Brex calls DoorDash the “first of many” new enterprise customers to come – TechCrunch

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Welcome to the Daily Crunch on Wednesday April 13, 2022! Tomorrow, we’re so excited to attend Early Stage (if you’re coming, don’t forget to submit your pitch deck!). If you haven’t received your ticket yet, it’s always possible to get a last-minute ticket to have fun in San Francisco.

On Equity today, the podcast team says VC needs crypto much more than vice versa, so listen to that too!

¡Hasta manana! – Christina and haje

TechCrunch’s top 3

• Arguing over company expense management: The competition to help big companies be more efficient in their spending has just won another fighter. Brex, which initially focused on startups with its corporate card, is now branching out into software. It’s already secured DoorDash as a customer, so the jump into the company’s spending pool was more of a cannonball than a toe dip. Ironically, the same day, Mary Ann wrote about Emburse, an expense management company that started in a company that is now tackling Brex small business territory. Ding Ding!
• Today’s TechCrunch+ Stock: alexander issued an advisory on ending the SaaS selloff now that public markets are stabilizing, saying, “Ironically, interest rates may be the best reason to expect most equity selloffs software are behind us”. Meanwhile, Anne plunged in investment in Latin America, where the numbers show a slowdown, but it could just be “a correction after some overheating,” Anna reported. Don’t pull out the tissues just yet — with all the seed investment continuing to pour into the region and new money focusing on LatAm, there’s apparently “a lot of dry powder to roll out.”
• Former prisoner from Xinjiang describes his experience in Chinese detention camps: At this point, it’s hard not to have heard of Chinese detention camps that are accused of incarcerating people of certain ethnic backgrounds. Zack interviewed a person who arrived in Washington, DC, with his family after being granted temporary immigration status by the US government. What is the technology angle? In the camp and after his release from house arrest, Ovalbek Turdakun said Hikvision-branded cameras were “always on and watching”.

Startups and VCs

There have been a ton of EV companies that have made their way to the public markets by being “acquired” by an already listed company, rather than going the usual IPO route. Jaclyn argues that EV companies should have pumped the brakes a bit before jumping on the SPAC bandwagon.

Meanwhile, fresh off our propaganda machine monitoring service, TikTok was doing what it could to weed Russian state media propaganda from its platform, but a study finds it’s not particularly successful: the platform continues to be dominated by pro-war content.

It’s simply the best; better than all the rest:

Dear Sophie: I didn’t win the H-1B lottery. What are my next steps?

Dear Sophia,

I graduated with my masters degree in business analysis last year and have been working for a company ever since while on OPT.

My employer entered me into the H-1B lottery last month, but I was not selected. I heard that my degree is now considered a STEM field, which makes me eligible to continue working under the OPT.

How can I stay in the United States?

— Astute Analyst

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams grow. You can join here.)

Big Tech inc.

• Pokémon Go creator thinks he has a gem on his hands with new Peridot game: I’m not a gamer, but apparently a lot of my colleagues are, from the amount of watercooler chatter that happens when new games come out. Peridot appeals to your love of caring for animals, but now with augmented reality you can go treasure hunting and explore new places together.
• WhatsApp approved to expand payment service to 100 million Indian users: This is both a good and a bad thing, let us point out. While that gives the Meta-owned service the green light, regulators say it needs to roll out slowly. This gives rival companies a chance to further establish themselves in the area.
• Just when the European Commission thought its Digital Services Act was good: European consumer organization BEUC, an umbrella group of consumer organisations, has called on the EU not to weaken key provisions targeting trader traceability, the ban on misleading design and the ban on use of children’s data and sensitive data for advertising targeting. I don’t know why they wouldn’t want to go all out, but we point out that these deals are often not made transparently.
• Switching to the Android app is no longer just a rumor: If you’re an iOS user looking to ditch your iPhone in favor of a smartphone running Google’s Android operating system, you’re in luck. Google has quietly launched the Switch to Android app on the App Store to make your transition as smooth as possible.
• Read the latest from the Better.com saga: Spoiler alert: More layoffs are on the horizon.