Hi there,

What good is commercialized space travel if you have to fly solo?

Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire and first prospective rider on SpaceX’s deep-space rocket, has launched a campaign to find a significant other to join him on a trip around the moon.

The contest is open to women who are older than 20, “want to enjoy life to the fullest,” and “wish for world peace.”

Maezawa’s search for lunar love will naturally be turned into a reality show called “Full Moon Lovers.”

What a time to be alive.

Make their pockets hurt

VC dollars and deals in the US declined for the second consecutive quarter, in line with the broader drop in global VC funding.

Check out more trends in the latest CB Insights and PwC Q4'19 venture capital funding report.  

Nope. Same old me.

Startup: We will maintain that bootstrap mentality even after the SoftBank funding.

Startup after funding:

It's still alive and kicking

Blockchain expertise tops the list of the most in-demand hard skills for 2020, according to LinkedIn.

Need a refresher on what blockchain is? Check out our explainer on blockchain technology here.

Get Plaid, get paid
 

Yesterday, Visa announced that it’s buying fintech startup Plaid for a cool $5.3B. Plaid is the engine that powers popular consumer apps such as Robinhood, Venmo, Coinbase, and Betterment, among others.

The CEO and co-founder of Plaid will be speaking at the Future of Fintech (June 14-16, SF).

Also on the lineup are speakers from Banco Santander, Citigroup, MoneyLion, JPMorgan Chase, Wealthfront, TransferWise, Dave.com, and more.

All ticket prices increase by up to $500 tomorrow, January 15. Secure your spot today.

Checked out
 

The $1.85T business commercial banking market is ripe for disruption — currently, most B2B payments are done via paper checks. 

We dug into how businesses are evolving past this antiquated method. Clients can check out our analysis here.

Nikkei Asian Review. Akira Hayakawa covers Oyo's mass layoffs and cites CB Insights data.

Business Insider. Dan DeFrancesco (@dandefrancesco) highlights neobank business models and references CB Insights’ Q3’19 global fintech report. 

Mashable. Rachel Kraus (@realkrauswife) covers smart beauty devices at CES and references our Beauty Trends report.

P.S. We're looking for a director of strategic accounts. See the job description here.

A moonshot date. A Japanese billionaire is seeking a girlfriend who will travel to the moon with him.

The Verge 

Don't be evil. Working in Big Tech used to be the dream of many college students. That sentiment may be changing.

New York Times

Teamwork makes the dream work. Here’s the story of how the first Ebola vaccine was created. 

STAT News

Fingerprints everywhere. With the ubiquity of digital records, is this the end of undercover spying as we know it?

Yahoo News

It's all relative. Is Amazon's market share 35% or 5%?
Benedict Evans