Heavenly Views, Earthly Troubles
Hope you guys have been camping! It’s nice to get out of the city and enjoy nature and all its views. Speaking of views, NASA’s James Webb telescope just unveiled its most beautiful and technical progress yet.
The Deep Field image shows galaxies upon galaxies that’re only visible by NASA’s latest tech. Talk about seeing stars?
This week we have Amazon’s Delivery Return; Tik-Tok Marches On; and, Pain Now, Pain Later.
Analytics, Digital, Design In Action
Amazon’s Delivery Return
Under earnings pressure after a big loss last year, Grubhub struck a deal with Amazon on Wednesday, offering restaurant delivery services without a fee for Amazon Prime members. The partnership gives Amazon the option to take a 2% stake in Grubhub, the US subsidiary of Just Eat Takeaway.com, the European food giant. Amazon will be able to increase its total stake to 15% of Grubhub depending on certain performance factors, such as the number of new customers added. Grubhub has been rumored to be on the selling block for a while now.
Amazon tried but then ultimately stepped away from building its own cost-intensive Grubhub and DoorDash competitor in the US back in 2019. Three years later, it’s taking a different approach to tackling the space to build in one more sweetener to encourage more sign-ups to its Prime subscription service.
TikTok Marches On
Despite growing heat from the US Senate regarding its data practices (and underlying geopolitical concerns), TikTok continues with its innovation and product suite.
First, Follow Me, a multi-channel educational experience designed to help small-and-medium businesses (SMBs) leverage the power of TikTok to drive real world results. The 6-week program will run from July 11 to August 19 and provide SMBs with resources on how to get started on TikTok and take their small business to the next level. Follow Me will serve as a guide for SMBs looking to share their stories, build their community on TikTok, and achieve their business goals.
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Second, it dropped plans to expand its live e-commerce “TikTok Shop” initiative to the United States and additional parts of Europe, according to the Financial Times. It launched TikTok Shop in the U.K. last year, its first market outside Asia, allowing companies and influencers to sell products through QVC-style livestreams. TikTok was reportedly planned to launch TikTok Shop in Germany, France, Italy and Spain in the first half of this year, and then in the U.S. later this year.
Pain Now, Pain Later
Pain continues to spread across the tech world, with Klarna slashing its valuation by 85% being the next casualty. The company, which enjoyed stellar growth while also being criticised for potentially leading shoppers into unsustainable debt, announced the valuation after the conclusion of a difficult $800m funding round as investors continued to question the true worth of many tech businesses.
Just over a year ago, Klarna, founded in Sweden in 2005, hit a peak valuation of $46bn after a $639m funding round led by Japan’s SoftBank.
Meanwhile, even Microsoft was not immune to job cuts, while Instacart sees a shake up before its planned IPO.
We’re also recruiting for our ABD Team!
This week, we want to highlight a new BizOps position. ABD team has increasing needs for cross-functional collaborations, strategic alignment, and project management. We are looking for results-oriented individuals to drive organizational changes and push forward some of our strategic initiatives.
Also, check out our other positions that we are actively hiring.
Don’t forget that nominations are open for our Expert Circle! We’re on our Third Cohort!
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