Only Products and Other Stuff

Hi! I’m Greg Kumparak. I’ll be heading up Week in Review for the foreseeable future, with your former host Lucas Matney diving into cryptoland with the launch of a newsletter and podcast called Chain Reaction . He’s not going too far, and I’m sure he’ll stop back in from time to time. If my name seems familiar, it might be because I took over Week in Review a few times while Lucas was AFK/touching grass/not staring at a screen. Or it could be because you’ve been reading TechCrunch for a long time. I’ve been around this place for over a decade; I’ve worn a lot of hats in that time. (Metaphorical hats. I’ve got a big ol’ head, most actual hats don’t fit right.) That’s all I’ll say about me, for now, because this isn’t the Greg in Review newsletter. But come say hi on Twitter . Tell me what you like most about Week in Review as it has existed so far. I don’t intend to change much about the format, but I’m always down to do more of what people like. the big thing Lucas always starte...

For investors, one factor will almost always stand head and shoulders above the rest: Your TAM (total addressable market) needs to break at least $1 billion. But alongside a massive addressable market, investors are also looking to see that you have existing customers, even they’re few in number, who truly love your product. However, communicating the steps between your existing users (wedge) and your long-term potential as a company (TAM) can be incredibly tricky. At TechCrunch Early Stage this month, we sat down with Felicis Ventures partners Viviana Faga and Niki Pezeshki to talk about scaling, product-market fit, and why it’s crucial to be “10x better” than the incumbents. Product-market fit Startups must be able to demonstrate that they have users that love their product. But what does “love” really mean? Faga and Pezeshki believe that startups need a framework to measure their initial push into a niche audience. They suggest running a survey with your first cohort of us...

Android and privacy haven’t always been natural companions. Google still makes the bulk of its profits from its data-fueled advertising business that relies heavily on user information, much of it derived directly from Android users. Nowadays, Google gives its users more authority over how and when the search giant taps into Android-associated data by baking a number of security features and privacy protections into the software. Many of the basics you already know. Setting a strong PIN — or better yet, an alphanumeric passcode — to lock down your device is a great start, and making sure you keep your device up-to-date with the latest security patches . Plus, protecting your Google account with two-factor authentication can save you from even the most well-resourced hackers. What’s more, a number of Android’s built-in security features are switched on by default, such as verified boot, a feature that ensures that the device’s firmware hasn’t been tampered with by malware, and Goog...

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a fresh human-first take on this week’s startup news and trends. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. There’s a clash happening in the early-stage market. In one world, late-stage investors are reacting to tech stonk corrections by clamoring toward the early-stage investment world, forcing seed investors to go even earlier to defend ownership and potential returns. This trend was underscored by firms like Andreessen Horowitz launching a pre-seed program months after launching a $400 million seed fund . Even more, Techstars, an accelerator literally launched to help startups get off the ground, debuted a fund to back companies that are too early for its traditional programming. While all that is going on, early-stage investors are enduring a valuation correction and portfolio markdowns. Some are admitting that they’re telling portfolio companies to refocus on cash conservation, profitability and discipline, not just growth. Let’s pretend these tw...

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports . Global spending across iOS, Google Play and third-party Android app stores in China grew 19% in 2021 to reach $170 billion. Downloads of apps also grew by 5%, reaching 230 billion in 2021, and mobile ad spend grew 23% year over year to reach $295 billion. Today’s consumers now spend more time in apps than ever before — even topping the time they spend watching TV, in some cases. The average American watches 3.1 hours of TV per day, for example, but in 2021, they spent 4.1 hours on their mobile device. And they’re not even the world’s heaviest mobile users. In markets like Brazil, Indonesia and South Korea, users surpassed five hours pe...

Welcome to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the  daily TechCrunch+ column  where it gets its name.  Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up  here .  Good news! We’re  not talking about crypto, Elon Musk or SaaS multiples today. We’re also not talking IPOs, global venture capital trends or the like. Instead, we’re going to talk about putting toothpaste back in the tube. Sound fun? Let’s go. China’s technology industry Since the Ant IPO was pulled and the Chinese Communist Party executed off a flat-wild period of regulatory action in 2021, you have probably heard less about China’s technology. That’s because the companies that tended to make the biggest splash in foreign media were concerns like Alibaba, ByteDance and the like — tech companies that touched lots of individuals, including folks outside the country’s national borders. China’s government decided that such companies had too much influe...

Welcome to Perceptron, TechCrunch’s weekly roundup of AI news and research from around the world. Machine learning is a key technology in practically every industry now, and there’s far too much happening for anyone to keep up with it all. This column aims to collect some of the most interesting recent discoveries and papers in the field of artificial intelligence — and explain why they matter. (Formerly known as Deep Science; check out previous editions here .) This week’s roundup starts with a pair of forward-thinking studies from Facebook/Meta. The first is a collaboration with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that aims at reducing the amount of emissions from concrete production. Concrete accounts for some 8 percent of carbon emissions, so even a small improvement could help us meet climate goals. This is called “slump testing.” What the Meta/UIUC team did was train a model on over a thousand concrete formulas, which differed in proportions of sand, slag, ground...

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here . Friday, more like Fri-yay! It’s April 29, 2022, we’re here with the latest headlines, but honestly our brains are mostly focused on all the hardcore fun we’re going to have this weekend. Like doing laundry, napping, playing with our pets, reading a book for a while and sleeping in. I know, we’re old and boring, deal with it. — Christine and Haje The TechCrunch Top 3 Selling Tesla, getting a pretty tweet deal: Everyone’s favorite social media-acquiring billionaire is selling $4 billion worth of Tesla stock  and supposedly has a new Twitter CEO lined up. He also shared that he has the beginnings of a plan for how to monetize tweets. Wait, companies have to make money?  Robinhood’s stock price is going off a cliff  as competition gets stiff and its business model is more and more skew-whiff. Home is where the benefits are: Airbnb emp...