Sat.Nov 13, 2021 - Fri.Nov 19, 2021

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Betting Beyond the Bowl: Investing in Sweetgreen Was Always About More Than Salad

Revolution

In 2013, Sweetgreen had 22 locations in D.C., Maryland, Virginia, Boston, and New York?—?the first a 560-square-foot shack in our backyard. Fast forward to today, the tech-forward company spans more than 140 stores nationwide; partners regularly with chefs , artists , and cultural icons ; caters to millions of app users; and has officially debuted as a public company on the NYSE.

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Seed Rounds At $100mm Post Money

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

We have been seeing quite a few seed rounds getting done in and around $100mm post-money and that concerns me for a few reasons: Seed stage is when a company has a good team, a good idea, but has not yet proven product market fit and a go to market model, and has not yet demonstrated a sustainable business model. These investments have a high failure rate.

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ten years of I-Corps: the program that changed innovation

Venture Well

In the last 10 years, the National Science Foundation's Innovation Corps Program has spearheaded transformational program innovation. The post ten years of I-Corps: the program that changed innovation appeared first on VentureWell.

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Five Tips for SBA Community Navigator Pilot Program Awardees

Source Link

Congratulations to all the grantees awarded funds to participate in the SBA Community Navigator Pilot Program. You are embarking on work that is critical to building back inclusive and more resilient communities. We are excited to see so many in our SourceLink? network become hubs and/or spokes, and eager for this program roll out as it mirrors our own philosophy of building collaborative networks of entrepreneurship and small business owner support.

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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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The industrial data revolution: What founders got wrong

TechCrunch

Joe Hellerstein. Contributor. Share on Twitter. Joe Hellerstein is co-founder and chief strategy officer of Trifacta and the Jim Gray Chair of Computer Science at UC Berkeley. In February 2010, The Economist published a report called “ Data, data everywhere.” Little did we know then just how simple the data landscape actually was. That is, comparatively speaking, when you consider the data realities we’re facing as we look to 2022.

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Stagetime Raises $1.5M Series Seed

HPA

Stagetime announced raising a $1.5M Series Seed round , which was led by HPA. M25 and IU Angel Network also participated in the round. Stagetime is a networking platform for the performing arts industry. Stagetime empowers creatives to create a comprehensive professional story about their past performances and skill sets. Stagetime is an online network where artists, agents, and artistic administrators can grow as professionals and maintain relationships by engaging with industry connections, sh

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What is the Best CRM and Marketing Tech Platform for a New Private Equity/Venture Capital Fund?

David Teten VC

One of the first decisions we had to make in setting up our new VC fund, Versatile Venture Capital , was our CRM and marketing technology infrastructure. . I’m very interested in the tech stack of private equity/VC firms , both to improve the efficiency of Versatile VC and also as a focus area for our investing. I run PEVCTech , a community focused on this area.

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Here’s where MLOps is accelerating enterprise AI adoption

TechCrunch

Ashish Kakran. Contributor. Share on Twitter. Ashish Kakran , principal at Thomvest Ventures , is a product manager/engineer turned investor who enjoys supporting founders with a balance of technical know-how, customer insights, empathy with challenges and market knowledge. In the early 2000s, most business-critical software was hosted on privately run data centers.

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Want to Partner with Amazon? Here’s One Way.

Smart Hustle Magazine

Did you know you can grow your small business, if you’re into trucking, by becoming an Amazon freight partner ? During an interview with April Taylor of Opulent Transport, Ramon Ray, founder of SmartHustle.com learned how Taylor’s partnership with Amazon has helped her trucking business grow. Smart Hustle Small Business Podcast · Want to partner with Amazon?

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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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Simple Hacks to Enhance the SEO of Your Website

StartupNation

SEO can be a revenue goldmine, but as fruitful as it can be, it is not an easy undertaking. SEO requires consistency and a multidirectional approach. While most companies are investing the time and effort to get their SEO game right, most of them are not yielding the desired results. As per an Ahrefs study, just 5.7% of all studied pages ranked in the Top 10 search results within one year.

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Cohesion Raises $15M Series A

HPA

Cohesion , a leader in smart building and digital twin SaaS technology, announced raising $15M in a Series A round co-led by HPA and Morgan Stanley Next Level Fund. By creating one of the world’s largest repositories of commercial real estate data, Cohesion will lead the industry’s transformation to autonomous buildings. The company will use the new funding to focus on strategic channel growth and for product and market expansion including its digital twin technology for optimizing building envi

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Nigerian e-health pharmaceutical distribution startup DrugStoc secures $4.4 million Series A funding, embarks on expansion drive

TechCrunch

The pharmaceutical supply chain across Africa has for decades remained fragmented leading to sourcing and distribution challenges as well as quality concerns; as fake and substandard products flood the market. Yet, these issues facing the supply chain are fixable. Chibuzo Opara and Adham Yehia, being all too familiar with the problems of poor pharmaceutical supply chains, are planning to widen the reach of DrugStoc, a e-health drug procurement platform that eliminates these challenges by linking

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10 Reasons Why I Use Bubble.IO to Iterate on Startup Ideas

Entrepreneur's Handbook

??You shouldn’t have to onboard a technical co-founder just to test a business idea. Bubble is a no-code platform that enables you to build web apps. Here’s my simple definition of a no-code platform: A platform that allows you to build an interactive web app through a “drag and drop” user interface and easy-to-implement logic. Working on a no-code platform is almost like writing in plain English.

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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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How Venture Capitalist Diane Yoo Chooses Her Startup Investments

StartupNation

With so many entrepreneurs and startup ventures seeking investment opportunities, it’s crucial that venture capitalists (VCs) create a list of criteria they want their potential investments to meet. Of course, every VC dreams of investing in a business that can grow into a billion-dollar unicorn company, but these instances are few and far between. As such, VCs have to consider a number of factors when choosing which companies or entrepreneurs in whom to invest.

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Words Like Loaded Pistols

Tomasz Tunguz

Words like Loaded Pistols. What an arresting title for a book. I decided to read it just based on its cover. In the first few pages, I learned that it’s a book about rhetoric. What is rhetoric? I met a few people in college who studied it, and I thought it had to do with logic or philosophy. I was wrong. It’s the art of convincing others with words.

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South African payments gateway Ozow raises $48M Series B led by Tencent

TechCrunch

According to a 2019 report by Deloitte , about 80% of South Africans have a bank account but only 24% of them make more than three transactions monthly. Unlike other African countries, South Africa also has a functioning credit system with the prevalent use of credit cards. However , expensive value-added services like credit cards do not necessarily address the needs of underbanked people.

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How To Fundraise Like a Boss: 8 Tips From Indiegogo’s Slava Rubin

Entrepreneur's Handbook

Indiegogo founder Slava Rubin, who recently raised $6 million for alt investment platform Vincent, shares fundraising advice from his… Continue reading on Entrepreneur's Handbook ».

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Digitalization: 5 Tech Updates That Will Help You Survive The Recession & Thrive

Lack of digitalization decreases business competitiveness. To thrive, embracing modern solutions becomes essential. The approach to digitalization often aligns with a company's business model. This shift not only boosts productivity but also automates processes and improves security. The tech market offers a wealth of technologies tailored for management, planning, and forecasting, replacing outdated pen-and-paper methods.

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Small-Scale Manufacturing is the Secret Sauce to Revive Downtowns

StartupNation

Excerpt from Recast Your City: How to Save Your Downtown with Small-Scale Manufacturing by Ilana Preuss.Copyright © 2021 Ilana Preuss. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington, D.C. The Secret Sauce: Small-Scale Manufacturing. Small-scale manufacturing businesses create a tangible product—in any material—that can be replicated or packaged; my catch all is “hot sauce, handbags, and hardware.

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Justifying Token Equity Multiples using GDP Data

Tomasz Tunguz

When investing in a crypto startup that will issue a token, an investor considers two prices - the price of the equity and the price of the token. There’s a rule of thumb used today that states the token should be worth 3-5x the equity. A founder informed me the rationale is that a share in a company has a lien on the future dividend streams, but a token has a lien on profit share of the GDP around an economy and that economies tend to be 3-5x larger.

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Entrepreneur First launches partnership with Tezos to spin up Web3 startups

TechCrunch

Entrepreneur First (EF), an accelerator-come-company builder, is partnering with the Tezos crypto platform to attract new potential founders to Web3. EF specializes in putting together early-career co-founders, developing their ideas and putting them in front of investors. Technical training and guidance will be provided by experts from the Tezos community.

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High-quality deals spell out a clear path to exit for investors

Innovation 2 Enterprise

By Scott Meacham. High-quality deals spell out a clear path to exit for investors. The reality of private equity markets is either the story of capital chasing deals, or of deals chasing capital. So, it is no surprise that when venture capitalists and others in private equity get together to talk business, capital and deal flow dominate the conversation — and not necessarily in that order.

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Enhance Customer Value: Unleash Your Data’s Potential

The complexity of financial data, the need for real-time insight, and the demand for user-friendly visualizations can seem daunting when it comes to analytics - but there is an easier way. With Logi Symphony, we aim to turn these challenges into opportunities. Our platform empowers you to seamlessly integrate advanced data analytics, generative AI, data visualization, and pixel-perfect reporting into your applications, transforming raw data into actionable insights.

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How Local Startups Can Leverage Small Business Funding

StartupNation

There are many small business loans available for startups. Learn more about the different financing options and how you can get a startup loan for your business. There’s a bit more that goes into running a business than a million-dollar idea and an endless supply of Red Bull. Profitability is the metric of success and it takes money to make money – especially when you’re first starting out.

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It’s Time to Build Something That Will Change Your Life. Stop Wasting Time.

Entrepreneur's Handbook

The act of creation rewires your thinking. Continue reading on Entrepreneur's Handbook ».

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HomeBase raises $30M to help more people in Southeast Asia become property owners

TechCrunch

Homebase , a Ho Chi Minh City-based proptech startup that helps people buy homes, announced today it has raised $30 million in equity and debt (the ratio was undisclosed). The company’s business model is similar to Divvy Homes and ZeroDown in the United States and, in fact, Divvy Homes co-founder and former CEO Brian Ma and Zerodown chief operating officer Troy Steckenrider III are investors in Homebase.

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Deep Dive Africa is Back: Bringing Together Investors and Startups

Impact Hub

Africa, 15 November 2021 – Deep Dive Africa, an initiative by Impact Hub and the GrowthAfrica Foundation, is back for the second year of connecting early-stage investors and African startups. The program is funded by Make-IT in Africa, a project implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft fu?r Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

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PE Mastery: CAPTARGET's Playbook for Quality Lead Flow

CAPTARGET presents a masterclass in M&A deal sourcing. Learn to cast a wide net, embracing seller self-identification. Consistency is the linchpin: keep the origination process steady for a reliable flow of opportunities. Diversify your tactics, employing various tools and vendors. Tech matters! Understand DNS settings, domain authority, and brand presence for optimal outreach.