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Okay, NOW it’s Friday. Obtained any enjoyable plans for the lengthy weekend? Haje is shifting home (ugh), and Christine is shopping GIFs of puppies till her battery runs out. Most likely.

Most individuals aren’t straight-up racist, however it seems unconscious biases sneak into our brains in all kinds of nasty, sneaky little methods. Stereotypes and prejudices exist, and being conscious of yours is an effective place to start out engaged on. The Cornerstone Basis has a free 30-minute course you may take to uncover and work on them.

We hope you may have a positive Monday and don’t miss us an excessive amount of whereas we’re off for the vacation. Search for our return on Tuesday. — Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch High 3

• It’s a hen, it’s a aircraft, it’s a drone: Dronamics raised $40 million in a pre-Collection A spherical (or actually large seed spherical for those who’d slightly take a look at it that means) to start out an autonomous cargo drone airline in Europe, Mike writes. It has some bold objectives, too: The CEO says will probably be in a position to ship to all of Europe in the identical day from a single warehouse.
• Preempted: Some Disney+ Hotstar prospects had been none too happy when the stream went down in the midst of a well-liked cricket match. Manish has extra, together with particulars that such a factor just isn’t an remoted incident.
• Pointing fingers: Carly and Zack report {that a} knowledge breach has Atlassian and Envoy briefly blaming one another for what went down that led to 1000’s of Atlassian staff having their knowledge uncovered.

Startups and VC

With so many fintechs shedding employees, it may be simple to imagine that your complete trade is in misery, however that’s not the case. In actual fact, some corporations are discovering alternative within the lots of layoffs, Mary Ann discovers. Right here’s who’s hiring. In the meantime, Natasha M and Alyssa collected a complete checklist of 2023 tech layoffs.

The U.S. Securities and Trade Fee has charged the collapsed blockchain agency and stablecoin operator Terraform Labs and its founder Do Kwon with defrauding U.S. traders who bought the digital belongings Terra USD and Luna, Kate studies.

And we now have 5 extra for you:

In order that founder you backed turned out to be problematic. Now what?

Picture Credit: retrorocket (opens in a brand new window) / Getty Photographs

Early-stage traders don’t intently handle the entrepreneurs they bathe with money, even when issues go off the rails. And in some instances, they might not have the ability to exert a lot authority.

Assuming a VC makes an funding by way of a SAFE word, “if that stake hasn’t transformed to fairness, they don’t have a lot say if issues begin to go mistaken,” studies Rebecca Szkutak.

To study extra about how traders deal with problematic CEOs, she spoke to:

• Cameron Newton, founder and normal companion, Relevance Ventures
• Eric Bahn, co-founder and normal companion, Hustle Fund
• Angela Lee, enterprise companion, professor, Columbia Enterprise Faculty

We even have a number of extra for the weekend:

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup groups get forward of the pack. You possibly can enroll right here. Use code “DC” for a 15% low cost on an annual subscription!

Huge Tech Inc.

The pandemic pressured us to search out new methods to collaborate in a distant office, and a few corporations have been in a position to leverage that want. Rita studies that Feishu, ByteDance’s Slack-like device, was one among them, producing $100 million in 2022. She writes, “ByteDance’s heavy funding in Feishu is telling of the state of enterprise software program in China. At a time when Silicon Valley traders are heralding product-led progress — providers that convert customers by their merchandise, as exemplified by Calendly — software program in China nonetheless largely counts on gross sales, advertising and providers to recruit customers.”

Now right here’s 5 extra for you: