Techcrunch blog!: Dutch court declares e-bike startup VanMoof bankrupt, trustees now exploring asset sale

Tuesday, July 18, 2023

Today's top story will have you saying, "From VanMoof to VanPoof!" The e-bike startup was officially declared bankrupt in The Netherlands. Also, find out how the company got there, even as the e-bike market was booming.

After just two and a half years at the helm of OnlyFans, CEO Ami Gan steps down.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government launched the Cyber Trust Mark, its long-awaited IoT security labeling program.

In preparation for Tesla's second-quarter earnings release, here are some things you need to know. Oh, and someone over there checked accounting because several directors, Elon Musk included, now must pay $735 million to settle claims they overpaid themselves. Meanwhile, Tesla owners can now recharge with solar.

And Singapore-based ID verification platform Bureau bumps its Series C to $12 million to continue developing its approach to "[building] a single source of truth, with its network of verified identities, all tokenized behind a mobile number."

Image Credits: Taylor Hatmaker

More top reads

Your day just got a lot greener: Sylvera banks $57 million to put carbon offsetting on a path to net zero.

A-I got into an accident: SoftBank led a $65 million investment into Tractable for car and property damage appraisals using AI.

Get your head into the clouds: Wing Cloud is building an open source, unified cloud programming language.

Ring, ring enterprises, it's Bing: In Microsoft news, Bing Chat is now an enterprise feature. And find out all about the new services Microsoft debuted at its Inspire annual conference.

Out gathering data: Polar Analytics raised $9 million to help Shopify brands corral data from all of their apps into one place.

If at first you don't send, resend, resend again: Developer-focused email platform Resend raised $3 million to take the pain out of transactional emails.

Signed, Anonymous: Glassdoor introduces Blind-like anonymous community features.

This should be music to your ears: Plex's Winamp-inspired music player Plexamp is now free.

Now you just have to get them to come back: Retention doesn't seem like a problem for Threads. Mark Zuckerberg touts Threads is seeing "tens of millions" of people return to the app daily.

It's "big raise" day: Telegram raises $210 million through bond sales, while cybersecurity firm Netcraft lands $100 million and Mukesh Bansal seeks over $100 million valuation in new venture's maiden funding.

Last one on the slide is a rotten egg: For those who like trying out new things, WordPress Playground lets you run WordPress entirely in your browser.

Here's some more for your Tuesday:

What's going on with Greenwood and The Gathering Spot?

Can insurtech recover from the 'death of insurtech 1.0'? (TC+)

Thousands of authors sign letter urging AI makers to stop stealing books

Are software companies good businesses? (TC+)

Apple and Amazon fined $218M for 'brand gating' in Spanish antitrust finding

Image Credits: Man As Thep / Getty Images

5 marketing slides to bring to your next board meeting

Feeling pretty confident about the deck you've prepared for your upcoming board meeting? If so, you may be on the wrong track.

Few board members have direct marketing experience, so founders need to "stick with what can be measured," advises Michelle Swan, a partner at investment firm Tercera.

In this TC+ post, she explores five marketing points your board needs to understand:

What are marketing's priorities?
How are you performing against those priorities?
What is the health of the pipeline?
Is the company and its offerings positioned for future growth?
What's planned for the next quarter or year?

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code "DC" for a 15% discount on an annual subscription.