Daily Crunch: Meta fires executive after ‘predator catchers’ interview video goes viral

Alex Wilhelm@alex / 6:15 PM EST•February 18, 2022

Every day at 3 p.m., you'll get a rundown of the biggest and most important stories from TechCrunch. You can subscribe here.

On Friday, February 18, 2022, Daily Crunch will be here! There is a note that most of TechCrunch is off on Monday for a U.S. holiday. We are a global team, so we will not be quiet next week. That is a promise.

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Meta’s fires community dev manager following sting: Meta, the parent company of Facebook and other social properties, has parted ways with a “manager of global community development,” we report. The company tried to talk us out of the story, but the news matters in the context of other issues at the company that we outline in the post. That this news came amid a PR refresh for the company is also worth recalling.
• Grow quickly or die even faster: Tracking this particular earnings cycle has been watching a series of heads set rolling. Tech companies big and small have found themselves on the wrong end of investor discontent, thanks mostly to slower-than-anticipated growth projections. For startups, the lessons are pretty stark and clear: You have to grow like hell or watch your valuation implode.
• When the founder becomes the story: Ah, Bolt. We just can’t stop talking about you, thanks to the fact that your former CEO keeps annoying the larger technology scene on the socials. This time Ryan Breslow, now merely the Bolt’s executive chairman, went on a tirade about offering loans to help employees exercise their options. At issue are the facts that such action is not new and has led to some financial fiascos in the past.

Startups/VC

• Smart homes aren’t for normies: Have you wanted to change up your living situation so that it’s more reactive, colorful and maybe even data-driven? Do you want, in other words, a smarter home? Well, maybe you really don’t. TechCrunch columnist Owen Williams writes about his journey with the matter after buying a home. My takeaway is that if Owen is struggling, I’d be flat doomed with trying to get the various tools to play nice with one another.
• Soon your package may come in a reusable shipping wrapper: Like you, I buy too much stuff online, which means that I create more waste and recyclables than I really want to admit. Returnity is betting that a “sturdier packaging bag that can be used again and again” will help ameliorate the situation and just raised capital for its efforts.
• Portuguese VC fund boosts its capital pool: Venture capital firm Shilling has added $23 million to its “Founders Fund” after raising last year. This is good news for startups in the European country, and also good news for those of us who can come up with more than one joke about a venture capital fund named after what some participants in the asset class love to do on Twitter.
• Household-savings-as-a-service? That’s what U.K.-based startup Nous wants to build. The gist is that the company will collect data from its customers and help them “progressively automate the management of essential service switching and/or contact renegotiating.” I never negotiate as I am a huge weenie. But if I had a service to help, well, I too would love to save more money. Nous just raised $9 million.
• What happens when a super app isn’t very super? That’s the question that our own Manish Singh asked today. The super app in question? Tata Group’s TataNeu, which has been in testing for some time and apparently needs more polish before it is ready for well, super-wide adoption.

Do you want to work for Equity?

How to grow your organic traffic with earned media

It's unfair to expect entrepreneurs to do any better than they already are.

Many startup companies pay a PR agency a monthly retainer of $10,000 or more, but their odds of getting a story placed about their company aren't much better than spinning a roulette wheel.

According to the head of marketing at Stacker Studio, a startup can increase organic traffic and improve search engine rankings by developing newsworthy content that gets picked up and shared by media outlets.

She explains how to create earned media that can boost ranking, referring, clicks, and other key metrics.

Techcrunch+ helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.

How to grow your organic traffic with earned media

Big Tech Inc.

• The FBI is taking on ransomware: Apparently the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has deemed malicious, data-hostage-taking hacks a big enough issue as to warrant its own “unit dedicated to tracking cryptocurrency crimes and ransomware profits.” Good, if seemingly a little late given how frequent such attacks have become in recent years.
• GM + Walmart = more self-driving deliveries? U.S. auto giant GM and retail giant Walmart are a team in Arizona to use self-driving tech from the former to help deliver stuff from the latter. The pilot is expanding, we report.
• The self-driving talent battle is not yet over: Yes, we’re past the days in which self-driving-focused engineers were worth $8 billion apiece. But that doesn’t mean that deals in the space are not still coming to fruition. Another could be ‘round the corner, it turns out, with Volkswagen looking to buy Huawei’s “nascent autonomous driving unit.”

TechCrunch Experts

SEAN GLADWELL was credited with the image.

Recruiters are being sought for the project where we ask top professionals about problems and challenges that are common in early-stage startups. You can let us know if that is you or someone you know.

Things are getting worse at Better. More executives have resigned from Better.com nearly three months after the online mortgage lender laid off 900 employees via Zoom and as the company prepares fo...Do you have recent experience recruiting talent for pre-revenue startups? If this describes you — or someone you know — please read our important announcement. Delivery has become one of the fastest growing verticals for robotics investments amid pandemic-related shutdowns. There’s been plenty of interest in the category over the years, but COVID-19 has a...The public markets may have cooled on fintechs in recent months, but for entrepreneurs who are still considering starting up, “outlook good,” says the Magic 8 Ball. LG’s innovation center — LG Nova among friends — today announced that it has selected the first 50 companies for its Mission for the Future global challenge competition. From 1,30...DeepScribe is used by more than 400 physicians and just raised $30 million to reach even more. The company’s AI-powered platform helps doctors keep better notes by automatically transcribing ...Quick pop quiz: Is it better to recycle your cardboard boxes, or use a sturdier packaging bag that can be used again and again until it meets its maker again? Returnity‘s bet is the latter, a...An off-road racing series that uses hydrogen cars is expected to debut in 2024. Extreme H will be a companion championship to Extreme E, an off-road EV motorsport that held its first race last year...Cruise plans to expand the self-driving delivery pilot it has with Walmart in Arizona, the company’s senior government affairs manager said in a recent public meeting with state legislators. ...If you’ve been shopping for a major appliance lately, you might have noticed that everything — from ovens to fridges, TVs, dishwashers and microwaves — is equipped with Wi-Fi connectivi...Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has confirmed to TechCrunch that Jeren A. Miles, who had been a manager of global community development, is no longer employed by the company after a video wen...For startups, the lesson here is that no matter how well you did in 2021, investor sentiment appears more tied to what you are projecting for this year than anything. ICON, which creates homes using 3D printing, has raised an additional $185 million in a round led by Tiger Global Management, TechCrunch has learned exclusively. The financing is said to be an exte...Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This week, Natasha and Alex and Mary Ann got together with C...The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is launching a new unit dedicated to tracking cryptocurrency crimes and ransomware profits. U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced the formation...Steve Blank’s definition of a startup is “a temporary organization in the search of a repeatable business model”. Temporary, because as soon as you have built a machine where you ...Snapchat is rolling out a new buddy system-like feature that will allow users to share with a friend their real-time location for 15 minutes or a few hours, the company announced on Friday. The new...Sirona Medical, a company developing an “operating system” for digital radiology, has acquired Nines — a company that has developed FDA-cleared analysis and triage algorithms. This acquisitio...