Another week, another set of important stories about startups, technology, and policy between the U.S. and Asia. Plus, one product launch.

India may become next restricted market for U.S. cloud providers

Data sovereignty is one of those slow-boiling issues that are easy to miss, but incredibly important to stay on top of. I have been focusing a lot on China’s data sovereignty policies, including its relatively new cloud computing law, but this week I shine the light on India. The country is promulgating a revamped data localization law that would require Indian data to be stored in local data centers. It’s a laudable goal for locals, but extraordinarily complicated for cloud providers who have to handle the data governance rules.

Washington

Another week of heavy non-writing work, but two good essays and one news announcement isn’t a bad haul.

The death and life of the tech press

This was a response to a recent Columbia Journalism Review essay about the need to completely rebuild the tech press from scratch. I feel as though this vastly overstates the problem, which is essentially that tech has grown to affect every facet of human existence, and it is really the non-tech press who need to raise their standards. In addition, I argued for the importance of dynamic range in the coverage of tech. A small startup is worthy of more praise than a massive behemoth tech company, and the level of criticism should expand as companies grow.

Alphabet

Another week spent heads down on some new initiatives I am working on. Two interesting companies that I covered this week are Brat and Even, which both raised a bunch of money from investors. And if you are in SF in early September, definitely head to Disrupt SF and watch a great panel on the future of insurance tech.

Brat raises $30 million to reboot scripted television for the Gen Z crowd

Even raises $40m to transform the working class to the savings class

Oscar and Lemonade founders will join us at Disrupt SF to strategize about the future of insurance innovation

Photo by Alex The Shutter used under Creative Commons

This past week, I was in Zug, Switzerland for TechCrunch's one-day conference on blockchain. I had a blast meeting so many interesting people, and learning a lot about the blockchain ecosystem. I had two on-stage interviews, and the videos are in the list below. I covered one panel for TechCrunch, and had a de rigueur article on China venture capital because no one can have enough of that, can they?

China VC has overtaken Silicon Valley, but do aggregate numbers tell the whole story?

Chinese venture capitalists are putting in more dollars than their American counterparts, and the distinction between top tech companies in China and the U.S. is even more startling. But is that the whole story? Part of the change is blockchain,

This was a quieter week as I worked on some internal projects at TechCrunch. Two relatively short news pieces, one on JASK, which I have written about extensively on TC, and the other on a new company called Bumped.

Instead of points, Bumped gives equity in the companies you shop at

One of my personal pet topics is how to extend ownership of equity to more people (the equity of equity, essentially). Paired is trying to do this in loyalty, where they offer you fractional shares in the companies you shop at. It's a novel idea, and while it won't dramatcally change the dismal economcis of our society, it could definitely be a step in the right direction.

JASK nets $25m from Kleiner to build