Sunday, May 5, 2024

The dark side of startup accelerators

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By Anthony Ha

Sunday, May 5, 2024

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin

This Week, TechCrunch dug into the struggles at two different startup accelerators.

First, Dominic-Madori Davis looked back at a year of shuttered programs, layoffs, and reorganization at Techstars. Behind the scenes, there's reportedly been a "cold war" between the accelerator's CEO Maëlle Gavet (who took over in 2021) and the managing directors who run its local programs. Techstars said the story paints "a distorted picture" of its business "by providing unnamed sources a platform for unverified grievances."

Next, Mary Ann Azevedo and Christine Hall wrote about Newchip, an accelerator that filed for bankruptcy in May 2023. As a result, a bankruptcy court has ordered the company to auction off the warrants it holds in the 1,000+ startups that went through the program. Founders said the uncertainty makes it difficult for them to obtain additional financing and has even forced some of them to shut down their companies.

Read on to see what else TechCrunch has been covering this weekend.

Weekend news and opinion

Image Credits: D3Damon / Getty Images

No easy solution to AI hallucinations

Hallucinations are one of the biggest issues with generative AI — put simply, it's hard to trust answers from an AI model that has a weakness for making things up. Some companies are pitching retrieval augmented generation (RAG) as a solution that can lead to "zero hallucinations." But Kyle Wiggers discussed the technology with AI researcher David Wadden, who said that while RAG can be useful, it can't stop models from hallucinating. Read More

Women in AI discuss teaching and strategy

Our interview series with some of the smartest and most important women in AI continues. Tara Chklovski, founder and CEO at nonprofit Technovation, discusses her organization's project-based AI curriculum, while Kingfisher Labs founder Catherine Breslin offers insight on how companies can develop AI responsibly.

Amae Health's in-person strategy for mental healthcare

For her latest Deal Dive, Rebecca Szkutak talks to the founders of Amae Health, which recently raised a $15 million Series A led by Quiet Capital. Amae brings together services like family and individual therapy, social workers, psychiatric care and medicine management under one (non-virtual) roof. It operates a clinic in Los Angeles, with plans to open locations in Raleigh, Houston, Ohio, and New York next. Read More

What else we're reading

Over the past couple years, I've read countless think pieces about how the internet has gotten worse — our social networks centralized into a few walled gardens, real news hidden behind paywalls, and the online world beyond increasingly dominated by search-optimized, AI-generated garbage. But Molly White (best known for her blog "Web3 Is Going Just Great") argues that we still have the tools to bring back the web's "good old days," or to build something even better. Read More

In a related vein, media industry analyst Brian Morrissey looks at what might come after the open web, with the fediverse (a system of interoperable social networks) offering one path away from centralization. Read More

Before you go

I hate myself for being excited about this, but I am excited: Airbnb is giving customers an opportunity to visit the house from "Up," as well as Professor Xavier's mansion from "X-Men '97."