Alexander I. Platt Contributor Alexander I. Platt is an associate professor at the University of Kansas School of Law. Once upon a time, a successful startup that reached a certain maturity would “go public” — selling securities to ordinary investors, perhaps listing on a national stock exchange and taking on the privileges and obligations of…
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The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every weekend in your inbox. Hello readers: Welcome to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B. Before…
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Hello friends, and welcome back to Week in Review! Last week we dove into Bezos’s Blue Origin suing NASA. This week, I’m writing about the unlikely and triumphant resurgence of the NFT market. If you’re reading this on the TechCrunch site, you can get this in your inbox from the newsletter page, and follow my…
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In a late Friday night blow to Uber, Lyft and other gig worker-centered companies, a superior court judge ruled that California’s Proposition 22, which was passed in 2020 and designed to overrule the state’s controversial AB-5 law on the employment status of gig workers, violates the state’s constitution. Frank Roesch, a superior court judge in…
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Rapido, a bike taxi aggregator in India, said on Monday it has raised $52 million in a new financing round as the six-year-old startup looks to find space in a category dominated by Ola and Uber in the South Asian market. The six-year-old startup’s new funding — Series C — was financed by Shell Ventures,…
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Before you hire a marketing consultant who doesn’t understand your products or commit to a CMO who has several years of experience — but none in your sector — consider influencer marketing. If the phrase evokes images of celebrities hawking hard seltzer, think again: An influencer can be as humble as an enthusiastic Reddit user…
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Nimrod Golan-Yanay Contributor Nimrod Golan-Yanay is the CEO of Urban Aeronautics, the Israel-based aerospace company behind the world’s first wingless, eco-friendly and compact aircraft fleet designed specifically for dense urban environments. Nearly everyone knows the pain of sitting in traffic watching valuable minutes tick by. Just as bad is the maddening search for a parking…
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Aurora Innovation, the autonomous vehicle startup that acquired Uber’s self-driving unit in December, is going public via a merger with special purpose acquisition company Reinvent Technology Partners Y. The deal announced Thursday confirms TechCrunch’s reporting in June that the startup was in final talks with the SPAC launched by LinkedIn co-founder and investor Reid Hoffman,…
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Kevin Novak joined Uber as its 21st employee its seventh engineer in 2011, and by 2014, he was the company’s head of data science. He talks proudly of that time, but like all good things, it ran its course and by the end of 2017, having accomplished what he wanted at the company, he left.…
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Years ago, U.S. ride-hailing giant Uber and its Chinese rival Didi were locked in an expensive rivalry in the Asian nation. After a financially bruising competition, Uber sold its China-based business to Didi, focusing instead on other markets. The two companies are coming head-to-head again, however, as Didi looks to list in the United States.…
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