Dronamics lands $40M pre-Series A for cargo drones that ‘can fly all over Europe in 12 hours or less’ • TechCrunch

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All right, NOW It is Friday. Do you have fun plans for the long weekend? Haje is moving (ugh), and Christine is browsing GIFs of puppies until her battery runs out. Probably.

Most people aren’t outright racist, but it turns out that unconscious biases sneak into our brains in all sorts of nasty, sneaky little ways. Stereotypes and biases exist, and being aware of yours is a good starting point to work from. The Cornerstone Foundation offers a free 30-minute course that you can take to discover and work on them.

We hope you have a good Monday and that you don’t miss us too much during our holidays. Expect our return on Tuesday. —Christina And haje

TechCrunch’s top 3

• It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a drone: Dronamics raised $40 million in a pre-Series A round (or a really big round if you prefer to think of it that way) to start an autonomous cargo drone airline in Europe, Mike writing. He also has ambitious goals: the CEO says he will be able to deliver all over Europe on the same day from a single warehouse.
• pre-empted: Some Disney+ Hotstar customers were not very happy when the stream stopped in the middle of a popular cricket match. pot holder a plus, including details that this type of thing is not an isolated incident.
• Pointing fingers: Carly And Zack report that a data breach caused Atlassian and Envoy to briefly blame each other for what happened which led to thousands of Atlassian employees having their data exposed.

Startups and VCs

With so many fintechs laying off staff, it might be easy to assume the whole industry is in distress, but that’s not the case. In fact, some companies find opportunities in masses of layoffs, Mary Ann find out. Here’s who’s hiring. In the meantime, Natasha M And Alyssa has collected a comprehensive list of 2023 tech layoffs.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has accused Terraform Labs and its founder Do Kwon of defrauding U.S. investors who bought digital assets Terra USD and Luna, kate reports.

And we have five more for you:

So this founder you backed turned out to be problematic. Now what?

Early-stage investors don’t tightly manage the entrepreneurs they flood with money, even when things go off the rails. And in some cases, they may not be able to wield much authority.

Assuming a VC makes an investment via a SAFE rating, “if that stake hasn’t been converted into equity, they don’t have much say in the event things start to go wrong,” reports Rebecca Szkutak.

To learn more about how investors deal with problematic CEOs, she spoke to:

• Cameron Newton, Founder and General Partner, Relevance Ventures
• Eric Bahn, Co-Founder and General Partner, Hustle Fund
• Angela Lee, Venture Capital Partner, Professor, Columbia Business School

We also have others for the weekend:

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Big Tech inc.

The pandemic has forced us to find new ways to collaborate in a remote workplace, and some companies have been able to capitalize on this need. Rita reports that Feishu, ByteDance’s Slack-like tool, was one of them, generating $100 million in 2022. business in China. At a time when Silicon Valley investors are heralding product-driven growth — services that convert users through their products, as evidenced by Calendly — software in China still relies heavily on sales, marketing and services to recruit users.

Here are five more for you: