👉 What Happened on Tech Twitter Last Week - Feb 2nd

🇺🇸The iowa caucas shitstorm, 💸best acquisitions in tech history, 🔥PornHub Super Bowl analysis, 😂VCs impersonate each other, and more!

Yo! It’s Brett again. ✌️This last week was seriously one of the wildest weeks on Tech Twitter, but before we get into the juicy goodness of it all, I’d love to get some feedback from you.

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And now to our regularly scheduled programming.

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🇺🇸Iowa caucus app shitstorm

The Iowa Democratic Caucus stalled for over a day due to a malfunctioning voting app, leading an awkward moment where a candidate declared victory before he found out he wasn’t the winner. Read through @rabble’s tweetstorm for a deep dive on how this project got so messed up.

rabble @rabble

If you want to understand what happened with Shadow and the failure of the Iowa Caucus app you have to understand how electoral campaign tech work is done and funded. Let me tell you a story to make sense of it.

rabble @rabble

There is no way they could succeed. The problem is structural, the way we’re funding campaign tech is wrong. We need it to be based on open source technology, we need a community of companies, parties, and third party groups funding it. It needs to have funding between cycles.

Tyler Dinucci @TylerDinucci

Hey guys, was let go from my job today 😟. If anyone has any leads, please let me know. I’ve attached my resume. References upon request!l

💸Instagram & YouTube Good, Casper Bad

The Big Cos announced their Q4 earnings and it wasn’t great, but we got a glimpse into Instagram and YouTube, perhaps the two greatest acquisitions in the tech industry. Both have seen 100x+ return on what seemed like absurdly high acquisition prices. Holy moly!

Tanay Jaipuria @tanayj

Instagram now accounts for a quarter of Facebook's revenues, bringing in ~$20B in revenue in 2019. That's more than YouTube which is at ~$18B ($15B in ads + $3B in subscriptions). Both would be worth over $100B each standalone and were purchased for $1B and $1.6B respectively.

While we’re talking about public markets, Casper had its disappointing IPO and people are up and arms about DTC as expected.

Magdalena Kala @magdalenakala

Casper repricing IPO to less than half its last private round, Harry’s acquisition by large CPG blocked by FTC and Walmart stopping its “buy up DTC brands” strategy is the trinity of doom for DTC exit options.

🔥Burning money on Super Bowl ads

Commercial spots during the Super Bowl are really expensive, yet the folks at Quibi thought it would be a good idea to shell out the money even though they haven’t launched the product yet. Crying thinking about all the App Store searches that were left unconverted 😭

Quibi @Quibi

Waiting for your driver? Our big game commercial shows you what to do with that spare time. Episodes in 10 minutes or less. Quick Bites. Big Stories. Quibi. Launching April 6.

Austin Rief @austin_rief

Quibi just dropped an entire typical seed round of funding on 30 seconds and they haven’t launched yet.

While we’re here, it’s worth highlighting the PornHub usage analysis that gets done after every Super Bowl.

Darren Rovell @darrenrovell

JUST IN: Pornhub says traffic dropped by as much as 50% in Kansas City during the Super Bowl, but rose to above normal levels after they celebrated title. Niners fans weren’t as excited to check out the site.

😂More hilarious dunking on VCs than usual

Tech Twitter is no stranger to dunking on VCs, but this week, it was extra entertaining. Cyan Banister, long-time partner at Founders Fund impersonated a number of VCs in an incredible tweet storm (click in):

Cyan @cyantist

Let’s play a game. I’m going to impersonate an investor in each connected tweet in this thread. See if you can guess who it is. Some of these people are famous and some more obscure.

A couple “operators” also had some hilarious comments on the industry.

Nikita Bier @nikitabier

Only in tech is the word “operator” used to describe people. In other industries, everyone does work—or “operates.” But in tech we have to make this distinction because most people don’t build, or work really. They just do cocktail parties and DocuSign.

Sar Haribhakti @sarthakgh

We have hit a point where GPs proudly talk how their new teammates have had an unconventional path to VC *checks resume Went to GSB or HBS, had coveted summer internships & spent time at a Tech Giant or on Wall Street. Bravo sir, you are fooling no one but yourself 👏

🤷‍♂️Other funny, cool & interesting tweets

You know what’s cool? A billion users.

Sachin Rekhi @sachinrekhi

The 1B+ users club: • Apple: 1.5B devices • Google: 2.5B Android devices; 1B+ on Search, Gmail, Drive, Maps, YouTube, Chrome, Photos • Facebook: 2.89B users on FB, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger • Microsoft: 1.5B Windows devices, 1.2B Office users • Tencent: 1B WeChat users

Always 👏price 👏high 👏

Jeff Chang📈 @JeffChang30

Reasons why startups should price relatively high in general: 1. Easier to lower prices than raise them 2. PMF at low price doesn't mean PMF at a higher one 3. Less likely to leave money on the table 4. If your product is actually 10x better, it's worth it What else?

Coronavirus is no joke

Zach Tratar 🧢 @zachtratar

Remember that graph I highlighted two days ago about the coronavirus? This is it now. In 2 just days we went from 8,000 cases to 24,000 and 180 deaths to 490. We are off the chart -- SARS was nothing compared to the coronavirus.

Zach Tratar 🧢 @zachtratar

For all those claiming the coronavirus isn't serious: look at the numbers. Be smart. Be safe. Protect yourself. https://t.co/Xs53LDleVF

This is just trippy

Matt Stark @mattstark256

The polaroid game now has a working title: Viewfinder #madewithunity #gamedev #polaroid

Someone built Amazondating.com and it’s sooooo great. Unfortunately it looks like it was taken down already.

Natty Zay™️ @_zaydevon

@amazondating Katherine is out her damn near noodle

Vday stats via Natalie Dillion per usual.

Natalie Dillon @ntdillon

Valentines Day 💞55% people celebrate 💰$27.4B total expected spend 💃🏻Up 32% from last years $20.7B 🕺🏻2x amount spent a decade ago 🥰$196 avg spend per person 💎Jewelry is top spending category 🐶27% to buy presents for their pet 😻Record $1.6B to be spent on pets

Throwback videos from Jon Erlichman per usual.

Jon Erlichman @JonErlichman

On this day in 1997: Steve Jobs rejoins Apple 11 years after being fired

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