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Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump promoted a new interview with the former president on Facebook and Instagram Tuesday, but a workaround to Trump’s ban on two of the world’s most popular social networks wasn’t long for this world.

She was apparently swiftly cautioned by Facebook that anything posted “in the voice of President Trump” is not currently allowed on Facebook or Instagram and would be subject to removal. Trump himself remains banned on Facebook pending a decision by the Oversight Board, the external governing body the company set up to tackle it thorniest platform policy decisions.

Those rules apply to any accounts or pages associated with the Trump campaign as well as any belonging to former surrogates for the campaign, two categories that Lara Trump’s account falls into. Facebook confirmed to TechCrunch that screenshots depicting emails from the company were legitimate.

Facebook does still make a news exemption for Trump, presumably for something more akin to a 60 Minutes interview, but in this case he was being interviewed by someone involved in his campaign who then planned to promote the video on a campaign-associated account.

While Facebook won’t host the video itself, Lara Trump opted for a workaround to the workaround, linking to the interview on Rumble, a video sharing website that saw an influx of Trump supporters late last year.

She also posted to the video on The Right View, a web-based show previously produced by the Trump campaign that the Washington Post describes as “a sort of pro-Trump answer to ABC’s ‘The View.'”

Fox News announced this week that it would bring Lara Trump into the fold, hiring the member of the Trump family on as a paid contributor.

Picture it. It’s September, and you’re at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 about to present your virtual elevator pitch to thousands of attendees around the world. In the short span of 120 seconds, your company will become known to a rapt audience of early-startup influencers including potential customers, investors, tech icons and the media.

An awesome opportunity, amirite? Don’t just picture it — make it happen by exhibiting in Startup Alley. Yes, it really is that easy. Every early-stage startup that exhibits in Startup Alley gets to pitch to the Disrupt audience.

It’s not only a tremendous opportunity to practice, pitching at Disrupt can have long-term benefits. Don’t just take our word for it. Jessica McLean, the director of marketing and communications at Infinite-Compute, talks about her company’s experience pitching last year at Disrupt 2020.

“Startup Alley exhibitors got to pitch to attendees, and we were thrilled with how it went. I recorded the pitch, and now we just shoot potential investors a quick video saying, “take a look at our CEO pitching at Disrupt 2020.” It’s a great piece of marketing collateral.”

Along with the epic exposure that comes from pitching at Disrupt, Startup Alley exhibitors also have a shot at being interviewed during one of the many hour-long Startup Alley Crawls. Each tech category gets its own crawl — we’ll post the specific times in the agenda closer to the show’s opening — and TechCrunch journalists will interview a select number of exhibiting founders from each category.

Here’s yet another reason to buy a Startup Alley Pass sooner rather than later. Your pass makes you eligible to participate in Startup Alley+, a curated experience designed to help founders increase their opportunities for exposure and business growth. Only 50 companies — chosen by TechCrunch — will form this cohort, and there’s no additional cost. Here’s the kicker — the benefits start months before Disrupt 2021 begins. Learn more about the Startup+ experience here.

Did you know that TechCrunch editors award two Startup Alley exhibitors with a Startup Battlefield Wild Card? Those founders get to compete for $100,000 in the always-epic Startup Battlefield competition. Who knows? You might follow in the steps of RecordGram. That startup, chosen from Startup Alley as a Wild Card, went on to win the Startup Battlefield competition.

Bottom line: Exhibiting in Startup Alley is a savvy strategy. You’ll pitch your company to a global audience, gain valuable exposure, meet and connect with influencers and potential customers. Win-win-win.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 takes place on September 21-23. If you want to take advantage of every opportunity, there’s just one item to cross off your to-do list. Apply for Startup Alley before the early-bird price ($199) expires on May 13 at 11:59 pm (PST).

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2021? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

The pandemic’s remarkable impact on the app industry has not slowed down in 2021. In fact, consumer spending in apps has hit a new record in the first quarter of this year, a new report from App Annie indicates. The firm says consumers in Q1 2021 spent $32 billion on apps across both iOS and Google Play, up 40% year-over-year from Q1 2020. It’s the largest-ever quarter on record, App Annie also notes.

Last year saw both app downloads and consumer spend increase, as people rapidly adopted apps under coronavirus lockdowns — including apps for work, school, shopping, fitness, entertainment, gaming and more. App Annie previously reported a record 218 billion in global downloads and record consumer spend of $143 billion for the year.

Image Credits: App Annie

These trends have continued into 2021, it seems, with mobile consumers spending roughly $9 billion more in Q1 2021 compared with Q1 2020. Although iOS saw larger consumer spend than Android in the quarter — $21 billion vs. $11 billion, respectively — both stores grew by the same percentage, 40%.

But the types of apps driving spending were slightly different from store to store.

On Google Play, Games, Social and Entertainment apps saw the strongest quarter-over-quarter growth in terms of consumer spending, while Games, Photo & Video, and Entertainment apps accounted for the strongest growth on iOS.

By downloads, the categories were different between the stores, as well.

On Google Play, Social, Tools, and Fiance saw the biggest download growth in Q1, while Games, Finance and Social Networking drove download growth for iOS. Also on Google Play, other top categories included Weather (40%) and Dating (35%), while iOS saw Health and Fitness app downloads grow by a notable 25% — likely a perfect storm as New Year’s Resolutions combined with continued stay-at-measures that encouraged users to find new ways to stay fit without going to a gym.

Image Credits: App Annie

The top apps in the quarter remained fairly consistent, however. TikTok beat Facebook, in terms of downloads, and was followed by Instagram, Telegram, WhatsApp and Zoom. But the short-form video app only made it to No. 2 in terms of consumer spend, with YouTube snagging the top spot. Tinder, Disney+, Tencent Video, and others followed. (Netflix has dropped off this chart as it now directs new users to sign up directly, rather than through in-app purchases).

Image Credits: App Annie

Though Facebook’s apps have fallen behind TikTok by downloads, its apps — including Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram — still led the market in terms monthly active users (MAUs) in the quarter. TikTok, meanwhile, ranked No. 8 by this metric.

Up-and-comers in the quarter included privacy-focused messaging app Signal, which saw the strongest growth in the quarter by both downloads and MAUs — a calculation that App Annie calls “breakout apps.”  Telegram closely followed, as users bailed from mainstream social after the Capitol riot. Another “breakout” app was MX TakaTak, which is filling the hole in the market for short-form video that resulted from India’s ban  of TikTok.

Image Credits: App Annie

Gaming, meanwhile, drove a majority of the quarter’s spending, as usual, accounting for $22 billion of the spend — $13 billion on iOS (up 30% year-over-year) and $9 billion on Android (up 35%). Gamers downloaded about a billion titles per week, up 15% year-over-year from 2020.

Among Us! dropped to No. 2 in the quarter by downloads, replaced by Join Clash 3D, while DOP 2: Delete One Part jumped 308 places to reach No. 3.

Image Credits: App Annie

Roblox led by consumer spend, followed by Genshin Impact, Coin Master, Pokemon Go and others. And although Among Us! dropped on the charts by downloads, it remained No. 1 by monthly active users in the quarter, followed by PUBG Mobile, Candy Crush Saga, Roblox and others.

App Annie notes that the pandemic also accelerated the mobile gaming market, with game downloads outpacing overall downloads by 2.5x in 2020. It predicts that mobile gaming will reach  $120 billion in consumer spending this year, or 1.5x all other gaming formats combined.

As the world changes rapidly, so too do the most traditional of industries. That includes property tech and insurtech. Luckily for us, two of the top minds in those spaces are joining us on an upcoming episode of Extra Crunch Live.

On April 21 at noon PT/3pm ET, Fifth Wall’s Brendan Wallace and Hippo’s Assaf Wand will hang out with us to discuss fundraising across these evolving verticals and explain specifically how fundraising went down for Hippo. The duo will also take a look at pitch decks sent in by the audience and give their live feedback. (If you’d like your deck to be featured on a future episode of Extra Crunch Live, hit up this link.)

But first, a little more information on our guests.

Brendan Wallace is cofounder and managing partner at Fifth Wall, one of the top VC firms dealing in property tech, future of work, new retail and more. Fifth Wall portfolio companies include OpenDoor, Classpass, AllBirds, Clutter, Eden, Lime, and Lyric, among others.

Before Fifth Wall, Wallace was an entrepreneur himself, cofounding Identified (acquired by Workday) and Cabify, a huge ridesharing service in Latin America. He was also an angel investor, with investments in Bonobos, Dollar Shave Club, Lyft, and SpaceX, to name a few.

The TL;dr version on Wallace is that he’s been around the block in the tech world plenty of times, and has experience across a variety of sectors. There’s lots to learn here.

Assaf Wand is cofounder and CEO of Hippo, a home insurance provider for the digital age. Wand is also a serial entrepreneur, founding a company that designed and developed consumer products called Sabi. It was acquired in 2015.

Interestingly, Wand has also worn the hat of an investor, serving as strategic investor for Intel Capital and also spending time at McKinsey as a consultant.

Hippo has raised more than $700 million from investors that include Bond, Felicis, Comcast and Horizons.

Wallace invested in Hippo’s Series B round, and we’re anxious to hear why Wand and Wallace chose each other, how they work together today, and what advice they have for founders looking to raise capital and scale their businesses.

The episode goes down at noon PT/3pm ET on April 21 and is free to all who want to check it out live. On-demand access to the content is reserved for Extra Crunch members only. Register to come hang out with us here.

Meet Leeway, a French startup that is building an end-to-end software-as-a-service solution for your contracts. Leeway lets you centralize all your contracts in a single repository, go through multiple negotiation steps and trigger a DocuSign event for the signature.

The company raised a $4.2 million seed round from HenQ, Kima Ventures as well as several business angels, such as the founders of Algolia, Eventbrite, Spendesk, MeilleursAgents, Livestorm and Luko.

If you’re working for the legal department of your company, you’re probably working with multiple tools. Chances are you’re using Microsoft Word to write a contract, a cloud service to store and share the contract with your teammates and business partners, an e-signature and archival service.

Leeway is optimizing this worklfow at every step. First, you can store all your contracts on Leeway. In addition to making it easier to find a contract later down the road, you can get reminders when a contract is about to expire so that you can renew a contract.

Second, you can edit your contract from Leeway directly. For instance, a manager can review a contract and write changes in Leeway’s interface. The employee can then start a revision and save a new version of the contract.

After that, you can send the contract from the same interface. Administrators can set up approval workflows so that several people need to approve a contract before it is signed. As everything is centralized, you can get an overview of all your contracts that are currently in the pipeline.

Image Credits: Leeway

Up next, Leeway is thinking about integrating conditional clauses within the product. Usually, big companies have several versions of the same clause — very favorable, favorable, not so favorable, etc. When a client is negotiating, Leeway customers could switch the clause from very favorable to favorable for instance.

Right now, around 30 companies are using Leeway to manage their contracts. Clients include Voodoo, Evaneos, Ifop and Fitness Park. “We have a very specific customer base — the legal department of companies with 100 to 500 employees,” co-founder and CEO Antoine Fabre told me.

It doesn’t mean that smaller and bigger companies shouldn’t be using Leeway. But companies with less than 100 employees don’t necessarily have a full-fledged legal department. The sales team or the finance department could act as the legal-ish team. But Leeway still has a lot of room to grow.

Image Credits: Leeway