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All right, all right, all right. For the past few days, I’ve been listening to Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey, as read by the author. I honestly don’t know what prompted me to listen to it or how it ended up on my Audible app. I don’t even really Likes audiobooks. I knew the guy had depth, but I swear I was still reeling. to turn He has lived a wild, crazy and lawless life. to turn He has a bunch of great stories. But I never expected him to throw me in a big spin. It has nothing to do with startups, it’s about finding yourself in the world, which means it’s already happening Everything to do with startups. Anyway: highly recommended.
That indirectly inspired my column this week, as I’ve been thinking about how app activation metrics interfere with our mental health in many ways. This is especially true for apps like Nextdoor, Citizen, and the Ring Doorbell app, which terrorize your pocketbook 24/7. And we, like naive, almond-powered animals, respond. Maybe it’s time to unsubscribe.
The TechCrunch team is getting really excited about TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco in a couple of weeks. I’ll be on stage, among other things, interviewing Rajeev Rajan, Atlassian’s new artistic director, and begrudgingly accepting sartorial advice from random strangers – that could be you!
on those cheerful notes. . . Moving on to what’s happening in startup land this week!
The highest levels and the lowest levels
Well, startup life is certainly not for the faint of heart, and there are a lot of highs and lows happening around us at the moment.
Medobed, a startup that promises to deliver medications in 10 minutes, was initially selected for Y Combinator’s S23 pool. Tasreen changed its pace of work and cut ties with the Indian company. One of the partners in the investment company also suggested to many potential investors not to deal with the startup.
Well, she changed her mind – Chamet is a popular but controversial live video chat app. Google decided to pull the app from the Play Store. Big Goog did not provide a specific reason but waved in the general direction of its “questionable user-generated content” policy.
Someone gets a crash wagon: Ingrid reports Babylon Health has filed for bankruptcy – after valuing it at nearly $2 billion Which Before long. Today it’s worth about $5,000 on paper. User.
Self-proclaimed demonstrators: People love a good scandal, and protesters rallied at Cruise HQ in San Francisco this week. But it appears that the incident they were protesting against may have been exaggerated. An ambulance was allegedly blocked by Cruise’s self-driving car, but TechCrunch saw video footage of an accident where an ambulance was not obstructed in this case.
Sell, sell, sell: Benitago has raised $380 million or so to buy a group of e-commerce brands that do business on Amazon. This week, it filed for bankruptcy as the market contracted.
The ghost is in the shell
The pace of the transaction may slow down a bit (maybe?) but the AI is still in a state of excitement.
One interesting trend in the market is that we continue to see existing companies adding new features and functionality. Many of our readers were curious about Kyle’s report that Zoom is rebranding and expanding its generative AI features, amid some privacy concerns along the way.
OpenAI wants ChatGPT’s conversational AI agent everywhere, including classrooms — despite the huge potential for abuse and confusion there. In the face of the bull, the company suggested several ways for teachers to use the system. In addition to the students cheating massively in their work using artificial intelligence.
Get in, tune in, make a shit: My favorite piece of AI this week came from Kyle. It is well documented that AI models can “hallucinate” seemingly plausible information that is incorrectly extrapolated from existing data. This may not be solvable with current generation systems, but it may not be as bad as we think, he writes.
It knows if you’re tweeting, and it knows when you’re asleep: Sarah reports that X’s privacy policy confirms that it will use public data to train its AI models.
Lean startups are getting faster, smarter and more artificially intelligent: Last week, I spoke with the father of lean startups, Steve Blank. He’s very passionate about AI and says it will revolutionize the “lean startup” movement, making startups smaller, more aggressive, and, well, AI.
A healthy dose of startup news
As someone who is extremely neurodiverse, I’m very excited about Sam Altman’s support of Mentra, which aims to match neurodiverse job seekers with ideal jobs. It will be interesting to see how this plays out (and whether tenants are able to accommodate hiring specifically for neurodivergent people).
Bladder health isn’t the sexiest topic in the world, so it probably won’t surprise you that there are quite a few startups focusing on this area. In fact, there’s only one, according to its founder Peony Li — who just closed a $4.24 million seed funding round for a London-based bladder health startup that’s set to expand to the United States.
fitter. more happy. More productiveTeale secured an $11 million funding round earlier this summer. The company provides a platform for employee mental health and helps HR managers when it comes to preventing burnout or quiet resignation.
A roof over your headEmployment is not the same as renting an apartment – or is it? Rent Butter believes that knowing how risky a tenant is goes beyond a standard background check and credit score, and wants to help landlords rethink risk when it comes to screening tenants.
P-ai-n killers: The opioid epidemic has been extremely complex, confounding researchers for the better part of two decades. Jerrell Ezell, an assistant professor at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, sees AI as the spark that ends the opioid epidemic.
Top reads on TechCrunch this week
As always, a large number of our most-read stories have already been included above, but here are some of the bright signs on the hill (or, at least, the ones that moved up the rankings in our analytics tool) over the past week:
Pause for lawsFree Fire, produced by Garena, has been banned in India due to national security concerns. Free Fire is now being relaunched a year after it was banned.
Paws for error: Oh dear, supermarket chain Lidl has landed itself in big trouble after snack brand Paw Patrol aimed at children included a website on the packaging featuring adult content.
Just pause: The state of Texas has passed a law requiring those who want to enjoy some indecency online to undergo an identity check. This has proven difficult to implement, and the state cannot yet enforce identity checks on porn sites.
Pause for applause: Anker is introducing some smart new travel chargers that make it easier for you to take your gear on the road. Just in time for Disrupt too!
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