Jack Dorsey and Jay Z create a bitcoin endowment, Datadog acquires a Startup Battlefield company and BuzzFeed experiments with AI-generated quizzes. This is your Daily Crunch for February 12, 2021.
Oh, and before we get started: Consider applying to the Early Stage pitch off and submitting a pitch deck for feedback on Extra Crunch Live!
The big story: Jack Dorsey and Jay Z invest in bitcoin development
The Twitter founder and rapper/entrepreneur have put 500 bitcoin (currently worth more than $23 million) into an endowment called ₿trust, which Dorsey said is being set up as a blind trust.
He also said the endowment will focus initially on bitcoin development in Africa and India — India’s government has been reluctant to embrace cryptocurrencies thus far, while Africa (especially Nigeria) has had a surge in transactions.
A job description for ₿trust’s board members says that the organization’s mission is to “make bitcoin the internet’s currency.”
The tech giants
Datadog to acquire application security management platform Sqreen — Originally founded in France, Sqreen participated in TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield in 2016.
BuzzFeed uses AI to create romantic partners in its latest quiz — Director of Product for Quizzes Chris Johanesen said he’s hoping this will be the first in a series of “stunt-y experiments.”
Startups, funding and venture capital
Online workspace startup Notion hit by outage, citing DNS issues — Notion’s service was not loading as of around 9 a.m. ET on Friday.
Ember names former Dyson head as consumer CEO, as the startup looks beyond the smart mug — Ember is best known for its smart, heated mugs.
Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch
2 years in, Extra Crunch is helping readers build and grow companies around the world — You don’t need a membership to read about what Extra Crunch has accomplished and what’s next.
Felicis’ Aydin Senkut and Guideline’s Kevin Busque on the value of simple pitch decks — Even though Busque is a co-founder of TaskRabbit, he didn’t get the response he was hoping for the first time he pitched Senkut.
Will ride-hailing profits ever come? — A detour into Uber and Lyft’s numbers.
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Everything else
Minneapolis bans its police department from using facial recognition software — Thirteen members of the city council voted in favor of the ban, with no opposition.
Use today’s tech solutions to meet the climate crisis and do it profitably — As we enter the most crucial decade of climate action, we need to ensure that clean technologies become the only acceptable norm.
Sweden’s data watchdog slaps police for unlawful use of Clearview AI — Earlier this month Canadian privacy authorities found Clearview had breached local laws.
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