A lawyer and veteran of the startup world (but don’t call him a VC), Andrew Yang rose to national prominence during his 2020 campaign for president. A hard-fought battle in a crowded field, Yang made a name for himself as an outsider candidate, heavily favoring a technocratic approach to policy that reflected his entrepreneurial background.…
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General Motors is joining the list of big automakers picking their horses in the race to develop better batteries for electric vehicles with its lead of a $139 million investment into the lithium-metal battery developer, SES. Volkswagen has QuantumScape; Ford has invested in SolidPower (along with Hyundai and BMW); and now with SES’ big backing…
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The pandemic-induced lockdowns halted many a home decoration project, but the irony was that our homes became even more important. But where to get ideas to decorate? Home decor experts could no longer visit. Now an LA-based startup is addressing this digitization of the interior design market, but kicking off with a typically LA-oriented, high-end…
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The online grocery market is poised to get a little more crowded in the next several months, with the launch of a startup led by a veteran founder who has taken big hits from Amazon in the past, but now hopes to come back swinging with the help of an army of robots. Home Delivery…
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NASA has marked a major milestone in its extraterrestrial exploration program, with the first powered flight of an aircraft on Mars. The flight occurred very early this morning, and NASA received telemetry confirming that the ‘Ingenuity’ helicopter it sent to Mars with its Perseverance rover. This is a major achievement, in no small part because…
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Buzzy ‘social audio’ app Clubhouse has raised a Series C funding round, reportedly valuing the company at $4 billion. Clubhouse said the new round of financing was led by Andrew Chen of Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from DST Global, Tiger Global and Elad Gil. This round means Clubhouse has tripled the valuation it attained in…
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We are in the crypto-in a-suit bull market, epitomised by Coinbase going public and joining the Fintech 50 Index last week. A suit is the uniform of corporate life but we are not defined by our uniform. Years ago, during a crypto bear market I was at a conference of legacy finance folks. I was…
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More than a year after the pandemic began, remote work shows no signs of going away. While it has its cons, it remains top of mind for potential employees around the world before joining a new company. But while most people in Africa still go to physical offices, despite the pandemic, a few companies have…
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The buy now, pay later model, popularized by companies like Klarn and Affirm has been one of the big e-commerce winners in the last year, giving consumers who might be stretched financially another option to pay for things when they buy them online. While that has prompted the UK financial authority to re-examine how it…
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While the crypto industry is still in its infancy, lately it’s been seeing a lot of growth. Venture capital funding in crypto and blockchain startups is expected to break new records in 2021. The results for the first quarter of this year has been impressive, regardless on your source of data. Research from CB Insights…
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