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Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Using public roads, trucking startup TuSimple completes 80-mile autonomous run

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Wednesday, December 29, 2021 By Greg Kumparak

This is going to be the last Daily Crunch for the year, as the news machine seems to be winding down for its New Year’s nap. It’s been a pleasure putting these together while Alex has been AFK  — alas, my little sprint has come to an end. Alex should be back next week, and I’ll be moving on to help wrangle all the news from CES.

Many thanks to the Daily Crunch team, and to all of you, for letting me hang out for a few days. Have a safe and wonderful new year!

Greg

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Image Credits: Nora Carol Photography / Getty Images

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • TuSimple’s biggest test yet: Autonomous trucking company TuSimple says it has completed its first driverless test run on public roads, successfully completing an 80-mile trip with no human intervention. Will road-tripping kids of the future know the joy of convincing a truck driver to honk the horn?
  • 6 things in cybersecurity we didn’t know last year: Our security editor Zack Whittaker knows his stuff, so when he makes a big list of cybersecurity things that were new to him this year, I listen. Like, for example, that the biggest cost in a ransomware attack often isn’t the ransom itself.
  • eVTOLs in 2022: Is 2022 the year in which eVTOLs finally … take off? Calling it a “make it or break it year” for electric aircraft that can hover and take off/land vertically, Aria Alamalhodaei has a great multipart look at the state of the industry and the challenges on the flight path ahead. Linked above is part two, here’s part one from earlier this month.
The TechCrunch Top 3 image

Image Credits: TuSimpe

Startups/VC

  • GlobalBees joins the unicorn club: GlobalBees, an Indian company that specializes in acquiring/partnering with promising “digitally native brands” to help them grow, has raised $110 million in a round valuing it at $1.1 billion.
  • Southeast Asian startups to watch in 2022: “As someone who covers Southeast Asia startups and funding stories, the best word I can think of to describe 2021 is ‘whoa!'” writes Catherine Shu.

Dear Sophie: Will the H-1B lottery be based on the highest wages?

Dear Sophie,

I graduated in December, and I'm currently working on OPT for an early-stage biotech startup. I'm not sure how much my employer knows about the H-1B lottery process or if they are planning to put me in the lottery.

I heard that the next lottery will not select H-1B candidates based on the highest salaries paid. What else should I know?

— Gifted Grad

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

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Big Tech Inc.

  • Samsung's C-Lab: One of my favorite parts of CES — which we’re regretfully skipping in-person this year — is how a number of huge companies use it as a way to exhibit the otherwise secret projects they’ve been tinkering on in their in-house incubators. Brian Heater has a list of Samsung’s latest side quests, which varies from pet recognition AI to diaper sensors.
  • Apple puts Foxconn plant on probation: Apple put operations at a 17,000-person factory in India on pause, following reports that hundreds of employees had to be treated for food poisoning. Apple says it has sent out independent auditors to evaluate the food safety and living conditions, with the local government also demanding action.

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If you’re curious about how these surveys are shaping our coverage, check out this article on TechCrunch+ from Miranda Halpern, "10 growth marketing experts share their 2022 predictions and New Year's resolutions."

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Tuesday, December 28, 2021

Black Girls Code conducts review as suspended CEO denies employee allegations

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Tuesday, December 28, 2021 By Greg Kumparak

Hi all, and welcome back to Daily Crunch for December 28, 2021!

I hope you’re all staying dry, warm and safe as we come to the end of another weird year. I haven’t heard from Alex how his vacation is going, which I’m hoping means he’s having a great time and playing way too much Crusader Kings III.

Alex should be back next week. In the meantime, I’ll try to be half as good at wrapping up the top stories from the past day or so.

Greg

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Image Credits: Sean Mathis / Getty Images

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • WTF is .xyz?: Have you noticed the sudden uptick in “.xyz” domains in the wild? Wondering why? Anita Ramaswamy has a great overview of .xyz’s history, its growing role in the web3 world and how Google/Alphabet might’ve sparked the trend.
  • Black Girls Code CEO suspended: What’s going on at Black Girls Code? Why was the non-profit org’s CEO and co-founder, Kimberly Bryant, suddenly suspended? Natasha Mascarenhas talked to many of those involved to get some answers.
  • ‘The Matrix: Resurrections’ is a bad movie, but…: I still haven’t watched the new “Matrix” (I have a toddler running around, so watching any movie without songs and/or animated dogs is rare) so I can’t vouch for Devin’s headline, but I appreciate him finding a diamond (the movie’s take on our relationship with tech) in what he otherwise considers the rough (everything else.) Spoiler warnings, btw.

Startups/VC

  • Where New Zealand startups are poised to win: The startup scene in New Zealand is rocketing — quite literally. Besides rockets, where else might New Zealand find wins? Rebecca Bellan talked with investors in the region and came away with four verticals to watch.
  • Religious apps draw investor attention: I’ll never stop being amazed by Connie Loizos’ ability to spot trends I never would’ve noticed. This time it’s a huge uptick in investment in faith-focused apps — from $6.1 million in 2016 to $175 million this year. Connie sat down with the founder of one of these apps (Hallow) for insights on the landscape.

How to be one of the "haves" of SaaS

Software as a service has leveled the playing field for startups in the last decade, but in terms of venture capital, the winners still take all.

According to Sean Fanning, a VP on OpenView's investment team, companies that post stellar growth often take the bulk of VC investment, leaving the lower performers to fight for scraps.

In an in-depth post, Fanning shares three tactics used by SaaS companies with an attractive enterprise value-to-revenue (EV/R) multiple:

Continued execution against large and growing market opportunities.

Leveraging a business model that enables rapid growth (i.e., product-led growth).

Strong unit economics that support high free cash flow margins over the long term.

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

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Big Tech Inc.

  • Even more companies drop from in-person CES: Large companies continue to drop out of the Consumer Electronics Show due to COVID concerns. Following announcements from Intel, T-Mobile, Google, Amazon, Twitter, and more last week, the latest are AMD, OnePlus, MSI, and Procter and Gamble.
  • Dutch regulators demand App Store changes: Seems like South Korea started something global with its App Store legislation back in August. The Netherlands is the latest country to tell Apple to change its requirements around in-app purchases — though, curiously, in this case they seem specifically focused on dating apps?

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Monday, December 27, 2021

11 tech companies that closed in 2021

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Monday, December 27, 2021 By Greg Kumparak

Hi again friends, and welcome to Daily Crunch for Monday, December 27.

I continue to captain the USS Cruncherprise while Alex is out on vacation. If you’re missing his wit and wisdoms, fear not: He’ll be back next week.

As I mentioned last week, the news cycle tends to get a bit quieter in these last weeks of December — so expect these daily recaps to be a bit more compact accordingly. We should be back in the full swing of things next week, if only because that’s when CES is happening. (And, yes, it’s apparently still happening, despite a number of the biggest companies pulling out.)

Greg

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Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • Remembering the startups we lost in 2021: Houseparty! Dark Sky! Loon! A few members of the TC team put together a list of the products, projects and tech companies that shut down (or announced plans to shutdown) this year. Fry’s Electronics gets an honorable mention because, though it was hardly a startup, its shutdown leaves a massive “pyramid-shaped hole in the hearts of many who grew up wandering its aisles.”
  • TC’s fav things: Team TC also put together its annual list of its “favorite things” of the year, with “things” defined … as, well, anything. We love doing this one; it ends up being a big mish-mashed list of stuff worth knowing about (I really can’t stop listening to Kirsten’s air traffic controller music recommendation), and doubles as a little glimpse into the in-the-moment headspaces of the folks who keep this place going.
  • Is accessibility awareness resulting in better accessibility? Companies are doing a better job of talking about accessibility, but are their words leading to actual results? Joe Devon, co-founder of the Global Accessibility Awareness Day, takes us on a deep dive into the data.

Startups/VC

  • Naren Gupta passes away: The co-founder of Nexus Venture Partners died on Saturday at the age of 73. Manish Singh shares details of Gupta’s life, his many successes and how the venture capitalist helped “plant Indian SaaS startups on the world map.”
  • Teesas raises $1.6M: Less than two months after launch, Nigerian edtech startup Teesas has raised a $1.6 million pre-seed round. The company offers a subscription program for students that delivers live/recorded content designed to pair right up with what they’re learning in school.
  • Jupiter raises $86 million: The Indian neobank startup, not the gas planet. Just a few months after launching publicly, the company’s founder says the service has “just short of half a million users.” This round values the company at $711 million, more than doubling its valuation from August.

Foreign investors, mature startups redraw New Zealand's VC funding landscape

For a country with just over five million people, New Zealand’s startup ecosystem is punching well above its weight.

In 2020, investors bet $158 million on 108 deals, the third consecutive year of growth. After a series of exits like RocketLab, Pushpay and Seequent, foreign investors like Sequoia and Founders Fund have taken notice.

“I'm hopeful over the next five years we're going to start seeing more unicorns and real successes coming out of the market, which I think will create a positive halo effect and that'll create the next generation of founders,” said James Pinner, acting CEO of New Zealand venture fund Elevate.

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

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Big Tech Inc.

  • More big companies back out of CES: While the Consumer Electronics Show is still set to go on as planned, a number of huge companies won’t be there this time — at least, not in person. T-Mobile was the first huge name to drop its in-person presence at the show due to the ongoing COVID spike; a number of companies have since followed their lead, including Google, Lenovo, Intel, GM, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon.
  • TikTok moderator sues: Content moderation is a massive challenge that, arguably, no major social network has gotten right. Machines aren’t really up to the job yet, and hiring people to do it is like saying “You know all the vile, horrifying, absolute-worst bits of the internet? Here’s a firehose of it!” A TikTok moderator sued parent company ByteDance this week over trauma they experienced on the job; according to the complaint, tackling the “sheer volume of content” required moderators to “simultaneously view three to 10 videos at the same time.”

TechCrunch Experts

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