Original Content podcast: Hulu’s ‘Happiest Season’ casts fresh characters in a familiar story

“Happiest Season,” a new film on Hulu, feels like a traditional, Christmas-themed romantic comedy — with one important exception. The movie stars Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis as Abby and Harper, a lesbian couple who are visiting Harper’s parents for the holidays. As they drive back to Harper’s childhood home, she makes a big confession: Despite...

20m

Tesla’s racially diverse workforce is led mostly by white men, internal report shows

Tesla’s top leadership positions skew white and male with just 4% of those roles going to Black employees, according to the company’s first diversity and inclusion report released Friday. The report shows that overall the company, which has factories in California, Nevada and New York, has a workforce that includes women as well as Black, Hispanic...

54m

This Week in Apps: The year’s best apps, 2020’s biggest downloads, the App Store’s newest hire

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People now spend three hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren’t...

1h

Why Sapphire’s Jai Das thinks the Salesforce-Slack deal could succeed

Who says that chats about enterprise software have to be boring? They don’t, we learned during our conversation earlier this week with Sapphire’s Jai Das, a pleasant time that touched on a host of topics including startup sectors, his investing group’s capital base and, of course, the Slack-Salesforce deal. Our conversation took place about an hour...

1h

Mike Cagney is testing the boundaries of the banking system for himself and others

Founder Mike Cagney is always pushing the envelope, and investors love him for it. Not long sexual harassment allegations prompted him to leave SoFi, the personal finance company that he cofounded in 2011, he raised $50 million for new lending startup called Figure that has since raised at least $225 million from investors and was valued a year ago...

14h

Daily Crunch: Slack and Salesforce execs explain their big acquisition

We learn more about Slack’s future, Revolut adds new payment features and DoorDash pushes its IPO range upward. This is your Daily Crunch for December 4, 2020. The big story: Slack and Salesforce execs explain their big acquisition After Salesforce announced this week that it’s acquiring Slack for $27.7 billion, Ron Miller spoke to Slack CEO Stewart...

19h

Gift Guide: 9+ caffeinated gift ideas for your favorite coffee lovers

Welcome to TechCrunch’s 2020 Holiday Gift Guide! Need help with gift ideas? We’re here to help! We’ll be rolling out gift guides from now through the end of December. You can find our other guides right here. The pandemic has meant we leave our homes far less often, and that means fending for ourselves when it comes to coffee. But too many of us have...

20h

Review: Wireless headsets from Logitech, Audio-Technica, SteelSeries, HyperX and more

With the amount of time you’re spending at home these days, you deserve a better headset. A wireless one that works with your computer and maybe your console as well, with a mic for calls and great sound for games and movies. Fortunately there are a lot to choose from, and I’ve tested out your best options. I asked the leading audio and peripheral...

21h

3 ways the pandemic is transforming tech spending

Eric Tan Contributor Eric Tan is Senior Vice President of IT and Business Services Coupa, a leader in business spend management and a former Battery portfolio company. Scott Goering Contributor Scott Goering is VP of Business Development at Battery Ventures . Ever...

23h

Zephr raises $8M to help news publishers grow subscription revenue

Zephr has raised $8 million in a new funding round led by Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (owned by media giant Bertelsmann). The London-headquarteed startup’s customers already include publishers like McClatchy, News Corp Australia, Dennis Publishing and PEI Media. CEO James Henderson told me via email that rather than creating “a monolithic...

23h