Welcome to Startups Weekly, a fresh human-first take on this week’s startup news and trends. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. When On Deck had to cut its staff twice within a matter of months, its co-founders Erik Torenberg and David Booth published a memo promising to focus more. Thus marked the company’s … Read more
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by … Read more
Welcome to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. In 2021, we wondered whether Brazil could be in for an IPO bonanza. It hasn’t happened: Not only is Latin America’s largest economy going … Read more
The growing market for sales tools has given rise to a curious cottage industry: DevOps startups specifically targeting the software used in sales and marketing functions. (Here, “DevOps,” refers to tools that automate processes between software development and IT teams.) It’s become a blossoming sector all its own, with vendors selling DevOps platforms for software … Read more
Research in the field of machine learning and AI, now a key technology in practically every industry and company, is far too voluminous for anyone to read it all. This column, Perceptron, aims to collect some of the most relevant recent discoveries and papers — particularly in, but not limited to, artificial intelligence — and explain … Read more
Steve Case, the cofounder of America Online, the investment firm Revolution, and its offshoot seed-stage arm Rise of the Rest, has a new book out called Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places are Building the New American Dream. In it, Case argues that Covid was a “shake the globe” moment for entrepreneurship, … Read more
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. It’s Friday, and that means… Actually, we don’t even really know what that means anymore, other than that we’re going to sit in the sunshine and bask in the very last few … Read more
When it comes to advice, tech loves standardization. Startups are often told that there are certain metrics to hit, deadlines to meet, timetables to measure themselves against. Examples abound: Here’s the ideal amount of money to raise at your Series A round; here’s how many employees you should have before hiring this executive; here’s what … Read more
When founders are laying off staff and cutting costs to face the downturn, it may seem like odd timing to tell startups to take their product as seriously as ever. In a recession, do users really care about product experience? Yes, says Mighty Capital, whose portfolio includes companies such as Airbnb and Amplitude. The San … Read more
Last month, Grammy-winning artists Timbaland and Swizz Beatz sued TikTok competitor Triller for $28 million. Triller acquired their livestream event series Verzuz last year, but the two musicians alleged that the social app had missed several large payments, prompting them to file a lawsuit. Now, Triller has settled with Timbaland and Swizz Beatz, but the … Read more
Instagram is rolling out the ability for users to upload longer uninterrupted Stories, the social network confirmed to TechCrunch on Friday. Now, when you post a Story that’s under 60 seconds in length, it won’t be broken up into segments. The company began testing the change with select users late last year, and has now … Read more
Joanna McFarland got the idea for HopSkipDrive in 2014 because she needed a solution to a problem that many working parents like herself face: How do you consistently get your kids where they need to be on time? The idea was sparked at a birthday party she attended with one of her children. The topic … Read more
Byju’s has cleared all its dues to Blackstone by paying $234 million it owed the global investment giant for the $1 billion acquisition of Aakash, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch, addressing one of the criticisms levelled against the Indian edtech giant in recent months. The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, valued at $22 billion, had … Read more
A star pitcher is resurrected from the Hall of Flame. A Hellmouth swallows the state of Utah. Crows descend on Tastykake Stadium, pecking slugger Jessica Telephone out of a peanut shell. This is Blaseball, the absurdist baseball simulator that captured the most delightfully wacky corners of the internet when it launched in summer 2020. Developed … Read more
Marc Benioff and company certainly know how to put on a show. In fact, Benioff has been putting on Dreamforce customer spectacles since 2003 — that is, until the pandemic came along and put the whole shebang online for a couple of years. With the Salesforce event back live and in person this week, just … Read more
General Motors is partnering with a Canadian battery recycler to produce new batteries from recovered battery materials, as it aims to scale EV production in North America amid supply shortages and rising costs. The automaker invested through its GM Ventures arm in a Series A financing round for Lithion Recycling, a developer of advanced battery … Read more
Whether you’re bullish or bearish, web3-native or web3-naive, you have to admit nothing remains the same for long in the growing blockchain, crypto, NFT and web3 universe. And the entirety of the rapidly evolving space is under increasing scrutiny — both public and regulatory. This constant change, combined with plenty of controversy, are just two … Read more
John Zic Contributor Share on Twitter John Zic is a partner and founding team member at EQUIAM. He spends most of his time wrestling with fragmented and imperfect private market data in a never-ending effort to derive market-beating investment signals. Shachi Shah Contributor Shachi Shah is director of business operations at EQUIAM. She is passionate … Read more
“You had one job” might be funny when a birthday cake decoration goes wrong, but if we’re talking about executives who don’t show up for board meetings, the stakes are much higher. “Disengaged or dysfunctional boards aren’t just bad for CEOs and LPs; they’re bad for everyone,” writes Matt Blumberg, co-founder and CEO of Bolster, … Read more
This column is fascinated by Latin America, a region of the world rich in history, culture and, recently, a massive boom in technology company formation and financing. The period of rapidly accreting venture capital activity, however, is slowing. Fast. The declines in capital availability, as far as TechCrunch can see, will not prove lethal. However, … Read more
Volkswagen is partnering with a Belgian network operator to integrate electric vehicles into the power grid, as more EVs take to the road amid rising energy costs. Volkswagen’s charging unit Elli and re.alto, a startup owned by Brussels-based Elia, signed a memorandum of understanding on Friday to collaborate on ways to integrate EVs into the … Read more
TikTok is rolling out its comment dislike button globally to all users, the company announced on Friday. The short-form video app started testing the dislike button in April as a way for users to identify comments they believe to be irrelevant or inappropriate. If you click the dislike button on a comment, the dislike won’t be … Read more
Ford broke ground Friday at its $5.6 billion BlueOval City complex in Tennessee, the epicenter for its future electric vehicles and a key milestone toward its goal to sell 2 million EVs annually by late 2026. BlueOval City is slated to begin building advanced batteries for future Ford and Lincoln EVs in 2025, including the … Read more
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Coming to hang with us at Disrupt, where Equity is kicking off the entire event? Use code ‘EQUITY’ to save 15% on your tickets. Hell yeah, and see you there! Alex, Natasha and Mary Ann jumped on … Read more
Battery life has long been the Apple Watch’s biggest drawback. The issue only became more pronounced when the company went all-in on sleep-tracking with watchOS 7 in 2020. Rather than increasing the mAh on the hardware, Apple presented a workaround: an alert that pops up if the user dips below a certain percentage before bed … Read more
Nibiru, a new crypto derivatives protocol co-founded by Tribe Capital GP Arjun Sethi, has raised $7.5 million seed funding at a valuation of $100 million, two sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. Tribe Capital, Republic Crypto and Kraken invested in the seed round, a source said, requesting anonymity as the information is not public. … Read more
Mark Shaw likes running around. The serial entrepreneur joined activity and fitness tracking platform Strava as a co-founder in 2009 to lead engineering as CTO. He spent eight years there, and as of its most recent raise in 2020, Strava had reached 70 million members globally and amassed an almost cult-like following from its users, … Read more
Tesla couldn’t get a judge to dismiss a case alleging racial bias at the automaker’s Fremont factory last month, so the automaker is now countersuing the agency responsible instead. The luxury electric vehicle maker on Thursday filed a complaint in state court in Alameda County saying the California Civil Rights Department (CRD) adopted “underground regulations” … Read more
Days ahead of the Italian general election, the country’s privacy watchdog has sent Facebook’s parent (Meta) an urgent request for information, asking the social media giant to clarify measures it’s taking around Sunday’s election. The risk of election interference via social media continues to be a major concern for regulators after years of rising awareness … Read more
The U.K. government has announced plans to make it easier for telecoms operators to access telegraph poles on private land, representing part of a broader push to bring high-speed broadband to all corners of the country. The announcement was made as part of the U.K.’s so-called “mini budget,” which was partly set up to address … Read more