Don't miss these TechCrunch swings by LA: At TechCrunch's StrictlyVC event in LA, we sat down with Founders Fund's Trae Stephens, who co-founded Andruil and Sol. We talked about his firm's investments (Boring Company, yes; X, no), and what sort of founders he looks to back. We also had buzzy startup Rabbit on stage, whose handheld AI device has taken off like a rocket in the past month. More on Rabbit here. Waymo can now take you to the (SF) airport: As last week closed, Alphabet self-driving effort Waymo got the nod from the California Public Utilities Commission to expand its commercial operations. These can now include the city of Los Angeles, and trips to the San Francisco airport. I am honestly considering booking a trip to my beloved City by the Bay just to take a self-driving ride. Or Waymo could come to Providence. You know, please? On the record with Nubank CEO: Few sectors were hotter than fintech during the last tech boom, and few regions grew as fast as Latin America did. At their intersection, Nubank rose to massive scale and went public. TechCrunch's Mary Ann Azevedo sat down with Nubank's CEO over the weekend to dig into the neobank's business as well as the landscape of tech companies in the region. Wagely's fintech recipe cooks up $23M: Indonesian fintech startup Wagely grew on the back of its wage-access service, which offers workers salary advances without the predatory rates charged by other financial services. The startup is doing so well that it managed to secure a healthy round, despite funding to Indonesian startups declining some 87% last year compared to 2022. Taiko wants to bring truly decentralized social networking to Ethereum: An issue with the Ethereum blockchain is that it can't handle many transactions at the same time. So, many 'layer 2' solutions, better known as L2s, have been built atop the blockchain to aggregate and batch transactions. Taiko thinks that those services are too centralized, however, so it's building its own L2 for its social service that it plans to be far more decentralized. The effort has seen the company raise $37 million, including a $15 million Series A. Who is really raising money? That's the multi-billion dollar question, right? TechCrunch's Dominic-Madori Davis has all the notes on who is raising capital today – or more precisely, which groups are not raising as much as you might expect. Speaking of funding to diverse groups: While the data linked above makes it clear that venture funding flows more to some people than others, some are not accepting the status quo as immutable. Derek Smith's Plug In South LA is making strides in accelerating startup activity in the U.S. city, focused on helping "aspiring entrepreneurs learn the ropes of growing a startup," Ron Miller reports. Don't do this if you want to raise more capital: First-time founders that want to raise more venture capital should avoid selling too much of their company too early. Why? Because later investors might view limited founder stakes as a poison-pill against putting more cash into a startup. TechCrunch's ongoing interview series with women in AI continues, with conversations with Francine Bennett, a founding member of Ada Lovelace Institute, and Karine Perset, who runs the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's AI unit. We're going to see you at Early Stage, right? The list of venture investors who will be in attendance is getting to be pretty darn extensive. | 
