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Hello and happy Thursday. Just one more day for the work week. Haha is in Boston taking fabulous photos of the activities that take place in TechCrunch early stage today, so I’m defending the fort. And I’m also mourning for myself twitter blue check mark, who left me today. Enough of that. Let’s continue with the news! — christina
TechCrunch Top 3
- Passwords are hard to remember: The company behind the encrypted email service Proton Mail has now introduced the Proton Pass password manager so you don’t have to remember a thing. Roman has more.
- Don’t worry, this is a Primo tool: Also for RomanFrench startup Primo raised $3.4 million to continue developing an IT tool for companies that are too small for an IT manager.
- Blue skies, smiling at me: Bluesky, the Jack Dorsey-backed Twitter alternative, is now available on Android, he writes Sarah.
Startups and VCs
Three former managing directors of Amex Ventures decided on their own to start Vesey Ventures, and now they have they closed their debut fund with $78 million in capital commitments to support early-stage fintech startups. maria anna have more on your journey.
Now let’s move on to CoreWeave, which got a mega round of $221 million in Series B investmenthalf of which came from lead investor Magnetar Capital. Kyle writes that this values the general-purpose cloud computing company at $2 billion before money.
Here are SIX more for you:
- game in: rita peel back the layers of Bitkraft Ventures’ vision of investing in Asian gaming startups.
- A robust vision of robotics: Robust.AI raised $20 million to scale robot deliveries for pilot customers, reports Brian.
- From hospitality to fleet management: Two brothers in Senegal are putting their hotel management skills to work to help trucking companies with their logistics. your company, Chargel, has now raised $2.5 million in seed funding, annie writes
- Focus on mental health: Label spoke to investors who say that if the mental well-being of founders is tied to innovation and success, then there has to be a light showing on itespecially during this difficult capital crisis environment.
- It’s like Barbie’s Jeep, but in human size.: French microcar startup Kate raised another $7.6 million in its quest to produce smaller electric vehicles, such as its K1, reports Roman.
- We assure you that they are real.: Singapore-based document verifier Accreditify is now flush with $7 million to continue to inform you if your documents are real. Katherine has more.
4 Problems Venture Capital Can’t Solve
Image Credits: Oleksandr Shchus (Opens in a new window) / Fake Images
Fundraising is a key aspect of every founder’s journey, but Techstars managing director Collin Wallace says it can also hasten a company’s demise.
For example, raising funds to increase sales and marketing efforts may sound great, but what if the business itself has a negative economic unit?
“Most of the time, what stands between a business and its ability to scale isn’t a lack of money,” says Wallace.
“It is better to ask: Do we have hustle problems? Problems with the product? Process problems? People problems? Is my business model fundamentally flawed?
Two more from the TC+ team:
- Ooey sticky pitch deck goodness: In the last installment of Launch pad disassembly, Haha look at the pitching pad that landed Honeycomb a $50 million Series D.
- thread the needle: Dominic Madori spoke with Lisa Lambert, Director of National Grid’s CVC National Grid Partners, who discussed that “environmental and social concerns should be top of mind right now for any savvy investor.”
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big tech inc
SpaceX finally got its Starship rocket off the ground and went into orbit for the first time. darrell writes that “all told, this should definitely be considered a success: SpaceX founder Elon Musk had previously said that there was a significant chance that Starship wouldn’t even get off the platform on this first try.”
The cheats are for kids, but in the case of Discord, the cheats are for their new chatbot. Lawrence reports that some users performed a trick called “jailbreaking” on the Clyde Discord chatbot, getting it to share napalm and meth instructions.
And now here are five more for you:
- Explicit content ahead: Imgur will ban explicit images on your platform, Ivan reports.
- From the mind of…: Kyle writes about Google consolidating its AI research divisions into Google DeepMind.
- get a word in: It’s no secret that group chats tend to suck when there are more than three people in one. A new app called Wavelength is trying to make group chats suck less. Ivan has more.
- we got ourselves a convoy: Kodiak Robotics has a new concert for autonomous freight forwarding for Tyson Foodsreports Rebeca.
- Respect my authority!: lauren has details about Paramount Reportedly Owes Warner Bros. Discovery $52 Million For “South Park” Broadcast Rights.
Daily Crunch: Proton Launches End-to-End Encrypted Password Manager For Desktop And Mobile by christina living room originally posted on TechCrunch