🗞️ Links & Thinks from 2023.03.10
Silicon Sinkhole
Silicon Valley has been in rough shape for a bit, and the potholes are getting bigger.
Monthly venture funding has dropped to pre-pandemic levels. We’ve gone from unicorn fields forever to, what I imagine is, “you better show me how you’re going to make revenue.” I would expect less new entrant competition for tech firms to worry about and more ad options from startups or interesting non-ad monetization attempts. Or maybe more non-venture scale and/or federated startups. That’d be cool too.
Less cool, a bank run has killed Silicon Valley Bank. The bank got tight on capital thanks to interest rates and announced a share sale, which caused a panic. Or maybe it was when the CEO said:
the bank has “ample liquidity” to support its clients “with one exception: If everybody is telling each other that SVB is in trouble, that will be a challenge.”
🤦
No better way to waken the animal spirits than by explicitly asking them not to awaken.
More Inspiration!
All the Shopify inspiration you could ask for.
TikTok has added Keyword Insights to its robust trend and insights tool lineup. It shows you “trending script keywords…to get inspired by ad examples.” (I bet this would be very handy when paired with The Clock’s new search ads.)
Track That Click
The Trend Machine is making a post-cookie move by combining its Events API with Dentsu’s tech for server-side measurement.
Shopify finally has native GA4 integration. Get on it if you haven’t already, less than 4 months until the death of Universal Analytics.
Try Then Buy
Forget Buy Now, Pay Later, Elyn is doing Try Now, Buy Later, which is basically Stitch Fix or Amazon Prime try before you buy. But the French startup wants to bring the option to more retailers.
It also handles the return flow, which is handy for retailers (and sounds similar to Stitch Fix, again):
When a customer wants to return an item, Elyn asks you a couple of questions to narrow down the reason why you want to return something. Is it the wrong size or the wrong color? Do you want to get your money back? Do you want the same item in a different size? Do you want another item? Do you want a gift card?