Know What's Happening in Entrepreneurship
Know What's Happening in Entrepreneurship
PopSockets turned phone backs into a $169 million business
PopSockets began as a garage prototype in 2011, converting the unused back of smartphones into a grip accessory. By 2017 the company generated $169 million in revenue, driven by word‑of‑mouth growth, celebrity endorsements, and embedding the product into daily phone use.
Deborah Pan Dorner, a former MIT‑trained medicinal chemist, founded the healthcare communications agency Bond and Matter after a career in biotech research. The podcast episode explores how her scientific background shapes the agency’s data‑driven yet creative approach to pharma marketing. Dorner discusses the hurdles of female leadership, mentorship, and balancing a demanding career with parenthood. She also outlines her vision for the agency’s next growth phase.
Eve Halimi and Anam Lakhani, former Wall Street interns, launched Alinea Invest in 2020. The fintech app aims to demystify investing for Gen Z, especially women, by offering an approachable, low‑threshold experience. They identified a gender‑specific white space in traditional wealth...
EnviroGold Global unveiled its Rapid Deployment Pathway (RDP), a structured framework that moves tailings reprocessing projects from initial evaluation to commercial deployment faster than traditional mining routes. The RDP combines staged assessments, pilot testing, and industrial demonstrations to de‑risk projects...
I spoke to a startup building software to help clinical trials recruit more of the right kinds of people more quickly - a serious challenge at present.
Pinnacle Medicines, a two‑year‑old biotech focused on oral peptide therapeutics, secured $89 million from a mix of U.S. and Chinese investors. The financing will fund its platform that converts injectable peptides into pill form, building on the recent success of Novo...
The 11th Annual State of Latino Entrepreneurship report shows Latino‑owned firms added 180,000 net new businesses and 976,000 jobs between 2017 and 2023, outpacing White‑owned firms. Revenue for these firms jumped 68% to $832 billion, underscoring their outsized role in U.S....
Cesar Ravan, chief executive officer of RC Private Wealth and founder of RC CPAs, has been selected for inclusion in Marquis Who's Who. The honor underscores his reputation in wealth management and advanced income tax planning, and follows a series...
The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has signed a memorandum of understanding with Krafton India to nurture gaming, esports and digital‑entertainment startups across the country. The partnership will launch innovation challenges, hackathons and mentorship programs, signaling...
Nebius Group, the Yandex spin‑off, closed a $2.5 billion capital raise and announced a $27 billion AI compute agreement with Meta, valuing the startup at roughly $30 billion. The deal fuels a massive data‑center build‑out, but a legal battle over $6 billion of tax...
Renasens, a Swedish start‑up, secured €10 million (approximately $10.8 million) in seed funding to scale its textile‑recycling technology that uses supercritical CO₂ to recover fibres from blended waste. The capital, led by Extantia with participation from Course Corrected and Norrsken Launcher, will...
Bulgarian private‑equity firm INVENIO Partners announced the first closing of its third fund, targeting a total of €75 million (≈ $81.5 million) to back high‑growth SMEs in Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia. The fund will deploy equity and quasi‑equity investments of $3.3 million to $10.9 million...
Opendoor, the U.S. iBuying platform, announced plans to hire up to 100 employees in Toronto, renting a floor on King Street and Spadina Avenue for the new hub. CEO Kaz Nejatian, a former Shopify COO, emphasized Toronto’s deep talent pool...
Nigeria produces more than 30 million tonnes of waste each year, overwhelming municipal services. Ecobarter, a tech‑enabled social enterprise founded in 2018, pays households and businesses for recyclable and organic waste, using a mobile app to schedule pickups, track collections, and...
Nigerian crypto exchange Quidax announced a company‑wide layoff on March 2, terminating employees in sales, design and operations and offering one month’s severance. The cuts follow a February salary payout and are framed as performance‑related, though the exact numbers remain...
Karolina Pelc, a former casino dealer turned iGaming executive, founded the SaaS firm BeyondPlay and sold it to FanDuel in February 2024. She now mentors founders and has released her debut book, Her Play, which argues that luck is a...
Moving Tech Innovations, the Bengaluru‑based parent of Namma Yatri, has acquired Netherlands‑based Automicle Holding BV to launch its zero‑commission, community‑led mobility platform in Europe. The deal gives Moving Tech a foothold in European cities, where it plans to replicate its...
Serial entrepreneur Joe Liemandt, founder of Trilogy Software and ESW Capital, has launched Alpha School with a $1 billion investment in AI‑driven learning. The model delivers two hours of personalized AI instruction each day, allowing students to master material before moving...
Uber announced the discontinuation of its Shuttle bus service in Delhi NCR, effective March 27, marking the exit of its bus‑based commute offering from India’s last remaining market. The move follows similar shutdowns in Mumbai and Hyderabad, which were attributed...
Pentathlon Ventures closed its second fund at Rs 255 crore (≈ $31 million), targeting 16–20 seed‑stage B2B tech startups. The fund expands its focus to enterprise AI transformation, fintech, healthtech, cybersecurity, logistics and manufacturing. Backed by family offices, HNIs and entrepreneurs across India, the...
In this annual financial recap, Amanda Adams (fiber artist) and Nicole Muller (painter/muralist) break down their 2025 earnings, expenses, and seven income streams, highlighting a $44,000 gross revenue and $8,000 net profit after major home repairs funded by local Baltimore...
Alix Earle spent years posting about her acne, from Accutane rounds to bare-face breakouts. Now she turned that story into Reale Actives, a 4-step skincare line built with her dermatologist. For a year, she seeded unlabeled products, teased a mystery account, and...
Caroline Desmond explains that retail POS systems, designed for single‑owner inventory, break down when a store exceeds 100 consignors. As intake volumes rise, staff spend more time on manual ownership assignments, payout calculations, and answering basic seller queries. The article...
ELMED Life Sciences secured a $2.7 million Series A round led by NABVENTURES' AgriSURE Fund. The capital will fund new manufacturing capacity in Hyderabad, R&D acceleration, and broader distribution across Indian tier‑2/3 regions and overseas markets. ELMED develops probiotic and microbiome‑based products...
The global photo‑booth market, valued at $584.6 million in 2024, is projected to reach $1.4 billion by 2032 with an 11.5% CAGR. Southeast Asia contributes roughly one‑fifth of that market but remains highly fragmented, relying on outdated tools. ChackTok offers a hardware‑agnostic...
Yelen, a Côte d’Ivoire‑based startup founded by ex‑Google executive Ibrahima Sylla, launched in June 2025 as an all‑in‑one platform for African social sellers. The service lets merchants create storefronts, accept card and mobile‑money payments, and manage orders from WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook...
Chris Froome, the four‑time Tour de France winner, has been appointed chief innovation officer at sport‑technology company Vekta. The hire places a celebrated athlete at the helm of product strategy for AI‑driven training tools, underscoring a growing trend of athletes...
Reeve Benaron, co‑founder and co‑CEO of Intrivo Diagnostics and chairman of digital‑media firm AUDIENCEX, has built businesses at the nexus of technology, data and real‑world impact. He pioneered AUDIENCEX’s data‑driven advertising platform in 2012 and later launched Intrivo’s Diagnostics‑as‑a‑Service model,...
I talked to one of female founder clients today & she said something that stuck - “Fundraising [as a female] is so hard - so much harder than even they say.”
at a ceo offsite with one of our crossover investors and im pretty objectively the most junior/early stage founder here and its so genuinely inspiring + intimidating in best way
Bengaluru‑based NeoSapien launched Neo 1, a thumb‑size AI wearable that records conversations, creates transcripts and reminders, and retails for roughly $120. The startup recently closed a $2 million seed round backed by Merak Ventures and several angel investors, and claims to be...
Got a squat rack finally so why not vibe design and code my own fitness app while I'm at it. https://t.co/0utcVSDSsw
Founder Mode is an arrival. It means you’ve overcome the fear of failure, and you simply execute to overcome any obstacle in your way.
Insurtech startup Plum announced a $20.6 million Series B round, raising ₹193 crore led by Peak XV Ventures with participation from Tanglin and GMO Venture Partners. The funding will finance talent acquisition, AI‑driven claims processing, enterprise‑grade security, and deeper HR‑payroll integrations. Plum also plans...
Some nice new ideas upvoted by everyone today With the new AI models + human upvoting and downvoting there might actually be good ideas here for people to build startups from Possibly... https://t.co/PcyxSjjTQs
Founders are running their decks, docs, and narratives through AI to drive investor cycles. But investors are doing the same: they’re making (more) comments on investor agreements, advisor docs, warrants, etc. Founders: expect to work harder to close.
AI‑first law firm Keith has secured $2.5 million in seed funding to launch a fully automated conveyancing platform this summer. The firm will use a network of 38 specialized AI agents to handle up to 80% of the transaction workflow, aiming...
Nvidia-Backed Startup Seeking to Counter Chinese AI Eyes $25 Billion Valuation Yes, it's all about "countering Chinese AI"... https://t.co/7VwOnVxaeb
OpenAI Backs New AI Startup Seeking Bot Army Breakthroughs The San Francisco company, called Isara, was founded last June by two 23-year-old AI researchers, Eddie Zhang and Henry Gasztowtt. They have hired researchers from Google, Meta , and OpenAI. https://t.co/TmyAydRBDk
Amazon has purchased New York‑based Fauna Robotics, the two‑year‑old startup behind the $50,000 Sprout kid‑size humanoid robot. The deal, whose financial terms were not disclosed, expands Amazon’s robotics reach beyond warehouse automation into the emerging personal‑robot market.
Nikolay Grebentsov, president of Nikovit Inc., is scaling a clean‑energy venture that sells affordable heat‑pump and mini‑split systems through its EZCOOL brand. Recent accolades—including the Best Entrepreneur in HVAC award and a Small Business Breakthrough Award—coincide with a push to...
JTC Corporation announced major upgrades to LaunchPad @ One‑North, including the new Meeting Point co‑working and event space. The hub now partners with NUS Enterprise, INSEAD and 19 international startup nodes, giving Singaporean startups direct access to markets in Paris,...
Verse8, an AI-native platform that lets creators instantly turn ideas into playable games, announced a $5 million seed round. Since its stealth launch in July, the service has attracted more than 3.5 million monthly active users, supported by over 5,000 active creators...
The Lean Startup proposes a unique way of looking at growth metrics The book suggests that the typical metrics, user registration growth and gross revenue, don’t paint an accurate picture of true sustainable growth Rather, each founder needs to find their...
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you don’t need Mark Cuban on your cap table in order to succeed.
In this episode of The Curious Consumer, hosts Nate and Jenna chat with Shemin Ross, third‑generation owner of Killer Brownie, about the brand’s evolution from a regional bakery staple to a national CPG powerhouse now in over 15,000 retail locations,...
Half the battle in a startup is figuring out who not to spend time with.
The Navy’s Program Executive Office for Digital is adopting a lean‑startup mindset, using small OTA‑backed bets to prototype emerging technologies. Early initiatives such as Naval Identity Services and the Enterprise Service Desk have transitioned from pilots to full enterprise services,...
Create one Claude skill a day - that’s all you need to build million dollar business.
