Is blitzscaling killing early employee equity opportunities?

Silicon Valley has many dreams. One dream — the Hollywood version anyway — is for a down-and-out founder to begin tinkering and coding in their proverbial garage, eventually building a product that is loved by humans the world over and becoming a startup billionaire in the process. The more prosaic and common version of that Valley dream though is to join an early-stage company right before its growth kicks into high gear. Sure, those early employees might only have a smidgen of equity, but that equity could be worth a whole heck of a lot if they...

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Startups Weekly: Zoom, Superhuman and small reactions to big scandals

Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I noted the big uptick in VC spending in 2019. Before that, I struggled to understand WeWork’s growth trajectory. Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter @KateClarkTweets. If you don’t subscribe to Startups Weekly yet, do that here, now, please, thanks. Anyways, onto today’s topic....

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As FTC cracks down, data ethics is now a strategic business weapon

Daniel Wu Contributor Dan Wu is a privacy counsel and legal engineer at Immuta. He holds a JD from Harvard University, and is a PhD candidate for Social Policy and Sociology at The Harvard Kennedy School. More posts by this contributor Market map: the 200+ innovative startups transforming affordable housing Innovations in inclusive housing $5 billion dollars. That’s the apparent size of Facebook’s latest fine for violating data privacy.  While many believe the sum is simply a slap on the wrist for a behemoth like Facebook, it’s still...

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Facebook reportedly gets a $5 billion slap on the wrist from the FTC

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has reportedly agreed to end its latest probe into Facebook‘s privacy problems with a $5 billion payout. According to The Wall Street Journal, the 3-2, party-line vote by FTC commissioners was carried by the Republican majority and will be moved to the Justice Department’s civil division to be finalized. A $5 billion payout seems like a significant sum, but Facebook had already set aside $3 billion to cover the cost of the settlement and the company could likely make up the figure in less than a quarter of...

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Minimum investment for EB-5 investor green card expected to more than double

While not a startup visa, the EB-5 investor green card offers many entrepreneurs a path to a green card by investing money and creating jobs in the U.S. Under the EB-5 program, an entrepreneur’s family is also eligible for green cards. Imminent regulatory changes to the EB-5 program are expected to make obtaining an EB-5 green card a whole lot more expensive. The minimum investment is anticipated to more than double to $1.35 million from the current $500,000. And with individuals from India expected to face a backlog for EB-5 green cards shortly,...

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With so much late-stage money available, why are tech companies going public now?

Ajay Chopra Contributor Ajay Chopra co-founded Pinnacle Systems in his living room and grew it to a multi-billion dollar public company before becoming a venture capitalist with Trinity Ventures. More posts by this contributor Private equity buyouts have become viable exit options — even for early-stage startups Full autonomy is years away, but here’s what’s next on autonomy’s wild ride Ringing the Nasdaq market bell was the thrill of a lifetime — both when I did it as a founder and also vicariously as a VC via my incredible founders who...

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Digging into the Roblox growth strategy

Could Roblox create a new entertainment and communication category, something it calls “social co-experience”? When it was a small startup, few observers would have believed in that future. But after 15 years — as told in the origin story of our Roblox EC-1 — the company has accumulated 90 million users and a new $150 million venture funding war chest. It has captured the imagination of America’s youth, and become a startup darling in the entertainment space. But what, exactly, is social co-experience? Well, it can’t be described precisely — because...

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When someone great is gone: How to address grief in the workplace with empathy

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Daily Crunch: Twitter will let you hide replies

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. Twitter will start testing its ‘hide replies’ feature next week, in Canada Before you start complaining about censorship, keep in mind that hidden replies won’t actually get pulled from Twitter — they’ll disappear from the default view, but you can still tap a gray icon to see them. The goal is to give the person who starts a conversation more control over...

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Verified Expert Brand Designer: Studio Rodrigo

Ritik Dholakia worked as a startup product manager before he co-founded Studio Rodrigo, a branding and product design agency based in NYC. Unlike traditional branding firms, Studio Rodrigo is proud of its product design chops, especially when it comes to helping early-stage startups build version one of their product. It’s not an easy balancing act since most companies eventually want to bring their product design talent in-house, but it turns out, Studio Rodrigo can help with that too. Learn more about the studio in our Q&A with founder Ritik...

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Verified Expert Brand Designer: Studio Rodrigo

Ritik Dholakia worked as a startup product manager before he co-founded Studio Rodrigo, a branding and product design agency based in NYC. Unlike traditional branding firms, Studio Rodrigo is proud of its product design chops, especially when it comes to helping early-stage startups build version one of their product. It’s not an easy balancing act since most companies eventually want to bring their product design talent in-house, but it turns out, Studio Rodrigo can help with that too. Learn more about the studio in our Q&A with founder Ritik...

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Facebook answers how Libra taxes and anti-fraud will work

{rss:content:encoded} Facebook answers how Libra taxes and anti-fraud will work https://ift.tt/2O1pRtw https://ift.tt/32z8LXs July 12, 2019 at 05:53PM Facebook provided TechCrunch with new information on how its cryptocurrency will stay legal amidst allegations from President Trump that Libra could facilitate “unlawful behavior”. Facebook and Libra Association executives tell me they expect Libra will incur sales tax and capital gains taxes. They confirmed that Facebook is also in talks with local convenience stores and money exchanges to ensure...

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