Only Products and Other Stuff

The regulatory environment surrounding crypto is shifting stateside as the SEC takes aim at major players in the web3 world, promising to shake up business as usual with aggressive action. This week on Chain Reaction, we sat down with David Nage. Nage is a Principal at Arca overseeing their early stage fund with a primary focus on blockchain and digital assets. On the podcast this week, we dug into a multitude of crypto topics impacting the web3 venture capital world, including struggles with the blockchain gaming sector and a renewed regulatory fervor from the SEC following this week’s report of an investigation into Coinbase. You can listen to the full interview below. In our conversation, Nage noted that the recent downturn has already provided plenty of learnings for players in the space, but notes that some of the biggest blowups have disproportionally impacted retail investors. “I wish that we as a society didn’t have to learn through failure, but it appears that we really le...

Bolt Mobility, the Miami-based micromobility startup co-founded by Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt, appears to have vanished without a trace from several of its U.S. markets.  In some cases, the departure has been abrupt, leaving cities with abandoned equipment, unanswered calls and emails and lots of questions. Bolt has stopped operating in at least five U.S. cities, including Portland, Oregon, Burlington, South Burlington and Winooski in Vermont and Richmond, California, according to city officials. City representatives also said they were unable to reach anyone at Bolt, including its CEO Ignacio Tzoumas. TechCrunch has made multiple attempts to reach Bolt and those who have backed the company. Emails to Bolt’s communications department, several employees and investors went unanswered. Even the customer service line doesn’t appear to be staffed.  The PR agency that was representing Bolt in March of this year told TechCrunch it is no longer working with the company....

What’s the difference between a startup and a small business? Semantics, mostly. As many startups find themselves struggling to raise funds from venture capitalists as financing continues to decline this year , the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) could prove to be a powerful resource for capital, even if startups traditionally look for funds from other sources. Chris Hurn , the founder and CEO of Fountainhead, knows the potential benefits of taking on government financing. Fountainhead is a nonbank lender of government-guaranteed loans. Hurn said the current generation of entrepreneurs is laser-focused on raising equity-based funding from backers like venture capital firms — but that isn’t their only option, especially as equity gets more expensive in current market conditions. “The problem is that business owners oftentimes overlook pretty readily available debt capital,” Hurn told TechCrunch. “They don’t have to give up any equity. [SBA loans] can oftentimes be the exact s...

It takes a veritable army to make TechCrunch Disrupt — which takes place October 18–20 in San Francisco — the well-oiled experience that savvy startuppers have come to know and love. And we couldn’t do it nearly as well without our incredible volunteers. If you’re looking for a no-budget way to experience Disrupt up close and personal, sign up to volunteer for work exchange. Not only will you get a behind-the-scenes look at how to produce events, but you’ll also earn a free pass ($1995 value) to experience the event. You’ll work hard, play hard and get free access to all three days of Disrupt. Whether you dream of becoming a startup founder, marketer or event coordinator, this is a great way to see what it takes to produce a world-renowned tech startup conference. Plus, your free pass gives you access to the full Disrupt experience — the main stage, the TechCrunch+ stage, the expo floor — where you’ll find the Startup Battlefield 200 — and the Startup Battlefield competition. ...

As the fintech venture market goes, so goes the venture market itself. Why? Because fintech investment has historically made up around one-fifth of every venture dollar invested — at least in recent years. And after both fintech investing  and venture capital itself went a bit bonkers last year , both are dealing with a new, more conservative reality. For fintech startups, the downturn is real, and many upstart companies — we learned during our recent fintech investor survey — are looking to avoid de-novo rounds that include a new valuation (no one wants to raise a down round!). Therefore, extension rounds are an attractive option for many founders. But as TechCrunch has reported, while extension rounds are popular even beyond fintech today , there are often more startups hunting for the round type than there are checks . So, to better understand the market for fintech extension rounds today, we have one more set of answers from a group of fintech venture investors we surveyed ....

Welcome to The Interchange! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and your vote of confidence. If you’re reading this as a post on our site, sign up here so you can receive it directly in the future. Every week, I’ll take a look at the hottest fintech news of the previous week. This will include everything from funding rounds to trends to an analysis of a particular space to hot takes on a particular company or phenomenon. There’s a lot of fintech news out there and it’s my job to stay on top of it — and make sense of it — so you can stay in the know. — Mary Ann What a difference a few months makes. In mid-February, we published a survey of 10 fintech investors with questions on topics such as what areas they are excited about and their outlook for the future. Here we are, not even six months later, and the vibe from the responses of our latest survey — this time of eight fintech investors — is a very different one. A few examples… When asked in February ...

Hello hello! Welcome back to Week in Review , the newsletter where we do a quick rundown of the most-read TechCrunch stories from the past week. The idea: When you’ve had a busy few days, you should be able to skim Week in Review and still have a good idea of what’s up lately in tech. Want it in your inbox? Sign up here . The most read story this week was about Battlegrounds Mobile India, a popular battle royale title that has found an audience of tens of millions in India. Players woke up to find the game suddenly blocked from both Google Play and Apple’s App Store by order of the Indian government. Why? That’s…not exactly clear yet, but Manish has the breakdown of everything we know so far . other stuff New Gmail for all : Use Gmail? Don’t be surprised if it looks different soon. The company announced this week that the “Material You” interface overhaul it has been testing will roll out to all users in the coming weeks. Don’t like the new styling? For now, at least, you can find ...

Welcome back to Chain Reaction. Last week, we looked at Musk holding onto doge. This week, we’re talking about where all of this crypto VC money is possibly gonna go. To get this in your inbox every Thursday, you can subscribe on TechCrunch’s newsletter page. maybe, it’s all a game? A weekly dispatch from the desk of TechCrunch crypto editor Lucas Matney : The reality is that the dreams of web3 investors and founders are facing a bit of a jam — a crypto downturn generally means less hype, fewer conversations between friends and generally less organic consumer onboarding to consumer experiences. This is far from ideal for VCs who saw a consumer web dream within grasp, but fortunately they’ve got some deep pockets thanks to recently raised mega funds with crypto bets as their sole focus. Still, it’s a rough time for consumer crypto’s core audience though, with recently minted acolytes down bad and many likely discouraged from sinking more time, money or effort into new web3 proje...

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. Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has slowed down. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced 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 and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps. This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more. Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsle...