Only Products and Other Stuff

On Friday afternoon, former Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey turned to the platform that he co-created to speak about its future, days after the company was bought for $44 billion by Elon Musk. In the vague thread , Dorsey said he doesn’t believe in permanent bans, with the exception of illegal activity. “As I’ve said before, I don’t believe any permanent ban (with the exception of illegal activity) is right, or should be possible. This is why we need a protocol that’s resilient to the layers above,” said Dorsey, who stepped down from his role at Twitter in November 2021 and currently works as the Block Head of Block. I have tried taking a break from Twitter recently, but I must say: the company has always tried to do its best given the information it had. Every decision we made was ultimately my responsibility*. In the cases we were wrong or went too far, we admitted it and worked to correct. — jack (@jack) April 29, 2022 While Dorsey’s thread didn’t name names, there’...

Hey everyone, and welcome back to Chain Reaction In our Chain Reaction podcast this week, Anita and I chatted with Sequoia Capital’s Shaun Maguire on why gamers are skeptical of NFTs and where decentralization really matters. More details below. Last week was our inaugural newsletter and we chatted at length about the changes Twitter could make to expand its crypto business. At that point, I — like many others — was operating under the assumption that a Musk Twitter deal was ultimately doomed, but low and behold we’ve got a deal. Everything has been approved at this point, but I can’t shake a feeling that something is going to kill this deal in the eleventh hour. If that happens, Twitter’s board or Musk will be on the hook for a $1 billion penalty for walking away from the deal, but I suppose we’ll see … This week, I’m looking at a controversial Bitcoin mining ban working its way through New York regulators and what bills like it could mean for the political reputation of crypto’s #...

Lotti Siniscalco is a partner at Emergence Capital , where she invests in early-stage enterprise software companies. During TechCrunch’s Early Stage event, she headlined a session dedicated to giving feedback on pitch decks. What follows is a small slice of Lotti’s input from the session. Constructing pitch decks is part art and part science. And they’re always a work in progress. Each week on TechCrunch Live , a founder and investor present an early pitch deck that won significant capital investment. The events are free to join, and after looking at the pitch deck, startup founders can practice their pitch with the investor and founder. TechCrunch is also kicking off a series of posts digging into real pitch decks that raised rounds that we’ve covered. The first entry diving into the Minut deck is here . Enjoy! On pitching the right investor: “The first thing is: Know your audience. Do a little bit of research, and try to tweak the email to make it personal,” Lotti said, adding t...

Earlier this month at TechCrunch Early Stage, I talked to Frederique Dame, an investing partner at GV, about product-market fit . A standing-room-only crowd packed the venue as Dame spoke about her experience leading product and engineering efforts at Uber, Yahoo and Smugmug, sharing some of what she learned about gathering customer data, iterating quickly to validate ideas, and the challenges that come with scaling teams from a few dozen people to several thousand employees. Great day at @TechCrunch Early Stage talking with @YourProtagonist about how founders can find product-market fit! pic.twitter.com/ybbqwGX6Hm — Frederique Dame (@fffabulous) April 14, 2022 We also discussed several specific tactics and strategies that can help move organizations towards PMF, including effective ways to capture and share user data, and developing customer personas that will help everyone understand the company’s mission and purpose. Full TechCrunch+ articles are only available to memb...

Pinterest may have beat on revenue and earnings in the first quarter, but the company is not out of the woods yet when it comes to carving out a place for its service in today’s competitive landscape. In particular, Pinterest is up against a credible threat with the rise of TikTok when it comes to social commerce. The idea that you could be inspired to shop by browsing media shared by others is an experience that Pinterest, in a way, helped pioneer, with its pinboard-style website where users often saved ideas of things they were considering buying or trying. But these days, the more common refrain among influenced and inspired shoppers is “TikTok made me buy it,” not “I found it on Pinterest.” That’s a challenge the company understands it must overcome in order to establish its site as a destination for the next generation of online shoppers. The company on Wednesday reported fairly solid earnings, pulling in $575 million in revenue versus $573 million expected, and delivering e...

If you own a home, Sealed has a heat pump to sell you. The Manhattan-based startup, which helps homeowners replace their oil- and gas-gulping heating systems via an unusual financing model, has secured an additional $29.5 million in a new deal led by property-tech investor Fifth Wall . Other investors, including Robert Downey Jr.’s FootPrint Coalition and CityRock, also chipped in. Heat pumps work by moving heat around, directing it inside or outside your home depending on whether you’re trying to cool down or stay warm. They’re more efficient than their fossil-fueled counterparts, but costly to install, which is where Sealed’s model kicks in. The firm covers   installation and weatherization costs upfront, billing homeowners monthly based on the energy they save. That means Sealed only gets paid if it succeeds in cutting down energy waste. The startup’s big bet is on its machine learning algorithms, which “really accurately predict a home’s future energy usage,” CEO Lauren Salz...

So, yeah, kicking off another installment of the newsletter by talking a bit about our upcoming robotics event. Honestly, this panel is a special one, though. It’s one I’d been thinking about before I even knew if we’d be returning to an in-person event this year. Daniela Rus and Matthew Johnson-Roberson have both appeared on TC stages and in this newsletter over the years. Both are leading robotics voices at their respective world-class universities (MIT and CMU, respectively) who bring a lot of deep insight to the subject. And there really is a lot of ground to cover here, from the latest groundbreaking research their respective institutions are currently working on to the role universities can and should play in helping graduates develop startups. It’s going to be a good one. I also led with that topic because, well, I’m putting off the inevitable a bit here. But yes, we need to talk about Elon — but no, not that thing . Tesla Bot or Optimus or whatever we’re calling it this week...