Tue.Aug 23, 2022

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Cultivating Inclusivity: Storytelling To Foster Belonging and Inclusion

Venture Well

Learn how to cultivate a sense of belonging through storytelling in your classroom by utilizing stories from mentors and teaching students how to tell their own. The post Cultivating Inclusivity: Storytelling To Foster Belonging and Inclusion appeared first on VentureWell.

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Disney-backed Inworld raises new cash for its AI-powered virtual characters

TechCrunch

If software is eating the world, AI isn’t far behind. AI-powered text-, art- and audio-generating systems will soon make — and already are making — their way into the tools people use every day, from programming environments and spellcheck plugins to concept art creation platforms. The video game industry is no exception to this, and that hardly comes as a surprise.

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Y Combinator Top Companies - August 2022

Y Combinator

Today we’re excited to release an update to the YC Top Companies list. The list includes private and acquired companies valued at $150M or more as of July 31, 2022, and is sorted by valuation (YC’s public companies are featured here ). We’ve also published an update to the YC Breakthrough Companies list which highlights fast-growing companies that have received significant additional investment from YC.

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YC-backed Zywa, a neobank for Gen Z, raises $3M to expand across MENA

TechCrunch

Dubai-based Zywa, a neobank for Gen Z, plans to fuel its growth in the United Arabs Emirates (U.A.E), and to kick-start its expansion to Saudi Arabia and Egypt after raising $3 million seed funding at over $30 million (110 million AED) valuation. The new funding follows the $1 million pre-seed backing it secured in February this year. Goodwater Capital, Dubai Future District Fund, Rebel Fund, Trampoline Venture Partners, Zemu VC, a number of prominent European family offices, and strategic angel

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Digitalization: 5 Tech Updates That Will Help You Survive The Recession & Thrive

Lack of digitalization decreases business competitiveness. To thrive, embracing modern solutions becomes essential. The approach to digitalization often aligns with a company's business model. This shift not only boosts productivity but also automates processes and improves security. The tech market offers a wealth of technologies tailored for management, planning, and forecasting, replacing outdated pen-and-paper methods.

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Investing in Ready Player Me

Andreessen Horowitz

Interoperability has long been a key guiding principle of the Metaverse – a vision that we can bring our digital identity and assets with us as we travel between virtual worlds. Yet today, the largest games and virtual worlds are … The post Investing in Ready Player Me appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.

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More Trending

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Remote Startups Will Win the War for Top Talent

Andreessen Horowitz

The ease and speed with which you can now buy nearly anything — truly, anything — online is often taken for granted: not just food, but cars, homes, blue-chip art, even a college education. In the past 30 years, we have grown to trust the internet in a way we could never have imagined in. Read More. The post Remote Startups Will Win the War for Top Talent appeared first on Future.

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ConverseNow expands its drive-thru ordering tech as it bags another $10M

TechCrunch

Some fast-food drive-thru experiences were immortalized by Joe Pesci in “Lethal Weapon 2” (expletives and all) when he basically said you never get a correct order. Fast-forward to today, and the technology is still a bit lacking, and any number of situations, from people talking in the background to a noisy engine, can inhibit the order-taker from hearing and relaying your order accurately.

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A Real-World MBA Is the Fastest Way to Transition from a Job to Making Money Online

Entrepreneur's Handbook

Here’s how I (and many others) did it Continue reading on Entrepreneur's Handbook ».

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Tier Mobility lays off 180 people amid poor funding climate

TechCrunch

Tier Mobility, the German micromobility giant that recently acquired Spin from Ford , is laying off 16% of staff, or 180 people, according to a LinkedIn post by CEO Lawrence Leuschner. “Ultimately, we have to respond to the current economic and funding climate, reducing the number of projects and business lines we are focussing on as a company in order to accelerate our path to profitability,” wrote Leuschner.

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The Big Payoff of Application Analytics

Outdated or absent analytics won’t cut it in today’s data-driven applications – not for your end users, your development team, or your business. That’s what drove the five companies in this e-book to change their approach to analytics. Download this e-book to learn about the unique problems each company faced and how they achieved huge returns beyond expectation by embedding analytics into applications.

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These 8 Copywriting Frameworks Will Teach You More About Marketing Than a College Degree

Entrepreneur's Handbook

Use them with email, landing pages, and digital content Continue reading on Entrepreneur's Handbook ».

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Call it venture farming season, because seed rounds are kicking butt

TechCrunch

TechCrunch+ dug into the late-stage funding market yesterday using recent data from Carta to explore how the largest startup rounds are changing. Catching up those who missed the piece: We are seeing late-stage startup rounds shrink rapidly, even if valuations for the startups closest to going public are proving stickier than we perhaps expected. Today we’re flipping the script and looking at the earliest startup stage, using the same dataset as before.

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5 Customer Horror Stories That Can Make You Regret Being an Entrepreneur

Entrepreneur's Handbook

And how to deal with them without throwing in the towel or derailing your entire business. Continue reading on Entrepreneur's Handbook ».

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Daily Crunch: Former Apple employee pleads guilty to stealing autonomous vehicle design details

TechCrunch

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Goood [time of day] dear [name]. You know what we’re psyched about? The agenda for TC Disrupt just dropped , and it’s going to be an absolute corker of an event. Aaaah. Check out what’s happening on our four (Count ’em!

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PE Mastery: CAPTARGET's Playbook for Quality Lead Flow

CAPTARGET presents a masterclass in M&A deal sourcing. Learn to cast a wide net, embracing seller self-identification. Consistency is the linchpin: keep the origination process steady for a reliable flow of opportunities. Diversify your tactics, employing various tools and vendors. Tech matters! Understand DNS settings, domain authority, and brand presence for optimal outreach.

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Community of Cultivators: Edition 64

GCUC

Here at GCUC we are immensely fortunate to cross paths and work with so many amazing people. Through our work, we’ve cultivated a global. The post Community of Cultivators: Edition 64 appeared first on GCUC Community.

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Mastering the B2C2B game: 6 lessons to learn before you launch

TechCrunch

Jonathan Naymark. Contributor. Share on Twitter. Jonathan Naymark is the general manager of Codecademy for Business at Codecademy , an online learning platform that offers courses across web development, data science, cybersecurity and more. Launching a B2B product within a B2C company presents distinct challenges as you attempt to strike a balance between successfully establishing a new product and maintaining your original business.

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How To Use Instagram Reels As A Marketing Tool?

Feedough

Usually, businesses spend a lot of money running ads to. Read more. The post How To Use Instagram Reels As A Marketing Tool? appeared first on Feedough.

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Deposits banks $5M for its plug-and-play approach to financial product creation

TechCrunch

More companies are adding payments and other financial features to their offerings; however, this often requires technical expertise that some don’t have. Enter Deposits , a Dallas-based finance startup offering a cloud-based, plug-and-play feature to simplify the implementation of digital banking tools for companies like credit unions, community banks, insurers, retailers and brands.

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Monetizing Analytics Features

Think your customers will pay more for data visualizations in your application? Five years ago, they may have. But today, dashboards and visualizations have become table stakes. Turning analytics into a source of revenue means integrating advanced features in unique, hard-to-steal ways. Download this white paper to discover which features will differentiate your application and maximize the ROI of your analytics.

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TechCrunch+ roundup: Shame-free down rounds, checkout flow tune-up, SaaS tsunami

TechCrunch

Turning one-time customers into repeat buyers takes on heightened importance during a downturn. Acquiring one new user can be a heavy lift, but finding ways to reduce friction during shopping and checkout is a proven method for boosting the lifetime value of existing customers. An important note: One study found that password difficulties cause nearly 60% of consumers to abandon their shopping carts before completing a purchase.

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Ramp will now let businesses flexibly finance bills

TechCrunch

In the startup world, adding lines of business is always a risk. A company can spread itself too thin and end up not doing a great job at much of anything. Or it can stumble upon an offering that not only is a hit, but a hit that’s growing faster than its original, core product. The latter appears to be true in Ramp’s case. The corporate spend startup launched its bill pay feature in October of 2021, building upon its corporate card business and accounting software product.

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Pitch your startup at TechCrunch Live’s Minneapolis event

TechCrunch

TechCrunch is thrilled to be (virtually) headed to Minneapolis, Minnesota. The event takes place on September 7 at 2:00 pm CDT/12:00 pm PDT. It’s free to attend, and it’s free to submit your Minneapolis-area startup to the pitch-off competition. I hope you can make it. Just like every TechCrunch Live event, the program features entrepreneurs and investors who will share their stories with the goal of helping others build better venture-backed businesses.

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ModernLoop aims to automate the process of scheduling job candidate interviews

TechCrunch

With the economic turbulence, recruiting is slowing down. Layoffs.fyi , a crowdsourced tech startup layoffs tracker, shows that 60 companies executed layoffs within the past month or so, with over 16,000 employees laid off. It’s not limited to tech. According to a recent Gartner survey , one in three HR executives across all industries said their organizations had slowed hiring in response to the volatile market.

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How to Stay Competitive in the Evolving State of Martech

Marketing technology is essential for B2B marketers to stay competitive in a rapidly changing digital landscape — and with 53% of marketers experiencing legacy technology issues and limitations, they’re researching innovations to expand and refine their technology stacks. To help practitioners keep up with the rapidly evolving martech landscape, this special report will discuss: How practitioners are integrating technologies and systems to encourage information-sharing between departments and pr

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Mural raised $5.6M to help brands deploy DAO treasuries

TechCrunch

Mural, a crypto firm focused on decentralized autonomous organizations ( DAOs ) infrastructure, has raised $5.6 million in seed funding, the company’s co-founders Sinclair Toffa and Kevin Alvarez-Fung exclusively told TechCrunch. This was the company’s first outside capital raise through investors like Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Ventures, Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group, Firstminute Capital, 186 Ventures and a handful of founders.

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Indian crypto entrepreneur’s blockchain venture seeks seed funding at $200 million valuation

TechCrunch

Indian crypto exchange WazirX’s co-founder Nischal Shetty is in advanced stages of talks to raise a maiden funding round for his new venture, sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. Shetty is raising $20 million to $30 million in a seed financing round for his blockchain startup Shardeum, sources said, requesting anonymity as the deliberations are ongoing and private.

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Scalenut’s AI copywriter also helps content make a dent in search engine results

TechCrunch

AI copywriters are getting a lot of attention from investors. A couple that have recently raised funding include Copy.ai and Copysmith. Now Scalenut is entering the arena with a $3.1 million funding round led by Saama Capital and Amit Singhal, formerly a senior vice president at Google and head of Google Search. Launched earlier this year by Mayank Jain, Gaurav Goyal and Saurabh Wadhawan, Scalenut says it has since signed up 100,000 users, primarily SMBs and mid-market sized businesses, grown it

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Qloo raises cash to expand its AI-driven recommendation API

TechCrunch

Policymakers have been cracking down on platforms that collect consumer data, implementing rules that require companies to be transparent about the details they gather and use for commercial purposes. For example, last year, Virginia passed the Colorado Data Protection Act, which requires businesses to obtain consent before processing sensitive information, disclose when the information will be sold and allow customers to opt out.

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How To Package & Price Embedded Analytics

Just by embedding analytics, app owners can charge 24% more for their product. How much value could you add? This framework from Software Pricing Partners explains how application enhancements can extend your product offerings. You’ll learn: How to take a disciplined approach to pricing The three elements of the Packaging Decision Framework Ways to structure your new embedded analytics offering Download the White Paper to learn about How To Package & Price Embedded Analytics.