Startups Weekly: A Silicon Valley for everyone

Editor’s note: Get this free weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7am PT). Subscribe here. Many in the tech industry saw the threat of the novel coronavirus early and reacted correctly. Fewer have seemed prepared for its aftereffects, like the outflow of talented employees from very pricey office real estate in expensive and troubled cities like San Francisco. And few indeed have seemed prepared for the Black Lives Matter protests that have followed the death of George Floyd. This was...

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So you want to talk about race in tech with Ijeoma Oluo

“A lot of people denigrate the value of talking about race and racism in technological spaces,” said Ijeoma Oluo, author of So You Want to Talk About Race, which has surged to the top of the New York Times best sellers list in paperback nonfiction, two and a half years after its initial January 2018 publication. “…I don’t think there’s a more important space to be talking about it.” Oluo and I were talking this January, just before the global pandemic struck, at One Cup Coffee: a no-frills, “more than profit” coffee shop that shares a storefront...

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Imaging startup Light is exiting the smartphone business

Light’s push into smartphones was an inevitability. Sure, the startup turned heads with its pricey L16 camera, but these days mobile photography is almost exclusively the domain of the handset. Early last year, the answer arrived in the form of the trypophobia-inducing Nokia 9 PureView. In a category where manufacturers raced to add more cameras, the PureView had the most, with a five-hexagonal array. It was new, innovative and for most, it was overkill. At the very least, however, it gave Nokia/HMD some bragging rights and managed to set...

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3 perspectives on the future of SF and NYC as startup hubs

It has been an incredibly tough period for everyone the past few months as the global COVID-19 pandemic has wiped out whole industries from the economic map. While tech has been among the most resilient industries in the face of this cataclysm, the extreme mobility of the industry’s workforce begs large questions about what the future of startups and work will look like moving forward. We’ve debated what COVID-19 will do to the rise of the college town as startup hubs and how the pandemic will change the way we work in coffee shops and neighborhoods....

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Imaging startup Light is exiting the smartphone business

{rss:content:encoded} Imaging startup Light is exiting the smartphone business https://ift.tt/3hl8iPT https://ift.tt/2B533TE June 13, 2020 at 12:34AM Light’s push into smartphones was an inevitability. Sure, the startup turned heads with its pricey L16 camera, but these days mobile photography is almost exclusively the domain of the handset. Early last year, the answer arrived in the form of the trypophobia-inducing Nokia 9 PureView. In a category where manufacturers raced to add more cameras, the PureView had the most, with a five-hexagonal...

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‘The money is still there,’ says APX managing director Jörg Rheinboldt

APX is an early-stage accelerator in Berlin, but it’s not quite your average accelerator — it’s essentially a joint venture between giant European publishing house Axel Springer and Porsche, the German automaker. Earlier this month, we sat down with APX managing director Jörg Rheinboldt to discuss what makes APX different and how it’s weathering the coronavirus pandemic. Rheinboldt has quite a bit of experience as both an entrepreneur and investor. He co-founded Alando.de, which was acquired by eBay in 1999 and donation platform betterplace.org...

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BLCK VC co-founder Sydney Sykes talks specific actions firms can take to be more inclusive

BLCK VC is on a mission to double the number of Black venture capitalists out there by 2024. The reason behind it shouldn’t need explaining — only 2% of all partner-level VCs are Black, and 81% of VC firms don’t have a single Black partner. It’s no surprise then, that the startup ecosystem that is built underneath the VC community is sadly and drastically homogeneous. We sat down with BLCK VC co-founder and co-chair Sydney Sykes on an episode of Extra Crunch Live to talk about the ongoing protests, the state of the VC industry with regard to diversity...

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The complicated calculus of taking Facebook’s venture money

Facebook is reportedly getting into the venture capital game, but for young entrepreneurs working in social media, ignoring or deleting that particular friend request could be the right call. According to a report in Axios, the company is building up a corporate fund under the auspices of its “New Product Experimentation” team, which launched last year. The company posted a job opening looking for a “head of investments” for the new division and now has new job openings in the group for two “founder” positions in New York City and Menlo Park, California.  Axios...

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The complicated calculus of taking Facebook’s venture money

Facebook is reportedly getting into the venture capital game, but for young entrepreneurs working in social media, ignoring or deleting that particular friend request could be the right call. According to a report in Axios, the company is building up a corporate fund under the auspices of its “New Product Experimentation” team, which launched last year. The company posted a job opening looking for a “head of investments” for the new division and now has new job openings in the group for two “founder” positions in New York City and Menlo Park, California.  Axios...

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Daily Crunch: Snapchat is getting mini apps

Snap announces a bunch of new features, Moderna prepares for the final-stage trial of its coronavirus vaccine and Sony shows off the PlayStation 5. Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 12, 2020. 1. Snapchat debuts Minis, bite-sized third-party apps that live inside chat Snap Minis are lightweight third-party programs that users can quickly pull up in the Chat section. This allows them to complete tasks without switching apps, like ordering movie tickets, comparing class schedules, studying a flashcard deck or going through a guided meditation. The...

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Daily Crunch: Snapchat is getting mini apps

{rss:content:encoded} Daily Crunch: Snapchat is getting mini apps https://ift.tt/2BWauNr https://ift.tt/2CoAoqu June 12, 2020 at 07:02PM Snap announces a bunch of new features, Moderna prepares for the final-stage trial of its coronavirus vaccine and Sony shows off the PlayStation 5. Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 12, 2020. 1. Snapchat debuts Minis, bite-sized third-party apps that live inside chat Snap Minis are lightweight third-party programs that users can quickly pull up in the Chat section. This allows them to complete tasks without switching...

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