Cloudflare rolls out new mobile services to secure employees’ smartphones • TechCrunch

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The TechCrunch Top 3

• Do we ever really know how secure our phones are?: Cloudflare says no, and to prove it, they launched an eSIM to secure mobile devices, Kyle reports. What makes theirs different from other legacy options — for example, VPN — is its cell-level protection. “A SIM card can act as another security factor, and — in combination with hardware keys — make it nearly impossible to impersonate an employee,” Cloudflare CTO John Graham-Cumming told Kyle.
• Red notice: It’s official — Interpol issues red notice for Terraform founder Do Kwon, who faces charges in South Korea after Terraform’s cryptocurrency and stablecoin collapsed earlier this year. Manish and Kate have been following this story for a while and have more.
• Pivot: Two years ago, Vendease was trying to make it work in Nigeria’s food sector as a marketplace connecting suppliers and farmers to restaurants. When it saw how fragmented delivery service was, it pivoted to a food procurement platform, meaning it no longer operates as the middleman and is now reaping that benefit, including $30 million in fresh capital, Tage reports.

Startups and VC

While Not So Dark started with a network of dark kitchens, the company abandoned this business model shortly after raising its Series A round. Operating dark kitchens requires a ton of capital and can create issues in some neighborhoods. The company now raised an $80 million Series B, and launched digital food delivery brands that you can find in food delivery apps, Romain reports.

When it comes to advice, tech loves standardization. Startups are often told that there are certain metrics to hit, deadlines to meet, timetables to measure themselves against. In The “ideal runway” is a myth, isn’t it?, over on TC+, our subscription site, Natasha M breaks down how the 18- to 36-month runway rule of thumb isn’t as rule-of-thumb-y as you’d think.

Guess what? We love you so much that we’ve got five more highlights from across the site:

3 ways to implement a product-led sales motion to unleash PLG’s revenue potential

Image Credits: JamesBrey (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Startups that employ product-led growth strategies reply on customers to fuel growth and acquisition, but “the traditional top-down enterprise sales model just doesn’t work with the self-serve, freemium user bases of PLG,” writes Stephen Moock, head of sales and success at GTM platform Calixa.

Sharing consolidated user data with product and sales teams will reveal patterns and insights that help identify product-qualified leads who are more likely to convert. To take advantage, sales teams need to “recalibrate” their approach.

According to Moock, “your free offering, and the features customers get when they upgrade to paid plans should both create a natural conversion path to your enterprise offering.”

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

Three more recent stories from the TC+ team:

Big Tech Inc.

Samsung is entering India with two new credit cards that promise 10% back “round the year,” as long as cardholders purchase products and services, Manish reports. It seems to be a way for the smartphone maker to broaden its appeal. It’s also ambitious, he writes, because the credit card market in India is quite crowded with over 50 companies trying to gain the attention of the “world’s second-largest internet market.”

And we have five more for you: