Daily Crunch: “Copy China” social media app Lemon8 smashes its way into the US top 10

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Hello and welcome to your Friday. Has the week dragged on or gone quickly for you? Or maybe you had today off. Regardless, I’m here to bring you all the tech goodness today. Today’s lesson: “Never give out data.”

Oh, and support our fellow podcasters Chain Reaction and Found: they’ve been nominated for a Webby, so please support them with a vote by April 20. – Christina

TechCrunch’s top 3

• It’s a spicy app: ByteDance’s latest hit, Lemon8, which some describe as a cross between Instagram, Pinterest and Amazon, is now among the top 10 apps in the US. Rita says Lemon8 is more like another app called Xiaohongshu and explains why ByteDance may have taken another page from China’s playbook.
• Prepare your unicorn horn: You’ll need a TechCrunch+ subscription to read this next one, but I promise it’s worth it. alexander went looking for unicorn IPOs and came back with a list of names, saying, “The first group of potential unicorn IPOs to come is looking good.”
• In a galaxy far, far away: If you’re a Star Wars fan, Disney+ will launch a new series called “The Acolyte” in 2024. Aisha writes that this storyline takes place at the end of the High Republic era before the events of the main Star Wars films.

Startups and VCs

Everyone needs a good competition to unleash their creativity. KyleGuess and pot holder teamed up to review Anthropic’s four-year, $5 billion plan to tackle OpenAI. Reviewing the company’s pitch deck, the trio outlines the business model that will drive Anthropic there and the investors behind it.

Wrapping up the week, as mentioned yesterday, we were a group watching the Y Combinator Winter 2023 Demo Day. Artificial intelligence and open source were big buzzwords on Day 1, while Day 2 had us wondering if crypto is back and why accountants are suddenly getting so much love.

From VCs to recommerce startups: let’s add some tags

Thanks in large part to Gen Z’s interest in sustainable shopping, recommerce is reaching new heights and VCs are looking for something new.

Since Etsy went public in 2015, companies like Poshmark, The RealReal, and thredUP have followed suit, attracting even more investors to the industry. Last year, VCs paid about $6 billion to resale platforms, writes Brian Schwarzbach, investor at Cathay Innovation.

In an article for TC+, he explores three areas of recommerce attracting VC funds and shares “some food for thought for founders building startups in this (re)emerging space.”

Tech Crunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get a head start. You can register here. Use code “DC” to get 15% off an annual subscription!

Big Tech inc.

Sometimes things don’t go as planned. In India, its central bank decided to pause plans it had for a rival to the country’s dominant payment system, Unified Payments Interface. pot holder writes that the project, called New Umbrella Entity, has caught on, attracting interest from major corporations and financial institutions, and inviting bids in 2021 for licenses to operate new retail payment and settlement systems at across India. However, the project simply failed to have that sizzle and pop that the Reserve Bank of India was looking for.

Catch a falling iPod and put it in your pocket…Harris reports on Apple’s patent application for what appears to be a tiny little iPod that can do it all: music, videos and books, no need for a smartphone or smartwatch. Although you don’t know how you can read on something so small. I guess we’ll see.

And we have five more for you: