Glints, one of Southeast Asia’s largest talent development and recruitment platforms, announced today it ha raised $50 million in an oversubscribed Series D. The round was co-led by DCM Ventures, Lavender Hill Capital and returning investor PERSOL Holdings. This brings Glints’ total raised so far to $80 million.

As part of the investment, Lavender Hill Capital founding partner Xiaoyin Zhang and DCM Ventures general partner Ramon Zeng, will join Glints’ board.

Glints’ platform currently has three million professionals in five markets (Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan), and 50,000 companies that are seeking workers, including AIA, IKEA, GetGo, KKday and Gameloft.

The new capital will be used to expand Glints’ talent supply base in the Philippines and employer demand globally and hiring for its product and tech teams.

Founder and CEO Oswald Yeo told TechCrunch the company is focusing on the Philippines because of “its large and fast-growing international workforce. Additionally, we’re seeing local employers interested in hiring both tech talent locally and also remote hiring as well.

Founded in 2013, the Singapore-based startup says its annual revenue and gross profits grew 2.5x year-over-year, continuing its trend of annual revenue growing at a triple-digit percentage.

One growth driver is increase demand for remote workers. Glints says remote cross-border job postings grew more than 3x year-over-year, and that it sees positive contribution margins across all business units, with Indonesia and Vietnam continuing to be profitable. This continues a trend from earlier in the pandemic: over the past two years, Glints’ remote cross-border job posts have grown more than 11x.

Headquartered in Singapore, proptech startup Propseller is on a mission to make real estate transactions more efficient and data-driven for sellers and buyers alike. Its platform is able to tell users the likelihood of a conversion each step of the way. Today Propseller announced it has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India. 

Other investors participating in the round include returning backers Hustle Fund, Iterative and Rapzo Capital, along with new investors Partech, ICCP SBIT, Vulpes Ventures and Redbadge Pacific. It also includes several prominent proptech founders, like PropertyGuru’s Jani Rautiainen, OpenAgent’s Marta Higuera, Homeday’s Steffen Wicker and Tushar Garg of Flyhomes. 

Founded in 2018, Propseller will use its Series A to scale its business model, expand its offerings (including adding services like moving) and enter overseas markets. It currently has about 50 employees, including 20 salaried real estate agents (or consultants, as the startup calls them), and plans to hire 200 more people for its marketing, operations, product, engineering and sales and real estate teams. 

By using technology to make the real estate buy/sell process more efficient, Propseller is also able to charge only 1% commission rate, as opposed to 2% for traditional real estate agencies, its founder and CEO Adrien Jorge told TechCrunch. 

Jorge became interested in real estate while growing up in Nice, France. He says people from his family either became engineers or real estate agents, and he noticed that the latter group made more money than the engineers. Curious, Jorge joined his mother’s real estate agency at the age of 14 and stayed there until he was 22. But when his grandfather asked if the wanted to take over the business, Jorge decided not to.

One of his reasons was that the traditional real estate agency model was hard to scale and very manual, and often charged commissions that are hard to justify. Instead, Jorge went on to work for tech companies, including six years at Groupon, where he was in positions including general manager of Southeast Asia. 

While looking for investment opportunities, Jorge experienced the hassle of buying real estate in Southeast Asia. For example, he says that property prices are often high, but service from traditional brokerages often leave much to be desired. He attributes this to the fragmentation of Southeast Asia’s real estate market, with 200,000 agents across Southeast Asia, who close on average only two transactions per year. 

As a result, Jorge saw an opportunity to build a platform to help people sell their homes more quickly, with transparency and the least amount of hassle. 

The reason why Propseller calls its licensed real estate agents consultants is because the company’s automation gives them the time to work on client relationships. On average, Propseller’s consultants close about 55 sales transactions per year, which also means they make more revenue. 

“We are very likely the only company in Singapore to tell you what is the expected conversion rate of buyer leads coming from PropertyGuru or 99.co,” said Jorge. This means when a lead is generated, it can be tracked from start to finish, so sellers and consultants know how likely a successful closing is at every step of the process. 

Viewings generally take place offline, but Propseller also makes video and VR viewings for each property. Sellers can stay on top of the process with a dashboard that shows them which channels their property is being distributed on, inquiries generated, scheduled viewings and offers. 

The COVID pandemic has made people more willing to buy large-ticket items online and many who will continue to work from home are seeking a larger property. As the pandemic subsides gradually, Jorge believes these trends will stick around. 

The company’s main competition are the 34,000 independent agents in Singapore, who own about 99% of the real estate market share. Proptech competitors include Own My Home and Blue Nest in Singapore, Red Fin in the U.S. and Flyhomes to a certain extend, Jorge said. 

Propseller is setting itself apart with an end-to-end real estate transaction platform, Jorge said. “We have broken down every step of the process, recording everything that happens and we are able to record data that no one else has and identify how that process can be optimized to get the best results.” 

In a prepared statement, Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India managing partner Carmen Yuen said that Propseller is “revolutionizing the way we transact our homes in a more cost and time-efficient, using technology and data. We’ve followed the Propseller team for more than two years now, and they have demonstrated impressive resilience and growth over the years.” 

TechCrunch Live is hosting a special, extended event focused on the great city of Minneapolis, Minnesota on September 7. I hope you can join us. We have an agenda packed with insiders who can speak to the growing startup ecosystem in the Twin Cities. But for the pitch-off, we’ve recruited two outsiders to judge the local startups: Mahati Sridhar, Vice President, Rise of the Rest Seed Fund and Sarah Hinkfuss, Partner, Bain Capital Ventures.

Both Mahati and Sarah offer considerable investment and startup experience. We’re thrilled to have their participation

To help highlight what the city has to offer, we’re enlisting the help of local startups! Like past City Spotlights, this one will feature a pitch-off with local Minneapolis startups pitching to VCs. The winner gets fast-tracked into Startup Battlefield 200, which includes free exhibition space at TechCrunch Disrupt 2022. Applications are closed, but everyone can register for the event here.

Mahati Sridhar, Vice President, Rise of the Rest Seed Fund

Mahati is a Vice President on the investment team at Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund. She joined the firm in 2021 and focuses on sourcing, due diligence, and supporting existing portfolio companies.

Prior to joining Revolution, Mahati was an Associate at Bull City Venture Partners, a Durham-based venture capital fund where she worked on seed and series A software and internet investments in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic. Mahati is also a Venture for America Fellow and served her fellowship in Charlotte where she helped launch CFV Ventures, an early-stage fintech-focused venture fund. She started her career in Investment Banking at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey where she worked on the healthcare coverage team.

Mahati received a B.S. in Business Administration from UNC-Chapel Hill and an MBA from Columbia Business School. Mahati originally hails from Raleigh but currently calls New York City home.

Sarah Hinkfuss, Partner, Bain Capital Ventures

Sarah Hinkfuss works with growth-stage founders across both application software and fintech. She is particularly interested in backing founders who have personal experience in the market they are creating.

Ms. Hinkfuss joined Bain Capital in 2020 as a Vice President on the Tech Opportunities team. Prior to joining Bain Capital, Ms. Hinkfuss worked as an Associate in KKR’s Growth Equity group in San Francisco. Prior to that she was a Senior Vice President at Applied Predictive Technologies, an enterprise SaaS company acquired by Mastercard in 2015.

Ms. Hinkfuss received an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she was an Arjay Miller Scholar and Siebel Scholar. She graduated cum laude with a BA in Economics and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, where she was a Hoopes Prize recipient and Weatherhead Research Fellow.

Agenda

TechCrunch Live in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Raising capital outside of the coasts with Anna Mason (Rise of the Rest Seed Fund) + Andrew Leone (Dispatch)

Andrew Leone’s Dispatch provides businesses with an on-demand courier delivery service. Headquartered in the greater Minneapolis, Minn area, the startup is quickly becoming a shining star in the area’s exploding startup ecosystem. It’s the type of startup that captures the attention of local investors, but outsiders as well including Anna Mason, managing partner at Revolution’s Rise of the Rest fund.

Who’s writing checks in MSP with Mary Grove (Managing Partner, Bread & Butter Fund) and Justin Kaufenberg (Managing Director, Rally Ventures)

A panel on the growth opportunities for Minn from the perspective of VC funds – what’s needed in the market, what are they funding right, where startups should look for funding.

Building a fintech company with Atif Siddiqi (Branch) and Ryan Brosha (Matchstick Ventures).

Minneapolis has a growing number of fintech companies, and Branch is among the best positioned. Hear from its CEO and Co-founder Atif Siddiqi and one of the company’s early investors, Ryan Brosha Managing Director and Partner at Matchstick Ventures.

Pitch-off

Judges: Mahati Sridhar & Sarah Hinkfuss

This week on the TechCrunch Podcast we’re talking to Zack Whittaker about TechCrunch’s new spyware lookup tool and a whistleblower complaint against Twitter alleging massive security issues. Tim De Chant also comes on to explain how the Inflation Reduction Act could make EVs more available and affordable. And as always, we’ll catch you up on the tech news you may have missed this week.

Articles from the episode:

• TechCrunch launches TheTruthSpy spyware lookup tool
• Manchin’s ultimatum may turn the US into a battery powerhouse
• Ex-security chief accuses Twitter of cybersecurity mismanagement in an explosive whistleblower complaint

Other news from the week:

• Meta officially rolls out its new metaverse ID system
• Deepfakes for all: Uncensored AI art model prompts ethics questions
• Oracle’s ‘surveillance machine’ targeted in US privacy class action
• T-Mobile phones will connect to Starlink for free starting next year

Hello, hello! We’re back with another edition of Week in Review, the newsletter where we quickly break down the top stories to hit TC in the last seven days. Want it in your inbox? Sign up here.

Our most read story this week was about Stable Diffusion, a “new open source AI image generator capable of producing realistic pictures from any text prompt” that is quickly finding its way into more projects. But, as Kyle Wiggers notes, the system’s “unfiltered nature means not all the use has been completely above board.”

other stuff

T-Mobile + Starlink: Can Elon’s Starlink satellites keep your phone connected even when there’s no cell tower around? That’s the idea behind a newfound alliance between SpaceX and T-Mobile. If it works, T-Mobile phones should able to send messages (but probably not calls) over the Starlink network in a pinch, albeit with a delay of up to 30 minutes.

Google’s noise reduction AI: Smartphones have gotten better and better at low-light photos, but at a certain point the obstacle preventing further improvements is … well, physics. Is an algorithm that uses “AI magic” (as Haje puts it) to eliminate visual noise and “figure out what footage ‘should have’ looked like” the eventual only answer? No idea, but the examples are pretty friggin’ impressive.

DoorDash breached: Remember the Twilio hack a few weeks ago? The ripple effects continue. This week DoorDash disclosed that hackers were able to obtain access to internal DoorDash tools, accessing “names, email addresses, delivery addresses and phone numbers of DoorDash customers.”

Meta’s new accounts: If you’ve got a Quest VR headset and don’t want to tie it to a Facebook or Instagram account, this’ll be the route you take. If you’re still using an old pre-Meta Oculus account, know that support for those ends on day 1 of 2023.

eBay buys TCGplayer: If you’re a collector of any trading card games — think Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Magic, etc. — you’ve probably heard of TCGplayer, which eBay is buying “in a deal valued up to $295 million.” We’ll chat with TC writer Aisha Malik about the deal (and why eBay wants it) in the writer spotlight down below.

Image Credits: Getty Images

audio stuff

Commuting? Cooking? Just wearing headphones to discourage people from talking to you? Come hang out with us in Podcast land! This week the Equity team talked about the legal battle going on over at Black Girls Code, Jordan and Darrell talked with comedian/Super Trooper Jay Chandrasekhar about his app on Found, and the Chain Reaction team caught up with two investors from the relatively new web3-focused firm Haun Ventures.

additional stuff

What’s behind the TC+ paywall? Here’s some of the most read stuff this week. Want more? Sign up for TC+ here and use code “WIR” for 15% off your annual pass. 

Manchin’s ultimatum: Can the Inflation Reduction Act and lucrative tax credits help “turn the U.S. into a battery powerhouse”? Tim De Chant explores the possibilities.

Should this metric be your team’s North Star?: The team from Battery Ventures proposes that ARR per employee (or “APE,” as they’ve dubbed it) should be your team’s guiding light.

3 views on Flow: Last week we found out that WeWork founder Adam Neumann is back with a new thing and had already raised over $350 million from the likes of a16z. Good idea? Bad Idea? Tim De Chant, Dominic-Madori Davis, Amanda Silberling share their takes.

writer spotlight: Aisha Malik

Image Credits: Aisha Malik

As noted last week, we’re experimenting with the idea of highlighting one TechCrunch writer per newsletter to learn a bit about them and what’s been on their mind lately. This time we’re catching up with the outstanding Aisha Malik, one year almost to the day since she wrote her first TC post. 

Who is Aisha Malik? What do you do at TechCrunch?

Hi, I’m a senior consumer news writer and the second Canadian on the TechCrunch team! I write about the latest changes to platforms and apps, and how they affect the average consumer. My team and I also uncover upcoming app features ahead of their official release. I also get the chance to chat with founders about their app launches and latest funding rounds.

What’s interesting in your beat right now? Any trends we should know about?

One thing we’re seeing and likely will continue to see is just how often apps are copying each other. Just this week, we found out that Instagram is testing a BeReal clone feature that challenges people to post candid photos within two minutes. Over the past year, we’ve seen Instagram copy numerous TikTok features, we’ve seen TikTok copy Snapchat with its Stories feature, and we’ve also seen Twitter copy Instagram with its close friends “circle” feature.

There are countless similar examples. It’ll be interesting to see just how this trend progresses. People are already calling on Instagram to go back to its roots, so what happens when every app is trying to be like another one? At some point, these apps are going to be overcrowded with features, and that might not be something that consumers want.

Right?! It’s absurd. And who wants to build the next cool thing when the giants of the app world will just clone your key features as soon as they start to prove popular?

Since you’re on the consumer/apps team: what’s the most used app on your phone that didn’t come pre-installed? What eats up your battery every day?

I have no shame in admitting this (okay, maybe just a little) but the answer is TikTok.

I find myself opening the app when I want to take a quick break or when I’d rather not commit to watching a movie or an episode of a TV show, but still want some sort of entertainment. I know people who haven’t download the app claim it’s filled with dancing videos, but the truth is you’ll only end up seeing dancing videos if that’s something you’re actually interested in. TikTok formulates its “For You” page in a way that’s based on your interests, so I see it as a great way to discover and engage with content that you care about. As someone who enjoys baking and reading, the majority of the content I see on TikTok revolves around baking recipes and book recommendations.

I also think TikTok clearly has an impact on culture, whether it’s memes, music or political movements; there’s a chance that it’ll appear on TikTok first. I see the app as a fun and easy way to stay up-to-date on all sorts of trends.

I get it. I had to delete TikTok off my phone — every time I’d open it, my eyes would go all Hypnotoad and I’d be gone, only snapping out of it 20 minutes/100 videos later. The algorithm is too good. It feels like the final boss of the internet; the algorithm in its most evolved/efficient form. I’m probably getting a bit too in the weeds here. Back to the questions!

One of the most read stories this week was your post on eBay’s acquisition of TCGplayer. What is TCGplayer, and why does eBay want it?

TCGplayer is one of the biggest online marketplaces for collectible trading card games. The acquisition essentially marks eBay’s latest push into the trading card market, which saw a huge boom during the pandemic. eBay says trading cards are currently showing substantial growth.

To put things in perspective, eBay says the trading cards category is growing significantly faster than its total marketplace and that the category saw $2 billion in transactions in the first half of 2021. Considering that eBay has long been a destination for trading card enthusiasts to buy and sell, acquiring one of its biggest competitors better cements the company’s place as the go-to marketplace to seek out these collectibles.

It’s kind of wild how collectibles saw a massive surge throughout the pandemic — something, perhaps, about lots of people spending a lot more time at home around their own stuff. Collectibles-focused companies like Whatnot just exploded in popularity, going from a pre-seed round to a valuation in the billions in two years. Are you a collector of anything, trading cards or otherwise?

Do rocks count? [Laughs]

Yes!

I have a small collection of rocks and stones that I’ve collected from beaches and forests I’ve visited in Canada and the U.S. I don’t know much about different types of rocks, so the ones in my collection aren’t extraordinary or anything. I just think collecting them is a nice way to feel connected to specific locations I’ve enjoyed visiting!

Fantastic. Thanks, Aisha!

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has decreased. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps.

This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.

Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters

Top Stories

Twitter whistleblower’s impact (or lack thereof!) on the Elon Musk lawsuit

The headlines this week were dominated by Twitter’s former head of security, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko’s, explosive whistleblower complaint.

The former Twitter employee accused the company of cybersecurity negligence that ranged from a lack of basic security controls to national security threats and foreign intelligence risks. But one more immediate question on everyone’s minds is whether or not Zatko’s statements about bots on the platform will help or hurt Elon Musk’s case.

To some, it may appear that Zatko has backed up Musk’s claims when he notes that there are millions of active accounts on the platform which Twitter is not including in its mDAU metric — a metric Twitter itself invented to count only those users it could monetize by way of advertisements. (That is, mDAUs are mostly people, not spambots.)

“These millions of non-mDAU accounts are part of the median user’s experience on the platform,” states the complaint. “And for this vast set of non-mDAU active accounts, Musk is correct: Twitter executives have little or no personal incentive to accurately ‘detect’ or measure the prevalence of spam bots,” it reads.

The complaint then goes on to say that Twitter, when asked in 2021, couldn’t identify the total number of spam bots on its platform, and couldn’t provide an accurate upper bound on that figure.

Ah ha!, right? Even Twitter doesn’t know how much spam it has!

Well, maybe that’s not the smoking gun you might think.

Musk’s legal argument is that Twitter has been misleading its users and investors about the number of bots on its platform, which the company has estimated to be less than 5%. (Because surely this all hasn’t come about because Musk overpaid for the deal and now wants out!)

However, Twitter has been reporting to the SEC that spam and bots are less than 5% of its mDAUs — a figure that’s essentially already scrubbed of bots so advertisers know how many real eyeballs they’re able to reach. What’s more, while Zatko may have a point that this sort of made-up, proprietary metric is ripe for manipulation, he also says in the complaint that Twitter execs are “incentivized to avoid counting spam bots as mDAUs.” In other words, it seems likely that Twitter’s statements to the SEC are correct when Twitter says its mDAU figures are “less than 5%” spam.

Plus, even if Twitter doesn’t know how much total spam is on the platform at any given time, that doesn’t mean it can’t figure out how much spam is in its mDAU figure — a figure Twitter has explained it calculates using private data. Twitter looks at things like IP addresses, phone numbers, geolocation, client/browser signatures and more, CEO Parag Agrawal noted in a Twitter thread. This helps it to come up with its mDAU figure, by classifying accounts that appear to belong to “real” users as such.

It’s worth noting the total spam on Twitter’s platform is always in flux — when Twitter does a big sweep for spam and bots, users have noticed their follower counts drop. However, Twitter wasn’t monetizing based on those bots nor was it reporting inflated user metrics to the SEC by including spambots in its user figures — at least, not since its invention of the mDAU in 2019.

And while it’s true that mDAUs are not a representation of the spam-filled Twitter user experience today — an experience, remember, that Musk claimed he was buying Twitter to fix! — they are an indicator of how many real people are on the site. And that’s what a new owner would want to know anyway, right?

Whether or not mDAUs represent Twitter as it truly is misses the point. Sure, mDAUs may be a non-standard metric. It might not be comparable to the metrics used by other social platforms. It may even be a bad metric! But that’s not relevant to the case. The fact is, it’s not a new metric. Twitter defined it years ago and was using mDAUs long before Musk committed to buying Twitter. It’s what Twitter reports to the SEC.

So good luck using this as proof of being lied to, Mr. Musk. Can’t wait to see how that works in court!

In other news, Twitter expands into podcasting

Image Credits: Twitter

While the whistleblower news may have been the biggest news story of the week, Twitter dropped some pretty significant product news as well. It’s turning itself into a podcast app.

The company announced an update to its Twitter Spaces tab that would see it integrating podcasts into a revamped experience where content is now organized into hubs called “Stations.” These Stations group content by topics — like news, sports, music and more. The app will also make recommendations based on who you follow and how you engage with content. Twitter Spaces — including both live and prerecorded audio — will also continue to be available in the Spaces tab.

TechCrunch had previously reported that Twitter was developing Stations and a personalized audio digest as part of a makeover coming to its Spaces tab, but we didn’t know the extent of the podcast integrations at the time. The company tells us it’s making over 2 million podcasts available at launch, which are programmatically recommended to users.

Podcasts are ingested as RSS feeds, which means the 2 million figure is not a hard limit — Twitter could expand. Still, it’s a notable out-of-the-gate start, as Spotify today has more than 4 million podcasts, many of which are produced in-house, exclusives or shows recorded in its Anchor app.

Twitter, of course, is home to its own sort of exclusives, known as Twitter Spaces. These live audio programs can be recorded for later listening — similar to podcasts. If the creator doesn’t download, edit and package the Space to send it out to other services on a podcast RSS feed, then these Spaces remain something you could only find on Twitter. (Of note, Twitter says it would include both the recorded Twitter Space and the resulting podcast of that Space in its app — allowing it to count the same show twice.)

Twitter will make recommendations of podcasts to individuals based on how they listen and engage with people and topics. This could also be a competitive advantage of sorts.

As to why it felt the need to do podcasts? That’s less clear. Twitter told us it wants to be “the home for audio conversations.” It also sees an overlap between podcast listeners and Twitter users. Based on its own internal research, 45% of U.S. Twitter users listen to podcasts monthly. More realistically, it likely sees the ability to monetize audio with ads — if this effort pays off.

However, Twitter falls short in terms of key features that would make its app an alternative to your favorite podcast player. There’s no offline listening, no download capability, no support for paid podcasts and no exclusive partnerships. So who, exactly, does the podcast feature serve — those so addicted to Twitter they can’t even leave the app to stream a favorite program, we suppose.

Weekly News

Platforms: Apple

• Apple announced its iPhone event will take place on September 7 at 10 AM PT. The company is expected to announce a new iPhone 14 with an improved camera and a faster chip. An updated Apple Watch may also show up along with…maybe…a AR/VR headset?!
• Apple confirmed iPadOS 16 is delayed. Bloomberg originally reported it and macOS Ventura would have a slightly later release this year.
• Apple shipped the seventh beta of iOS 16, likely a final or near-final version before the official September launch of the new OS. It also released the seventh betas for watchOS 9 and tvOS 16, as well as the first beta of iPadOS 16.1.

Platforms: Google

• Android Auto 8.0 arrived, but lacks the redesign Google teased in May that would introduce a three-section split screen layout and better adaptability with regard to supporting differently shaped car infotainment screens.
• Google launched a developer Preview of the new Cross device SDK for Android, first announced during Google I/O. The new SDK allows developers to build “rich multi-device experiences with a simple and intuitive set of APIs,” Google says.

E-commerce

• Beauty Retail and Direct-to-Consumer Apparel apps are driving more DAUs in the last 30 days than they did during the peak of 2021 holiday shopping, according to Apptopia. Daily users engaging with D2C Apparel apps have increased 5% from December 2021, and 2% for Beauty Retail apps, a report found.
• 65% of social networking app users consider Meta apps a shopping destination according to a commerce report from SimplicityDX. This data excludes Facebook Marketplace. If the marketplace is kept in the equation, the figure jumps to 83%.
• Walmart’s mobile app is getting a cashback feature — but only for Walmart+ subscribers. Via a partnership with Ibotta, Walmart+ members will be able to save offers, then scan a QR code at checkout to automatically receive money back in the in-app wallet, which they can use on a later purchase.

Image Credits: Walmart

Social

• Instagram updated its teen safety features, which will now default users under the age of 16 to the app’s most restrictive content setting. It will also prompt existing teen users to do the same, and will introduce a new “Settings check-up” feature that guides teens to update their safety and privacy settings. Teens under 18 can only choose between the “Standard” and “Less” options for how much sensitive content they want to see on the app. But even though new users will be defaulted to the most restrictive setting, they can still change it. The features, first announced in December before Instagram’s Senate testimony, are rolling out to global users now. Privacy advocates say they’re a good first step, but suggest that Instagram should route its youngest users to the most restrictive setting, including if it suspects they’re younger than they indicated when signing up. And they point out that Instagram’s list of what it considers sensitive content doesn’t include content that promotes self-harm or disordered eating.

Image Credits: Instagram

• It’s not a verified label but…Twitter began tests of a special tag that would highlight accounts that had a verified phone number. This signals the account is less likely to be spam. Also this week the team working on spam bots, the Twitter service team, merged with those working to reduce toxic content, the platform health experience team.
• TikTok tries out a “Nearby” feed that displays local content to users. The test is only live in Southeast Asia and is currently limited in scope. When available, the feed is shown as a third option alongside For You and Following on the app’s homepage.
• Snap settled an Illinois class action lawsuit that accused Snapchat’s filters and lenses of violating the Biometric Information Privacy Act. The settlement totaled $35 million and will go toward individual payouts that are estimated to be between $58 and $117. Users who think they may be eligible for compensation can submit a claim online. Despite settling the claims, Snap still denies it violated the BIPA, saying its Lenses “do not collect biometric data that can be used to identify a specific person, or engage in facial identification.”
• Instagram added a feature that allows users to share anyone’s posts or Reels through a QR code. Users also can share a QR code location through its searchable Map experience.
• Pinterest confirmed it’s facing a probe by California’s Civil Rights Department over unlawful discrimination. The department reached out to former Pinterest employee Ifeoma Ozoma and others as possible witnesses, all of them women. Ozoma and another former Pinterest employee, Aerica Shimizu Banks, had accused the company around two years ago of discrimination and retaliation.

Messaging

Image Credits: WhatsApp

• WhatsApp confirmed that users in select markets are gaining access to WhatsApp Communities, its new group discussions platform offers admin controls, sub-groups, file sharing, 32-person group calls and emoji reactions.
• WhatsApp is working on a feature to make Stories — or, as it’s known on the app, Status Updates — a bigger part of the experience by adding blue rings around users’ profile photos in the main chat list that link to their updates. It’s also planning to add the ability to retrieve deleted messages and let admins erase messages from group chats, reports said.
• Telegram founder Pavel Durov said he wants to integrate web3 into the messaging app, TechCrunch reported. Specifically, Durvo referenced the TON project and how it’s used for domain name/wallet auctions. He said he’d be inclined to try out TON’s blockchain on Telegram.
• Facebook Messenger received an update making it compatible with M1 and M2 Macs.

Photos

Image Credits: Lightricks

• Mobile photo editing app creator Lightricks launched its own AI-powered, text-to-image generator within two of its apps, including photo editor Photoleap and Motionleap, an app that animates still photo to make them look like they’re in motion.

Dating

• Match Group’s COO and CFO Gary Swidler has warned that Tinder signups aren’t back at pre-pandemic levels and new user acquisition remains a challenge, per The FT.
• Tinder’s parent company Match filed a new antitrust case in India against Apple over its App Store fees, calling them excessive.

Streaming & Entertainment

• YouTube TV is developing a new viewing mode that would allow users to watch four different streams at once in a mosaic interface. It’s also said to be working on a way to bring YouTube Shorts to the TV.
• A hacker compromised Plex’s streaming media platform and was able to access usernames, emails and encrypted passwords. Plex informed users by email and suggested a password reset.
• SiriusXM began offering a bundle that combines Stitcher Premium with its SiriusXM Platinum Plan.

Gaming

Image Credits: Netflix

• Netflix launched its own version of the popular Heads Up! game to subscribers, which features decks referencing popular Netflix shows like “Bridgerton,” “Selling Sunset,” “Stranger Things,” “Squid Game” and others.
• Netflix job postings suggest the company is expanding into cloud gaming. So far, the streamer’s some two-dozen mobile games are only used by less than 1% of its subscriber base, according to third-party data.
• The New York Times integrated its popular word game app, Wordle, into its existing NYT’s Crossword app. This now allows it to rank above other Wordle clones and copycats in app store searches.
• Google launched its Google Play Games for PC program into open beta in South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand and Australia. The program had only been available through a waitlist, previously. It now offers more than 50 PC-compatible games for Windows users — including Summoners War, Cookie Run: Kingdom, Last Fortress: Underground and Top War. The games can be played using the same Google ID on Windows as on users’ Android devices.
• Valve is now beta testing a redesigned Steam mobile app for iOS and Android, which includes a rebuilt framework and modernized design. The app hasn’t gotten a major revamp in years. Valve says the beta will help it learn what users like and don’t, and find bugs that need to be fixed.

Productivity

• Microsoft is introducing more ads inside its Outlook Mobile app for iOS and Android. Before, the company only included ads in the “Other” tab of the inbox — the one with all the junk — for those who use the two-tabbed mode for filtering their emails. It will now include ads in the inbox for those who use a single inbox interface, too.

Travel & Transportation

• Google’s Waze is shutting down its six-year-old service Waze Carpool starting next month. The company said driving behaviors changed following the pandemic as more people are working from home, which reduced the need for a service aimed at commuters.

Utilities

• Bloomberg doubled down on its earlier reporting of more ads coming to Apple’s first-party apps with confirmation that Apple Maps will start serving ads next year.
• Apple kicked off fundraising for U.S. National Parks through Apple Pay donations running August 21-28. As a part of this initiative, it also rolled out a new national parks guide to highlight those that honor Native American heritage inside the Apple Maps app. While these sort of initiatives may help to drive users to Apple Pay, the company may no longer need to do this in the future as now three-quarters of U.S. iPhone users have enabled Apple Pay on their devices. 
• Both Yelp and Google Maps rolled out updates to make it clearer which listings were abortion providers versus crisis pregnancy centers. Yelp labeled the latter as providing “limited medical services” while Google labeled abortion care providers as “provides abortions.” It’s not taking action on crisis pregnancy centers, however.
• Google Wallet (previously known as Google Pay) rolled out to six more regions, making the app available now in 45 global markets.
• Apple’s Wallet app can be deleted in iOS 16.1, code suggests, as Apple responds to regulatory pressure focused on how it may push its first-party apps on iPhone users.

Security & Privacy

• VICE goes hands-on with Pretty Good Phone Privacy, a data service for Android that offers increased security when using mobile phone networks. They concluded the service could be suited to those who want a layer or two of additional protections but cautioned PGPP was still in early phases and a little buggy.
• Food delivery app DoorDash confirmed a data breach that exposed customers’ personal information, including names, email addresses, delivery addresses and phone numbers. A subset of users also had partial payment card information stolen.
• Twilio confirmed the same hackers compromised the accounts of some users of its 2FA app, Authy, as part of a wider breach of its systems.
• Google said it has pulled over 2,000 personal loan apps from its Play Store in India this year amid a crackdown on apps engaged in predatory lending practices and abuse and harassment of their users.

Reading Rec’s

• “How the Find My App Became an Accidental Friendship Fixture“ — The New York Times dug into how young people are using Apple’s Find My app to keep up with their friends, no matter the cost to personal privacy and interpersonal dynamics.
• “It’s a modern-day Facebook’ – how BeReal became Gen Z’s favourite app”— this hot Gen Z app is profiled by The Guardian, which dubs it the “modern-day Facebook” for keeping up with real-life friends.
• Authenticator app developer Kevin Archer detailed in a Twitter thread how he continues to face subscription scammers on the App Store who have copied his legitimate app, then beg for reviews during onboarding and push a subscription on consumers before users even start using the app. Archer says they’ve reported the scam several times using the “Report a Problem” feature and Apple has not taken action.

Funding and M&A

Consumer social app maker 9count raised an additional $6 million on top of its $21.5 million Series A to help fund development of its flagship app, Wink, and its newer dating app, Summer.

Bengaluru-based healthcare app Mojocare raised $20.6 million in Series A funding led by B Capital Group. The app offers consultations with doctors, therapists and nutritionists and sells products.

Dubai-based Zywa, a neobank aimed at Gen Z users, raised $3 million in seed funding at over $30 million (110 million AED) valuation. The startup aims to expand further into Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Seattle mental health Alongside raised $5.5 million for its in-development adolescent mental health app. The app would allow users to interact with a chatbot and guide them to resources.

Downloads

Shuffles

Image Credits: Pinterest

Collage-style video “mood boards” are going viral on TikTok — and so is the app that is making them possible. Pinterest’s recently soft-launched collage-maker Shuffles has been climbing up the App Store’s Top Charts thanks to demand from Gen Z users who are leveraging the new creative expression tool to make, publish and share visual content. These “aesthetic” collages are then set to music and posted to TikTok or shared privately with friends or with the broader Shuffles community.

Despite being in invite-only status, Shuffles has already spent some time as the No. 1 Lifestyle app on the U.S. App Store.

During the week of August 15-22, 2022, Shuffles ranked No. 5 in the Top Lifestyle Apps by downloads on iPhone in the U.S., according to metrics provided by app intelligence firm data.ai — an increase of 72 places in the rankings compared to the week prior. It was the No. 1 Lifestyle app on iPhone by Sunday, August 21st, and broke into the Top 20 non-gaming apps on iOS as a whole in the U.S. that same day, after jumping up 22 ranks from the day prior.

But this app isn’t available to all. You need to know someone with an invite to get in. You can try our invite codes FTSNFUFC or L5JI8QCS to try to get in.

Read more about Shuffles here on TechCrunch. 

Most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the keycaps on their keyboards. Chances are, they are white with black text or black with white text and that’s about it. Like with all things (mechanical) keyboards, though, there are seemingly endless choices. For a long time, the most sought-after keycaps were those manufactured by Germany’s GMK. But as the mechanical keyboard hobby exploded in recent years, GMK simply couldn’t keep up with the demand, and new sets — which in the mechanical keyboard world tend to take the form of group buys — often took a year or longer to ship.

While a lot of enthusiasts love GMK’s ability to print vibrant colors on its ABS keycaps, the company’s recent manufacturing issues and delays cost it a lot of goodwill in the community. Unsurprisingly, GMK’s issues opened up the doors to other high-quality keycap manufacturers, including the likes of EnjoyPBT and Drop. And while Drop also offers a number of GMK-made sets in its store (without the group-buy hassle), the company also recently launched its DCX Keycaps, which by now are available in nine variants.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

I’ll admit that I’ve never been a huge fan of Drop’s default MT3-profile keycaps. Some people love them, but they are just a bit too high and round for me. The new DCX profile, though, which Drop says took two years to develop, is more akin to the standard Cherry layout that you’re probably used to. Indeed, unless you look closely, you may mistake these for Cherry-profile keycaps. At $99 for a full set of thick double-shot ABS keycaps, they are also a bit of a bargain (by mechanical keyboard standards, at least) — though if you’re a Mac user, you’ll likely want to spend the extra $25 for the MacOS-specific keys.

These keycaps are easy to like. Drop sent me a review sample of its black-on-white set. The legends are crisp — one of the hallmarks of good ABS keycaps — and there were no manufacturing defects that I could find. Unlike cheaper ABS sets, Drop’s keycaps don’t feel too smooth, and while they’ll likely show some shine after a few years of usage (all ABS keycaps do), there’s obviously no sign of that yet. They are not as thick as some of the PBT keycaps I mostly use on my personal keyboards, but are comparable to the GMK keycaps Drop itself currently sells. As such, on the same board, the sound they make is just a little bit higher than that of a thicker PBT set, but that’s barely noticeable, and in terms of sound, the switches, plates and everything else in your board will make far more of a difference anyway.

The set is compatible with standard ISO and ANSI layouts, though if you use an Alice-style keyboard, for example, you’ll need the $15 space bar kit, too. That’s pretty standard across the industry and keeps the price of the base kit lower as only a minority of buyers will ever need those.

Drop also sent me one of its pre-built CTRL keyboards to try the new keycaps on. The Paragon-series Full Stack version comes with Cherry Silent Red switches and the Drop + Oblotzky SA Oblivion Custom Keycap Set (with the white alpha keys). I don’t mind the aesthetics of that set, but compared to the new DCX sets, it feels a bit cheap. I admit that the SA profile with its tall keycaps really isn’t for me, but maybe just as importantly, I don’t enjoy how smooth they are to the touch.

Despite having been on the market for quite a while, now, the Drop CTRL with its aluminum frame and fun lighting effect remains a viable option. At $150 for the barebones version, it sits at the lower end of the custom keyboard market while offering a high-quality build (it’s worth noting that the pre-built Paragon Full Stack I tested features some design tweaks, like doing away with the floating key design, and clocks in at $500). As such, it’s playing in what is now a highly contested market segment, and some newer boards offer more features and options for a similar price (including, for example, gasket mounts), while Drop itself hasn’t released a new in-house design since 2019.  The company recently teased a new keyboard, though, so chances are that’ll change sooner than later.

Meadow, a leader in building tools for cannabis dispensaries, is expanding out of California. Since its founding in 2014, the company has focused its efforts on its home state but recently partnered with Michigan-based Wellflower.

The company retooled its cannabis platform for the Michigan market and now offers the service state-wide.

“California is challenging,” CEO and co-founder David Hua told TechCrunch. “We’re still growing, but there’s a need to look at other states with more density.”

Hua explained that the company has gone as deep as it can in California. As a result, the company is in a healthy position, profitable and not seeking additional fundraising at this time, and able to choose its next market carefully.

“We’re liking Michigan so far,” Hua said. “In California, we work with operators who have been operating for over a decade, and they may have a bit of a counterculture demeanor. Whereas in Michigan, operators have professional experience and have worked in a bunch of other shops. And they’re trying to verticalize, a trend we’re also seeing [in California].”

Meadow sees Michigan as a stepping stone into the East Coast, mainly New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.

“Massachusetts is up and running,” Hua said. “New Jersey is just getting their feet on the ground. New York is sort of where everyone is eyeing how they will structure the regulations.”

Cannabis operators have a growing set of tools available to them, and Hua is finding that they’re often overwhelmed with the various single-use platforms available. Rather than stacking different APIs and platforms, Meadow’s all-in-one solution offers a complete toolset — from marketing to e-commerce to delivery to customer loyalty programs.

Meadow’s expanding without the help of additional outside capital. The company’s last raise was in December 2018, and it has only raised $2.34 million since its founding. Hua told TechCrunch it had offers to go public in Canada but is pleased with its decision to keep the company private. He points to the slower-than-expanded growth of the cannabis industry as one of the troubles with seeking VC capital in the space. There’s a reckoning of sorts, he says, in that local and state regulations artificially limit the growth of cannabis dispensaries, and this runs counter to the startup mentality of exponential growth.

“Alright, you raised all this money,” he said, “and you’re going to 10x, and there’s not enough room to 10x.” In his view, this leads cannabis startups to look at other areas to grow, leading to building products and services away from the company’s core competencies. “The complexity of what you’re trying to execute increases dramatically.”

Meadow’s strategy has always been different. The company was part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2015 class but didn’t raise a Series A and stayed small. It hit profitability in early 2022 and feels it can serve its customer base without outside influences. Currently, the company employs 14 people, with the average employee tenure around five years.

Expanding outside of California could force Meadow to change its strategy of growing slowly. However, David Hua does not foresee needing outside funding unless there’s a cataclysmic moment- the de-scheduling of cannabis, federal legalization, or interstate commerce allowing operators to freely move cannabis over state lines.

Meadow, a leader in building tools for cannabis dispensaries, is expanding out of California. Since its founding in 2014, the company has focused its efforts on its home state but recently partnered with Michigan-based Wellflower.

The company retooled its cannabis platform for the Michigan market and now offers the service state-wide.

“California is challenging,” CEO and co-founder David Hua told TechCrunch. “We’re still growing, but there’s a need to look at other states with more density.”

Hua explained that the company has gone as deep as it can in California. As a result, the company is in a healthy position, profitable and not seeking additional fundraising at this time, and able to choose its next market carefully.

“We’re liking Michigan so far,” Hua said. “In California, we work with operators who have been operating for over a decade, and they may have a bit of a counterculture demeanor. Whereas in Michigan, operators have professional experience and have worked in a bunch of other shops. And they’re trying to verticalize, a trend we’re also seeing [in California].”

Meadow sees Michigan as a stepping stone into the East Coast, mainly New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.

“Massachusetts is up and running,” Hua said. “New Jersey is just getting their feet on the ground. New York is sort of where everyone is eyeing how they will structure the regulations.”

Cannabis operators have a growing set of tools available to them, and Hua is finding that they’re often overwhelmed with the various single-use platforms available. Rather than stacking different APIs and platforms, Meadow’s all-in-one solution offers a complete toolset — from marketing to e-commerce to delivery to customer loyalty programs.

Meadow’s expanding without the help of additional outside capital. The company’s last raise was in December 2018, and it has only raised $2.34 million since its founding. Hua told TechCrunch it had offers to go public in Canada but is pleased with its decision to keep the company private. He points to the slower-than-expanded growth of the cannabis industry as one of the troubles with seeking VC capital in the space. There’s a reckoning of sorts, he says, in that local and state regulations artificially limit the growth of cannabis dispensaries, and this runs counter to the startup mentality of exponential growth.

“Alright, you raised all this money,” he said, “and you’re going to 10x, and there’s not enough room to 10x.” In his view, this leads cannabis startups to look at other areas to grow, leading to building products and services away from the company’s core competencies. “The complexity of what you’re trying to execute increases dramatically.”

Meadow’s strategy has always been different. The company was part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2015 class but didn’t raise a Series A and stayed small. It hit profitability in early 2022 and feels it can serve its customer base without outside influences. Currently, the company employs 14 people, with the average employee tenure around five years.

Expanding outside of California could force Meadow to change its strategy of growing slowly. However, David Hua does not foresee needing outside funding unless there’s a cataclysmic moment- the de-scheduling of cannabis, federal legalization, or interstate commerce allowing operators to freely move cannabis over state lines.

Healthcare startups often face unique challenges — something Well Health founder Guillaume de Zwirek understands. Together with Freestyle Partner, Jenny Lefcourt, the two will speak on the strategies used by de Zwirek as he built and scaled WELL Health into a leading healthcare startup.

This TechCrunch Live event opens on August 31 at 11:30 a.m. PDT/2:30 p.m. EDT with networking. The interview begins at 12:00 p.m. PDT followed by the TCL Pitch Practice at 12:30 p.m. PDT.

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News that Haus, a consumer beverage brand looking to bring down the ABV in booze, had failed to close a funding round and was being forced to sell took many — this publication included — by surprise. Perhaps we should have been less taken aback.

Tracking the value of recently public DTC companies is an exercise in zooming in as their valuations shrink. Shares of consumer shoe brand Allbirds, for example, a company beloved by many in the technology world, reached a 52-week high of $32.44 before falling to around $4.50 today. Shares of DTC consumer glasses brand Warby Parker similarly peaked at $60.30 per share in the last year and retreated to roughly $13.60 per share today.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.

Read it every morning on TechCrunch+ or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

Those declines are not unique. Peloton has taken nearly historic levels of public-market punishment after its pandemic-fueled run pedaled itself out of steam as COVID-19 waned from the public consciousness and masks in public settings like restaurants and gyms morphed from ubiquitous to rare.

Benchling’s unicorn status didn’t come overnight. Some ten years after its founding, the company is worth more than $6 billion, and the founder sees the company going public in the future. The company’s future looks like its past: talking to customers and building for power users. To that end, Benchling announced today that it recently surpassed 1,000 customers and increased its subscription revenue 90% year-over-year. It has new executive leadership, too, including the appointment of Atlassian-veteran Stephen Deasy as the company’s first Chief Technology Officer.

Benchling’s CEO and co-founder, Sajith Wickramasekara, recently spoke at a TechCrunch Live event along with one of its early investors, Miles Grimshaw, general partner at Benchmark. Together, the two explained Benchling’s early strategy that tapped a small entry market, which eventually led to widespread adoption.

TechCrunch Live records weekly on Wednesdays at 11:30 a.m. PDT/2:30 p.m. EDT. Join us! Apply for TCL Pitch Practice by completing this application.

As Wickramasekara explained, early funding was hard to secure. It was 2012, and Benchling sat alone between SaaS companies and biotech. “Every software investor thought what we were doing was small and unimportant,” Wickramasekara said, adding later, “and then we went to science investors, and every science investor understood the challenges of R&D, but they didn’t understand software; they invested in drugs.”

Benchmark’s Miles Grimshaw was introduced to Benchling’s co-founders through a mutual friend and was impressed. “When I met Sajith and Ashu Singhal, they were two co-founders who knew bench science and had worked in those labs doing research. But they were also amazing engineers who could build great products and distill them into an easy user experience.”

“That’s just a really hard and rare combination,” Grimshaw said about Benchling’s co-founders.

Grimshaw noted that the current market for Benchling’s product was relatively small at the time. However, he saw the industry as developing, and instead of looking at the current addressable market, he worked with the co-founders to identify the potential market size.

“I think the question is less, ‘how big is the market today,’ but rather, what could the market become and what’s the rate of growth of that market,” Grimshaw said. “A small market growing quickly is powerful for a new company to gain outside market share.”

Grimshaw points to Amazon and Shopify as prime examples of this strategy. The idea is to identify the market’s growth rate, and capture part of the incremental evolution each year. Amazon started when e-commerce was nascent but managed to capture larger shares as the market grew. Shopify did the same, Grimshaw said, by targeting the small businesses entering the growing SMB e-commerce market.

Wickramasekara explained Benchling’s early traction came from giving away the software to academics.

“[Academics] is where we knew there were end users who could take advantage of the software and a lot of people thought we were crazy for doing that, you know, giving away the software for free to academics who have no money,” Wickramasekara said. “There isn’t a freemium funnel where they’re going to start converting and paying money for the software all of a sudden.”

Academics was and still is a substantial customer base for Benchling. Wickramasekara points to Grimshaw for encouraging this strategy. The company stayed in this market and didn’t focus on generating revenue for several years.

Grimshaw called this plan a slower ramp but created a more robust foundation by creating a moat around early adoption that money cannot attack. Since these users were using free software, it’s harder for a competitor to steal the user base. The thought was the user base trained in Benchling would eventually convert into commercial, professional users.

It was a long journey, Wickramasekara said. After iterating with academics for several years, the strategy paid off, and some research scientists ended up spinning out new companies or joining existing ones. They brought Benchling along with them.

“It was because of their love for the product as an end user that gave us the shot on the goal,” Wickramasekara said. “We learned the kind of problems those businesses were facing, which led to the platform’s expansion. And from there, we began to see commercial success.”

Benchling was focused on constantly talking to its end users from the start. Even though those early users conducted different research, the underlying technology was similar.

“The first users of the products were folks we knew from MIT” Wickramasekara said. “We were also out in the Bay Area at the time. So in those early days, we would drive to Cal or Stanford, go from lab to lab, and get introductions from people we knew. We would sit down with scientists and understand why they were or were not using the products.”

This is a practice that Benchling continues today.

Grimshaw adds that once a company moves beyond early adopters, it’s important to continue talking to customers. Still, it must be the right customer — most often, it’s the vanguard of the market. The goal must be building a moat around the users leading the market to secure their feedback in the case an incremental competitor arises and tries to steal them away.

“[This moat] ensures you have the best feedback source on lock, and you must keep building and staying aggressive,” Grimshaw concluded. “It’s a very powerful foundation. Sajith did it very well and continues with a lot of elbow grease.”