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On Wednesday, April 13, 2022, the Daily Crunch will be here. We are excited to be at Early Stage tomorrow, so please submit your pitch deck if you are coming. You can still get a last-minute ticket to San Francisco if you didn't get your tix yet.
On Equity today, the crew argues that VC needs a lot more than the other way around, so give that a listen as well!
Christine and Haje!
The TechCrunch Top 3
Duking it out over corporate spend management: The competition to help large enterprises be more efficient with their spending just gained another fighter. Brex, which initially focused on startups with its corporate card, is now getting into software. It’s already secured DoorDash as a customer, so the leap into the corporate spend pool was more of a cannonball than a dipping a toe. Ironically, on the same day, Mary Ann wrote about Emburse, a spend management company that started in enterprise that’s now going after Brex’s small business territory. Ding ding!
Today’s TechCrunch+ action: Alex opined about whether the SaaS selloff is over now that the public markets are leveling out, saying, “Ironically, interest rates may be the best reason to expect that most of the selloff in software stocks is behind us.” Meanwhile, Anna dove into investment in Latin America, where numbers show a slowdown, but it might just be “a correction after some overheating,” Anna reported. Don’t get out the tissues yet — with all of the seed investment still flowing into the region and some new funds focusing their sights on LatAm, there’s “lots of dry powder still to be deployed” apparently.
Former Xinjiang prisoner describes experience in Chinese detention camps: At this point, it is hard to not have heard about the Chinese detention camps that are accused of incarcerating people of certain ethnic backgrounds. Zack interviewed one individual who arrived in Washington, D.C., with his family after being granted temporary immigration status by the U.S. government. What’s the tech angle? In the camp and after his release to house arrest, Ovalbek Turdakun said Hikvision-branded cameras were “always on and watching.”
Startups and VC
EV companies have made their way to the public markets by beingquired by an already-listed company, rather than going the regular IPO route. The EV companies should have put the brakes on before jumping on the bandwagon.
TikTok was trying to shed some Russian state media propaganda from its platform, but a study shows that it is not very successful.
It is better than all the others.
Dear Sophie: I didn’t win the H-1B lottery. What are my next steps?
The image is from TechCrunch.
Thank you, dear Sophie.
I earned my master's degree in business analytic last year, and have been working for a company since then.
My employer entered me in the H-1B lottery, but I haven't been selected. I heard that my degree qualifies as a science, technology, engineering, and math field, making me eligible to continue working.
Can I stay in the US?
Astute analyst.
Techcrunch+ helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.
Dear Sophie: I didn’t win the H-1B lottery. What are my next steps?
Big Tech Inc.
Pokémon Go creator thinks it has a gem on its hands with new Peridot game: I am not a gamer, but apparently a lot of my colleagues are, based on the amount of watercooler chatter that happens when new games come out. Peridot appeals to your love of taking care of animals, but with augmented reality, you can now go treasure hunting and explore new places together.
WhatsApp approved to extend payments service to 100 million India users: That’s both a good thing and a bad thing, we report. While this does give the Meta-owned service a greenlight, regulators say it has to do a slow rollout. This is giving rival companies a chance to gain a bigger foothold in the region.
Just when the European Commission thought its Digital Services Act was good to go: European consumer organization BEUC, a collection of consumer organizations, asked the EU not to weaken key provisions aimed at trader traceability, prohibiting deceptive design, and banning the use of children’s data and sensitive data for ad targeting. Not sure why they would not want to go full-force on those, but we report that these deals are often not done with transparency.
Switch to Android app no longer just a rumor: If you are an iOS user wanting to leave your iPhone behind in favor of a smartphone on Google’s Android OS, you are in luck. Google quietly launched the Switch to Android app on the App Store so your transition is as smooth as possible.
Read the latest in the Better.com saga: Spoiler alert: More layoffs are said to be on the horizon.
Today social networks are more powerful than ever, and startups and corporations are innovating new commerce models that leverage the greater reach available to us.
The verdict that China’s web3 community has been waiting for months is here: NFTs, or the tokens used to prove the ownership and authenticity of an item, must not be used for securitization o...“Our world is breaking down around us …” a Reddit user posted this morning in r/ClubPenguinRewritten, documenting how the fan-driven, probably illegal remake of Club Penguin was slowly ...Outside of the NFL, there has been a major influx of partnerships between U.S. professional sports teams and players joining forces with crypto companies during the past 12 months.
In the 18 months since the Zoox robotaxi made its virtual debut, the custom-built vehicle has been largely under wraps. That is, until TC Sessions: Mobility 2022, a two-day in-person event schedule...TikTok announced today that it has started testing a way for users to identify comments that they think are irrelevant or inappropriate. Following the announcement, the company confirmed to TechCru...It’s time to trot out old Saint Expeditus, the patron saint of procrastinators, for an important reminder to those of you who could go pro when it comes to kicking the task-can down the road. TechC...Digital mortgage company Better.com is gearing up for another round of layoffs, multiple sources with knowledge of internal happenings at the company have told TechCrunch. This time, the company is...Remember caring for your “Nintendogs” on your Nintendo DS? Or maybe you used to bring your Tamogatchi to third grade to make sure you could flush its pixelated poop? Pokémon Go creator ...The National Payments Corporation of India, the payments body that oversees the widely popular UPI instrument, has given approval to WhatsApp to extend its payments service to 100 million users in ...Group-financing platform Braid is trying to make transactions work for various entities, from shared households to side hustles to creative projects.
Sometimes you go in for a Handshake, but they refuse to let go and end up buying your entire company. Well, at least that seems to be the case with European virtual and hybrid recruiting platform T...The medium is the message more than ever these days, and brands are faced with a challenge — but also opportunity — to capture what consumers think about them and their products if they...My employer entered me in the H-1B lottery, but I wasn’t selected. I heard that my degree now qualifies as a STEM field, making me eligible to continue working under OPT. How can I stay in th...TechCrunch Early Stage starts tomorrow, Thursday April 14, and we’re thrilled to be back in person. This is our first in-person event in two years, and the show’s lineup is spectacular. Join us. Th...When the European Commission presented its Digital Services Act (DSA) proposal in December 2020, it listed beefed up consumer protections as a headline goal for the flagship update to the bloc̵...Last year, reports began circulating that Google was developing a “Switch to Android” app for iOS users looking to make the jump from iPhone to a smartphone running Google’s Andro...
