#helped

3 stories

Technology

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socialgettingfall

TikTok now wants to be the place you book the trip you just saw on TikTok

I’ve struggled with insomnia since I was very young. Like many chronic overthinkers, I tend to fall asleep best when my mind is occupied by something else, such as podcasts, YouTube compilations, or my personal favorite: rain sounds. But earbuds can be uncomfortable, and playing audio out loud isn’t exactly considerate when I’m staying at my partner’s place. That’s why I was intrigued by the new Peace Duo Under-Pillow Speaker from Jabees. Launched last month, this ultra-thin speaker utilizes bone conduction technology—which sends vibrations through your skull directly to your inner ear—to transmit sound through your pillow and into your ear privately. Just place it beneath your pillow and listen as you drift off. In my testing, I found the Peace Duo was so thin that I almost forgot it was there. I mainly used the built-in sleep sounds, which come preloaded on a micro SD card with four hours of soothing soundscapes, including gentle waves, light rain, rain with thunder, and soft wind. For more personal content, the Peace Duo also offers Bluetooth connectivity, so you can connect your phone and stream your favorite audio. Image Credits:Jabees Battery life is another standout. A single charge lasts up to ten nights of one-hour listening sessions, so you won’t have to remember yet another device that requires nightly charging. The foldable design also makes it easy to put away in the included magnetic fabric travel case. There is one important caveat: it doesn’t work well with thick memory foam pillows. Unfortunately, that’s what I normally use, so I switched to a regular cotton pillow and the sound came through clearly. (The company claims that thinner memory foam pillows should work fine.) Image Credits:Jabees Priced at $59.99, the Peace Duo comes in two colors: Sunrise Yellow and Mist Green. It also offers personalization; users can swap out the magnetic snap-on frames for custom images and even add their names, making it a great gift for families, students, or anyone who needs extra help getting restful sleep. The Peace Duo won’t cure insomnia, but it’s a practical, unobtrusive sleep gadget — and for what the company is charging, it’s a small price for a decent night’s sleep. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Lauren covers media, streaming, apps and platforms at TechCrunch. You can contact or verify outreach from Lauren by emailing laurenf.techcrunch@gmail.com or via encrypted message at laurenforris22.25 on Signal. View Bio

TechCrunchJun 13

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Technology

2updates

startuphelpedpath

The Path, founded by Tony Robbins and Calm alums, hopes to offer safer AI therapy

Earlier this year, Lucra Sports founder and CEO Dylan Robbins did something that no one else has ever done. He landed famed public investor Cathie Wood and her ARK Invest Venture Fund as a lead in a startup fundraising round. Lucra announced last month that it raised a $20 million Series B, led by the ARK fund, with participation from several other VCs. Robbins attracted ARK even though the fund had previously gotten badly burned on a similar eSports company: Skillz, a skill-based gaming platform in which the fund invested heavily before divesting at a loss. On top of that, Dylan landed this big fish as an investor even though his company is not in the one area that all VCs are currently chasing: AI. Lucra offers white-label interactive gaming competitions as a novel kind of loyalty program for businesses that serve consumers. Rather than, say, earning points toward a coupon, Lucra’s clients offer online tournaments for prizes, or supports friendly wagers between their customers on who will win games. Its customers include Five Iron Golf, Dave & Buster’s, and Chess King. Robbins told us there were two secrets in how he landed a big-name investor against such odds: 1. Be friendly to everyone, anywhere because you never know when a casual conversation will turn into your major investor. 2. Lead your pitch with AI even if you aren’t a famed AI scientist and aren’t building models, agents, or anything AI. To the first point, the seeds to Lucra’s fundraising journey began when Robbins was playing darts in a New York bar. He met another guy at the dartboard, and they enjoyed a few games together. “Six months later, we ran into each other at the bar again. The same darts bar. It’s like, ‘Good to see you. How’s it going?’ And we got to talking and I asked him what he did for work. And he told me he worked at ARK,” Robbins recalled. Robbins told him about Lucra and the contact introduced him to the investment team at ARK, which wound up writing a small check in his Series A round. “My first piece of advice on all of this is you never know who you’re talking to. Just go around, be nice, meet people, have fun,” Robbins says. Let that lead to good conversations, which will lead to introductions, he said. Flash forward a few years to the end of 2025, when AI had overtaken venture funding like honeysuckle. Lucra Sports had really found its lane with its white-labeling service. It was ready to raise a Series B to fuel growth and new ideas like adding mini-games into its offerings. (Lucra just invested in a mini-game development partner to build out this capability.) But Robbins kept running into an AI-shaped wall. “We were raising in Q4 of 2025, which was then, like even now, kind of peak AI mayhem,” Robbins said. “One out of every three calls, the first line, they would stop the meeting and say, oh, we’re only investing in AI now, I don’t want to waste your time. To the point where they wouldn’t even let me pitch.” The rest told him they were only investing in AI after they heard the pitch. So Robbins tried a new tactic. He adjusted his pitch and his deck to discuss AI right out of the gate. The revised pitch argued that if AI works, people are going to have more free time to play games with friends at the bar or online — hence his business will be a winner — and if it doesn’t, a non-AI bet starts to look like smart diversification. It was a hedge either way. “It was a small cohort of people that would really take it seriously,” he said of his pitch. ARK, fortunately, was one of them. Once committed, the lead investor made introductions to other VCs to help fill out the round. Underpinning all of this were good business fundamentals, including “consistent year over year growth, not just one spurt,” he said. The final lesson Robbins learned was that, especially for a non-AI business, VCs want to hear a big dream. Robbins had one: a total addressable market of anyone who plays games of any kind, from pickleball to Wordle.

TechCrunchMay 25

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Politics

2updates

poweravailabilityadditional

Availability of additional 400 MW helped to limit power curbs to a few places in Kerala on Tuesday, says KSEB

The KSEB said it received 200 MW through a power procurement deal cleared by the Kerala State Electricity Regulatory Commission (KSERC) on April 25 and another 200 MW from central generating stations (CGS). | Photo Credit: THULASI KAKKAT The Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) has said that it was able to provide uninterrupted supply to most places in Kerala on Tuesday (April 28, 2026) as it received an additional 400 megawatts (MW) from two sources.The KSEB said it received 200 MW through a power procurement deal cleared by the Kerala State Electricity...

The HinduApr 29

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