Berlin-based design platform Kittl raises $11.6M Series A to take on Adobe and Canva • businesskinda.com

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Did you know that you can buy 3D printed keycaps to replace your escape key with a cat, for example? Today that’s our delicious bit of whimsy, courtesy of Frederick‘s review of a new keyboard (scroll all the way down for a photo of the cute little kitty). — Christine and Hey

The businesskinda.com Top 3

  • imitation is the purest form of flattery: Mike writes that Kittl is carving out a slice of the graphics world dominated by giants like Canva and Adobe, raising $11.6 million in Series A capital for its design platform that it says “easily turns ideas into graphics products without the difficult learning curve of other platforms.
  • This startup turns up the heat: European smart thermostat startup Tado planned to go public, but instead went after another round of funding, raising $46.9 million to pursue profitability. Paul has more.
  • “It’s always crypto winter to be a black founder”: This is how Iddris Sandu, the founder of Spatial Labs, described his hunt for funding for his web3 company. The infrastructure and hardware company raised $10 million in seed funding to create products and shopping experiences using augmented reality, Dominic Madori writes.

Startups and VC

Fintech startup Stripe has set itself a 12-month deadline to go public, either through a direct listing or by pursuing a private market transaction such as a fundraiser and takeover bid, according to sources familiar with the case. The news comes as a surprise given the rather dry market activity in the tech world. Mary Ann and Natasha M report.

There was a brief, sweet moment in 2021 over a few months when it felt like investing in robots could be immune to broader market forces. We all understood fundamentally and implicitly that this was not the case, but it was still a nice moment, Brian muses. However, now it’s becoming clearer that what we thought was happening with robot investments is definitely happening.

Another handful of tech news:

Teach yourself growth marketing: How to conduct growth experiments through A/B testing

Despite the myth, sharks don’t have to keep swimming to keep breathing. Early-stage startups, on the other hand, are less fortunate.

If driving growth is a priority, companies should conduct an ongoing series of A/B tests that can help refine marketing messages and make their product pipelines more relevant to customer needs.

In part three of a five-article series on Growth Marketing Fundamentals, Jonathan Martinez explains how to properly manage A/B testing, identify statistical significance when reviewing data, and prioritize experiments that maximize reach and maximize impact.

Three more from the TC+ team:

businesskinda.com+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams lead the way. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

Big Tech Inc.

In its own tally, GitHub says it has 100 million active users, Paul reports. This is a significant jump from the 3 million it had 10 years ago and even a healthy increase from just three months ago when Microsoft, which acquired the company five years ago, announced that GitHub had more than 90 million users.

Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies in the United States and Europe converged to seize Hive’s ransomware infrastructure, including leak sites and decryption keys. Carly reports. She writes that Hive is “one of the most prolific ransomware operations,” primarily targeting healthcare and public health entities, claiming responsibility for breaches of the Illinois-based Memorial Health System in August 2021, and most recently targeting Tata Power , a leading power generation company in India, in October.

And we have four more for you: