Bird founder Travis VanderZanden officially leaves the nest

Travis VanderZanden’s slow-motion departure from Bird is now complete. The scooter rental company announced in a late-Friday news dump that the executive has stepped down from his role as chairperson of Bird’s board, “effective immediately.”

Replacing VanderZanden is John Bitove, who played a role in saving Bird’s bacon this past December via its merger with Bird Canada.

VanderZanden had led the micromobility company from its inception as its president and founding CEO, but that all changed last year when Bird’s declining stock price culminated in a delisting warning from the New York Stock Exchange. Soon after, VanderZanden stepped down from his role as president, handing over the title to Bird’s then-chief operating officer Shane Torchiana. Torchiana went on to assume the CEO post as well several months later. At the time, VanderZanden called the reorg a “long-planned transition.”

According to Bird, VanderZanden “decided to step down [from the board] to pursue other ventures.” In a similarly vague yet intriguing statement, VanderZanden added that he intends to return to his “entrepreneurial roots and incubate some new ideas.”

TechCrunch has reached out for more information on the founder’s departure and will update this story when we hear back.

Bird founder Travis VanderZanden officially leaves the nest by Harri Weber originally published on TechCrunch

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Right Wing Tries To Hijack MLK's Messages

After the kangaroo Christian nationalist Supreme Court overturned affirmative-action, Republican lawmakers and their media minions tried to erase Martin Luther King Jr.'s powerful messages and replace them with their conservative, racist beliefs.

And let's not forget, in this opinion, race is not done.

They said that they can talk about individual struggles.

So you can use your race to show your character, to show how you overcame adversity, your strength and your courage.

Look, as a young man, I lost my father to a drunk driver.

My brother committed suicide.

So when I wrote my essays, it wasn't about that, but it was about how I overcame that.

It showed my character.

That's what won today rather than the color of your skin.

You know, one of the things that many people, especially on the right, have taken away is that this basically fulfills Dr. King's dream of saying that you would be judged by the content of your character, not by the color of your skin.

Yeah, that is a good point.

But I would say Dr. King would probably be against this decision, and he would be profoundly shocked by it.

This a-hole uses his personal tragedies as a template to brag about his character? That has nothing to do with civil rights on any level. Racism is not about character, but all about hatred. How can one's character be properly judged when you are immediately dismissed by the color of your skin?

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Vice President Of Russian Bank Mysteriously Falls Out Of Window

Unlike a lot of these types of stories out of Russia, this one doesn't seem to be politically motivated, just some random drama. Baikova's boyfriend was also at the scene in her apartment when she fell to her death. Oddly though, it took nearly a week for the incident to become news in Russia.

Source: Daily Mail

The glamorous vice-president of a Russian bank has reportedly plunged to her death after falling from the window of her Moscow apartment.

Kristina Baikova, 28, an executive at Loko-Bank, is just the latest mysterious casualty involving Russia's top business people.

Ms Baikova allegedly fell from her 11th floor apartment on Khodynsky Boulevard in the early hours of last Friday. She died instantly at the scene.

The bank executive was with a 34-year-old friend, thought to be named Andrei, at the time of the incident after inviting him over to her home for a drink.

An investigation into her death has been launched.

Kristina Baikova, 28, VP at Russian Bank, Loko-Bank, fell to her death from an 11th floor window of her Moscow apartment in the early hours of Friday morning. pic.twitter.com/eFWZSIJDj9

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Are corporations too influential?

Welcome to Startups Weekly. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday.

This week, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how some of the biggest companies in the world have as much — if not more — power than entire countries. Most countries, at least, have some level of democratic oversight, but that isn’t true in the same way for companies. My question, then: In a world where the policies of, say, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter become de facto standards all around the world, should we have a greater degree of say (TC+) in what those policies are?

The other thing that’s kept me busy this week is fundraising. Alex talked with 11 VCs (TC+) about how hard it was for their companies to raise so far this year. Meanwhile, I talked with a number of founders who were really struggling to raise money. The truth is, the founders struggling the most have three things in common (TC+).

Now let’s take a look at what happened in the world of startups this week.

Notes from the security frontlines

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

The most popular story on TechCrunch in the past week was one of my own, which came with a curious backstory: Flipper Devices was founded in Moscow, Russia, in 2020, by a Ukrainian founder and a largely Russian team. I ran the headline that a “Russian hacking device” had made $80 million worth of sales, only for a bunch of PR people to get very upset with me for calling the company, which was founded in Russia and whose team is still 90% Russian, Russian. Don’t get me wrong, I get why a company making a hacking device might not want to be associated with Russia — and the company has gone to great lengths to scrub any traces of that connection from the internet. The whole story was pretty weird, and concluded with me getting an unsolicited scan of the founder’s (Ukrainian) password in my email inbox. Very curious indeed.

That sounds secure…: In a beacon of “here’s what not to do,” Lorenzo reports that an Illinois high school accidentally changed every student’s password to ‘Ch@ngeme!’. The problem? For a moment there, every student knew every other student’s password. D’oh.

Stupid and pointless: Prosecutors called for the British hacker who was responsible for the 2020 Twitter breach to serve at least seven years. Zack reports that the hacker was sentenced to 5 years behind bars. The convicted hacker described his crimes as “stupid and pointless.” Who am I to disagree?

Watching the watchers: Zack reports that Polish-developed stalkerware LetMeSpy, a phone-tracking app, says it was hacked. The leaked data included years of victims’ call logs and text messages dating back to 2013.

News you can touch. Yep, it’s hardware.

Image Credits: Getty Images

A ton of interesting things happened in startup hardware land this week. Uplift Labs signed an interesting deal with Major League Baseball to use the startup’s 3D motion tracking tech to help scout for promising players.

Fast on the heels of its previous $14 million fundraise, Realtime Robotics raised another $10 million or so, representing the third close on what now seems like a never-ending Series A financing for the manufacturing automation startup.

Apropos robotics, Brian also had a fascinating story today on how robots are learning from watching YouTube videos. If my YouTube recommendations are anything to go by, every robot in the world will very soon be expert woodworkers and do very stupid things with explosives.

Who’s a good bot? That’s right, you’re a good bot: In a, “Geez, I feel safer already” type moment, Brian reports that the House GOP discussed the use of robot dogs to patrol U.S. borders.

It flies and it counts. That’s just what it does: Kate reports that B Garage raised $20 million for its warehouse inventory drones. And as we’re talking about flying inventory drones, Brian reported that Gather AI bought drone inventory competitor Ware.

Walking? Feh, check the webcam: The lazy among us may have pointed a webcam at the oven to keep an eye on a pizza, but Devin reports that Lilz takes the same concept to a whole ‘nother level, bringing its gauge-watching smart cameras to the U.S. and raising $4 million.

Startups that are going places

Image Credits: Joby Aviation

Raise your hand if you saw this one coming (while I sit on my hands, because I really did not) — but it seems like the Tesla charging standard is gaining a foothold very quickly. First, Texas said that state-funded EV chargers had to include Tesla plugs (now known as the North American Charging Standards, or NACS), and it seems like Washington state may be following suit.

Wheeee: You couldn’t force me on board one of these things with a gun, but Joby Aviation has reasons to celebrate, as Rebecca reports that the company received a permit to fly its first eVTOL built on a production line.

Pulling the e-brake: Kate reports that Singapore’s ride-hailing firm Grab lays off over 1,100 employees, representing around 11% of its staff — its first big round of layoffs since 2020.

End of the road for Lordstown: It’s been an uphill battle for Lordstown Motors. Rebecca reports that the company is suing Foxconn, claiming fraudulent conduct that “destroyed” the American company’s business. Over on TC+, Alex ponders that there’s not a lot of SPAC deals left that didn’t come crashing down painfully and spectacularly. Canoo, anyone?

Despite all its rage, it is still just a car in a cage: Even as Lordstown implodes and a lot of the other EV companies are struggling, Faraday Future raises $90 million to keep itself alive.

Top reads on TechCrunch

Image Credits: Forcite

Foo-wee, it’s been a lively week. My personal favorite was Tim’s story about Forcite launching a $1,100 smart helmet, finally bringing a version of the decade-old Skully dream to fruition.

U so basic: Netflix decided that it had enough of letting its users skate by on the cheap, and Ivan reported that the streaming giant quietly axed its basic plan in Canada.

We totally have lots of users, promise! Some strange dodginess this week — Amanda reported that Unicorn social app IRL is to shut down after admitting 95% of its users were fake.

Yeah, saw that one coming: In my very personal opinion, Shein — and other, similar purveyors of essentially disposable clothing — is the literal worst for the environment. It seems like the company got a sheen of comeuppance, as Amanda reports that an influencer’s highly curated trip to a Chinese factory backfired.

The crowd is going Vilnius: Europe keeps investing huge sums of money into tech ecosystems, and Paul reports that Lithuania’s capital Vilnius is about to invest more than $100 million into “Europe’s largest tech campus.”

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Are corporations too influential? by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

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Ron DeSantis Is The Wish.com Version Of Rick Perry

Gov. Rick DeSantis sounds like Rick Perry, who led the Department of Energy. So far, that's not so weird, but it's also the agency that the former Governor of Texas wanted to abolish but forgot its name during a 2011 presidential debate.

DeSantis said he would seek to abolish the Departments of Education, Commerce, and Energy and the IRS. He's a small-government type of Republican. He wants the government so small that there will no longer be oversight of our country's nuclear warheads -- because that's what the Department of Energy does.

NBC News reports:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday that if he is elected president he would seek to close four federal agencies as part of an effort to reduce the size of government.

"We would do Education, we would do Commerce, we'd do Energy, and we would do IRS," DeSantis said in an interview with Fox News's Martha MacCallum when he was asked whether he favored closing any agencies.

"If Congress will work with me on doing that, we'll be able to reduce the size and scope of government," he added. "If Congress won't go that far, I'm going to use those agencies to push back against woke ideology and against the leftism that we see creeping into all institutions of American life."

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How confidential computing could secure generative AI adoption

Ayal Yogev Contributor

Ayal Yogev is the co-founder and CEO of Anjuna, a multi-cloud confidential computing platform.

Generative AI has the potential to change everything. It can inform new products, companies, industries, and even economies. But what makes it different and better than “traditional” AI could also make it dangerous.

Its unique ability to create has opened up an entirely new set of security and privacy concerns.

Enterprises are suddenly having to ask themselves new questions: Do I have the rights to the training data? To the model? To the outputs? Does the system itself have rights to data that’s created in the future? How are rights to that system protected? How do I govern data privacy in a model using generative AI? The list goes on.

It’s no surprise that many enterprises are treading lightly. Blatant security and privacy vulnerabilities coupled with a hesitancy to rely on existing Band-Aid solutions have pushed many to ban these tools entirely. But there is hope.

Confidential computing — a new approach to data security that protects data while in use and ensures code integrity — is the answer to the more complex and serious security concerns of large language models (LLMs). It’s poised to help enterprises embrace the full power of generative AI without compromising on safety. Before I explain, let’s first take a look at what makes generative AI uniquely vulnerable.

Generative AI has the capacity to ingest an entire company’s data, or even a knowledge-rich subset, into a queryable intelligent model that provides brand new ideas on tap. This has massive appeal, but it also makes it extremely difficult for enterprises to maintain control over their proprietary data and stay compliant with evolving regulatory requirements.

Protecting training data and models must be the top priority; it’s no longer sufficient to encrypt fields in databases or rows on a form.

This concentration of knowledge and subsequent generative outcomes, without adequate data security and trust control, could inadvertently weaponize generative AI for abuse, theft, and illicit use.

Indeed, employees are increasingly feeding confidential business documents, client data, source code, and other pieces of regulated information into LLMs. Since these models are partly trained on new inputs, this could lead to major leaks of intellectual property in the event of a breach. And if the models themselves are compromised, any content that a company has been legally or contractually obligated to protect might also be leaked. In a worst-case scenario, theft of a model and its data would allow a competitor or nation-state actor to duplicate everything and steal that data.

These are high stakes. Gartner recently found that 41% of organizations have experienced an AI privacy breach or security incident—and over half are the result of a data compromise by an internal party. The advent of generative AI is bound to grow these numbers.

Separately, enterprises also need to keep up with evolving privacy regulations when they invest in generative AI. Across industries, there’s a deep responsibility and incentive to stay compliant with data requirements. In healthcare, for example, AI-powered personalized medicine has huge potential when it comes to improving patient outcomes and overall efficiency. But providers and researchers will need to access and work with large amounts of sensitive patient data while still staying compliant, presenting a new quandary.

To address these challenges, and the rest that will inevitably arise, generative AI needs a new security foundation. Protecting training data and models must be the top priority; it’s no longer sufficient to encrypt fields in databases or rows on a form.

In scenarios where generative AI outcomes are used for important decisions, evidence of the integrity of the code and data—and the trust it conveys—will be absolutely critical, both for compliance and for potentially legal liability management. There must be a way to provide airtight protection for the entire computation and the state in which it runs.

The advent of “confidential” generative AI

Confidential computing offers a simple, yet hugely powerful way out of what would otherwise seem to be an intractable problem. With confidential computing, data and IP are completely isolated from infrastructure owners and made only accessible to trusted applications running on trusted CPUs. Data privacy is ensured through encryption, even during execution.

Data security and privacy become intrinsic properties of cloud computing—so much so that even if a malicious attacker breaches infrastructure data, IP and code are completely invisible to that bad actor. This is perfect for generative AI, mitigating its security, privacy, and attack risks.

Confidential computing has been increasingly gaining traction as a security game-changer. Every major cloud provider and chip maker is investing in it, with leaders at Azure, AWS, and GCP all proclaiming its efficacy. Now, the same technology that’s converting even the most steadfast cloud holdouts could be the solution that helps generative AI take off securely. Leaders must begin to take it seriously and understand its profound impacts.

With confidential computing, enterprises gain assurance that generative AI models only learn on data they intend to use, and nothing else. Training with private datasets across a network of trusted sources across clouds provides full control and peace of mind. All information, whether an input or an output, remains completely protected, and behind a company’s own four walls.

How confidential computing could secure generative AI adoption by Walter Thompson originally published on TechCrunch

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Fund of funds are starting to play a different role for venture LPs

Fund of funds (FoF) were created to serve as a bridge for LPs to get access to managers they couldn’t back otherwise. But in an environment where funds are not seeing consistent support from their existing LPs, and there are more venture funds than ever, is their role still relevant?

Fund of funds fundraising — say that five times fast! — has declined for years. To compare, traditional U.S. venture firm fundraising set a record in 2022 with $162 billion. U.S.-based VC FoF raised just $400 million in the first quarter of 2023, according to PitchBook, and $3 billion in 2022. This compares to $24.4 billion in 2021 and $33.7 billion — the fundraising peak — in 2017.

It’s not surprising why many LPs have soured on the strategy, said Kyle Stanford, a senior venture analyst at PitchBook. For one, backers of these funds pay a mix of fees to both the FoF and the underlying commitments the FoF manager makes.

“LPs have that double layer of fees. And that extra time it takes after [an LP] invests in the fund of funds and then have it deployed is just something that LPs right now just don’t want to deal with,” Stanford told TechCrunch+.

And with there being so many new firms and funds in the market, the issues surrounding LPs not getting access to attractive VC funds is largely moot and that barrier isn’t really an issue anymore, he said. “There has been way more opportunity to invest in a VC than there has ever been in the past,” he said. “For new LPs coming into the market, they didn’t need to go to a fund of funds to get access.”

But to be clear, even if the funding numbers are down, FoF still holds a place in the future of venture — maybe just a different one than they did traditionally. Multiple firms have started innovating on the model, and FoF can still help LPs get access to the managers they can’t invest in otherwise, albeit for different reasons than before.

Fund of funds are starting to play a different role for venture LPs by Rebecca Szkutak originally published on TechCrunch

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