Is Wall Street losing its tech enthusiasm?

This is The TechCrunch Exchange, a newsletter that goes out on Saturdays, based on the column of the same name. You can sign up for the email here. Over the past few months the IPO market made it plain that some public investors were willing to pay more for growth-focused technology shares than private investors. We saw this in both strong tech IPO pricing — the value set on companies as they debut — and in resulting first-day valuations, which were often higher. One way to consider how far public valuations rose for tech startups, especially...

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MG Siegler talks portfolio management and fundraising 6 months into the COVID-19 pandemic

This week, GV General Partner (and TechCrunch alum) MG Siegler joined us on Extra Crunch Live for a far-ranging chat about what it takes to foster a good relationship between investor and startup, how portfolio management and investing has changed as the COVID-19 crisis drags on, and what Siegler expects will and won’t stick around in terms of changes in behavior in investment and entrepreneurship once the pandemic passes. We last caught up with Siegler on the heels of his investment in Universe, a mobile-focused, e-commerce business-building startup....

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The 2020s promise better tech solutions to humanity’s biggest problems

Editor’s note: Get this free weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7 a.m. PT). Subscribe here. Let’s think beyond Monday, for a minute, to the trends playing out in technology this coming decade. While humanity’s problems have never been greater, our tools have never been better. Here’s more, from Danny Crichton: The 2010s were all about executing on the dreams of mobile, cloud, and basic data. Those ideas had historical antecedents going back in some cases decades or more (Vannevar...

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Equity shot: Boo! It’s the Halloween earnings special!

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. As promised, the whole gang is back, this time to chew on the biggest, baddest, worstest, and most troubling earnings reports from the current cycle. This week saw Amazon and Alphabet and Microsoft and Apple and Facebook report, along with a host of smaller companies. Spoiler alert: there were more tricks than treats. Danny, Natasha and Alex wanted to get to the bottom of the big tech results,...

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You can start a venture fund if you’re not rich; here’s how

For years — decades, even — there was little question about whether you could become a venture capitalist if you weren’t comfortable financially. You couldn’t. The people and institutions that invest in venture funds want to know that fund managers have their own “skin in the game,” so they’ve long required a sizable check from the investor’s own pocket before jumping aboard. Think 2% to 3% of the fund’s total assets, which often equates to millions of dollars. In fact, five years ago, I wrote that the real obstacle to becoming a venture capitalist...

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TikTok stars got a judge to block Trump’s TikTok ban

TikTok has won another battle in its fight against the Trump administration’s ban of its video-sharing app in the U.S. — or, more accurately in this case, the TikTok community won a battle. On Friday, a federal judge in Pennsylvania issued an injunction that blocked the restrictions that would have otherwise blocked TikTok from operating in the U.S. on November 12. This particular lawsuit was not led by TikTok itself, but rather a group of TikTok creators who use the app to engage with their million-plus followers. According to the court documents,...

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Facebook hits pause on algorithmic recommendations for political and social issue groups

With just days to go before the U.S. election, Facebook quietly suspended one of its most worrisome features. During Wednesday’s Senate hearing, Senator Ed Markey asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about reports that his company has long known its group recommendations push people toward more extreme content. Zuckerberg responded that the company had actually disabled that feature for certain groups — a fact Facebook had not previously announced. “Senator, we have taken the step of stopping recommendations in groups for all political content or...

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iPhones can now tell blind users where and how far away people are

{rss:content:encoded} iPhones can now tell blind users where and how far away people are https://ift.tt/37W232B https://ift.tt/3jJTZ7i October 30, 2020 at 11:01PM Apple has packed an interesting new accessibility feature into the latest beta of iOS: a system that detects the presence of and distance to people in the view of the iPhone’s camera, so blind users can social distance effectively, among many other things. The feature emerged from Apple’s ARKit, for which the company developed “people occlusion,” which detects people’s shapes and lets...

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Q3 earnings find Apple and Google looking to the future for hardware rebounds

{rss:content:encoded} Q3 earnings find Apple and Google looking to the future for hardware rebounds https://ift.tt/3mDTBcq https://ift.tt/2HSXVps October 30, 2020 at 10:05PM “5G is a once-in-a-decade kind of opportunity,” Tim Cook told the media during the Q&A portion of Apple’s Q3 earnings call. “And we could not be more excited to hit the market exactly when we did.” The truth of the matter is its timing was a mixed bag. Apple was, by some accounts, late to 5G. By the time the company finally announced that it was adding the technology across...

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Dear Sophie: Would a Trump win abolish the H-1B visa lottery?

Sophie Alcorn Contributor Share on Twitter Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Dear Sophie: Any upgrade options for E-2 visa holders interested in changing jobs? Dear Sophie: What visa options exist for a grad co-founding a startup? Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the...

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Join Greylock’s Asheem Chandna on November 5 at noon PST/3 pm EST/8 pm GMT to discuss the future of enterprise and cybersecurity investing

The world of enterprise software and cybersecurity has taken multiple body blows since COVID-19 demolished the in-person office, flinging employees across the world and forcing companies to adapt to an all-remote productivity model. The shift has required companies to rethink not only collaboration software, but also the infrastructure that powers it and the best way to protect assets once their security perimeters have been destroyed. The pandemic has also dramatically increased the usage of digital services, forcing cloud providers to keep up...

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Nestlé acquires healthy meal startup Freshly for up to $1.5B

Nestlé USA just announced that it has acquired Freshly for $1.5 billion — $950 million plus potential earnouts of up to $550 million based on future growth. Founded in 2015, Freshly is a New York City-based startup that offers healthy meals delivered to your home in weekly orders, then prepared in a few minutes via microwave or oven,  So you get the benefit of fresh, healthy meals but — unlike signing up with a meal kit startup — you don’t have to spend a lot of time cooking them yourself. If anything, this sounds even more appealing now,...

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Facebook is limiting distribution of ‘save our children’ hashtag over QAnon ties

Facebook today confirmed that it will be limiting the distribution of the hashtag “save our children.” Over the past several months, the phrase — and ones like it — have become associated with QAnon. These terms have served to provide a kind of innocuous cover for the popular online conspiracy theory. A spokesperson for the social network confirmed the move today, noting that child safety resources will be prioritized in search above those potentially tied to QAnon. “Earlier this week, we stepped up how we enforce our rules against QAnon on pages,...

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