For Your Information Blog: 08/10/21

Friday, October 8, 2021

Questions raised over natural gas fuel source for Elon Musk's Texas spaceport

Friday, October 08, 2021 • By Alex Wilhelm

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for October 8, 2021! It's Friday! We made it! If you are tired, consider how weary the Instagram team must be. Their service is having even more uptime issues this afternoon. Between that and announcing that its users are no longer allowed to sell bits of the Amazon rainforest, it's a banner week for Zuck's empire. Now, let's talk tech! – Alex

Image Credits: RoschetzkyIstockPhoto / Getty Images

The TechCrunch Top 3

Elon's mystery gas: Big plans from SpaceX regarding its largest rockets are missing a few details on where the company intends to find tens of millions of cubic feet of natural gas that it will need. Sure, Tesla is petrol-free, but SpaceX has left a few question marks in a draft programmatic environmental assessment (PEA) regarding combustible gas that have us scratching our heads.
Europe's startups set to receive pre-seed boost: Early-stage founders in Europe are about to have a few new accelerators in their neighborhood, courtesy of Techstars. The accelerator collective is opening programs in Paris (again) and Stockholm, in addition to its current efforts on the continent. Per Techstars' CEO, there's far more founders in Europe today than are being served, despite record venture capital totals.
Tesla to move its HQ to Texas: Ah, taxes. Tesla will move its headquarters to Austin, Texas from its traditional California home, but it won't stop investing in the West Coast state. Indeed, the company intends to boost "output at its Fremont gigafactory by 50%," TechCrunch reports. So, Texas taxes. That's what this move appears to be about.

Clouds that compete can still connect

Private equity is ready to take MSP consolidation to the next level

Good news: Businesses of all stripes are digitizing their operations faster than ever before, creating huge advantages for companies that start the work now.

Bad news: Many technical workers are already looking for new jobs, and companies must compete to find the right people who can build robust, secure IT environments.

Managed services providers (MSPs) are filling the gap, and private equity firms are paying attention.

“MSPs have all the ingredients that private equity loves,” write Mike McGill and Kevin Jolley of Cowen and Company, LLC.

“A strong demand trend, low risk of obsolescence, a ‘sticky’ service that attracts long-term customers and high recurring revenues, strong cash flow margins and a relatively ‘asset-light’ business.”

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

Private equity is ready to take MSP consolidation to the next level image

Image Credits: Richard Drury / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc.

Google, YouTube to ban climate denial ads: Mountain View-based Alphabet has decided it no longer wants to profit from folks who deny climate change. To that end, the company will "no longer allow ads or monetization for content that promotes climate change denialism."
Google to distribute physical hardware keys to 10,000 users under threat of Russian hacking: At some point we have to come up with a better solution to state-sponsored hacking than Google sending out security keys, but for now this counts as good news.
And Pinterest is building something called havens that are "space on its platform to explore the relationship between mental health and rest." Which sounds nice, I suppose.

TechCrunch Experts

If you have a software consultant that you think other startup founders should know about, fill out the survey here.

Read one of the testimonials we've received below!

Consultant: ManagedKube

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Testimonial: "[They have] a deep understanding of cloud technology and how to use that in combination with open source software to get us an infrastructure that is scalable but easy to understand and maintain. They were literally trying to make themselves obsolete!"

We're continuing to add content to our growth marketing vertical. Check out this article on TechCrunch+ from Jonathan Martinez: "5 common growth marketing mistakes startups make." If there's a growth marketer you think we should know about, let us know.