Missouri governor threatens to prosecute local journalist for finding exposed state data

By On Oct 16, 2021

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Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch on October 15, 2021! Have a good Friday for you and yours; I am proud of all of us for having survived a hectic week. The discounts at our space event end in a very short time. And without further ado, let’s get into the news! – Alex

The TechCrunch top 3

Missouri governor merges journalism and hacking: The United States is a great nation with many intelligent and many less intelligent people. A story in the latter category ended up in our wheelhouse when a state governor ruled that a journalist pointing out security flaws on an official website was malicious hacking. Maybe stories like these are why so many Generation Z people are doomers?
Instacart buyers strike: Try to remember a time when some of the Instacart workforce was happy and neither wanted to go on strike. It’s hard, right? This Saturday, “some Instacart buyers will be on strike to protest the company’s low wages and lack of communication with its workers,” TechCrunch reports. Let’s see if this particular piece in the larger Striketober saga produces work-friendly results.
Apple rips up Quran app after Chinese regulators asked: The day after Microsoft announced that it would remove LinkedIn’s primary service from China after failing to align the country’s government with its own views, Apple appears to have complied with a Chinese government request to “Quran Majeed, a popular app for Read Islamic Religious Text and Other Prayer-Related Information ”from the Chinese App Store. Given the abuse of Muslims by the Chinese state within its borders, this is no small act.

Startups / VC

Let’s take our time today in the world of startups, it’s Friday and so on.

First up, we have a great post from Rebecca Bellan, who deals with a wide variety of startups helping emerging middle classes around the world get places. This list includes, among others, “Swvl, Treepz, Jatri, SafeBoda, Urbvan, Chalo and Buser”. If you’re into the transportation tech beat, this is great read.

The story goes on

Next, Andy Stinnes, a general partner at Cloud Apps Capital Partners, wrote an essay for the blog today discussing that today’s bull market for venture capital (more here) is a common good for founders, “closer inspection shows that these “trends are much more nuanced and apply very unevenly across the funding continuum from seed to late stage.” If you are looking to raise capital, it is well worth your time.

Moving on, our own Taylor hatmaker did the passed pawns’ work by digging in Core, a metaverse environment where she wandered around and found the scenery both magnificent and “seamless”. If you want to take a look into the future of gaming and social interaction, this is it.

And before we get to the rest of our startup rundown, I wrote an imaginary interview with a fictional CEO about a fictional IPO. More information can be found here.

SoundCloud receives Pandora partnership, new radio station: When Spotify became a music giant, SoundCloud stayed closer to the underground. And it survived what some did not expect. Today the up and coming music service announced a deal with Pandora that could help get it a little bigger audience.
Clubhouse adds “music mode”: Sticking to a musical theme for a bar or two, Clubhouse has developed a way for musicians to better stream their music live on the service. So, I suppose the clubhouse can now also be a coffee house?
And finally, with its security camera search tool, Spot AI lets you secretly: At $ 22 million and freshly stripped of its “stealth” label, Spot AI is now visible to the public, which is fitting given that its core product deals with security cameras and their recording. The company “reads” footage from the devices so that the video can be searched by itself. Which is cool, if vaguely creepy.

Bringing In-House: What To Look For When Hiring a General Counsel

For various reasons, experienced lawyers can be withdrawn from large companies to join a startup as general counsel, writes Tim Parilla, Chief Legal Officer of LinkSquares, in a guest column.

“For some it is an attempt to find a better work-life balance (whoops!), While others are eager to build and lead their own team or see it as an opportunity to work for a mission-oriented company”, he writes.

For founders, it’s an opportunity to attract a seasoned professional who can gain in-depth knowledge of your business – rather than relying on a generic (and costly) outside law firm.

Parilla provides in-depth tips on what startup executives should look for in an in-house counsel (as well as a few things that suggest a lawyer might not be right for your company).

(TechCrunch + is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams move forward. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

Researchers show that Facebook’s advertising tools can target a single user: The method depends on knowing enough about how Facebook sees a person, but it’s still unsettling. Facebook’s custom audience tool may be a little too individual for our taste.
Sorry gears, people want electric sports cars: While the Porsche 911 is an iconic car, it loses to an internal rival in the sales war. TechCrunch reports that the petroleum-powered 911 was surpassed by the electric Porsche Taycan in the first three quarters of 2021. I hadn’t expected that for a few years.
A big update for “Animal Crossing” is coming: News from Nintendo, for you Animal Crossing fans out there. The popular title has a major update on November 5th. It’s called Happy Home Paradise and I’m sure it will keep what it promises.
And to wrap up the news today Global smartphone sales fell 6% last year, likely due to the global chip scarcity afflicting industries from automotive to computers and adding to tensions over Taiwan’s sovereignty.

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Join Walter Thompson for a Twitter Spaces chat on Tuesday, October 19 at 3:00 p.m. PT / 6:00 p.m. ET as he goes through what TechCrunch is looking for in guest posts.