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Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for September 22, 2021. Disrupt Day Two is racing along as I write to you, which means I am missing some Battlefield presentations. But good news for both of us: We have posts below about each of the companies showing off what they are building. We won’t miss out!
Tomorrow we’re crowning a new winner of Battlefield, by the by. See you there! — Alex
The TechCrunch Top 3
- Microsoft wants to kill Zoom, not Slack: That’s according to Slack CEO and possible Salesforce successor Stewart Butterfield. There’s some logic to the point — Microsoft’s Teams product competes with Zoom and Slack, but that doesn’t mean that it’s going after each equally. Butterfield also noted during Disrupt that many Slack customers are also Office 365 customers.
- Microsoft details new Surface hardware: Rudely, I have to say, Microsoft also held an event today. However, unlike our startup-focused shindig, Redmond wanted to talk hardware. Namely new Surface gear, one piece of which has a laptop screen unlike anything I’ve ever seen in production before. If you are into computers, take a peek.
- Facebook sheds value on revenue warning: Changes that Apple is making to the larger digital ecosystem are having effects on Facebook, TechCrunch reports. The social giant also noted that it underreported a metric that may have caused customers to think that their ads were underperforming by some 15%. Facebook stock fell nearly 4% on the day.
- If you want to have some fun, observe how your humble servant tried (and failed) to buy an NFT.
Startups/VC
As we did yesterday, we’re kicking off our startup notes with a Battlefield roll-call. A big shoutout to Startup Battlefield Editor Neesha Tambe, one of the TechCrunch staff that you don’t get to see much on the site. She’s amazing and helped the companies below prep for the event — not to mention taking point in making the hard calls about whom to include.
Battlefield roll call:
- Flite Material Sciences uses lasers, not chemical coatings, to keep ice and rust off surfaces.
- StethoMe’s smart stethoscope lets your kid’s doctor listen to their lungs from afar.
- Nymbull wants to guard your next Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace item for sale.
- Cellino is using AI and machine learning to scale production of stem cell therapies.
- Koa is helping African consumers make better money moves.
- The Blue Box is betting on the future of at-home breast cancer tests.
- Tide Encryption is ready to end the cyber breach pandemic.
- Prenome could help pregnant women better predict and manage gestational diabetes.
- Nth Cycle wants to revolutionize metals processing for recyclers and mine operators.
- Carbix spins emissions into gold — or at least useful minerals.
- Keep Technologies wants to turn a cup holder into a security guard for your car.
But that was hardly all. Startups were busy today:
- Here’s what Canva CEO Melanie Perkins looks for in a potential acquisition, for example.
- Also, electric bike company Ubco just raised $10 million, which makes us pine for a future in which cars don’t run cities.
- Here are notes on how Calendly is building a platform, one with scheduling as the central element. As someone who actually works for Google Calendar, this hit home.
- Finally, Brave, which is building a privacy-focused browser, has “launched a non-tracking video conferencing add-on out of beta.” I need to give that a spin, frankly.
Dear Sophie: What’s the difference between IEP and the latest proposed startup visa?
Dear Sophie,
What’s the difference between International Entrepreneur Parole and the latest proposed startup visa?
Do you think the startup visa will become a reality? If so, when?
— Financial Founder
(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)
Big Tech Inc.
Big companies were busy as well, which means we have a little bit more news to nosh on. Enjoy!
- Patreon wants to support adult-content creators: Maybe you haven’t heard, but porn is a big deal on the internet. OnlyFans is a good reminder of that fact. Patreon has new notes out concerning its own platform, adult-content creators and how the two might work together.
- More evidence that self-driving tech is slowly parallel parking its way into our lives: This time it’s news that FedEx is going to work with Aurora’s self-driving tech on an intra-Texas route. Slowly, and then all at once? When it comes to self-driving, let’s hope.
- Hot off buying Mailchimp for $12B, Intuit wants to buy startup equity a bit earlier: So it’s launching a venture capital arm. Yes, it’s almost odd that the software company — and rent-seeker via lobbying the federal government — didn’t have a venture arm before. But now it does. Corporate VC efforts are akin to corporate blogs a while back, something that was once rare and quickly became the norm.
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