Hi Everyone. This is Take Off. We're like a hidden Easter egg in your favorite video game - surprising, delightful, and adding an extra layer of fun to your tech news consumption.

Here's what we're serving up today:

• Reddit’s IPO Pop 🍾

• Tech M&A: From Drought To Deluge? 💧

• Asteroids ☄️

• Trending Tools ⚒️ 

Reddit’s IPO Pop 🍾

Whether it’s the NFL, NBA, MLB or any other league, getting drafted is one of the most important days in an athlete’s life. 

In corporate America, that day is when the company rings the bell on The New York Stock Exchange and IPOs.

The self-anointed “Front Page of the Internet” rang the bell on Wall Street on March 21st, 2024 and started trading on the exchange under the ticker - NYSE:RDDT.

The Nervous Minutes

Reddit was the first major social media IPO since Pinterest in 2019. 

There was a frenzy of nervousness and excitement all around to see how the IPO would perform. 

The company priced its Initial Public Offering at $34 - the upper end of the target range.

And it was NOT gloom and doom for them as its stock surged 48% to close out at $50.44 on their first day of trading, leaving some of the platform’s power users and moderators with a nice windfall. 

The Trillion Question

Reddit’s Mascot Snoo ringing the bell at The New York Stock Exchange was also a soft ringtone tickling the ear of a sleepy IPO market. 

You see, the US IPO market has been as dry as The Sahara after the ZIRP era and investors want to see some IPO dough. 

Reddit’s early success as a public company could encourage other classic tech companies to go public. 

Of course, Reddit cannot single-handedly push companies to launch IPOs. The other big factor is the Fed’s signal that it still has plans to cut interest rates by three quarters of a percentage point by the end of the year. 

Meme-ing Could Maim Investors

To be sure, there’s the risk that Reddit will get “memed” by its very own users. Redditors on the notorious subreddit r/WallStreetBets are already signaling that they plan to short the stock.

Tech M&A: From Drought To Deluge? 📉

As painful as the post-pandemic tech M&A slump has been, the market has definitely found the bottom and is set to rebound sharply in 2024. 

It’s a bust-to-boom reversal that - if it comes to pass - could see hundreds of billions of dollars worth of deal spending flowing back to an otherwise parched market.

Let’s talk shop for a second. Last year was tough, kinda like trying to row a boat in a storm - without any oars. 2023 saw the sharpest YoY contraction in tech M&A spending.

But forecasts predict that the dark days are behind us. 

Corporate acquirers are expected to lead the charge back. And it seems like they are already charging ahead. 

• Hewlett Packard Enterprises (NYSE: HPE) announced the $12.8B purchase of Juniper Networks Inc., the serial acquirer's largest-ever transaction.

• Synopsis (NASDAQ: SNPS) announced the acquisition of Ansys for $35B, making it the biggest deal in 2024 till now.

The MVP that’s expected to drive all the frenzy? 

No points for guessing - Generative AI. As expected, it is expected to easily outpace the forecasts for all other emerging tech trends. 

Many CEOs are taking advantage as some target companies are under pressure, given the difficulty of raising follow-on capital at an affordable rate and the challenging prospects for going public. 

Companies that raised capital in 2020-2021 and are still struggling to become profitable could find the prospect of a sale more attractive than they might have just a few years ago.

What are your predictions for the M&A market?

☄️ Asteroids ☄️

AT&T resets millions of customer passcodes after a 2019 data leak affecting over 73 million records gets exposed, revealing personal details and encrypted passcodes easy to crack 🛡️🔓

Google Podcasts app bids farewell, pushing users to migrate to YouTube Music for podcast streaming before its shutdown in early April. 🎙️➡️🎵

OpenAI launches Voice Engine for ethical voice cloning, enabling high-quality speech synthesis from brief samples, yet prioritizes safety and responsible use amid deepfake concerns. 🎤🛡️

⚒️ Trending Tools ⚒️

🖥️ Indiedex - Connect with other indie hackers in seconds

📚️ Everlearns - Generate any course in 5 minutes

📹️ Directin - Create amazing AI films - with one tool

📃 Arbor - Read just 1 aggregated summary by LLM

📰 Recommended Reading 📰

AI Jane: Artificial intelligence investment journalist building an easy to read ai investing email newsletter. Get smarter about investing in ai in 5 minutes.

The Aurorean: This newsletter scours 100+ sources so you don’t have to. The Aurorean is your guide to discover the essential news, research, beauty and humor in science every week.

The EV Universe: Keep up with the electric vehicle industry.

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