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.
Upvest has evolved from a 2019 Notion Capital-backed startup into Europe’s leading API‑first investment infrastructure, processing over 100 million orders a year for more than 30 financial institutions including Revolut and Santander’s Openbank. The company announced a $125 million financing round led by Sapphire Ventures and Tencent, underscoring investor confidence. Expansion plans now target pension products, UK ISAs and SIPPs, and entry into the French market, while integrating AI‑driven wealth solutions. This growth positions Upvest at the core of the next generation of European investing.
India’s second‑generation high‑growth startups have given rise to a third‑generation “startup mafia,” with 184 former executives launching about 203 new firms over the past decade. Razorpay leads the cohort, having produced 39 founders, followed closely by Cred, Meesho and PhonePe....
A VC event where no one said “AI moat.” Instead, influencers heard pitches for diamond memorials, soda startups, and underground robots. The room cared less about spreadsheets and more about attention. Founders need reach. Creators want equity. Both trade on followers. Is audience the...
Early‑stage EdTech founders crave mentorship, yet most guidance centers on business and fundraising rather than learning science. A partnership between CcHub and the Gates Foundation introduced a structured, network‑driven mentorship model that connects startups with individual mentors and a pool...
I was feeling nostalgic and asked ChatGPT to tell me about Zivity and I started crying. Even if we failed, we are in the corpus of humanity and our efforts helped shape much of what is considered "normal" today as...
Funded start-ups building the same product become competitors. Indie start-ups building the same product become friends. Indie start-ups only need $10k MRR to succeed. The market is so big that it is unrealistic and unnecessary for two independent developers to “compete” with...
Northwestern Medicine and Techstars have announced the five startups joining the 2026 class of their health‑care accelerator. The 13‑week, mentorship‑driven program will run at Northwestern’s Mansueto Innovation Institute in Chicago, focusing on clinical care, digital health, therapeutics and AI. Selected...
Who are the best openclaw and agentic system builders out there? I’m building something, it’s super raw, and want to get feedback. Could be big.
Everyone's delaying TGEs and waiting for better conditions right now but Katana is pushing forward anyway and i respect that. Ive built through multiple bear markets myself, you learn pretty quickly that the teams who show up when conditions are ugly...
Fundraising in 2026 has slowed dramatically, with deals now taking six to nine months versus three to four in 2021. Seed investors expect the same unit‑economics and go‑to‑market rigor that once belonged at Series A, and AI startups command roughly 42%...
SPVs are one of the most powerful tools in private markets. Most people have no idea how they actually work. Entity formation. Legal docs. Compliance filings. Capital calls. K-1s. + more. Verivend put together the clearest breakdown I've seen on how to actually...
A freight trucking firm boosted nightly earnings from $20,000 to $50,000 – a 150% jump – by training drivers to ask one simple question after each pickup: “While I’m here, do you need anything else shipped?” The tactic required no...
The new AI-native companies are leaner, meaner, and move fast. The sabertooth tigers are coming for the giant sloths.
Equatic, a Santa Monica carbon‑removal startup, secured $11.6 million Series A funding to build a 100‑kiloton ocean‑based CO₂ capture plant that also produces green hydrogen. The technology electrolyzes seawater with renewable power, generating base that pulls carbon from the air while the...
Antares Nuclear, founded in 2023, secured $96 million in Series B funding (bringing total capital to about $130 million) to build modular, transportable reactors for hard‑to‑reach energy deserts. The startup is targeting the U.S. military and aerospace sectors rather than commercial data centers,...
In 2022 32Co launched as a premium orthodontic aligner platform, then expanded in 2026 with Aerox Health, a dedicated sleep‑medicine brand. The company leveraged an existing dentist network to address the under‑served UK sleep‑apnoea market, applying the same clinical engine...
Startup survival increasingly hinges on execution speed rather than perfect data. Delays inflate burn, shrink runway, and hand market share to faster rivals, a factor behind 38% of cash‑run‑out failures cited by CB Insights. Ruslan Tymofieiev’s CLUST venture builder adopted...
The European Commission is set to unveil the EU Inc. proposal, a sweeping plan that would let founders register a company in under two days for a maximum of €100, entirely online, and launch EU‑wide employee stock‑option schemes. The initiative...
Antonio Gracias, founder of Valor Equity Partners, introduced the term “proentropic” to describe startups built to thrive amid escalating chaos such as climate volatility, geopolitical shifts, and rapid technology change. He traced the concept to physics, noting that disorder inevitably...
Value Makers Studio (VMS) has launched a three‑month accelerator, VMS Accelerate, in Cairo to help Egyptian startups expand into Saudi Arabia. The program will invest up to EGP 1.5 million (about $28,000) in each of seven seed‑stage companies and provide mentorship from...
Kudwa, a UAE‑USA fintech SaaS, secured $1.1 million in a round led by 1818 Venture Capital, F6 Ventures, Sparked VC, IM Fndg and IVP. The AI‑powered finance manager automates reporting, forecasting, and insights, linking to ERP and accounting systems. The capital...
UAE‑based blockchain infrastructure startup Utexo announced a $7.5 million seed round led by Tether, with participation from several venture firms. The company builds enterprise‑grade APIs that let financial institutions, digital wallets and exchanges process USDT stablecoin payments directly on the Bitcoin...
IACrea just got a game-changer for internationalization: @subclip_app I record a tutorial a video in French, Pick a language in Sub, And got my video translated and dubbed automatically ! I used to record only in French my video (biggest iacrea audience), and...
Terra Industries, a Nigerian‑focused defence startup, is now fitting its UAVs with machine guns and rocket launchers, turning surveillance platforms into combat‑ready systems for the Nigerian military. The classified project will be operated remotely by military personnel rather than Terra’s...
MakeMyTrip, the NASDAQ‑listed travel platform, is exploring an IPO for its India operations to access domestic capital markets. Its market cap has fallen from $10 billion to $4.5 billion in six months, while operating revenue rose 11% but profit plunged 74% year‑over‑year....
Goldman Sachs completed its acquisition of Urban Campus, marking the first outright purchase of a European coliving operator by a major investment bank and signalling the sector’s move into institutional‑grade assets. In the same fortnight, The Collective collapsed after failing...
TechIreland’s Female Founder Funding Review 2026 shows a record 82 Irish women‑founded startups raised €131 million in 2025, the highest annual total since 2017. While the number of deals surged, the average round shrank to €2.3 million and the median fell sharply...
whew... a full month off my business. + the 10 biggest lessons I learned + the questions you asked + and what my business looks like moving forward
Duplo, a Nigerian B2B payments platform, secured Systems Integrator and Access Point Provider licences from the Nigeria Revenue Service. The dual licences let the company generate NRS‑compliant e‑invoices, transmit them automatically, and settle payments within its platform. Nigeria’s digital tax...
Ola Electric plans to raise up to ₹2,000 Cr by selling a minority stake in its battery arm, Ola Cell Technologies. The fundraise targets sovereign wealth funds and global infrastructure investors, with Avendus Capital and Motilal Oswal advising. The move follows...
The (lazy) narrative: "agencies are dead" The reality: good marketers will get VERY rich — Building a product used to require a ton of capital, years of engineering or R&D, and a team you probably couldn't afford. (Trust me. I built a VC-backed tech...
Visa‑processing startup Atlys announced a $36 million Series C round led by Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital, with participation from existing backers and new investor MakeMyTrip. The funding will fuel expansion into additional international markets and accelerate the company’s AI‑driven visa platform, covering...
In this episode of the @LightconePod, we sat down with @mukundjha and @madhavjha, the founders of @emergentlabs - an AI platform that lets anyone build and ship production-ready software. In just eight months, users have created more than 7 million apps...
Y Combinator’s Winter 2026 batch is being framed as a showcase for AI tools that eliminate the most disliked parts of everyday workflows. A founder’s blunt pitch—"It handles the part everyone hates"—captures the cohort’s pragmatic focus. The preview suggests a...
Endeavor Bulgaria has opened applications for the 2026 edition of its Dare2Scale growth program, now entering its eighth year. The four‑month cohort, running September‑December, will expand beyond Bulgaria and the Western Balkans to include the Adria region—Slovenia, Serbia and Croatia—while...
Oxford Medical Simulation (OMS) has secured €5.78 million in growth funding from Salica Investments. The capital will fund OMS’s expansion into U.S. health systems and universities, and accelerate product innovation such as AI‑driven scenarios, learning analytics, and workflow tools. The round...
London‑based Ternary Therapeutics announced a £3.6 million seed round to fund its AI‑driven platform for designing molecular glues, a class of drugs that can bind previously "undruggable" proteins. The startup, founded in 2024, merges machine learning, physics‑based molecular modelling and rapid...
The article argues that successful fundraising depends on conviction and narrative, not expensive pitch decks. Founders should prioritize a three‑act story—problem, solution, team—while keeping slides minimal and data‑driven. Financial credibility is conveyed through a few clear metrics and a precise...
Indian tech services firm Hexaware is positioning itself to make the country’s 1,900 global capability centres AI‑ready, while Accel and Google’s AI Futures Fund have selected five early‑stage startups for the 2026 Atoms AI cohort, each receiving up to $2 million...
Nothing beats putting a new offer into the world and signing your first customers within a week. essential web is growing 🤯
This is why building in public, as fun and empowering as it is, has severe limits. Competitors have a significantly easier time now than before AI to build functionally critical-mass-escaping clones to swipe the bottom of the barrel. Lots of founders are...
Pretty much all my monthly meetings with my founder peers is discussing: - how we're keeping up with ai - showing off stuff we've built - learning from one another
This interview with @travisk is business school speedrun https://t.co/wAN9fIwDTl For founders, it's worth watching in its entirety. And if you're fundraising, channel your inner TK.
A portfolio founder we initially supported through 5050 pre-company just shared revenue has grown to $400,000. A day. Nothing more satisfying than seeing a sparkle in a founder's eye grow into a real company creating impact at scale.
I lost $9k on a product that was trending on TikTok. The trend died in a week. I launched a product that solves a timeless boring problem. It's been selling for 2 years. The market doesn't care about trends. It...
"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning." – Bill Gates Negative feedback is invaluable. 💡 Use it to improve your products and services and turn dissatisfied customers into loyal advocates.
The gap between "I can build this" and "this is worth building" has never been wider. AI closed the first one completely. The second one is still yours. Speed has never been cheaper. Imagination has never mattered more.
Making a product is not that hard. Getting it into as many hands as you can? That's what kills most startups. Zhong Xu scaled Deliverect to 80,000 customers because he treated sales as an engineering problem. https://t.co/WlxbWnSSjZ
Prepare for the inevitable questions that will follow your pitch. Anticipate potential queries and objections, and rehearse your responses to demonstrate your expertise and preparedness. But if you don't know an answer, it's okay - say that and then follow up via...
me since 2014 after learning about alexnet and founding ROSS at the university of toronto:
