Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Pentagon locks down unsecured email server that exposed sensitive military data

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By Christine Hall

Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Hello! If you had the day off for President’s Day, we hope it was a peaceful transition into work today. Please send good vibes to Haje as he figures out what to do with his damaged car (it's a long story). Meanwhile, today's Black History Month recommendation comes from Henry on "Blues Legacies and Black Feminism" by Angela Davis. Let's dig in. — Christine

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Image Credits: Glowimages / Getty Images (Image has been modified)

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • What happens when something is unsecured?: Well, unfortunately for the U.S. Department of Defense, it meant that sensitive military emails get leaked, Zack reports.
  • "That's no moon — it's a space station": Vast makes its first acquisition of Launcher in a move that brings it closer to building artificial gravity space stations in low Earth orbit. Aria has more.
  • Success breeds IPO: Shared vehicle company Lime reported its first profitable year, with Rebecca writing that "Lime has figured out how to make shared micromobility a sustainable business." So what happens when you are good at what you do? The company is now eyeing an initial public offering.

Startups and VC

FreshToHome, an Indian meat startup going after a piece of the country's food delivery market, has a new backer in Amazon, which led a $104 million round in funding. Manish writes that this investment marks the largest check Amazon's Smbhav Venture Fund has written thus far. Meanwhile, FreshToHome has made a name for itself, expanding its presence by 100% over the past year.

Now here are five more:

5 tactics for managing paid customer acquisition during a downturn

When economic conditions change, companies adjust their marketing tactics: When the pandemic began, junk mail volumes fell dramatically. After vaccines rolled out, mailboxes were once again full of irrelevant offers.

Paid marketing is a core tactic for early-stage startups, but this downturn is a good time for founders to reexamine customer acquisition strategies, says Brian Rothenberg, an investment partner at early-stage VC fund Defy.

“Capital is more expensive now than it's been in years,” he writes in TC+. “Where else can you invest to drive higher returns and to build a more durable competitive advantage?”

Two more from the TC+ team:

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!

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5 tactics for managing paid customer acquisition during a downturn image

Image Credits: akinbostanci / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc.

It was "game on" for hackers today. First, some hackers allegedly stole Activision games and employee data, Lorenzo reports. The company said the breach happened in December and was confirmed by a gaming blog. Stay tuned for more on that. Also, Coinbase is claiming that the same hackers that targeted hundreds of other companies, the so-called 0ktapus hackers, stole some of its employees' information, Carly writes.

In the ongoing conversation about how ChatGPT is taking over the world, Mark Harris weaves for us the web of nonprofits accelerating Sam Altman's AI vision.

And we have five more for you:

Read more stories on TechCrunch.com

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Friday, February 17, 2023

Dronamics lands $40M pre-Series A for cargo drones that 'can cross all of Europe in 12 hours or less'

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By Christine Hall and Haje Jan Kamps

Friday, February 17, 2023

Okay, NOW it's Friday. Got any fun plans for the long weekend? Haje is moving house (ugh), and Christine is browsing GIFs of puppies until her battery runs out. Probably.

Most people aren't straight-up racist, but it turns out unconscious biases sneak into our brains in all sorts of nasty, sneaky little ways. Stereotypes and prejudices exist, and being aware of yours is a good place to start working on. The Cornerstone Foundation has a free 30-minute course you can take to uncover and work on them.

We hope you have a fine Monday and don't miss us too much while we are off for the holiday. Look for our return on Tuesday. — Christine and Haje

 image

Image Credits: Dronamics

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a drone: Dronamics raised $40 million in a pre-Series A round (or really big seed round if you'd rather look at it that way) to start an autonomous cargo drone airline in Europe, Mike writes. It has some ambitious goals, too: The CEO says it will be able to deliver to all of Europe in the same day from a single warehouse.
  • Preempted: Some Disney+ Hotstar customers were none too pleased when the stream went down in the middle of a popular cricket match. Manish has more, including details that this type of thing is not an isolated incident.
  • Pointing fingers: Carly and Zack report that a data breach has Atlassian and Envoy briefly blaming each other for what went down that led to thousands of Atlassian employees having their data exposed.

Startups and VC

With so many fintechs laying off staff, it can be easy to assume that the entire industry is in distress, but that's not the case. In fact, some companies are finding opportunity in the masses of layoffs, Mary Ann discovers. Here's who is hiring. Meanwhile, Natasha M and Alyssa collected a comprehensive list of 2023 tech layoffs.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has charged the collapsed blockchain firm and stablecoin operator Terraform Labs and its founder Do Kwon with defrauding U.S. investors who purchased the digital assets Terra USD and Luna, Kate reports.

And we have five more for you:

So that founder you backed turned out to be problematic. Now what?

Early-stage investors don’t closely manage the entrepreneurs they shower with cash, even when things go off the rails. And in some cases, they may not be able to exert much authority.

Assuming a VC makes an investment via a SAFE note, “if that stake hasn't converted to equity, they don't have much say if things start to go wrong,” reports Rebecca Szkutak.

To learn more about how investors handle problematic CEOs, she spoke to:

  • Cameron Newton, founder and general partner, Relevance Ventures
  • Eric Bahn, co-founder and general partner, Hustle Fund
  • Angela Lee, venture partner, professor, Columbia Business School

We also have a few more for the weekend:

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

So that founder you backed turned out to be problematic. Now what? image

Image Credits: retrorocket / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc.

The pandemic forced us to find new ways to collaborate in a remote workplace, and some companies have been able to leverage that need. Rita reports that Feishu, ByteDance's Slack-like tool, was one of them, generating $100 million in 2022. She writes, "ByteDance's heavy investment in Feishu is telling of the state of enterprise software in China. At a time when Silicon Valley investors are heralding product-led growth — services that convert users through their products, as exemplified by Calendly — software in China still largely counts on sales, marketing and services to recruit users."

Now here's five more for you:

Read more stories on TechCrunch.com

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