Snap drops its flying selfie camera, Instagram gets mean, and the fall of "moral" CEO Dan Price

A group of more than 650 employees at Alphabet has asked the company to stop collecting data on users seeking information about abortions, according to a petition sent to CEO Sundar Pichai this week. More in the WSJ.

You may not have noticed, but this $550m+ fintech platform has maintained a 15.3% track record, despite COVID, stock market volatility and the beginning of a recession. How? By cracking the code of a $1.7 trillion asset class that’s outperformed the S&P 500 by more than 2x in the last 25 years. Even more impressive? Through 5 exits, it has delivered an average 28.4% net IRR to investors. Follow this exclusive StrictlyVC referral link to learn more. See important Regulation A disclosures.

Ryan Breslow has had a tumultuous 2022. It's not slowing him down.

Few outside of Breslow's world even knew his name a year ago. Then Bolt, a “one-click” checkout tech company that evolved from an earlier idea of his, announced $355 million in Series E funding at a reported $11 billion valuation. Suddenly, the startup was on everyone's radar, as was Breslow. The now 28-year-old Miami resident was riding so high that he couldn't help but take a kind of victory lap. Having struggled at one point to win over Silicon Valley investors, he began publishing thoughts on Twitter that most might never dare share publicly, including to call rival Stripe and famed accelerator Y Combinator “mob bosses” that will pull “every power move imaginable” to squash competitors.

While Breslow found some support for his perspective online, he was also criticized for the comments -- including by powerful investors -- and one week later, he stepped down as the CEO of Bolt and became its executive chairman.

Breslow, who still owns a major stake in Bolt, told us the development had nothing to do with his antics. But it was hard to believe Breslow's attention-grabbing tweets -- which kept coming -- weren't rattling Bolt's investors to some degree. Certainly, it has been a rocky road since. Further funding that was reportedly in the works has not materialized. The company has been accused in the press of inflating its customer metrics and overstating its tech capabilities. By late May, citing changing market conditions, Bolt announced it was laying off roughly one-third of its employees, or 250 people -- some of whom had taken out personal loans from the company in order to exercise their stock options.

Meanwhile, partnerships that Breslow teased publicly have yet to be announced. Bolt employees are also reportedly frustrated that Breslow sold $10 million worth of shares to investors during that Series E round back in January, when Bolt's board had not allowed them to sell their own holdings.

Some founders might lay low after so much blowback. Breslow -- who is both affable and cagey in conversation -- is instead barreling ahead with several decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) infrastructure projects, including a programmable funding protocol called Juicebox.

He is also at work on several other startups, including a "people-powered pharma" startup called Love that he co-founded and which just announced $7.5 million in seed funding.

More here.

Aero Technologies, a San Francisco-based air travel company that was cofounded by Uber's Garrett Camp and that offers direct first-class flights between a limited number of private terminals, has raised $65 million in Series B funding led by Albacore Capital Group and earlier backers Expa (a venture fund run by Camp) and Keyframe Capital. New investor Capital One Ventures also participated in the round. TechCrunch has more here.

Bevi, a nine-year-old Boston startup that makes smart water coolers that provide filtered, flavored, and sparkling water on demand, raised a $70 million Series D round from Cowen Sustainable Investments. The company has raised a total of $130.3 million. Built in Boston has more here.

Bravo Sierra, a four-year-old startup based in New York that makes personal care products, raised a $17 million Series B round led by The Merchant Club, with additional participation from Capstar Ventures, Redo Ventures, AF Ventures, and Mousse Partners. The company has raised a total of $35.8 million. GCI has more here.

Constructive Bio, a newly launched, Cambridge, England-based biotech startup, has raised $15 million in seed funding to create tech for producing synthetic genomes and reprogramming the genetic code of living organisms. Ahren led the round, joined by Amadeus Capital Partners, General Inception and OMX Ventures. Tech.eu has more here.

Motivo Health, a four-year-old Atlanta startup that connects new mental health providers with supervisors to complete their licensure requirements, raised a $14 million Series A round. Cox Enterprises led the deal. The company has raised a total of $16.3 million. MobiHealthNews has more here.

Defendify, a five-year-old startup based in Portland, Me., whose cybersecurity platform is targeted at clients with small IT teams and under 1,000 employees, raised a $3.35 million round. Maine Venture Fund was the deal lead, while 3dot6 Ventures, York IE, Maine Technology Institute, FreshTracks Capital, Wasabi Ventures, Coastal Ventures, and Opus Ventures also pitched in. More here.

GitPOAP, a Boston startup that has built a protocol that allows users to record contributions to the software development platform GitHub on-chain, raised a $4.28 million seed round. The deal was co-led by Inflection.xyz and Libertus Capital, with additional investment from Avalanche VC, Protocol Labs, POAP, Balaji Srinivasan, Patricio Worthalter, Anthony Sassano, Superphiz, and Mariano Conti. The Block has more here.

Insomnia Labs, a web3 advertising and technology startup based in New York, raised a $1.5 million round from Polygon, Animoca Brands, Eden Ventures, HBJ Investments, and Concept Art House. More here.

Koolbooks, an eight-year-old, Paris-based maker of solar-powered freezers and cold storage solutions that it sells to businesses across Africa, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding. The Nigeria-based growth equity fund Aruwa Capital Management led the round. TechCrunch has more here.

Microverse, a five-year-old Barcelona startup that operates a remote coding school with a focus on peer-to-peer learning, raised a $4 million Series A extension from Northzone, General Catalyst, All Iron Ventures, and True Equity, among others. The company has raised a total of $19.7 million. Sifted has more here.

Quaddro, a one-year-old startup based in São Paulo with an all-in-one application to help small businesses and entrepreneurs manage their business, raised a $3.2 million seed round led by Valor Capital Group, with additional capital provided by Grão, Bridge Latam, and NXTP, according to Fortune. More here.

Rocketplace, a startup that aims to build a “next-generation asset management platform for crypto,” has raised $9 million in seed funding. The company's founder is Louis Beryl, a former quant options trader at Morgan Stanley who spent time at Andreessen Horowitz before launching a lending startup called Earnest that later sold to Navient for roughly half what it raised from VCs. (We covered that acquisition at the time.) Beryl also founded Solid Energy Systems, which went public via a SPAC merger on the NYSE earlier this year. TechCrunch has more on Rocketplace -- whose seed round was led by Launchpad Capital -- here.

Sofy, a six-year-old, Seattle-based testing platform for software developers that says it can dramatically accelerate product release times, has raised $7.75 million in seed funding led by Voyager Capital, with participation from PSL Ventures, GTMFund, Revolution, and others. TechCrunch has more here.

Trial Library, a months-old San Francisco startup that conducts oncology clinical trials with a special emphasis on underrepresented groups, raised a $5 million seed round. The deal lead was Lux Capital; Next Ventures and Unseen Capital also participated. More here.

Blackrock grabbed headlines this week when it published its proprietary “Three D’s” strategy for inflation-fighting investments: Diverse, Durable, Defensive. What checks all these boxes? Fine art. Diverse? Yes. Citi reports a near-zero correlation between art and traditional asset classes. Durable? You bet. Fine art outperformed the S&P 500 by 2x in the last 25 years. Defensive? Yup. Art sales grew 25% while stocks had their worst 6-month start in 50 years. With Masterworks, anyone can easily invest in art. Follow this exclusive StrictlyVC referral link to learn more. See important Regulation A disclosures.

CoinFund, a seven-year-old, Brooklyn-based crypto-specific investment firm, has raised $300 million in capital commitments for a fund that will back early-stage blockchain projects. David Pakman, long a general partner with Venrock who became a managing partner with CoinFund in the fall of last year, talks with CoinDesk about the new effort here.

Metrodora Ventures, co-led by Chelsea Clinton, is raising a second fund, per an SEC filing flagged by Axios. More here.

Snap is reportedly "exiting" from developing any further its Pixy flying selfie camera. The decision comes less than four months after the product was launched publicly, notes the WSJ. More here.

Crypto.com laid off 260 employees — then quietly let go of hundreds more.

Joel Dudley has joined Innovation Endeavors as a partner. He was previously chief scientific officer at Tempus Labs, the Chicago-based company founded by serial entrepreneur Eric Lefkofsky. More here

Uplaksh Kumar has joined Foresite Capital as venture partner. He was previously SVP of strategic operations and scale at Grail, which says its blood-based early detection tests can pick up a "cancer signal" across more than 50 types of cancer. More here.

How internet fame enabled a long pattern of abuse in the personal life of Gravity Payments CEO Dan Price -- and hostile behavior at his company.

Layoffs are in the works at half(!) of companies, a new PwC survey shows. Its poll, conducted last month, centers on the responses of 700 US executives and board members across a range of industries. Bloomberg has more here.

Data suggests the link between having a best work friend and feeling committed to a job has grown stronger over the past three years, yet just 17% of employees in a June survey -- both fully remote or on-site -- said they had such a relationship, down from 22% in 2019. The WSJ has more here.

Scammers are using invoices sent through PayPal.com to trick recipients into calling a number to dispute a pending charge.

Instagram is tired of creators making their videos in Reels and then heading over to TikTok. Here's how The Verge found out.

Xiaomi, the Chinese company accused of ripping off Apple designs, has unveiled a new humanoid robot that looks a lot like Tesla's.

Animoca Brands plan to reanimate the crypto industry.

Rick Astley is never going to give you up (CSAA Auto Insurance version).

Mount Kilimanjaro gets internet so climbers can post their ascent pics.

How-to: add historical character to your backyard.

Fortune cookie generator.

An electric muscle car with its own exhaust "note."

Vans goes gaga for "Stranger Things."