V3 Ventures launches to put €100M into startups in health, beauty and food • TechCrunch

Verlinvest, a family-backed, “evergreen”, growth fund investor, that has previously funded a few well-known consumer brands like Oatly, Vita Coco, Tony’s Chocolonely, Who Gives A Crap, Pedego, Chewy.com, Hint & others, is getting into the venture game. After putting around €50m into VC initiatives globally, it’s now embarking on being the kick-starter LP in a…

the billionaire tantrum • TechCrunch

This morning Kanye West announced he’s buying Parler, the annoyingly-named so-called “free speech” platform that ignores the proper French pronunciation of its moniker in service of a poor pun. The deal terms aren’t out there yet, but the startup has so far raised $56 million and I bet it has a tidy little exit on…

Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart launches metaverse shopping experience • TechCrunch

Flipkart has launched a metaverse offering for consumers to discover and shop new products, the latest bet from the Indian e-commerce giant as it experiments with web3 offerings to supercharge its customer experience. The Walmart-backed Bengaluru-headquartered firm has partnered with eDAO, a Polygon-incubated firm, to launch the metaverse offering, which it is calling Flipverse. The…

Zombie startups • TechCrunch

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a fresh human-first take on this week’s startup news and trends. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. People leave jobs for all kinds of reasons, but when it’s a CFO departing a richly valued company as the company itself conducts layoffs, the exodus can be a sign of a…