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Hey there, you deep-fried morsels of delight. Deep fried, because that’s the thing that made you crunchy. No? Because this is the Daily Crunch?
The TechCrunch team got so competitive in this season of the Great Tech Bake-off, cooking up an incredible amount of scrumptious news over the past 24 hours, that it has taken us damn near 24 hours just to ingest the full tasting menu. Don’t worry, we’ve selected some of the juiciest, most Michelin-starred news for you, served in bite-sized pieces.
This whole food simile really isn’t working, is it. Okay, fine, we’ll workshop this some more in future newsletters, so you have that on the menu. — Christine and Haje
Our most popular dishes
- Phishing expedition: Revolut confirmed that it was hit by a cyberattack, likely the work of a phishing campaign, that ended up exposing the personal data of tens of thousands of users, Carly writes.
- A different kind of fish: While the thought of eating sardines might be gross, this particular Sardine was a sweet treat for Andreessen Horowitz, which backed the company’s $51.5 million Series B round so the company could “sniff out fishy fintech transactions,” Anita writes.
- Data landlocked no more: “Genie effectively enables the world’s first real time CRM.” That’s what Salesforce’s Patrick Stokes, GM of platform, had to say about the company’s new data lake that brings a new approach to how customer data moves around the platform, Ron reports.
Startups and VC
Iconic New York venture capital firm Lerer Hippeau announced $230 million in additional funding across two new funds: LH Seed VIII, which focuses on pre-seed and seed-stage companies, and LH Select IV, which invests in companies from Series A to C, Christine reports. Oh, and Ben Lerer is back at the firm full-time after completing the sale of Group Nine Media to Vox Media earlier this year.
Go on, feast on these:
- LOLWUT: “To be able to shitpost, you have to understand the subject matter really well,” Antimatter founder Jonathan Libov deadpans in an interview with Amanda. “In a sense, shitposting is the highest form of consciousness.”
- Would you like that checking account in Bitcoin?: Nilos unifies crypto and fiat accounts for small businesses, Romain reports.
- Closing the curt-AI-ns: DynamoFL aims to bring privacy-preserving AI to more industries, reports Kyle.
- We’re going to Ibiza. Back to the island: TrovaTrip is a group travel management platform and marketplace, which just raised $15 million, reports Aisha, who also invites everyone to get aboard the Venga Bus.
- Playing on “hard”: Natasha M reports that video game coaching marketplace Metafy cuts 23% of staff despite doubling revenue.
4 employment law mistakes startups can stop making today
There’s no nice way to say this: When it comes to onboarding new employees, most early-stage startups are either inept or uninterested.
At that point in a company’s development, speed and growth are considered more important than basic paperwork. And since most first-time founders have no management experience, problems will eventually arise.
In her second article for TC+, attorney Kristen Corpion explores the risks associated with noncompliance and describes four common mistakes that create problems down the road.
“By being proactive with addressing employment law issues early on, a startup can set itself up to scale more seamlessly,” she writes.
Let us cater to your TC+ desires:
- VC vibe check: 5 questions for venture capital in Q3 2022 by Anna and Alex.
- 📉 More like nether-eum: Was the merge overhyped? Jacquelyn takes a closer look as Ethereum drops more than 17%.
- R…R…Rewind!: Walter brings us the TechCrunch+ roundup with a thing or two you may have missed: Due diligence roadmap, employment law basics, YC’s Michael Seibel.
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!
Big Tech Inc.
Spotify, more like Bookify, launched its audiobook streaming service today with over 300,000 titles. Sarah writes that what is unique about Spotify’s services versus other platforms is “every title is individually priced instead of there being a single, consistent price across all books in the catalog. Spotify intends this to be one of the key differentiators and competitive advantages of its service.”
If you’re an Nvidia fan, Devin, Rebecca and Kyle covered different aspects of the company’s GTC event. We’ve got the new high-end RTX 4090 GPU, the Drive Thor chip for autonomous vehicles, services for training large language models and new products for robotics developers.
More from the cafeteria:
- Stroke!: Peloton’s new rowing machine is finally here. It’s pricey and Brian has the skinny.
- “Winter” came for this crypto company: Manish reports on crypto market maker Wintermute and its unfortunate breach that resulted in a $160 million loss.
- A bitter bite into this Apple: Countries in Asia and Europe will see more expensive prices on the Apple App Store. Though the company did not give a reason for the price hikes, Ivan writes that “it is likely to counter weak local currencies against the dollar.”
- Slack and Quip go into a bar…: And out comes a new collaborative tool aimed at finding something on Slack more easily. Ron has more.
- Amazon dabbles in synthetic fuels: The delivery giant plans to test e-fuels in its diesel trucks next year, Harri writes.
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