Daily Crunch: Finnish tech conference wins $1 million prize in Russian co-founders’ pitch competition

For a preview of the biggest and most important stories from TechCrunch delivered to your inbox every day at 3:00 PM PDT, subscribe here.

What’s up, Crunchers! Haje is back from his absence, and we’re working hard to bring you a wall of incredible stories from our dastardly team of TC wordsmiths. Let’s go! — Christina and It came

TechCrunch’s top 3

• Here yesterday, gone today“We should have taken a closer look at all participants’ operations before entering the competition.” So say the organizers of Slush after they and the VC pitch judges decided to revoke a million dollar award from Immigram after discovering the company had ties to the Russia. Mike see you.
• Dark times at Tesla: Tesla has recalled about 350,000, or 1%, of the electric vehicles it has sold in the past two years or so for fairly significant issues, including taillights that go out and front passenger airbags that malfunction, Jaclyn writing.
• Cloudy with a chance of misfortune and sadness: There are no rosy prospects for startups here. Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy doesn’t mince words when he warns startups that “a lot of turmoil and volatility” is in the funding forecast over the next 12-18 months, pot holder reports.

Startups and VCs

Actor Noah Schnapp, who plays Will in Netflix’s hit original series ‘Stranger Things’, is passionate about tbh, a company he co-founded that aims to ‘reinvent’ cocoa and hazelnut spread Nutella, reports Mary Ann. The company is turning to crowdfunding to raise funds for the vegan alternative.

At our sessions TC: Crypto event last week in Miami, Darrell sat down a real who-is-who in crypto to talk about the crypto regulatory landscape. The main takeaways that all three panelists basically agreed on is that the benefit of the FTX situation is that there is now more momentum than ever to come to some sort of crypto-specific regulatory framework at the United States. You can watch the segment on the site.

Here’s a community of stories to get you through your Monday. May he be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out.

Bring your product and customer success teams together on the same page to improve net retention

Picture credits: Richard Drury (Opens in a new window) /Getty Pictures

You don’t need to move the needle far to maximize customer success. SaaS startups that improve incrementally will rack up small wins that can change the trajectory of the business.

Instead of a traditional siled approach, consolidating product and CX teams into a single unit helps align incentives, writes Bryan House, senior vice president of product and customer success at Elastic Path.

“Whatever you call the role, product management, UX, and customer success should all be in the same person,” he advises. “This leader must create a structure that shares common incentives and goals aligned with your customer’s metrics of success.”

Three others from the TC+ team:

Tech Crunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get a head start. You can register here. Use code “DC” to get 15% off an annual subscription!

Big Tech inc.

It’s a bit of deja vu for Broadcom, which is once again under the watchful eye of competition regulators. This time, the UK Competition and Markets Authority is looking at the chip giant’s proposed $61 billion deal to buy virtualization software giant VMware. If you can’t remember the last time, it was when Broadcom tried to acquire rival Qualcomm in 2018. The deal was scrapped after former President Donald Trump cited national security concerns. Paul writes that “the political and competitive optics are different this time around, so it’s hard to predict how it will all play out,” but he got a comment from Broadcom on what the company thinks.

Oh, and FIFA is back. lauren has your guide to spread it.

Five more for your Monday:

UPDATE: The first version of the Daily Crunch incorrectly stated that the Slush conference was taking place in Sweden. In order not to incur the wrath of both groups of Vikings, we have corrected the title. Slush is an annual technology conference that takes place, of course, in Helsinki, Finland. As an honorary Scandinavian, Haje is ashamed of the mistake. Det skal ikke skje igjen, folkens!