Thu.Feb 02, 2023

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As the bee population declines, this startup secures $8M to apply AI and EVs to pollination

TechCrunch

Given our general reliance on something called “food” you’d think the issue of pollination – and its general decline – might be higher up the world’s agenda. Over 80% of crops require insect pollination, but growers can no longer rely on the dwindling wild bee population. But it’s a complex problem. Pollinating crops with honey bees can pose a threat to indigenous wild bees who are forced to compete with honey bees for food and are then exposed to new diseases.

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Katy Carrigan: From Head of Sales to CEO of the Rapidly Growing Gift-Giving App, Goody

Jason Malki

I had the pleasure of interviewing Katy Carrigan, CEO. Katy joined Goody as a consultant in April 2021. She quickly moved into a full-time role as Head of Sales and then Chief Revenue Officer. After a successful year of growing the firm’s revenue and customer base, she was asked to step into the CEO role. Goody is a gift-giving app for both businesses and consumers.

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Optimizing freemium products: Challenges and opportunities

TechCrunch

Konstantin Valiotti Contributor Share on Twitter Konstantin Valiotti is product director of growth at PandaDoc. More posts by this contributor When to build a freemium plan and how to get it right Building a freemium product or service is only the first step. Once you’ve done the work to build and launch a freemium product, you will have to collect initial market reactions and see how the funnel behaves at each touch point.

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How Long Is Long-Term Thinking?

Entrepreneur's Handbook

As an entrepreneur, how far do you need to look into the future?

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From Curiosity to Competitive Edge: How Mid-Market CEOs Are Using AI to Scale Smarter

Speaker: Lee Andrews, Founder at LJA New Media & Tony Karrer, Founder and CTO at Aggregage

This session will walk you through how one CEO used generative AI, workflow automation, and sales personalization to transform an entire security company—then built the Zero to Strategy framework that other mid-market leaders are now using to unlock 3.5x ROI. As a business executive, you’ll learn how to assess AI opportunities in your business, drive adoption across teams, and overcome internal resource constraints—without hiring a single data scientist.

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Rebar robotics firm Toggle adds another $3M to its fundraising tally

TechCrunch

There’s no denying that the robotics startup world has taken a hit during the ongoing economic downturn. Recent numbers prove what we’ve all suspected for some time. But two things are true: 1) The lull is temporary; and 2) While robotics isn’t recession-proof, construction might as well be. This is certainly a theme of late — as other categories of robotics have struggled to raise, those operating in construction appear relatively unimpacted.

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Meet Beek, a startup bringing audiobooks to LatAm with big-name backing

TechCrunch

Growing up in Mexico City, Pamela Valdes says she was a bullied child who was inspired by stories her parents told of other bullied individuals, such as Bill Gates, who went on to be very successful. “Those stories my parents told me in a way created my reality,” she said. Valdes recognized that her upbringing was more privileged than some others in Mexico and throughout Latin America, people who — in her words — heard stories about the drug cartels in their towns.

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Using Startup Advisors To Help Your New Hires Can Be The Difference Between Their Success or Struggle

Hunter Walk

Why Pairing Junior Executives With External Mentors Can Accelerate Your Hiring and Their Professional Development Often at a startup it’s better to hire for talent, ambition, and commitment, than years in role or ‘did they have the job already somewhere else.’ For example, imagine a high-performing Operations IC at Stripe, with relevant experience and an itch to get into a role that allows her to spread her wings further.

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Triple Whale raises $25M for its Shopify data platform

TechCrunch

Shopify powers a massive number of e-commerce sites, so it’s also no surprise that there is a vast ecosystem of tools around it that help these merchants manage all aspects of running their stores. Triple Whale , a Columbus, Ohio-based startup, focuses on providing Shopify store owners with a single platform that brings together all of their analytics into a single service to help them improve their conversion numbers and get better insights into their marketing campaigns.

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Unlock the Secret to Making More Out of Your New Customer Wins

Jason Malki

I had the pleasure of interviewing Rachel Lyubovitzky CEO of Setuply. Rachel is an accomplished serial entrepreneur, senior executive, published author, and investor passionate about innovation, effective strategy, and successful execution. She founded four B2B technology companies with her partners, powered by a mission to leverage technology to make people’s lives easier and more fulfilling.

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State of AI in Sales & Marketing 2025

AI adoption is reshaping sales and marketing. But is it delivering real results? We surveyed 1,000+ GTM professionals to find out. The data is clear: AI users report 47% higher productivity and an average of 12 hours saved per week. But leaders say mainstream AI tools still fall short on accuracy and business impact. Download the full report today to see how AI is being used — and where go-to-market professionals think there are gaps and opportunities.

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Lavender lands $13.2M for its AI-powered email marketing engine

TechCrunch

Years ago, Will Allred and William Ballance were developing a tech platform, Sorter, to apply personality and communication psychology to marketing campaigns. Just as Sorter was heading to market, the pandemic hit — and marketing budgets froze. With a week of funding left, Allred and Ballance pivoted, repackaging their tech to work in Gmail in what they thought would be a brief detour to Sorter’s launch.

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Rural Colorado Entrepreneurial Opportunities Increase With Access To New Capital

American Entrepreneurship

Greater Colorado Venture Fund raises $25 million dollar fund, in partnership with Colorado Venture Capital Authority; Funds will be used to galvanize, support and expand rural Colorado founders and entrepreneurs in their business building efforts. Durango, Colorado, January 25, 2023 – Today, the Greater Colorado Venture Fund (GCVF) announced, in collaboration with the Colorado Venture Authority , a $25m close of GCVF Fund II.

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New School Foods’ filet looks and tastes like salmon, but it’s actually plants

TechCrunch

New School Foods said its muscle fiber and scaffolding technology to produce whole-cut fish alternative products is now at a point where it can be demonstrated and a pilot facility built. The company’s first product is a plant-based filet that looks, cooks, tastes and flakes like wild salmon. The announcement comes after the Toronto-based plant-based seafood maker secured $12 million in seed funding.

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Nobl9 Secures Strategic Investment from ServiceNow and Cisco Investments to Accelerate Adoption of Service Level Observability

American Entrepreneurship

New funding to support growing customer demand for the Nobl9 Enterprise Platform WALTHAM, Mass. – January 31, 2023 – Nobl9, the service level observability company, today announced that it has raised $15.8 million from strategic investors ServiceNow and Cisco Investments, and existing investors including Battery Ventures and CRV. The funding will be used to continue building the best product, servicing customers and educating the community about the power of SLOs.

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15 Modern Use Cases for Enterprise Business Intelligence

Large enterprises face unique challenges in optimizing their Business Intelligence (BI) output due to the sheer scale and complexity of their operations. Unlike smaller organizations, where basic BI features and simple dashboards might suffice, enterprises must manage vast amounts of data from diverse sources. What are the top modern BI use cases for enterprise businesses to help you get a leg up on the competition?

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Pitch Deck Teardown: Laoshi’s $570K angel deck

TechCrunch

Most of the pitch deck teardowns to date (here’s a handy list of the more than 30 we have published so far ) have been for institutional funding rounds, typically in the millions or tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars raised. Those are interesting to look at, of course, but I also know that many of you will be much earlier in your journey.

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Rural Colorado Entrepreneurial Opportunities Increase With Access To New Capital

American Entrepreneurship

Greater Colorado Venture Fund raises $25 million dollar fund, in partnership with Colorado Venture Capital Authority; Funds will be used to galvanize, support and expand rural Colorado founders and entrepreneurs in their business building efforts. Durango, Colorado, January 25, 2023 – Today, the Greater Colorado Venture Fund (GCVF) announced, in collaboration with the Colorado Venture Authority , a $25m close of GCVF Fund II.

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Samooha launches with tech that lets companies securely share data

TechCrunch

Samooha , a startup developing a “cross-cloud” data collaboration platform, today announced that it raised $12.5 million in a funding tranche backed by Altimeter Capital and Snowflake Ventures, among others. CEO Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan says that the cash infusion — Samooha’s first — will be put toward product development and hiring; the plan is to grow the startup’s team from 14 developers to roughly 20 by the end of the year.

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Optilogic Secures New Investment to Transform Supply Chain Design

American Entrepreneurship

Led by MK Capital, New Funding Will Accelerate Further Research and Development of Optilogic’s Cloud-Native SaaS Solution [ANN ARBOR, January 31, 2023] Supply chain design software innovator Optilogic has secured $13 million in financing, led by MK Capital, a venture capital firm focused on supporting innovative B2B software companies. The funding will allow Optilogic to help any enterprise with a physical supply chain get full visibility into the cost, service, and risk of different supply c

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The GTM Intelligence Era: ZoomInfo 2025 Customer Impact Report

ZoomInfo customers aren’t just selling — they’re winning. Revenue teams using our Go-To-Market Intelligence platform grew pipeline by 32%, increased deal sizes by 40%, and booked 55% more meetings. Download this report to see what 11,000+ customers say about our Go-To-Market Intelligence platform and how it impacts their bottom line. The data speaks for itself!

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[Guild Education in GlobeNewswire] With healthcare jobs set to increase at record pace, Guild enhances its commitment to address critical workforce challenges, partners with 17 healthcare organizations

OurCrowd

Guild expands access to learning programs and career services to more than half a million healthcare employees, Brings together industry titans to advise on strategy and help drive impact in the sector. Read more here. The post [Guild Education in GlobeNewswire] With healthcare jobs set to increase at record pace, Guild enhances its commitment to address critical workforce challenges, partners with 17 healthcare organizations appeared first on OurCrowd Blog.

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PAIRIN Closes $2.1 Million Series B Funding and a $2M Line of Credit to Support Continued Expansion

American Entrepreneurship

Capital comes amid PAIRIN’s growing footprint of client success across the nation, supports PAIRIN’s growth plans by adding software engineers and sales and marketing experts. DENVER, Feb. 01, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — PAIRIN, the workforce journey company, today announced the official close of its Series B investment round of $2.1 million in investments and, separately, a $2M line of credit.

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[Air EV in PR Newswire] AIR partners with SeaKeepers, empowering yachters with eVTOL flight capabilities

OurCrowd

The companies will collaborate to ensure that AIR’s eVTOL for personal ownership is capable of marine operations such as yacht transport and resupply. Read more here. The post [Air EV in PR Newswire] AIR partners with SeaKeepers, empowering yachters with eVTOL flight capabilities appeared first on OurCrowd Blog.

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Predicting Cloud Growth Rates for 2023

Tomasz Tunguz

I’m watching public company earnings to identify early weaknesses in the software market. Yesterday, Google & Amazon announced earnings which completes the picture. Growth will continue to slow this year. A year ago, AWS, GCP, & Azure averaged 44% annual growth. Today, that figure has dropped to 27%. Amazon also guided to lower growth rates in the future.

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How Top Tech CFOs Solve Annual Planning’s Biggest Challenges

Gearing up for 2025 annual planning? Our latest eBook from the Operators Guild is your ultimate guide. Discover real-world solutions and best practices shared by top CFOs, drawn directly from discussions within OG’s vibrant online community. Learn from senior executives at high-growth tech startups as they outline financial planning strategies, align CEO and board goals, and coordinate budgets across departments.

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How to get your business funded. Start with a solid cofounding team

Founder Bounty

Every top tier of any company looks for a solid team more then anything else. Having interviewed at YC and talking to alumni everyone talks about the same thing. A solid team with a natural fit that can get through any hard times is essential to build a scalable business.  I have also been through techstars. Working with someone you just met is simply not good enough to get your business funded Its best to work with someone you know from before.

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20 Proven Business Ideas For Students

Feedough

Starting a business isn’t a feat accomplished only by people. Read more The post 20 Proven Business Ideas For Students appeared first on Feedough.

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Onehouse is building a neutral data lake integration layer on top of Apache Hudi

TechCrunch

Onehouse emerged last year with a cloud data lake product built on top of the open source Apache Hudi project. The startup wants to act as an integration layer to move data between different repositories, rather than competing directly with larger data lake vendors like Snowflake and Databricks. Today the company announced a $25 million Series A. Company founder and CEO Vinoth Chandar came up with the idea for Hudi while he was an engineer at Uber in 2016, and eventually decided to start a compa

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Symbolic testing with Halmos: Leveraging existing tests for formal verification

Andreessen Horowitz

… The post Symbolic testing with Halmos: Leveraging existing tests for formal verification appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.

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5 Ways You Can Win Faster with Gen AI in Sales

Incorporating generative AI (gen AI) into your sales process can speed up your wins through improved efficiency, personalized customer interactions, and better informed decision- making. Gen AI is a game changer for busy salespeople and can reduce time-consuming tasks, such as customer research, note-taking, and writing emails, and provide insightful data analysis and recommendations.