Moonlighters eclipsed — Wipro lets go of 300 employees who were working for its rivals

TechCrunch Newsletter

By Christine Hall and Haje Jan Kamps Wednesday, September 21, 2022

Due to excessively poor judgment, today's Christine and Haje show is brought to you by Haje and Christine. Meanwhile, mark your calendar for September 23 at 10:00 a.m. PDT/1:00 p.m. EDT when we bring you a special Twitter Spaces, "Immigration law for startups," featuring Silicon Valley–based attorney and TechCrunch+ columnist Sophie Alcorn. Sophie will discuss immigration-related issues and answer questions relevant to startup founders and workers. — Christine and Haje Image Credits: Dhiraj Singh / Bloomberg / Getty Images

The TechCrunch Top 3 No moonlighting for you: Wipro, an IT services company, fired 300 employees that it found were also working other similar jobs, including for competitors, Manish reports. "Stripe for phone plans": Gradient Ventures and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi backed Gigs with $20 million, Paul writes. The company enables other companies to become a mobile virtual network operator, which is a fancy way of saying mobile phone subscription plans. Cash after chaos: Private equity firm Vector Capital infused $100 million into Malwarebytes, a cybersecurity company, "weeks after laying off 125 employees," Carly writes.

Startups and VC Managing cap tables and equity at high-growth companies can be complicated (and sometimes messy), a fact that founders and employees often discover too late, Ingrid reports. That's given rise to a wave of companies building software to help, and today a European leader in that pack is announcing some funding to fuel its own growth. Ledgy builds cap table management software specifically for companies and their employees working across multiple countries and has raised $22 million. If you've experienced any form of harassment on Twitter in the last couple of years, then you've probably heard of Block Party. And if you haven't, lucky you! The company behind the tool just raised a $4.8 million seed round, reports Amanda. Okay, fine, have it your way. A few more: Enfin, une banque!: Ivorian fintech Julaya raised $5 million in its aim to become the banking partner of choice for businesses in Francophone Africa, Tage reports. Sidestepping the downturn: Anita and Lucas report CoinFund's Seth Ginns’s take on why the crypto downturn has spared early-stage startups — at least so far. Pleasure comes in many shapes: Dame Products expands its product line with its $50 Dip vibrator, following its $7 million raise, Christine reports. Money for something, and clicks for free: SentinelOne launches a $100 million fund to invest in enterprise cybersecurity startups, Carly reports. Is that a slingshot in your pocket or are you just happy to apogee?: Aria reports that SpinLaunch raised a new round to fling payloads into space.

Dear Sophie: My EB-2 priority date will be delayed 2 years! What should I do? Today, Sophie answered three questions about green cards in the EB-1A category for extraordinary ability and multinational managers, EB-2 NIW and with PERM, as well as EB-3 for professionals. Here's the first: Dear Sophie, I was so close! My priority date for my EB-2 application to register permanent residence was just nine days from the date listed in the September 2022 Visa Bulletin, but now the date in the October 2022 Visa Bulletin has gone back more than two years! I'm a software engineer and wanted to get my green card before I change jobs, but now I'm reconsidering my path. The only thing holding me back is I've heard that employees will be fined if they leave their employer before they actually get the green card. What's your advice? — Bumped by the Bulletin Here’s more TC+ to chew on: To da moon: Intuitive Machines bets the moon could be big business, by Alex. Turbulent times call for transparent measures: Amid volatile markets, VCs and startups must embrace transparency, by Becca. Tracking it to improve it: Arcadia wants to bring carbon transparency to ESG claims with Salesforce partnership, by Tim. TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here.  Read More Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

Big Tech Inc. It was a Google features kind of day today. Ivan wrote about the integration of Assistant and Calendar reminders with Tasks, in what he called the "latest step of the app cleanup drive." Then Sarah had one about some new search tools for eco-conscious travelers. Meanwhile, Brian had news from Framework, which is partnering with Google to create a Chromebook that is user-repairable. Card challenger: Manish has a look at UPI, one of India's most popular ways to make mobile payments, and where the company is headed next. We think our header gives you a good indication. Created in California, built in India and Vietnam: JPMorgan analysts say that Apple is poised to move some of its iPhone production to India in a few years and some of its iPad and Apple Watch production to India. Manish has more. Twitch dish: Taylor had a pair of Twitch stories today, reporting that the live streaming service plans to cut subscription revenue for certain top streamers and replace it with an ad revenue program. She also wrote about the company's gambling scam drama. Are those real or fake?: Haje invites you to play around with Spawning AI's new "Have I Been Trained?" site to see what photos were used to train AI search functions. Queen's gambit: We enjoyed Devin's story about cheating, chess and technology’s place in it.

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Newest Jobs from Crunchboard Business Relationship Manager at Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (Middletown, PA, United States) Server and Storage Architecture Supervisor at Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (New Stanton, PA, USA) Lead Policy Researcher (Associate/Full Specialist) - UC Berkeley Labor Center - Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at University of California Berkeley (Berkeley, CA, USA) Web Manager at Silver Oak Wine Cellars, LLC (Healdsburg, CA, USA) Manager of Marketing Technologies at The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) (New York, NY, USA) See more jobs on CrunchBoard Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month.

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Rockstar’s whoopsie means you can get an early look at GTA 6

TechCrunch Newsletter

By Christine Hall and Haje Jan Kamps Monday, September 19, 2022

Happy Monday! We're late to the party, but today this zany YouTube video has been playing on repeat. And maybe we've been practicing a little in front of the mirror. Shh, don't tell anyone. While we have you: stretch. Take a breath. Let's crash into this week and show it who's boss! — Christine and Haje Image Credits: Rockstar Games

The TechCrunch Top 3 Whelp, back to the drawing board: Rockstar Games confirmed that about 90 videos of early development versions of Grand Theft Auto were leaked, Darrell reports. Man on the run?: Kate and Manish paired up to give us the latest on Terraform Labs' Do Kwon. It seems Kwon is not interested in cooperating with investigators regarding the wipeout of Luna cryptocurrency and South Korean authorities have asked for a "red notice," which is fancy Interpol talk for "no visa for you." You say AI, we say deepfake: Deep Nostalgia creator D-ID has a new product that lets you create AI-generated videos from a single image, Ivan writes.

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Startups and VC Everyone wants to get in on the AI image-generation action, but if you've been intimidated by the existing options out there where you have to brush off your 1,337 command-line skillz, you're in luck: Diffusion Bee is a simple Mac app that gives you everything you need to generate your own images from text prompt using the open source AI image-generation framework, Darrell writes. "Over the last 12 months, founders in Africa were reaching out to me for advice and I was investing personally," Byld Ventures' founding partner said in an interview with Tage about its new $15 million fund. "So, I decided to institutionalize it and put a fund together." Moar: Size matters: Connie reports that VC Ann Miura-Ko is looking to help more students answer the question, Is this idea big enough? Like a bank vault, except for your house, and digital: Fintech app Portabl raises $2.5 million to help consumers securely store financial data, reports Dominic-Madori. Burn, baby, bur…Wait, no, please, don't: Haje reports that Pano has a burning desire to apply AI smarts to wildfire detection. Ola pumps the brakes: Manish reports that SoftBank-backed Ola is to cut 200 jobs in India. Oh Deere, that's encouraging: InnerPlant grows with new John Deere–led $16 million funding round to fuel sustainable farming, Christine reports.

Why growth activation matters In his latest TC+ post, growth expert Jonathan Martinez looks at the grim realities of user acquisition. The plain fact is, few of the people who are motivated enough to make it all the way through a registration flow ever create any value. “Approximately 95.87% of iOS users drop off after day 30,” writes Martinez. “As a startup founder, how do you prevent leakage after spending significant resources to acquire people at the top of the funnel?” For starters, product teams need to identify optimal activation metrics that spotlight the right users — the ones who find utility and delight in your offerings. Other awesome TC+ stories published in the last few days:  IPO-sta-cart: Keeping financial tabs on Instacart as it preps its IPO by Alex. The moon or bust: “Just break even” may the worst possible advice for startups in turbulent times by Igor Ryabenkiy. You think it's like this, but really it's like this: YC's Michael Seibel clarifies some misconceptions about the accelerator by Natasha M and Alex. 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! Read More Image Credits: Koldunova Anna / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc. It's not a new iPhone unless something on it is a mystery. In this case, colleagues spoke so much about how to set up the eSIM that Ivan thought a story about it might be popular. He was right. Nothing like a little competition to get the gears grinding, amirite? Upon seeing the myriad of competitors out there set to launch new electric vehicles in the next few years, Tesla is ramping up production in its Texas and Shanghai factories to get ahead of the wave of vehicles, Jaclyn reports. Keep calm and shop on: While Alex was keeping tabs on Instacart's IPO, Aisha wrote about the grocery delivery giant's new feature called Connected Stores, a suite of in-store tech for retailers. Sharing is caring: If you've been wondering if there was a way for you to share Facebook Reels from third-party apps, Facebook has an API for that, Ivan reports. Piling on: The U.S. Department of Justice and the state of California are being given some time to present arguments as part of the Apple-Epic antitrust trial, court rules, Sarah writes. Price check: There has been much talk about last-mile delivery M&A lately, and Paul brought us one more over the weekend: Instabox and Budbee are becoming Instabee in a $1.7 billion merger.

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Newest Jobs from Crunchboard Lead Policy Researcher (Associate/Full Specialist) - UC Berkeley Labor Center - Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at University of California Berkeley (Berkeley, CA, USA) Web Manager at Silver Oak Wine Cellars, LLC (Healdsburg, CA, USA) Manager of Marketing Technologies at The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) (New York, NY, USA) Director of Network Infrastructure and Security at Ventura County Community College District (Camarillo, CA, USA) IT Business Analyst at Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (Middletown, PA, United States) See more jobs on CrunchBoard Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month.

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