Pet tech startup Digitail raises $11M Series A led by Atomico • toptecheasy.com

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Hello, dear readers! Here we are again (like a renegade master) with a wall of great tech news stories. Plug in some headphones and bend your head to that song while keeping up with what’s happening in the rest of the world. Remember: There is no such thing as a standing desk. It’s a dance table. Aw yasss. (Maybe we had a little too much coffee this morning. That could explain our bad behavior.) Christine and Hey

The toptecheasy.com Top 3

• Make your move: With pet ownership increasing since the pandemic, veterinarians are being stretched to their limits. Here comes Romania-based Digitail, a company that automates administrative work for vets so they can focus on our four-legged friends. Mike reports that the company has secured $11 million in new financing to scale its operations in the US and Canada.
• Your turn: Amanda writes that proposed changes to Dungeons & Dragons’ Open Gaming license threaten an entire cohort of D&D content creators and are fighting to protect their livelihoods.
• SBF starts a Substack: In an attempt to explain his side of the FTX debacle, Sam Bankman-Fried told Substack, “I didn’t steal money and I certainly didn’t stash away billions.” Mary Ann has more.

Startups and VC

Investment prospects in China are suddenly improving as the country gradually phases out its draconian zero-COVID policies, which have disrupted businesses of all kinds and kept the country’s borders closed for the past three years. Rita reports. For venture capitalists, the pandemic has been a tumultuous ride. Tony Wu, a partner at Northern Light Venture Capital, a China-focused VC firm with $4.5 billion in assets under management, calls 2022 the “toughest” in his 15 years of investing in Chinese startups.

Another handful of headlines for your build:

Why Africa didn’t have unicorns last year, despite a record amount of fundraising

Unicorns are becoming an endangered species in Africa’s startup ecosystem, Tage Kene-Okafor reports.

While funding in the region increased slightly in 2022, “no unicorns showed up all year, compared to five in 2021,” he writes.

“So what happened in Africa in 2022 that made it so…weird?”

And there’s more for our loyal TC+ subscribers:

toptecheasy.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.

We started some of this yesterday, but Natasha L brings us a warning article for other ad-funded programs to ensure that Meta’s ads are found illegal in the European Union. She writes that “the fact that Facebook has spent years processing and profiting from Europeans’ data by serving illegitimate ads doesn’t mean other ad-funded platforms will get the same free ride from the bloc’s regulators. Enforcement is finally here.”

And we have five more for you: