Emmy Gengler Contributor Emmy Gengler is the CEO of Softjourn, a global technology services provider with offices in California, Ukraine and Poland. “The calls and texts started early, asking for power supplies and tools for fixing engines,” said Katia Ryzha, who lives and works in Ivano-Frankivsk, a small city in Western Ukraine. Since the war
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PT, subscribe here. Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Thursday, March 31, 2022! It’s a beautiful day in our neck of the woods, and we have a great lineup of news for you today,
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Welcome to our Friday show! Our regular co-host Natasha was off this time, so Mary Ann and Alex linked arms with our producer Grace to blast our way through the news of the week. As
Meta and Sama, its main subcontractor for content moderation in Africa, are facing a lawsuit in Kenya over alleged unsafe and unfair working conditions, if they fail to meet 12 demands on workplace conditions brought before them. Nzili and Sumbi Advocates, the law firm representing Daniel Motaung, a former Sama employee that was laid-off for
In the pandemic era, when digital storefronts have become a matter of course for retailers, data analytics is proving its worth. Tools that analyze customer data can help better maintain stock, build a supply chain, detect fraud and predict which products might appeal to particular customer segments. Those advantages — as well as their ability
Fashion rental platforms had a tough time during the pandemic as in-person events evaporated and office workers ditched their smarts to collectively slip into comfy loungewear (aka Zoom pants). But as the pandemic recedes (hopefully!) — and with growing focus on the environmental and social costs of fast fashion, the future for clothes rentals is
Last year, Apple proved it could still surprise when it announced a Self Service Repair plan. The offering is still limited, and the company — as ever — recommends users take their products in to get fixed, rather than potentially damaging them further. Even so, it marked a major shift for a company that has
Steve Bartel Contributor Steve Bartel is the CEO of Gem, a talent engagement platform backed by Greylock, Accel and ICONIQ. Over the last several years, an increasing number of companies have pledged to hire a more diverse workforce and begun releasing their diversity numbers annually. The results have been a mixed bag at best. With so
With SaaS becoming the standard for most business software, the security demands on SaaS companies are constantly increasing. Add users who need their data sandboxed from others or kept in a specific geographic region and the workload for development and security teams only increases. Antimatter, which is coming out of stealth today and launching its
TikTok and Snapchat need more parental controls, a letter signed by 44 attorneys general stated. Yesterday, the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) sent a series of concerns to the two social apps, which are commonly used among teens. The attorneys general cited a range of problems they had with the social media apps, including,
Google announced a major update to Google Meet today that includes a number of long-requested features and plenty that you didn’t even know you needed. There is a long list here, but the main additions are likely in-meeting reactions to give immediate, updates to the Meet companion mode, emoji-based feedback, the ability to use Meet
Last year, Visa surprised the European fintech industry as it announced that it would acquire Tink for €1.8 billion ($2.15 billion at the time of the deal). Klarna now wants to compete directly with Tink with a new business unit that has its own brand — Klarna Kosma. Like Tink, Klarna offers an open banking
YouTube TV is catching up to other streaming apps including Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Prime Video and others by finally adding support for picture-in-picture on iOS devices running iOS 15 or higher. First introduced to iPad users with iOS 13 then to iPhone with iOS 14 in 2020, YouTube has been slow to adopt this
Tesla said it’s planning a second stock split in roughly two years, giving a lift to shares that had been trading lower on news Covid-19 is again disrupting operations. Ed Ludlow reports on “Bloomberg The Open.”
‘Every morning starts with a check-in on Slack with all the colleagues’ Rebecca Bellan 8 hours The COVID-19 pandemic taught the world how to work from home, but Russia’s war in Ukraine has taught the employees at Delfast, a Ukrainian e-bike startup, how to work from bomb shelters, while on the move and under threat
More Americans than ever want to escape the rut of a low-paying job, but quitting to pursue a new profession is a risky proposition. Pursuit has raised $10M in funding for a promising and potentially self-sustaining new model for training up new tech workers in which learners only pay they land a real position. The
Instagram today is rolling out over a half dozen new messaging features, following promises late last year that its DM (direct message) inbox would get a significant upgrade in 2022. The changes include the ability to share music previews in DMs, the ability to send a message silently, the ability to see who’s online to
President Joe Biden will trigger the Defense Production Act to secure U.S. sources of critical minerals and materials like lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite and manganese that are used to make batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage. The order is in response to spiking gas prices and supply chain constraints caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Signaling its ambitions in the process automation market, Microsoft has acquired Minit, a Bratislava, Slovakia-originated process mining technology vendor, for an undisclosed sum, the companies announced today. Microsoft says that the purchase will “further empower” it to “help … customers digitally transform” by creating a more complete picture of their processes — and identifying which
French startup Deepki has raised a $166 million Series C funding round (€150 million). The company is building a software-as-a-service platform for the real estate industry. It’s a monitoring and analytics product that helps you take better decisions. Companies using Deepki can track and analyze ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) criteria, starting with carbon emissions
If you’ve never picked a raspberry, well, first of all that’s too bad, because a fresh raspberry is a beautiful thing. But second, and more immediately relevant in this case, you would not know that there is a technique to it that, surprisingly, robots aren’t super good at because they tend to be… crushy. But
Managing Apple devices can be a chore for small businesses — it takes time to set up each device, and it can be difficult to manage them in the field without being invasive, especially when it comes to “bring your own” devices. Last year, Apple introduced a new program in beta called Apple Business Essentials
The cameras, lenses, and lighting equipment to shoot even a relatively modest production can cost in the millions of dollars. Rental is often the name of the game, but the latticework of mom-and-pop equipment rentals can be hard to navigate. BoxedUp takes a fresh look at the space, creating a rental marketplace — a Turo
Cross-border payments platform dLocal is one of the most notable Latin American startups in recent history — the company became Uruguay’s first unicorn in 2020 and went public on the Nasdaq in 2021. dLocal’s founders had first launched AstroPay, another digital payments platform that now has over five million users. Now, dLocal and AstroPay co-founder
Tushop, a social-commerce platform in Kenya that enables the group-buying of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs), is set for expansion across Nairobi after raising $3 million in pre-seed funding in a round led by 4DX Ventures. Founded last year by Cathy Chepkemboi, also the CEO, Tushop uses community-leaders, who collect orders from their neighbors and also
As more people moved to remote work over the past few years, there was also an uptick in people choosing freelance or contract work, leaving companies to figure out how to manage that worker segment. If you are one of those having to find work and manage payments, tax filings and invoices, there’s help from
Apple has dropped a requirement for a separate binary which it had sought to impose on Dutch dating apps wanting to take up a legal entitlement to use non-Apple payment tech to process their in-app purchases. Previously the company had argued that a separate binary was a “straightforward prerequisite” which did not impede its claimed
Shared micromobility company Tier Mobility said on Wednesday it has acquired Fantasmo, a U.S.-based computer vision-powered e-scooter parking startup whose tech Tier had been trialing in multiple cities in Europe. Tier will bring on all of Fantasmo’s 15 staff members and continue to invest in and develop what will now be an in-house Camera Positioning
The second day of Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 Demo Day is now behind us, and the TechCrunch team is recovering from watching hundreds of pitches in quick succession. Every accelerator demo day is a marathon, but the American group has worked with more startups over time, making its pitch sessions a veritable deluge of new
Twitter has announced that it’s expanding access to its “Professional Accounts” profile setting to all users globally. Up until now, users have had to apply to convert their account into a professional one. Now, everyone on the platform can opt into a professional account directly from their account settings. A professional account, which Twitter refers