Citing 'overreaching activism,' SpaceX reportedly fires workers who decried Musk's behavior

TechCrunch Newsletter

By Christine Hall and Haje Jan Kamps Friday, June 17, 2022

There we go, today it's Friday! We're planning to spend some quality time with a headset and a collection of amazing TechCrunch podcasts — here's our roundup of this week's episodes, enthusiastically curated and collected by Henry. We're taking Monday off for Juneteenth. If you're outside the U.S. (or not fully up to speed inside the U.S., for that matter), this article from the New York Times is a great introduction. Also, Haje appears to be running a fever today, so if some of the jokes in this newsletter make even less sense than usual, let's blame it on him running on three-and-a-quarter brain cells today. — Haje and Christine Image Credits: SpaceX

The TechCrunch Top 3 Getting to Mars with fewer people: Not sure if it is a coincidence, but commenters to our story from yesterday felt the group of SpaceX employees, that circulated an open letter challenging Elon Musk's Twitter behavior, should be fired. Today, Darrell brings us news that this may have indeed happened for some of that employee group. He reports that other employees did not appreciate being inundated with unsolicited offers to join the group and took their own action with corporate. See here for more on Musk's plan for Twitter. Integrating into Alibaba: Cainiao, the logistics service operated by Alibaba, made its debut in Pakistan to support Daraz, an e-commerce company there that Alibaba bought in 2018. Rita reports that it's likely Cainiao will now follow Alibaba as it expands its footprint around the globe. Some fresh perspective for VC: We got double a treat from Dominic-Madori today. She interviewed a number of Black Gen Z VCs who successfully broke into an industry that had traditionally not included them. You can read her interview with Fearless Fund's Arian Simone here or under today's TC+ section.

Startups and VC Today in startups, Brex mentions it is “less suited to meet the needs of smaller customers” and that the company is exiting the small business space while still catering to startups, Mary Ann reports. We're also intrigued by Immutab's half-billion-dollar fund to boost web3 gaming adoption, as Jacquelyn reports today. Also, can we just say, our crypto, blockchain and web3 reporting has really found its stride over the last couple of months, so definitely keep an eye out for more on that front going forward. Start with our web3 tag on the site and work your way through some of our previous stuff, too! The best of the rest: A roundup of the robot revolution: If you are into robots, definitely subscribe to Brian's Actuator newsletter. This week's issue, “Funding the robot revolution,” is particularly good, if you ask us, but he's consistently a great source for keeping a finger on the robotic pulse. Do robots even have pulses? Answers on a postcard or tweet, pls. Reddit? I barely know it: Social news giant Reddit is buying machine learning platform Spell, reports Taylor, presumably to improve its spam hunting and recommendation algos. More bank, less banking: For LatAm's small businesses, Mono aims to be the “first bankingless bank,”  reports Christine. That's a lot of cheddar, you guys: Rohlik bags $231 million even in a market that appears to be a little bored of food delivery startups, Ingrid reports. That's it! No crypto for you! Thai crypto exchange Huobi announced it is closing in July, writes Rita. Investor? I barely know or: (These puns don't even make sense! Don't worry, we'll send him back to bed as soon as this newsletter is done.) We did enjoy this guest column from Tory Reiss, where he explains how he turned their investors into a great source of customer feedback.

Fearless Fund's Arian Simone on why a downturn is business as usual for minority founders In the U.S., Black women are the most entrepreneurial demographic, but they're also more likely to fall into a funding gap when they need access to capital. Out of $330 billion in VC funding that startups received last year, "less than five Black women raised money past the Series A stage, and one of them was Rihanna," reports Dominic-Madori Davis. To help level the playing field for minority women working in tech and consumer packaged goods, entrepreneur Arian Simone co-founded Fearless Fund in 2019 with business advisor Ayana Parsons and actress Keshia Knight Pulliam. The fund has backed 31 companies to date, and despite the chill in the markets, it has no plans to slow down. "Companies that are venture-backed have seen their fair share of horror stories," said Simone. "They don't typically get rattled by the current macroeconomic climate." (TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.) Read More Image Credits: Fearless Fund

Big Tech Inc. Privacy is a good thing, so it's nice to see WhatsApp come out with a new feature that lets you hide your profile photo, bio and "last seen" status from people you don't want to see, Aisha reports. The new privacy opt-in goes by "My contacts except…" and is where you can list those people. We now go across the pond to a pair of stories by Natasha L. In the first one, we find out that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will be coming back to the U.S. The U.K.'s home secretary granted the extradition request after several attempts by the U.S. to bring Assange back to be tried for conspiracy to hack and computer misuse, she reported. In Natasha's other story, she does a deep-dive into the region's data reform study, one of those being replacing cookie pop-ups with browser-related opt-outs. In case it is tl;dr, she says, "plenty of uniquely British red tape is also incoming for your digital operations." Don't forget to read these, too: Snap, uh, snaps to it with new paid tier: If you like being the first to test out or know about new app features, Snap's got something for you, Ivan writes. Blocked: Carly reports that popular proxy service company Rsocks, known to be run by Russian cybercriminals, had its website seized by the U.S. government. Shopping with remotes: Roku and Walmart claim they are the first streaming and retail partnership to enable shoppable ads while streaming your favorite shows, Lauren reported. Well, that prediction came true: Manish writes about TikTok moving all of its U.S. data to Oracle servers after, you guessed it, some new claims surfaced that user data was being accessed from China. Good news for parents of young children: The FDA has cleared the COVID-19 vaccine for children as young as 6 months, Darrell reported.

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SpaceX employees blast Musk’s tweets as a ‘source of distraction and embarrassment’

TechCrunch Newsletter

By Christine Hall and Haje Jan Kamps Thursday, June 16, 2022

It's Fridaa… wait, Thursday? Come on, will this week ever end? Don't worry, we are all right, just looking forward to our impending vacation mode. — Haje and Christine Image Credits: Darrell Etherington

The TechCrunch Top 3 SpaceX employees seeing stars, and not in a good way: Thanks to a group of SpaceX employees, we now know that the company has a so-called no-asshole policy for employee behavior. This group, via an open letter, expressed their concern that leadership, in this case their fearless leader Elon Musk, should be held accountable for his Twitter behavior, Darrell reports. Everyone loves a good map: Not sure if you've caught on yet, but we enjoy reporting on map technology. Ivan reports that Google Maps will now show you live traffic around you in a new Android widget. Going to have to give that a try this weekend. The goat world tour begins: Goat Brand Labs has raised a whopping $50 million in fresh funding as the Indian direct-to-consumer brand aggregator looks to acquire more premium brands and help it scale globally, Manish reports.

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Startups and VC We're pretty excited about the news that Google for Startups is deploying $4 million worth of grant funding to a collection of 40 black-led startups across Europe, as Mike reported today. More of that sort of thing, please. On TechCrunch+, our subscription product, Dominic-Madori writes a fantastic piece on why a downturn is business as usual for minority founders. Well worth a read. On the topic of downturniness, Connie wrote a great piece that includes an interview with Brad Feld and serves as a field guide for startup board members in an up-and-down market. It's a must-read for startup founders and board members who've not seen the inside of a market wobble before. More, always more: Blockchain? More like blockpain: Jacquelyn reports that falling valuations, pulled deals and market volatility are the norm for crypto founders at the moment. Buzz and beep: Wheeled robots can't reach the high shelves easily, but Brian reports Corvus is using drones to track warehouse inventory. Neat! I've got a bridge to sell ya: Real estate tech may have seen a bunch of layoffs, but HomeLight raises $60 million and announces an acquisition, Mary Ann reports. Sorry, you're on mute: Tl;dv built an extension for videoconferencing platforms. It bolts on a suite of capabilities that attendees can use to record, transcribe and timestamp key moments to quickly and easily (re)surface important info after the meeting has ended, Natasha L reports. Get a whiff of this. Or don't: If you like an exasperated rant with your afternoon read, Haje has you covered, with his verbal shrug about Pzaz's "eau de caffeine."

3 climate tech VCs share how they find, vet and support carbon-slashing startups This week at TC Sessions: Climate 2022, Tim De Chant spoke to three active climate tech investors to learn more about how they identify new opportunities and what they're looking for at the moment. Kiersten Stead, managing partner, DCVC Bio Christian Garcia, partner, Breakthrough Energy Ventures Pae Wu, general partner at SOSV, CTO of IndieBio "Our job is to take risk, to a degree, and to risk it on teams that we think are truly talented," Stead said. "So that's one piece of the equation," she added. "But the other side of the equation is that the world doesn't receive the benefit of anything unless it can scale, unless it's fundable, unless there's a great market with it, and it's profitable." (TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.) Read More Image Credits: TechCrunch

Big Tech Inc. Normally, we get into the Big Tech news and find it typically fits into a handful of buckets, but to our delight, there were a lot of great stories today that run across a number of industries. Let's dig into some, shall we? Starting over in TechCrunch+, Alex has been closely monitoring the ugly public markets climate for a while now and waiting, perhaps with bated breath, for it to get better and for a long list of companies poised for IPO action to pull the trigger. We are happy to report that it happened, and the company that opened "the IPO window" was not one that he expected. Mastercard is now in the clear in India, Manish reported. The country lifted a ban on the credit card giant after it deemed the company had sufficiently complied with its data storage requirements. Meanwhile: Browsing an app is soooo yesterday: Sarah writes that our smartphone's home screen will be the next big social platform thanks to widgets and push notifications. Tesla plays "The Price Is Right": Weren't electric vehicles supposed to get cheaper so everyone would be enticed to buy them? Tesla didn't seem to get that message, and instead is increasing the prices across its lineup, Rebecca reported. I guess if you are already spending $99,990 for a Model S, spending $104,990 isn't a stretch, but sheesh. Samsung gets on the mobile wallet train: Aisha reported that the tech is combining Samsung Pay and Samsung Pass together under the Samsung Wallet umbrella so you can find your cards and certain car makers' keys all in one place. Going once, going twice: You've enjoyed the energy rush you get when you are the final bidder on eBay, and now you can do it live, Aisha also writes. The e-commerce marketplace is launching an interactive live shopping platform and will start with rare trading cards. Speaking of live shopping, Amazon is doing it, too, starting June 21, Ivan reported. Don't forget to set a calendar reminder for Amazon Prime Day on July 12 and 13. To infinity jobs and beyond: Microsoft has a new mission for its employee portal, Viva. The company is adding job support, starting with sales, so that users can find all of their tools in one centralized location, Ron writes.

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