If death and taxes are inevitable, why are companies so prepared for taxes, but not for death?
In the immediate aftermath of Linder’s loss, founding a company would have been a long shot.
So Bereave built a B2B product to sell to employers, which they can offer their employees in times of need.
The platform catalogs resources for people experiencing loss, walking them through the steps of closing out a loved one’s affairs.
Tall Poppy, a company that offers digital safety guidance for employees navigating online harassment and hacks, also uses step-by-step checklists.
Fisker temporarily lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments as it scaled up deliveries, leading to an internal audit that started in December and took months to complete, TechCrunch has learned.
The EV startup was ultimately able to track down a majority of those payments or request new ones from customers whose payment methods had expired.
Red flags raisedFisker has warned investors since last year about problems with its internal accounting practices.
Fisker’s poor internal procedures have created problems beyond keeping track of payments.
Fisker hired contractors in February to help resolve the title and registration problems, but the backlog was immense, according to the people.
Bumble has lost a third of its Texas workforce in the months since the state passed the controversial abortion SB 8 (Senate Bill 8), also known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, over a year ago.
We’ve supported employees who’ve chosen to move out of state,” Monteleone added.
“We — since SB 8 — have seen a reduction in our Texas workforce by about a third.
The dating app maker became the first business to join an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit against the Texas abortion law, Zurawski v. State of Texas, filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights.
The dating app maker posted a weak Q4, with a $32 million net loss and $273.6 million in revenue.
Leaked documents show Techstars lost $7 million in 2023 but still had plenty of cash Cuts to Techstars programs are not surprising given its 2023 financial performance.
Cuts to Techstars’ staff and its decision to shutter certain accelerators came after it missed its 2023 revenue goals, according to documents outlining its preliminary 2023 results viewed by TechCrunch.
Techstars 2023 budget targeted an average of 68 “active accelerator programs,” but was reduced to 61 in its mid-year forecast.
The good news was that TechStars had plenty of cash in 2023 to handle these troubles and its closing cash balance in 2023 was actually much better than originally anticipated.
But these documents reveal that the company closed last year with around $50 million in cash for its operational budget.
As Techstars retools, some former staffers say it lost focus on what made it successfulWell-known accelerator group Techstars announced a slew of changes to its operations this week, including the shuttering of some of its city-based programs.
And one former Techstars managing director (MD) told TechCrunch that the move away from local fundraising for city-based accelerator programs was an error.
One former managing director (MD) said that having local limited partner investors in Techstars meant that more people in those cities had a stake in its local programs.
The shift away from local capital and more focus on corporate dollars meant that city-based boosters and founders were less central to Techstars’ focus, the MD said.
Still, Techstars faces competition, not just from Y Combinator domestically, but from other accelerator programs in the US and elsewhere around the world.
Google has apologized (or come very close to apologizing) for another embarrassing AI blunder this week, an image generating model that injected diversity into pictures with a farcical disregard for historical context.
While the underlying issue is perfectly understandable, Google blames the model for “becoming” over-sensitive.
But if you ask for 10, and they’re all white guys walking goldens in suburban parks?
Where Google’s model went wrong was that it failed to have implicit instructions for situations where historical context was important.
These two things led the model to overcompensate in some cases, and be over-conservative in others, leading to images that were embarrassing and wrong.
X, formerly known as Twitter, said Wednesday it is withholding specific accounts and posts in India, action it said the firm disagrees with, in response to executive orders issued by the Indian government.
Non-compliance with the executive orders, X said, would have subjected the firm to “potential penalties including significant fines and imprisonment.”X’s Global Government Affairs said legal restrictions prevent it from publishing the executive orders, but “we believe that making them public is essential for transparency.” X will file a writ appeal challenging the Indian government’s blocking orders, it said, and has notified users who are impacted by the orders.
The disclosure from X follows New Delhi ordering to temporarily block about 177 accounts and posts surrounding farmers’ protests in the country.
As privacy advocate Apar Gupta wrote in a recent post on X:Blocking orders for Twitter accounts of farm leaders have been issued in advance.
This is not surprising, what does provide anguish is the vile commentary against farmers on social media.
For example, the MTA transit system in New York collected more than 18,000 lost items from 2018 to 2023 — and that time includes when people were sheltering in place for the pandemic.
Boomerang thinks AI can fix lost and found.
The Miami-based startup built software that uses machine learning to match pictures and descriptions of lost items.
Customers, which can range from gyms to theme parks, upload pictures and descriptions of their lost and found while consumers do the same for the item they’ve lost.
If there is a match, consumers can choose to pick up their items or have them shipped.
Sono SionGerman automaker Sono once led the charge to bring solar panels to electric cars with the five-seater Sono Sion hatchback.
No longer an automaker, Sono now focuses on embedding its solar tech into other vehicles.
GM, Honda’s affordable EVsGeneral Motors and Honda said in April 2022 that they’d co-develop millions of small and affordable EVs.
Months later, it seems the acquirer has yet to restart VanMoof production or resume repairs.
On the other handIt’s been a bummer year for fans of small EVs, but all is not lost.
In the early days of the industrial production of animal proteins, Pat Brown and his team at Impossible Foods pioneered a new approach to precision fermentation. Using microbial organisms like…
