April 11, 2025

These 5 Toxic Founder Traits Always Make Me Walk Away From a Business

As a venture capitalist, I’ve found that even the most brilliant idea can fail if led by a toxic founder. No technology, market opportunity or promising niche can save a company if its internal atmosphere is poisoned by manipulation.

What’s next for ATProto, the protocol powering Bluesky and other apps

March 26, 2025
It’s getting easier to build new applications on ATProto, the protocol that powers Bluesky’s social network and a growing number of other apps. At ATmosphere, the ATProto community conference held over the weekend in Seattle, Bluesky CTO Paul Frazee offered attendees a glimpse of what’s ahead for the protocol’s development and how those will help […]

Krisp is using AI to help Indians sound like Americans on calls

March 26, 2025
Audio startup Krisp on Wednesday said it is launching a new feature that uses AI to change a user’s accent during calls. The company is initially rolling out support for changing Indian English accents to U.S. English. The startup says the accent conversion process preserves the speaker’s voice and only switches phonemes to match American […]

The TikTok ban is losing support among Americans, study says

March 26, 2025
Americans’ support for a TikTok ban is declining, according to a study from the Pew Research Center. This survey of over 5,000 U.S. adults found that just 34% of respondents supported banning the short form video app. When Pew ran a similar study in 2023, 50% of adults supported the TikTok ban. Over the same […]

Amazon launches personalized shopping prompts as part of its generative AI push

March 26, 2025
Amazon continues to infuse AI into its shopping tools to encourage customers to make more purchases. The company announced on Wednesday a new feature called “Interests,” aimed at creating a more personalized and conversational search experience.  With the new feature, customers can enter tailored prompts in the search bar, reflecting their interests, preferences, and even […]

Countdown: 5 days left to save up to $320 on TechCrunch All Stage passes

March 26, 2025
The clock is ticking — less than a week left until TechCrunch All Stage ticket prices go up! Save over $300 on founder and investor passes before March 31 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Founders, accelerate your path. Investors, empower their rise. On July 15, join 1,200 founders and VCs at SoWa Power Station in Boston, […]

The Download: China’s empty data centers, and OpenAI’s new practical image generator

March 26, 2025
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. China built hundreds of AI data centers to catch the AI boom. Now many stand unused. Just months ago, China’s boom in data center construction was at its height, fueled by both government…

Rivian spins out a new micromobility startup called Also with $105M from Eclipse

March 26, 2025
Before RJ Scaringe founded Rivian in 2009, he had micromobility on his mind. More than a decade later, his musings took root in a small skunkworks program inside Rivian that set out to answer one question: Could the company’s technology be condensed down into something smaller and more affordable than its electric vans, trucks, and SUVs? […]