Welcome to Startups Weekly. Sign up <\/em>here<\/em><\/a> to get it in your inbox every Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n Not to get all GrumpyManYellsAtCloud.gif<\/tt>, but I\u2019m getting pretty tired of the myth of the dropped-out-of-college founders. Investors \u2014 and the broader ecosystem \u2014 have known for a long time that while there are some high-profile outliers, it\u2019s much easier to build a startup if you have a fat Rolodex, some experience, and perhaps a few failures under your belt<\/a>. I know Hollywood doesn\u2019t think it\u2019s nearly as good of a story, but\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0perhaps it\u2019d be good to balance things out a little on that front.<\/p>\n Apropos meddling: Those robots have been hard at work generating smut, and Kyle reports that as AI porn generators get better, the stakes get higher<\/a>. Perhaps as a result of that story (and the internet reaching fever pitch over AI porn), an interview we did with the Unstable Diffusion team<\/a> last year is hella trending again on TechCrunch.<\/p>\n Apropos even more meddling: It seems that even very experienced founders get things pretty wrong from time to time, too \u2014 Elmo isn\u2019t done running Twitter into the ground, it seems. This week, the burning wreckage of a social media site officially changed its logo to X<\/a>. That has had some, er, curious side effects, including a lot of rebranding and renaming. Uniting the themes of smut and social media, Twitter Videos has so far resisted to rename itself, and one social media account<\/a> (NSFW) seems to hint at why.<\/p>\n Image Credits:<\/strong> nadia_bormotova \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I know, it seems like there\u2019s always an AI section in Startups Weekly at the moment. Don\u2019t blame me \u2014 blame the flamin\u2019 hot news coming out of that vertical at the moment.<\/p>\n On TC+, Nick Zamanov penned an article about how his company tried using OpenAI to generate marketing strategies<\/a> \u2014 and was delighted to discover that it worked.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, OpenAI just released a neat feature that introduces customized instructions for ChatGPT<\/a>. Instead of having to type \u201cwrite me a three-section newsletter in the style of TechCrunch\u2019s Startups Weekly, and smatter in some really dumb jokes,\u201d you can configure that as the default behavior. Writing newsletters is going to be so quick in the future, I swear. (Just kidding: I\u2019ve tried. ChatGPT\u2019s attempts at writing this thing were as dull as dishwater. My job is safe for another week or two.)<\/p>\n The bots are coming to the Androids<\/strong>: ChatGPT comes to Android<\/a>, and soon became available in the U.S., India, Bangladesh and Brazil<\/a>. OpenAI plans to release the app in more countries very soon.<\/p>\n I\u2019m sure that wasn\u2019t a stressful job<\/strong>: After just 18 months in the job, OpenAI\u2019s head of trust and safety Dave Willner steps down<\/a>. The company\u2019s CTO Mira Murati will manage the team on an interim basis while they find a replacement.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s translate this from corporate-ese into bot-speak<\/strong>: A startup that\u2019s building tools to help prepare enterprise data to get gobbled up into large language models, Unstructured raises $25 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n Image Credits:<\/strong> Images by Christina Kilgour \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This week, I\u2019ve been doing a lot of thinking about the job of a founder. I already mentioned the TechCrunch+ piece I wrote about startups not just being a young person\u2019s game<\/a>, and I spoke with a founder who decided to replace himself as the CEO<\/a> of his own company. Earlier this week, I also spoke with DeeDee Deman, who has spent the past 50 years headhunting CEOs, to get some tips on how you can think about finding a new CEO for your startup<\/a>.<\/p>\n While on the topic of replacements \u2014 Sequoia Capital\u2019s Michael Moritz moves on<\/a>, almost 40 years after he joined the influential venture fund. He\u2019s going to continue board work with a handful of companies but is planning to hand over most of the workload to other Sequoia partners.<\/p>\n Companies are still going public. Just not startups<\/strong>: It\u2019s been a drought in the tech startup IPO space, but on TC+, Alex crunched the numbers and realized that there\u2019s still a lot of activity \u2014 and it\u2019s making startups look silly as hell<\/a>.<\/p>\n Optimizing for impact<\/strong>: More and more companies are thinking about climate \u2014 and impact investors are flocking to the segment. That scares me a bit<\/a>,\u00a0but Agnes Svensson, the chief impact officer at Norrsken VC, shares five key questions climate tech founders should ask<\/a> impact investors.<\/p>\n One of the most amazing social experiments<\/strong>: Reddits r\/place is an incredible experiment<\/a>, where a logged-in user can place a single pixel on a canvas every 5 minutes. It\u2019s one of my favorite things about the internet, because it requires something utterly rare: coordination and teamwork. Of course, redditors used this year\u2019s evolution of the game to shout loudly about the API changes that have sparked a revolt<\/a> on the social media site.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Image Credits:<\/strong> Bryce Durbin \/ TechCrunch<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Autonomous trucking company Aurora sells $820 million worth of stock<\/a> in order to continue its drive toward launching an autonomous trucking business in 2024. Around the same time, Waymo put the brakes on its self-driving trucks program<\/a>.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, peeking at Tesla\u2019s business fundamentals, Rebecca reminds us that the company is an automaker, not a tech company<\/a> \u2014 and that its margins look a lot more like Ford than, say, Salesforce.<\/p>\n Time for another U-turn<\/strong>: We\u2019ve been flip-flopping on this one for a while, but it seems like GM has changed its mind once again, saying it isn\u2019t going to kill off the Chevy Bolt EV after all<\/a>. Personally, I think that\u2019s great. We need smaller, more affordable EVs<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tapping the zap<\/strong>: Seven of the largest automakers today announced a joint venture to create a massive EV charging network<\/a> across North America.<\/p>\n Topping up at home<\/strong>: In smaller charging news, Voltpost raised a $3.6 million seed round to bring EV charging to the curbside<\/a>.<\/p>\n In addition to some of the big hitters sprinkled throughout above, here are some of our mustn\u2019t-miss stories for the week:<\/p>\n Maybe it\u2019s just taking a nap?<\/strong>: I argued that VR as a category is dead<\/a>\u00a0and failed to find a killer app. AR is picking up the mantle, but we\u2019ll see if it can do better.<\/p>\n I dunno, maybe hide better?<\/strong>: Zack reports that North Korean hackers targeting JumpCloud <\/a>may have forgotten to mask their IP addresses properly, researchers say.<\/p>\n Buy it, then kill it<\/strong>: Aria reports that SpaceX has made only one acquisition to date (that we are aware of), but Swarm Technologies is halting new device sales<\/a>. It seems that the acquisition may have been an aqui-hire, as Swarm\u2019s founders are finding senior positions across SpaceX.<\/p>\n Stalking for cash<\/strong>: Zack had a couple of popular articles this week. He reported that Spyhide stalkerware is spying on tens of thousands of phones<\/a>, and he dug into how TheTruthSpy stalkerware made its millions.<\/a><\/p>\n Enough, already<\/strong>: It\u2019s getting more and more frustrating to report on this, but startups with all-women founding teams raised just $1.4 billion in H1<\/a>, Dominic-Madori reports. That\u2019s a paltry 1.6% of all venture funding invested. Mixed-gender teams picked up 28%.<\/p>\n Get your TechCrunch fix IRL. Join us at Disrupt 2023 in San Francisco this September to immerse yourself in all things startup. From headline interviews to intimate roundtables to a jam-packed startup expo floor, there\u2019s something for everyone at Disrupt. Save up to $600 when you buy your pass now through August 11, and save 15% on top of that with promo code STARTUPS. Learn more<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nMore AI. Always more AI<\/h2>\n
The art of changing your mind<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/GettyImages-123665941.jpg\")
<\/p>\nPulling into the pit stop<\/h2>\n
![\"semi-truck-autonomous-driverless\"](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/semi-truck-autonomous-driverless.jpg\")
<\/p>\nTop reads on TechCrunch this week<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Untitled-design-2.gif\")
<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n