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Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter for your weekend enjoyment.

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch’s China roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what they mean to people in the rest of the world. The question for the tech news cycle in China these days has become: Who is Beijing’s next target? Regulatory clampdowns are common in China’s tech industry […]

The truth is, flying cars are a reality. The aviation technology exists and early-stage regulatory review is underway in both the U.S. House and the Senate to bring eVTOLs to market.

Writing our way out of the place we’re in is tricky. The words come easily enough, each measured for its emotional weight in the stream of issues we face. It’s possible this paragraph will disappear as I find my ground. Mandates, Cuomo, Olympic mental gymnastics, where we were two weeks ago and how it relates […]

Hello friends and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.

“The growth industry is definitely maturing. Less hacks, more teams, more focus on velocity,” Ward van Gasteren, founder of Grow with Ward told us in an interview this week. “Everybody within the field is getting to know the best practices very quickly and implementing them even quicker. So then what?” Working with a growth professional […]

Starting with the assumption that 90% of startups will fail and the most successful ones take an average of six years to IPO, founders must make careful decisions about whom they invite to join the core team.

Biden’s major bipartisan infrastructure plan struck a rare chord of cooperation between Republicans and Democrats, but changes it proposes to cryptocurrency regulation are tripping up the bill. The administration intends to pay for $28 billion of its planned infrastructure spending by tightening tax compliance within the historically under-regulated arena of digital currency. That’s why cryptocurrency […]

'If you take the leap that the pandemic happened because there's just a lot of things happening in the environment, it means we have to build the future that we want.'

'What we find is the backers have a deep desire and an interest to be a part of what's happening on the journey. To feel deeply connected is part of what you get as a backer of a creative project.'

It sounds like a plan concocted by a supervillain, if that villain’s dastardly end was to provide cheap, clean power all over the world: launch a set of three-kilometer-wide solar arrays that beam the sun’s energy to the surface of the Earth. Even the price tag seems gleaned from pop fiction: one hundred million dollars. […]

With most popular online video games, there’s a huge gap between being a good player and a great one. A casual player might be able to hold their own against other casual players, only for a random pro to wander by and chew through everyone like they’re somehow playing with a different set of rules. […]

I’m not here to sell you on why you need a growth team, but I will point out that product-led businesses with a growth team see dramatic results — double the median free-to-paid conversion rate.

It’s a matter of building a loyal customer base that comes back time and again for the reliable, personalized service provided by a platform that offers and delivers exactly what consumers want.

Venture capitalists are chatting this week about a recent piece from The Information titled “The End of Venture Capital as We Know It.” As with nearly everything you read, the article in question is a bit more nuanced than its headline. Its author, Sam Lessin, makes some pretty good points. But I don’t fully agree […]

V2Food is one of many new contenders in the alternative protein space, founded in Australia but now setting its sights on Europe, Asia and beyond. It has a few key advantages over the competition, and with €45 million in new funding it may be finding its way to plates in the Eurozone soon. The company […]

Michelle Davey's pitch to Jordan Nof of Tusk Ventures about Wheel, a startup focused on providing a full suite of virtual care solutions to clinicians, was front-loaded with early metrics.

Velodyne Lidar, the sensor company that went public a year ago when it merged with special purpose acquisition company Graf Industrial Corp., reported its second quarter earnings Thursday, results that show a company spending more to find new customers for its products while grappling with an increasingly expensive internal drama. Just a few weeks ago, […]

If your work life — or your life’s work — revolves around the tech startup world, there’s no more important place to be on September 21-23 than TechCrunch Disrupt 2021. And for just a few more hours, you can snag a pass to this be-all-and-end-all tech startup conference for less than $99. In other words, […]

High-quality UX for websites and apps is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have if a company is to succeed. But scaling the impact of UX teams is not simple, and in recent years teams have turned to what’s know as DesignOps platforms to help them. Now, a new startup hopes to become a key […]

The players in the space that we can name and track are generally cash-rich and market-sentiment poor.

As startups in Africa continue to grow and raise money at a ridiculous pace, so too will their cap tables expand. Most African startups’ bulk of VC money is from foreign investors, making it imperative for African startups to incorporate abroad, especially in the U.S. The processes for incorporation are quite complicated, and even though […]

Foldables! Two, probably! Those are your headliners. Samsung tipped its hand with the event invite, which features a pair of geometrical objects that pretty clearly represent the new Galaxy Z Fold and Galaxy Z Flip. The other headliner is what we won’t be seeing at the event (Deadliner? Endliner?). The company already confirmed via corporate […]

SpaceX has achieved another major milestone in its Starship fully reusable launch system: It stacked the Starship spacecraft itself on top of a prototype of its Super Heavy booster, which itself is loaded up with a full complement of 29 Raptor rocket engines, and the Starship on top has six itself. The stacked spacecraft now […]

The Austin-based company’s technology creates an infrastructure for healthcare provider data management that puts providers at the center.

The firm’s approach combines venture capital expertise with a diverse community of over 250 limited partners and go-to-market experts who work with portfolio companies to accelerate revenue growth.

U.K.-based open banking bulk payment startup Comma has raised £4.34 million ($6 million) in a seed round of funding led by Octopus Ventures and Connect Ventures. They were joined by investors Village Global, and the founders of Wagestream, Peter Briffett and Portman Wills. The company says it enables small and micro businesses to bulk-pay bills, […]

This past decade, Nigeria has seen several companies cater to the development and growth of software engineers and tech talent in general. It’s a space many in the Nigerian ecosystem like to think is budding yet overcrowded. So when Chika Nwobi started Decagon in 2018, the perception was generally “here comes another tech talent accelerator.” […]

Indian online learning platform Vedantu is not engaging to sell the firm to edtech giant Byju’s, a top executive said on Friday. A report by Indian news outlet Entrackr said early Friday that Byju’s had offered $700 million to $800 million to acquire Bangalore-based Vedantu, which counts Accel and GGV Capital among its investors. In a […]

More than 40 African startups from a handful of countries have gone through YC over the past decade. Zambia joins that list today, and its entrant, Union54, is a worthy first entry. Union54 (54 is a nod to the number of African countries) is a fintech company founded by Perseus Mlambo and Alessandra Martini. The […]

Micromobility startup Voi has raised $45 million, funds it says will be used to research and develop technology that will improve safety, keep users from riding on sidewalks and ensure scooters are properly parked. The funding comes a month after Voi launched a pilot in Northhampton, UK with Irish startup Luna to test how computer […]

While Amsterdam garners the lion’s share of attention in the Netherlands tech ecosystem, the not-so-far-away region around Utrecht has its fair share of tech startups and investors, as is evidenced by our latest survey of locals, below. Area ecosystem wranglers such as StartupUtrecht, UtrechtInc, Holland Startup, Utrecht Community and others bring startups, scaleups, corporates, angels, […]

India’s apex court on Friday ruled in favor of Amazon to stall the sale of Future Group to Reliance Industries in a major victory for the American e-commerce giant in the key overseas market — and a blow to the nation’s richest man Mukesh Ambani. The Indian Supreme Court said the order by a Singapore […]

U.S. electric automaker Fisker expects operating expenses to reach between $490 million and $530 million this year, a slight increase in its business outlook for the year that is driven by R&D spending on prototypes for its Ocean SUV, testing and validation of advanced technology, hiring and its “accelerating” partnership with Foxconn. The company, which […]

Last summer, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Best Buy committed to “do better” when it came to supporting communities of color. As part of the retail giant’s self-proclaimed mission to better address underrepresentation and technology inequities, the company announced today that it is investing up to $10 million in Brown Venture Group. Minnesota-based […]

Hello friends and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.

Uber’s second-quarter earnings revealed greater than expected losses, in large part due to the company’s massive $250 million stimulus package launched in April to incentivize drivers back onto the app after a pandemic-induced shortage. The company reported a loss of $509 million before EBITDA. For comparison, Lyft reported a positive adjusted EBITDA in the […]

Duolingo, best known for its whimsical owl and language-learning app, is working on a new product to add to its growing suite: a math app, according to CEO Luis von Ahn. The co-founder mentioned the app during an interview last week, the same day that Duolingo officially listed in the stock market. After the interview, […]

Ward van Gasteren embraces the “growth hacker” term, despite the fact that some in the profession prefer the term “growth marketing” or simply “growth.” What’s the difference to him? The hacking part should be a distinct effort on top of ongoing marketing, he says. “Growth hacking is great to kickstart growth, test new opportunities and […]

Apple later this year will roll out new tools that will warn children and parents if the child sends or receives sexually explicit photos through the Messages app. The feature is part of a handful of new technologies Apple is introducing that aim to limit the spread of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) across Apple’s […]

Founders should definitely pursue big rounds at sky-high valuations, but it’s important that they recognize how important it is to manage who they allow into their mentorship circles.

In May, Yahoo! Answers shut down after helping the internet answer its most burning questions since 2005. But now, Quora, which began as a question-and-answer site but expanded to incorporate blogging, is making its platform more appealing to creators. Quora says it’s “on track to be cash flow positive from ads alone,” implying that the platform […]

Later this year, Apple will roll out a technology that will allow the company to detect and report known child sexual abuse material to law enforcement in a way it says will preserve user privacy. Apple told TechCrunch that the detection of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is one of several new features aimed at […]

Fleets weren’t long for this world, but Twitter’s product teams aren’t slowing down on bringing new stuff to Spaces, the company’s own take on audio rooms. Twitter introduced Spaces in a limited test last year, expanding the Clubhouse copycat feature more broadly to anyone with at least 600 followers in May. Now, Twitter is giving […]

Putting the right people in the right roles early on can be the difference between success and failure — and that starts at the top.

Walter Isaacson, the biographer who chronicled the lives of Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin and Leonardo da Vinci, is turning his attention to the life and career of Elon Musk. The Tesla CEO announced the project in a tweet Wednesday. If you’re curious about Tesla, SpaceX & my general goings on, @WalterIsaacson is writing a biography […]

In the world of robotic startups, acquisition is often as good an outcome as any. And when it comes to robotic tractor startups, you could do worse than being acquired by John Deere. The agricultural technology giant announced today that it’s set to acquire Bear Flag Robotics for $250 million. The Bay Area-based firm, which […]

Companies developing driver detection technology could get a boost from a provision tucked inside the 2,702-page $1 trillion infrastructure bill that would require automakers to build into new cars technology that can tell if drivers have had a few cold ones. The provision in the bill, which is actually a piece of bipartisan legislation called […]

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Inspector General will review the FDA’s accelerated approval pathway, the office announced Wednesday. This sweeping review comes just two months after the controversial approval of Biogen’s Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm. The review will focus on the FDA’s accelerated approval pathway — a route that allows […]

The $3.8 billion sale of Swedish automotive tech company Veoneer to Magna International hit a roadblock Thursday after chipmaker Qualcomm submitted a bid for the company for $800 million more. Qualcomm’s $4.6 billion bid, which comes in at $37 per share, has already received approval from the company’s board and would not need a stockholder […]