Author: TechBrunch

Theo Baker is truly an anomaly. While journalism as a major has been in decline for years, with some schools even dropping it altogether, Baker, a senior at Stanford University, has focused on old-fashioned investigative reporting, and it's paying off. Baker first gained attention as a freshman when his reporting in the Stanford Daily led to the resignation of Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne. After exposing two decades of allegations of research misconduct, Baker found himself “receiving anonymous letters, conducting stakeouts, and pursuing confidential sources” just one month into the university, according to the publisher. Meanwhile, established lawyers tried to…

The way venture capitalists think about fundraising can be a black box. However, investors need to consider their go-to-market strategies for raising capital as much as they consider how their portfolio companies determine their market fit. All season long at Build Mode, we've been looking at how founders should approach marketing, and this week we're looking at how VCs can market themselves as trusted partners to founders and valuable investments to LPs. Isabelle Johannessen spoke to Leslie Finezaig of Graham & Walker and Ross Fubini of XYZ Ventures about raising her first fund and how that experience resonated with the…

Venture capitalists Ross Hubini (XYZ Ventures) and Leslie Finezaig (Graham & Walker Ventures) pull back the curtain on how venture capitalists create their own go-to-market strategies, how they value startups, as well as how they attract LPs and founders. In this episode of Build Mode, they share the hard-earned lessons from their first round of funding and how that experience helped them empathize with founders. They discuss why “founder-market fit” also applies to VCs, how authentic thought leadership trumps well-crafted content, and why relationships with the best investors start years before funding is needed. We also discuss the importance of…

Venture capitalists Ross Hubini (XYZ Ventures) and Leslie Finezaig (Graham & Walker Ventures) pull back the curtain on how venture capitalists create their own go-to-market strategies, how they value startups, as well as how they attract LPs and founders. In this episode of Build Mode, they share the hard-earned lessons from their first round of funding and how that experience helped them empathize with founders. They discuss why “founder-market fit” also applies to VCs, how authentic thought leadership trumps well-crafted content, and why relationships with the best investors start years before funding is needed. We also discuss the importance of…

Messaging app Freedom Chat has fixed two security flaws. One allowed security researchers to guess registered users' phone numbers, and the other allowed users to set a PIN and make it available to other users on the app. Released in June, Freedom Chat advertises itself as a secure messaging app, and its website claims that users' phone numbers are kept private. However, security researcher Eric Daigle told TechCrunch that the user's phone number and PIN code used to lock the app could be easily obtained by exploiting the vulnerability. Daigle discovered the vulnerability last week and shared its details with…

Flaviu Radulescu launched Runware in 2023. At the time, he was testing a text-to-image company and realized that while the genAI technology was powerful, it was slow at generating images. Radulescu teamed up with Ioana Hreninciuc to launch Runware, a development tools platform focused on real-time generation of images, video, and audio. The company has experienced significant growth since its initial launch. The company told TechCrunch that over 200,000 developers have created more than 10 billion works. This product allows developers to integrate Runware's API into their apps and generate media assets through a single interface, without having to set…

Park Dae-joon has resigned as CEO of South Korean retail giant Coupang after a data breach exposed the personal information of more than half of the country's population. President Park apologized for the violation in a statement, citing a “deep sense of responsibility for the spread of infection and the subsequent recovery process.” Coupang has replaced Park with Harold Rogers, a top lawyer at Coupang's U.S.-based parent company, according to a machine translation of the company's statement. Last month, the retail giant, which is often compared to Amazon for its dominance in South Korean e-commerce and logistics, revealed details of…

Pet wellness company Petco has taken portions of its Vetco Clinics website offline after a security flaw exposed large amounts of customers' personal information to the open web. After TechCrunch alerted the company that data about Vetco customers and their pets had been compromised, Petco confirmed in a statement that it was investigating the data breach at its veterinary services company and declined further comment. This security lapse allowed anyone on the Internet to download customer records from Vetco's website without requiring the user's login information. At least one customer record has been published and indexed by Google, allowing anyone…

Kabir Narang, a founding general partner at B Capital and an early backer of several Indian startups, has left the global venture firm, TechCrunch has learned and confirmed with the company. Narang is laying the groundwork for a new investment platform expected in 2026 that will focus on “compounding at the intersection of technology, AI, and global capital flows,” according to a memo shared with the founders and seen by TechCrunch. After joining B Capital in March 2017, Mr. Narang co-led the firm's Asia strategy and chaired the global investment committee from Singapore. During his tenure, he supported Indian startups…

Stalkerware makers who were forced out of the surveillance industry after data breaches that compromised the personal information of their customers and those they spied on will not be able to return to selling the invasive software, according to the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC denied a request by Scott Zuckerman, founder of consumer spyware company Support King and its subsidiaries SpyFone and OneClickMonitor, to lift the ban. On Monday, the FTC announced the denial in a press release after Mr. Zuckerman petitioned the federal watchdog agency in July to revoke or modify the restraining order. In 2021, the FTC…