Seasons and leaves are turning, and so does the tech world. Some big news from LinkedIn recently, as well as some fresh funding across tech.
Analytics, Digital, Design In Action
A Slow Boat From China
LinkedIn exits China after seven years. In a statement, the company cited a “significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China.”
LinkedIn entered China after agreeing to censor content on its site for misinformation and politically sensitive subjects. In recent years, it has been the only major US internet company offering content within China. LinkedIn says it will operate a China-only jobs board within the country, effectively removing the social networking and content sharing functionality of the site.
More than geopolitics, China is unlikely to miss LinkedIn much, partly because job-seekers have many other options. China's job site market is more bifurcated, with some platforms focusing on nuts and bolts searches — Tencent-backed job board Boss Zhipin had its IPO on Nasdaq in June — and others, like Maimai, focused exclusively on worker gossip.
Note-Taking Goes Viral
Note-Taking and productivity app Notion fetches $10 Billion valuation, following superb remote work-driven growth - and TikTok. Notion quintupled its user base of knowledge workers, note takers and personal organizers in 2020 as the pandemic pushed more work online.
However, even more recently, it wasn’t prepared for Gen-Z which loves a minimalist note-taking tool and workspace. The app was mentioned in tens of millions of short videos on the social media app.
Executives said its latest funding would go towards Notion’s “platform” push to offer, and connect to, more applications, as well as staffing up its operations to meet its international and big-business demand.
Also recently, it started offering free credits to startups globally.
DevOps Giant GitLab Goes Public
GitLab went public at a valuation of more than $15 Billion. GitLab is a web-based DevOps lifecycle tool that provides a Git repository manager providing wiki, issue-tracking and continuous integration and deployment pipeline features, using an open-source license.
CEO Sijbrandij launched GitLab in 2012 as a business built on top of an open source project created by Dmitriy Zaporozhets and Valery Sizov. Zaporozhets joined a year later as co-founder and CTO.
GitLab was the first-ever on Nasdaq to livestream its entire IPO day, with about 18,000 people stopping by over the course of the broadcast, it says.
Apple Unleashed
Apple held its latest event, Unleashed, where it previewed some neat Mac Chips, MacBook Pro, its third gen AirPods, and much more.
While not game breaking, the event did demonstrate Apple’s growing chips prowess, as well as its latest antes in the Music streaming competition and the growing speaker market.
Above all, we think Stripe Co-Founder John Collison is onto something with Tim Cook’s photo.
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