Startups Weekly: Will the Seattle tech scene ever reach its full potential?

Greetings from Seattle, the land of Amazon, Microsoft, two of the world’s richest men and some startups. I’m always surprised the Seattle startup ecosystem hasn’t grown to compete with the likes of Silicon Valley — or at least Boston and New York City — since the dot-com boom. Today, it’s the strongest it’s has been due to the successes of companies like the newly minted unicorn Outreach, trucking business Convoy and, of course, the dog walking startup Rover. But the city still lags behind, failing to adopt the culture of entrepreneurship that...

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Former YouTube star sentenced to ten years in prison for child porn

Former Youtube star Austin Jones has been sentenced to ten years in a US federal prison after pleading guilty to persuading underage girls to send him explicit videos of themselves. Jones, who made a name for himself online singing covers of songs, was arrested and charged in 2017 with two counts of producing child pornography. He later pled guilty to one charge of receiving child pornography — admitting in a plea agreement that in 2016 and 2017 he enticed six girls to to produce and send explicit videos to “prove” they were his “biggest fan”,...

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Dear Hollywood, here are 5 female founders to showcase instead of Elizabeth Holmes

Joseph Flaherty Contributor Joe Flaherty is director of Content & Community at Founder Collective. More posts by this contributor Why the ‘end of the startup era’ could be great for entrepreneurs Invisible unicorns: 35 big companies that started with little or no money There’s a seemingly insatiable demand for Theranos content. John Carreyrou’s best-selling book, Bad Blood has already inspired an HBO documentary, The Inventor, an ABC podcast called The Dropout, a prestige limited series starring SNL’s Kate...

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Spotify’s leanback instant listening app Stations hits iOS

{rss:content:encoded} Spotify’s leanback instant listening app Stations hits iOS https://tcrn.ch/2V1AFpO https://tcrn.ch/2ZTArVx May 03, 2019 at 09:19PM Spotify has launched its instant listening app Stations on iOS, but only in Australia for the time being. The release comes nearly a year and a half after the Stations app first arrived on the market, initially for Android users in Australia. Dubbed an “experiment,” the app allows users to jump right into streaming instead of having to curate their own playlists or stations, or save favorite music...

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Daily Crunch: Facebook bans far-right figures

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. Facebook bans a fresh batch of mostly far-right figures The banned figures include Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson, Laura Loomer, Paul Nehlen and Louis Farrakhan — plus, Facebook doubled down on banning Alex Jones. The company said this is part of its policy to ban “individuals or organizations who promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless...

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WorldCover raises $6M round for emerging markets’ climate insurance

WorldCover, a New York and Africa-based climate insurance provider to smallholder farmers, has raised a $6 million Series A round led by MS&AD Ventures. Y Combinator, Western Technology Investment, and EchoVC also participated in the round. WorldCover’s platform uses satellite imagery, on-ground sensors, mobile phones and data analytics to create insurance options for farmers whose crops yields are affected adversely by weather events — primarily lack of rain. The startup currently operates in Ghana, Uganda, and Kenya. With the new funding...

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When it comes to elections, Facebook moves slow, may still break things

This week, Facebook invited a small group of journalists — which didn’t include TechCrunch — to look at the “war room” it has set up in Dublin, Ireland, to help monitor its products for election-related content that violates its policies. (“Time and space constraints” limited the numbers, a spokesperson told us when he asked why we weren’t invited.) Facebook announced it would be setting up this Dublin hub — which will bring together data scientists, researchers, legal and community team members, and others in the organization to tackle issues...

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How tech entrepreneurs think of Universal Basic Income

As tech has grown, policy debates have become an important pastime. Today’s tech industry aspires to replace human drivers with self-driving cars, secretaries with AI assistants, permanent jobs with gigs — and as a result, the human impact of tech has become an everyday conversation. No other idea is as emblematic of this as Universal Basic Income, a policy that would distribute a monthly sum to every adult regardless of their income or employment status. The conversation is widespread. Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have said that UBI may be desirable...

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Google’s budget Pixel 3a XL pops up at an Ohio Best Buy

{rss:content:encoded} Google’s budget Pixel 3a XL pops up at an Ohio Best Buy https://tcrn.ch/2VaLif4 http://bit.ly/2UZRGAW May 03, 2019 at 05:18PM The Pixel 3a is arriving next week at Google I/O. That statement felt like all but a given before, and now that’s the handset is showing up at Ohio-area Best Buys, well, you can pretty much bank on it at this point. Google’s budget take on its Pixel flagship is expected to take the stage during the May 7 keynote at Mountain View. Meantime, we’ve got another pretty good look at the thing courtesy of...

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Asto, the bookkeeping app from Santander, adds invoice financing for freelancers and SMEs

Asto, the Santander owned “upstart” developing financial tools for freelancers and SMEs, is adding invoice financing to its bookkeeping app. The new offering, which potentially opens up so-called “micro-financing” to a much broader business market, comes hot on the heels of Santander Group acquiring Albert, an invoicing and expenses app for freelancers and micro-businesses. Albert’s functionality has now been integrated into Asto, with Albert co-founder Ivo Weevers becoming Asto’s Chief Product and Design Officer. In a call, Weevers described Asto’s...

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