To keep content creators from jumping ship, YouTube makes it easier to monetize

Tuesday, June 13, 2023

It’s choppy waters in the world of social startups today. Manish reports that Jack Dorsey says that India threatened to shut down Twitter and raid employees’ homes. Natasha reports that Spotify was fined in Sweden over a GDPR data access complaint. And over on the Reddit side of things, thousands of subreddits went dark to protest Reddit’s API pricing.

Also noteworthy – it’s been a while since we heard from Timehop, the “what happened a year ago today” type service that was essentially made irrelevant by Facebook launching its own version of the feature. But it appears that party-planning platform Punchbowl is acquiring it.

Also, we have a Security stage at Disrupt – and here is the Security Stage agenda. Worth attending, especially after Zack’s report today that U.S. intelligence confirms it buys Americans’ personal data. Yikes.

Image Credits: Alexander Shatov / Unsplash

How to pitch me: 10 investors discuss what they’re looking for in June 2023

This month, 10 early-stage investors shared their theses, contact details, tactical advice for nontechnical founders, and some sample questions they expect entrepreneurs to ask them during pitch meetings.

Our respondents also ball-parked salaries for pre-revenue startups, discussed the pros and cons of using pitch memos vs. full decks, and each shared what they’re reading, watching and listening to. (This group loves “Succession” so much, they would probably take a pitch meeting with Kendall Roy.)

Here’s who participated:

Vivek Ramaswami, partner, Madrona
Monique Woodard, founding partner and managing director, Cake Ventures
Adam Struck, founder and managing partner, Struck Capital
Jenny Lefcourt, general partner, Freestyle Capital
Champ Suthipongchai, general partner, Creative Ventures
Latif Peracha, general partner, M13
Rich Maloy, managing partner, SpringTime Ventures
Harley Miller, co-founder and managing partner, Left Lane Capital
Blair Garrou, co-founder and managing director, Mercury Fund
Kristin Wilson, venture partner, Oui Capital

A few more more for Tuesday:

Leadership matters, but other things matter, too: Dominic-Madori reports that the ‘AI arms race’ is about more than who will lead the industry.
Moar productive greenery: Tim reports that to boost greenhouse productivity, Skytree is using space station CO2 scrubbers.
This is where the crypto is flowing: Jacquelyn looks at where six crypto whales’ wallets are putting their assets.

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription.