Hello friends! Welcome back to Week in Review, where we quickly summarize the most read stories on businesskinda.com from the past 7 days. The goal: If you had a busy week, you should be able to skim WiR and still have a pretty good idea of what’s been happening in tech. Want it in your inbox? Register here.
Many thanks to Henry Pickavet for putting WiR together while I was taking a few weeks off. I wish I could say it was a wonderfully relaxing couple of weeks, but I was traveling with a back injury and my 3 year old…so, yes, no. I had a great time, but I’m happy to be back home and put words on the internet!
The most read story this week was news by far that Elon Musk quietly had twins with “one of his top executives” last year. Musk responded to the countless takes with a tweet: “Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is by far the greatest danger facing civilization.”
†greg
other things:
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / businesskinda.com
Elon Musk Says He’s Killing the Twitter DealElon Musk’s legal team announced late Friday that they plan to stop the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, citing “false and misleading statements that Mr. Musk relied on when entering into the merger agreement.” Twitter chairman Bret Taylor immediately responded with a statement that “the Twitter board commits to close the transaction at the price and terms agreed with Mr. Musk and intends to take legal action to enforce the merger agreement.” .” This is going to get messy.
Glance is on its way to the US: Glance is a company that puts custom content/games (and of course ads) on the lock screen of an Android phone. After making its way to about 400 million smartphones in Asia in recent years, the company is gearing up for a US launch “within two months,” according to a first from our own Manish Singh.
A bigger, stronger Apple Watch: Rumors of new Apple devices are always in the air… but when the very often correct Mark Gurman says something is coming, we tend to pay attention. Gurman says Apple is building a beefed-up version of its Apple Watch for “extreme sports athletes” — one with a larger screen for easier reading mid-workout and a sturdier design so you don’t have to worry about dents and dings.
Apple’s “Lockdown” Mode: It’s certainly a generalization, but the more features your phone has, the more potential attack vectors there are for hackers to target. With that in mind, Apple this week announced “Lockdown Mode,” an iOS/iPadOS/macOS setting that lets you instantly disable a number of features — think things like what files it will open, what websites are allowed to do, who to contact. can take with you, etc. It’s primarily aimed at those who “may be at risk from highly targeted cyberattacks,” according to an Apple press release, but it will be available to everyone later this year.
Vauld hits pauseCryptocurrency prices saw massive crashes in May and June, and crypto lending platform/exchange Vauld said early this week it is suspending “all withdrawals, trading and deposits” as it explores “potential restructuring options.” In a series of tweetsVauld co-founder Darshan Bathija noted that clients had withdrawn more than $197 million from the platform in the past few weeks alone.
Sunny Balwani found guilty: After a 3-month trial, the former COO of Theranos, Sunny Balwani, was found guilty of 12 charges this week. For those who haven’t followed every stroke of the Theranos disaster, Amanda has put together an excellent, concise overview of the case so far — and the impact it’s already had on the startup ecosystem.
Amanda interviews MKBHD: I may be half a decade older than him, but I want to be Marques Brownlee when I grow up. Also known as MKBHD, he is a wildly popular tech YouTuber, increasingly popular TikToker, professional ultimate frisbee player (!), and an all-around-cool human being. Amanda spoke to Marques at VidCon, where they talked about everything from developing the lengthy content he’s known for with the pace of TikTok in mind, his thoughts on the metaverse, and the technology he says isn’t getting enough attention.
audio stuff:
Podcasts! You love them, we have them.
Over the past few days, Darrell chatted with Amanda about her trip to VidCon on The businesskinda.com Podcast, Jacquie and Anita talked about crypto’s “savior” on Chain Reaction, and the Found podcast team spoke to WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg about his 19 years leading the company.
You can find all of these and much, much more in our weekly podcast roundup.
added stuff:
Want even more businesskinda.com? Head over to the aptly named businesskinda.com+, where we take a closer look at the topics our subscribers tell us they care about. Some of this week’s good things include:
The thing that makes your pitch deck useless“You’ve brushed off your Keynote skills, you’re giddy that you can finally start paying yourself a living wage, and you’re excited to pitch your startup’s next round of funding to your investors,” writes Haje (resident Pitch Deck expert from TC). “These are tumultuous times, sure, but hit the other pedal for a second, buddy — you might be forgetting something.”
In the meantime…: That last post was related to the slide that Haje thinks every pitch deck needs; this is all about the slide he thinks is useless.
So are we in a startup recession or something?: Alex Wilhelm spends more time thinking about the core of the startup economy than anyone I know, so when he opens a post that says something like “I don’t know what’s going on in the startup market and it is a bit of a pain in the ass,” I continued.
Janice has been with businesskinda for 5 years, writing copy for client websites, blog posts, EDMs and other mediums to engage readers and encourage action. By collaborating with clients, our SEO manager and the wider businesskinda team, Janice seeks to understand an audience before creating memorable, persuasive copy.