To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.
Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Monday, June 28. How much time did you spend on your phone this weekend? Too much? Not a lot? According to recent data on consumer app spending, you probably spent a pretty fair amount. Consumer spending on apps hit a new record in the first half of the year, though the pace of growth is slowing.
Before we begin, Extra Crunch is on sale this week. Check it out here and support The Good Ship TechCrunch. — Alex
The TechCrunch Top 3
- Surgical robots are big business:News broke today that U.K.-based surgical robotics startup CMR has put together a $600 million round led by SoftBank’s second Vision Fund and Ally Bridge Group. CMR is now worth $3 billion.
- Etsy acquires Brazilian rival: Also out today was news that Etsy, the consumer crafts marketplace popular in the United States, purchased its Brazilian cognate for $217 million. The deal for Elo7 follows Etsy’s recent purchase of Depop. It appears that Etsy views at least a good portion of its growth through an inorganic lens.
- SpaceX wants to send Starship to (near) space:SpaceX’s Starship is nearly going to space next month, the company reported. Yep, Starship, the thing you probably most remember for blowing up during trials, could be headed to orbit in July. Don’t think that we’re knocking SpaceX for having some failed trials. The company used to crash rocket stages in reentry all the time. Now it lands them on drone ships with regularity. In space tech, perhaps you have to blow up before you can properly take flight.
Startups/VC
To kick off today, we’re talking about Pittsburgh, a fascinating startup market that TechCrunch is visiting in short order:
- Pittsburgh’s mayor on the city’s startup community and the difficulty of attracting venture capital: How do you reinvent a city that was left behind by deindustrialization and wants to shake off its old reputation? TechCrunch got in the weeds with Bill Peduto, the mayor of Pittsburgh since 2014.
- VCs discuss the opportunities — and challenges — in Pittsburgh’s startup ecosystem:Of course, city government is only one piece of the larger puzzle of building a startup hub. The monied classes also have a part to play when it comes to creating a flywheel for startup creation, investment and re-investment.
- How Carnegie Mellon is helping build its own startups and keeping them in Pittsburgh: And speaking of flywheels, another key component of any startup market that wants to be self-sustaining is helping keep its newly educated minds local, where they can build, scale, exit, and then put their capital and knowledge back to work.
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!
