Daily Crunch: New Starbucks Odyssey loyalty program ‘accidentally built on blockchain and web3’

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Happy new week, startup geeks!

Not one, but two Twitter Live events are happening tomorrow (Tuesday) and we’re excited for both. At 8am PDT / 11am EDT, We speak with André Chan on why Gen Z VCs are trash, and at 12:00 PDT / 3:00 PM EDT, we talk to partner M13 Anna Barber on what today’s founders can learn from the bursting of the dot-com bubble.

Let your week have all the right surprises! — Christina and He came

TechCrunch Top 3

• 2001, Starbucks Odyssey: In August, Starbucks began infiltrating plans for a blockchain-based loyalty program and the NFT community. Today, the coffee giant is creating further excitement by unveiling the Starbucks Odyssey. Sara there are more than this hot cup of rewards.
• Twitter vs. Elon Musk, part 265: Ivan writes that the “third time’s a charm” for Elon Musk’s lawyers, who sent Twitter a third termination notice over compensation for former security chief Peiter “Mudge” Zatak in June, claiming the action broke the law. Musk’s proposed deal to take over the social media giant. Or so they thought. Twitter denies that this violated the agreement.
• Africa’s hot and difficult fintech sector: Kippa, a Nigerian financial management app for merchants, has closed $8.4 million in new funding. takes reports that Kippa already has 500,000 merchants using their app since launching last June.

Startups and VCs

Electric truck company Nikola merged with VectoIQ into a SPAC in June 2020 at a $29 billion valuation. Trevor Milton, the former CEO of Nikola, is going on trial for fraud, which serves as a wake-up call to risk-averse investors who would throw money at the company before it has started shipping products or generating revenue. Rebecca reports.

“The reality is that if you’re a venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, no LP at your annual meeting is going to ask, ‘How did you miss Company X in Columbus?’ Like, that’s not going to happen. But they will ask you, ‘How did you miss Company Y that was in Silicon Valley?’ They don’t want to lose these things in their backyard,” explained Chris Olsen in a fascinating interview with Connie. Olsen spent six years at Sequoia Capital in California before co-founding Drive Capital in Columbus, Ohio in 2013.

Tangentially related, to our city focus: Minneapolis last week, He came hosted a panel discussing what Minneapolis investors are looking for (note: it’s not just Minnesota startups).

Here are a few more for you:

For payment orchestration startups in Latin America, market fragmentation is a blessing in disguise

In Latin America, e-commerce is plagued by high fraud rates. Almost 20% of adults have a credit card, and many who have one cannot use it abroad.

It is also true that e-commerce there is growing faster than in any other region since the beginning of the pandemic. According to the study, online sales in Latin America will generate USD 379 billion, an increase of 32% compared to the previous year.

“The payments landscape in Latin America appears hopelessly fragmented and riddled with fraud,” says Rocio Wu, director of F-Prime Capital.

“However, we believe that fragmentation really provides a great opportunity for vertically integrated payment orchestration startups to realize great value.”

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps startup founders and teams thrive. You can apply here.)

Big Tech Inc.

Darrell covered the Blue Origin launch this morning and brought the news that the launch was aborted after a “mid-flight anomaly.”

We know you missed Apple’s fix of news over the weekend, so team, including Zack, Ivan, Sara and Romain, have teamed up to bring you some stories related to iOS 16. First up are five new security and privacy features, followed by “cool” features you can’t miss. So everything you wanted to know about lock screen widgets and how downloading iOS 16 will turn your iPhone into a more personal device and finally a lean one on Apple Passkey.

• Looking at India: That’s exactly what Google plans to do with part of the production of its Pixel smartphones, Manish it says.
• What not to leave in a hotel room: I’m not sure how easily you can “find” a Meta Quest Pro prototype, but that’s what a video game streamer in Mexico says happened. Amanda have more.
• Not: Can’t say Amazon hasn’t tried. The e-commerce giant is asking the European Union to accept its offer to end an antitrust investigation into its use of third-party data. Natasha L writes that some advocacy groups are calling Amazon’s offer “weak, vague and full of loopholes.”
• Chocolate, salty balls maybe?: Go over capsules and K-cups. The coffee balls are here. find out what He came had to say about a coffee machine from Switzerland.