Extra Crunch roundup: Jam City SPAC, startup PR, telemedicine market map, more

Almost half of all Americans play mobile games, so Alex reviewed Jam City’s investor deck, a transcript of the investor presentation call and a press release to see how it stacks up against Zynga, which “has done great in recent quarters, including posting record revenue and bookings in the first three months of 2021.”

(Full disclosure: the second time I worked at a startup founded by Mark Pincus, Zinga slept behind my desk and I was one of her favorite dog-sitters.)

Thanks for reading Extra Crunch; I hope you have an excellent weekend!

Walter Thompson

Senior Editor, TechCrunch

@yourprotagonist

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5 ways to raise your startup’s PR game

The ability to effectively communicate can make or break your launch. It will play a role in determining who wins a new space — you or a competitor.

So how do you make a splash? How do you stay relevant?

For one, you have to stop thinking that what you are up to is interesting.

Every early-stage startup must identify and evaluate a strategic advantage

Whether you’re building a company or thinking about investing, it’s important to understand your strategic advantage.

In order to determine one, you should ask fundamental questions: What’s the long-term, sustainable reason that the company will stay in business?

As M&A accelerates, deal-makers are leveraging AI and ML to keep pace

The global pandemic has changed the way we work, including how and where we work. For those involved in the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) industry, a notoriously relationship-driven business, this has meant in-person boardroom handshakes have been replaced by video conference calls, remote collaboration and potentially less travel in the future.

The pandemic has also accelerated digital transformation, and deal-makers have embraced digital tools to help them execute effectively.

The quickening pace of digital transformation is no longer about ensuring a competitive edge. Today, it’s also about business resilience. But what’s on the horizon, and how else will technology evolve to meet the needs of companies and deal-makers?

There are still many inefficiencies in managing M&A, but technologies such as artificial intelligence, especially machine learning, are helping to make the process faster and easier.

New Relic’s business remodel will leave new CEO with work to do

Lew Cirne, New Relic’s founder and CEO, is stepping into the executive chairman role. He will be replaced by Bill Staples on July 1.

Cirne spent the last several years rebuilding the company’s platform and changing its revenue model, aiming for what he hopes is long-term success.

TechCrunch decided to dig into the company’s financials to see just what challenges Staples may face as he moves into the corner office. The resulting picture is one that shows a company doing hard work for a more future-aligned product map and business model, albeit one that may not generate the sort of near-term growth that gives Staples ample breathing room with public investors.

Fast growth pushes an unprofitable no-code startup into the public markets: Inside Monday.com’s IPO filing

At long last, the Monday.com crew dropped an F-1 filing to go public in the United States. TechCrunch has long known that the company, which sells corporate productivity and communications software, has scaled north of $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR).

The countdown to its IPO filing — an F-1, because the company is based in Israel, rather than the S-1s filed by domestic companies — has been ticking for several quarters.

The Exchange has been riffling through the document since it came out, and we’ve picked up on a few things to explore.

The battle for voice recognition inside vehicles is heating up

Until recently, integrating affordable voice-recognition software into an automobile was something from science fiction.

But last year, the percentage of vehicles offering in-car connected services reached 45%. By 2024, analysts predict cars with voice recognition will comprise 60% of the market.

Considering how much time many of us spend behind the wheel, there’s an infinite number of applications for the technology. For our latest Extra Crunch market map, we sized up the general market opportunity before creating a roster of major players and reaching out to investors to see where they’re placing bets.

Industrial automation startup Bright Machines hauls in $435M by going public via SPAC

Bright Machines is going public via a SPAC-led combination that will see the 3-year-old company merge with SCVX, raising gross cash proceeds of $435 million in the process.

After the transaction is consummated, the startup will sport an anticipated equity valuation of $1.6 billion.

The Bright Machines news indicates that the great SPAC chill was not a deep freeze. And the transaction itself, in conjunction with the previously announced Desktop Metal blank-check deal, implies that there is space in the market for hardware startup liquidity via SPACs. Perhaps that will unlock more late-stage capital for hardware-focused upstarts.

We took a look at what Bright Machines does, and then the financial details that it shared as part of its news.

Want to double your rate of return? Seek counsel from experienced executives

As a rule of thumb, it takes 7-8 years for a successful startup to achieve an exit. But there’s a simple way to speed up the clock: Bring in one or more founders who have previous executive experience.

According to data gathered by Rob Olson, partner and head of data strategy at venture engine M13, startups that have two or more experienced founders tend to exit 33% faster and raise 34% less capital.

“Combined, these two improvements can nearly double an investor’s rate of return,” says Olson.

Should startups build or buy telehealth infrastructure?

Digital health in the U.S. got a huge boost from COVID-19 as more people started consulting physicians and urgent care providers remotely in the midst of lockdowns. So much so that McKinsey estimates that up to $250 billion of the current healthcare expenditure in the U.S. has the potential to be spent virtually.

The prominence of digital health is undoubtedly here to stay, but how it looks and feels from provider to provider is still a debate among sector startups.

But for providers who want to deliver care virtually across the country, it’s not as simple as adding a Zoom invite to an annual check-up. The process requires intention every step of the way — right from the clinicians delivering remote care to the choice of payment processor.

Help TechCrunch find the best email marketers for startups

Email marketing has been with us for decades, but today it has been refined to a science and an art form.

If you’re an early-stage founder, it is one of the best ways to build and grow your direct relationship with your customer. You know how fickle the platforms can be. You can’t afford to mess this up.

So when and how should you think about doing email marketing, versus all of your other frantic priorities?

Here at Extra Crunch, we’re helping you find the answers. We launched a survey of founders who want to recommend a great email marketer or agency they have worked with to the rest of the startup world.

Fill out the survey here.