Finance people live and breathe spreadsheets, Mayfield’s Rajeev Batra was telling me. We were talking about our upcoming TechCrunch Live event featuring him and Cube’s Christina Ross, and Rajeev was explaining how he sees Cube’s position in the marketplace. Christina Ross co-founded the company in 2018 in a bid to provide a solution to CFOs...
Americans spent nearly $20 billion on pizza deliveries in 2021. Most of us could probably bake one at home, but speed and convenience are powerful incentives at dinnertime. The potential of AI tools like ChatGPT creates a similar dilemma — should companies license large language models without modifications, or customize them and pay much higher...
TechCrunch Live is back! I’m thrilled to bring this event series back for its third season. We’re booked for months, and I’m delighted to host the upcoming guests. Join us for our first episode with Benchmark and Cambly taking place on February 1, 2023 at 11:30am PT / 2:30pm ET. TCL’s mission is still to...
Startup board meetings are scheduled several weeks apart, but many founders work until the last minute on the deck updating investors on revenue, the product pipeline, hiring, and other essential matters. In this environment, founders who try to “bright side” their numbers into a positive narrative will lose credibility. It’s nice to think so, but...
TechCrunch Live is entering its third season, and I’m thrilled to be leading the events again this year. The first event is on February 1, 2023, and will feature a timely discussion on what to do if your company can’t raise a Series A. We have Cambly’s Sameer Shariff and Benchmark’s Sarah Tavel speaking at...
Due to a phenomenon called semantic satiation, if you repeat a word or phrase too frequently, it can sometimes lose all meaning. That’s what happened to “unicorn:” We wore it out like a pair of sneakers that leak in the rain but are too comfortable to part with. In fact, most of the startups in...
Successful startup founders do not spring fully formed from the head of whatever god or goddess keeps tabs on entrepreneurs. It takes time to educate yourself, learn essential skills and acquire a smart, connected network. Here’s the great news — TechCrunch Early Stage, taking place April 20 in Boston, Massachusetts, is designed to help both...
I once aspired to own San Francisco real estate. Now, I’m only interested in acquiring intellectual property. Case in point: “Scooby-Doo” aired on TV before I was born, but the spin-off “Velma” just premiered on HBO Max. It’s getting ripped to shreds on social media, which means people watched, so we can expect more to...
We spend a lot of time praising tech investors and entrepreneurs for their risk appetite. But why don’t we put startup workers on the same pedestal? Who’s taking on more risk: A Stanford grad who leveraged their network to raise a seed round or an immigrant worker who relocates to an expensive city for a...
You don’t need to be an economist to appreciate the myriad forces placing downward pressure on startups today. Setting aside the legions of investors keeping their powder dry, is your yearly revenue growing faster than the inflation rate? What percentage of your sales team has experience working during a downturn? Amidst the angst, there’s some...