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Written in its company’s handbook, there’s one rule for working at Dragos. “Don’t be an asshole.” “The first key to our success is our people and that we hire good people,” said Robert Lee, the company’s founder and chief executive, in an interview with TechCrunch. “I think building a successful team is about having a standard and saying that I expect you all to be adults and not need a million HR policies,” he said. Lee’s management approach revolves around his company’s greatest asset — his staff. With 125 employees, the company has seen rapid growth since its founding in 2016 but puts great importance on maintaining the company’s relaxed but productive culture. Lee said he doesn’t want to change its culture dynamics by growing too fast, micromanaging, or burdening his staff with strict expense policies. “If you’re stuck laid over at night, but you see there’s one seat left on a redeye and it’s a first class seat that’s going to cost six times more but it gets you home — go for it...

Chinese tech giant Alibaba is doubling down on India’s burgeoning video market, looking to fight back local rival ByteDance, Google and Disney to gain its foothold in the nation. The company said today that it is pumping $100 million into Vmate, a three-year-old social video app owned by subsidiary UC Web. Vmate was launched as a video streaming and short-video-sharing app in 2016. But in the years since, it has added features such as video downloads and 3-dimensional face emojis to expand its use cases. It has amassed 30 million users globally, and will use the capital to scale its business in India, the company told TechCrunch. Alibaba Group did not respond to TechCrunch’s questions about its ownership of the app. The move comes as Alibaba revives its attempts to take on the growing social video apps market, something on which it has missed out completely in China. Vmate could potentially help it fill the gap in India. Many of the features Vmate offers are similar to those offered...

Jordan Crook / TechCrunch : Foursquare buys location analytics service Placed from Snap, raises $150M led by Raine Group; Placed reportedly raised $13.4M before Snap acquired it in 2017   —  Foursquare just made its first acquisition.  The location tech company has acquired Placed from Snap Inc on the heels … from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2wqYD44

Mark Sweney / The Guardian : Netflix and Amazon made £1.1B in revenue from ~17.7M UK subscribers in 2018, while streaming services of UK's four main commercial broadcasters made ~£530M   —  Without a major British rival, TV and film fans are turning to the Silicon Valley giants from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2KdG4sk

BuzzFeed News : Investigation: US universities, foundations, and retirement plans back funds that invest millions in Chinese surveillance tech companies Megvii and SenseTime   —  Millions of dollars from US university endowments, foundations, and retirement plans have helped fund two billion-dollar Chinese … from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2wt55aH

Maria Deutscher / SiliconANGLE : Intuit says it is acquiring Origami Logic, an Accel-backed marketing analytics startup that has raised over $64M in funding, in a deal expected to close Q4 2019   —  Financial software powerhouse Intuit Inc. today announced that it's buying Origami Logic Inc., an Accel-backed marketing analytics startup. from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2Knik5d

Natalie Gagliordi / ZDNet : VMware reports Q1 revenue of $2.27B, up 13% YoY, beating analyst estimates of $2.24B, and net income of $505M, including a gain of $132M from Pivotal   —  VMware also reported an unexpected gain of $132 million from its investment in Pivotal Software.  —  VMware delivered strong … from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2JMXHQa