YouTube Shorts comes to the U.S., Amazon starts testing electric delivery vans in San Francisco and new data suggests the impact of Google Play’s recent changes. This is your Daily Crunch for March 18, 2021.

The big story: YouTube’s TikTok rival launches in the US

The YouTube Shorts product allows users to record, edit and share videos of 60 seconds or less, which can be accompanied by licensed music from a variety of industry partners. The company has been testing the feature in India while making Shorts viewable internationally — but until today, U.S. viewers couldn’t actually create short videos of their own.

Sarah Perez noting that it’s pretty similar to TikTok while lacking some key features, such as intelligent sound syncing.

The tech giants

— This makes SF the second of 16 total cities that Amazon expects to bring its Rivian-sourced EVs to in 2021.

— As regular Daily Crunch readers will remember, Google recently announced that it’s cutting the commissions it charges developers on Google Play.

— Shortly after Twitter announced it would begin testing a better way to display images on its app, it’s now doing the same for YouTube videos.

Startups, funding and venture capital

— The startup has lured some of its most high-profile (and controversial) writers with sizable payments.

— Rodolfo Corcuera, Juan José Fernández and Daniel Tamayo founded the company in January 2020, recognizing that the process of paying vendors for business owners is largely “manual and cumbersome.”

 — OpenSea has been one of a handful of NFT marketplaces to explode in popularity in recent weeks.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

— Amid declining ridership, transportation agencies find new software partners.

— Despite the many benefits, adopting a no-code platform won’t suddenly turn you into a no-code company.

— The mechanism can enable founders to maintain control despite later dilution and may sometimes even grant ironclad control in perpetuity.

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Everything else

— TechNet’s David Edmondson puts the spotlight on a number of states that are currently considering anti-LGBT legislation.

— We interview Ford’s Technical Expert Mario Santillo about its new robotics initiatives.

— Katie Moussouris, founder and chief executive at Luta Security, will give a crash course in bug bounty and vulnerability disclosure programs at TC Early Stage 2021.

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