Technical

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...

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...