VNV Global attributes its fair value estimate to a valuation model based on trading multiples of public peers rather than historical funding rounds.
Funding and interest in B2B startups took off in the last decade and saw a bump in the wake of COVID-19.
African startups, including B2B e-commerce platforms like Wasoko, have followed the same playbook as their counterparts further afield: layoffs; cost cuts; and closures are not uncommon.
In the lead-up to its merger with MaxAB, Wasoko shuttered hubs in Senegal and Ivory Coast and laid off staff in Kenya.
It operates a food and grocery B2B e-commerce platform in Egypt and Morocco, expanding to the latter following its acquisition of YC-backed WaystoCap in 2021.
Scores of accelerator programs run every year with the aim of identifying and cultivating founders in the earliest stages of building a company.
Only a fraction seek out founders who are explicitly aligned with some set of values — let alone classically conservative values like family, patriotism and faith.
Discipulus Ventures, which kicked off its first 10-person cohort yesterday, is a singular exception.
“You can’t say what matters, you can’t say what you think is true, and that’s obviously not going to be good if you want to solve these problems,” he said.
The city’s reputation has grown in recent months as a breeding ground for a new type of hard tech founder, one very much like the type Discipulus is trying to attract.
Tesla is about to start giving every customer in the U.S. a one-month trial of its $12,000 driver-assistance system, which it calls Full Self-Driving Beta, provided they have a car with the compatible hardware.
The company is also reportedly mandating, at CEO Elon Musk’s request, that prospective buyers are given a demo of the software before they purchase a new Tesla.
The full-court press to promote FSD Beta software, an upgraded version of the Autopilot system that comes standard in all Tesla vehicles, is happening at an interesting moment for the company.
It’s the end of the first quarter of 2024, and Tesla usually pulls out all the stops — including having executives help deliver cars to customers — to meet or beat its sales goals.
The decision to temporarily increase access to the FSD Beta software comes as Tesla has been rolling out a new “V12” version of the software that ditches the previous code in favor of a system that runs entirely on neural networks.
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Maju Kuruvilla is no longer CEO of one-click checkout company Bolt.
Kuruvilla didn’t have much to say about the change but did confirm it both on LinkedIn and X, by posting, simply “One-Click Checkedout from @bolt!
Kuruvilla, the former Amazon executive, took over as CEO in January 2022 after founder Ryan Breslow stepped down.
That is when Bolt was seeking a $355 million Series E round that valued the company at $11 billion.
More recently, Bolt signed a deal with Checkout in which Bolt became Checkout.com’s “exclusive one-click checkout provider” and Checkout.com becoming “Bolt’s preferred payment partner.”Want more fintech news in your inbox?
A federal judge sided against Elon Musk today, dismissing a lawsuit brought by Musk and X that targeted a nonprofit that researches online hate.
In the lawsuit, X claimed that it lost “tens of millions of dollars” as a direct result of the CCDH’s research.
Musk, who personally directed the lawsuit, called the CCDH “an evil propaganda machine” in replies on X.
The nonprofit, formed in 2018, researches trends in hate speech, extremism and misinformation on major social networks.
Unlike the CCDH lawsuit, X is suing Media Matters for America in Texas, which doesn’t share California’s protections against frivolous lawsuits designed to stifle free speech.
AI-coustics to fight noisy audio with generative AINoisy recordings of interviews and speeches are the bane of audio engineers’ existence.
According to co-founder and CEO Fabian Seipel, AI-coustics’ technology goes beyond standard noise suppression to work across — and with — any device and speaker.
“We’ve been driven by a personal mission to overcome the pervasive challenge of poor audio quality in digital communications,” Seipel said.
But Seipel says AI-coustics has a unique approach to developing the AI mechanisms that do the actual noise reduction work.
“Speech quality and intelligibility still is an annoying problem in nearly every consumer or pro-device as well as in content production or consumption.
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Monday show, in which we look back at the weekend what’s ahead in the week before us.
Over in the EU, a number of U.S.-based tech companies are under inquiry thanks to the new Digital Markets Act.
At some point, you have to wonder if tech giants are going to find a better working relationship with the bloc.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Spotify has carved out a business for itself in music streaming, podcast entertainment and audiobooks.
Starting with a rollout in the U.K., Spotify is testing the waters for an online education offering of freemium video courses.
Mohit Jitani, the London-based product director for the education business, said in an interview that pricing choices were part of what it’s testing.
Around half of Spotify Premium subscribers have listened to education or self-help themed podcasts, Spotify says.
Offering educational content aimed at running a business, or improving your music production, fits with that.
Microsoft’s AI ambitions dominated the news as well, so let’s dive right in.…Did someone forward this to you?
The U.S. joined international regulators in accusing Apple of using monopolistic tactics to lock in iPhone users.
In response, Apple claims the DOJ’s actions could ruin exactly what its users enjoy about its phones and ecosystem.
NewsMicrosoft absorbs Inflection AI’s leads: The co-founders of the high-profile AI startup were scooped up by Microsoft on Tuesday in a deal that positions Mustafa Suleyman as the lead of consumer-facing unit Microsoft AI, and Karén Simonyan as the EVP and CEO of the same group.
Amid numerous feature launches and AI updates, the company remains unclear about its path to monetization.
