Today's Entrepreneurship Pulse
LoopFeedback launches to close AI feedback gap with $12M seed round
Former Google and Apple researchers Dr. Maya Patel and Dr. Alex Liu have founded LoopFeedback, a startup building a real‑time human‑in‑the‑loop feedback system for large language models. The company announced a $12 million seed round led by Andrees, aiming to improve model alignment and safety.
Also developing:
By the numbers: abcoffee raises $7.35M in pre‑Series B
Pave Space Raises $40 Million to Develop European Heavy Kickstage
Swiss startup Pave Space has secured $40 million in seed funding to build a 20‑metric‑ton orbital transfer vehicle capable of moving up to five metric tons from low‑Earth orbit to medium, geostationary or lunar trajectories in less than a day. The heavy kickstage, slated for its first flight by 2029, aims to replace months‑long electric propulsion climbs with hour‑scale transfers, offering a cost‑effective, launch‑vehicle‑agnostic solution. Pave has already booked eight reservation agreements and is backed by investors including Visionaries Club and Creandum. The company highlights the strategic importance of rapid, sovereign access to high‑energy orbits for Europe’s fragmented telecommunications market.
91trucks Acquires Motorfloor and Trucksfloor Operator Indiyanet
India’s leading digital commercial‑vehicle marketplace 91trucks has acquired Motorfloor and Trucksfloor, the two platforms operated by Bhubaneswar‑based Indiyanet. The deal merges two of the country’s top‑traffic sites, creating a more comprehensive buying and selling experience for trucks, buses and three‑wheelers....
Building the Path to 3D-Printed Organs, Cellbricks Raises €10M for Biofabricated Tissue Implants
Berlin‑based Cellbricks Therapeutics secured €10 million (≈$11 million) in funding, including a €7 million seed round and over €3 million of non‑dilutive capital, to advance its light‑based biofabrication platform. The company aims to commercialise vascularised human tissue implants for complex wound healing and breast...
Switzerland’s PAVE Space Closes $40 Million Seed Funding Round
Swiss startup PAVE Space announced a $40 million seed round led by Visionaries Club and Creandum, accelerating its LYOBA heavy‑lift kick stage development. The company, a 2024 spin‑off from the Gruyère Space Programme, targets rapid satellite transport between orbits and plans...
I Must Be Doing Something Right
PZ Myers explains that his cooperative blog, freethoughtblogs, survives on a modest Patreon contribution that covers server costs, leaving the site only slightly in the red and without profit ambitions. He contrasts this lean model with Trump Media & Technology...
Notch Raises $30M to Expand AI Operating System for Regulated Industries
Notch Ltd., a former specialty insurer turned AI startup, announced a $30 million Series A round to accelerate its AI operating system for regulated sectors, especially insurance, across the United States. The platform provides transparent, auditable AI agents that automate both front‑office...
Airbase Emerges From Stealth With $5M to Automate Spectrum Allocation
Airbase announced its emergence from stealth with a $5 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, joined by Squadra Ventures and Founders You Should Know. The startup aims to automate the Federal Communications Commission’s outdated, manual spectrum‑allocation workflow that relies on...
Nick Candy-Backed Fintech VibePay Falls Into Liquidation, Job Losses
Fintech VibePay, a UK peer‑to‑peer payment app backed by Nick Candy’s Candy Ventures, entered liquidation after investors withdrew funding. The company, founded in 2019 by Luke Massie, had raised over £12 million (approximately $15 million) and aimed to enable open‑banking account‑to‑account transfers...
What the Heck Is a 28th Regime?
In this episode of The Sound of Economics, Bruegel experts Reinhilde Wöglers, Fiona Scott Morton, and Professor Tobias Tröger discuss the European Commission’s new “28th regime” – a voluntary corporate‑law tool aimed at simplifying company formation and attracting venture‑capital investment across...
The Man Who Wired Africa
Dare Okoudjou, a Benin‑born telecom engineer, founded MFS Africa—now rebranded as Onafriq—to build the continent’s underlying payments rail. The network interconnects more than 500 million mobile wallets and 200 million bank accounts across 40 African nations, turning a fragmented ecosystem into a...
Cursor's $29B Valuation Tested as Investors and Demand Falter
Cursor, the AI‑driven code generation platform valued at $29 billion, is seeing investor enthusiasm cool and market demand soften. The shift highlights broader uncertainty for AI‑assisted development tools that power DevOps pipelines.
OpenAI Pulls the Plug on Sora, Ending $1 Billion Disney Pact
OpenAI announced today that it is shutting down Sora, its AI video‑generation product, and terminating a $1 billion partnership with Disney. The move reflects mounting compute expenses and a strategic pivot toward enterprise and developer‑focused AI offerings.
Spotify & Monzo Execs Join Unicorn Startup, Spendesk
Spendesk, the AI‑powered spend‑management platform, announced the hiring of Quentin Vigneau as Chief Product Officer and Alan Wright as Chief Technical Officer. The appointments come as the company celebrates its first profitable year and launches a new finance category, Spend...
When Starting a Business, the End Is a Very Good Place to Start
Starting a business with the end in mind forces founders to choose the right legal entity, anticipate ownership changes, and embed exit‑oriented provisions from day one. The article compares sole proprietorships, LLCs, C‑corps and S‑corps, highlighting how each impacts tax...
Fintech Startup Kiwi Appoints Sumeet Basrani as CBO
Fintech startup Kiwi has named payments veteran Sumeet Basrani as its new Chief Business Officer, bolstering the firm’s leadership as it pivots toward mass‑scale credit distribution on India’s UPI network. Basrani arrives with more than 15 years of experience at...
Fashion Supply Startup Thread Factory Raises Pre-Seed Funding Led by AJVC
Thread Factory, a B2B fashion‑supply platform, secured a pre‑seed round of about $180,000, led by AJVC. The funding will boost its technology stack, expand the team, and grow its retailer‑manufacturer network across India. The startup reports an annual recurring revenue...
Togo's Quiet Rise as a Startup Contender
Togo’s tech ecosystem gained global attention when Lomé‑based super app Gozem closed a $30 million Series B round in February 2025, briefly placing the country among Africa’s top five startup funding destinations. The nation now hosts over 300 registered startups that have...
Two High School Students Built an App to Keep Their Classmates Off Their Phones at School
Two Los Angeles high‑school friends, Noah Fakheri and Brian Ohebshalom, launched LockedIn, an app that disables distracting applications with a triple‑tap when students step onto campus. The tool debuted at Milken Community School and is already being piloted at other...
Amazon Leo Prepares To Boost Satellite Production And Launch
Amazon Leo announced a plan to double its launch cadence, targeting 20 missions in the second year after completing 11 launches in the first year. The company already operates more than 200 satellites and has hundreds of flight‑ready units stored...
Exited Founder Podcast | Rachel Murphy: Selling to a Competitor and Building a Founder Exit Playbook
In this episode, host Brian Dukes talks with serial entrepreneur Rachel Murphy about her two successful exits—first a consultancy she built in her early 20s and later a healthcare‑government services firm she grew to an eight‑figure sale. Rachel shares how...
Fast&Up Parent Fullife Healthcare Raises Rs 300 Cr Led by Elev8
Fullife Healthcare, the parent of Fast&Up, secured Rs 300 crore (approximately $36 million) in a Series D round led by Elev8 Venture Partners, marking the investor’s first foray into the direct‑to‑consumer segment. The capital will fund brand acceleration, new product lines in digestive...
Cricketer Riyan Parag Backs Industrial Solutions Startup Proxgy
Cricketer Riyan Parag has invested roughly ₹2 crore (about $240,000) in industrial‑tech startup Proxgy, joining backers Ajinkya Rahane, Nikhil Kamath, Peyush Bansal and Suhail Sameer. Proxgy, founded in 2020, creates IoT‑enabled hardware and AI‑driven software to boost safety and efficiency for blue‑collar workers. The fresh capital...
Yazu Hospitality Targets Double-Digit Growth with 20 Pc Revenue Jump Next Year
Yazu Hospitality, a design‑led restaurant group founded in 2019, now runs eight outlets across five Indian cities, with its flagship Yazu brand contributing 85% of revenue. The company projects a 20% revenue increase next fiscal year, targeting Rs 60 crore (~$7.2 million) from...
Amity’s US$100M Raise Signals Southeast Asia’s AI Coming of Age
Thai AI group Amity announced a $100 million Series D round, the biggest generative‑AI raise in Southeast Asia, bringing its total capital to about $160 million. The funding backs a revenue run‑rate that has topped $100 million, driven largely by European operations, and fuels...
Communications Strategist Rachel Abad Launches Behaviour-Change Consultancy Looped-In
Communications strategist Rachel Abad has launched Looped‑in, a behaviour‑change consultancy aimed at embedding audience insight, concept testing and behavioural frameworks into communications planning. Abad brings 15 years of experience working with major Australian organisations such as the Level Crossing Removal...
Nigeria’s Power Problem Is Gutting Co-Working Margins
Co‑working operators in Lagos are being forced to relocate because soaring electricity costs, driven by the new service‑based tariff, are eroding margins. In Band A zones, a ₦200,000‑₦400,000 (≈$435‑$870) monthly bill can be cut to about ₦250,000 (≈$543) by moving to...
Custom AI Tools Automate Reviews, Boost Reliability
Building your own tools like GStack is an amazing experience. You come up with something you think might work and then two days later it replaces what you were doing before. Instead of /plan-ceo-review and /plan-eng-review sequentially, I find myself using...
Everyone Said Merging Mr Yum and Me&u Would Fail. Here’s What Actually Happened
The merger of Australian restaurant‑tech firms Mr Yum and me&u defied early scepticism by surviving a grueling first year of integration and emerging profitable by late 2025. Founders focused on disciplined system consolidation, customer migration, and cultural alignment rather than headline...
How Zwift Created a Global Fitness Unicorn - Steve Beckett
In this episode of Uncensored CMO, Steve Beckett—former Head of Cycling at Team Sky and the fifth employee of Zwift— walks through the creation of Zwift from a niche indoor cycling concept into a global fitness unicorn. He shares how...
Amazon Acquires Fauna Robotics, Adding $50,000 Sprout Humanoid to Its Portfolio
Amazon has completed the acquisition of Fauna Robotics, the New York startup behind the $50,000 Sprout humanoid robot. The deal, whose financial terms were not disclosed, brings a consumer‑focused robot into Amazon’s already massive warehouse‑robot fleet of over one million...
Startup Success Standards Have Shifted Upward—Now Exceptional Required
The definition of a “great” startup has changed. But many founders are still building like it’s 2018. A few shifts happened: 1) A $1B exit used to be the goal. Now it’s often just the baseline. 2) $100M ARR used to mean you...
Testing 20 Workers Forces Local Postgres Max_connections Scaling
I've scaled app servers, I've scaled HAProxy, I've scaled Postgres replica dbs, I've scaled job servers Never until today have I had to scale my local max_connections for Postgres but once you run 20 simultaneous workers doing full tests, now I...
Leap Forward
In this episode of Leap Forward, host David Orsenko chats with a founder and a pivotal early supporter—someone who believed in the founder before anyone else—to uncover the behind‑the‑scenes moments that shaped a successful startup. They recount how chance encounters,...
Rexi Raises $1.2M Pre-Seed Funding
Argentine fintech Rexi announced a $1.2 million pre‑seed round backed by multiple U.S. venture capital firms. The AI‑native platform automates bank reconciliation for fintechs, banks and payment companies by deploying intelligent agents that match transactions and resolve queries within minutes. The...
YC W26 Sets Record: 3× $1M Startups, 14%
YC Demo Day for W26 is in full swing The craziest stat: 3X more companies in this batch reached $1M annualized revenue than W25 Also crazy: the fastest revenue growth rate of YC history at 14% week on week growth *on average*...
AI Autopiloted Term Sheet, Closing Deals in Seconds
Sent a founder a term sheet. $500k @ $10m post. She replied, and CC’d my assistant. “Too low. Claude, double the check size, 3x the valuation, and introduce me to Zuck and Jensen.” I laughed, as if that would work. I keep those intros...
Icebergs Culinary Director Alex Prichard Leaves Current Role to Pursue Dream Venue
Alex Prichard, culinary director of Sydney’s iconic Icebergs Dining Room, announced he will leave his role after 11 years to launch his own restaurant. The new venue, Sara Dining, is slated to open in Berry on the NSW South Coast in...
Stop To‑Do Lists, Schedule Real Time Blocks
You’re killing your productivity if you’re still running on to-do lists. Most entrepreneurs have long, generic lists. Zero priority. Zero time for it.. The result? You end your day with it longer than you started. After 29 years of entrepreneurship, here’s what...
Snapshot Projects to Counter AI Non‑Determinism
The best way I learn is to to just DO THE THING and interact directly with customers. I love being able to own an early project and go into "Full Stack Founder" mode where I do everything from marketing, development...
The Real Cost of Undervaluing Human Capital in the GCC
Human capital is increasingly recognized as a strategic asset in the GCC, where talent scarcity and mobility demand a shift from treating HR as a support function to a core business driver. Companies that overlook employee experience face hidden costs...
Ninja Explores Riyadh Listing as Saudi Market Holds Steady Despite Tensions
Saudi quick‑commerce startup Ninja, founded in 2022, is weighing a Riyadh IPO after posting roughly $1 billion in 2025 revenue and targeting $1.6 billion in 2026. The company secured $250 million of funding in 2025, lifting its valuation to $1.5 billion and joining Saudi...
Phoenix Venture Partners Reaches Third Close of Debut Fund
Phoenix Venture Partners announced the third closing of its debut Phoenix Venture Partners Innovation Fund, bringing new investors from the United States, France, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE. The fund, which previously closed its second round at $50 million, targets...
Reforge Joins Miro to Scale AI Product Education
I’m excited to announce that @reforge is joining @MiroHQ . 10 years ago @andrewchen and I ran the first Reforge Growth Series. What started as a single course has grown into a community of over 100,000 alumni and SaaS...
Advisor Time Value Drives Rising Client Acquisition Costs
In our last report on Advisor Marketing, we found that the median client acquisition cost (CAC) for advisory firms was $3,800 when including both "hard dollar" expenditures on marketing and the "soft dollar" value of advisors' time. https://t.co/BTglcsTaaR Acquisition costs...
Human Psychology, Not Novelty, Drives App Success
new apps and tech don’t succeed because they’re innovative or cool, but rather because of a deeper set of human tendencies…
Man Charges $600–$1,200 to Skip Airport Security Lines
As Airport Security Waits Spiral, One Man Started A Line-Sitting Business — $600 To $1,200 To Skip The Wait - View from the Wing https://t.co/WcrOZafP1H
Early Failures Forge Growth: Build, Ship, Learn
My first website was embarrassing... First blog posts were rough. First talks were brutal. But reps build range... Build. Ship. Learn. Decide.
Earn $10K Fast by Selling Writing Services
Made my first $10,000 on the internet not with digital products but by selling a writing service. This is the quickest way to monetize online. And tomorrow, I'm sharing the exact roadmap I'd follow if I had to start from scratch in...
Strategic Discovery Asks Unlock Bigger Deals, Not Just Numbers
Founders: Strategic vs Tactical discovery: Tactical = How many users? Strategic = "What happens if you miss hiring goals? Tactical = "Current process? Strategic = "Cost of status quo? Strategic questions = bigger deals.
Scaling Money: From Hustle to Brand
Your first $1K: hustle Your first $10K: offer Your first $100K: systems Your first $1M: team Your first $1B: Brand