Month: July 2023
If it hadn’t been for them meddlin’ kids
Welcome to Startups Weekly. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. Not to get all GrumpyManYellsAtCloud.gif, but I’m getting pretty tired of the myth of the dropped-out-of-college founders. Investors — and the broader ecosystem — have known for a long time that while there are some high-profile outliers, it’s much easier
Welcome to Startups Weekly. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday.
Not to get all GrumpyManYellsAtCloud.gif, but I’m getting pretty tired of the myth of the dropped-out-of-college founders. Investors — and the broader ecosystem — have known for a long time that while there are some high-profile outliers, it’s much easier to build a startup if you have a fat Rolodex, some experience, and perhaps a few failures under your belt. I know Hollywood doesn’t think it’s nearly as good of a story, but . . . perhaps it’d be good to balance things out a little on that front.
Apropos meddling: Those robots have been hard at work generating smut, and Kyle reports that as AI porn generators get better, the stakes get higher. Perhaps as a result of that story (and the internet reaching fever pitch over AI porn), an interview we did with the Unstable Diffusion team last year is hella trending again on TechCrunch.
Apropos even more meddling: It seems that even very experienced founders get things pretty wrong from time to time, too — Elmo isn’t done running Twitter into the ground, it seems. This week, the burning wreckage of a social media site officially changed its logo to X. That has had some, er, curious side effects, including a lot of rebranding and renaming. Uniting the themes of smut and social media, Twitter Videos has so far resisted to rename itself, and one social media account (NSFW) seems to hint at why.
More AI. Always more AI
Image Credits: nadia_bormotova / Getty Images
I know, it seems like there’s always an AI section in Startups Weekly at the moment. Don’t blame me — blame the flamin’ hot news coming out of that vertical at the moment.
On TC+, Nick Zamanov penned an article about how his company tried using OpenAI to generate marketing strategies — and was delighted to discover that it worked.
Meanwhile, OpenAI just released a neat feature that introduces customized instructions for ChatGPT. Instead of having to type “write me a three-section newsletter in the style of TechCrunch’s Startups Weekly, and smatter in some really dumb jokes,” you can configure that as the default behavior. Writing newsletters is going to be so quick in the future, I swear. (Just kidding: I’ve tried. ChatGPT’s attempts at writing this thing were as dull as dishwater. My job is safe for another week or two.)
The bots are coming to the Androids: ChatGPT comes to Android, and soon became available in the U.S., India, Bangladesh and Brazil. OpenAI plans to release the app in more countries very soon.
I’m sure that wasn’t a stressful job: After just 18 months in the job, OpenAI’s head of trust and safety Dave Willner steps down. The company’s CTO Mira Murati will manage the team on an interim basis while they find a replacement.
Let’s translate this from corporate-ese into bot-speak: A startup that’s building tools to help prepare enterprise data to get gobbled up into large language models, Unstructured raises $25 million.
The art of changing your mind
Image Credits: Images by Christina Kilgour / Getty Images
This week, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the job of a founder. I already mentioned the TechCrunch+ piece I wrote about startups not just being a young person’s game, and I spoke with a founder who decided to replace himself as the CEO of his own company. Earlier this week, I also spoke with DeeDee Deman, who has spent the past 50 years headhunting CEOs, to get some tips on how you can think about finding a new CEO for your startup.
While on the topic of replacements — Sequoia Capital’s Michael Moritz moves on, almost 40 years after he joined the influential venture fund. He’s going to continue board work with a handful of companies but is planning to hand over most of the workload to other Sequoia partners.
Companies are still going public. Just not startups: It’s been a drought in the tech startup IPO space, but on TC+, Alex crunched the numbers and realized that there’s still a lot of activity — and it’s making startups look silly as hell.
Optimizing for impact: More and more companies are thinking about climate — and impact investors are flocking to the segment. That scares me a bit, but Agnes Svensson, the chief impact officer at Norrsken VC, shares five key questions climate tech founders should ask impact investors.
One of the most amazing social experiments: Reddits r/place is an incredible experiment, where a logged-in user can place a single pixel on a canvas every 5 minutes. It’s one of my favorite things about the internet, because it requires something utterly rare: coordination and teamwork. Of course, redditors used this year’s evolution of the game to shout loudly about the API changes that have sparked a revolt on the social media site.
Pulling into the pit stop
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch
Autonomous trucking company Aurora sells $820 million worth of stock in order to continue its drive toward launching an autonomous trucking business in 2024. Around the same time, Waymo put the brakes on its self-driving trucks program.
Meanwhile, peeking at Tesla’s business fundamentals, Rebecca reminds us that the company is an automaker, not a tech company — and that its margins look a lot more like Ford than, say, Salesforce.
Time for another U-turn: We’ve been flip-flopping on this one for a while, but it seems like GM has changed its mind once again, saying it isn’t going to kill off the Chevy Bolt EV after all. Personally, I think that’s great. We need smaller, more affordable EVs.
Tapping the zap: Seven of the largest automakers today announced a joint venture to create a massive EV charging network across North America.
Topping up at home: In smaller charging news, Voltpost raised a $3.6 million seed round to bring EV charging to the curbside.
Top reads on TechCrunch this week
In addition to some of the big hitters sprinkled throughout above, here are some of our mustn’t-miss stories for the week:
Maybe it’s just taking a nap?: I argued that VR as a category is dead and failed to find a killer app. AR is picking up the mantle, but we’ll see if it can do better.
I dunno, maybe hide better?: Zack reports that North Korean hackers targeting JumpCloud may have forgotten to mask their IP addresses properly, researchers say.
Buy it, then kill it: Aria reports that SpaceX has made only one acquisition to date (that we are aware of), but Swarm Technologies is halting new device sales. It seems that the acquisition may have been an aqui-hire, as Swarm’s founders are finding senior positions across SpaceX.
Stalking for cash: Zack had a couple of popular articles this week. He reported that Spyhide stalkerware is spying on tens of thousands of phones, and he dug into how TheTruthSpy stalkerware made its millions.
Enough, already: It’s getting more and more frustrating to report on this, but startups with all-women founding teams raised just $1.4 billion in H1, Dominic-Madori reports. That’s a paltry 1.6% of all venture funding invested. Mixed-gender teams picked up 28%.
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Today I learned they make delightfully retro cassette tape power banks
That’s not a cassette tape! | Image: Remax
As a ‘90s kid who dreamed of being an ‘80s adult, this immediately commanded my attention: you can now charge your phone with a cassette tape.
Shenzhen accessories manufacturer Remax has apparently been on it for over a year, debuting “10,000mAh” batteries that look like classic cassettes. Depending on the color — yellow, red, or the new green 2023 model — you can charge them up with USB-C, micro-USB, or even an Apple Lightning cable, then output up to 22.5W over USB-A or USB-C to fast-charge a phone.
The $20-$40 batteries aren’t not quite as nifty as I originally imagined, though. While they do awesomely come with their own transparent cassette tape cases, they’re definitely larger than a classic cassette, and there’s no spinning parts to fiddle with.
The original yellow and red models also don’t have a good place to put your charging cable — something remedied on the new green version, which adds pull-out flexible 20W Type-C and Lightning cables while ditching a weaksauce LED flashlight and the micro-USB input.
The reason I’m not instantly plopping down my own $25: I suspect I’ll be disappointed by their charge. While they may nominally contain 10,000mAh batteries, the fine print shows a “rated capacity” of just 5200mAh, and the red model, at least, only promises 300 charge cycles before that capacity wanes.
Still, super cute stocking stuffer, and should probably be good for one full charge of a single phone at a time. I’ll leave you with a brief YouTube hands-on I spotted with last year’s yellow variant — Paul here was pretty impressed with the overall feel.
That’s not a cassette tape! | Image: Remax
As a ‘90s kid who dreamed of being an ‘80s adult, this immediately commanded my attention: you can now charge your phone with a cassette tape.
Shenzhen accessories manufacturer Remax has apparently been on it for over a year, debuting “10,000mAh” batteries that look like classic cassettes. Depending on the color — yellow, red, or the new green 2023 model — you can charge them up with USB-C, micro-USB, or even an Apple Lightning cable, then output up to 22.5W over USB-A or USB-C to fast-charge a phone.
The $20-$40 batteries aren’t not quite as nifty as I originally imagined, though. While they do awesomely come with their own transparent cassette tape cases, they’re definitely larger than a classic cassette, and there’s no spinning parts to fiddle with.
The original yellow and red models also don’t have a good place to put your charging cable — something remedied on the new green version, which adds pull-out flexible 20W Type-C and Lightning cables while ditching a weaksauce LED flashlight and the micro-USB input.
The reason I’m not instantly plopping down my own $25: I suspect I’ll be disappointed by their charge. While they may nominally contain 10,000mAh batteries, the fine print shows a “rated capacity” of just 5200mAh, and the red model, at least, only promises 300 charge cycles before that capacity wanes.
Still, super cute stocking stuffer, and should probably be good for one full charge of a single phone at a time. I’ll leave you with a brief YouTube hands-on I spotted with last year’s yellow variant — Paul here was pretty impressed with the overall feel.
Best Internet Providers in Scottsdale, Arizona – CNET
Though Cox’s internet service is available just about everywhere in Scottsdale, it’s not always the best option.
Though Cox’s internet service is available just about everywhere in Scottsdale, it’s not always the best option.
Best Internet Providers in Mesa, Arizona – CNET
Fiber internet from Google and AT&T is on the way, but until then, most Mesa residents should look to Cox.
Fiber internet from Google and AT&T is on the way, but until then, most Mesa residents should look to Cox.
Best Internet Providers in Charleston, South Carolina – CNET
With fast and cheap plans from both local and national providers, this city offers a bounty of internet options to residents.
With fast and cheap plans from both local and national providers, this city offers a bounty of internet options to residents.
Samsung has proof that big tablets like the Tab S9 Ultra really do help productivity
Samsung’s most expensive Galaxy Tab did well enough to warrant a sequel, the company says.
Samsung’s $1300 Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra may seem like an overpriced entry into the Android tablet market – but there’s a pretty good reason Samsung released such an expensive device. It sells better than you’d expect.
According to Samsung in an interview with TechRadar, the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra accounted for 30% of the Tab S8 series, with most users opting to use it for productivity over consumption, at least in comparison to the Tab S8 and Tab S8 Plus.
Samsung’s Junho Park, VP (Director of Global Product Planning), told Techradar, “Customers are using the S8 Ultra for both productivity and entertainment, but the proportion of customers using the tablet for productivity is higher than the equivalent figure for the rest of the Tab S8 series.”
In other words, while the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra accounted for a third of total Tab S8 sales (Despite its price difference), users who selected it were intentional with their choice. Samsung says that people were more likely to be productive on the Tab S9 Ultra than other devices. And if you check out our Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra review, it’s pretty obvious why. Samsung did a great job of building an iPad Pro rival. The optimized One UI software, powerful hardware, and elegant keyboard accessory all came together to build a competent laptop replacement. There’s just one problem: laptops still exist.
Can a tablet really be productive?
With the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra and the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra, Samsung certainly hopes you think the answer is yes. Whether it’s true or not will depend on you. In my experience, tablets can be productive in a pinch. I’m not opposed to the concept. I have a OnePlus Pad with a keyboard and full access to Android apps. I’ve used a BlackBerry PlayBook to write school essays. I was a big advocate of being productive on a tablet with Microsoft’s Surface Pro. Excellent as the Surface Pro 9 and the (short-lived) Surface Pro X were, I’m now a big believer in the right tool for the job.
When it comes to productivity, laptops have an inherent advantage. They are built for working first and foremost. They come with keyboards and trackpads. They have access to peripherals and all sorts of extensible ports. They can run all software ever, whether directly as on Windows, or through systems like Parallels if you’re using one of the best MacBooks or best Chromebooks. More than a Tab S9 Ultra can ever dream of, a real computer like the MacBook Pro or the Surface Laptop is a versatile workhorse.
Samsung’s profits are down 95 percent for a second consecutive quarter
Samsung is still suffering under a glut of unsold memory chips.
Enlarge / A South Korean flag, left, and Samsung Electronics Co. flag fly outside the company’s headquarters in Seoul, South Korea. (credit: Jean Chung/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Things are still bad at Samsung. After the company’s Q1 2023 saw a crushing 95 percent year-over-year profit drop, Q2 2023 isn’t any better, with the company posting KRW 0.67 trillion ($524.9 million) in profits, another huge 95 percent drop from the KRW 14.1 trillion ($10.7 billion) it made in Q2 2022.
Samsung is mostly known for its electronics and appliances, but on the earnings sheet, Samsung is a memory company. Estimates of the company’s profit structure in more normal times (2022) puts memory (NAND and RAM) at 55 percent of profits, with mobile at 22 percent, and displays at 11. Samsung’s LSI division—that’s the foundry and Exynos chips—is at 6.9 percent, and other consumer electronics, for all the shelf space they take up, only make up 4 percent of profits.
While back-to-back 95 percent profit declines are definitely bad, Samsung expected this. The company is facing down a glut of unsold chips, leading to lower prices and lower profits. Memory companies stockpiled chips during the pandemic, and while some companies expected the boom times to end and cut production in November 2022, Samsung waited until April 2023, leading to its big pile of unsold inventory. Along with its earnings report, Samsung announced it is cutting memory production again to try to get its inventory under control. While Samsung’s other divisions meant the company turned a small profit in the first half of 2023, the memory division contributed an operating loss of $7 billion for the year so far.
Final Fantasy XIV is finally headed to Xbox
Image: Square Enix
Critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV is finally coming to Xbox.
During the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest keynote, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer appeared to announce the news alongside game director Naoki Yoshida. “We want to bring the Xbox community and your warriors of light together, in a way that is safe, secure, engaging, and, above all, fun.” Spencer said.
Since the game’s launch in 2013, the MMORPG has only been available on PC and PlayStation. According to Yoshida, one of the biggest requests from fans was to bring the game to the Xbox platform.
As a result, Final Fantasy XIV will come to the Series S / X and feature faster loading times and 4K resolution for the Series X. Fortunately, Xbox fans won’t have to wait for the game’s latest expansion to play. According to Yoshida, the Xbox version will launch in spring 2024 with an open beta to take place sometime around the launch of patch 6.5. Progress from the open beta will carry over, so Yoshida encouraged Xbox players to sign up for the beta.
Image: Square Enix
Critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV is finally coming to Xbox.
During the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest keynote, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer appeared to announce the news alongside game director Naoki Yoshida. “We want to bring the Xbox community and your warriors of light together, in a way that is safe, secure, engaging, and, above all, fun.” Spencer said.
Since the game’s launch in 2013, the MMORPG has only been available on PC and PlayStation. According to Yoshida, one of the biggest requests from fans was to bring the game to the Xbox platform.
As a result, Final Fantasy XIV will come to the Series S / X and feature faster loading times and 4K resolution for the Series X. Fortunately, Xbox fans won’t have to wait for the game’s latest expansion to play. According to Yoshida, the Xbox version will launch in spring 2024 with an open beta to take place sometime around the launch of patch 6.5. Progress from the open beta will carry over, so Yoshida encouraged Xbox players to sign up for the beta.
X officially rolls out its ads revenue sharing program for creators
The Verge
Twitter, which Elon Musk is currently rebranding to X, is officially rolling out its ads revenue sharing program for creators. The company had given some creators payouts earlier this month, but now, users globally who meet the eligibility criteria can apply for the program from the monetization tab in settings.
To be eligible for the program, you need to be subscribed to X Blue (which appears to be the new name for Twitter Blue) or be a Verified Organization, have “at least 15M impressions on your cumulative posts within the last 3 months,” and have at least 500 followers, according to a support document about the program.
“We want the process to be as simple as possible, so all eligible X Blue and Verified Organizations subscribers are entitled to revenue share so long as they meet the eligibility criteria and join,” the company says. You’ll get payouts as long as X determines that you’ve generated more than $50. The support document about the program doesn’t specify how the company determines the value of its payouts.
The program has been in the works for some time. Musk first announced it in February, saying that the revenue share kicked off “starting today.” It took a few months the initial payouts finally started rolling in, with some saying they earned thousands of dollars.
The Verge
Twitter, which Elon Musk is currently rebranding to X, is officially rolling out its ads revenue sharing program for creators. The company had given some creators payouts earlier this month, but now, users globally who meet the eligibility criteria can apply for the program from the monetization tab in settings.
To be eligible for the program, you need to be subscribed to X Blue (which appears to be the new name for Twitter Blue) or be a Verified Organization, have “at least 15M impressions on your cumulative posts within the last 3 months,” and have at least 500 followers, according to a support document about the program.
“We want the process to be as simple as possible, so all eligible X Blue and Verified Organizations subscribers are entitled to revenue share so long as they meet the eligibility criteria and join,” the company says. You’ll get payouts as long as X determines that you’ve generated more than $50. The support document about the program doesn’t specify how the company determines the value of its payouts.
The program has been in the works for some time. Musk first announced it in February, saying that the revenue share kicked off “starting today.” It took a few months the initial payouts finally started rolling in, with some saying they earned thousands of dollars.