PayPal laid off 83 employees as it reduces Bay Area presence

The last time we wrote about the company was still fairly early on in the pandemic – June 2020 – when it had just raised a $200 million Series C. Meantime, the company raised an undisclosed Series D last year. Certainly there’s no lack of investor interest in the firm at the moment, with this most recent round valuing Geek+ at somewhere around $2 billion.

Shifts to a mostly remote workforce don’t happen overnight, however. According to ActivTrak, 41% of organizations didn’t have a dedicated remote work policy in place as of May 2020. And when the shifts do happen, they’re not always graceful. One survey suggests that nearly half of employees — 46% — find remote work, at least in the early stages, can make it more difficult to maintain professional relationships with key stakeholders.

The 64-year-old executive, whose Vision Funds have backed over 470 startups globally in the past six years, said on Monday that some unicorn founders are unwilling to accept lower valuations in fresh funding deliberations, an assertion that has led him to believe that the “winter maybe longer” for unlisted companies.

Founded in 2004, Seattle-based Avalara works with companies including Zillow, Pinterest and Roku, helping to automate many of the time-consuming processes involved in managing taxes in each market they operate. Indeed, many governments around the world collect taxes based on where a service is consumed, rather than where the service...

For a long time, I noticed the same startups that conducted layoffs in March 2020 had to scale back again in the 2022 wave. The first wave was in preparation and fear; this wave feels like a pullback after a surge. What confuses me is seeing startups cut staff now, cite it vaguely due to the macroeconomic environment, then do the same thing a few weeks later with the same reasoning.

One story that deserves your attention is the mystery around Bolt Mobility. Bolt Mobility appears to have ceased operations and vanished into the ether, leaving behind dead vehicles and unanswered calls in at least eight U.S. markets. Representatives from affected cities told TechCrunch they haven’t been able to get ahold...

We’ve added two new pass levels — Expo Only and Online Only — and you can buy them now. Here’s what each pass includes. The Expo Only pass: We have a very limited supply of these passes, which cost $99 through September 16 — if they last that long. You’ll have access to the exhibition floor, where you’ll find the Startup Battlefield 200, sponsors, and breakout sessions.

A post from Bloomberg Law noted that both these lawsuits were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The report said that Google accused Sonos products — like the Sonos One, Arc, Beam, Move and Roam — of violating seven patents. “Rather than...

Spurred to meet the need, software engineer Nir Livneh founded Equalum, a startup providing software that integrates with existing infrastructure to process and transform data, including streaming data. Equalum can collect, transform, and synchronize data, moving data in real time or in batches from devices and apps to AI systems, data lakes and data warehouses.

The San Francisco-based company, which allows users to build voice and SMS capabilities — such as two-factor authentication (2FA) — into applications, said in a blog post published Monday that it became aware that someone gained “unauthorized access” to information related to some Twilio customer accounts on August 4.

One of those changes? The number of pitches from founders looking to raise. “Since March, it’s gone down about 90%,” Lavingia told TechCrunch. “I was probably seeing more than most — about 20 to 40 well-vetted decks a week – and that number is down to about two to four a week now.” He’s also seen the quality of talent rise for people wanting to work for Gumroad — which he partially attributes to the steady stampede of layoffs — and a decline of founders starting companies.

Against all odds, I ended up doing well. Well enough to be the best salesperson globally (out of nearly 1,000) and breaking the 10-year record for most sales in a single year. How? After working on the first Obama presidential campaign from 2006-2008, I had a fresh perspective on how to sell. One that works regardless of whether we’re in a bear or bull market.

The Nigeria-based systems integrator said the strategic expansion positions it as a “new competitive entrant in the EU market offering data warehousing and analytics products as well as highly experienced senior data engineers from its Nigeria team as consultants for European firms.”. Olumide Soyombo, one of Nigeria’s high-profile angel...

In 2021, nearly 300 million people were shopping online in Latin America; Mexico accounted for 27% of that e-commerce activity, according to Statista. E-commerce was a small percentage, about 6%, of all retail sales in Mexico in 2020, and is forecasted to grow to 15% by 2023. However, Tariq Musa,...

Happy Friday, y’all! Start your weekend off right with some delicious podcast morsels from Equity, Found and Chain Reaction. Also, time is ticking away on a $1,300 savings for TechCrunch Disrupt, so get on that before 11:59 p.m. PDT today. We hope you have a good weekend, see ya Monday! — Christine.

Digital rights advocacy group Privacy International, which lodged a formal complaint against the surveillance adtech giant back in 2018, when the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into application, tweeted news of the sanction today. It accuses Criteo of operating what it dubs a “manipulation machine”, via the...

While much industry focus and effort has centered around profile picture NFTs like Bored Ape Yacht Club or CryptoPunks, NFTs that offer utility beyond just images have been growing in popularity. “I think within NFTs, everything is just really scratching the surface,” Raj Gokal, co-founder of Solana, told TechCrunch this...

Founded in 2020 (originally as Bluu Biosciences), Bluu Seafood is one of several companies working to solve the world’s seafood production problems, which includes overfishing, contamination from heavy metals and plastic, and cruelty. To do this, the Berlin-based company starts with a single “one-time” fish biopsy (the fish doesn’t have to be killed for this), and then uses stem cell technology to develop full cell lines (fish species) in a lab setting.

Last year was record-breaking for the cybersecurity market. Data from Momentum Cyber, a financial advisory firm for the security industry, showed that cybersecurity startups raised a “record-shattering” $29.5 billion in venture capital in 2021, more than doubling the $12 billion raised in 2020, while a record number — including Dragos and Noname Security — were minted as unicorns.

Last week, we looked at the near-term future for crypto gaming as VCs zero in on where to place consumer bets. This week, we’re looking at hardware wallets and the endless journey towards feeling safe in the crypto world. To get this in your inbox every Thursday, you can...