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Hello and welcome to the Daily Crunch on October 15, 2021! Good Friday to you and yours; I am proud of all of us for having had a more than eventful week. At the top, the discounts end in our event space in a very short time. And without further ado, let’s get to the news! – Alexis
The Top 3 TechCrunch
- Missouri governor confuses journalism with hacking: The United States is a great nation with many intelligent people and many less intelligent people. A story of the latter category found its way into our wheelhouse when a state governor decided that a reporter reporting security breaches on an official website was a malicious hack. Maybe stories like this are the reason why so many Gen Z people are on death row?
- Instacart buyers go on strike: Try to remember a time when some of the Instacart workforce were happy and neither about to strike nor on strike. It’s hard, isn’t it? This Saturday, “some Instacart buyers will go on strike to protest against the low wages of the company and the lack of communication with its workers,” reports TechCrunch. Let’s see if this particular piece of the bigger Striketober saga results in worker friendly results.
- Apple withdraws the Quran app after Chinese regulators demanded: The day after Microsoft announced it was going to pull LinkedIn’s main service out of China after failing to reconcile that country’s government with its own views, Apple appears to have complied with a state request. Chinese to remove “Quran Majeed, a popular application for reading Islamic religious text and other prayer-related information” from the Chinese application store. This is no small act, given the Chinese state’s abuse of Muslims within its borders.
Startups / VC
Let’s take our time today in the startup world, it’s Friday and all.
First of all, we have a great piece of Rebecca Bellan dig into a multitude of startups that are helping emerging middle classes around the world find their place. This list includes, and I quote, “Swvl, Treepz, Jatri, SafeBoda, Urbvan, Chalo and Buser”, among others. If you like the pace of transportation technology, this is a great read.
Then Andy Stinnes, a general partner of Cloud Apps Capital Partners, wrote an essay for the blog today explaining that while the current venture capital bull market (more here) is a general good for founders, “an inspection Further investigation reveals that these trends are much more nuanced and apply very unevenly across the funding continuum, from seed to late stage.If you’re looking to raise capital, it’s worth it.
Go ahead, ours Taylor Hatter did Yeoman’s job digging into Core, a metaverse environment she wandered into, finding the scenery both stunning and “seamless.” If you want to get a glimpse of what the future of gaming and social interaction could be like, this is for you.
And, before we move on to the rest of our startup recap, I wrote an imaginary interview with a made-up CEO about a fictitious IPO. For more background, go here.
- SoundCloud lands a partnership with Pandora, a new radio station: As Spotify grew into a music giant, SoundCloud moved closer to the underground. And he survived, which some did not expect. Today, the upstart music service announced an agreement with Pandora which could bring it a little more audience.
- The clubhouse adds a “music mode”: Sticking to a musical theme for another bar or two, Clubhouse has devised a way for musicians to better broadcast their music live on the service. So I guess Clubhouse can now also be a cafe?
- And, finally, Spot AI leaves discretion with its security camera search tool: Rich at $ 22 million and freshly stripped of its ‘stealth’ label, Spot AI is in public view today, which is fitting as its core product deals with security cameras and how they are ingested. . The company “reads” the images from the devices, making it possible to search for the video itself. Which is cool, if vaguely scary.
Bring it in-house: what to look for when hiring a general counsel
Experienced lawyers can be pulled from large firms to join a startup as general counsel for a variety of reasons, writes Tim Parilla, legal director of LinkSquares, in a guest column.
“For some it’s an attempt to find a better work-life balance (oops!), While others are eager to create and manage their own team or see it as an opportunity to work for. a mission-driven business, ”he writes.
For founders, this is an opportunity to bring in a seasoned professional who can gain in-depth knowledge of your business, rather than relying on a generic (and expensive) outside law firm.
Parilla offers detailed advice on what startup executives should look for in an in-house lawyer (as well as a few things that would indicate that a lawyer is not the right fit for your business).
(TechCrunch + is our membership program, which helps startup founders and teams get ahead. You can register here.)
Big Tech Inc.
- Researchers show that Facebook’s advertising tools can target a single user: The method depends on knowing enough about how Facebook perceives a person, but it’s still unsettling. Facebook’s Custom Audience Tool is perhaps a little too personalized for our liking.
- Sorry, reducers, people want electric sports cars: While the Porsche 911 is an iconic car, period, it is losing to an internal rival in the sales war. TechCrunch reports that the petroleum-powered 911 was overtaken by the electric Porsche Taycan in the first three quarters of 2021. I did. not expect this for a few years.
- A big update for “Animal Crossing” is coming: Nintendo news, for you “Animal Crossing” fans. The popular title has a big update on November 5th. Dubbed Happy Home Paradise, I’m sure it does what it says on the tin.
- And, to close today’s news, Global smartphone sales fell 6% last year, possibly due to the global chip shortage that is disrupting industries from automobiles to computers and amplifying tensions over Taiwanese sovereignty.
TechCrunch Experts
Image credits: SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images
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Read one of the testimonials we received below!
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Community
To rejoin Walter thompson Tuesday, Oct. 19 at 3:00 p.m. PT / 6:00 p.m. ET for a chat on Twitter Spaces as he browses what TechCrunch is looking for in guest contributions.
