Tuesday, September 27, 2022

Cloudflare rolls out new mobile services to secure employees' smartphones

TechCrunch Newsletter
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By Christine Hall and Haje Jan Kamps

Monday, September 26, 2022

Good morning, you crunchistas. We hope you've had a chill weekend. Or if it wasn't chill, that it was wild for all the right reasons. YOLO and all that.

Okay, on with the news! — Christine and Haje

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Image Credits: Michael Short/Bloomberg / Getty Images

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • Do we ever really know how secure our phones are?: Cloudflare says no, and to prove it, they launched an eSIM to secure mobile devices, Kyle reports. What makes theirs different from other legacy options — for example, VPN — is its cell-level protection. "A SIM card can act as another security factor, and — in combination with hardware keys — make it nearly impossible to impersonate an employee," Cloudflare CTO John Graham-Cumming told Kyle.
  • Red notice: It's official — Interpol issues red notice for Terraform founder Do Kwon, who faces charges in South Korea after Terraform's cryptocurrency and stablecoin collapsed earlier this year. Manish and Kate have been following this story for a while and have more.
  • Pivot: Two years ago, Vendease was trying to make it work in Nigeria's food sector as a marketplace connecting suppliers and farmers to restaurants. When it saw how fragmented delivery service was, it pivoted to a food procurement platform, meaning it no longer operates as the middleman and is now reaping that benefit, including $30 million in fresh capital, Tage reports.

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Startups and VC

While Not So Dark started with a network of dark kitchens, the company abandoned this business model shortly after raising its Series A round. Operating dark kitchens requires a ton of capital and can create issues in some neighborhoods. The company now raised an $80 million Series B, and launched digital food delivery brands that you can find in food delivery apps, Romain reports.

When it comes to advice, tech loves standardization. Startups are often told that there are certain metrics to hit, deadlines to meet, timetables to measure themselves against. In The “ideal runway” is a myth, isn't it?, over on TC+, our subscription site, Natasha M breaks down how the 18- to 36-month runway rule of thumb isn't as rule-of-thumb-y as you'd think.

Guess what? We love you so much that we've got five more highlights from across the site:

3 ways to implement a product-led sales motion to unleash PLG's revenue potential

Startups that employ product-led growth strategies reply on customers to fuel growth and acquisition, but “the traditional top-down enterprise sales model just doesn't work with the self-serve, freemium user bases of PLG,” writes Stephen Moock, head of sales and success at GTM platform Calixa.

Sharing consolidated user data with product and sales teams will reveal patterns and insights that help identify product-qualified leads who are more likely to convert. To take advantage, sales teams need to “recalibrate” their approach.

According to Moock, “your free offering, and the features customers get when they upgrade to paid plans should both create a natural conversion path to your enterprise offering.”

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code "DC" for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

Three more recent stories from the TC+ team:

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Big Tech Inc.

Samsung is entering India with two new credit cards that promise 10% back "round the year," as long as cardholders purchase products and services, Manish reports. It seems to be a way for the smartphone maker to broaden its appeal. It's also ambitious, he writes, because the credit card market in India is quite crowded with over 50 companies trying to gain the attention of the "world's second-largest internet market."

And we have five more for you:

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Saturday, September 24, 2022

London-based spatial computing startup Hadean closes $30 million Series A

TechCrunch Newsletter
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By Christine Hall and Haje Jan Kamps

Friday, September 23, 2022

It's Friday, and that means… Actually, we don't even really know what that means anymore, other than that we're going to sit in the sunshine and bask in the very last few days of warm weather before it becomes time to be envious of the antipodeans for the next six months.  — Christine and Haje

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Image Credits: Cemile Bingol / Getty Images

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • Fashionably late: Epic Games liked distributed computing startup Hadean so much that it didn't want to miss out on a chance to back it. Paul has more on how Epic was able to get in on the $30 million Series A investment and why.
  • From bland to bling: Life insurance is not often an exciting topic, but Strava co-founder Mark Shaw believes he has found a way to "zhuzh" it up with Inclined, a company lending against whole life insurance policies, Mary Ann writes. The company is now flush with a $15 million Series A.
  • Shopping for healthcare: Healthcare is a complicated web of doctors, labs and payers that rarely seems to connect. Kenyan startup Ponea Health is out to change that with its healthcare marketplace offering that brings everyone together, Annie reports.

Startups and VC

The crypto market is flooded with centralized (Binance, FTX) and decentralized ETH-based perpetuals and options trading platforms (Dydx, Opyn, Perpetual Protocol). Nibiru is attempting to build the first mainstream decentralized multichain solution. The company was co-founded by Tribe Capital GP Arjun Sethi, and just raised $7.5 million in seed funding at a valuation of $100 million, Manish reports.

A cloud kitchen — also known as a ghost kitchen or a shared kitchen — offers restaurant owners and food entrepreneurs a commercial kitchen space at a reduced cost for food delivery and takeout. A Manila-headquartered startup called CloudEats, which operates cloud kitchens across the Philippines and Vietnam, just raised a $7 million Series A extension to accelerate the digitization of food service in Southeast Asia, Kate reports.

Here's a few more…

8 investors discuss what's ahead for reproductive health startups in a post-Roe world

Dominic-Madori Davis surveyed eight investors about the role venture capital might play in this new era where Americans no longer have the legal right to obtain an abortion.

The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision affected more than healthcare and personal privacy: Will capital and talent flee U.S. states that restrict reproductive rights? Will investors back more startups that expand healthcare access?

Given “the tenuous relationship between venture money and ethics,” Dominic-Madori asked the group how they plan to exert influence — and how they prefer to be approached by entrepreneurs:

  • Hessie Jones, partner, MATR Ventures
  • Lisa Calhoun, Gary Peat and William Leonard, Valor Ventures
  • Mecca Tartt, executive director, Startup Runway
  • Ed Zimmerman, founding partner, First Close Partners
  • Theodora Lau, founder, Unconventional Ventures
  • McKeever Conwell, founder, RareBreed Ventures

Recently on TechCrunch+:

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Big Tech Inc.

Who knew a baseball simulation game would catch on so well in the height of a pandemic? The Game Band certainly did. Amanda speaks with the makers of Blaseball about how they are building the game for the future.

  • Breaking in a new show: If you're a fan of "Breaking Bad," the show's creator announced a new show for Apple TV+, Ivan writes.
  • Clapping back: The California Civil Rights Department is now looking at a countersuit from Tesla after a judge refused to dismiss a case involving racial bias at the electric car giant. Rebecca has more.
  • New chief: Former Google ad executive Allan Thygesen has a new gig: serving as DocuSign's new CEO, Ron reports.
  • No supply shortage here: Jaclyn reports on GM Ventures' new investment in Lithion Recycling, a Canadian battery recycler, to keep the juice flowing for GM's fleet of electric vehicles.
  • Urgent message: Elections are happening in Italy on Sunday, and the country is nervous about election interference measures, so it fired off a message to Meta requesting information on how Facebook plans to manage this, Natasha L writes.

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Friday, September 23, 2022

A closer look at Google’s remote-controlled $30 Chromecast

TechCrunch Newsletter
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By Christine Hall and Haje Jan Kamps

Thursday, September 22, 2022

Hey, folks! Chromecasts have been a hacker and nerd favorite for a moment or two, and we're pretty psyched to see the price (with a remote!) dropping to $30. Apropos hardware, Brian and Kirsten just published our Apple Watch Ultra first look review, so we've been enjoying that, too.  — Christine and Haje

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Image Credits: Google

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • Love gadgets? You’ll love today’s newsletter: Google's new Chromecast is a quadruple threat: 4K HDR support, 10,000 apps, costs $30 and has a remote, Ivan writes. Yes, please.
  • The first cut is the deepest: Just when Indian hotel chain Oyo thought it was safe to go public, SoftBank slashed its valuation by 73% to $2.7 billion, Manish reports.
  • No closing time here: E-commerce company acquirer OpenStore is defying the e-commerce aggregator odds by both doing well in this economy and raising funds, Christine writes. The 1-year-old company, started by Founders Fund's Keith Rabois and Atomic's Jack Abraham, raised $32 million in a round of funding that values the company at $970 million.

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Startups and VC

Anyone who has to use a wheelchair regularly runs the risk of incurring injury from poor circulation. Kalogon believes it can mitigate this common but potentially life-threatening condition with a smart cushion that prevents any one part of the body from being compressed for too long — and it has already caught the eye of the VA, Devin reports.

Keeping up with tax compliance for cryptocurrency can be tricky, especially since many laws are new (or haven't been written yet). That's why Binocs was founded. Users integrate their exchanges and wallets, and Binocs provides a tax report and other accounting details. The startup announced today that it has raised $4 million to expand, Catherine reports.

And a few more from around the world (around the world):

When it comes to startup board participation, VCs and CEOs must do their jobs

"You had one job" might be amusing if a birthday cake decoration goes wrong, but when we're talking about executives who don't show for board meetings, the stakes are much higher, writes Matt Blumberg, co-founder and CEO of Bolster.

"Disengaged or dysfunctional boards aren't just bad for CEOs and LPs; they're bad for everyone," Blumberg says, a realization that spurred him to adopt a new meeting format that includes follow-up surveys.

"That is a lot of moving pieces to manage, but I find that doing so keeps the meeting fresh and well paced."

More TC+ goodness:

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Big Tech Inc.

Get ready to bite into a big Apple. Brian put on his reviewer hat and took a look at the AirPods Pro, which he said had "some really welcome additions to one of the best pair of earbuds out there." And Brian and Kirsten tried out the Apple Watch Ultra, where one of their concluding views was "the Ultra is much more than an Apple Watch dressed up in a rugged case."

Meanwhile, buy now, pay later giant Klarna confirmed it had to take some additional bites out of its workforce to the tune of 100 people, though 500 were warned of the reduction, Connie writes.

  • Adam Levine wishes this existed already: Ivan reports that Instagram is testing a nudity protection filter for direct messages so that users of the social media app don't have to see unsolicited nude messages. Too bad there isn’t a feature yet to warn you against sending certain messages…
  • Don't get locked in: Natasha L writes about Mozilla's research regarding the ability to choose our own web browser on the devices we like to use versus being presented with pre-installed ones.
  • Not playing games: India's Department of Telecommunications is proposing the regulation of internet communication services that would require platforms to obtain a license before they could operate in the market. Jagmeet has more.
  • Single and ready to mingle: Alibaba Cloud has plans to double down on its cloud service offering overseas and is ready to spend $1 billion on a "global partner ecosystem upgrade," Rita writes.
  • That's a large chunk of "chain": Authorities in South Korea uncovered another $680 million in "abnormal" crypto-linked foreign exchange transactions, Kate reports. If you're keeping score at home, that's now a total of $7.2 billion since June.

Read more stories on TechCrunch.com

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