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Last Updated: 2022-06-11 4:30:01 PM
Publish Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2022 20:15:25 +0000
Hi, friends! Welcome back to Week In Review, the newsletter where we recap some of the top stories to cross TechCrunch dot com this week.
The most read story this week was . . . well, everything that came out of Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference. Apple tends to dominate the news cycle during WWDC, and this year’s show was no exception.
Apple always kicks off WWDC with a keynote where they make back-to-back-to-back announcements for products from all over their lineup. New iOS! Plans to take over your car’s dashboard! A new M2 chip that’s somehow even faster/more efficient than the already absurdly fast/efficient M1! Rather than link out to a zillion different posts on all the news, I’ll just link you to our big WWDC roundup here.
other stuff
M1’s “unpatchable” flaw: Speaking of M1, security researchers at MIT have detailed the workings of what they say is an “unpatchable” security flaw in the chip. An Apple spokesperson thanked the researchers for “this proof of concept” but said the company doesn’t think it presents “an immediate risk” to users and is “insufficient to bypass operating system security protections on its own.”
Uber Eats will now deliver you food from across the country: Your [on-demand delivery companies] were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.
Oracle drops $28 billion on Cerner: We knew Oracle was buying the health records company Cerner â though we learned about the deal at the very end of December, a time when most people are doing everything they can to not look at a computer screen/the news. Oracle announced this week that the deal is done, wrapping things up for an absolutely massive $28 billion.
More layoffs: Oh, hey, it’s my least favorite (but seemingly never-ending) part of this newsletter. Since we last checked in, there’ve been layoffs at Superhuman (22% of staff), edtech unicorn Eruditus, the scooter company Bird (23%), clothing subscription Stitch Fix (15% of salaried workers), security unicorn OneTrust (25%) and many more. Amanda and Natasha have an overview of the latest layoffs here.
The Nimbus is “like a motorbike with a roof”: Want the zippy fun of a motorcycle or scooter but don’t want to deal with, you know, weather? This week Michigan-based startup Nimbus unveiled the prototype of “Nimbus One,” a three-wheeled EV that looks like a mix between a motorcycle and a Smart car. The company says that they’ll cost a bit shy of $10,000 â or, on subscription, about $200 a month â when they start shipping next year.
Image Credits: Nimbus
audio stuff
Everyone has a podcast these days, and guess what? SO DO WE. Actually, we’ve got a bunch of them!
One of the highlights this week was Chain Reaction, where Anita and Lucas chatted with a16z’s Sriram Krishnan about the firm’s new $4.5 billion crypto fund and what the web3 landscape looks like after the recent crypto tumbles.
added stuff
We have a paywalled section of our site called TechCrunch+. I know, paywalls, bleck, but it helps keep our lights on and lets us dive deeper into the things you tell us you want to read about. It costs a few bucks a month and has a bunch of really good stuff, like:
Women are leaving VC firms to launch funds of their own: “Over the past year, numerous notable women investors have left their roles at established firms to launch funds of their own,” writes Rebecca Szkutak, breaking down some of the latest high-profile departures.
The NFT slump is real: NFT sales are down. Will investment in NFT-focused companies follow suit? Alex takes a look at the data.
Peeking into Lunchbox’s $50M pitch deck: Back in February, Lunchbox â a company that builds online ordering systems for restaurants and ghost kitchens â raised a $50M Series B. This week, Haje took a look at the pitch deck the company used to get investors onboard.
Image Credits: Lunchbox (opens in a new window)
Publish Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2022 18:15:34 +0000
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.
The app industry continues to grow, with a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. App Annie says global spending across iOS and Google Play is up to $135 billion in 2021, and that figure will likely be higher when its annual report, including third-party app stores in China, is released next year. Consumers also downloaded 10 billion more apps this year than in 2020, reaching nearly 140 billion in new installs, it found.
Apps arenât just a way to pass idle hours â theyâre also a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus. In 2020, investors poured $73 billion in capital into mobile companies â a figure that was up 27% year-over-year.
This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.
Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters
WWDC Wrap-up
This week, Apple wrapped up its first in-person WWDC since the pandemic began, and while there were no big surprises — like the first look at Apple’s AR smartglasses, for example — the company did announce a solid lineup of new products, services and software. It introduced new MacBook Airs and Pros, its M2 CPU, updated operating systems, Xcode Cloud and tons more developer tools.
Blurred lines
Image Credits: Apple
One theme that jumped out was how Apple is continuing to blur the lines between its different platforms. In macOS Ventura, it’s turning the System Preferences app into a new System Settings app, which looks just like the Settings app you’d find on the iPhone. Meanwhile, Apple’s new iOS 16 Lock Screen is gaining widgets that are inspired by Apple Watch’s complications — and in fact, developers can use the latest version of WidgetKit to build for both the Lock Screen and Watch using the same code.
M1 iPads running iPadOS 16 can take advantage of external displays and the clever multitasking feature, Stage Manager — one of the more exciting software developments to emerge from the event. Stage Manager offers resizable, floating and overlapping windows, plus a way to organize other apps’ windows off to the left side of the screen. It represents one of the biggest pushes yet to make the iPad more of a replacement for a computer, and less of a big-screened iPhone — hence the increased demand for processing power. But now the question users must ask is whether they need a computer at all, or would an iPad and an extra screen do?
Image Credits: Apple
And though Apple didn’t show off any big new projects in terms of hardware, there were suggestions that it’s working toward an AR future when it announced the new ability to integrate ARKit with its Nearby Interaction framework, allowing developers to build more directionally aware AR-powered apps that seem to lay the groundwork for its rumored AR smartglasses.
Plus, for everyone who still dreams of an Apple Car reveal, Apple instead gifted us an updated version of CarPlay that sees Apple working with automakers to integrate a new version of CarPlay that extends to the vehicle’s entire instrument cluster, instead of just the infotainment system. Hopefully, this is not what the rumors meant by an Apple Car! Of course, it will be years before this is actually available to consumers in their vehicles.
Image Credits: Apple
iOS 16 gets messy updated
As for iOS 16, Apple’s Lock Screen update and personalization features are the stars of the latest release. On the one hand, it’s great to have easier access to glanceable information that doesn’t require you to first unlock your iPhone. The new “Live Activities” will be useful too, as they can telegraph real-time information — like an approaching Uber or the latest sports scores — directly to your Lock Screen. This could minimize the need to launch apps for quick updates.
Access to this new screen real estate could inspire a new category of apps, too — the way that the launch of Home Screen widgets drove new apps like Widgetsmith and Brass to the top charts.
But on the other hand, I have this nagging feeling that the iPhone’s user interface is starting to get a little too messy and overcomplicated, while other parts of the experience are undercooked.
Image Credits: Apple
For starters, you can now customize your iOS 16 Lock Screen with a long press that pops you into a new editor interface where you can pick from Apple’s own photos and live wallpapers or your own images, then select your Lock Screen’s widgets, fonts and colors.
Given this new feature is all about redesigning your iPhone’s main interface, it’s disappointing to see Apple failed to deliver a variety of options for beautiful, built-in wallpapers. By comparison, the latest Android release includes some dozen-plus themed wallpaper collections, each with numerous images, as well as a large collection of animated wallpapers. Apple’s default options are embarrassing by comparison. Live weather and space wallpapers? Emojis? A single Pride rainbow option? Those same bouncing bubbles we’ve had for years? Even the options that are new don’t feel very inspired.
Considering Apple is asking us to think about our iPhone’s interface design with this feature, it missed the chance to blow us away with new imagery as the centerpiece for our custom designs which then coordinate with all the new widgets, fonts and colors as fully fleshed-out themes. (And don’t even get me started on how Apple’s app icons don’t match our new themes!)
Image Credits: Apple
Then there are the notifications that now scroll up from the bottom — but only on the Lock Screen. If your phone is unlocked, you still pull down from the top. Frankly, I’ve never liked that there are two different screens to see based on which side of the iPhone notch you pull down from at the top of the screen. It’s personal preference, of course — but I think Android does this better with its own control center that sits above the notifications, all in one view that’s pulled down from the top.
It’s not that we can’t learn to adapt to all these changes and new gestures; it’s just that it feels like it’s time to simplify these things.
For instance, now that we have Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets, it’s probably time to ask if the right-swipe gesture to unlock the “Today View” is something that still needs to exist? It feels like unnecessary clutter at this point. (Sorry Today View fans.)
It’s also much more confusing than it should be to set a different background for your Lock Screen than for the Home Screen, since doing so isn’t a function of the new Lock Screen editor. Instead, you have to return to Settings to adjust the Home Screen’s wallpaper.
In other words, Apple seems to have approached the Lock Screen makeover as if it’s some standalone entity to customize instead of part of a larger iPhone theme and design system. That needs to change. And yes, I am going to point out that by the time the new iOS 16 Lock Screen launches, Android’s theming system and design language Material You will be a year old. You know, the one that lets you personalize the entire Android interface including the lock screen, notifications, settings, widgets, interface elements and even apps. We are not going to talk about how long Android has had widgets.
But yay, new Lock Screen I guess!
Image Credits: Apple
New APIs and developer tools
As for the new developer tools, there were some interesting updates emerging from this year’s WWDC.
Notable new APIs included RoomPlan — to tap into lidar for scanning indoor spaces; WeatherKit — a Dark Sky replacement that offers 500,000 calls/mo free with your Apple developer membership, then pricing that starts at $49.99/mo; LiveText to grab text from photos and paused video frames (video!!!); Focus filters — to show users relevant information based on the Focus mode they’re in; PassKeys to replace passwords with Face ID or Touch ID; ARKit 6, now with 4K video; Metal 3, WidgetKit; App Intents and others.
Image Credits: Apple
What’s great about these tools is that they offer the ability to not just build better apps, but build different types of apps, in some cases. That’s needed, because the App Store doesn’t feel as fresh and exciting as it did in earlier years when we were excited about the concept of running apps on a phone. APIs unlock developer innovation and we’re looking forward to seeing what these new APIs inspire.
Another interesting addition was Developer Mode, which could be laying the groundwork for sideloading if Apple is forced to allow this against its will — though today that’s not the case. Keep an eye on this one.
Image Credits: Apple
There was a lot more from WWDC, including useful updates to Apple’s own apps like being able to unsend messages, schedule emails, pay for purchases later with Apple Pay, track weather natively on iPad, keep up with your medication in the Apple Health app, use the Fitness app without an Apple Watch, better control your smart home and other updates — including little iOS 16 features Apple didn’t even tell us about.
And it teased a forthcoming app, Freeform, that’s an open, collaborative notetaking app that works with Apple Pencil.
Here’s everything Apple just announced at the WWDC 2022 keynote
One more thing…
But before we go, can we talk about this downright magical new iOS 16 Photo cutout feature? With this new feature, a part of Visual Lookup, you can now isolate the subject of the photo from the background, then copy and paste it into another app or a text. If you’ve ever tried to do this using photo-editing tools, you’re going to be surprised not only how easy this is, but also how well it turns out.
Lol iOS 16 can cut out people from photos pic.twitter.com/rBmmZPgcxa
— Poke (@Pokediger1) June 6, 2022
On the Lock Screen, this capability can separate the photo subject from the background of the wallpaper too, which makes for a layered look where the date and time and other elements can be behind the subject but in front of the photo’s background. Apple really undersold this one during the keynote.
You’ve got to try it yourself. This is the best new thing.
Image Credits: Apple
Weekly News
Platforms: Google
Just ahead of Apple’s WWDC keynote, Google announced its latest Pixel feature drop. The release included Conversation Mode in Sound Amplifier to help the hard of hearing; air quality alerts; support for Nest Doorbell video feeds on the lock screen; a flashlight reminder (when it’s left on); a music and video editing app called Pocket Operator (created in partnership with Teenage Engineering and available for download on the Play Store); and other features.
Google released Android 13, beta 3 for Pixel devices, and announced Android 13 had reached platform stability. That means the developer APIs and app updates are now final. Android 13 brings a bevy of new features, including more personalization options with themed icons, permission-based changes to push notifications, more granular file system controls, a new photo/video picker, better support for tablets and foldables and much more.
Google also announced the launch of its initial developer previews for Privacy Sandbox on Android and said it will have more developer previews coming soon, as well as a beta later this year.
E-commerce
Image Credits: Amazon
Amazon tapped into augmented reality in an attempt to appeal to sneakerheads shopping its site. The retailer announced a new feature called “Virtual Try-On for Shoes” that allows customers to visualize how a pair of new shoes will look on themselves from multiple angles using their mobile phoneâs camera and AR technology. Participating brands include New Balance, Adidas, Reebok, Puma, Saucony, Lacoste, Asics and Superga.
TikTok e-commerce efforts in the U.K., TikTok Shop, are reportedly in turmoil after losing half the staff (20 people) since its October 2021 launch because of a toxic workplace culture, The FT reported.
In hopes of prompting creator adoption of its short-form Shorts service, YouTube announced its first-ever “Shoppable Shorts Challenge” alongside its second annual YouTube Beauty Festival. The challenge will have creators making videos about Glossier’s Cloud Paint product.
Fintech
PayPal announced it will begin allowing users to transfer cryptocurrency from their PayPal accounts to other wallets and exchanges. The feature will allow users to move crypto to external crypto addresses, including exchanges and hardware wallets, and send crypto to other PayPal users âin seconds.â
Investments app Public introduced Public Premium, a new $10/mo membership tier that offers research, data and insights to help inform investment decisions. This includes access to deeper company metrics, research from expert analysts and moreâ. The service is free to members with an account balance of $20,000+.
Social
Image Credits: TikTok
TikTok rolled out new screen time “take a break” reminders designed to put users in better control of their TikTok usage. In addition its daily screen time limits tool, the new feature will allow users to have the app remind them to take a break from the app during a single session. By default, the tool suggests reminder options of alerts at 10, 20 or 30 minutes, in addition to allowing users to set their own times. The reminders can be snoozed or turned off at any time. The app also added a new screen time dashboard as well as reminders for minors (13-17) to enable TikTok’s screen time tools if they’ve used the app for more than 100 minutes per day.
Pinterest launched applications for its Creator Fund in the U.K. Accepted creators get to join a five-week program of events, gain access to educational talks and equipment, and get a cash grant of £20,000.
Twitter said it would give would-be acquirer Elon Musk access to its full firehose after his complaints that it wasn’t sharing data to prove that less than 5% of its service was made up of bots. The news came as a new study reported that Twitter could be around 10% bots and the Texas AG’s office began its own investigation into Twitter bots.
Instagram expanded its in-app âsensitive content” controls to allow users turn off sensitive content in recommendations throughout the app, including search, Reels, hashtag pages, âaccounts you might followâ and in-feed suggested posts, instead of just the Explore tab, as before. The app defines sensitive content as permitted but possibly upsetting content such as posts including violence (like people fighting; graphic violence is banned); posts that promote regulated products (tobacco, vaping, pharmaceuticals, adult products/services); posts that promote or depict cosmetic procedures; posts that attempt to sell products or services based on health-related claims (like supplements); and more.
Instagram also added a TikTok-like feature that allows users to pin up to three posts to their profile in the app.
TikTok launched TikTok Avatars, a new feature similar to Snap’s Bitmoji and Apple’s Memoji that lets users customize their appearance, add voice effects and more.
Image Credits: TikTok
Link-in-bio service Linktree, popular among social media apps users and creators, launched Link Apps. The new feature lets creators embed services from Cameo, OpenSea, PayPal, SoundCloud and others via a new marketplace.
Facebook is killing off its consumer-facing Portal video-calling device to instead focus on business users. The smart screen device had allowed access to apps like Messenger and WhatsApp and integrated with users’ Facebook accounts. The company is also scaling back plans for AR glasses.
Photos
Photo editing app maker Picsart launched a new AI-powered image-enhancement tool that improves the overall quality of an image and resolution for printing or sharing online. The tool uses advanced AI models to remove or blur pixelated effects, add pixels and sharpen and restore scenes and objects, including faces. It’s being made available via the app’s API and on iOS, where it’s called “HD Portrait.”
Messaging
WhatsApp was warned by European regulators it has just one more month to address the remaining concerns around its terms of service and privacy policy updates to clearly inform consumers about the changes. The company is being asked to clarify if it generates revenue from commercial policies related to user data, as well.
Telegram is launching a subscription service later this month that will offer premium extra, like the ability to view âextra largeâ documents, media and stickers sent by Premium users, or add premium reactions if theyâve already been pinned to a message.
Streaming & Entertainment
AT&T removed the HBO Max bundle from its new, premium tier unlimited wireless plan, Unlimited Premium, which replaced Unlimited Elite. The bundle deal had helped drive new subscriptions to the streaming app in prior years.
Amazon simplified the pricing for its Amazon Kids+ entertainment bundle by making it $4.99/mo for Prime members and $7.99/mo for others. The changes will allow the service to be used for up to four child profiles, which increases the cost for those who had previously only paid for a single child, but decreases the cost for others. The service offers a kid-friendly selection of books, videos, apps and games, among other things.
At Spotify’s Investor Day, the company reported on the financial health of its business with a big focus on podcasts, noting this area brought in nearly âŹ200 million in 2021 revenue, up 300% from the prior year. The company said its overall gross margin was 28.5%, dragged down by its continued investments in podcasts, but it’s on track to a GM of 30-35%, and that podcasts have 40-50% GM potential, and audiobooks could soon follow suit.
Gaming
Image Credits: Netflix
Netflix announced a number of new gaming titles during its annual Geeked Week event, some of which are tied to popular Netflix shows, including âThe Queenâs Gambit,â âShadow and Bone,â and âToo Hot To Handle.â The streaming service currently has 22 games available and plans to have 50 titles by the end of this year.
Tencent is rolling out a new international version of one of the world’s largest mobile games, Honor of Kings, by year-end. The game had racked up $10 billion in worldwide revenue by 2021. The overseas version will be published by Level Infinite for TiMiStudio.
Game studio HiDef announced it’s teaming up with Snap to develop an off-platform Bitmoji-based dance and music social game that will also leverage Snap’s AR tech. The game will launch in 2023.
Apple’s new iOS 16 will allow iPhones to support pairing with Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons and Pro Controllers to give users more control while playing mobile games.
No Man’s Sky is coming to iPad — well, the Apple silicon-powered ones, that is.
Health & Fitness
Meta rolled out the ability for users to track their Meta Quest fitness stats from VR to their phone. The feature involves the Move app — Meta Questâs built-in fitness tracker that lets you set goals for how many calories youâve burned and how many minutes youâve spent working out in VR. This will now sync to the Oculus Mobile app and Apple’s Health app.
Travel & Transportation
Delivery company Uber said its food delivery business Uber Eats is launching a new product that will provide shipping of select specialty food items across the continental U.S.; 15 merchants from NY, LA and Miami are involved to start.
Singaporean taxi operator ComfortDelGro partnered with Alipay+ to allow tourists in Malaysia and South Korea to use their mobile wallet apps (Touch ‘n Go eWallet and Kakao Pay) to pay for cab fare in Singapore.
Travel app Hopper launched “Leave for Any Reason,” a $30 product that lets customers leave their hotel for any reason and rebook with another hotel of the same star category, with rebooking costs covered by Hopper.
Traveling to the beach? Don’t forget to download the new shark-spotting app. The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy and New England Aquarium teamed up to encourage consumers to report shark sightings off Cape Cod in Massachusetts through an app called Sharktivity.
Government & Policy
Wired reports on how Ukrainian civilians are using apps to help the army, which blurs the lines between civilians and soldiers and raises questions related to international humanitarian laws.
Russian tech giant Yandex removed national borders between Ukraine and Russia from its maps app. Users still see the country names displayed â but lines depicting exact borders between countries like Ukraine and Russia are no longer visible.
Nasdaq-listed language learning app Duolingo is back in Chinaâs Apple App Store and Android stores nearly a year after its disappearance due to China’s regulatory crackdowns. The company had been told at the time of its removal to strengthen its “content compliance mechanism.”
The U.K.âs Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published its final report on its year-long mobile ecosystem market study. The report found there are substantial concerns about Apple and Google’s market power which require regulatory intervention. Among the concerns are in-app payments and commissions, Apple’s ban on cloud gaming providers and non-WebKit-based browsers on iOS, switching costs between ecosystems, and more.
UK’s antitrust watchdog finally eyes action on Apple, Google mobile duopoly
Funding and M&A
Hourly, an app that helps businesses track hours and payroll for hourly wage workers, raised $27 million in Series A funding led by Glilot Capital Partners. Hourly has around 1,000 customers in California, in areas like construction, home services, accounting and retail.
India fintech CRED raised $140 million in a fourth round of funding led by GIC, Singaporeâs sovereign wealth fund, valuing the startup at $6.4 billion, up from $2.2 billion in April 2021. Among other things, CRED allows users to manage credit cards, check their credit score and earn rewards.
Fintech app Fruitful announced a total of $33 million in equity funding raised across a seed and Series A round over the past 18 months. Emigrant Bank led the companyâs $8 million seed round and 8VC led its $25 million Series A. The app will launch this fall to offer consumers financial guidance from experts via a $98/mo subscription service.
Mexico City-based neobank app Klar raised $70 million in Series B funding led by General Atlantic, valuing the startup at $500 million. The company added 1.4 million customers over the past 12 months and more than $100 million worth of loans.
Indonesia cryptocurrency-focused app Pintu raised a $113 million Series B from Intudo Ventures, Lightspeed, Northstar Group and Pantera Capital. The app offers 66 tokens and has more than 4 million installs.
Note-taking app maker Notion announced it’s acquiring the calendar app Cron. Notion already synced with Google Calendar, but this deal suggests the company wants to expand further into the productivity space. Cron had raised $3.5 million in seed funding. Deal terms weren’t disclosed.
Mobile app marketing solution Airship acquired Gummicube, an App Store Optimization service. The deal will see Gummicubeâs ASO technology linked to Airshipâs App Experience Platform. Terms were not disclosed.
Downloads
Brickit (update)
Image Credits: Brickit
Brickit, the clever mobile app that uses AI to identify which LEGO bricks you own and then suggest projects, rolled out a new version of its app that includes several new features that help people do more with their LEGO collections.
The updated app now includes a Finder feature that will identify the precise location of bricks within a pile of bricks. Its AI and ML capabilities have also been improved, the company says. Brickit’s AI has gotten better at identification, with a success rate as high as 92%, it claims. The app will also use machine learning to help it get better over time. If it gets something wrong, it asks the users to help correct the problem, then uses that information to improve its LEGO brick knowledge. A final new feature may be the best as it makes Brickit not just a tool, but a community. Brickit now lets users submit their own creations to the app which Brickit then transforms into instructions and share with other Brickit users worldwide.
Tweets
Hey, it’s a new HIG!
Brand new Apple Human Interface Guidelines!
Thatâs right, weâve completely redesigned the HIG to be more cross-platform, easier to search, and completely reorganized from high level design principles down to low-level component guidance.https://t.co/Hd4qISMbqi pic.twitter.com/g1qpIt1BmL
— Linda Dong âtil dub dub (@lindadong) June 7, 2022
Good News, weather app devs
Found the pricing for WeatherKit. Looks to be roughly half of what the old Dark Sky API pricing was. ~20,000 requests/$1. Solid.https://t.co/39AvRbJlIV pic.twitter.com/ER8Dd59Bxx
— David Smith (@_DavidSmith) June 6, 2022
Graceful response to being sherlocked
Proud to have pioneered use of incredible phone cameras for conferencing, streaming & presenting. We started with âthis canât be doneâ; now here we are with support from all major platforms. Itâs wild to be at #WWDC22 to see @Apple taking the next step validating it.
— Aidan Fitzpatrick (@afit) June 6, 2022
It didn’t have to be this way, Apple…
After poking around SKAdNetwork 4.0, Iâm ready to call it on ATT and SKAdNetwork. Collectively they are a trillion dollar blunder by Apple executives. And likely have/will cost Apple itself billions (and therefore tens of billions in market cap). Hear me out⌠1/X
— David Barnard (@drbarnard) June 10, 2022
Want to see something cool?
Some early work converting Streaks complications to use SwiftUI so they can be used on iOS 16 Lock Screen.
Much of this was already done for iOS widgets, but thereâs some specific functionality only available on Apple Watch I want to match on iPhone. pic.twitter.com/FcfDWaymKc
— Quentin Zervaas (@qzervaas) June 9, 2022
Wait, what now?
This new Developer Mode in iOS 16 really has all the trappings of a first-party sideloading feature. #WWDC22https://t.co/KepR76Eieq
— josh avant (@joshavant) June 7, 2022
We’re obsessed too, this thing is wild!
Since I'm obsessed with this #iOS16 cutout feature, I wrote about it…https://t.co/pRT0mQZv5l #wwdc
— Ray Wong (@raywongy) June 7, 2022
Publish Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2022 18:01:11 +0000
Welcome to Startups Weekly, a fresh human-first take on this weekâs startup news and trends. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here.
Per Layoffs.fyi, a layoff tracker, over 16,000 tech workers lost their jobs in May, and June is off to a similarly brutal start. TechCrunchâs senior reporter Amanda Silberling and I have accidentally, and unfortunately, started working on a weekly column about the tech layoffs; what first started as a tip-over moment at Thrasio has soon expanded to startups regardless of sector, financing stage or if they had obvious growth tensions or not.
This is not (just) another roundup of tech layoffs
Tech layoffs top 15K in a brutal May
A third straight week of tech layoffs in the books
Tech employees face another tough week of cross-stage layoffs
Post-pandemic reset leads to wave of layoffs in tech
As the layoffs continue, it can feel like the same boilerplate story: number of those impacted, roles or teams that were reduced, severance package details and a vaguely generic statement from the CEO citing market turbulence as a key reason for the reduction. That doesn’t mean they aren’t any less newsworthy, but I’m always curious about the follow-up story opportunities. So, I asked all of you for some perspective, namely what else to ask and include in these stories.
From Jennifer Neundorfer: Iâd love to see a follow-up piece with data on where people who are laid off go next. Do specific companies/industries scoop them up? Do some start companies? Something else entirely?
This question made my mind immediately jump to the talent opportunity that emerged in early 2020 when unicorns laid off chunks of staff in preparation for the pandemic. Then, I wrote a story about how startups were hiring pods of employees that got laid off, otherwise known as a not-so-new strategy of acquiring. At one point, a majority of online mortgage company Stavvy was full of ex-Toasters impacted by the restaurant techâs 50% workforce reduction.
Beyond the rise of acqui-hiring, I think weâll see some classic fellowships pop up that help recently laid-off people break into entrepreneurship. Neundorferâs firm, January Ventures, started a program similar to that of Cleo Capital, which gives capital to aspiring founders to kickstart them.
The key here is that layoffs make people more risk averse, especially depending on their socioeconomic background. That mixed with the fact that Big Tech is on a hiring freeze, I donât know what happens when a wave of people lose their jobs in a mixed messages hiring market.
But, if anyone has the data to answer this question, do send it on over!
From Anna Rasby-Safronova: Did the ones who were laid off see it was coming and how do layoffs affect mental health, anxiety and productivity of the rest of the team?
Iâve now spoken to dozens and dozens of former and current employees within struggling startups, and the reaction to layoffs largely feels like whiplash for those impacted.
The reason? The difference between layoffs in 2022 and 2020 is that many of the companies that are laying people off today are well capitalized, named unicorns just one year ago. In 2020, cuts could easily be cited to an unprecedented pandemic that complicated growth plans; while in 2022, cuts come right after leaders boasted insane growth just months prior. Add in the fact that people are still laid off in questionable ways â from severance showing up in payroll to long-winded memos â and I canât imagine these cuts donât aggressively impact morale internally and externally.
International workers face additional complexities when laid off, as loss of employment can put visa status in flux. Even as companies put together spreadsheets or resume support, the added volatility could mean talented workers are forced to leave the United States altogether to pursue a better life somewhere else. These are stories weâre working to tell but are sensitive for obvious reasons.
From Luke Metro: Which fraction of companyâs employees were hired in the last 1-2 years? I do wonder how many companies doing layoffs did massive hiring sprees during the frothiness of 2021?
The reason this question is important is that it colors how a layoff was engineered; and if it only impacts the newest members, the most nascent products or everyone across the board â from executives to entry-level hires. If it’s the latter, it may suggest that a startup is having deep inset problems that requires a mass reorganization of its resources. If a workforce reduction largely impacts those hired in the past year, it could mean that the startup needs to scale back some of its more experimental work and hone back to where it already has product-market fit. Thanks for the tip, I’ll start asking about this!
In the rest of this newsletter, weâll talk about multiplayer fintech and the grocery delivery world. As always, you can support me by forwarding this newsletter to a friend or following me on Twitter or subscribing to my blog. As a programming note, I am out on vacation next week so expect an abbreviated Startups Weekly column, still from yours truly, but with support from Henry Pickavet, Richard Dal Porto and the rest of the team.
Deal of the week
A Santa Monica-based startup, Ivella wants to build banking products for couples to take away money tensions. CEO and co-founder Kahlil Lalji is launching with a split account product that just raised $3.5 million in funding from Anthemis, Financial Venture Studio and Soma Capital. Other investors include Y Combinator, DoNotPay CEO Joshua Browder and Gumroad CEO Sahil Lavingia.
Hereâs why itâs important: The best solution, so far, for multiplayer fintech has been joint accounts: meaning that two people will set up an account where they â sing it with me now â join their accounts and pull from the same pool. Instead, Lalji wants to build a split account: Couples maintain individual accounts and balances but get an Ivella debit card that is linked to both of those accounts.
With that shared card, couples can set ratios â maybe prorate what percent of each bill someone pays depending on their income â and Ivella will automatically split any transactions made using the Ivella debit card. This in and of itself was the largest technical challenge that Ivella was confronted with in its early days, describes Lalji:
âThe place that a lot of people fall short, just like a lot of fintech falls short, is that they donât break the mold of what banking looks and feels like,â Lalji said. âAnd because weâre focused specifically on couples, we want to build a product that feels not so sterile and not just like a bank.â
How Olive pivoted 27 times on its way to a $4 billion valuation
Nigeriaâs Indicina raises $3M to help businesses offer credit to their customers at scale
The delivery market is coming down from its pandemic highs
Our own Kyle Wiggers wrote about how the on-demand delivery marketâs pandemic period of rapid growth is winding down. As he notes, there are signs of a correction including Instacartâs slashed valuation, DoorDash and Deliverooâs stock price fluctuation, and Gorillas, Getir, Zapp and Gopuff conducting layoffs while others like Fridge No More and 1520 shut down entirely.
Hereâs why itâs important: As I told Wiggers over Slack, the on-demand delivery marketâs lack of profitability is often talked about in a, “thatâs so obvious” and broad-stroke manner. This piece got into the heart of why grocery delivery is so expensive and more specific struggles startups face in this market.
Hereâs what Craft Ventures partner and co-founder Jeff Fluhr, the ex-CEO of StubHub, said to TechCrunch; despite the fact that Craft has invested in a number of delivery companies:
âThe fast delivery space is the epitome of exuberance of 2021: Investors were pouring money into cash-guzzling companies with flimsy business models,â he told TechCrunch in an email interview. âFast delivery companies are capital intensive. They require local infrastructure, local people and local operations that are expensive to build out. As a result, all of these companies have been incinerating boatloads of cash over the past 12 to 24 months as theyâve expanded to new geographic markets. Of course consumers like the instant gratification of a pint of ice cream in 15 minutes, so revenues grew quickly, driven by a great consumer experience and word-of-mouth virality. Investors followed the growth paying no attention to the potential for profitability. But the notion that a startup can deliver on that promise profitably is a pipe dream.â
With ride-hail and delivery launch, Fenix wants to be the Bolt of the Middle East
Affirm and Klarna ramp up competing efforts to attract US consumers
Apple Pay Later lets you split up purchases into four payments at no interest
Across the week
Weâre talking about the new era of climate tech at TechCrunch Climate next week! Attend the June 14 event to hear from Bill Gates, Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and a wave of emerging entrepreneurs looking to solve our worldâs biggest problems.
Announcing the full agenda for TC Sessions: Robotics happening this July
Announcing the TechCrunch+ Stage Agenda at Disrupt 2022
In case you missed last weekâs newsletter, read it here: âNuance? In this startup market?â Also read the companion TechCrunch+ column, âA downturn is nothing new for diverse founders.â
Seen on TechCrunch
Hereâs everything Apple just announced at the WWDC 2022 keynote
Whatâs the right order for the slides in your pitch deck?
Lots of sellers, fewer buyers, in markets for startup shares
What connects the stock market contraction to startup valuations?
Seen on TechCrunch+
Thereâs still good news out there for software startups
For mental health startups, happiness is in niches
Black Founders Matter presses VCs to pledge commitment to diversity
Until next time,
N
Publish Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2022 16:17:08 +0000
Web3 has plenty of money going for it — well, yes quite a bit less than a few months ago — but it’s still hard to argue that mainstream consumers have lined up to embrace web3 internet services. There have been some flash-in-the-pan hits so far, but investors are still searching for consumer use cases that make the most of blockchains, tokens and NFTs, beyond just trading them.
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) GP Sriram Krishnan believes the incentive structures of web3 makes the space a natural fit for social networking, he told us on the latest episode of TechCrunch’s crypto podcast Chain Reaction. Krishnan has ample experience at web 2.0 social networking companies; he’s served as an executive at Twitter, Facebook and Snap before joining a16z, which notably just debuted its latest $4.5 billion crypto fund.
“People ask me, ‘What is the thing that you’re spending a lot of time on, that you’re really interested in?'” Krishnan says. “I think the intersection of social media and web3 is really fascinating.”
While web3 has yet to see a platform equivalent of Twitter or Facebook take off, Krishnan believes the structure of blockchain-based platforms provides some interesting incentives to bring creators into their networks, which could in turn bring along their audiences. He notes that some of the most popular existing social media services have indexed on the sell of providing content creators a platform with reach, but one that doesn’t necessarily give them the financial upside of the network itself — something he think NFTs and tokens could rectify.
“With web3… people who contribute value to the platform now have a share of the economics happening in the platform itself,” Krishnan says. “In some of web3 social media you actually could have the spiritual equivalent of a place on the cap table.”
The Winklevoss twins rock on
Beyond tokens and other crypto assets, Kirshnan alluded to mechanisms like decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) which allow stakeholders in a platform or protocol to make decisions about how that project matures, something he notes as pretty foreign to existing ideas of how Big Tech companies interact with their most popular content creators.
“[With web3], you now have a say in the governance of said platform too, which is really really interesting. It opens up a whole new toolbox and new power dynamic between creators and the social media platforms,” Krishnan says.
Krishnan says that the open natures of protocols operating in web3 means that clients will be more beholden to the interests of their users, because users could more easily take their assets and content to a new platform if they feel their interests aren’t being represented — something that sort of reframes the idea of exporting data from social media services.
“That ‘right of exit,’ that right of building alternate clients is one of the web3 social things I find really exciting,” he notes.
Web3 social is fairly theoretical at the moment, and while a few startups have tried to make a splash, the onboarding woes for users getting wallets, buying tokens and joining a platform are still much more challenging than the experiences on more streamlined sites like Twitter. Investors hope that some of these issues are just growing pains that developers will build past, developers that VCs like Krishnan are hoping they can bankroll.
Amid crypto market turmoil, Andreessen Horowitz announces $4.5 billion web3 fund
Subscribe to Chain Reaction on Apple, Spotify or your alternative podcast platform of choice to keep up with us every week.
Publish Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2022 15:00:40 +0000
Welcome to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. Itâs inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here.
When does a startup stop being a startup? It’s a tougher question than it seems — tech companies have found that there’s power in words. Let’s explore! â Anna
Startup versus scaleup
“We’re not a startup, we’re a scaleup,” marketing executive Cristina Marcos told me of her employer, interactive content creation platform Genially. This was actually one of the first things she said when we met in person earlier this week, and her emphasis really caught my attention.
On the one hand, it seems reasonable to say that a company like Genially, which has millions of users and raised more than $26 million in funding, is no longer a startup. On the other, “startup” is such a buzzword that it is interesting to see companies steering away from it.
That “scaleup” is Genially’s preferred term over “startup” is noteworthy. Joe Haslam, a professor at IE Business School in Madrid, has been arguing for almost a decade that “scaleup is the new startup.” But even he concedes that the “scaleup” term didn’t take off as much as he expected.
Publish Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2022 14:00:59 +0000
During its WWDC keynote, Apple announced a bevy of changes and updates to its hardware and software. In the mix were anticipated improvements to its various operating systems and computers — and plans to expand its fintech footprint.
Apple has been growing as a consumer finance company for some time, most famously thanks to its Apple Pay service and the launch of a branded credit card in recent years. However, while itâs earned a market footprint of sufficient scale as to matter in the consumer financial technology market, itâs not considered a fintech company per se.
That could be changing. During its WWDC speech, Apple announced a new service called Apple Pay Later that will allow consumers to make mobile and online purchases sliced into four payments over six weeks at the millions of U.S. retailers that already accept Apple Pay. The offering wonât include fees or other charges, the company said, requiring only a “soft” credit check and review of the userâs transaction history with Apple.
This concept should be familiar. Often described as âbuy now, pay later,â or BNPL, the installment payment method became a startup darling in recent years, with companies like Affirm (which has Stripe and Amazon partnerships) riding the consumer credit option all the way to the public markets. Klarna reached an epic scale as a private BNPL company, and weâve recently seen Block buy Afterpay, a BNPL provider, and a merger between Sezzle and Zip.
“We are quickly seeing BNPL providers evolve into more full-featured digital wallets that include ‘pay in one’ in addition to installments, and we have seen traditional digital wallets such as PayPal add the pay-in-installment feature. So it is not surprising that Apple has added this feature,” Dayna Ford, senior director analyst at Gartner, told TechCrunch via email. “BNPL has proven to be popular among consumers and merchants as a way to increase sales. It is likely to help boost Apple Pay usage, and it is a logical extension of their growing financial relationship with Apple users.”
“Banks, lenders and merchants need not view Apple Pay Later as a threat but rather as an opportunity to carve out their own niche in what has become the payments standard.” Jifiti CEO Yaacov Martin
TechCrunch has reported on myriad BNPL startups around the world, each chasing scale with modest model variations, at times focusing on particular verticals or other forms of customer segmentation. How will all of these BNPL-focused providers fare with Apple pounding its way into their market? We got an early look at what investors are thinking, at least, when shares of Affirm sold off in the wake of Appleâs news.
But thatâs just one company, one result. What about outfits like Afterpay and Affirm? Will Appleâs news upset their apple carts? And what should we consider the potential impact of Appleâs news on the smaller, regional or otherwise niche-y BNPL players that raised so very much capital in the last few years? TechCrunch wanted to find out.
Competition
Itâs worth noting that the BNPL sector has been under some pressure in recent months. After Affirmâs share price came back to Earth following a period of investor fancy, Klarna was forced to change up its fundraising hopes, cutting its valuation to pursue new capital.
The company remains on the defensive. TechCrunch has written about the economics of the BNPL world here, if you would like to go deeper.
To get a better handle on how Apple will impact the well-funded, if slightly ill market, TechCrunch reached out to — and heard back from — many of the major vendors in the BNPL space, including Affirm, Afterpay and Splitit. Klarna declined to comment.
Publish Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2022 11:00:40 +0000
Welcome back to Chain Reaction.
Last week, we talked about an arrest in the crypto world that had investors sweating. This week, we’re talking about rocking through the general malaise of a crypto winter.
You can subscribe to this newsletter and get it in your inbox every Thursday on TechCrunch’s newsletter page.
blockstars
Crypto has had a brutal couple months and yet, the show goes on â metaphorically and literally for the Winklevoss twins who, despite announcing significant layoffs and suffering a federal lawsuit this week against their crypto exchange Gemini, have started the multi-city tour for their cover band âMars Junctionâ which plays hits from Blink 182, The Killers and Rage Against The Machine.
The bandâs billionaire frontmen (both immortalized by Armie Hammer in the film The Social Network) remade their image with a substantial bet on the bitcoin ecosystem years ago and while Gemini lags plenty of competitors, the exchange hit a $7.1 billion valuation last year, but lawsuits from investors and regulators teamed with layoffs could spell trouble ahead nonetheless.
Asbury Park, weâll see you this thursday @WonderBarAP! Get tickets / rsvp your NFT > https://t.co/TbV9P2OKUH @cameron @tyler pic.twitter.com/D0PlEsouI1
— Mars Junction (@MarsJunction) June 6, 2022
High-flying valuations were a hallmark of the 2021 bull run for crypto during which unicorn startups were minted on a weekly basis as money dumped into the space even while consumer interest in web3 services seemed to grow more modestly. But as investors look at the public travails of Coinbase, startups that didnât raise quite enough are about to see more hostile terms coming their way.
This week, The Block and Bloomberg reported that crypto lending platform BlockFi was taking a massive valuation haircut and was aiming to raise a round at a $1 billion valuation just over a year after raising cash at $3 billion.
Investors are getting more conservative with their capital but also growing a bit more skeptical of exit options.
For public behemoths like Coinbase, the hit to their stock price has left them scrambling, reversing a hiring spree on a dime and rescinding offers to prospective employees. Coinbaseâs misfortunes are likely a leading signal of tough times ahead for private crypto startups who may not have raised as much runway as necessary. Companies that are in dire need for growth capital wonât be in a great spot, though venture capitalists like a16z will certainly try to keep the party going for seed stage startups with new funds devoted largely to new bets.
The broader tech industry hasnât seen a prolonged recession in a couple decades, but crypto startups have dealt with plenty of brutal âwinterâ periods. As a result one would expect theyâd be a bit better prepared for the good times to end⌠and yet plenty of top crypto companies are signaling that this latest crash caught them off guard.
the latest pod
Itâs Anita here â on this weekâs episode, Lucas and I sadly had to be the bearers of some bad news as the crypto market downturn begins impacting employees. Some of the biggest crypto companies are joining the recent wave of tech startups firing people en masse. We talked about Coinbaseâs recent move to rescind job offers it had already extended to candidates who had committed to work there, Geminiâs decision to sack 10% of its staff, and how exactly things have gotten so ugly so quickly.
We also talked about the new bill Senators Cynthia Lummis and Kirsten Gillbrand introduced this week that could provide long-awaited regulatory clarity for crypto, getting into why we think this is a long-term win for companies building in the space and investors holding digital assets. Â
Sriram Krishnan, a general partner on a16zâs crypto team (and co-host of âThe Good Time Show,â) joined us to shed light on some of his recent Twitter beefs and how his experience as an exec at some of the largest social media companies informs his approach to web3 consumer investing.Â
Subscribe to Chain Reaction on Apple, Spotify or your alternative podcast platform of choice to keep up with us every week.
Andreessen Horowitz’s Sriram Krishnan on crypto social networking
follow the money
Where startup money is moving in the crypto world:
Mobile investment platform Delphia raised a $60 million Series A led by Multicoin Capital.
Calaxy, a web3 social marketplace, nabbed $26 million in strategic funding co-led by Animoca Brands and HBAR Foundation.
Entropy, a decentralized crypto custodian, raised $25 million for its seed round led by a16z.
âItâs Always Sunny in Philadelphiaâ actor Rob McElhenneyâs web3 entertainment startup, Adim, raised $5 million in seed funding in an a16z-led round.
Decentralized exchange ApolloX secured an undisclosed amount in seed funding from investors including Binance Labs and Kronos Research.
Euler Finance, a non-custodial crypto lending protocol, brought in $32 million with Haun Ventures as lead investor in its Series A.Â
Data infrastructure provider Vybe Network announced the close of a $10.5 million Series A investment led by FTX.
Mash, a Lightning Network-enabled payments platform, secured $6 million in seed funding co-led by Castle Island Ventures and Whitecap Venture Partners.
Cryptio, an institutional crypto accounting platform, snagged $10 million in a Series A led by Point Nine.
NFT portfolio management startup Floor raised an $8 million seed round led by 6thMan Ventures.
Web3 startup Calaxy raises $26M to give content creators their own social tokens
the week in web3
As Anita heads to the Consensus crypto conference in Austin this week, weâve been thinking about the aspects of web3 that still seem to excite and energize crowds, even during a tough period in the markets.Â
Web3 entrepreneur Tux Pacific summed it up well: âIn fact, Iâve never felt Iâve been in a space where itâs been more acceptable for people to be so different. If you go to a [crypto] conference, itâs just filled with weird, weird people,â Pacific told Anita in an interview. Pacific, one of the rare trans, queer founders in crypto with big-name venture backing, also talked about how their unique background informs their fresh approach to building a crypto custody company.
Maybe itâs a bold time to raise capital to invest in web3, but Ledger, a hardware-focused crypto security startup, has teamed up with French venture firm Cathay Innovation to do exactly that. The pair raised $110 million to invest in early-stage crypto startups. Ledgerâs founder and CEO, Pascal Gauthier, told Anita why heâs so confident that now is a good time to be deploying capital in crypto.
Solana Labs is doubling down in South Korea, where itâs seeing growing demand for gaming and NFTs. Solana Ventures and Solana Foundation have set up a $100 million fund to support startups in the country â Jacquie has the details.
TC+ analysis
Here’s some of this week’s crypto analysis you can read on our subscription service TC+ (written by TC’s Jacquelyn Melinek):Â
Proposed bipartisan US crypto bill could be âsigh of reliefâ for the industry
Earlier this week, U.S. Senators Cynthia Lummis, Republican of Wyoming, and Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, proposed a crypto bill that could provide guide rails around the digital asset space. The bill addressed many corners of the crypto world and has market players calling it a âstep in the right directionâ and not an âescapeâ to strong regulation, but a shift with clearer rules.Â
DOJ case against ex-OpenSea exec could label NFTs as securities, former SEC lawyer says
A former executive at OpenSea, the biggest NFT marketplace, was arrested and charged last week âwith wire fraud and money laundering in connection with a scheme to commit insider trading in [NFTs],â according to a press release from the U.S. Attorneyâs Office for the Southern District of New York. Now, this case might have the potential to determine whether or not NFTs are defined as securities.
Thanks for reading and listening. You can subscribe to this newsletter and get it in your inbox every Thursday on TechCrunch’s newsletter page.
Publish Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2022 23:30:43 +0000
Celina Mikolajczak, who has held senior roles at Tesla and Panasonic, resigned from QuantumScape less than a year after taking the chief manufacturing officer position at the solid-state battery company, according to a regulatory filing.
Mikolajczak and QuantumScape are parting ways over “differing management styles between the parties,” the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission states. Mikolajczak will move to an advisory role on the companyâs scientific advisory board.
She intends to focus her career on the development of a fully U.S.-based battery supply chain, according to the filing.
Shares of QuantumScape fell 7.7% to close at $10.15, near its 52-week low of $10.
The departure wraps up a fast and furious relationship between the company and Mikolajczak.
A little over a year ago, Mikolajczak took a board seat at QuantumScape. She was still vice president of battery technology at Panasonic Energy of North America when she joined the board, telling TechCrunch at the time that her employer “graciously allowed her” to take the appointment.
A month later, QuantumScape announced Mikolajczak would join the company as vice president of manufacturing engineering, beginning in July. She resigned from the board in connection with accepting the offer. In her new role, Mikolajczak was charged with leading the transition of the companyâs tools and manufacturing processes from research and development to production, QuantumScape said in a regulatory filing at the time.
The hiring appeared to be a boon for both parties.
QuantumScape, which had risen to buzzy prominence after Volkswagen Group invested more than $500 million, struck a deal in September 2020 to merge with a special purpose acquisition company, Kensington Capital Acquisition Corp. The capital raised through the public markets would give QuantumScape the boost it needed to commercialize solid-state batteries for electric vehicles.
Meanwhile, Mikolajczak had the kind of experience QuantumScape would need to scale.
Mikolajczak has a long history of researching and developing better lithium-ion batteries. Her technical consulting practice at Exponent focused on lithium-ion cell and battery safety and quality. She then took a senior management position at Tesla that was focused on cell quality and materials engineering. During her time at Tesla, Mikolajczak developed the battery cells and packs for Teslaâs Model S, Model X, Model 3 and Roadster Refresh.
After leaving Tesla, Mikolajczak went on to serve as director of engineering, focusing on battery development for rideshare vehicles at Uber Technologies. And in 2019, she joined Panasonic Energy of North America, where she was vice president of battery technology. While at Panasonic, Mikolajczak led a team focused on improving lithium-ion cell manufacturing and bringing the latest cell technologies to mass production for Tesla at the Gigafactory facility in Sparks, Nevada.
Publish Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2022 23:15:39 +0000
So much for that touching goodbye post to Sheryl Sandberg that Mark Zuckerberg posted just 9 days ago, when after a 14-year run at Facebook â now Meta Platforms â Sandberg said she was resigning from her post as COO. At the time, Zuckerberg called Sandberg’s planned departure the “the end of an era” and spoke glowingly of her as an “amazing person, leader, partner, and friend.”
Today, the Wall Street Journal reports â for the second time since Sandberg resigned â that Facebook has been investigating Sandberg since at least the fall for the possible misuse of corporate resources.
Under review: whether she had Facebook employees engaged in work that supported her Lean In foundation, whose mission it is to foster women’s leadership and workplace inclusion; whether she pulled Facebook staffers into the writing and promotion of her second book, “Option B,” which focused on overcoming the sudden death of her husband in 2015; and finally whether she diverted the time and attention of Facebook employees to her upcoming wedding this summer.
What a monster(?).
We don’t know who is leaking details of this investigation to the WSJ, but if the “people familiar with the matter” are trying to destroy her reputation, they’re doing a comically lousy job. (We reached out to Facebook for more information earlier and have yet to hear back from the company.)
For one thing, no one thinks Sheryl Sandberg is an angel. If they ever did, they reassessed many years ago, across numerous scandals, from Facebook’s obvious ambivalence about data privacy, to her handling of Facebook’s public relations after revelations of Russian interference on the platform in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. (While Zuckerberg launched an apology tour at first, she launched an aggressive lobbying campaign to combat Facebookâs critics.)
It plainly takes a certain kind of person to run a rule-bending company like Facebook, and you can’t help it grow into one of the most powerful companies in world history without getting even dirtier. Still, a newer story leaked to the Journal in April managed to further raise questions about Sandberg. According to the report, Sandberg, who earlier dated Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, twice pressed a U.K. tabloid to shelve a potential article about him, relying on a team that included both Facebook and Activision employees, as well as paid outside advisers.
A lot of people found the possibility that Sandberg would potentially use her muscle in this way disturbing. The newest articles about Sandberg are different, though. In fact, we hope these leaks about investigations into Sandberg’s potential misuse of assets are coming from Sandberg and her associates. Talk about brilliant machinations, if so.
Think about it. In Sandberg, we have a commanding female COO, who has long been credited for much of Facebook’s growth, being investigated for relying on staff to (1) nurture an organization for women, (2) write a book primarily for women about overcoming grief and (3) being a human who is planning a joyous wedding after suffering unimaginable loss.
If Facebook really wants to take issue with Sandberg planning her wedding on company time, so be it. But clearly both Lean In and Sandberg’s books â proceeds of which were reportedly given to Lean In â were very good for Facebook’s brand when it most needed some softening.
Alas, we don’t actually think Sandberg is seeking out coverage in the Journal. The more likely scenario is that there are people inside Facebook with an axe to grind. If so, their efforts to take down Sandberg may backfire in a big way unless these internal investigations â reportedly the outgrowth of hiring its first chief compliance officer last year â lead to a much bigger reveal.
As for now, Sandberg mostly looks to be getting the world’s worst send-off from a company to which she remained dedicated longer than nearly any other executive aside from Zuckerberg himself. In fact, the Journal notes that it’s well known already that both Sandberg and Zuckerberg use corporate resources for some personal matters. Facebook even makes “extensive disclosures” about these things in its regulatory filings, notes the outlet.
In the meantime, these slow leaks make Facebook appear petty and vindictive â even borderline absurd. As reports the WSJ: “Some within Meta close to the investigation worry about potential Securities and Exchange Commission violations if Ms. Sandberg used professional resources for personal matters without adequate disclosures, although it isnât yet clear what such violations might be, people familiar with the matter said.”
Publish Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2022 22:45:51 +0000
Nathan Beckord
Contributor
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Nathan Beckord is CEO of Foundersuite.com, a software platform for raising capital and managing investors. He is also the host of Foundersuiteâs How I Raised It podcast.
More posts by this contributor
How to build and maintain momentum in your fundraising process
How to break into Silicon Valley as an outsider
Iddo Tal has an infectious enthusiasm for fundraising. He believes that when startup founders know how to raise money, they can find the freedom to approach investors with confidence and raise the capital they need to grow their company.
Tal developed his methodologies in the course of leading five startups over more than 20 years. His biggest success story was invi Labs, a smart messaging app that was acquired by Google in 2018, which integrated the technology into Google Messages. By the time he stepped down as product manager in 2020, the platform had more than 600 million users worldwide.
This article is based on an episode of Foundersuiteâs How I Raised It podcast, where Tal shared his seven-step method to managing a meeting with investors, including actionable tips for effectively following up on promising pitches.
“Would you enjoy being in a meeting day after day with people trying to hard sell you the entire time?” Iddo Tal
When Tal began pitching investors in Silicon Valley, it took him some time to understand the dynamics at work in those meetings.
“Would you enjoy being in a meeting day after day with people trying to hard sell you the entire time?” he asked.
He recalled trying to hard sell the room for the full hour-long meeting and watching as investorsâ shoulders tensed. “I was trying to teach investors every bit of information I knew about the market and the business, and this is such an ineffective method,â he said.
Over time, he created a framework that changes the dynamic. It works so well, he said, that even if the investor is not a good fit for your startup, they might just introduce to you their contacts.
1. Open with two to three minutes of small talk
Begin the meeting with a few minutes of chitchat to create rapport. Let the investors talk about something that interests them, or look for a common interest.
If youâre pitching on a Zoom call, take a look at whatâs in the investorâs background â a diploma, a photo, a trinket â and ask them about it.
2. Frame what will happen during the meeting
Before you get into your pitch, lay out what they can expect from the meeting. This shows investors that you are organized and prepared, and it keeps you from rambling.
Tal recommended that your framing should sound something like this:
Hey, [investor], thank you so much for inviting me here. I believe we have an hour, right? So how about we do the following:
For five minutes Iâll give you my pitch with the deck. After that, weâll take the biggest part of the meeting â about 30 minutes â for your Q&A. And then Iâd like to spend 10 minutes asking you questions. In the last 10 minutes, weâll define the next steps together. How does that sound?
Publish Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2022 22:05:05 +0000
To get a roundup of TechCrunchâs biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.
Itâs Friday, June 10, 2022, and Haje is on the road, so itâs just me today. Before I let you enjoy the weekend, there are a few housekeeping items to address. First, TechCrunch Disrupt will be in person this year, and today is the last day to raise your hand to speak. Second, if youâre attending TC Sessions: Climate next week, we have your inside look on what to expect. Now that those are taken care of, if youâre in the mood to listen to something instead of read, we have you covered. Have a great weekend! â Christine
TC Sessions: Climate 2022
The TechCrunch Top 3
Pacman on the attack: Carly writes that MIT researchers, while applying a âPacman attackâ test on Appleâs M1 chips, undiscovered a doozy in the way of an âunpatchableâ hardware vulnerability that could allow attackers to break through its last line of security defenses. In its response, Apple didnât seem too worried.
Amazon isnât bidding on cricket: Manish was privy to some news that Amazon was pulling out of the running to bid on a 5-year deal to stream IPL cricket games. No word on why that is, but if you enjoy the games, it looks like Disney and Reliance are still in it.
âThe search for alphaâ: A downed market for crypto appears to be an advantage for hedge funds looking to get in on some digital assets, Jacquie writes. She combs through the PwCâs Global Crypto Hedge Fund so you donât have to.
Startups and VC
We enjoyed Amandaâs and Natashaâs take today on the myriad layoffs plaguing technology companies these days. They also point out something new with this latest crop of announcements.
What do you get when you combine a young VC investor leveraging his age to bring a fresh perspective to the industry with some women investors striking it out on their own and a look into investors demanding profitability from tech companies? A nice afternoon of reading.
Here are some others we hope tickle your fancy:
The subscription game is the game Iâm in: Free messaging app Telegram is going to offer a premium option, and get this, it wonât be downgrading features for those who donât subscribe. Now, isnât that refreshing? Your move, Marco Polo.
Getting in on a growing market: The International Finance Corp. is poised to invest in Partechâs Africa Fund II, Annie reports. The fund will invest in a broad range of stages, from seed to Series D.
A hand to hold: Boulder Care raised $36 million in Series B funding to continue developing its telehealth program focused on substance abuse disorders. The company works mainly with patients on Medicaid and is seeing some industry-leading retention rates for those in the program.
Sunny days are here again: Indiaâs SolarSquare has raised $4 million to accelerate the countryâs move toward clean energy.
Growth marketing experts survey: How would you spend a $75,000 budget in summer 2022?
Image Credits: Toni Cuenca (opens in a new window) / Unsplash (opens in a new window) under a license.
As entrepreneurs began turning lessons learned in bootcamps into basic best practices, startups started giving growth marketers more respect and resources over the last decade.
Here’s the good news: Managers can’t slash your respect budget. Unfortunately, to maximize ROI, every dollar now needs to stretch further than Reed Richards in the last “Doctor Strange” movie.
This time, we asked four experts to tell us how they’d manage a budget of $75,000 and which recommendations they’d offer someone who had only $10,000 to spend:
Ellen Kim, VP of Creative, MarketerHire
Jack Hallam, growth and community lead, Ammo
Jonathan Metrick, chief growth officer, Portage Ventures
Jonathan Martinez, founder, JMStrategy
Growth marketing experts survey: How would you spend a $75,000 budget in summer 2022?
(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)
Big Tech Inc.
Turn down that racket!: Netflix is turning some of its popular original programming into games, like âThe Queenâs Gambit,â âShadow and Boneâ and, yes, âToo Hot to Handle.â And now, more Disney fans in the Middle East and Africa will now have access to Disney+. Meanwhile, Peacock confirms it is testing a rewards program for paid subscribers that involves movie tickets or movie rentals.
You make me wanna roll my windows down and cruise: The weekend is upon us, and we hope you live in an area where you can roll the car windows down and enjoy the breeze. If not, here is some car news to enjoy with the air conditioning blasting. Porsche is working with UP.Labs aimed at creating six tech companies that will focus on some of the automakerâs goals, including predictive maintenance, supply chain transparency or digital retail, Kirsten reports. Over at Faraday Future, the electric vehicle startup has another federal agency inquiring about its actions.
Some social media headaches relieved: In social media news, you may remember that Twitter was testing a Report Tweet flow that would add more options for explaining what the issue is when flagging offensive or dangerous content on the site. That test worked, and now Twitter is rolling it out. Next, Meta is rolling out Horizon Home as part of a new update to the Quest 2 headset. Apparently Quest 2 wasnât making it easy for people to meet up in the metaverse.
Publish Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2022 21:59:34 +0000
Deon Nicholas is the CEO and co-founder of Forethought, the AI company whose mission is to transform customer experiences with human-centered AI. Forethought has raised over $100 million in venture capital, including from NEA, which led Forethoughtâs $9.52 million Series A. Hear from NEAâs Vanessa Larco on what convinced the firm to invest in Forethought, and see Forethoughtâs early pitch deck that promised to up-end the customer service industry.
This event opens on June 29 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 Wednesdays at 11:30 a.m. PDT/2:30 p.m. EDT. Join us! Click here to register for free and gain access to Forethought’s pitch deck, enter the pitch-practice session and access the livestream, where you can ask the speakers questions.
Publish Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2022 18:40:34 +0000
Credit card companies are trying to sweeten the perks they offer their customers, and American Express is doing just that through a new partnership with crypto wealth management platform and wallet provider Abra. The companies’ CEOs announced the launch of the Abra Crypto Card on the Amex network today at Coindesk’s Consensus conference in Austin, Texas.
The card will allow users transacting in U.S. dollars to earn cryptocurrency rewards on their purchases through the Amex network, Bill Barhydt, founder and CEO of Abra told TechCrunch in an interview.
Abra declined to share details on which cryptocurrencies will be available to users in the first version of its card, which will launch late this year, but Barhydt said the offering will eventually allow users to choose to receive their rewards through multiple different cryptocurrencies as well as traditional rewards such as entertainment and dining-related perks already offered on the Amex platform.
Users can choose to receive rewards in the form of Abra’s ERC-20 Crypto Perx (CPRX) token or another cryptocurrency, he explained. CPRX is a utility token with more than a million holders already through Abra’s own perks program, according to Barhydt. The credit card will offer customers some sort of benefit for choosing to receive their rewards in CPRX versus another cryptocurrency, Barhydt said, though details are still unclear.
Card users will have to be registered with Abra, and the card will function by having these users apply for a line of credit, Barhydt explained. Once they start earning crypto rewards, they’ll be able to use Abra’s swap exchange to convert these rewards across different cryptocurrencies easily, he added.
“Eventually, we’re also working on a solution that will allow you to use your existing crypto balance to affect your credit line, which is something we’ll probably launch in the future. I think that’s a big benefit because a lot of crypto holders are kind of penalized when it comes to banking and credit,” Barhydt said.
The card is geared toward two different groups — crypto enthusiasts with experience, and those who are looking to enter the crypto world for the first time through a simple entry point, according to Barhydt.
“They’ll earn crypto rewards without having to convert their other assets to crypto,” he said.
Amex users have been waiting for an announcement like this for some time, as its competitors Visa and Mastercard have already launched their own crypto rewards credit cards through partnerships with digital asset companies, such as Visa’s crypto rewards card offered in conjunction with BlockFi and the Mastercard-powered card issued by crypto exchange Gemini. Fintech companies Brex, Venmo and SoFi all also offer their own crypto rewards credit cards.
American Express was cautious about entering this market, but the Abra card is likely a precursor to more crypto-related products for the company.
“We’ve been modernizing the American Express networking capabilities over the last many years, and through that, we’re looking to launch innovative and leading value propositions. This announcement with Abra is the first product that we’re announcing on that platform,” Mohammed Badi, president of Global Network Services at American Express, told TechCrunch in an interview.
Publish Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2022 18:39:33 +0000
The world of AI-powered drug discovery keeps expanding as the capabilities of machine learning grow. One approach that seemed unthinkable just a few years ago is simulating the complicated interplays of two interlocking molecules â but that’s exactly what drug designers need to know about, and exactly what Charm Therapeutics aims to do with its DragonFold platform.
Proteins do just about everything worth doing in your body, and are the most frequent targets for drugs. And in order to create an effect, you must first understand that target, specifically how the chain of amino acids making up the protein “folds” under different circumstances.
In the recent past this was often done with complex, time-consuming X-ray crystallography, but it has recently been shown that machine learning models like AlphaFold and RoseTTAFold are capable of producing results just as good but in seconds rather than weeks or months.
The next challenge is that even if we know how a protein folds in its most common conditions, we don’t know how it might interact with other proteins let alone novel molecules made specifically to bind with them. When a protein meets a compatible binder or ligand, it can transform completely, since small changes can cascade and reconfigure its entire structure â in life this leads to things like a protein opening a passage into a cell or exposing a new surface that activates other proteins, and so on.
“That’s really where we have innovated: we have built DragonFold, which is the first protein-ligand co-folding algorithm,” said Laskh Aithani, CEO and co-founder of Charm Therapeutics.
“Designing drugs that bind to the disease-causing protein of interest very tightly and selectively (i.e., avoid binding to other similar proteins that are required for normal human functioning) is of paramount importance,” he explained. “This is done most easily when one knows how exactly these drugs bind to the protein (the exact 3D shape of the ligand bound to the disease-causing protein). This allows one to make precision modifications to the ligand such that it can bind more tightly and more selectively.”
You can see a representation of this situation at the top of the article: The small green molecule and the purple protein fit together in a very specific way that is not necessarily intuitive or easy to predict. Effective and efficient simulation of this process helps screen billions of molecules, similar to earlier processes that identified drug candidates but going further and reducing the need to experimentally check whether they interact as expected.
To accomplish this, Aithani tapped David Baker, designer of the RoseTTAFold algorithm among many others and head of an influential lab at the University of Washington, to be his co-founder. Baker is well known in academia and industry as one of the leading researchers in this area, and he has published numerous papers on the subject.
Charm Therapeutics co-founders Laskh Aithani (left) and David Baker. Image Credits: Charm Therapeutics
Shortly after it was shown that algorithms could predict protein structures based on their sequence, Baker established they could also “hallucinate” new proteins that acted as expected in vitro. He’s very clearly on the leading edge here. And he won a $3 million Breakthrough prize in 2020 â definitely up to being a technical co-founder. Aithani also proudly noted the presence of DeepMind veteran Sergey Bartunov as director of AI and former pharma research lead Sarah Skerratt as head of drug discovery.
The $50 million A round was led by F-Prime Capital and OrbiMed, with participation from General Catalyst, Khosla Ventures, Braavos and Axial. While such large amounts are not uncommon for software startups, it should be noted that Charm is not stopping at building the capability of characterizing these protein-ligand interactions.
The company’s early-stage funding was used to build the model, but now they’re moving on to the next step: positive identification of effective medications.
“We have the initial version [of the model] ready, and that has been validated in-silico,” Aithani said. “Over the coming quarters, we are validating it experimentally. Note that the ‘product’ will mainly be for internal use to help our own scientists discover potential medicines that we own 100% of the rights to.”
Ordinarily the testing process involves wet-lab screening of thousands upon thousands of candidate molecules, but if it works as advertised, DragonFold should massively cut down on that number. That means a relatively small lab with a relatively small budget can conceivably home in on a drug that a few years ago might require a major pharma company investing hundreds of millions.
Considering the profit profile of a novel drug, it’s no surprise that the company has attracted this kind of investment: a few tens of millions is a drop in the bucket compared with the R&D budget of any big biotech research company. All it takes is one hit and they’re laughing. It still takes a while, but AI drug discover shortens timelines as well â so expect to hear about their first candidates sooner rather than later.
Publish Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2022 18:32:35 +0000
According to Crunchbase, more than 17,000 tech workers have lost jobs since the start of this year. Thatâs painful, but for perspective: TechCrunch tracked more than 100,000 tech layoffs between August and December 2008.
In my experience, founders and investors usually come out unscathed on the other side of events like these. For below-the-line employees, however, unexpected layoffs can be life-changing: One former product manager I used to work with now sells residential real estate, and another works in public health.
This is a time to be cautious: Update your resume, dial back your summer vacation plans and start adding more to your rainy day fund.
As Iâve said previously, if your name doesnât appear on the team slide of your companyâs pitch deck, this is a time to be cautious: Update your resume, dial back your summer vacation plans and start adding more to your rainy day fund.
Building a company is a high-stakes effort, so hereâs a promise: I wonât approve articles with advice for navigating this downturn unless the author has direct experience with the matter.
Before Karl Alomar became managing partner of VC firm M13, he led one company through the dot-com bust of 2000 and helped another survive the Great Recession of 2008.
Full TechCrunch+ articles are only available to members
Use discount code TCPLUSROUNDUP to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription
âThe key difference between 2022 and previous downturns is that this contraction was anticipated for a long time, whereas the previous downturns were far more sudden,â he says.
Alomar shared eight elements entrepreneurs should consider in this environment, including his top-level advice that anyone fundraising should pin down at least two years of runway.
âInvestors will likely remain on the sidelines for the most part as the markets settle and a new set of comparable multiples has been established,â Alomar said. âThis might take a little time.â
On Wednesday, June 29, at 2:30 p.m. ET, Karl Alomar will join me in a Twitter Space to share more strategic advice for fundraising during a downturn. To get a reminder, follow @techcrunch and @techcrunchplus.
Thanks very much for reading; I hope you have a great weekend.
Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch+
@yourprotagonist
8 factors to consider when fundraising during a downturn
Dear Sophie: How do we handle being fully remote when it comes to immigration?
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch
Dear Sophie,
Our fully remote startup is looking to fill several new engineering positions.
We have not gone through the immigration process with employees before, and a couple of prospective hires will require visas.
One is currently on an H-1B and living in Dallas. Another candidate is currently living in Germany and wants to work from Miami.
What should we consider before hiring these engineers? How do we handle being fully remote when it comes to immigration?
â Distributed and Determined
Dear Sophie: How do we handle being fully remote when it comes to immigration?
Growth marketing experts survey: How would you spend a $75,000 budget in summer 2022?
Image Credits: Toni Cuenca (opens in a new window) / Unsplash (opens in a new window) under a license.
As entrepreneurs began turning lessons learned in bootcamps into basic best practices, startups started giving growth marketers more respect and resources over the last decade.
Hereâs the good news: Managers canât slash your respect budget. Unfortunately, to maximize ROI, every dollar now needs to stretch further than Reed Richards in the last âDoctor Strangeâ movie.
This time, we asked four experts to tell us how theyâd manage a budget of $75,000 and which recommendations theyâd offer someone who only had $10,000 to spend:
Ellen Kim, VP of Creative, MarketerHire
Jack Hallam, growth and community lead, Ammo
Jonathan Metrick, chief growth officer, Portage Ventures
Jonathan Martinez, founder, JMStrategy
Growth marketing experts survey: How would you spend a $75,000 budget in summer 2022?
Pitch Deck Teardown: Lunchbox’s $50 million Series B deck
Image Credits: Lunchbox (opens in a new window)
Lunchbox CEO Nabeel Alamgir co-founded the company with Andrew Boryk and Hadi Rashid to give restaurants a way to create and manage online delivery and takeout without paying high fees to delivery platforms.
Since then, itâs expanded to create tools for ghost kitchens and restaurant chains, creating a comprehensive digital stack for food service.
In February 2022, the team raised a $50 million Series B, and we have its unabridged, 15-slide deck, which includes a case study, two cogent problem slides and several data points that helped investors imagine its path to an exit.
Pitch Deck Teardown: Lunchbox’s $50 million Series B deck
VCs flock to TikTok to reach the next generation of founders and investors
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch
Investors are turning to social media as they widen the top of their talent funnel, reports Dominic-Madori Davis.
On TikTok, founders and VCs are engaging directly with a global audience, and itâs leading to acquisitions, funding rounds and the democratization of information thatâs historically been held by insiders.
âThese are really smart, capable young people who will do great things in the future,â said Craft Ventures Partner Arra Malekzadeh.
âI want to capture their interest and attention early in their lives, so when they do decide to become entrepreneurs or investors, Iâll be someone they know to come to.â
VCs flock to TikTok to reach the next generation of founders and investors
As markets go down, government tech spending stays steady: How can investors tap in?
Image Credits: artpipi (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Federal spending on technology is expected to hold steady even as a recession looms, and investors and startups should tap this opportunity, write Josh Mendelsohn and Mike Ference, co-founders of Hangar.
âThe current government spending, much of which will only begin moving in the states as they complete their legislative sessions this summer, means that companies have a once-in-a-decade (or more) chance to enter a funded marketplace looking for new ideas.â
Since the infrastructure spending bill included $110 billion for more than 4,300 projects, âfor investors, itâs an incredible opportunity to back the next wave of innovation.â
As markets go down, government tech spending stays steady: How can investors tap in?
Publish Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2022 18:00:34 +0000
TC Sessions: Climate, in partnership with the Extreme Tech Challenge 2022 Global Finals, is our first event dedicated to the climate crisis. And our agenda is complete!Â
Leading scientists, entrepreneurs, VCs and more will gather in person on June 14 at UC Berkeley (and online on June 16) to examine the role of tech and startups in mitigating and adapting to the existential threat you know and dread. I know this reporter will be there! How about you? Join me at the show â but hurry. Buy your pass today and save $100. Prices go up at the door.
On stage, youâll hear from influential leaders, including former EPA administrator Carol Browner, Impossible Foods founder Pat Brown, Berkeley Labâs director of Climate & Ecosystem Sciences, William Collins, Lime CEO Wayne Ting and â Bill Gates. Off stage, youâll have the chance to meet many of the founders, scientists and engineers that are building the next generation of climate startups.
Hereâs the full agenda outlined below. Study it, plan your day and get ready to explore the latest in climate tech.
June 14
Opening Remarks
with Carol T. Christ (UC Berkeley)
The Climate Crisis Is Real â The Solutions Should Be, Too
with William Collins (UC Berkeley) and Kari C. Nadeau (Stanford University)
Letâs talk hot air. This level-setting panel will explore climate tech hype, hope and reality, as the sector scours the Earth for solutions and the powers that be (politicians) stubbornly cling to the outdated, fossil-fueled tech that got us in this mess in the first place.
Scaling Deep Tech Startups in Climate with SOSV’s HAX Program [Roundtable, Table 1]
with Essam Elsahwi (Pulsenics), Beth Esponnette (Unspun) and Susan Schofer (SOSV / HAX)
Discussion of some of the challenges / hurdles and approaches to overcome scaling and early commercialization of diverse climate tech companies.
Climate Investing Insights with Alumni Ventures [Roundtable, Table 2]
with Matt Caspari (Strawberry Creek Ventures / Alumni Ventures)
Intimate discussion on investing in climate. Topics: Lessons from Climate 1.0; Current trends; Macro financial impact; Zones of opportunity.
Ground Floor Green: Early-Stage Climate VC
with Christian Garcia (Breakthrough Energy Ventures), Kiersten Stead (DCVC) and Pae Wu (SOSV)
Climate tech is a hot area for investment once again, but the money going in this time around is a lot smarter on the subject than it has been in the past. Balancing hope and hype is still a major challenge, however, especially at the earliest stages, and weâll dive into how the best and the brightest on the investment side are picking their winners.
Extreme Tech Challenge Global Finals Opening Remarks
with Young Sohn (Extreme Tech Challenge)
Sponsored by Extreme Tech Challenge
Extreme Tech Challenge co-founder Young Sohn introduces the Extreme Tech Challenge 2022 Global Finals. Sohn will share the mission of the organization and how the fifth wave of technology evolution we are in now represents a massive opportunity for founders and investors.Â
Extreme Tech Challenge 2022 Global Finals: Pitch Session No. 1
with Victoria Slivkoff, Young Sohn and Bill Tai (Extreme Tech Challenge)
Sponsored by Extreme Tech Challenge
Extreme Tech Challenge (XTC) Category and Special Award Winners will pitch their innovative startups with the potential to radically improve the world.
How to Solve the No. 1 Contributor to Climate Change — Food Waste with Full Harvest [Roundtable, Table 1]
with Christine Moseley (Full Harvest)
Every year, one-third of all edible produce is wasted on farms in the U.S. simply because of cosmetic or surplus reasons, contributing to food waste as the No. 1 contributor to climate change globally. Join Christine Moseley as she discusses how to solve the massive food waste problem at the farm level with technology and innovation.
Planting the Pre-Seeds: Investing Early In Climate Tech with Obvious Ventures [Roundtable, Table 2]
with Andrew Beebe (Obvious Ventures)
We have seen a surge in investors and entrepreneurs building companies that address the climate crisis. The solutions, however, are far-reaching: cold fusion, electrified transportation, carbon-free cement and emissions accounting software. How are top investors in the space defining climate tech? What are they looking for in entrepreneurs and ideas at the earliest stages? What is their decision-making process? What trends are they seeing in this space?
Bill Gates on How to Deploy Billions in Clean Tech
with Bill Gates (Breakthrough Energy)
Earlier this year, Breakthrough Energy revealed an intention to deploy as much as $15 billion in search of innovation solutions to minimize and reverse our combined carbon output across the global economy. Breakthrough Energy was founded by Bill Gates in 2015 to work through public-private partnerships with the goal of achieving net-zero global emissions. Weâll hear from Gates about what he thinks are the top priorities in climate technology investment.
Powering the Future Through Transformative Tech
with Jamey Butcher (Chemonics International), Philipp Gruener (Decisive Capital Management SA), Victoria Slivkoff (Extreme Tech Challenge) and Bill Tai (Extreme Tech Challenge)
Sponsored by Extreme Tech Challenge
This panel jumps into the breakthrough tech innovations that are transforming industries to build a radically better world. How can business, government, philanthropy and the startup community come together to create a better tomorrow? Hear from these seasoned investors and industry veterans about how technology can not only shape the future, but also where the biggest opportunities lie.
Accelerating Climate Solutions from Discovery to Deployment with UC Berkeley [Roundtable, Table 3]
with Kathy Yelick (UC Berkeley)
What role should universities play in developing and transferring innovative and equitable solutions to the climate crisis?
Building Trust with Forward-looking Reforestation Carbon Offsets with DroneSeed [Roundtable, Table 2]
with Cassie Meigs (DroneSeed)
With overall demand for carbon offsets increasing and buyers getting more sophisticated, high-quality removal offsets with tangible, verifiable benefits for the climate and local ecosystems are in short supply. At the same time, wildfires are getting bigger, hotter and more frequent, leaving many forested lands struggling to recover naturally. A new approach to forestry-based offsets that focuses on planting trees and the CO2 they will capture as they grow offers a solution to both challenges. Learn about ex-ante (forward-looking) forestry-based carbon offsets, why they represent new, promising approaches to post-fire forest recovery, and how they provide a better supply of high-quality carbon removal offsets in the marketplace.
CAPEX CAPEX CAPEX with SOSV’s IndieBio [Roundtable, Table 1]
with Alex Kopelyan (IndieBio & SOSV), Jared Moore (Solid Ox Motors), Parikshit Sharma (SOSV’s IndieBio) and Michelle Zhu (Huue)
Will burdensome balance sheets and long pay-back cycles of infrastructure keep the cleantech industry behind?
Networking Break
Grab a bite at a nearby eatery on campus or on Telegraph Ave. Lunch is not served at the conference.
Kitchen Consequential
with Pat Brown (Impossible Foods)
Patrick Brown founded Impossible Foods in 2011 with the goal of offering customers an ethical and environmentally responsible alternative to meat. An innovative approach to developing its product has propelled the company into restaurants and homes across the world. Brown, who recently transitioned from CEO to chief innovation officer, will discuss the present â and future â of fake meat.
Why the Next Big Entrepreneur Must Come from Climate Tech with Fifth Wall [Roundtable, Table 2]
with Peter Gajdos (Fifth Wall)
We have arrived at a time where climate change is finally being acknowledged as a true climate crisis. From historic fires in Europe and Australia to record-breaking hurricanes to the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, nearly every region in the world has been heavily affected. As a result, it is now a financial and moral imperative to make climate technology a main priority of humanity, and for this reason, we need to encourage and support young entrepreneurs developing these technologies. We need the brightest scientists, entrepreneurs and lawyers and financiers involved to make a significant difference to the future.
The Future of Green Buildings — Flexible, Smart, Carbon-Free with ProspectSV [Roundtable, Table 1]
with Doug Davenport (ProspectSV)
Commercial real estate is evolving quickly, from the rise of vehicle charging and renewable energy, to a new focus on indoor environments. Letâs have a talk about the opportunities coming to build and manage buildings that are adaptive to new demands, responsive to needs, cost-effective and sustainable. Weâll also discuss the big frontier — building portfolios ripe for new solutions and services.
The Road to Zero-Emissions
with Carol Browner (former EPA Administrator) and Wayne Ting (Lime)
In spite of increasingly strict regulations in some states and the rise of electric bikes, scooters, mopeds, buses and cars, the vast majority of vehicles on roads today have tailpipe emissions. Lime CEO Wayne Ting and Carol Browner, former director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy and administrator of the EPA, will talk about where the U.S. is on the road to zero-emissions. The pair will dig into the challenges that remain and the role that innovation, policy and investment can play in greening up transportation.
Climatech — How to Make it Different this Time with Khosla Ventures [Roundtable, Table 1]
with Rajesh Swaminathan (Khosla Ventures)
What can startups learn from the successes and failures of Cleantech 1.0? How do we ensure a much more successful outcome this time?
Building a Food System for the Next 1,000 Years with Iron Ox [Roundtable, Table 2]
with Brandon Alexander (Iron Ox)
Join Brandon Alexander, CEO and co-founder of Iron Ox, to discuss how his team is revolutionizing the future of farming using AI and robotics to make the next generation of our global food system more sustainable, scalable and delicious.
Our Reliance on Docile Fuels
with Carlos Araque (Quaise), Caroline Cochran (Oklo) and Suleman Khan (Swell)
The world is going electric, but the energy has to come from somewhere. As we are reducing our reliance on oil, coal and natural gas, this panel takes a look at what else weâve got going for us to keep our cars rolling, our laundry spinning and our factories doing whatever factories do.
Extreme Tech Challenge 2022 Global Finals: Pitch Session No. 2 & Winner Announcement
with Victoria Slivkoff, Young Sohn and Bill Tai (Extreme Tech Challenge)
Extreme Tech Challenge (XTC) Category and Special Award Winners to pitch their innovative startups with the potential to radically improve the world.
Sponsored by Extreme Tech Challenge
How Corporations Can Be Better Citizens
with Amy Burr (JetBlue Ventures), Kentaro Kawamori (Persefoni) and Mark Kroese (Microsoft)
As corporations become more and more powerful, corporate social responsibility (CSR) encompasses a breadth of programs on how they can take a leadership role in society. On this panel, we discuss how corporations can flex their muscles for good across financial, economic, societal and environmental issues.
AI in Farming: The Key to Sustainable Agriculture with Farmwise [Roundtable, Table 1]
with Sebastien Boyer (FarmWise)
There is a lot AI can do to help farmers reduce their environmental impact. Weâll dive into climate-smart farming strategies and applications of AI in farming today and tomorrow.
Reducing your Cloud Computing Climate Impact
with Fred Plais (Platform.sh)
Sponsored by Platform.sh
Making the choice to deploy to the cloud is clearly the better choice for the climate, but you can further reduce your emissions by taking a couple of key steps. You are invited to attend this session to learn more about how the tech community is helping to mitigate climate change and a simple strategy to reduce your carbon footprint in the cloud.
Wasting Away
with Matanya Horowitz (AmpRobotics), Megan OâConnor (Nth Cycle) and Miranda Wang (Novoloop)
Recycling has been an environmental buzzword for decades, but the reality of reusing waste products hasnât always lived up to its potential. A trio of startups on the cutting edge of the industry will discuss recent breakthroughs and what the future looks like for recycling, from sorting robots to ocean plastics and batteries.
Extreme Tech Challenge 2022 Highlight Video
Sponsored by Extreme Tech Challenge
June 16 (online only)
Fireside Chat with Secretary Jennifer Granholm (U.S. Department of Energy)
TechCrunch Climate Desk Analysis
Hang with us at the TC Climate Desk to catch up on what you may have missed from across the show, including fresh analysis and clips from the in-person talks.
TechCrunch Climate Pitch-off
Join us to see three companies pitching at TC Sessions: Climate. Hailing from around the United States and the globe, founders will pitch for four minutes, followed by an intense Q&A with our expert panel of judges. Founders will learn some key tips to incorporate into your own pitches.
Speed Networking
Startup Pitch Feedback Session 1
All exhibiting startups at TC Sessions: Climate are invited to present a fast pitch and hear feedback from a TC staff member.
Startup Pitch Feedback Session 2
All exhibiting startups at TC Sessions: Climate are invited to present a fast pitch and hear feedback from a TC staff member.
TC Sessions: Climate 2022 takes place in person on June 14 in Berkeley, California (with an online day June 16). Buy your pass today and avoid the price hike at the door. Weâll be there to greet you!
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Publish Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2022 17:50:27 +0000
At its annual Geeked Week event, Netflix announced a slew of new titles coming to its gaming service this year. A few of the new games are tied to some of Netflix’s most popular TV shows, including “The Queen’s Gambit,” “Shadow and Bone,” and “Too Hot To Handle.” The streaming service currently has 22 games available and plans to have 50 titles by the end of this year, some of which it announced today.
Neftlix’s upcoming The Queen’s Gambit: Chess game will let players enter Beth Harmon’s world and take chess lessons, play matches and compete against friends. The company says the game pays homage to its hit TV show. The game was developed by United Kingdom-based Ripstone and will launch sometime in 2022.
Image Credits: Netflix
The upcoming Shadow and Bone: Destinies title is a single player role-playing game based on the Netflix fantasy-drama series. Users will be able to play their favorite characters and travel across the world of the Grishaverse in a narrative adventure to fulfill their destinies. Netflix says that players will have to make decisions that will determine the course of their journey during the game. The title was developed by Germany-based Chimera Entertainment and will launch soon.
The company’s upcoming Too Hot To Handle game is based on the streaming service’s popular reality series of the same name. The game will see players meet and mingle with others who are all vying for their affection. The title was developed by Croatia-based Nanobit and is expected to launch soon.
Image Credits: Netflix
The streaming service is also going add a new La Casa De Papel game based on the popular Spanish heist crime TV show. Netflix says the game will see players pulled into a heist to rob a shady billionaire’s casino in Monaco. The game was developed by Colombian developer Killasoft and will be launching soon.
The company is also launching a vertical climber game called Poinpy where players will bounce upward and feed the blue beast that is behind them. They higher you go, the more challenging areas you’ll encounter. The game was developed by Japan-based Team Poinpy and Ojiro Fumoto. The title was published by Devolver Digital and is launching today.
Netflix also announced a new vertical scrolling game called Lucky Luna where players will venture into the depths of mythical temples and dungeons. Each level introduces new features that open up different ways to explore the land around you. The game, which is expected to launch sometime this year, was developed by Canadian developer Snowman.
The company also announced an upcoming game called Desta: The Memories Between. The game will see players overcome broken relationships and a tragic family event through a ball game. The title was developed by United Kingdom-based Ustwo Games and is launching sometime in 2022.
Image Credits: Netflix
Netflix’s upcoming Terra Nil title is a strategy city-building game with an emphasis on the climate crisis. The game is about ecosystem reconstruction and turning a barren wasteland into an ecological paradise. The title was developed by South Africa-based Free Lives and published by Devolver Digital. The game is launching sometime in 2022.
Another game coming to the service is called Reigns: Three Kingdom, which was inspired by the Chinese epic, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Players will be thrown into the final years of the Han dynasty. The game was developed by United Kingdom-based Nerial Limited and published by United States-based Devolver Digital. The game is launching sometime this year.
Image Credits: Netflix
Another game coming to the service sometime this year is called Wild Things: Animal Adventures where players will rescue cute animals, explore an immersive world and build their dream habitat in the match-three adventure game. The title was developed by United States-based Jam City.
The company also announced a new game called Raji: An Ancient Epic where a young girl has been chosen to stand against the demonic invasion of the human realm. The game was developed by India-based Nodding Heads and is going to roll out sometime this year.
Image Credits: Netflix
Lastly, Netflix is adding a game called Spiritfarer where you play a ferry master to the deceased. You need to build a boat to explore the world and then befriend and care for spirits before releasing them into the afterlife. The game was developed by Canada-based Thunder Lotus Games and is launching sometime this year.
These upcoming games will join the 22 titles currently available in Netflix’s gaming catalog, including Stranger Things 3: The Game, Stranger Things: 1984, Card Blast, Shooting Hoops, Asphalt Xtreme, Krispee Street, Moonlighter, Exploding Kittens: The Game, Knittens and more.
To access the titles on Android, you need to tap on the new Games tab in the Netflix app for Android where the games are listed. After selecting a title, users are directed to the Google Play Store to install the games, as you would any other app. Once the games are downloaded, they are available to play at any time by tapping them within the Netflix app or on the home screen of an Android device. For iOS, Netflix uses a similar system where users are directed to Appleâs App Store for the downloads. The games will also require users to authenticate with their Netflix membership information in order to begin playing.
Netflix launched its gaming service in November 2021 and has been adding new games to its catalog every month. Currently, the titles are free to play and donât include any in-app purchases. The company sees games as a means of growing and maintaining its existing subscriber base.
Netflix games are coming to all members on Android, starting this week
Publish Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2022 17:36:47 +0000
Since our last column, another smattering of tech startups has laid off employees. We get it. Layoffs happen. But as we conduct yet another week of analysis into a depressing time in tech, weâre thinking about how these difficult conversations could be a bit less awful if we learned to prioritize care for workers over increasing profit margins.
We know that the startup ecosystem is volatile, but severance pay and extended healthcare benefits give employees much more peace of mind as they search for their next opportunity. âWhere do you expect us to find this money?â you might ask. Thatâs a good point, but if your startup has ever thrown a swanky party with expensive alcohol that you didnât really need, maybe start there. Also, rescinding offers is bad, conducting layoffs via email is like sending a breakup text, and lest we forget the time when Buzzfeed acquired HuffPost, then immediately laid off 47 writers by inviting them to a Zoom meeting with the password âspr!ngisH3r3.â
Some companies like Coinbase and Vtex have offered employees who were laid off (or rescinded) the option to list themselves in a public talent hub to help them get more job opportunities. This is a nice gesture, but only time will tell how effective these tactics are â is anyone really scrolling through a list of 326 rescinded Coinbase candidates? For their sake, hopefully, yes.
Otherwise, weâre still observing the same trends weâve noted over the last few weeks â edtech companies like Eruditis that thrived during lockdown are becoming less active as remote learning eases, leading to job cuts. ID.me, the identity verification service, overhired to meet pandemic demand, then hit a wall. Clubhouse, once the buzziest new social app, is also fading out from relevance, in part perhaps due to the return of in-person events, but also, established social networks like Twitter have ripped off the live audio concept and deployed it more effectively.
One new trend, if we can call it that, is that some of the workforce reductions also come with a chunk of staff leaving voluntarily as companies pivot strategy and change their mind.
Without further ado, here are the startups leveraging layoffs this week:
Superhuman, a buzzy e-mail startup that has received over $100 million in venture funding, laid off 22% of staff last Friday, CEO and co-founder Rahul Vohra wrote on Twitter. âAs we head into a downturn that could last years, we made this difficult choice so that we can deliver on our vision sustainably,â he wrote. The workforce reduction impacted 23 people, who Vohra says will be provided with severance, mental health support, health insurance throughout the year and job search help. TechCrunch reached out to Vohra for comment on how the support will look and what roles were impacted and has yet to hear back.
Clubhouse laid off a portion of staff as part of a restructuring and ârethinking of the audio appâs strategy,â reports Bloomberg. The company told the publication that some roles were eliminated, and some people left to pursue new opportunities. One person who fits the latter bill is Aarthi Ramamurthy, who led international product efforts for Clubhouse for over a year before leaving last week. TechCrunch reached out to Clubhouse for comment on how many people were impacted and what roles will be focused on going forward. Clubhouse responded with the following statement: âA few individuals have decided to pursue new opportunities and a handful of roles were eliminated as part of streamlining our team. We are continuing to recruit for roles in engineering, product and design.â When asked for further details, a spokesperson said that the statement is all the company has to share at this time.
Eruditis, an edtech unicorn, has laid off 40 people and had 40 people resign voluntarily, reports Inc42. The publication says that people on the talent acquisition, or hiring, team were impacted as Eruditis scales back its hiring plans, from bringing on 1,300 people over the past 12 months to only wanting 150 more people, at most, this year. Like many other startups conducting layoffs, Eruditis significantly increased its hiring pace over the last two years, when online learning became more of a priority in the pandemic. Now, a representative from the company tells TechCrunch:
Given the recent economic and geopolitical uncertainty, we are realigning our operating model as part of our commitment to growing the organization sustainably and responsibly, and making decisions that focus firmly on profitability. We have restructured, including combining consumer and enterprise marketing functions under global leadership and right-sized in select areas.
A bike- and scooter-sharing startup, Bird plans to lay off 23%, our own Rebecca Bellan reports. With about 600 employees, that means around 138 people will lose their jobs across organizations and regions. This move was unfortunately expected. In May, the company announced financials from Q1 2022, which showed a continued decrease in revenue every quarter since going public via SPAC in Q3 2021 â though the company started trading at about $10 a share, shares are now worth just 57 cents today. At the start of the pandemic, Bird laid off 30% of its workforce, or about 406 out of 1,387 employees. Now, the companyâs total workforce will be just a third of the size it was in the beginning of 2020.
The personalized, direct-to-consumer clothing retailer Stitch Fix cut 15%, or 330, of its salaried workers. After going public in 2017, the styling service experienced a sharp decline in a pre-pandemic 2020, which has only gotten worse. Shares of the company traded at about $68 a year ago, but now, they fall below $8. The company tried cutting costs in summer 2020 by laying off 18% of its stylists, then brought in a new CEO Elizabeth Spaulding, whose inflexible policies around work schedules led another third of stylists to depart the company.
The identity verification service ID.me laid off some corporate employees after too-fast growth since the pandemic. Insider reported this week that after hiring 1,500 new workers to meet the demands of its high-profile clients like the IRS, the company suffered lapses in security, sometimes allegedly sharing sensitive information like social security numbers via Slack.
Hospitality unicorn Sonder laid off about 250 employees: Twenty-one percent of its corporate employees and 7% of front-line staff. A competitor to Airbnb (which is doing relatively well), Sonder rents out serviced apartments that are like boutique hotels. The company says its layoffs are part of a general restructuring and that management remains optimistic about the future of the travel industry. Yet according to an SEC filing from this week, the company aims to cut costs by $85 million annually to become cash-flow positive by 2023.
Yet another multibillion unicorn conducting layoffs, security startup OneTrust is reducing its headcount by 25%, affecting 950 employees. âI know this news is surprising, especially as you heard last month that the business is on track with record quarters and increasing customer demand,â CEO Kabir Barday wrote in a note to employees, published on the company blog. âHowever, capital markets sentiment shifted to a more balanced approach between growth and profitability, and at this time, we have decided the best course of action is to reorganize.â OneTrust is providing severance packages, extension of medical coverage, equity and an opt-in talent network.
Convoy will lay off 7% of its 1,300-person staff, GeekWire reports. Less than two months ago, the Seattle-based trucking marketplace raised a $260 million Series E round, bringing its valuation to $3.8 billion. But now, a company spokesperson says, Convoy is making this decision to best position itself to wade through a market downturn.
Softbank-backed creator economy startup Jellysmack laid off 8% of employees this week, shutting down commercial operations in Italy, Germany and the Netherlands. In light of the challenging market, the company plans to focus on projects that bring the most immediate value to creator partners. Like its competitors, Jellysmack buys limited-time licensing to creatorsâ back catalogs, giving them upfront cash in exchange for their slower (yet potentially larger) income stream.
Let’s hope for a shorter list next week.
This is not (just) another roundup of tech layoffs
Tech layoffs top 15K in a brutal May
Publish Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2022 17:04:37 +0000
Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today that Horizon Home will roll out as part of a new update to the Quest 2 headset.
Despite Meta’s insistence that virtual reality is the future of social networking, the Quest 2 hasn’t supported a straight-forward way to socialize so far. You could join a party with friends and galavant across Horizon Worlds, its social platform, or you could play a game together, but it hasn’t been very simple to just ⌠hang out. Now, as promised this past fall, the Horizon Home feature will let friends come visit you in your virtual home.
Image Credits: Meta
Your home is where you find yourself when you first put on your headset, which you can choose from pre-made options like a space station, a Japanese inn or a patio overlooking a mountainous sunset (say what you want about Meta, but these environments are actually impressive). With a bit of unlicensed finagling, you can even upload your own environments — one user designed the home from “The Simpsons.” In the future, Meta plans to roll out functionality for creating your own environments without using third-party apps.
Zuckerberg demonstrated the new feature in a video with free climber Alex Honnold. They met in Zuckerberg’s home environment (which is the same as mine — what does that say about me?), then jumped into a 360-degree video that Honnold uploaded while free climbing 1,000 feet up on a cliff in the Dolomites.
“Watching Alex climb with Alex’s avatar in VR was pretty meta,” Zuckerberg commented on his own Facebook post.
Image Credits: Meta
As Meta tries to build a new way of socializing online, its VR apps have come under fire for not effectively mitigating harassment, which is unfortunately inherent in any digital forum but is especially prevalent when placed in an immersive space that lacks the same real-world consequences. Despite its new name, Meta isn’t the first company to dabble in the metaverse — in other immersive games like Second Life and Roblox, users have experienced sexual harassment and assault so it’s important that Meta bakes in comprehensive safety features from the get-go. But historically, the company has prioritized shipping products over ensuring user safety.
TechCrunch asked Meta what safety features are built into Horizon Home as it launches on the Quest.
âParty leaders can unilaterally remove guests from both the Party and Meta Horizon Home,” a Meta spokesperson said. Any user can use the system-level block option or submit a report. Also, like other Horizon apps, guests can exit a social situation in one click to immediately disconnect from voice chat and the general environment.
“Additionally, Meta Horizon Home utilizes hotspot locomotion versus free locomotion to reduce the likelihood of usersâ VR avatars colliding with one another,” the spokesperson added.
Meta to allow Horizon Worlds users to turn their avatar’s personal safety boundary off
Publish Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2022 16:50:17 +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 4: The battle for BNPL buyers and other TC 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 Mary Ann Azevedo about two fintech giants, Affirm and Stripe, partnering up and what that means for competitors and Brian Heater comes on to preview next weekâs Apple Worldwide Developer Conference. And as always, youâll get a rundown of the weekâs top news on TechCrunch.
Articles from the episode:
Affirm teams up with Stripe as the BNPL wars intensify
What to expect from Appleâs WWDC 2022 keynote
Other news from the week:
Sheryl Sandberg will step down as Meta COO
Former OpenSea exec arrested and charged with insider trading of NFTs
a16z-backed Loom lays off 14% of staff, one year after becoming a unicorn
SWVL plans to lay off 32% of its team two months after going public
Tech layoffs top 15K in a brutal May
Chain Reaction
Episode 9: a16z VC on crypto criticism and their $4.5 billion bet (with Sriram Krishnan)
Welcome back, this week Lucas and Anita discuss investor drama facing blockchain startups during the market crash and the major piece of crypto legislation that just went live on the U.S. Senate floor. In their interview this week, Anita and Lucas chat with Sriram Krishnan. Krishnan is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), which he joined after a trifecta of senior roles at Twitter, Facebook and Snap. Krishnan recently joined the crypto team at a16z, which recently debuted a new $4.5 billion crypto mega fund. We chatted about crypto controversy and opportunities in web3 social with Krishnan. Our interview was edited for length and clarity.
Subscribe to the Chain Reaction newsletter to dive deeper:Â https://techcrunch.com/newsletters
Helpful links:
https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/08/proposed-bipartisan-us-crypto-bill-could-be-sigh-of-relief-for-the-industry/
https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/25/amid-crypto-downturn-a16z-debuts-4-5-billion-web3-mega-fund/
https://twitter.com/levie/status/1531498735137476608
The TechCrunch Live Podcast
Episode 7: Building founder/investor relationships and using grants to fund startups
Funding radical startups addressing climate change with Natel Energy and Breakthrough Energy Ventures
Libby Wayman, partner at Breakthrough Energy Ventures (Bill Gate’s climate investment firm), and Gia Schneider co-founder and CEO of Natel Energy join TechCrunch’s Matt Burns on this episode of TechCrunch Live. Gia Schneider brought along a pitch deck that won over investors including Breakthrough Energy Ventures. As she explains during the episode, the company was far from an overnight success.
The project started in 2005 and the company was founded in 2009. Natel Energy looked to government grants in the early days as way to fund the development without dilated the company’s cap table. Libby Wayman explained in detail how startups can apply for and use grants. This is a process she recommends for company’s like Natel Energy.
Eventually, as Natel Energy developed its technology and business, the company sought venture capital and won over Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Hear how Natel Energy fits within Breakthrough’s investment thesis and what the firm looks for when investing in companies.
TechCrunch Live records weekly on Wednesdays at 12:00 p.m. PDT.
Found
Episode 61: Vivian Wang, Landed
Landed founder and CEO Vivian Wang is on a mission to connect blue-collar workers with high-quality job opportunities. Landed handles the hiring process from recruiting to vetting to setting up interviews and facilitating a feedback loop for the general managers to make their workplaces more desirable. Theyâre also improving employees’ financial well-being by helping them upscale once theyâve landed the job. In the episode, Vivian talks about how COVID showed us all how essential blue-collar workers are and made apparent how underserved those workers are and how she plans to improve the experience in these jobs by helping them access pay quicker, build credit and decrease turnover.
Take our listener survey and let us know a bit about yourself and what you think of FOUND.
Connect with us:
On Twitter
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Via email: found@techcrunch.com
Call us and leave a voicemail at (510) 936-1618
Equity
Episode 526: A Twitter Bot Wrote This
The show is largely off this week, which means that we don’t have our usual deluge of new startup news covered for you. But, we didn’t want to leave you with nothing at all on this lovely Friday, so we went to the time machine to see what we could find.
The episode in the feed today is the same episode we put out nearly exactly one year ago today (June 11, 2021) to give some flavor and context to what was going on a now a year past. The idea was that we’ve spent so much time talking about how 2022 is shaping up to be different than 2021, so why not go back and show the distinction?
https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/11/the-huge-tam-of-fake-breaded-chicken-bits/
We hope you like our fun little experiment. The show returns to regular form Monday.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts
Episode 525: The early signs of startup layoffs to come
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. As the team takes a break this week, we decided to replay an old yet prescient episode from earlier this week. In February, Natasha and Alex asked: What can startups learn from the rise, and now struggles, of Hopin? For companies that grew like weeds, whatâs next?
Hopin was one of the first tech companies to conduct layoffs in 2022; and as we said then, while it is perhaps a very visible canary, it is hardly the only startup that rode COVID-19âs economic disruptions to new heights. Tell us how the episode aged, and if you’re on team reckoning or team recorrection?
The market is changing. And while Hopin grew rapidly in 2021, a host of companies that thrived during COVID-19 are now resetting both internal, and external expectations. New year, new market.
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!