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Last Updated: 2022-06-03 7:00:01 PM
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 22:05:02 +0000
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Happy Fri-yay the 3rd of June 2022. Or, as this cursed pandemic is still doing its thing, perhaps itâs March 824, 2020, who knows. Whatever is happening in your world, we hope that you are experiencing peace and that you know the source of peace. Can you tell weâve been reading some hippie literature recently? Those folks do seem pretty peaceful â maybe theyâre onto something. Happy weekend and catch you on the flip side! â Haje and Christine
The TechCrunch Top 3
Brrrr, itâs cold in here â there must be some hiring freezes in the atmosphere: Itâs been quite the week for layoffs and hiring freezes, as you will see farther down in our fair newsletter. So perhaps it is not a surprise that after telling Tesla employees to get thee into the office, it has now come out that Elon Musk told executives to freeze hiring for salaried workers. Not only did the news do a number on Tesla shares, but it also gave President Joe Biden some fodder for his jobs report.
The delivery kids arenât all right: Delivery startups, once the âdarlingsâ of venture capital investment as Kyle put it, found their stride when none of us could go places over the past 2 years. But it seems the faster the delivery times got, or the promise of it, the more certain companies failed to, well, deliver. Sources say correction is a cominâ.
“Inflation and layoffs and supply chain problems, oh my!”: That was Ronâs evaluation of what is going on out there. However, as he found out while listening to Salesforceâs first-quarter performance call, CEO Marc Benioff revealed his company did not see the downed quarter as some other companies did.
Startups and VC
Sometimes, you come across companies that speak with a forked tongue. Iâm not saying thatâs the case for Blackbaudâs self-proclaimed âsocial goodâ cloud provider business, but itâs definitely a little whiffy to have had the National Rifle Association as a customer since 1997, as Devin reports.
A propos calling bovine excrement when we see it; the A team (Amanda and Anita, obvz, that other A-team has a lot less finger-on-the-pulse cred) argue that perhaps we should just cool it with the âgirlbossâ moniker.
But wait, there is more:
Bad contractor, no customer data for you: Kyle reports that Reco, a company using AI to map a companyâs data sharing, today announced that it raised $30 million.
You pivot me right round, baby, right round, like a startup, baby, right round: Matt hosted one of our favorite sessions of TechCrunchâs City Spotlight this week, exploring how the 10-year-old startup Olive ended up pivoting 27 (!) times before accelerating the company into a $4 billion valuation.
Bosch cleans up: Famous for hand tools and washing machines, and less famous for (but extremely well known within the industry) for automotive components, the 135-year-old company Bosch just announced it has a $295 million corporate venture capital fund to invest in climate, IoT, and autonomous vehicles, Harri reports.
Chips for the dip: South Korean AI chip maker Rebellions just collected a $50 million investment from Pavillion Capital, Kate reports.
Yes please to AI: As Pinterest sets its eyes on improving the online shopping experience on its platform, the company announced this afternoon itâs acquiring the AI-powered shopping service for fashion known as The Yes, Sarah reports.
Moar layoffs today: Both Social app IRL and Insurtech company PolicyGenius cut 25% of their respective workforces, as the Great Belt-Tightening of 2022 continues.
Black Founders Matter presses VCs to pledge commitment to diversity
Image Credits: Marceau Michel
In an interview with new TechCrunch reporter Dominic-Madori Davis, Marceau Michel, founder and managing partner of Black Founders Matter VC Fund, spoke about a new initiative to boost diversity in tech.
âThis is about changing the power dynamics in venture capital,â he told TechCrunch. âYou have to start at who is left behind and bring them to the starting line.â
Under the 25 by 25 Pledge, investors would promise to direct 25% of their funds to BIPOC women founders by 2025.
âIf a fund does not want to do this pledge ⊠the question is why,â Michel said. âThe status quo just doesnât hold up anymore. Keeping people that look like us out of the picture just doesnât work.â
Black Founders Matter presses VCs to pledge commitment to diversity
(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)
Big Tech Inc.
Microsoft said it thwarted a plan by a Lebanon-based hacking group, believed to be working with Iranian intelligence, to allegedly target Israeli organizations. The group, called Polonium, was creating Microsoft OneDrive accounts and then using them to attempt the hacks.
Amazonâs long-time consumer division CEO Dave Clark said he was stepping down from the company in July after 23 years with the company. Itâs unclear why he is leaving after having only taken on the role two years ago, but Clark did tweet that âitâs time for me to build again.â
In new features news:
TikTok is expanding on its live subscription offering with a new comedy series in collaboration with creator Jericho Mencke and Pearpop. The subscription price is $4.99.
Snapchat users will now see restaurant recommendations on their Snap Maps in select cities. The feature is part of a collab with restaurant review website The Infatuation.
Mozilla now has a translation option for Firefox that is based on a machine learning process from your computer versus a cloud-based process.
Your Ring doorbell will get some enhanced alert and video download features in about a month. However, the video doorbell company is not making subscribers happy with a rise in its Protect Basic plan, which is poised to increase to $3.99 a month in July.
You may have missed these gems from yesterday, but Coinbase surprised us by announcing that it was freezing its hiring process. Initial reports said the company was rescinding offers to new employees that were already accepted, but those people had not yet started. Now we are getting word that their jobs are safe. Donât worry, we are on it and will hopefully be able to clear this up soon. Next up, General Motorsâ autonomous vehicle unit Cruise is now able to charge for driverless robotaxi rides in San Francisco. And we take a look at a report showing just how hard it is to get an app at the top of the App Store.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 21:48:29 +0000
The rest of the startup universe may be struggling to bring in funds, but itâs still a good time to get a robotic raise. Agtech is high on that list. The median age of farmers is 55 years old in the United States, and finding human help is increasingly more difficult of late.
FarmWise has been at this for a while, deploying its autonomous weeding robotics at farms in California and Arizona for the last few years. The Central Californian company says its robots have logged 15,000 commercial hours on vegetable farms, all told, capturing some 450 million scans of crops for its database.
Today the company announced a $45 million raise, led by Fall Line Capital and Middleland Capital. GV, Taylor Farms, Calibrate Ventures, Playground Global, SVG Ventures and Wilbur Ellis also got in on the Series B, which brings FarmWiseâs total equity raise to $65 million, to date.
The funding will go toward accelerating the firmâs R&D and rollout of its existing product.
“We started FarmWise with the conviction that farmers should be supplied with cost-effective, sustainable solutions to feed a growing world, and artificial intelligence is the ideal technology to make this a reality,” co-founder and CEO, Sebastien Boyer said in a release. “With rising costs in the agricultural industry, we’re continuing to expand our technology to work with many more farmers.”
The round also finds Fall Line Capital co-founder and managing director, Clay Mitchell, joining its board.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 21:43:10 +0000
Saket Modi
Contributor
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Saket Modi is the co-founder and CEO of Safe Security, a cybersecurity and digital business risk quantification platform company.
Todayâs cybersecurity landscape requires an agile and data-driven risk management strategy to deal with the ever-expanding third-party attack surface.
When a business outsources services by sharing data and network access, it inherits the cyber risk from its vendors across their people, processes, technolog, and that vendorâs third parties. The typical enterprise works with an average of nearly 5,900 third parties, which means companies face a huge amount of risk, regardless of how well they cover their own bases.
For instance, 81 individual third-party incidents led to more than 200 publicly disclosed breaches and thousands of ripple-effect breaches throughout 2021, according to a report by Black Kite.
The current outside-in approach to managing third-party risk is inadequate. Instead, the industry needs to move toward a new third-party risk management approach by initiating conversations beyond outside-in assessments. Specifically, businesses should establish zero-trust principles for all vendors, assess risk across external and internal assets with inside-out assessments and measure cyber risk in real time.
The zero-trust principle of “Never trust, always verify” has been adopted widely to manage internal environments, and organizations should extend this notion to third-party risk management.
To combat this, enterprises need to consider vendors as subsets of their business.
The looming threat
The amount of data and business-critical information one enterprise shares with its vendors is staggering. For instance, a company might share intellectual property with manufacturing partners, store personal health information (PHI) on cloud servers to share with insurers and allow marketing agencies access to customer data and personally identifiable information (PII).
This is just the tip of the iceberg, and most businesses often don’t know how big the iceberg really is. In a survey conducted by Ponemon Institute, 51% of the companies surveyed said they do not assess the cyber risk posture of third parties before allowing them access to confidential information. What’s more, 63% of the companies surveyed said they do not have visibility into what data and system configurations vendors can access, why they have access to it, who has permissions and how the data is stored and shared.
This massive network of businesses sharing information in real-time results in a vast attack surface that is becoming increasingly difficult to manage. To overcome this challenge, businesses use cybersecurity initiatives such as questionnaire-based onboarding surveys and security rating services in their third-party risk management strategies.
While these tools have definite use cases, they also have severe limitations.
Cybersecurity rating services are a quick and economical approach to third-party risk assessments. Their simplicity â representing a vendorâs cyber risk as a score, like credit ratings in financial services â make them a popular choice, despite the limitations.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 21:11:59 +0000
Well, this is straight from the desk of “didn’t see that coming,” but search engine toolkit company Ahrefs just told me they’ve been working on their very own search engine on the sly, plowing $60 million of resources into its own search engine, called Yep. It’s a unique proposition, running its own search index, rather than relying on APIs from Google or Bing.
As for the name? I dunno; Yep seems pretty daft to me, but I guess at least the name is one character shorter than Bing, the other major search engine I’ll only ever use by accident. Name aside, Yep is taking a fresh new path through the world of internet advertising, claiming that it’s giving 90% of its ad revenues to content creators. The pitch is pretty elegant:
“Letâs say that the biggest search engine in the world makes $100B a year. Now, imagine if they gave $90B to content creators and publishers,” the company paints a picture of the future it wants to live in. “Wikipedia would probably earn a few billion dollars a year from its content. Theyâd be able to stop asking for donations and start paying the people who polish their articles a decent salary.”
It’s an impressively quixotic windmill to fight for the bootstrapped company Ahrefs. Its CEO sheds some light on why this makes sense to him:
âCreators who make search results possible deserve to receive payments for their work. We saw how YouTubeâs profit-sharing model made the whole video-making industry thrive. Splitting advertising profits 90/10 with content authors, we want to give a push towards treating talent fairly in the search industry,â says Ahrefs founder and CEO, Dmytro Gerasymenko, and continues to make the point that his search engine is meant to be heavily privacy-forward. âWe do save certain data on searches, but never in a personally identifiable way. For example, we will track how many times a word is searched for and the position of the link getting the most clicks. But we wonât create your profile for targeted advertising.â
Perhaps it sounds a little idealistic, but damn it, that’s what made me excited about Yep in the first place. It represents the faintest of echoes from a web more innocent and more hopeful than the social-media poisoned cesspool of chaos and fake news we often find ourselves in today.
I was a little surprised to learn that the company decided to spin up its own data centers — it claims it has more than 1,000 servers already spun up, storing more than 100 petabytes of data. It’s an odd choice, given that cloud-based solutions are usually more flexible, but Gerasymenko has a plan for that too, claiming that they are much more expensive for such extensive infrastructure, with a goal of hundreds or thousands of high-end servers running under full load 24/7.
Of course, this whole project didn’t start with a search engine — the company already had a huge dataset available from its day-to-day business. Ahrefs has been crawling and storing data about the web for 12 years to provide its customers with its core product: an SEO toolset. The search results are powered by its own crawler — AhrefsBot — which the company claims visits more than 8 billion web pages every 24 hours. The company claims the new search engine will be available in all countries and in most languages.
So, er, $60 million without external investment? That’s a lot of dough — where did it all come from? The company explains that it re-invested its revenues from its paid subscriptions. The company claims it currently has $100 million worth of revenues per year from its more than 50,000 customers, and has shunned external investment so far. The company has 90 employees and is headquartered in Singapore. The search engine project has a team of 11 — including data scientists, backend engineers and front-end developers. Gerasymenko himself is playing an active role in building the search engine, the company tells me.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 20:53:08 +0000
Machine learning models are increasingly augmenting human processes, either performing repetitious tasks faster or providing some systematic insight that helps put human knowledge in perspective. Astronomers at UC Berkeley were surprised to find both happen after modeling gravitational microlensing events, leading to a new unified theory for the phenomenon.
Gravitational lensing occurs when light from far-off stars and other stellar objects bends around a nearer one directly between it and the observer, briefly giving a brighter â but distorted â view of the farther one. Depending on how the light bends (and what we know about the distant object), we can also learn a lot about the star, planet, or system that the light is bending around.
For example, a momentary spike in brightness suggests a planetary body transiting the line of sight, and this type of anomaly in the reading, called a “degeneracy” for some reason, has been used to spot thousands of exoplanets.
Due to the limitations of observing them, it’s difficult to quantify these events and objects beyond a handful of basic notions like their mass. And degeneracies are generally considered to fall under two possibilities: that the distant light passed closer to either the star or the planet in a given system. Ambiguities are often reconciled with other observed data, such as that we know by other means that the planet is too small to cause the scale of distortion seen.
UC Berkeley doctoral student Keming Zhang was looking into a way to quickly analyze and categorize such lensing events, as they appear in great number as we survey the sky more regularly and in greater detail. He and his colleagues trained a machine learning model on data from known gravity microlensing events with known causes and configurations, then set it free on a bunch of others less well quantified.
The results were unexpected: in addition to deftly calculating when an observed event fell under one of the two main degeneracy types, it found many that didn’t.
“The two previous theories of degeneracy deal with cases where the background star appears to pass close to the foreground star or the foreground planet. The AI algorithm showed us hundreds of examples from not only these two cases, but also situations where the star doesnât pass close to either the star or planet and cannot be explained by either previous theory,” said Zhang in a Berkeley news release.
Now, this could very well have resulted from a badly tuned model or one that simply wasn’t confident enough in its own calculations. But Zhang seemed convinced that the AI had clocked something that human observers had systematically overlooked.
As a result â and after some convincing, since a grad student questioning established doctrine is tolerated but perhaps not encouraged â they ended up proposing a new, “unified” theory of how degeneracy in these observations can be explained, of which the two known theories were simply the most common cases.
Diagram showing a simulation of a 3-lens degeneracy solution.
They looked at two dozen recent papers observing microlensing events and found that astronomers had been mistakenly categorizing what they saw as one type or the other when the new theory fit the data better than both.
“People were seeing these microlensing events, which actually were exhibiting this new degeneracy but just didnât realize it. It was really just the machine learning looking at thousands of events where it became impossible to miss,” said Scott Gaudi, an Ohio State University astronomy professor who co-authored the paper.
To be clear, the AI didn’t formulate and propose the new theory â that was entirely down to the human intellects. But without the systematic and confident calculations of the AI, it’s likely the simplified, less correct theory would have persisted for many more years. Just as people learned to trust calculators and later computers, we are learning to trust some AI models to output an interesting truth clear of preconceptions and assumptions â that is, if we haven’t just coded our own preconceptions and assumptions into them.
The new theory and description of the process leading up to it are described in a paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy. It’s probably not news to the astronomers among our readership (it was a pre-print last year) but the machine learning and general science wonks may cherish this interesting development.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 20:45:20 +0000
After a month that saw nearly 16,000 tech workers lose their jobs, June is off to a similar tumultuous start. Startups across all sectors, from healthcare to enterprise SaaS to crypto, are laying off portions of staff and citing, seemingly, from the same notes: itâs a tough market, a time of uncertainty, and a correction toward sustainability is needed.
This week, weâll continue our round-up of layoffs in tech, but weâre not stopping there; we extracted a few common themes from the workforce reductions, especially focusing on nuances that may be lost from headlines. To start, here are the companies leveraging layoffs this week:
Carbon Health laid off 8% of staff, or 250 people. Per our own Christine Hall, âthe startupâs most recent funding round was a $350 million Series D round in July 2021, led by Blackstone Group, that reportedly put the company at a $3.3 billion valuation. We covered its $100 million Series C round in November 2020. In his letter to employees, Bali outlined two reasons for the decision to let go of staff â despite its continued and fast growth over the years. The first was winding down some of its business lines related to COVID. In 2020, Carbon Health developed both pop-up clinics and at-home test kits.â
Loom, an enterprise video tool backed by Andreessen Horowitz, laid off 14% of staff. The companyâs most recent round valued the company at $1.53 billion, making it hit unicorn status for the first time. Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, Coatue and General Catalyst are also investors in the company. Similar to Hopin, Loom benefited from a surge of people working from home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; the product was positioned to help remote workers find better ways to connect with colleagues in a virtual-first world, and help hybrid workforces find a lightweight way to skip some meetings. Then, again similar to Hopin, the startup conducted layoffs to help it build in what it describes as a more sustainable way moving forward.
Coinbase will extend its hiring freeze and revoke accepted offers from some candidates who havenât started their roles yet (…and inform them of their status via email). This news comes after Coinbaseâs brutal Q1 results, which reported a $430 million loss.
The crypto platform Gemini, led by co-founders and twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, laid off 10% of its staff due to âturbulent market conditions that are likely to persist for some time.â Despite reacting to the market changes, Geminiâs co-founders also addressed that thereâs a somewhat expected volatility in what they called the âcrypto revolution.â
Social app IRL lays off 25% of team, says it has enough cash to last well into 2024. The cut comes around a year after the startup landed a $170 million SoftBank-led Series C and hit coveted unicorn status. Regarding the decision to cut staff, CEO Abraham Shafi wrote in a memo to staff that IRL has âmore than enough cash to last well into 2024.â Over the last year, the startup increased its head count by 3.5 times, but Shafi noted that WhatsApp was able to grow to 450 million users with a team of 55. This suggests that the workforce reduction was less about trying to reduce runway and more about right-sizing the team after a period of overhiring.
Insurtech Policygenius cuts 25% of staff, less than 3 months after raising $125M. As Mary Ann Azevedo reports, âsince its 2014 inception, Policygenius has raised over $250 million from investors such as KKR, Norwest Venture Partners and Revolution Ventures as well as strategic backers such as Brighthouse Financial, Global Atlantic Financial Group, iA Financial Group, Lincoln Financial and Pacific Life. While we canât speak specifically to Policygenius, itâs been widely reported how poorly insurtech companies have fared in the public markets over the past year with Lemonade, Root and Hippo all trading significantly lower than their opening prices.â
Amsterdam-based TomTom let go of 500 employees, or 10% of its workforce. TomTom used to be known for car GPS navigation before we all had iPhones, but over the last few years, the company has attempted to pivot to mapping for self-driving cars. The jobs affected are in the maps department, where the company is pursuing more automation.
A digital mental health company backed by Softbank, Cerebral plans to conduct layoffs in July (which shouldnât be anxiety-inducing at all for staff as they wait to learn their fate). The telehealth company also recently replaced its founding CEO amid a government investigation into its potential violations of the Controlled Substances Act â Cerebral has been critiqued for over-prescribing ADHD drugs.
Tesla CEO and guy-who-needs-to-stop-tweeting, Elon Musk ordered a hiring freeze and job cuts, which would affect 10% of salaried employees. Currently, Tesla employs almost 100,000 people. Strangely, President Joe Biden weighed in, saying, “So, lots of luck on his trip to the moon, I donât know.”
Nuance of note
No one wants to be in the unicorn club
Despite cuts happening across all stages, many of the recent layoffs have come from companies that, just one year ago, hit unicorn status. The list includes Cameo, IRL and Loom, and thereâs a couple reasons as to why that may be.
First, one year is a long time. And it feels even longer in a market that canât make up its mind. Nonetheless, Startups that were hitting growth last year may no longer be on the same trajectory, making growth into their current valuation a significant stretch. As a result, the one year mark could be showing up as a reminder to reflect, and unfortunately for employees, scale down to a more realistic spot.
Second, being a unicorn is hard — even in a bull market. Richly-valued startups do need to eventually deliver on hopeful value, some would believe, and capital doesnât necessarily ensure success. When youâre a late-stage company, there are specific growing pains that come with the title, such as integration with acquisitions, handling a remote workforce, and learning how to iterate when the business is no longer as nimble as it was when it was just two people in a dorm room. In the past, layoffs may have been put off by another round of funding, but now that follow-on funding isnât a given, layoffs are becoming more common.
Third, many of the pandemic-born unicorns are actually just piñatas filled with expired candy. Hard stop.
Tech layoffs don’t happen to companies, they happen to people
Layoffs should be treated as a worst case scenario, not a precaution
Companies like Coinbase, Tesla and IRL have enough runway to keep their staff employed during a tumultuous economic time and ongoing pandemic. But they cut costs anyway by letting go of their staff.
âCourage is a decision, and we will choose courage,â IRL CEO Abraham Shafi wrote in a company memo after laying off 25% of his staff. âWhatever we are facing today canât be any worse than the uncertainty we met at the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic.â
Unfortunately, workers canât control getting laid off when their employer has enough money to retain them. And for those of us subject to the endlessly frustrating American healthcare system, losing your job also means medical instability for both you and your family. Letâs stop pretending that COBRA isnât exorbitantly expensive.
We think founders need a quick Heart to Heart about the market
Meanwhile, Coinbase rescinded already-accepted offers from a number of employees. According to a LinkedIn search, many of the rescinded employees were students who were soon to graduate with PhDs and bachelorâs degrees alike. In those cases, a new hire may accept a job months before their start date, since theyâll need to graduate before filling the role.
Many soon-to-be graduates who accepted jobs at Coinbase turned down several other offers to work at the major crypto exchange, but now, theyâre stuck scrambling to find employment. This situation is even more dire for international students, who risk deportation if they canât find an employer to sponsor their visas.
Layoffs are sadly an inevitable part of corporate life, especially in startups. But so often, it seems like theyâre caused by bad management choices that make it more difficult to keep paying staff. People make mistakes, but those mistakes can put innocent workers in situations of financial precarity, potential deportation and limited access to healthcare. So when layoffs are made as a precaution, or a correction to mitigate past mistakes and over-hiring, itâs personal.
Tech layoffs top 15K in a brutal May
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 20:10:13 +0000
All startups must grow, but as markets contract, conserving resources is a higher short-term priority.
Crypto exchange Coinbase is in the headlines this morning after news broke that it is rescinding some candidates’ outstanding job offers.
Yesterday, we reported that IRL, a social app, was laying off 25% of its staff a year after raising a $170 million Series A, even though it has enough cash to operate for another two years.
I don’t have any insight into IRL or Coinbase’s financials, but I can say with certainty that these companies will have a harder time hiring talented employees from now on.
Full TechCrunch+ articles are only available to members
Use discount code TCPLUSROUNDUP to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription
Tech isn’t like other industries: workers can explore uniquely personal interests while earning a sliver of equity in a potential unicorn.
But they also have options. If you’ve ghosted someone after extending a verbal offer of employment, that’s going to be a consideration for future candidates. People talk!
At this point, most tech workers are likely wondering when layoffs are coming to their company. To build trust and keep employees engaged, managers should optimize existing engineering resources, says Ammar Bandukwala, co-founder and CEO at Coder.
“High-performing IT teams â which could deploy and push code to production faster than their peers â experienced 60 times fewer failures and recovered from them 168 times faster,” he writes in TechCrunch+.
If you manage a software engineering team, I hope you’ll read and share.
Have an excellent weekend,
Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch+
@yourprotagonist
4 ways to make your engineering team more productive
How to improve retention, growth marketingâs golden metric
Image Credits: GOCMEN (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
After helping someone prepare dinner, I was aghast when they informed me that the broccoli stalks I’d just tossed into the compost were excellent for making vegetable stock, as a pizza topping, or adding to a stir-fry.
Jonathan Martinez’ latest TC+ article on growth marketing reminded me of this, since many companies are throwing away perfectly good data that can boost retention and conversion.
“Itâs imperative to constantly analyze the sources driving growth at a detailed and bottom-of-funnel level,” he writes.
How to improve retention, growth marketingâs golden metric
8 IT spending trends for the post-pandemic enterprise in 2022
Image Credits: TARIK KIZILKAYA (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Market research firm ETR contacted 1,200 IT leaders who oversee a yearly collective IT budget of approximately $570 billion to learn more about their planned spending over the coming year.
Although year-over-year spending is projected to rise just 6.7%, “the need for experienced IT personnel has accelerated, and hiring demand in the space has reached the highest level we have ever seen,” writes Erik Bradley, ETRâs chief analyst.
8 IT spending trends for the post-pandemic enterprise in 2022
What connects the stock market contraction to startup valuations?
Image Credits: Matthias Kulka (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Without striking a gloomy note: tech layoffs are mounting, investors are urging their portfolio companies to hunker down, and founders are doing everything but casting spells to reduce their burn rate.
“But are valuations really down?” asks Daniel Faloppa, founder of Equidam.
“For all startups? If so, why, and what can we expect in the short and mid-term?”
What connects the stock market contraction to startup valuations?
Pro-rata is easier to get than ever today, but investors are thinking twice
Image Credits: Say-Cheese (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
“Whenever pro-rata rights are involved, you can always smell some drama,” writes Rebecca Szkutak in her inaugural TechCrunch+ article.
Early investors have reserved the right to maintain their stakes in startups that raise additional capital, but with the slowdown in venture funding, it’s unclear if they’ll want to do so.
“The pro-rata allocation is becoming more easy for us to attain, and to get the whole thing,” said Eric Bahn, a co-founder and general partner at Hustle Fund.
Pro-rata is easier to get than ever today, but investors are thinking twice
Pitch Deck Teardown: Encore’s $3M seed deck
Image Credits: Encore (opens in a new window)
Cloud-based software development platform Encore shared the pitch deck its founders used to raise a $3 million seed round with TechCrunch+.
Using 24 slides, the deck identifies four fundamental problems with building modern software that Encore aims to solve while using non-technical language to explain its value proposition in detail.
“There is a lot to love about Encoreâs deck: It simplifies a complex product story into a few easy-to-digest slides and shows why thereâs an opportunity in the market,” writes Haje Jan Kamps.
Pitch Deck Teardown: Encore’s $3M seed deck
This is the beginning of the unbundled database era
Image Credits: miniseries (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
As customers moved online over the past couple of years, enterprises saw the benefits of storing as much customer data as they can to improve their products and services.
However, old-school relational databases run from server farms won’t be able to meet performance requirements for much longer. As businesses shift more operations to the cloud, their databases are now evolving as well, writes Ethan Batraski, a partner at Venrock.
“A new category of cloud database companies is emerging, effectively deconstructing the traditional database monolith stack into core layered services â storage, compute, optimization, query planning, indexing, functions and more.”
This is the beginning of the unbundled database era
Dear Sophie: How do we qualify for each of the O-1A criteria?
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch
Dear Sophie,
Our startup will be sponsoring my co-founders and me for O-1A visas.
How do we qualify for each of the O-1A criteria?
â Extraordinary Entrepreneur
Dear Sophie: How do we qualify for each of the O-1A criteria?
VC funding for crypto projects fell in May, but many investors remain bullish
Image Credits: seksan Mongkhonkhamsao (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Many boosters are calling this the start of “crypto winter,” but even as investments slowed down in May, bullish investors are still bringing their floaties and diving into the pool like it’s summertime.
The amount of capital deployed into crypto is down in the short term, but itâs still significantly higher than levels from a year ago: Investment in the space last month increased 89% to $4.22 billion from $2.23 billion in May 2021, reports Jacquelyn Melinek.
“For investors like us, itâs time to buy,” Stan Miroshnik, partner and co-founder of 10T Holdings, told Jacquelyn. “Valuations have come in and great companies are now available at a more reasonable price.”
VC funding for crypto projects fell in May, but many investors remain bullish
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 20:04:58 +0000
Dave Wechsler
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Dave Wechsler leads insurtech investing for OMERS Ventures. After serving as the VP of Growth at Hippo, Dave is one of the first insurtech operators to become a full-time investor.
Just over five years ago, the insurance industry entered the crosshairs of the tech world. Despite serving as the backbone of global growth, insurance lagged the pace of technology adoption enjoyed by other industries.
Entrepreneurs saw this as an opportunity to disrupt incumbents, and soon there were lofty claims that everything about the industry was about to change. With techâs embrace, people were about to soon “love their insurance!” Venture capitalists noticed, and startups closed large rounds of capital.
Fast-forward to today, and itâs safe to say that none of us have found an intimate connection with our insurers. That said, the industry is in a transformational moment as it races to keep pace with technology.
Many like to refute the underlying disruption by pointing to public valuations of insurtech firms, some of which are down as much as 85%-90%. But we are experiencing a typical phenomenon that occurs in industries transformed by technology: Early challengers often lack appreciation for the complexities of the market and sometimes overpromise short-term visions.
We learned that itâs hard to change a highly regulated industry with a disinterested customer base who rarely shops the competition.
Now, a new crop of challengers is learning from their predecessors’ mistakes. As we enter âinsurtech 2.0,â the lessons learned are becoming the new best practices, and nowhere is this more evident than at the startups building an MGA (a managing general agent).
The MGA (R)evolution
An MGA is a hybrid between an insurance agency (policy sales) and insurance carrier (underwriting and assumption of the risk). MGAs started off during the U.S.’ frontier years. East coast carriers pursued the emerging westward market by granting remote agents unique underwriting and servicing authorities. In return for their added responsibilities, these MGAs received higher sales commissions from their carrier partners.
When they arrived on the scene, insurtech challengers revived the dormant MGA structure to monetize their more scalable solutions. Founders pitched carriers a tech-forward relationship with the customer, focusing on:
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 19:43:35 +0000
The New York Senate has passed a bill that bans crypto mining operations that use carbon-based fuel to power their facilities.
The bill specifically is targeting proof-of-work mining, which is one of the two most popular mechanisms cryptocurrencies use to verify new transactions on the blockchain and make new tokens, but it uses a lot of energy to validate blockchain transactions.
Some of the most popular proof-of-work tokens include Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin.
The alternative, proof-of-stake, is when cryptocurrencies — like ETH2.0 or Avalanche — use staking to achieve the same thing for less energy and it is thought to be more efficient for scaling than proof-of-work.
The bill is an attempt by lawmakers to impede the stateâs carbon footprint and âmitigate the current and future effects of climate change,â according to the bill.
âCryptocurrency mining operations running proof-of-work authentication methods to validate blockchain transactions are an expanding industry in the State of New York,â it stated. The continued expansion of operations will âgreatly increase the amount of energy usageâ in the state, it added.
If it passes, all proof-of-work mining activity in the state that relies on burning fossil fuels will face a two-year ban. However, 100% renewable energy proof-of-work mining businesses will still be allowed to operate.
âUltimately, this bill will hurt New York more than it will help, as these miners will increasingly cluster in states such as Texas, Tennessee, Washington State, and elsewhere that provide solar, wind, hydro and other sources of clean energy,â said Steven McClurg, co-founder and CIO of Valkyrie Investments, which oversees WGMI, the largest U.S.-based Bitcoin miners ETF.
The Senate voted 36-27 in favor of the bill after passing it through the New York State Assembly in April. It now moves to the desk of New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who could sign or veto the legislation.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 19:34:20 +0000
The world of Mac peripherals has a lot of complete and utter garbage in it, so it’s a breath of aluminum-scented air to see the new USB-C slim dock from Satechi. The dock is exactly the same size as Apple’s wireless keyboard, so when it’s not in use, your alphanumerics have a sleek metal hammock for some rest and recuperation. More importantly, the dock slides neatly on top of the 24-inch iMac’s foot, adding a slew of easy-to-reach features and functionality without ruining the dastardly good looks of your silver-and-glass design masterpiece.
It makes so much sense that as soon as I saw it, I sighed in a not entirely safe-for-work way. Don’t get me wrong, I applaud Apple for its shapely computers, but the company has long been leaning pretty deep into form-over-function territory. The number of times I’ve been swearing to have to crawl behind my computer to plug in a peripheral for a few minutes, then accidentally yank the wrong USB cable out of the back of it when I’m done… It’s a gorgeous design and a terrible user experience.
I’m a sucker for a tidy desk, and LOOK AT IT! Image Credits:Â Satechi.
Satechi, then, swoops in with a product that just… works. It’s Exclusively designed for 2021 iMac (24-inch) models, and adds extra data storage space and extends the number (and reachability) of the USB ports, all through a single USB-C cable running to the back of your trusty work-steed.
The dock packs a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 data port (with transfer speeds up to 10 Gbps). It also has a USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 data (with up to 10 Gbps), and a couple of slower USB-A 2.0 ports. There’s also microSD and SD card reader slots; perfect for a grumpy-ass journalist or photographer trying to get some work done.
Another neat trick the USB-C dock has up its sleeve is a tool-free NVMe SATA NGFF enclosure. That’s a lot of alphabet soup, but in a nutshell, it means you can install a small solid state harddrive to extend the storage available on your computer, all at 10 Gbps speeds.
Add a harddrive in your dock? It makes so much sense it hurts. Image Credits: Satechi.
The dock costs $150, but the company is running an early-bird special that knocks $30 off the price if you order now. Deliveries start now-ish. If I didn’t have a dumb Windows box as my work computer, my finger would be twitching over the “add to cart” button right now.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 19:15:26 +0000
TechCrunch is more than just a site with words. We’re also building a growing stable of podcasts focused on the most critical topics relating to the startup and venture capital worlds. To help you find the right show for your interests, we’ve compiled our audio output from the week.
Embedded below is the latest from Chain Reaction, our new and stellar crypto-focused podcast hosted by Lucas and Anita. You will also find Found, a long-form bit of work that goes deep on the real saga of company formation, from Jordan and Darrell. There’s an audio-only version of TechCrunch Live hosted by Matt that features founders and investors discussing successful pitch decks. Finally, there’s Equity, TechCrunch’s long-running, Webby-award-winning podcast focused on venture capital and the latest startup news, hosted by Natasha, Mary Ann and Alex.
And if you are more into the written over the spoken word, well we have newsletters on the above topics as well.
The TechCrunch Podcast
Episode 3: Why do people keep giving Adam Neumann money? And other TechCrunch news
Welcome back to The TechCrunch Podcast, where youâll hear everything you need to know about the weekâs top stories in tech from the people who wrote them. This week our host, Managing Editor Darrell Etherington, talks with Natasha Mascarenhas about the ongoing tech layoffs, Anita Ramaswamy about WeWork founder Adam Neumann moving into the crypto space with backing from a16z, and Devin Coldewey about AI-generated images. Plus a rundown of the weekâs top news on TechCrunch.
Articles from the episode:
A third straight week of tech layoffs in the books
Latch, a proptech meets SaaS play, conducts two consecutive weeks of layoffs
Adam Neumannâs blockchain-based redemption story now sponsored by a16z
OpenAI: Look at our awesome image generator! Google: Hold my Shiba Inu
Other news from the week:
Itâs official: Broadcom to acquire VMware in massive $61B deal
Jack Dorsey steps down from Twitterâs board
Twitter investors sue Elon Musk over acquisition shenanigans
Extras:
Hana Mohanâs Twitter thread on the YC advice to founders
Hana Mohanâs episode of Found
Equityâs episode:Â We think founders need a quick Heart to Heart about the market
The TechCrunch Live Podcast
Episode 6: How Olive pivoted 27 times on its way to be worth $4 billion
Olive is a homegrown Columbus, Ohio unicorn; hear from the CEO and lead investor how the company was founded and grew into an industry leader.
Sean Lane co-founded Olive in 2012, and signed on Chris Olsen from Drive Capital as the companyâs first investors. Now, nearly 10 years later, Olive has raised $856.3 million on its way to being a driving force in using artificial intelligence in the healthcare industry. But the companyâs path to success wasnât a straight line. As CEO Sean Lane explains on this special TechCrunch Live event, the company pivoted 27 times before finding its current product market fit.
Lane explains the strategy behind changing a companyâs direction and the emotional toil it takes on everyone involved â from employees to executives to the investors.
Want to watch the panel:Â Here’s the YouTube video.
Chain Reaction
Episode 8: Outdoor Voicesâ founder on scaling a new crypto startup in a downturn (with Ty Haney)
Welcome back, this week Lucas and Anita argue about Coinbaseâs latest management strategies, whether Do Kwon being called the new Bernie Madoff is a fair comparison, and why the OnlyFans founder is the latest web2 entrepreneur pivoting to crypto.
In their interview this week, Anita and Lucas chat with Ty Haney. Haney is the founder of athleisure empire Outdoor Voices, though sheâs recently departed the company to start a new effort around getting brands to embrace NFTs. We chatted with her about founding a crypto startup in a downturn, keeping her company well-capitalized and how she pivoted from yoga pants to non-fungible tokens.
Subscribe to the Chain Reaction newsletter to dive deeper:Â https://techcrunch.com/newsletters
Helpful links:
Coinbase is testing a real-time employee feedback system. It sounds rough
OnlyFans founder makes crypto debut selling influencer trading card
Longtime Bitcoiner Dan Held says this âcrypto winterâ wonât be as harsh as others
Found
Episode 60: Claire Coder, Aunt Flow
Claire Coder, founder and CEO of Aunt Flow joined us on Found Live. Darrell, Jordan and Claire got into how she landed on a B2B model for Aunt Flow and the importance of free, accessible period products — which is something she often has to educate prospective investors or customers on. Claire also opened up about how she has grown as a leader, learned to listen to feedback from her team, and improved the culture at Aunt Flow.  And don’t forget to hear from more founders from Columbus, Ohio.
Up next on Found Live is WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg.
Connect with us:
On Twitter
On Instagram
Via email: found@techcrunch.com
Call us and leave a voicemail at (510) 936-1618
Equity
Episode 524: Sheryl Sandberg, Substack and the art of still raising money for groceries
This was another live week from the Equity crew, meaning that the towering Mary Ann, the inimitable Natasha and the somewhat fungible Alex were all chatting in real time, thanks to Grace and Julio having the script and tech in place to allow for it. And as we were live, we also wound up taking a little bit more time per story than usual, which was good fun.
What did we get into? AÂ lot:
The end of an era: Sandberg steps down from Meta COO role.
Deals of the Week: Affirm ties up with Stripe, Felt raises $15 million for maps, and Astro proves that quick grocery delivery is still a thing.
A new fund is coming from an alum of Precursor Ventures, a firm that we have covered extensively on the podcast.
The latest from Substack, a startup that we nearly all use, but wonder about from a valuations perspective.
And we wrapped with notes from our recent spotlight on Columbus, Ohio!
Equity is mostly off next week, meaning no Monday show, and some pre-taped stuff the rest of the week. We’re going to breathe, and come back recharged. Hugs, and chat soon!
Episode 523: How investors are playing offense right now (their words, our two cents)
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, we’re trying something new. Natasha spent a good chunk of last week at the All Raise VC summit, an annual off-the-record event that brings together some of the best and brightest in the investment community. After the summit, she sat down with Mandela SH Dixon — All Raise’s new CEO — to unpack what happened, and discuss how today’s changing venture capital market will impact diverse founders.
The first half of this episode is a conversation between Natasha and Mandela, and then we’ll bring on Alex and turn to some on-the-ground clips from the summit. Sound bytes from Freestyle’s Jenny Lefcourt, January Ventures’ Jennifer Neundorfer, Rethink Impact’s Heidi Patel and Union Square Ventures’ Rebecca Kaden will get the classic Equity treatment. Or, put differently, Alex and Natasha will react to top investors talking about their game plans for the next market cycle. It’s fun!
Episode 522: Faster ML models, crypto M&A, and what’s ahead for on-demand pricing
Itâs Monday, which means that Alex and Grace were back as a team to cover the biggest, boldest and baddest technology news. We are once again back with your weekly kickoff! Hereâs what we got into:
More on the potential M&A boom this week, in light of this recent CNBC piece that got my mind turning. Sure, this is kinda like the CVC story we’ve been tracking but a bit more focused.
China’s venture capital market is taking body-blows, albeit from recent highs. Still, it is more than easy to track the country’s regulatory crackdown to falling venture capital activity.
Strong Compute raised money, highlighting the fact that early-stage companies can still raise, and that there could be huge unlocks coming in ML model training. Which would be good for all of us.
And is on-demand pricing on the way out? Things aren’t looking good for the model that once challenged the incumbency of SaaS.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 17:30:33 +0000
Thereâs an idea floating in the ether (or at least in my ether) that thereâs enough sunny federal land in Nevada to power the entire United States with solar.
Some very rough back-of-the-envelope math suggests itâs possible, requiring just over 11% of Nevadaâs federal land. None of that includes room for batteries for storage or the massive transmission wires needed to export it all â both of which would expand the footprint significantly â and a concentrated installation like that wouldnât be very resilient or ecologically sound.Â
The point is, thereâs room to spare! The federal government owns plenty of land in other sunny and windy places, not just Nevada.
So why donât we have more solar and wind on public lands?
The Biden administration is hoping to remove at least one roadblock. This week, the Department of the Interior announced 50% cuts in rent and capacity fees (a fee assessed based on how much power is produced) in an effort to spur more solar and wind development on federal land. (Geothermal doesnât get any love in this policy change for whatever reason.) Utility-scale wind and solar projects can incur lease fees of millions of dollars per year, so the boost could be significant.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 16:22:03 +0000
As a child, Marceau Michel always asked for a quarter.
He knew if he kept asking for a quarter, heâd have a dollar one day. Then he’d be well on his way to having two â a slow but purposeful build toward amassing his own little fortune.
Today, at the helm of the Black Founders Matter venture fund, Michel has kept that mentality. The fund announced today the formation of the 25 by 25 Pledge, which encourages venture capitalists to commit to investing a quarter of their funds into BIPOC women founders by the year 2025. The pledge also requires VC firms to have 25% of their staff be BIPOC women, believing the increase in diversity behind the scenes will help pivot more deal flow into marginalized communities.
“This is about changing the power dynamics in venture capital,” Michel told TechCrunch. “You have to start at who is left behind and bring them to the starting line.”
Michel was inspired to start the pledge after realizing his own investments leaned toward Black male founders. That led him to focus on investing in Black women, and added five companies to round out his portfolio of 10. His new initiative hopes to encourage VCs to prioritize investing with diversity in mind as a way to improve the industryâs harrowing fundraising stats.
White women receive a marginal portion of total venture capital funding, but the amounts minority women get are far more diminutive. Last year, women raised just 2% of the record $330 billion in venture capital. Of that 2%, less than 0.50% went to Black women, approximately 0.51% went to Latina founders, an estimated 0.71% went to Asian women, and a mere 0.004% went to Indigenous founders, according to Crunchbase data.
“If a fund does not want to do this pledge ⊠the question is why.” Marceau Michel, founder of Black Founders Matter
“If more funds said, ‘I only want to see deals led by women,’ then weâd see more women being invested in,” Michel said. “Black, Indigenous and women of color make up most of the women on Earth. Asking for 25% [of investment volume] is not too much. I just see it as the start.”
The pledge is available on the Black Founders Matter website for those wanting to sign.
The impact of a pledge
The 25 by 25 Pledge has a precedent: the 15 Percent Pledge, launched in 2020 by fashion designer Aurora James.
The 15 Percent Pledge encourages retailers to dedicate at least 15% of their shelf space to Black-owned businesses. So far, it has received commitments from 28 retailers, including Sephora and Nordstrom. The pledge, now a nonprofit, also created a database of 1,200 Black companies to help companies find and build relationships with Black founders. To date, the 15 Percent Pledge says it helped Black-owned businesses generate $10 billion in revenue and aims to beget $1.4 trillion in wealth for Black entrepreneurs by 2030.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 16:15:31 +0000
Amazon today announced that Dave Clark, CEO of the company’s worldwide consumer division, will step down after 23 years in the position. In a note to leadership, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that Clark’s last day in the office will be July 1 — a date corroborated by a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
“[W]e still have more work in front of us to get to where we ultimately want to be in our consumer business. To that end, weâre trying to be thoughtful in our plans for Daveâs succession and any changes we make. I expect to be ready with an update for you over the next few weeks,” Jassy wrote in the note, which was shared on the public About Amazon blog this morning. “While change is never easy, Iâm optimistic about the plan that the consumer team has built and have confidence that if we stay focused on executing it, weâll deliver the right experiences for customers and results for the business.”
Clark joined Amazon’s operations pathways program in May 1999 after graduating with an MBA from the University of Tennessee. He played an increasingly large role across the company, starting as an operations manager in Kentucky, growing to a general manger in the Northeast, stepping up to lead worldwide operations, and then eventually leading all of worldwide consumer. Clark was a major proponent of Amazon’s $775 million acquisition of warehouse robot maker Kiva in 2012, and headed teams that designed several generations of fulfillment centers and built out Amazonâs transportation network, among other accomplishments.
It’s unclear why Clark might’ve left so suddenly. In the blog post, Jassy claims that the decision was Clark’s own and that Clark intends to “pursue other opportunities.” Just two years earlier, Clark replaced Jeff Wilke as chief executive of Amazon’s retail business, which encompasses the retail website, Amazon’s physical stores, Amazon Prime and the growing logistics empire that stocks and deliver items.
“I am a builder at heart — it’s what drives me ⊠As much as I have loved the ride, it is time for me to say goodbye to start a new journey,” Clark said in an internal email that he also published to Twitter. “For some time, I have discussed my intent to transition out of Amazon with my family and others close to me, but I wanted to ensure the teams were setup [sic] for success. I feel confident that time is now.”
I've had an incredible time at Amazon but itâs time for me to build again. It's what drives me. To all I've had the honor of working with: thank you for making it so much fun to come to work every day for 23 years to invent cool, amazing things for customers.
Email to team below pic.twitter.com/c8Ao46VvaJ
— Dave Clark (@davehclark) June 3, 2022
Perhaps telegraphing the resignation, Clark and his wife reportedly sold their home in Medina, a Seattle suburb, last fall ahead of a move to Dallas, Texas. Amazon is headquartered in Seattle.
Clark was celebrated within Amazon for dramatically expanding the company’s retail operations during the pandemic, but his governance of the company’s warehouses became the subject of media — and regulatory — scrutiny. Multiple outlets reported that Clark led Amazon’s push to persuade the U.S. Postal Service to install a controversial temporary mailbox outside Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, during a union election in 2021. Clark also spearheaded the creation of an internal social media program that would let Amazon employees recognize co-workers’ performance with “shout-outs” but which banned words like “union,” “pay raise,” “living wage,” “grievance” and “diversity.”
Clark has been unapologetic about his cavalier style, once telling Bloomberg that he favored “lurking in the shadows of ⊠warehouses and scoping out slackers he could fire” during his early years at Amazon. And he’s repeatedly sparred with opponents on Twitter, including comedian John Oliver and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
Clark has made managerial missteps, too, in recent years, for example overexpanding Amazon’s warehouse and labor capacity in the latter stretch of the pandemic — outstripping consumer demand. (GeekWire points out that the company would have posted an operating loss of more than $2.8 billion in the first quarter if not for its profitable Amazon Web Services cloud unit.) On the retail side, Amazon recently shuttered its bookstores and other shops. And just this week, the company announced that it would shut down its Kindle bookstore in China, preventing customers in the country from purchasing new ebooks.
CNBC notes that Clark is among Amazon’s highest-paid executives, with total compensation of $56 million last year — almost all of it in the form of stock awards (his annual salary is just $175,000).
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 16:11:58 +0000
Microsoft said on Thursday that it has successfully “identified and disabled” a previously unreported Lebanon-based hacking group that it believes is working with Iranian intelligence.Â
The hacking group, tracked by the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) as âPolonium,â targeted or compromised more than 20 organizations based in Israel and one intergovernmental organization with operations in Lebanon over the past three months, with a focus on critical manufacturing, IT and Israelâs defense industry. In one case a cloud services provider âwas used to target a downstream aviation company and law firm in a supply chain attack,” Microsoft said in a blog post.
It added that Polonium operators have also targeted multiple victims compromised by the MuddyWater APT group, tracked by Microsoft as Mercury, which U.S. Cyber Command earlier this year linked to Iranian intelligence.
The previously unknown hacking group created legitimate Microsoft OneDrive accounts and then utilized those accounts as command and control (C2) to execute part of their attack operation. The observed activity was not related to any security issues or vulnerabilities within OneDrive, the Microsoft researchers wrote.
MSTIC said it determined with high confidence the group behind the attacks is based in Lebanon, adding that they were “moderately” confident that Polonium was collaborating with Iranâs Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).
âThe uniqueness of the victim organizations suggests a convergence of mission requirements with MOIS,â Microsoft said. âIt may also be evidence of a âhand-offâ operational model where MOIS provides Polonium with access to previously compromised victim environments to execute new activity.â
Microsoft says it successfully suspended more than 20 malicious OneDrive applications created by the Polonium threat actors. The company added that it has also notified affected organizations and deployed a series of security intelligence updates that will quarantine tools developed by the Iranian-linked hackers.Â
Itâs still unclear how the attackers gained initial access to their victimsâ networks, but Microsoft notes roughly 80% of compromised organizations were running Fortinet appliances, which âsuggests, but does not definitively proveâ that the Polonium compromised the Fortinet using a three-year-old vulnerability identified as CVE-2018-13379.
Microsoftâs action comes just months after the U.S. government, along with counterparts in Australia and the U.K., warned that Iranian state-backed hackers are targeting U.S. organizations in critical infrastructure sectors â in some cases with ransomware. The advisory said that Iranian-backed hackers accessed a web server hosting the domain for a U.S. municipal government in May last year, before accessing the networks of a U.S.-based hospital specializing in healthcare for children the following month.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 15:57:12 +0000
Tonightâs the night, folks. Your window to save some serious cheddar â up to $1,500 â on passes to TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, California, on October 18â20 is about to close. When it does, prices go up. Saving money is good, and itâs really quite simple.
Buy your pass today, June 3, before the deadline expires at 11:59 p.m. (PDT). The price of admission includes a bonus online day, October 21. Youâll hear fresh analyst commentary from the Disrupt Desk, participate in roundtable discussions and catch replays of the live presentations.
TC Disrupt is the mothership of all TechCrunch events. Itâs 3 days packed with programming across the entire tech startup spectrum. Itâs where more than 10,000 members of the early-startup community â founders, investors, engineers, leaders, tech icons, makers and shakers â come to launch, learn, connect, invest and grow.
If youâre serious about realizing your startup dreams (and weâve never met a startupper who wasnât), get serious about going to Disrupt â itâs a giant incubator for opportunity and success.
Yes, we’re a tad biased, but that doesnât mean weâre wrong. Listen to what three of your colleagues said about their experiences at TechCrunch Disrupt.
âThe top three benefits I got out of going to Disrupt were introducing my product to people who would not have seen it otherwise; networking with investors, mentors, advisors and potential customers and, finally, talking to other entrepreneurs and founders and learning what it took to get their companies off the ground.â â Felicia Jackson, inventor and founder of CPR Wrap.
âI loved seeing so many women co-founders, CEOs and engineers at Disrupt. TechCrunch embraces diversity, which you don’t see a lot of in the startup world.â â Jessica McLean, director of marketing and communications, Infinite-Compute.
âI wanted to get the most out of my time at Disrupt. I learned a lot by splitting my time between the Startup Battlefield, the Main stage speakers and the how-to presentations for founders on the TechCrunch+ stage.â â JC Bodson, founder and CEO of Arbitrage Technologies.
TechCrunch Disrupt takes place from October 18 to 20 in San Francisco with an online day on October 21. It offers fantastic ROI at any price, but why pay more? Prices go up tonight. Make the most of your investment, and buy your pass before 11:59 p.m. (PDT) tonight. We canât wait to see you in San Francisco!
Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TechCrunch Disrupt? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.
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Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 15:41:45 +0000
Social media collaboration company Pearpop and creator Jericho Mencke are launching a live subscription comedy series on TikTok. Pearpop told TechCrunch that episodes will run twice a week in June, with eight 30-minute episodes in total. The new series, which is called “Finding Jericho,” will stream exclusively on TikTok Live. It will cost $4.99 to watch the series. The news was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
In each episode of the series, Mencke will interview celebrities and creators, including Griffin Johnson, Sloane Veronico and Wasil Daoud. Pearpop says the series will touch on “unconventional topics you won’t see elsewhere.” Mencke will also do sketches to add a comedy aspect to the series.
The series was created by Pearpop’s development team Zack Bernstein and Austin Sokol, along with Mencke. Pearpop says the series takes inspiration from “Borat,” “Nathan For You” and “The Eric Andre Show.”Â
“Jerichoâs random style and satirical troupes always start in one place and end where the audience thought unimaginable,” Pearpop CEO Cole Mason said. “His comedy is always clean, but with a one-of-a-kind edgy tone, for all ages. Pearpop is going to continue to push the boundaries for how creators, brands and entertainers can work together and collaborate in new ways. Todayâs news marks an exciting new milestone in that journey.”
Finding Jericho premiered on June 2 at 9 p.m. PDT on TikTok on Mencke and Pearpop’s TikTok accounts. The rest of the series will air on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9 p.m. PDT.
Pearpop and Jericho are utilizing TikTok’s LIVE Events offering, which is a tool that lets creators better plan their upcoming LIVE sessions, to put out the comedy docuseries. With the feature, creators can schedule and promote their event in advance to build anticipation across their community, while fans can discover, register, and then get notifications and reminders when the LIVE Event is about to begin.
Update 06/03/2022 2:30 PM ET: The article was updated with additional information from TikTok.Â
TikTok expands LIVE platform with new features, including events, co-hosts, Q&As and more
Pearpop introduces dynamic NFTs that gain value as a social media post goes viral
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 15:40:46 +0000
Gia Schneider raised $65 million on the road to unlock distributed hydro resources. In July 2021, Libby Wayman from Breakthrough Energy Ventures led Natel Energyâs $20 million Series B, and on June 8, 2022, the two industry leaders are speaking on TechCrunch Live. Weâll take a look at Natel Energyâs early pitch deck, and hear how Schneider won over Waymanâs firm. This episode comes ahead of TechCrunchâs inaugural in-person event: TechCrunch Sessions: Climate.
This event opens on June 8 at 11:30 a.m. PDT/2:30 p.m. EDT with networking and pitch practice submissions. The interview begins at 12 p.m. PDT followed by the TCL Pitch Practice at 12:30 p.m. PDT. Register here for free.
TechCrunch Live records weekly on Wednesday at 11:30 a.m. PDT/2:30 p.m. EDT. Join us! Click here to register for free and gain access to Natel Energy’s pitch deck, enter the pitch practice session and access the livestream, where you can ask the speakers questions.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 15:25:52 +0000
Ring announced new features for its Ring Protect Basic plan, such as more alert options, exclusive discounts (10%), up to 50 video downloads (up from 20) and 180 days of video (up from 60), plus a ton of âcoming soonâ features (smart alerts for cars, animals, alerts for breaking glass and open doors). However, with these new upgrades, the price of the Protect Basic plan is increasing starting in July to $3.99 a month or $39.99 a year in the U.S.
Ring shared the news in a surprising note this week, sharing that existing customers will see the new features on July 1, and will experience the price jump whenever their subscription renews.
Image Credits: Ring
Ring’s cheapest security camera subscription plan was introduced in 2015 and has stayed flat at $3 per month ever since (well, until this week). The 99-cent increase has some users understandably aggravated, especially those who donât care for the new features.
Just had the email from @ring telling of a 40% price increase for a pointless additional service that residential doorbell owners just donât need. Will also be cancelling asap. Well played!
— Kelly (@Ke11yJ) June 1, 2022
@ring just cancelled subscription due to price increase. Shame, the increase suggests improvements but it should only happen when customers renew. Not mid contract.
— Wally (@wally6375) June 2, 2022
Basic plan subscribers who own more than one device will also be annoyed because if you have the Basic plan and own two or three devices (doorbell, nursery camera, in-home drone, etc.), you will now be asked to pay another $20 or $30 a year. Some subscribers used to get around the second-tier cost by tripling subscriptions to cover each camera, which would only bring their monthly fees to about $9/month or $90/year for three separate cameras.
With the price increase, they will be forced to pay the full fee for all three or to save money and subscribe to Protect Plus. The Protect Plus plan covers all Ring devices and costs $10 a month or $100 a year. In the press release, the company stated, âThe price change will not affect Ring Protect Plus and Pro plans, which include the same features as Basic and more.â
Many basic Ring features like two-way talk, motion-activated notifications and the live real-time camera view donât require a subscription to work. Therefore, itâs likely that users will opt out of these subscription plans that have unappealing features to some buyers and stick with fewer capabilities for no extra fee.
Ring is one of the top-selling security systems in the U.S., so itâs no surprise that people are angry about the price hike.
Updated Friday, June 3, 1:15 p.m. ET, with correction of initial launch in 2015 instead of in 2017.Â
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Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 15:10:03 +0000
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has directed executives to pause all hiring and prepare for job cuts, according to a leaked email that was first viewed by Reuters.
Tesla shares fell 8.5% following the Reuters report.
An additional email sent Friday to all employees, clarified his comments to executives, stating that the headcount reduction would be for salaried workers. He added that the job cuts would not apply to people building cars, battery packs or solar. Musk also said headcount would increase in those areas.
President Biden, who was asked Friday in a press briefing about Musk’s economic warning, pointed to recent investment and job hiring announcements by Ford, Stellantis and Intel.
“While Elon Musk is talking about that, Ford is increasing its investment overwhelming,” said Biden, who added the automaker was hiring more than 6,000 union workers at its U.S. factories. “So, lots of luck on his trip to the moon, I don’t know.”
Musk replied via Twitter with the message “Thanks Mr. President!” and a link to a press release from NASA announcing the space agency had picked SpaceX, another Musk company, to send astronauts to the moon.
Image credit: Screenshot of tweet on Twitter
Musk’s hiring freeze directives came the same week that Musk sent employees two emails, which were also leaked, that the company was ending its remote work option. Musk told staff that if they didn’t want to return to the office they should leave.
In the first email, which was later corroborated by Musk in a response via Twitter, he told employees that they must work a minimum of 40 hours in a Tesla office. A followup email entitled “to be super clear” explained that “the more senior you are, the more visible must be your presence.”
Image Credits: Screenshot/Tesla
Musk’s latest email strikes a gloomier tone about the economy, noting he has a “super bad feeling” and hints at a coming recession. Musk tells the executives who received the email that a 10% cut of its workforce will be required.
Tesla and its subsidiaries employs 99,290 people, according to its annual filing. Those employees are spread throughout its factories and facilities, including its headquarters in Austin as well as in Buffalo, New York, Sparks, Nevada, Fremont, California, Berlin and Shanghai. Tesla also has a smattering of offices in California and Germany and retail stores in Europe, Australia and North America.