Sat.Jul 13, 2019 - Fri.Jul 19, 2019

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Doing well by doing good: Impact investing & the OurCrowd Impact Fund

OurCrowd

The heart of social entrepreneurship is developing ideas that can solve problems and turn a profit. The global impact ecosystem is starting to take shape. Investments can be powerful. When successful, they can benefit both investors and the invested. Money poured into a business that takes off provides job opportunities and helps the economy grow while investors recoup their money and make a profit too.

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The Strategic Question at Seed Today

Tomasz Tunguz

I’ve written before about the Jacob’s Ladder of Fundraising. The Jacob’s Ladder is a children’s toy that flips over, and it’s a great metaphor for the seed market. Seed rounds are rapidly approaching and now often equal to the sizes of Series As just five years ago. The chart above shows the mean round size in the US across.

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Make All the Asks

This is going to be BIG.

“I didn’t want to bother you.” “I didn’t want to impose.” “I didn’t want to show up with my hand out.” “I feel like if you were interested, you would have said something already.” “I wasn’t sure if it was ok to ask.” “I haven’t spoken to that person in a while—it might be too random now.” Do any of these lines sound familiar? Too often, I meet founders that need something, and feel awkward about asking for it for a variety of reasons.

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Smart Way to Source Innovation: Activate Product Development

UBI Global

Sourcing Innovation for Product Development Innovation is a key focus for businesses looking to stay competitive. Why? Because a company and its legions of executives, managers, and even researchers sometimes run out of ideas. Fresh perspective is needed. This is especially true when it comes to managing- and reimagining– its current offerings.

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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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Why Michigan Could Become a Startup Powerhouse

HPA

The unicorns in Michigan demonstrate a fertile startup ecosystem with unlimited opportunities. A couple weeks ago, StockX became the state’s newest in a quickly-growing cohort of unicorns, which includes two other startups that also earned the elite status this year. In February, OneStream Software announced that it had not only become a unicorn but that it is profitable as well, an achievement that few startups can claim — even by the time they exit.

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More Trending

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3 Ways to Apply an Agile Mindset

Entrepreneurs' Organization

Written for EO by Sarah Fruy, director of online marketing at Pantheon Platform. I admit it. I was a traditionalist. For a long time, I followed a one-step-at-a-time approach to project management. All my efforts went to seeing the end product through—not knowing whether it would even be successful after launch. I would spend lengthy cycles working toward a goal.

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Women Face More Challenges When it Comes to Venture Capital Funding

Smart Hustle Magazine

There are more than 11.6 million businesses in the United States that are women-owned. Out of businesses that generate $1 million or more, 1 in 5 is owned by women. Being a female entrepreneur is looking better each and every day. But, with all of the progress that’s been made, there are still looming disparities. . The number one challenge women face is a significant disadvantage in securing access to venture capital funding compared to their male peers.

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Video Games, a Single Mom, and “Brilliant A s”: How this CTO Became a Successful Tech (and Diversity) Leader

HPA

Get to know John. John Higginson is the CTO at Enova, a large publicly-traded Chicago FinTech company that’s extended over $20B in credit to customers worldwide. At Enova, John is responsible for driving the company’s technology strategy to leverage advanced digital experiences and data science to deliver on its mission to help hard-working people access fast, trustworthy credit.

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[HIL in Mirage News] How Israel Innovation Authority and CERN are infusing Israeli innovation ecosystem with

OurCrowd

The Knowledge Transfer group at CERN has initiated a pilot programme in collaboration with the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA). Read more here. The post [HIL in Mirage News] How Israel Innovation Authority and CERN are infusing Israeli innovation ecosystem with appeared first on OurCrowd.

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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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Key Risks of Angel Investing

The Seraf Compass

? Early stage investing is an inherently risky way to invest. The list of high level risks is long and includes financing risk, technical risk, and market risk. As angel investors, you need to be aware of the key risks you are taking with your investment.

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Whales Not Unicorns

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

I have been vocal here that I do not like the term Unicorn to describe highly valued venture-backed startups. Unicorns are mythical creatures that don’t really exist and highly valued venture-backed startups do exist. They might be rare, but they are not fictional. A better word would be Whales. And it turns out that the Whaling industry in the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries looked remarkably similar to today’s venture capital business.

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How to Manage a Board

Y Combinator

With special contributions from Nic Dardenne. One of the most common questions we hear from founders is “How do I manage my board?” It’s something that provokes anxiety, because this is the first time the founder/CEO is subject to external supervision, and the board has powers that include the firing of the CEO and the senior management. It is natural to feel this way.

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In the News: Who’s hungry for FoodTech? We are

OurCrowd

The food industry is GIANT – $12 trillion and growing. The transformation of the food industry is active around us, from tech companies developing foodtech solutions related to composition, like Beyond Meat, as well as supply chain and analytics. C heck out my 3-minute interview on CNBC where I talk about why I’m bullish on food companies, and read on below for more tech industry highlights from the week.

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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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GCUC’s Amazon Prime 2019 Top Picks

GCUC

Lets talk prime day, shall we? This is one of our favorite days of the year for 2 reasons. We love to shop and amazon is a site we frequent (sorry wallet). This year we have our own GCUC Amazon store. “What does that even mean?”. We have created a one stop shop for you to find all of the little (and big) things that you would want and need in your space!

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Climate Adaptation?

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

While society debates how to deal with climate change, there are some scientists who are now saying that that time has passed and we now need to start planning society’s adaptation to the climate tragedy we have created on planet earth. This scientific paper from roughly one year ago is super depressing. I am linking to it because I read it this week and it certainly made me consider how our way of life may change dramatically in my lifetime.

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Well-timed pivots can make a project successful

Innovation 2 Enterprise

By Scott Meacham. Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman. I set a goal for this summer’s series of columns to reflect on and write about my lessons-learned during my past six years of immersion in entrepreneurship. Our focus at i2E is on high-growth technology or life sciences businesses, but startups of every stripe are vital to Oklahoma’s future. In many regards, what is true for high-growth entrepreneurship is true for Main Street.

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10x Engineers

Continuations

A recent series of tweets about identifying 10x software engineers set off a lot of making fun of the author for perpetuating a myth. Given the wording of the tweets too they made a particularly easy target (I can’t actually find them right now or I would link to them). All that poking fun though obscures some interesting questions about individual and team productivity in software engineering.

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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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[TechSee in Yahoo Finance] Vodafone PT-TechSee Partnership Brings Innovation to the Customer Care Center

OurCrowd

Vodafone PT, a leading communications service provider that delivers fixed, mobile, TV and integrated communication and entertainment services to millions of Portuguese residential and commercial customers, in partnership with TechSee, the category leader in Intelligent Visual Assistance, today announced the launch of an innovative contact center technology to further enhance the Vodafone customer experience.

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Abridge

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

We seed funded a company late last year called Abridge and the company went public yesterday with their iOS and Android apps. Naomi wrote about the investment on the USV blog. I want to focus on the product because I think it is a game changer for all of us that access the health care system regularly. The Abridge mobile app ( get it here ) allows anyone to record a medical visit with a doctor, a nurse, or any other health care professional.

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My Journey as EO Global Chair

Entrepreneurs' Organization

We recently spoke with Rosemarie “Bubu” Andres about her term as the FY2018/2019 EO Global Chair. Bubu is a proud EO Philippines member and co-founder of Candy Corner , the number one source of quality candies and chocolates in the Philippines. What inspired you to seek the position of Global Chair? There were many things. One factor was the realization that, since I was the only female Global Board member at that time, not seeking the position would mean there would be no female Global Chair ag

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Taller con Miguel Solórzano: Calidad y proceso de manufactura de alimentos

Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative

Este taller discutirá las buenas prácticas de manufactura de alimentos para emprendedores; las técnicas de medición de la calidad de un producto; la relación entre calidad, precio y producto; y cómo manejar y sacar provecho de los desperdicios. Participa para mejorar tus procesos de manufactura y mejorar la satisfacción de tus clientes. Fecha: 27 de julio.

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Your Fractional Finance and Accounting Team

Mighty Financial specializes in supporting the financial aspirations of small businesses and entrepreneurs. With our comprehensive bookkeeping and precise accounting expertise with decades of experience across diverse financial roles, our team offers tailor-made services ranging from essential bookkeeping to strategic fractional CFO support, catered specifically to the unique challenges of technology companies, startups, and SMEs.

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[OurCrowd in Crowdfund Insider] OurCrowd Provides Perspective on Portfolio Performance: 35 Exits Since 2013

OurCrowd

The digitization of early-stage investing has provided a new channel for smaller investors to gain access to this asset class. OurCrowd is one of the largest and, perhaps, most successful in this sector. Read more here. The post [OurCrowd in Crowdfund Insider] OurCrowd Provides Perspective on Portfolio Performance: 35 Exits Since 2013 appeared first on OurCrowd.

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Video Of The Week: Fireside Chat With Brian Armstrong

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

Back in May, during Blockchain Week in NYC, I had the pleasure of interviewing the CEO of our portfolio company Coinbase , Brian Armstrong. We started off talking about their rapidly growing institutional business, but quickly got to talking about everything Coinbase. Brian also gets a question in for me about 17mins into the talk. It’s about 10 minutes of me asking Brian questions and then another 20 minutes of Q&A from the audience.

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From Rookie to Rainmaker and Over the Rainbow

Entrepreneurs' Organization

Lesley Waterkeyn together with her sister Sandy van Dijk published an easy-to-follow reference guide for all those “what-ifs” experienced along the entrepreneurial gauntlet—from startup phase and on. We asked her more about her new book, The Entrepreneur’s Playbook: From Rookie to Rainmaker in Seven Steps. You recently released the book The Entrepreneur’s Playbook: From Rookie to Rainmaker in Seven Steps.

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Camille Fournier on Managing Technical Teams

Y Combinator

Camille Fournier is a Managing Director at Two Sigma and the former CTO of Rent The Runway. She’s also the author of The Manager’s Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change. You can find her on Twitter @skamille. Topics. 00:00 – Intro. 00:35 – Why do many individual contributors (ICs) never experience a good manager? 3:15 – How did the ideology of management being bad become pervasive in startups?

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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!