Here’s your chance for something different: We’re excited bring back “So You Think You Can Pitch” at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024, our annual founder summit taking place in Boston on April 25.
At TC Early Stage, three founders will get to present their pitch deck for 4 minutes in front of an expert panel of judges and secure essential insight before stepping up to bat.
How it worksTechCrunch will be selecting three finalists to present their pitch deck onstage for 4 minutes.
Selected finalists will meet with the TechCrunch team beforehand to prep for their session.
About TechCrunch Early Stage 2024TechCrunch’s founder summit on April 25 in Boston, Massachusetts, empowers early-stage entrepreneurs, from pre-seed to growth stages, on their journey to success.
Google is hopeful it will soon be able to ‘unpause’ the ability of its multimodal generative AI tool, Gemini, to depict people, per DeepMind founder, Demis Hassabis.
The capability to respond to prompts for images of humans should be back online in the “next few weeks”, he said today.
Asked by moderator, Wired’s Steven Levy, to explain what went wrong with the image generation feature, Hassabis sidestepped a detailed technical explanation.
Instead he suggested the issue was caused by Google failing to identify instances when users are basically after what he described as a “universal depiction”.
The issue is “very complex”, he suggested — likely demanding a whole-of-society mobilization and response to determine and enforce limits.
“Brand anchors” to gated areas like reward programs are something that companies will expand upon in 2024, he said.
“I think this year we’re going to see a lot of community-based brand building,” he shared on TechCrunch’s Chain Reaction podcast.
Starbucks launched Starbucks Odyssey in 2022 as its initial foray into the web3 world.
The experience combined the company’s Starbucks Reward loyalty program with NFTs to enhance customer experiences, TechCrunch previously reported.
This never would have happened if not for web3.”The loyalty program has a five-tiered system with over 58,000 active participants at least on level one, Kaczynski said.
We’ve been hearing about the notion of customer experience forever, the idea that we could improve customer interactions with brands digitally.
Whether or not that’s true, the two founders fundamentally see AI agents as a new technology category, providing an entirely new way for customers to interact with brands to improve their overall experience.
Regardless, Taylor and Bavor recognize that there are some serious challenges and risks when it comes to humans interacting with these AI agents.
I think with AI we finally have technology that isn’t just making us more productive but actually doing the job.
Sierra clearly sees a big opportunity to transform customer experience with AI, but many obstacles stand in the way of success.
Earlier this week, the 19-year-old son of former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, was found dead at UC Berkeley of an apparent drug overdose, according to his grandmother, Esther Wojcicki.
The news broke widely yesterday, though Wojcicki posted the news to Facebook several days ago, writing: “Tragedy hit my family yesterday.
Esther Wojcicki told the Palo Alto Daily of her grandson’s passing, “Kids in college, especially freshmen and sophomores, experiment with everything.
I didn’t have the opportunity to interview Wojcicki while she held one of the most prestigious CEO posts in the world.
I love kids, I love work and I think at some level I just love creating things and building.
Lai made impassioned comments about Taiwan’s chip industry after his victory on Saturday that seem to make it clear that his administration’s main tech focus will be on semiconductors.
Taiwan’s semiconductor industry strengthens the global standing of the country, a small island with a population of 23 million.
Another barrier is that even though the semiconductor industry is important to Taiwan’s economy, most people don’t work in it.
“Most people in the nation are not employed in the semiconductor industry, even though it’s the lifeblood of the economy,” says Patel.
Despite the challenges faced by Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, Triolo notes that its international recognition has grown significantly since Tsai came into power eight years ago.
Briq, a startup that uses AI to automate finances in construction, brings in $8M extension at a $150M valuationAt a time where many startups are struggling to raise funding, or are raising – but at lower valuations, it’s notable when companies raise at flat or higher valuations.
The startup last announced a fundraise in June of 2021 – a $30 million Series B financing led by Tiger Global Management.
Customers include Briq Choate Construction, Catamount Construction, Fessler and Bowman, and Elder Construction, among others.
Briq deploys that across two products: Briq AutoPilot and Briq CoPilot.
“Usually when we think about robots in construction, we think about machines on a jobsite.
When it comes to startups’ flight to quality, have we swung too far in the other direction?
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our new Saturday show, where we sit down with a guest, think about their work, and unpack the rest.
This week, we talked to Jenny Fielding, co-founder and managing partner at Everywhere Ventures, a founder collective and early-stage (think pre-seed) venture firm.
Jenny and I discussed a wide variety of topics, including startups’ flight to quality in 2024 and how smaller firms are competing with larger firms in the current investment landscape.
We know your time is precious, so beginning next week, we’re going to make it a lot easier for you to read our best stuff.
For starters, we’re adding a morning newsletter, with the startup and venture and broader tech news we think you want to be tracking more closely.
The newsletter – TechCrunch AM – is being authored by TC veteran Alex Wilhelm, who many of you already know and about whom we think pretty highly.
It’s the ultimate insider newsletter if you work in VC, want to work in VC, work with VCs, or want or do work for a VC-backed company.
Think TechCrunch Space, TechCrunch Crypto, TechCrunch Mobility and TechCrunch Fintech.
But when is the right time to hire a CFO, and is a full-time CFO even necessary in this age of C-level-as-a-service?
It is common for founders to think narrowly about accounting when considering whether to hire a CFO.
It is common for founders to think narrowly about accounting when considering whether to hire a CFO.
Startup coach and CFO Evgeny Popov said that hiring a CFO was a no-brainer, akin to finding a CTO for your tech company.
“Unfortunately, hiring a CFO is not an obvious move for founders because most founders come from the product or tech worlds and don’t see the CFO as vital to growth.”
