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Before he was the founder and CEO of Patreon, Jack Conte was a musician, mostly posting videos of his songs on YouTube (which he still does). Now, running a company that helps creators earn predictable monthly income from fan memberships, Conte is pissed off at Meta. As both Facebook and Instagram make changes to emphasize

Pony.ai, a Chinese autonomous vehicle company valued at $8.5 billion as of late, has sued two former employees over alleged trade secret infringement. The lawsuit is arriving months after Frank (Zhenhao) Pan and Youhan Sun, two former technical leaders at Pony’s autonomous trucking business in the U.S., resigned to start a competitor called Qingtian Truck.

The day before Lyft shut down its in-house rental service and laid off close to 60 employees, the team in charge of the program was consumed by what they thought was a much bigger problem. Throughout June, the rentals team had attempted to get the service up and running in New York without success. The

Anitra St. Hilaire Contributor I’ve been the first human resources leader at two successful startups. In both instances, I’ve built the human resources function and people teams from the ground up. Doing this from scratch means you have to consider everything, from compliance to compensation. Often, processes and procedures just fell into place before I

In spite of the so-called Great Resignation, wages haven’t risen as dramatically as some economists anticipated. About 41% of workers recently surveyed by Willis Towers Watson say that they’re living paycheck to paycheck, while the Bureau of Economic Advisers reports that personal savings rates reached a seven-year low in April — reflecting the dire financial

Spur Capital Partners, an investor in venture capital funds, is out to raise $200 million for its seventh core fund. So far, it has secured nearly $74 million to bet on early-stage VCs, per a securities filing. Who or what is Spur betting on, exactly? Over the years, the investor claims it has indirectly backed

Happy August! Or, as many of my neighbors are fond of saying: Happy Fogust. San Francisco sits on a peninsula surrounded by chilly water, so when warm summer air rushes in, thick fog obscures the landscape. Some days, the blanket is so thick, visibility is just a few hundred feet. It’s an apt metaphor for

We knew it was happening, but Meta has confirmed that its long-standing chief operating officer (COO) Sheryl Sandberg has departed from her role as of yesterday (August 1). News emerged on June 1 that Sandberg would be stepping down after more than 14 years in position and would be replaced by chief growth officer Javier

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Last week we said that you needed to pay attention to the public markets, and we weren’t kidding. It was a huge week for earnings — with notes from all over, including the

Today, Disney+ released a new trailer for the Star Wars series “Andor,” while also revealing that the premiere will be postponed to September 21 to accommodate a three-episode premiere. So not only will the series be the longest live-action Disney+ season with 12 episodes, it will also be the first time Disney+ has had a

Bolt Mobility, the Miami-based micromobility startup co-founded by Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt, appears to have vanished without a trace from several of its U.S. markets.  In some cases, the departure has been abrupt, leaving cities with abandoned equipment, unanswered calls and emails and lots of questions. Bolt has stopped operating in at least five

It takes a veritable army to make TechCrunch Disrupt — which takes place October 18–20 in San Francisco — the well-oiled experience that savvy startuppers have come to know and love. And we couldn’t do it nearly as well without our incredible volunteers. If you’re looking for a no-budget way to experience Disrupt up close

As I walked the halls of the massive Boston Convention Center this week for AWS re:Inforce, the division’s annual security event, I spoke to a number of vendors, and one theme was clear: Cloud security really is a shared responsibility. That idea has been around for some time, but it particularly hit home this week

Welcome back to Chain Reaction. Last week, we looked at Musk holding onto doge. This week, we’re talking about where all of this crypto VC money is possibly gonna go. To get this in your inbox every Thursday, you can subscribe on TechCrunch’s newsletter page. maybe, it’s all a game? A weekly dispatch from the

The runaway success of Axie Infinity and StepN has convinced a flurry of entrepreneurs that web3 gaming, where the ownership of in-game assets is in the hands of users via blockchain adoption rather than a centralized platform, is the future. Some of the biggest hits in the space to date reward users with tokens that

It’s been nearly a year since satellite Internet-of-Things connectivity provider Swarm was acquired by SpaceX, and Swarm co-founder and CEO Sara Spangelo (now senior director of Satellite Engineering at SpaceX) is ready to talk about what Swarm’s been up to in that time. SpaceX is not known to be a super acquisitive company, so I

A day after Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), Kenya’s monetary authority, said that Chipper Cash and Flutterwave were not licensed to operate in the East African country, the regulator has directed all financial institutions to cease doing business with the two fintechs. The CBK’s bank supervision deputy director, Matu Mugo, directed all regulated banks, microfinance

More smartphone struggles, as reports trickle in for Q2. Per Canalys, global shipments dropped 9% for the quarter, reversing a brief recovery for the category, whose woes have only been amplified by the pandemic, ensuing shutdowns, supply chain issues and persistent economic uncertainty. The 287 million units represent the lowest figure since Q2 2020, when

In this current climate, Roku needed a win. Despite the company reporting total net revenue growth of 18% year over year to $764 million– a nice increase from $737.7 million last quarter — the company missed Wall Street’s expectations. Analysts expected revenue of $805 million, which would have reflected 25% year-over-year growth. What is to

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Why, hello there, and welcome back to another installment of the Daily Crunch! It’s lovely to have you here with me. Also, give Freelance Whales a listen. I discovered the band when

Frugal founders and savvy shoppers take heed. TechCrunch Disrupt, which takes place in person on October 18–20 — and online October 21 — can be a serious boon to your business. But our early-bird pricing disappears in a cloud of ruffled feathers on Friday, July 29 at 11:59 p.m. PT. You have just 48 hours

Sequoia, the world’s most influential venture fund, has made its maiden investment in Pakistan, joining a growing list of high profile investors who have backed young firms in the South Asian market in the past one year. Islamabad-headquartered startup Dbank said on Thursday it has raised $17.6 million in a seed round, the largest in

Facebook is trying to be TikTok, but now, Twitter is bringing us back a little bit of Facebook (or LiveJournal or Myspace). Some users are reporting that they can now post Twitter statuses, which lets them tag posts like they’re retro MySpace moods. Some of these statuses include “Spoiler alert,” “Shower thoughts,” “Picture of the

Microsoft announced its fourth-quarter results Tuesday, missing Wall Street’s expectations. The company reported it had $51.9 billion in sales for the quarter that ended June 30, an increase of 12% year-over-year. Analysts were expecting around $52.5 billion. Net income inched up 2% to $16.74 billion. This is considered the slowest revenue growth for Microsoft since 2020.

Cruise, the General Motors subsidiary dedicated to commercializing autonomous vehicles, saw a jump in expenses during the second quarter as the company launched its first commercial robotaxi service in San Francisco. Cruise’s expenses hit around $550 million compared to $332 million during the same quarter of last year. Operating losses in the second quarter topped

Inflation is up and consumer confidence is down, which is why e-commerce startups that hope to weather the ongoing downturn should expand their product offerings. Does that sound counterintuitive? “The more complementary and additive a product is to your catalog, the larger your cart size and the more likely a customer is to return,” says

Boston Micro Fabrication — BMF among friends — is one of the biggest names in 3D-printing teeny-tiny things. The company just announced a Series C to continue its journey, as it announces it doubled its install base over the past year. “Our business has scaled strongly, and we plan to use the new capital to

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Happy new week! Christine went on a well-deserved break, so you’ll have to deal with a double dose of my awful puns and worse headline shenanigans for a bit. Oh! And we

This wasn’t a story you were expecting to read today, nor was it one I was expecting to write. Heck, judging from their interviews on the subject, it’s probably fair to say the team of mechanical engineers at Rice University weren’t expecting for their work to take them down this path, either. And yet, here

There are plenty of autonomous driving vehicles testing on the roads of Shenzhen today: Pony.ai, Baidu, DeepRoute, AutoX, you name it. But these vehicles are not really the unmanned vehicles tech upstarts envision for the future, as they have been required to operate with a safety driver behind the wheel. A set of provisions introduced