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Extra Crunch roundup: Square buys Afterpay, paid search basics, career advice for devs

Square paid around a quarter of its present-day value for Afterpay, Alex Wilhelm notes in The Exchange. That seems like a lot. But was it too much?“Afterpay brings global revenues, global users and a

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Demand Curve: Tested tactics for growing newsletters

There are very few marketing channels as well rounded as email newsletters. They provide a direct, owned line of communication with your audience; nearly 40x return on investment (~$40 generated per e

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Controversial crime app Citizen launches $20/month Protect service

After months of testing with upwards of 100,000 beta testers, Citizen today is launching its premium Protect offering for all users. The subscription service runs $20 a month and opens up a number of

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BoxGroup closes on $255M across two funds to back startups at their earliest stages

BoxGroup has quietly, yet diligently, been funding companies at the early stage for over a decade. The 11-year-old firm in fact was the first investor in Plaid, a fintech company that nearly got sold

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Mixlab raises $20M to provide purrfect pharmacy experience for pet parents

Pet pharmacy Mixlab has developed a digital platform enabling veterinarians to prescribe medications and have them delivered — sometimes on the same day — to pet parents.The New York-based company rai

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Which countries are best suited to survive a global systems breakdown?

01:00 The UK, Ireland and Iceland are among five countries most likely to survive a collapse of the global system, according to a new study.A combination of factors including population

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Extra Crunch roundup: Livestream e-commerce, growth marketing interviews, CEO for a day

This year, livestream viewers in China are projected to spend more than $60 billion on digital shopping experiences that let them interact with influencers in real time.Promoting everything from cosme

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True ‘shift left and extend right’ security requires empowered developers

DevOps is fundamentally about collaboration and agility. Unfortunately, when we add security and compliance to the picture, the message gets distorted.The term “DevSecOps” has come into fashion the pa

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Daily Crunch: $150M Series D vaults search-as-a-service provider Algolia to $2.25B valuation

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for July 28, 2021. What a day. Duo

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The MKT1 interview: Growth marketing in 2021, hiring versus outsourcing and more

Emily Kramer and Kathleen Estreich are the founders of of MKT1, a strategic marketing firm that does much more than just marketing. As we mentioned the last time we spoke with the company, it offers a

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Nura finally goes fully wireless with the NuraTrue buds

As I write this, I have no fewer than five recently reviewed earbuds sitting on the desk in front of me. And you know what? They’re all pretty good. Some are better than others, of course — that’s why

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What the COVID-19 report card reveals: geography, media and government

Editor's note: John Gong is a professor at the University of International Business and Economics and a research fellow at the Academy of China Open Economy Studies at

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What the COVID-19 report card reveals: geography, media and government

Editor's note: John Gong is a professor at the University of International Business and Economics and a research fellow at the Academy of China Open Economy Studies at

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Silicon Valley comms expert Caryn Marooney shares how to nail the narrative

Caryn Marooney, Silicon Valley communications professional turned venture capitalist, spoke extensively on storytelling at TechCrunch Early Stage: Marketing and Fundraising. During her talk, she broke

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Twitter tests a TweetDeck revamp it hopes to make a subscription product

Twitter announced today it will begin testing a new set of features for TweetDeck, the company’s often-ignored social media dashboard aimed at Twitter’s power users, which Twitter may soon

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Litnerd streams live actors into the classroom to help kids better connect with reading

Our kids can’t read. As of 2019, roughly a third of US fourth graders were unable to read at the level expected of them. The scores have barely changed in decades. Something isn’t working

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Facebook onboards another 31 newsletter writers on Bulletin

Late last month, Facebook announced Bulletin, its newsletter platform. Unlike Substack, Medium and other competitors, Bulletin hand-picks its writers to curate a more controlled platform, with stars r