What’s Possible: 5th November, 2021

We hope you enjoy this week's hand-picked selection of important and interesting stories from the frontiers of tech.

The 100x ARR Multiple‍

The 100x ARR multiple might be the fundraising meme of 2021. Before, most investors used forward ARR multiples to value companies, but recently, the 100x multiple seems to be a benchmark for SaaS companies raising rounds.

Australia's CBA offers crypto trading, breaks ranks with industry

Commonwealth Bank of Australia will become the country's first main-street bank to offer a platform for retail customers to trade cryptocurrencies, breaking industry ranks as it looks to match offerings from rival fintech firms.

Australia's biggest lender said it will partner with New York-based exchange Gemini Trust Company LLC to offer a "crypto exchange and custody service" through a new feature in its mobile banking app that is used by about 6.4 million customers.

Mythical raises $150M at $1.25B valuation for playable NFT game platform

One of the reasons for the excitement around Mythical is that it could be a bridge between blockchain technology and the triple-A game community, which has been reticent about diving into blockchain games out of fear of things such as scams, regulator crackdowns, and hostility from gamers.

“We can’t quite disclose it yet. But I think some of the biggest players in the U.S. are really starting to pay attention heavily now,” Linden said. “And we’re going to step into the space with one of them before too long. We want to have the right infrastructure in place to start onboarding games that have millions of players. It’s coming quickly now, which is exciting.”

Einride launches autonomous pods and electric freight operations in US‍

“We started with traditional Level 4 and then increased usability in applications, combining autonomous with the remote driver ability, so that gives us the flexibility and the benefits of autonomous and human agility and decision making,” said Falck.

Zillow is shutting down its homebuying business and laying off 25% of its employees

But an Insider analysis revealed other issues with the company’s iBuying strategy. Of the hundreds of homes Zillow has recently listed for sale in its five biggest markets, 64% were being marketed for less than the company originally paid for them.
The numbers were particularly staggering in Phoenix, where 93% of Zillow-owned listings were priced below what the company originally paid.

The science everyone needs to know about climate change

With the United Nations’ climate conference in Scotland turning a spotlight on climate change policies and the impact of global warming, it’s useful to understand what the science shows.

I’m an atmospheric scientist who has worked on global climate science and assessments for most of my career. Here are six things you should know, in charts.

Google releases a shoppable TV screen with YouTube‍

With a quarter of logged-in YouTube CTV viewers watching primarily on TVs, the living room is becoming an essential place for brands to drive incremental conversions with new audiences. In early experiments for Video action campaigns on TV screens, over 90% of conversions coming from CTV would not have been reachable on mobile and desktop devices.

When a viewer sees a Video action campaign on their TV, they are invited through a URL at the bottom of their screen to continue shopping on the brand’s website from their desktop or mobile device — without interrupting their viewing session.

Sparkline Capital: Brand in the Influencer Era

Fortunately, in the influencer era, the nexus of consumer power has migrated online. It has moved to the very domain that is the most fertile ground for NLP and other modern data analysis techniques. With the exponential growth in user-generated data, investors are better positioned than ever to quantify this important intangible asset.

Friends With Benefits: Fundraising in a Community First World

What if instead of founders pitching investors, investors pitched to communities

Started just over a year ago, Friends With Benefits is a self-organized and internet native community that is collectively building the ultimate cultural membership.

Today, we’re excited to announce a $10M raise led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Pace Capital, Kindred Ventures, Spark Ventures, and Li Jin.

These funds purchased tokens from the FWB DAO treasury - setting precedence for how future community owned platforms can build along side venture capital support.

Here’s how we did it, why did it, and how your community can too.

Interesting adjacencies

• Shaan Puri: Everyone is wrong about the Metaverse (thread)
• Raoul Pal’s rant about the new generation of investors (thread)
• Li Jin: What’s next for the creator economy & its intersection with web3? (thread)
• Politico: We haven’t reached ‘Peak Newsletter.’ Not by a long shot. (link)

If you'd like to see more of what we’re exploring at Possible Ventures, you can follow us on Twitter.

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