The goal was straightforward but ambitious: upend the cement industry.
Furno’s smaller kilns fly in the face of trends in the cement industry today, which has been chasing ever larger equipment.
By building smaller kilns, Furno is hoping to lower capital expenditures through mass production and lower operating expenses through energy efficiency.
And because Furno’s kilns are smaller, they could allow cement to be remade right on a construction site.
Already, Furno has captured the attention of ready-mix concrete companies, which have to buy cement from vertically integrated companies.
The company has crafted an interesting distribution strategy for travel eSIM cards and simplified the experience as eSIM remains a confusing technology for most people.
Thanks to eSIM, the experience is much better — or at least on paper because the eSIM industry is a bit confusing.
For instance, if you’re traveling to Argentina, you might search for the best option for a travel eSIM before heading to the airport.
Kolet’s first travel partners are professional travel agency Resaneo and air ticket booking platform Ulysse.
It has also asked some travel industry experts to become advisors for the startup.
With the second fund, Ada says it will invest between £250,000 and £1.5 million in pre-seed and seed stage startups, with a “significant amount” allocated for follow-ons.
So far, 12 investments have been made from the second fund.
Ada claims 30% of the investments from Fund I and Fund II were sourced this way.
Warner retorted: “There are 350+ fantastic female VC partners in Europe.
: “I think every leader of every VC fund needs to do whatever we can to attract the best talent in the industry.
Earlier this week, the U.S. government announced sanctions against the founder of a controversial government spyware maker, Tal Dilian, and his business associate, Sara Aleksandra Fayssal Hamou.
If the U.S. government thinks someone sold spyware to authoritarians and dictators, or their company’s spyware was used against the wrong targets, it will go directly after the people running those spyware companies.
And people who used to work in the government spyware industry expressed concern.
That’s big,” said a former head of a spyware maker that sold to governments, when TechCrunch shared the news of the sanctions with him.
According to a third person working in the spyware industry, the sanctions against Dilian and his business associate Hamou should make the whole market have a moment of reflection.
Yet another AI-powered fraud detection software provider is laying off staff.
Inscribe, whose platform works to detect fraud in areas like business underwriting, tenant screening, and onboarding, has cut just under 40% of its staff, which equates to dozens of employees.
San Francisco-based Inscribe.ai confirmed the headcount reduction to TechCrunch, noting that the AI advances in the financial services industry necessitated a pivot to a new product and direction for the company.
“2023 was a year of change for our customers and Inscribe,” explained Inscribe CEO and co-founder, Ronan Burke.
At the time, the company forecast it would double its then 50-person workforce over the coming 12 to 18 months.
It’s been over two years since a key piece of the tracking-ads’ industry’s consent collection apparatus was found to breach European Union’s data protection laws.
A simple ‘yes or no’ to ad tracking is as much friction web users should get.
Critics dub the whole cynical approach compliance theatre: An attempt by the ad industry to evade data protection law and keep tracking and profiling web users en masse by packaging systematic non-compliance inside an industry standard framework.
However action requiring reform of the framework was suspended pending a final court ruling on the IAB’s appeal.
Plus the European Data Protection Board is due to weigh in with guidance soon.
The guy who founded that – Jim Jannard – became a billionaire after selling a lot of sunnies, then went on to found RED digital cinema, one of the first major digital cinema camera brands.
Today, Nikon announced that Nikon Corporation has announced its agreement to acquire the camera manufacturer, and turning into a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Nikon Corporation.
This sensor’s physical size was comparable to analog film, bridging the gap between digital and traditional film production.
This short film convinced director Steven Soderbergh to shoot his film “Che” with Red technology, marking a significant milestone in digital cinema.
The company’s cameras were used to film over 25% of the top 100 grossing films filmed on digital video in the US shot on digital video by 2016.
What does crypto smell like?
To celebrate International Women’s Day, Binance launched a splashy campaign to urge women to get into crypto through the power of… fragrance.
But even as more women enter the industry, the crypto sphere has struggled shake the stench of a men’s locker room.
Boston Consulting Group found that only 7% of web3 founders are women, and among top crypto startups, 27% of employees are women.
But the messaging gets confused such that the idea of crypto perfume can come across as patronizing moreso than funny.
Networking app BeScene launches today to bring filmmakers and other creatives (actors/actresses, animators, cinematographers, costume designers, directors, editors, producers, production assistants, script coordinators, writers and so forth) a Tinder-like experience to help build connections within the entertainment industry.
“The simplicity and familiarity allow each user to find what they need quickly and in a way that is meaningful: through real human connections,” Armistead says.
Former Tinder executives attempted a similar strategy in 2018 with a networking app called Ripple, which uses the familiar swipe mechanism to match professionals with each other.
HUSSLUP, another like-minded networking app for the film biz, also has a swipe feature, however, it’s more aligned with LinkedIn since it provides job search and posting capabilities.
While BeScene hasn’t raised any external funding yet, the company gathered $250,000 from friends and family in 2022.
Amba Kak is the executive director of the AI Now Institute, where she helps create policy recommendations to address AI concerns.
She was also a senior AI advisor at the Federal Trade Commission and previously worked as a global policy advisor at Mozilla and a legal advisor to India’s telecom regulator on net-netruality.
How do you navigate the challenges of the male-dominated tech industry and, by extension, the male-dominated AI industry?
The tech industry, and AI in particular, remains overwhelmingly white and male and geographically concentrated in very wealthy urban bubbles.
By exposing the power dynamics that the tech industry tries very hard to conceal.
