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Twitter is in crisis these days. Under new owner Elon Musk, the service has lost more than half its staff through layoffs and quitting, made erratic moves in its product and platform strategies and is facing up to reports about its financial state.

That disruption, in true tech industry style, has led to the emergence of a plethora of alternatives, some still in germination and some fully formed and waiting for their moment in the spotlight.

Among them, one of the leaders that has emerged is Mastodon — a network created on the ActivityPub protocol that runs servers itself and allows others to join and/or establish their own servers to engage with and see each others’ content.

Eugen Rochko, Mastodon’s creator — and currently sole full-time employee — said in an interview with TechCrunch that the service has ratcheted up numbers very fast, and it now has 2.5 million monthly active users across no less than 8,600 different servers. Mastodon operates a couple of these directly, and the biggest of them, mastodon.social, has 881,000 registered users, 210,000 of them active.

Rochko has closed Mastodon’s servers for new signups. It’s a move he described as a “victimless decision,” because there are so many other places to register an account and still interact with the wider Mastodon universe. Nonetheless, the move has created a curious scarcity/demand situation: People and organizations have contacted Rochko asking for access to getting accounts on his servers anyway.

“The main reason that the registration is closed right now is just that it is a big burden to the DevOps, to scale up, beyond the number of users [we have now],” he said. “I don’t want to say, ‘oh, the software is not good enough to scale’ or whatever. That’s not really the reason, it’s just a question of not having a dedicated DevOps employee right now. I can’t run all of these organizational things and the rest. It’s just easier to close registrations and ensure that the people who are already on there have a good quality of service, instead of allowing more people to sign up, and then it slows down. And then I have to stay up, sleepless nights fixing things.

“The decentralized nature, and the fact that there’s plenty of other servers to choose from to sign up on means that it’s kind of a victimless decision to make.”

Now Rochko is eyeing up the next steps for his operation.

Mastodon as it currently exists is set up as a not-for-profit organization, financed for the most part by a Patreon account that Rochko set up that currently brings in $31,000 each month — a figure that he says “has risen dramatically over the past month… from $7,000.”

Mastodon is going to remain not-for-profit, Rochko said, but it’s looking at what he describes as a split model, “like Mozilla’s, where the nonprofit will continue working on the core product, which will remain open source, nonprofit and so on, and we might start a for-profit side business for software as a service, first to provide hosting for Mastodon’s for those who desire that.”

The aim, he said, is “a sustainable and fair business… we would do just the hosting and the server would be completely under your control. And obviously, we would allow you to take take your data and move it to your own hosting provider in the future, or migrate from another hosting provider, and so on.

Unlike the approach taken by WordPress, there are no plans to incorporate ads as part of the hosted service, he said. It’s a position that seems to come out of his own sentiments about them, but he doesn’t dismiss them altogether.

“You have to consider that the fediverse nature of the network,” he said. “Anyone could develop another platform, using the same ActivityPub protocol [that Mastodon does], but with completely different software around it, with different expectations and different features. And if they wanted to build ads into it, they could, in theory.

“The question is only as a user, would you go to a service that has ads, and to make those ads effective, the service keeps track of your interests and location? Or would you just go to another one that doesn’t have that? We, Mastodon, are not interested in the ad business and implementing ads into our code. But as I said, it’s free and open source, so anyone could modify it. They’d do it at their own risk, with different business models.”

As for those operators of Mastodon servers, he said, he leaves it open to them, but ironically favors something not unlike what Musk has floated for Twitter itself.

“I think that I see a method in the sort of framework for building interoperable social media networks; you could think of an individual server as a separate social network, like Tumblr, or Instagram,” he said. “With interoperability built in straightaway, I think that it makes sense that they would be able to explore different business models, or maybe build out different features. I think that probably the fairest model that could appear in the ecosystem would be the paid accounts model. This is something in the past App.net tried to do but, I feel, did not succeed. It wasn’t clear if that was because of the paid account part, or because they didn’t really build out a good flagship product.”

He revealed that he also has been talking with investors, although for the most part it seems that a lot of those who want to give him money don’t really understand what he’s trying to do, with one recurring theme being the idea of further commercializing the platform.

“Over the years, I’ve definitely received a lot of unprompted cold contacts from various VCs. I’ve previously ignored them, but now we have Felix [Hlatky], who works as basically a CFO, but he doesn’t have the title officially, yet. Now I forward those to him and then he tries talking with them, or sometimes I tune into the calls,” he said. “We’ve tried talking to some VCs about this hosting business thing in the past couple of weeks. I have to say, though, they’re interested in somehow getting into the main product and they’re not so much interested in a sustainable hosting business. So, VCs are not going to help here. We’re not letting them into the main product in any way. So yeah, we’re probably going to have to go with an angel investor, or just crowdfunding the hosting business separately or just, I don’t know, maybe personal funds would be enough. That’s not entirely clear.”

Mastodon has been notable for how it’s been picking up attention in the wake of Twitter’s drama — so much so that it triggered a new Musk-era rule forbidding links to competing social networks, suspending Mastodon’s Twitter presence in the process.

It’s also interesting because of how it’s approaching the social space.

Mastodon is based on an open source, “federated” concept, where different servers use the same protocol to speak to each other and share content; server operators oversee the activity of the users registered and hosted on their respective servers.

It might sound a little confusing to the uninitiated, but there are tools out there to help import your Twitter world over to Mastodon and retain much of the same experience.

To follow the metaphor, the servers become like a herd of animals, Mastodons even, distinct but generally moving in the same direction. To move away from the metaphor, though, Mastodon’s ethos is far from extinct: As we’ve detailed, open source is something that a number of other social media platforms, Twitter among them, are also contemplating quite seriously.

Mastodon in particular seems to have really struck a chord. The platform’s mobile apps are seeing about 4,000 downloads per day on average, but at one recent peak saw downloads of 149,000 on Android and 235,000 on iOS.

This spike took place, Rochko said, over the days when Twitter announced a huge swathe of job cuts that wiped out entire departments at the company, including those managing communications with the media but also those working on moderation, security and curation, as well as a number of technical teams.

Indeed, that inverse variation — Twitter’s fall equals Mastodon’s rise — is one that is playing out very well for the latter right now.

The question is whether it will last. To be sure, Twitter’s ups and downs as a platform have been a hallmark of the company almost from its start, so much so that many have wondered if it’s better thought of as a utility, not a business.

Regardless, Twitter has stayed and grown. And although this latest bout has, for many, felt like “the last straw”, only time will tell if everything settles down and users eventually accept whatever becomes the new status quo, or if meaningful change in social platforms really is coming.

In any case, sometimes evolutions in tech seem to happen overnight, but sometimes they take years. (Read more about how Rochko spent those years over on TC+.)

For Mastodon, the financial aspect is one that continues to hover over it, regardless.

For one, it’s played a part in how the company has grown. Rochko may be the sole full-time employee, but there are five others working freelance as moderators on Mastodon’s own servers, in addition to Felix Hlatky on the financial front, named on Mastodon’s about page. One focus has been to figure out how to bring on more people in a stable way.

The $31,000 per month he makes through Patreon is not really enough, nor stable enough, to finance a staff, Rochko said, but he has been thinking about a secondary level of business to generate a more stable income for the business, operating a second service where it provides services to host Mastodon servers for others.

“I’m the only full-time employee, and the rest — five people — are contractors at the moment,” he said. “I’m looking to expand the full-time team and have been working on some job listings. It’s kind of a slow process. I wish I could do it a lot faster. But it’s a new frontier for a company that has been a one-person venture for six years. It has been fine so far, but now we need more people.”

How Mastodon is scaling amid the Twitter exodus by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch

We made it! Another year (nearly!) complete. Go team!

The end of the year means many things — holidays, food, family, reflection, etc. Around these parts, it also means it’s time for the TechCrunch Favorite Things list.

Each year Team TechCrunch puts together a big list of the things that, when we look back over the last 12 months, stand out as being particularly great. As always, we don’t really restrict the definition of “thing”; maybe it’s a game that ate all your free time, or a gadget that helped you do your job, or a song that lived in your brain for weeks on end. Podcasts. People. Concepts. We’re deliberately very flexible with it, and it tends to result in an eclectic list of very good stuff.

Why do we do it? I’m… not sure! We started doing it one year and had fun, and it’s sort of just become a tradition. And if we don’t do it, people ask why. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Maybe it’ll inspire some last-minute gift ideas; maybe you’ll find something you want to look into for yourself. Whatever the case, enjoy!

Greg Kumparak | Editor

Kirby and the Forgotten Land

When my four-year-old expressed an interest in video games, I wanted his first game to be something we could actively play together. A friend recommended Kirby and the Forgotten Land, and it’s honestly the perfect suggestion.

It’d be a fun enough game played solo — a solid, beautifully designed platformer. But for someone playing through with a kid, it’s a masterpiece. Player 1 is Kirby, Player 2 is “Bandana Waddle Dee.” My son always insists on being Kirby and… well, he’s four, so he wins. Fortunately the Player 2 role I’ve been perma-assigned never feels like a tacked-on sidekick; unlike Kirby, you can’t gobble up enemies to take on their powers, but you can kick butt in your own right all while subtly playing guardian angel/healer for Player 1 who doesn’t agree they need a health item and maybe a nap.

Despite playing for months now, we’ve yet to beat the last few levels. We keep playing through our favorites from the first half, instead — he has no interest in the game being “over,” and, honestly, I’m in no rush either.

Kyle Wiggers | Senior Reporter

Steam Deck

Valve’s Steam Deck is less unobtainable than it once was, and thank the gaming gods for that. I picked one up a few months back and it’s single-handedly gotten me back into gaming, absolutely no exaggeration.

I’ve historically been a console guy for the ease and simplicity of the experience. I briefly went the PC gaming route and, while I’ll admit that it has its appeal, I’ve burned myself out spending hours reseating RAM, messing with drivers and trying to figure out which mods might be crashing my Skyrim install. The nice thing about the Steam Deck is, while it benefits from the wealth of PC gaming resources and tools out there — it’s a Linux-running machine, after all — there’s not much tinkering required to get it up and running out of the box. Sure, you can install mods, custom utilities and the like, but especially if most of your game library lives on Steam, the Deck will deftly handle the various necessary background management processes, delivering a flow that feels familiar to this longtime console gamers.

My one nag is compatibility. The Steam Deck’s compatibility layer for Windows games, Proton, does an exceptional job for the most part, but every so often I run into a fatal error that take eons to troubleshoot. (Recently, it was with Borderlands 3, which refused to launch despite my best efforts.) To Valve’s credit, Proton receives regular updates and Steam has a generous refund policy.

“Crying in H Mart”

I’m late to this, but I picked up Michelle Zauner’s “Crying in H Mart” at a community bookstore in Boston recently and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. To pile on the praise, Zauner’s memoire is in equal parts wonderfully and tragically descriptive, relaying her experiences growing up as the daughter of a Korean immigrant mother who receives a terminal cancer diagnosis. Zauner walks us through life in small-town Eugene, Oregon, where her desire to escape from the isolating suburbs fueled her resentment and rebellion against her mother, and through young adulthood as Zauner tries to pick up the pieces before her mother passes.

It’s an emotional roller coaster to be sure, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t spotlight the ethereal-sounding dishes mentioned in each chapter. You see, Zauner and her mother were gastronomes — it’s one of the few passions that they shared in common — and Zauner doesn’t skimp on the depictions of Korean delicacies like jjamppong (spicy mixed-up seafood noodle soup), gyeranjjim (steamed eggs) and san-nakji (raw octopus). “Crying in H Mart” has inspired a few dinners in this household over the last several months, and I’m sure it will continue to for many years to come.

Devin Coldewey | Science Editor

Elden Ring

Now that this game is comfortably seated among the all-time greats, it seems superfluous to sing its praises, but in a year full of great games this one truly stood out. Awe-inspiring and generous even with its faults, Elden Ring further cemented the potential for games to be truly original and inspired art.

Warhammer 40K novels

Normally I affect the 19th-century western canon aspect, but for whatever reason this year (I was curious about the fan film “Astartes,” as I recall), I picked up a book from the Horus Heresy prequel series to the Warhammer 40K world, a fandom I’ve always disdained. Like a fool! It’s awesome and these books are awesome: tragic space operas with the confidence of decades of established lore. Impossible to find many in print but that’s why I have…

Kobo Libra 2 (+ origami case)

I have lots of e-readers but this one has become my standby for its great display, highly adjustable light, ease of customization and loading, and a clever folding case that does triple duty as protection, stand and ergonomic grip. I’ve probably read like 8,000 pages on this thing.

This specific weekly desk calendar

I’m really bad at tracking time and appointments and meetings, and I’ve tried lots of stuff. I just forget everything. What actually ended up working for me is this weekly paper desk calendar. It’s kind of prosaic, but it’s exactly the size and style I want, and turns out what I needed to get more organized during a very busy year. Plus when I tear off the page I can use the paper for shopping lists and stuff — no need to keep a memo pad around! Apparently this is what I value in life.

Paul Sawers | Senior Reporter, U.K.

Garmin Fenix 5 Plus

I was going to include the Kobo Libra 2 e-reader as my recommended piece of hardware, but alas my colleague Devin beat me to it — the Garmin Fenix 5 Plus was next on my list. I actually bought this during the initial lockdown as a replacement for a more basic Garmin watch, but I’ve realized most of its value over the past 12 months as I’ve started traveling again.

While my old entry-level Garmin Forerunner 35 was fine for tracking distance, pace and speed in my runs, the Garmin Fenix 5 Plus allows me to map out a route through the Garmin mobile app and send it to my watch, which then serves up turn-by-turn navigation to ensure I never get lost in unfamiliar territory.

On top of that, I can also download Spotify playlists to my wrist. This means I no longer have to carry a bulky smartphone around with me if I want to listen to podcasts or music. Garmin has a bunch of watches at various price-points with different features, but having directions, podcasts and music on my wrist has been a real game-changer.

“We Didn’t Start the Fire” (podcast)

I’m a big fan of history podcasts, and this was a phenomenal find for me this year.

The “We Didn’t Start the Fire” podcast takes the lyrics from the 1989 Billy Joel chart-topper of the same name, and turns each of the 100-plus historical people and events mentioned in the song into an individual episode that explores the subject matter in detail.

Sure, a history podcast beholden to the words of a single song written more than 30 years ago is somewhat arbitrary, but this is a good thing, as it leads us down paths that we otherwise might never venture down. It is incredibly varied, spanning everything from well-known public figures such as Richard Nixon and Joe DiMaggio, to movies, music, wars and even the polyester fibre known as Dacron.

The presenters also manage to nab an interview with Billy Joel himself for one of the episodes, where they get him to explain why he chose to include certain historical people and events in the song. Although the podcast includes input from subject-matter experts, the dynamics and “banter” between co-presenters Katie Puckrik and Tom Fordyce is what makes this all work. They’re often tasked with discussing dense and obscure topics, and they bring it all to life.

“Lucifer on the Sofa” (Spoon album)

I find it hard to get into new music these days, pretty much always reverting to tunes roughly from the 1960s to early 2000s era. But Spoon rarely puts out a dud, and “Lucifer on the Sofa” was another superb album from the Texas rockers, mixing amazing melodies and hooks to create a fresh, original classic.

“Watermelon” (song from Dinner in America)

I hesitated on whether to include this, as it’s by no means an all-time classic, but it’s a really fantastic little song for many reasons. “Watermelon” is an original composition from the movie “Dinner in America,” which hit theatrical release this year (it’s worth a watch, btw).

The song was written in a day largely by Emily Skeggs, one of the main actors in the movie — up until that point, Skeggs had never written a song before. Watermelon is a chugging two-minute punk ditty that reminded me that songs don’t need huge production or instrument mastery — three basic chords, a melody and a simple repetitive drumbeat that Meg from the White Stripes could probably do in her sleep. It’s a real little earworm that has been whistled in my household for most of 2022.

Natasha Lomas | Senior Reporter

Stranger Things Season 4

I wasn’t expecting too much from Stranger Things’ fourth season, with so much creepiness already spent and resonant riffing on 80s nostalgia said and done (and with the kids, er, pretty grown up these days). But the show managed to keep my attention and serve up some cracking new characters, plus a spine-tingling moment or two (injecting a Kate Bush classic into the ears of Gen Z was truly a stroke of genius). No spoilers, but the ending was a little too exposition heavy for my tastes — but, on balance, the series still thrilled. Roll on the fifth and final season.

Mastodon/the fediverse

I’m still not sure what role the fediverse will play in shaping (reshaping?) how humans talk on the internet, but in a year when the world’s richest* manbaby paid an eye-watering fortune to purge Twitter of opinions he doesn’t like, I for one am glad that an alternative like Mastodon exists. One that, by design, is better able to resist capture by billionaires. As someone put it in a tweet (or was it a toot?): Protocols not products!

*On 2022’s plus side, Musk may no longer be the world’s richest human, but there is no doubt he is the Chief Twit.

Hooper’s Beta (YouTube Channel)

Climb smarter, get stronger and — above all — avoid injurying yourself by doing dumb or just pointless stuff. That’s roughly the philosophy behind Hooper’s Beta, a dehyping YouTube channel by climber and physical therapist Jason Hooper, who takes a science-focused approach to furthering technique and defusing fitness fads — and typically ends up dispensing far more solid advice (like how to figure out if you have a rotator cuff injury or just a little shoulder impingment syndrome and which strength training exercises might help with that). He is also not afraid to do some slightly ill-advised things to his own body, like eating nothing but Huel for 30 days to find out if that’s good for a climber’s nutrition needs or (er) not, so you don’t have to…

Anna Heim | TC+ Reporter

ABBA Voyage

“Music is back,” sings one of my favorite artists, Chilly Gonzales.

He’s talking about live music, which many of us missed dearly during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. To make up for it, I went to a ton of gigs this year — none of which are exactly relevant for TechCrunch, except for one: ABBA Voyage.

You may have heard that this show uses virtual avatars created by George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), but it is completely different to see them in person. I was wondering if it’d feel uncanny or unethical, but it doesn’t — probably because ABBA’s band members got their say, and introduce their younger, virtual selves in a playful way that also blends in very well with the rest of the show, which also features a live band. The residency has been extended to November 2023, so you still have time to go see it in person if you are in London at some point in the next few months.

AirTags

Having put an AirTag into my suitcase eased my pain when it got lost in transit recently — the airline didn’t know where it was for days, but I did all along, and was able to retrieve it from a huge room full of lost items. As a frequent traveller, I know I will put one AirTag in each of my luggage items from now on. Spoiler alert to my family: Some of you will find one under the tree this year!

Tim De Chant | Climate Reporter

iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard

A few years ago, when people started talking about how iPads could replace their laptops, I scoffed. I tend to like my computers full-featured. Though I’ve continuously owned MacBooks of some kind since 2006, I’ve always maintained a desktop Mac as my daily driver, so I figured the iPad-as-laptop trend wasn’t for me. I tested the waters a few times over the years, but found the experience lacking. Then I bought a Magic Keyboard.

Yes, typing is obviously better with a real keyboard. But where the Magic Keyboard has really made a difference is almost everywhere else. I’ve been using a Mac almost daily for the last 22 years, long enough that my brain no longer registers when I’m using keyboard shortcuts — it just happens. To say that my previous iPad experiments were missing command-, well, everything would be an understatement. With the Magic Keyboard, though, I can copy, paste, select text, undo, compose messages, switch apps… you get the idea… all without having to touch the screen.

This year at Disrupt, I decided to redo the experiment, this time with an M1 iPad Pro and Magic Keyboard. I brought my MacBook Pro just in case. I shouldn’t have bothered.

Alex Wilhelm | Editor in Chief of TechCrunch+

Crocs

I work from a small building in our back yard, which means that I run back and forth from the house quite often. This means slipping into, and out of flip-flops on a regular basis. Sadly, if the weather becomes even slightly inclement, such shoes are really not the jam. Enter Crocs. After seeing some Bloomberg reporter wearing pink Crocs, I decided to get a pair. So I did. In pink. And now I dash back and forth from the house with my feet better protected from mud and rain and snow and dog shit. Crocs are great. Embrace your ugly self! Wear what’s comfortable!

TechCrunch+

You know what’s good? Knowing what’s going on. You know what’s not good? Not knowing what is going on. But it’s also good to know what is going on behind the headlines and news stories. That’s where, I hope, TechCrunch+ can help out. Am I shamelessly plugging our work behind the paywall in what is otherwise a whimsical and fun post? Hell yes. Do I feel bad about it? Hell no. Because media isn’t cheap to build and our subscription services kicks maximum ass. Come check us out!

Amanda Silberling | Reporter

Defunctland’s YouTube documentary, “Disney Channel’s Theme: A History Mystery”

All of my picks for this list are tinged with recency bias: That is, at the time of writing, these are all things I have experienced in the last week. But maybe I just had a really good week in media, which is why I feel pretty confident and not too hyperbolic in saying that the YouTube channel Defunctland’s “Disney Channel’s Theme: A History Mystery” documentary is literally the best feature-length film I have watched this year.

Kevin Purjurer, the person behind Defunctland, makes elaborate, well-researched videos about theme parks gone wrong, yet somehow this hour-and-a-half-long documentary about a four-note Disney Channel jingle also serves as a bizarrely profound look into what makes good art and what duty memory serves in service of artists. I can’t spoil anything (yes, there are spoilers here), but just watch the whole thing and you’ll get what I mean. This is a work of genius. I am not doing a bit, I promise.

I Was a Teenage Exocolonist

I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is a narrative life sim following your character, a teenage exocolonist, if you will. You were conceived during a 20-year space journey from Earth to a new planet that your fellow humans are attempting to colonize, and the game begins when you’re 10 years old and stepping out of the spaceship for the first time. You can choose how to live your life for the next 10 years as you and your friends contend with the fact that maybe it’s actually a bad thing to land on an alien planet and subjugate the creatures that were already there.

See any real-world parallells!?!?!? But what really sold this game for me is that it’s infinitely replayable — I spent the weekend in a manic fugue state (perhaps an exaggeration) playing this game over and over again in an attempt to get the “good” ending. But listen, there are SO MANY ENDINGS. You can be a horrible, fascist soldier! A criminal! A farmer! An astronaut! An engineer who accidentially enables genocide by not asking enough questions! You know, normal things that happen in our normal lives.

If you want a weird mashup of Hades, Undertale and Stardew Valley, this game is for you — but play at your own risk, because I have not been able to stop playing this game — to the point that it’s actually kind of concerning how it has consumed my life. But I just got a “good” ending after four tries, so I think I can calm down and like, clean my apartment now.

Depths of Wikipedia

I went to the comedy live show of a Twitter meme account. Yes, that sentence is bizarre, but it gets even weirder the more you think about it, because how do you turn absurdist internet content into a real-life event that actually entertains people beyond just showing them memes on a projector?

Fortunately for us, Depths of Wikipedia creator Annie Rauwerda is a literal genius. The conceit of her meme pages/empire is that she goes down Wikipedia rabbit holes and finds really silly fun facts, like how the Pringles mascot Julius Pringle actually got his name because of a rogue Wikipedia edit that no one caught. I attended one of her shows last week not really knowing what to expect, and I came away watching a guy build a “Pringles ringle” onstage and a professional bagpipe musician exemplify his craft in front of a projector with a Wikipedia article, “List of nontraditional bagpipe usage.” She even got the Philadelphia chicken guy to act out the events of the 1904 Olympic men’s marathon, which… is quite the Wikipedia page to read.

I have never laughed so much at any sort of comedy event in my life.

Natasha Mascarenhas | Senior Reporter

Hu Chocolate

You know how we all picked up random hobbies and habits during the early innings of COVID-19? Well, I landed myself a sweet tooth. And I’ve been trying to get rid of it — but also empower it — ever since.

My latest obsession is Hu Chocolate, an organic sweet that would make even the milk chocolate lovers among us into dark chocolate fans. I’ve tried a few flavors, but I stick by their Salty flavor. It’s the perfect little treat to end everyday and feels a little bit more luxurious than the average handful of chocolate chips.

Cardamom coffee

Last year, I recommended Graffeo Coffee beans as a must-have for any java lover. I’m back again with another coffee suggestion: cardamom syrup. I like putting a splash of the Holy Kakow brand in my morning coffee, or a little extra if I want a sweet nightcap. It has stopped me from buying fancy lattes outside everyday, and it’s also just added the right amount of festiveness to my cup any time of the year.

Tooth & Claw: True stories of animal attacks

The host is an expert biologist who knows how to take you through some of the most insane wild animal attacks, and his two sidekicks bring a levity to the show that somehow really works. Best enjoyed on a car trip or flight or long run, but probably not something to have playing around kids or near dinner time.

Taylor Hatmaker | Senior Reporter

“Andor”

I’m not a Star Wars diehard by any means, but this show was incredible and everyone should watch it — even if you’re not familiar with the source material.

I won’t spoil anything, but it’s a wild ride that shifts settings and tones often, always deftly, and delivers some really moving performances in the process. “Andor” treats its audience like they’re smart enough to handle subtlety and even some discomfort (think Black Mirror), and the payoff is well worth it. This was some really special, smart and surprisingly inspiring television and these stories will stick with me for a while.

Aisha Malik | Consumer Reporter

“The Bear”

There were tons of popular new shows this year, but none of them stuck with me as much as Hulu’s “The Bear” — a comedy-drama TV show that delights with incredible performances, cinematic storytelling and sharp writing. The show does a great job of creating an atmosphere that draws you in almost immediately. Although it can make you feel a little anxious at times, it’s filled with moments of beauty. I won’t spoil anything, but “The Bear” should definitely be your next binge show if you want something that is both funny and riveting.

Bryce Durbin | Illustrator

My Favorite – “Tender Is the Nightshift: Part One”

In the summer, the great indiepop band My Favorite released new music for the first time in six years. The brainchild of Michael Grace Jr., “Tender Is the Nightshift: Part One” kicks off with an eight-minute dance track (“Dean’s 7th Dream”) that features Grace’s characteristic arch, despairing lyrics, delicately balancing chill synths and warm vocals. “Second Empire” (and its “instrumental dub” version) and other tracks round out this compelling EP. Dance away your sadness.

Darrell Etherington | Managing Editor

Universal Audio SD-1 mic

UA makes a lot of great audio gear, but their SD-1 dynamic vocal microphone might just be their best. Besides the super slick cream color, it’s a dead ringer for the venerated Shure SM7B — both in looks and in audio profile. It’s less expensive, though, and to my ear is better at eliminating any room or bg noise. One of the best deals in audio equipment period.

WANDRD Roam 9L sling

The WANDRD Roam lineup is a killer collection of slings, but the biggest is the 9L version. It has ample room to carry a mirrorless body, a long zoom lens and a fairly large prime as well, plus chargers and batteries. The real reason to buy WANDRD over other competing slings, however, is the neat trick it pulls off to make room for up to a 16-inch notebook: It has a double-zip back pocket with an expandable bottom to accomodate a laptop in one of its sleeves, safely and securely.

8BitDo Ultimate Controller

8BitDo’s latest Ultimate Controllers (there’s a BT version and a 2.4GHz only version) are as good or better than the first-party controllers they borrow the most from (that’s pretty much the Xbox controller and the Switch Pro controller, fwiw). These come with their own charging docks and customizable back grip buttons on top of everything else.

Miranda Halpern | Data Analyst

Breville Smart Waffle Maker Pro

You know what’s better than going out to brunch? Making brunch at home. I love getting a waffle when I go out for brunch, but I always felt like the ones I made at home were subpar…. until the Breville Smart Waffle Maker Pro entered my life. I originally borrowed someone else’s and I loved it so much that I spent the next two months debating if I should purchase my own; $280 is a lot to spend, let alone on a waffle iron, but this was worth the money. Crisp, thick, fluffy waffles in the comfort of your home for you and all of your friends. You can thank me later.

Nalgene 24oz On-The-Fly Lock-Top Tritan Bottle

If you’re in the market for a new emotional support water bottle, I highly suggest this one. It’s the perfect size to fit into the cup holder of your car, it has a lock top so it won’t spill if it’s in your bag and it’s easy to clean — yes, you need to clean your water bottles.

“Stick Season” by Noah Kahan

Stomp and Holler is back! If you’re a fan of the Lumineers, Vance Joy, Mumford & Sons or The Head and The Heart, I would recommend giving this album a spin.

Kahan entered the music scene with his debut album “Busyhead” in 2019. From there he released the “Cape Elizabeth” EP in 2020, which was his first project dipping his toes in the alt/indie genre, his sophomore album “I Was/ I Am” in 2021 and, most recently, his third album, “Stick Season.” Kahan’s lyricism, which has always been descriptive, reaches a new high as he takes us on the journey of feeling stuck while watching those from your past move on. The theme of nostalgia shows in “Homesick,” “Still,” and the title track, “Stick Season.” Kahan yearns for more — in life and in love — shown in tracks like “She Calls Me Back,” “Come Over” and “The View Between Villages.” If you’re looking for an album to blast as you drive through your hometown during the holidays — this is it.

TechCrunch’s Favorite Things of 2022 by Greg Kumparak originally published on TechCrunch

This year’s been eventful for investors and founders alike. Just as it seemed the venture capital boom of 2021 was slowing down, the startup and VC worlds spun on their axes practically overnight, birthing a new dynamic where “growth at all costs” was quickly replaced by a more measured and careful approach to business and investing.

For 2023 then, it appears investors are focusing on trends that are relatively safer and likelier to bear fruit. Xfund’s vice president, Jadyn Bryden, and Lightship Capital’s principal, Alexis Alston, told TechCrunch that they are focused on generative artificial intelligence.

“I’m looking forward to seeing how AI can contribute to scaling previously human-led areas of business, such as sales, social media, marketing and content development,” Alston said.

According to Richard Kerby, a general partner at Equal Ventures, vertical software is a good subsector to watch. “What that looks like in practice is software that provides some sort of workflow improvement to a category that enables a company to monetize via a variety of financial services,” Kerby said. “Some of the sectors that we will be exploring include supply chain, logistics, insurance, construction and e-commerce enablement.”

When it comes to funding for under-represented founders, the investors mostly agreed that not much was likely to change. While Alston said she was concerned that the numbers were going to drop, Bryden believes that more venture dollars would go to Black founders as there are “increasingly more diverse investors each year.”

“It is a slow progression,” she said, noting that more diverse-led firms are popping up to support Black founders. “Having Black decision-makers at the table can be a great way to make sure that Black founders have representation across the board.”

Read the full survey here to find out what these investors expect in 2023, which laws and policies they’re keeping an eye on and the best way to pitch them.

3 Black investors share what they are prepping for come the new year by Dominic-Madori Davis originally published on TechCrunch

For the last 24 months, Thomvest Ventures recorded headcount data for 150 Series A to C enterprise SaaS startups, and we have the numbers.

This report prepared by Eddie Ackerman, Thomvest’s strategic finance operating partner, looks at startup hiring velocity since February 2021 by region, company type and, notably, how much time passed since last fundraise.

Ackerman says he expects to see another tranche of layoffs in several weeks, after startups hold their Q4 2022 board meetings.

Full TechCrunch+ articles are only available to members
Use discount code TCPLUSROUNDUP to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription

That’s not something any worker wants to read a few days before Christmas, but forewarned is forearmed.

“For companies with a strong balance sheet, strong backers, product-market fit or low burn, now is the best time to make critical hires,” says Ackerman.

And if that doesn’t describe your company, you should already be planning to reduce headcount.

“The tough decision to freeze hiring should be made early, even if your balance sheet is in a good position,” writes Ackerman.

If you’re a founder who’s reading this: When layoffs are in the cards, you have a moral and ethical responsibility to let your employees know as soon as possible. Do the right thing.

TechCrunch+ will publish on a light schedule next week, and we’ll resume our usual cadence on Monday, January 2. I’m taking a short break for the holidays and will send the next TechCrunch+ newsletter/roundup on Tuesday, January 3.

Thanks very much for reading us in 2022. Have a very happy new year!

Walter Thompson
Editorial Manager, TechCrunch+
@yourprotagonist

How to make the most of your investor relationships in 2023

As Santa Claus refactors his list of who’s been naughty and nice, it’s also a good time for startup founders to take stock of their investor relationships.

Vidya Raman, a partner at Sorenson Ventures, has written a TC+ article with dos and don’ts for upcoming board meetings, her thoughts about which communication channels are best for different help requests and specific data points you should raise in your discussions.

“Be ruthless about how you spend your time,” she advises, “especially with your investors.”

Holiday shipping is easier this year, but the tech is still lagging

Global supply lines are in better shape than this time last year, but that doesn’t bode well for the future, writes Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen.

“This year’s improvements in shipping largely reflect a pullback in consumption rather than any improvement in the underlying infrastructure,” he says, noting that labor shortages, global instability and high fuel prices have created persistent bottlenecks.

“Fortunately, the data available today is rich beyond measure, and we also have the tools to leverage it in ways that can boost efficiency.”

Pitch Deck Teardown: Card Blanch’s $460K deck for its angel round

Fintech startup Card Blanch recently closed a $460,000 round for its pre-launch service that promises to let customers track personal spending from a centralized app.

To see why this deck was smiled upon by angel investors bearing good tidings, we’re sharing the founders’ non-redacted deck:

Cover slide
Problem slide
Market size slide
Solution slide
Product slide
“How it works” slide
Competition slide
Revenue model slide
Market opportunity slide
“Next steps” — the ask slide
“Your whole wallet in one card” — value prop slide
“Complete spending analytic in one place” — summary slide

Dear Sophie: What are the pros and cons of the E-2 and L-1A visas?

Dear Sophie,

We co-founded a startup in Colombia, and we’re thinking about opening a sales office in the U.S.! I would be moving, and my co-founder will continue to run our engineering team from Colombia.

I’m currently considering both the E-2 investor and L-1A executive visas. What are the pros and cons of each?

— Courageous Colombian

How to solve the financial close dilemma: 3 strategies that never fail

Be honest: Did you rush your November month-end close due to the December holidays?

New Year’s resolutions are hard to stick to, but because this is the slowest time of year, it’s a good time to establish healthier accounting habits.

Before running your December numbers, look for ways to automate the month-end close, advises Shagun Malhotra, a CPA and CIA who’s also an experienced auditor.

In a TC+ post, she shares three strategies for digitizing this process, along with suggestions for sub-metrics to track that will give you an accurate snapshot of your financial health.

“The data gathered in these steps will allow you to identify your business’ root issues quickly, which will then let you assess what to do next.”

3 Black investors talk about what they’re looking for in 2023

Investors are generally optimistic about tech’s long-term ability to recover, but when it comes to expanding opportunities for Black founders, Dominic-Madori Davis says they’re largely fatalistic.

She interviewed three Black investors to get their thoughts on impact investing, which trends they expect to take off in 2023 and how they prefer to be approached by founders:

Alexis Alston, principal, Lightship Capital
Richard Kerby, general partner, Equal Ventures
Jadyn Bryden, vice president, Xfund

Avoid 3 common sales mistakes startups make during a downturn

Analysts estimate that IT spending will increase in 2023, but tell that to SaaS sales teams trying to close contracts with customers who’ve been instructed to slash spending.

“What every company needs now is efficient sales,” says Anand Shah, CEO and co-founder of Databook, who explains why reactive moves like increasing sales quotas or raising prices won’t move the needle.

“Make real changes to meet your buyers’ needs. Use the macroeconomic backdrop to make the necessary sales productivity improvements.”

TechCrunch+ roundup: Headcount data study, SaaS sales mistakes, financial close strategies by Walter Thompson originally published on TechCrunch

A dozen countries in Africa including Nigeria, the continent’s biggest economy and democracy, are expected to hold their presidential elections next year, and questions linger on how well social media platforms are prepared to curb mis and dis-information after claims of botched content moderation during Kenya’s polls last August.

Concerns are mounting as it emerges that Twitter has scaled back content moderation after Elon Musk took over and later laid-off more than half the employees, and nearly cleaning out the entire Africa team, a decision that left outsourced moderators out of jobs too. With very limited support to filter or stop spread of propaganda, Africa will likely be a casualty of Twitter’s oft-erratic or slow response to falsehoods — which catalyze violence in times of political polarization.

But this is not unique to Twitter; widely used platforms like Facebook, TikTok, WhatsApp, and YouTube have also been fingered for doing little to stop mis- and dis-information in Africa.

In Nigeria, for instance, sitting president Muhammadu Buhari, has voiced concerns over how dis- and mis-information on social media is fanning conflict, insecurity, and distrust in the government in the lead up to the February elections – even as the country’s economy continues to struggle causing a sense of instability. Yet, as momentum picks up for what is one of the most hotly contested elections, activists, researchers, and a section of civilians are apprehensive about the mounting spread of negative campaigning.

Researchers anticipate that hateful content and falsehoods, meant to stir confusion or sway voters in Nigeria, will continue to be shared online. They are insistently calling on tech companies to hire and train local experts with the knowledge of local languages and context to intercept misleading, violent or intimidating posts that could undermine election integrity.

“Social-media platforms especially – Twitter, Meta (Facebook), YouTube, WhatsApp and Telegram – should step up efforts to identify and deal with election-related misinformation, disinformation and conspiracies as well as intercepting violent or intimidating messages,” said Audu Bulama Bukarti, a senior fellow, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, said in a report published a fortnight ago about security risks in Nigeria.

Nigeria’s youthful and tech-savvy population is Africa’s most active on social media. The calls for the platforms to step-up content moderation, while not new, follow the increased use of social sites owing to smartphone and internet penetration.

“The reach and influence of social media have grown ever larger in the years since the 2019 election. It will play a pivotal role in the 2023 election, in terms of positive political communication and in terms of its ability to spread misinformation and disinformation,” said Bukarti.

In Nigeria, Meta claims to have invested in people including content moderators and technology to stem the misuse of its platforms ahead of the elections. The social media giant is also taking the same measures as before and during Kenya’s elections, which included verifying the identities of persons posting political ads. But Mozilla Tech and Society Fellow Odanga Madung is not convinced Facebook are other social sites are prepared well enough.

“Social media platforms are still not completely ready to deal with election environments especially because they’ve had massive layoffs that have greatly affected how the work within several of the areas these elections will be held,” said Madung.

“And quite frankly, they have consistently failed to address the key aspects that make an election environment a dangerous information environment in the first place, where things are neither true or false and information tends to get weaponized quite a bit. Election environments are incredibly low trust environments. I do not think they’re going to actually succeed on this.”

Away from Nigeria, a pivotal moment is also approaching for social media platforms and fragile nations such as Sudan, South Sudan, DR Congo, Libya, and Mali — most of which have blocked social media access in the recent past to quell protests against their governments — as they head to polls next year.

Bungled labeling and moderation

Social sites like Facebook, Twitter and TikTok recently came under heavy scrutiny over their role in undermining election integrity in Kenya. A Mozilla Foundation report claims that content labeling failed to stop misinformation, while platforms such as Facebook profiteered from political advertising that served to amplify propaganda.

Twitter and TikTok’s spotty labeling of posts calling the elections ahead of the official announcement made the platforms seem partisan, and failed to stop the spread of falsehoods, despite partnering with fact-checking organizations.

Facebook, the leading social media platform in Africa, failed majorly on this front by not having “any visible labels” during the elections, allowing the spread of propaganda — like claims of the kidnapping and arrest of a prominent politician, which had been debunked by local media houses. Months later, Facebook put a label on the original post claiming the kidnapping and arrest of the prominent politician.

Sluggish responses to falsehoods by Facebook, are now at the center of a lawsuit filed last week claiming that Meta is fueling violence and hate in eastern and southern Africa.

Abrham Meareg, one of the petitioners and whose father, Professor Meareg Amare, was killed during the Tigray War after Facebook posts doxed and called for violence against him, says that Facebook failed, on multiple requests, to bring down posts that put his father’s life in danger. He said that one post was recently taken down, a year after his father’s murder — more than 600,000 Ethiopians were killed during the two-year war that started in 2020.

The case claims that Facebook’s algorithm fuels viral hate and violence while that content moderation in Africa is bungled as moderators lack local knowledge to moderate content posted in local languages.

“Many of them (platforms) lack context and they are always going to fall short in terms of the of the promises they make to their users because, again, a lie is able to move very fast across platforms before they able to get ahold of it,” said Odanga.

Whistleblower Frances Haugen previously accused Facebook of “literally fanning ethnic violence” in Ethiopia, and a recent Global Witness investigation also noted that the social site was “extremely poor at detecting hate speech in the main language of Ethiopia.”

“Something is wrong with the way Facebook moderates content, and … there is a lack of investment in content moderation, especially for African countries. When you compare to other regions, we are getting the second-rate treatment. And what’s the effect? We are seeing a catalyst for civic unrest, civil war coming from normal interactions; viral posts that make fun of people and then escalate to insightful posts that my client is proof do end up causing violence in real life,” said Meareg’s lawyer, Mercy Mutemi.

Meanwhile, social media remains central to the permeation of political propaganda and the dilution of important investigations in matters around economic and social corruption. Last year, the former Kenyan president, Uhuru Kenyatta, was mentioned in the Pandora Papers – a leakage of files detailing the hidden wealth of a number of global leaders, celebrities and billionaires in offshore havens. However, researchers noticed the soaring of two hashtags, #offshoreaccountfacts and #phonyleaks, which topped trending topics and shadowed organic discussions on Twitter in Kenya, undermining the findings of the documentary.

Foreign-sponsored campaigns with political objectives have also affected more than three-quarters of the countries in Africa as “disinformation campaigns become increasingly sophisticated in camouflaging their origins by outsourcing posting operations.”

According to a Africa Center for Strategic Studies report published in April this year, Russian-sponsored disinformation campaigns by the Wagner Group mercenary force, promoting the Kremlin’s interests in the continent, for instance, have so affected more than 16 countries in Africa.

Questions linger over Facebook, Twitter, TikTok’s commitment to uphold election integrity in Africa, as countries head to polls by Annie Njanja originally published on TechCrunch

Back in March 2020, when the world shut down, Amazon became the world’s go-to online store. When people couldn’t leave their homes, it became imperative to have goods come to them, and Amazon thrived. Money poured into its coffers, its stock price skyrocketed, and it hired like crazy and built warehouses to match the growing demand.

According to numbers from Statista, the company began the pandemic with approximately 840,000 employees in the first quarter of 2020. By Q1 2022, it had over 1.6 million workers. The problem was, as the pandemic loosened its grip on public life, people stopped buying everything online and returned to brick-and-mortar retail.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy certainly seems to understand that the market has changed, and he has been having his managers look for places to cut spending and reduce operating costs, something many large organizations are doing amid a period of great economic uncertainty.

Amazon’s efforts included, if reports are accurate, cutting up to 10,000 jobs in the near term to offset the hiring that happened during the peak of the pandemic.

From a stock perspective, the company has given up almost all of the gains it picked up on the back of the pandemic, losing almost 50% of its value this year, per CNBC. That means Jeff Bezos is just a little less rich than he once was and his ex, MacKenzie Scott, has a little less to give away. Jassy, meantime, has many more headaches to deal with and pressure to cut operations costs.

Through all this, AWS, Amazon’s cloud arm, which Jassy ran before he got promoted to the corner office, has continued to perform at the same high level it always has. But even AWS reported a slowdown in the third quarter as companies tried to slash cloud costs.

Consider that in Q3 2022, the most recently reported quarter, AWS revenue hit $20.5 billion, below the $21.1 billion the analyst crowd expected. It may not seem like much, but cloud computing has been one of a few uber-growth areas, so a miss was a big deal.

That said, you can’t lose sight of the fact that AWS is now on a run rate to become an $80 billion business, so that’s not exactly something to hang your head about, and the consensus is that the cloud business still has plenty of room to grow in spite of external macroeconomic conditions.

In other words, AWS will probably be fine regardless of currency issues, slowing growth or customers looking at only modest IT spending increases in the new year. Jassy may have to cut costs across the company, but chances are AWS gets mostly spared from this exercise.

While Amazon had a rocky year, AWS remains reliable cash cow by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch

Three years ago, Mila showed up on Kickstarter with its smart air purifier. The company created an air cleaner with a choice of different filters to suit the use case (and price point) customers were interested in, along with an impressive array of sensors built into the device itself. Today, the San Francisco-based company announced it closed a $10 million Series A to scrub the nasties out of the air for more people.

The company’s seed round was led by no other than Electrolux. Mila claims it was Electrolux’s first startup investment. The appliance giant also participated in the current round. Mila’s $10 million Series A was led by returning partner Cercano Management (the former venture arm of the late Paul Allen’s investment firm) and “an undisclosed global consumer goods brand.” The company says it’ll spend the money to hire, scale operations, expand its product portfolio and work toward its ultimate goal of meeting the global need for better indoor air quality. The company is also planning to launch Mila Halo, a smart humidifier.

The company raised its $10 million round in an all-equity deal at a $52 million post-money valuation, the company tells me. It says the new valuation represents a 3x value increase over its seed round the year prior.

“We’re at the cusp of a great ‘air awakening’ as the quality of the air we breathe becomes more top of mind for families. But the products families typically turn to provide little to no insight on whether or not they’re actually working. With Mila, families can finally monitor and control their indoor air quality effortlessly,” Grant Prigge, CEO and co-founder at Mila said in an interview with TechCrunch. “This investment
will allow us to meet growing demand while continuing to build thoughtful, beautiful experiences that improve the health of our homes.”

The company is operating in a fiercely competitive market — it isn’t like there is a shortage of air purifiers to choose from — but the company’s clever, cute design and the ability to use a number of different filters depending on the need sets it apart from its competitors. The app is also outstanding, reporting particulates (PM1, PM2.5, PM10), humidity, temperature, volatile compounds (TVOC), CO2 and CO. The purifier uses this data to scrub the air more intelligently — running the fans slowly if they’re not really needed, or running at full blast if nasties need to be scrubbed from the air.

We spoke with Grant Prigge, the company’s CEO and co-founder, to learn a bit more. The interview is edited for clarity and length.

TC: Who are the lead investors, and what has it been like to work with them so far?

Grant Prigge: Mila went from a small passion project with a couple hundred thousand dollars of angel funding from friends, to having Electrolux, one of the largest consumer appliance manufacturers in the world, as its first institutional investor. Mila was Electrolux’s first venture investment in the company’s 100 years of existence.

After launching what became the largest air purifier launch in crowdfunding history, with more than $1.5 million in preorders, Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital led Mila’s second round. Our Series A was led by Cercano Management, the venture spinoff of Vulcan Capital, and one of the largest consumer goods manufacturers in the world.

Most people cautioned us against working with big corporate investors, but they’ve been some of the best partners we could ask for, providing thoughtful feedback and lending their support along the way. With Electrolux’s support, we’ve been able to punch well above our weight, especially when it comes to navigating the supply chain challenges of the past few years. And with our newest investor, we see the same synergy in marketing and branding as we bring Mila to millions of homes across the globe.

What is the goal with the fundraise? What does the money unlock?

This fundraise enables us to expand our team and meet the growing demand for Mila’s award-winning air purifier. Additionally, it’ll allow us to expand our product portfolio with additions that work to enhance the health of our homes and indoor environments. In the new year, we’re incredibly excited to release Mila Halo, which is the first humidifier of its kind that actually makes it safe to use tap water, thanks to Halo’s proprietary water filtration system. Halo was the recipient of a CES Innovation Award in 2022.

It is the convergence of a growing portfolio of hardware solutions with an air quality control system that is becoming more intelligent by the day. We believe Mila will become the Home Health Operating System of the future.

What’s the long-term vision?

Our mission is to bring every family back from airblivion to shape the healthy home of the future. The quality of the air we breathe is now recognized as the single largest environmental threat to human health. Around the world, dirty air is behind 7 million early deaths annually — more than AIDS, diabetes and traffic accidents combined.

These past two years have only highlighted how little we know about the air we breathe. Consumers are becoming more aware of how critical their home environment is to their health — they just lack the tools to do something about it. In fact, 91% of consumers say they now understand how air quality impacts their health, but 69% say they don’t know what to do about it.

Mila intends to solve that. Indoor air quality (IAQ) is a $16 billion market ripe for disruption. We aim to be the dominant brand, making every home a healthier place to breathe.

What is the Mila Cares program, and why are you giving away purifiers for free?

One of the things that blew us away during our original Kickstarter campaign was the letters we got from our customers about who they were buying their Mila for. Spouses were buying it for their hubby who suffered from allergies, girlfriends were buying it to save the relationship between the cat and boyfriend, dads were buying it for their young kids who suffered from asthma and suffering from an autoimmune issue. These thoughtful notes and stories inspired and humbled us, and clearly showed that people were buying our products for the health of their loved ones, and we vowed to take that responsibility seriously in everything we do. It reinforced that compassion and care should always be a core pillar of our brand (hence, the name “Mila Cares”).

One way we do this is through the Mila Cares Program. Any customer can nominate someone in need of clean air, and any member of the Mila team can give out a Mila Cares Package. The only requirement is that it touched them in some way. Sometimes a laugh, sometimes a cry. The nominee then gets a surprise Mila Cares Package, almost always containing a Mila air purifier, with a personal letter from us.

To date, we’ve given out more than 100 Mila Cares Packages, and it allows us to celebrate deserving air breathers in the communities we’re lucky to be a part of in a meaningful way.

Backed by Electrolux, Mila raises at a $52M valuation to add smarts to fresh air by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

Remember the Apple Airpower charging mat? Announced in 2017, the device was supposed to recharge three devices simultaneously, but Apple never released it, citing engineering issues. Now, Tesla is giving it a shot with the just-announced Wireless Charging Platform.

Inside the Cybertruck-inspired aluminum casing is a wireless charging platform called FreePower from a startup called Aira. This is the same platform used other multi-device charging mats like the Nomad Base Station Pro. This technology provides up to 15W of fast charging for up to three devices. Allegedly, users can just toss their devices on the alcantara surface, and no matter where they land, they’ll get recharged.

This convenience doesn’t come cheap; the Wireless Charging Platform costs $300.

Aira, the company that developed the recharging platform, was founded in 2017 and has since raised $16.M to date. Its latest fundraising came by way of angel investors in 2019 primarily led by private investors, including Jawad Ahsan, Lori Greiner and Robert Herjavec. At the time, the company said the funding was going to be used to reach beyond the consumer market, and allow the company to expand into enterprise, automotive, and hospitality.

Tesla announces a $300 charging mat that can recharge 3 devices at once by Matt Burns originally published on TechCrunch

In case anyone asks, 2022 was all about energy — natural gas, oil, renewables, all of it. Natural gas prices surged early as Vladimir Putin’s poorly thought-out decision to invade Ukraine slashed gas deliveries to Europe. That, coupled with high oil prices, substantially contributed to near-record-setting inflation that forced central bankers to raise interest rates.

That inflation helped spur the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which contains several provisions to boost renewable power, ready the grid for its arrival and foster the development of other alternative sources of energy.

Taken together, those developments — along with what investors have told me is a desire for safe returns — have sent dollars flocking to clean energy. Venture capital activity in the sector through Q3 is on track to match 2021’s record highs, according to a new report from PitchBook.

Clean energy investments may close 2022 hitting new heights, setting stage for lofty 2023 by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch

Recent headlines have been dominated by announcements of large headcount reductions across the tech industry and especially at giants like Meta, Amazon and Twitter. But it’s not just the big names pulling back on headcount — private SaaS companies have similarly been implementing hiring freezes and headcount reductions for almost half a year now.

This isn’t surprising, as VCs started pushing for more focus on capital efficiency and the “Rule of 40” earlier this summer as it became clear that the “growth at all costs” mentality was going out of favor and the goal was to extend runway to weather the storm.

To get a better understanding of headcount fluctuations within the private market, we programmatically tracked the headcount of 150 private Series A to Series C B2B Enterprise SaaS startups across various industries over 24 months.

Here are the highlights of our study:

Companies are reducing headcount growth to extend runway

Headcounts rose every month across the last four months at a median rate of around 2% compared to the 10% we saw previously. Additionally, the 25th percentile of startups showed reductions in headcounts, indicating that many companies are taking drastic measures to extend their runway.

This is a gloomy indicator as startups brace for additional macro headwinds and repricing events.

Another round of cuts are likely early next year

If the macro environment doesn’t improve, we would expect another wave of job cuts after companies’ fourth-quarter board meetings (usually in January or February).

Many companies will discuss their CY ’23 forecasts, and headcount is always a lever to extend runway since it can account for up to 80% of a startup’s expenses. Given that many companies have maintained their headcounts, we may see them having to lay people off to reduce burn.

Tighter hiring started as early as May 2022

Private companies began tapping the brakes right around May 2022, and more firms started acting in unison, as seen from the tighter headcount velocity interquartile range, which was compressed heavily but has now stabilized.

Companies serving HR and procurement saw the steepest drop

As these services have shrunk across the industry, companies providing tech aimed at HR and procurement professionals saw the steepest drop in headcount growth. However, all the tracked customer profiles have trended toward reducing hiring efforts.

There’s lots of available talent

On a positive note, this is an excellent time for companies with product-market fit (and supportive investors) to hire the right talent, as big tech is reducing headcount and the market is flooded with exceptional talent.

From aggressive headcount growth to holding flat

Until April, most companies were hiring aggressively, with headcount rising month over month at over 10%, and the 75th percentile was close to about 20%.

In contrast, the current median is +1% and the 75th percentile is +4%.

This downward trend kicked off in May and continues today. The interquartile range continues to compress, with the median ultimately heading toward flat headcount (i.e., replacing natural attrition but not hiring beyond that). The 25th percentile fell into layoff territory around August, but both the 10th percentile and 25th percentile have since pulled back.

Now that we have set the stage:

Headcount growth is slowing as startups prepare for worst-case scenarios by Ram Iyer originally published on TechCrunch