Just half a year after leading SODA’s Series B, SoftBank Ventures Asia is raising its bet on the Tokyo-based sneaker resell platform. The early-stage venture capital arm of SoftBank Group announced today it has returned to lead SODA’s Series C, which currently totals $56.4 million. Other investors include South Korean sneaker reselling platform KREAM (another…
Emily Kramer and Kathleen Estreich are the founders of of MKT1, a strategic marketing firm that does much more than just marketing. As we mentioned the last time we spoke with the company, it offers a plethora of services ranging from marketing consulting and organizing recruiting and mentoring workshops to angel syndicate investing. The two…
Wilkin Sanchez Contributor Wilkin Sanchez is the founder of the Rhode Island Group for Hispanic Technology (RIGHT). When I first came to the United States from the Dominican Republic, nobody wanted to hire me for a job in tech. Rather than recognize the skills I possessed, employers could only see my still-developing English and my…
The tyranny of the Excel spreadsheet continues, and especially in rostering staff. Nowhere is this more acutely felt in today’s COVID-pressured hospital wards, which are now depleted not just by the disease but by staff burnout from patchy-over or under-scheduling of staff hours. Two doctors realized this and decided to create a startup. Patchwork Health…
For fleet managers, managing shipping crew changes across different countries is an elaborate process even in the best of times—and now is definitely not the best of times. Greywing, a Y Combinator-backed platform for automating maritime operations, launched a new solution today that it describes as an industry-first. Called Crew Change, it is used to…
Twitter’s recent acquisition spree continues today as the company announces it has acqui-hired the team from news aggregator and summary app Brief. The startup from former Google engineers launched last year to offer a subscription-based news summary app that aimed to tackle many of the problems with today’s news cycle, including information overload, burnout, media…
Among Silicon Valley circles, a fun parlor game is to ask to what extent world GDP levels are held back by a lack of computer science and technical training. How many startups could be built if hundreds of thousands or even millions more people could code and bring their entrepreneurial ideas to fruition? How many…
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) contribute heavily to the economic success of many countries, particularly those in the developing world. They are the backbone of most economies: Globally, SMEs represent about 90% of existing businesses and create more than 50% of employment. In South Africa, these businesses contribute around one-third of the country’s GDP. Last…
Tesla is pushing the launch of its electric Semi truck program to 2022 due to supply chain challenges and the limited availability of battery cells, the company said in its second-quarter earnings report Monday. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has warned about battery supply constraints before and the effect it might have on the Tesla Semi,…
In May, the neighborhood crime watch app Citizen offered its user base $30,000 to track down a suspected arsonist on live video, only to discover that they’d sent a mob of civilians after the wrong guy. Now, Citizen is covertly hiring journalists to livestream on the app at crime scenes for $25 per hour through…
