Wed.Apr 13, 2022

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The Founder and Investor Trust Problem: It's not what you think.

This is going to be BIG.

Whenever I submit a term sheet, I always caveat it by saying the following: “This is the one time we’re completely misaligned. I’m incentivized to buy up as much of the company at as low a price as possible and you’re incentivized to sell as little of the company as possible by raising the price.”. Founders seem to get that. The price negotiation process is pretty straightforward, and once a deal has been agreed upon we move on.

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Trust But Verify: The Importance of Reference Checking

The Seraf Compass

There is an old proverb that was adopted by Ronald Reagan during the later part of the Cold War and which became a signature phrase of Reagan’s in the mid-1980s. When talking about the Cold War adversaries, Reagan always liked to say we should “Trust, but Verify.” It came to summarize the approach the US would use after the signing of a landmark nuclear disarmament treaty.

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The 6 Most Common Obstacles You’ll Meet as an Entrepreneur

Entrepreneur's Handbook

Be well prepared for what to expect instead of hoping for positive experiences only Photo by Sebastian Herrmann on Unsplash Don’t get me wrong?—?I love the magic in the entrepreneurial world. But just like any other exceptional adventure, entrepreneurship comes with pros and cons, and there are plenty of obstacles and difficulties that need to be taken into account, especially when just starting.

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8 cannabis investors share their outlook on the European market in H1 2022

TechCrunch

Germany’s government created quite a buzz when it announced that recreational cannabis would be legalized during the current term. Does this mean that we’ll see recreational use of cannabis for adults becoming a common policy in Europe? It’s too soon to say. After interviewing several active investors in cannabis-related startups, we learned that the regulatory and functional landscape in Europe is just as fragmented as it is in North America.

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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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A Behind-The-Scenes Look at How Investors Receive Your Pitch Deck

Entrepreneur's Handbook

A Very Honest Guide to Writing Your Fundraise Pitch Deck How to optimise yours for success Congratulations! You’ve started a company, assembled a super squad of founders, and built out the MVP of your product. It’s going pretty well, and you think it’s the right time to speed up your growth by raising some money. You know you need a pitch deck to do this and so fire up your slide software of choice and crack your knuckles, ready to wow.

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SE Asia-based ESG and sustainable finance startup GoImpact raises Series A funding

AsiaTechDaily

Bookmark ( 0 ) Please login to bookmark Username or Email Address Password Remember Me No account yet? Register GoImpact , an ESG and Sustainable Finance start-up , announced the closing of its Series-A round fund-raising, at a valuation of $22 million, tripling that of the last round. The investors comprised a Hong Kong-listed company, Oriental Watch Holdings Limited, and a leading Hong Kong-based private investor.

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Announcing the agenda for TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility 2022

TechCrunch

TC Sessions: Mobility is back, and this year we are bringing together the best and brightest founders, investors, engineers and experts on the future of transportation for a two-day, in-person event May 18 and May 19 in San Mateo, California. An online day will follow on May 20 to give our audience, including those who were unable to attend, a chance to tune in online and catch highlights from the live event, network and watch the full sessions.

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Job Opportunity:  Marketing Associate/Manager:

Ben Franklin Technology Partners

A long-standing partnership between the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and Penn State University, Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Central and Northern PA is the largest early-stage investor and supporter of tech startups and small manufacturers in the program’s 32-county footprint. Headquartered in State College, the program has satellite offices in Erie, Harrisburg, and Johnstown.

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Digital bank Umba raises $15M, plans to expand into three new African markets

TechCrunch

There’s no shortage of digital banks in Nigeria and, in general, in Africa. As the region continues to experience rapid growth in mobile usage and the corresponding growing young population, these fintechs think this is the right time to provide financial services to every market category, from the banked to the unbanked. We’ve covered a host of these platforms in the past.

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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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How to avoid greenwashing your business

Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative

How to avoid greenwashing your business. By Shannon Courtney. With the growing impact of climate change globally, many companies are implementing sustainable business practices to reduce their carbon footprint on the planet and market to green-friendly consumers. But how do you know if a business is making substantive changes to implement sustainable operations or merely capitalizing on consumers’ interest in environmental responsibility by creating the facade of being a green business while con

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Fintech Brex bets big on software, lands DoorDash as a customer

TechCrunch

The corporate spend space continues to heat up. Today, decacorn Brex revealed that it is making a big push into financial software with the release of a new spend management product called Brex Empower. And it’s making the leap with one high-profile customer already signed up — DoorDash. Now, normally, a startup announcing a new product is hardly fodder for a news story.

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[Guild Education in WRAL TechWire] Lowe’s launches new job, workforce training program, free for workers

OurCrowd

MOORESVILLE – Lowe’s will begin a new program focused on education. According to a statement, the Mooresville-headquartered company has launched a program it believes will make it easier for some 300,000 company employees, both part-time and full-time, to participate in education programming without taking on debt. Read more here. The post [Guild Education in WRAL TechWire] Lowe’s launches new job, workforce training program, free for workers appeared first on OurCrowd Blog.

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Latin America’s decline in VC investment isn’t necessarily bad news

TechCrunch

That global venture capital slowed down in Q1 2022 might no longer be news to you. But global numbers can hide diverging realities around the world, and a closer look at regional data shows us that it is indeed the case. According to CB Insights’ latest State of Venture report , the amount of funding flowing into U.S.-based and Asian startups did decline, in line with the global trend.

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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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What Is Digital Economy? – Importance, Types, Examples

Feedough

The world has become digital and so has the economy. Read more. The post What Is Digital Economy? – Importance, Types, Examples appeared first on Feedough.

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Why EV startups should’ve hit the brakes before merging with a SPAC

TechCrunch

The blank-check boom that made real many electric vehicle manufacturers’ dreams of going public may be nearing a close. One such company, Faraday Future, is even in danger of being delisted, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last week. Faraday Future, Lordstown Motors, Lucid Motors, Nikola and Canoo — nearly all the EV manufacturers that took a shortcut to an IPO by merging with a publicly traded shell company — have faced SEC scrutiny, sending th

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How Too Many Bad Nights of Sleep Inspired This Entrepreneur to Launch His Dream Business

Entrepreneur - Entrepreneurs Category

A conversation about the launch and growth of mattress and bedding company Molecule. .

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Daily Crunch: Brex says DoorDash is ‘first of many’ new enterprise customers to come

TechCrunch

? To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PT, subscribe here. Welcome to the Daily Crunch for Wednesday, April 13, 2022! Tomorrow, we are giddy with excitement to be attending Early Stage (if you’re coming, don’t forget to submit your pitch deck !). If you didn’t get your tix yet, it’s still possible to snag a last-minute ticket to join the fun in San Francisco.

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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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His Drive to Help His Wife Fight a Disease Led to the Launch of a Health and Wellness Business

Entrepreneur - Entrepreneurs Category

Inside the birth and launch of Rebalance Health.

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Zoom launches AI-powered features aimed at sales teams

TechCrunch

Today during its second Work Transformation Summit this week, Zoom announced Zoom IQ for Sales, a product that uses AI to analyze sales meetings and deals to provide insights. It’s the company’s first explicit foray into sales automation software, a market that — according to Verified Market Research — could grow to $7.3 billion in size by 2028.

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How Too Many Bad Nights of Sleep Inspired This Entrepreneur to Launch His Dream Business

Entrepreneur - Entrepreneurs Category

A conversation about the launch and growth of mattress and bedding company Molecule.

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BlueOcean raises $30M for its AI-based brand intelligence platform

TechCrunch

The medium is the message more than ever these days, and brands are faced with a challenge — but also opportunity — to capture what consumers think about them and their products if they can harness and better understand those messages, via whichever medium is being used to deliver them. Today, a company called BlueOcean that has built an artificial intelligence-powered platform that it says can produce those insights is announcing $30 million in funding, money that it will be using t

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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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[Quantum Machines in PR Newswire] European institutions announce research project to develop neural networks for quantum error correction

OurCrowd

TEL AVIV, Israel, PARIS and LYON, France and ERLANGEN, Germany, April 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Quantum Machines, creator of the Quantum Orchestration Platform, Alice&Bob, a leading European developer of quantum processors, and top-European quantum computing research groups led by Prof. Benjamin Huard from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon and Prof.

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Is the SaaS selloff over?

TechCrunch

Good morning! I am writing to you in the minutes before I have to pack up my writing and podcasting setups so that I can catch a few planes to San Francisco for Early Stage. (I’m moderating two sessions , including one on scaling ARR, so come hang!) My colleague and frequent collaborator Anna Heim wrote the real Exchange today and it’s a banger.

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[Bionaut Labs in yahoo!finance] California start-up sends tiny robots on voyage into brains

OurCrowd

Sending miniature robots deep inside the human skull to treat brain disorders has long been the stuff of science fiction — but it could soon become reality, according to a California start-up. Bionaut Labs plans its first clinical trials on humans in just two years for its tiny injectable robots, which can be carefully guided through the brain using magnets.

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Salsify secures $200M as the boom in e-commerce catapults its valuation to $2B

TechCrunch

E-commerce is booming, but it’s become increasingly apparent over the years that the businesses that are able to capitalize on that trend — and contribute to that growth — are those able to grasp the right technology to navigate the space. Today, Salsify , one of the startups building e-commerce solutions to that end, is announcing a big round of $200 million, a sum that speaks both to the demand in the market, and its success to date. “It’s been very busy,” C

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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.