Inside the demise of EV startup Fisker, and X's new rules allow adult content

Equity

TechCrunch

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4.2 • 365 Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2024

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welcome to this week's Episode of Equity Monday. We're kicking off the week with a deep dive from this weekend into the demise of electric vehicle startup Fisker at the hands of its founders' whims. Fisker, which was founded by famed vehicle designer Henrik Fisker, is on the brink of bankruptcy after only having delivered a few thousand electric Ocean SUVs. Then, Rebecca Bellan talked about X's new rules to allow adult content (as long as it's "consensually produced," whatever that means), and why that's problematic for the safety of other users -- namely women, who are most often the targets of sexually explicit trolling and harassment. We also touched on Trump's TikTok debut, which came in the wake of the former president's felony conviction. To wrap up, Bellan also discussed a story that TechCrunch published over the weekend looking into the new trend of smaller, lesser-known investors getting shares of hot private AI companies like Anthropic, X.ai and Perplexity by using special purpose vehicles, or SPVs. The result has been a Wild West, high risk, buyer-beware situation, with SPV terms varying wildly. Haje closed out the show with another Pitch Deck Teardown, this time looking into the Angel pitch deck for RAW Dating App. RAW just raised a $3 million friends and family round to shake up the dating scene by shedding fake, TikTok-ified, heavily filtered photos and replacing them with a more genuine, unvarnished experience.

Transcript

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0:15.2	Hello and welcome back to Equity, Tech Crunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups. This is our Monday show where we take a look at the weekend and get you ready for the week ahead.
0:19.2	Today is June 3rd, 2024 and I'm Rebecca Belon, Senior Reporter at Tech Crunch.
0:24.3	It's a gorgeous morning here in New York, which is just what we need to get through this
0:27.2	morning's tech news.
0:28.2	Let's get caught up.
0:29.2	On today's show, we have a look behind the scenes at EV startup Fiskers collapse,
0:33.6	X's new rules to allow adult content, the wild west of special purpose vehicles and
0:38.7	private AI startup shares, and of course a pitch deck tear down from Hyacoms this time for the raw dating app. Let's get started
0:49.7	Let's dive into the big news that matters for our our first story of the day, we're looking behind the scenes of EP Start-Up Fisker's
0:56.2	epic collapse at the hands of its founder's whims.
0:58.8	Tell me, listen, what do an autonomous pod, an electric pickup truck, and a solid-state battery-powered sports car all have in common.
1:06.0	They're all innovations that Fisker promised and never delivered on.
1:09.0	Today, Fisker, which was founded by famed vehicle designer Henric Fisker, is on the brink of bankruptcy after only having delivered a few thousand electric ocean SUBs.
1:18.6	Employees who spoke to Tech Runch for this well-reported deep dive by Sean O'Kanees say the blame rests on the shoulders of the husband and wife
1:24.7	team running the show. The ocean can be held as the perfect example of Fisker's flaws, paved with
1:30.1	hubris power struggles and the repeated failure to set up basic processes that are foundational
1:34.6	for any automaker, the SUV has been riddled with mechanical and software problems.
1:39.3	Employees who spoke to Tech Runch say they were drowning from a lack of structure, inadequate customer service, no properly
1:44.5	functioning warranty system and a scarcity of spare parts among other failures.
1:49.2	Customers have thrown dozens of lawsuits at the company, which has now laid up almost all of its overwork staff.
1:54.4	There's more to this story so please check it out on TechCrunch.com.
1:58.0	Next up X formerly Twitter has tweaked its rules to formally allow adult content.
	...

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