If they can grow muscle, can they make meat?
Modern Meadow is a startup based in Brooklyn, New York. They are aiming to commercialize leather and meat products that are not made from slaughtered animals but brewed in cell-culture vats. If it works, and if the market embraces the resulting products, it would lead to vast savings in water, land, and energy use associated with livestock production.
Continue reading… “Why is lab-grown beef better than ranchers raising cows?”
Ello
Ello, a new upstart social network burst into the spotlight last week. It has grown from just 90 members in August to a reported 30,000 new users per hour, To understand the social network let’s start with its manifesto:
Continue reading… “Ello – a wakeup call for social media marketing”
Amy Norman and Stella Ma started pitching investors on their San Francisco-based startup, Little Passports, in 2009. Both women had young children and Norman was pregnant. The overwhelming majority of the investors they met with were men who wanted to know “if we were running this as a ‘lifestyle company,’” Ma recalls. Investors passed and word got around Silicon Valley that “there’s no way women like this could grow a company fast enough” to satisfy venture capitalists, Norman says.
Continue reading… “Angel Investing: Rise of women investors fuels businesses run by women”
FlightCar
Startups love untapped resources and a parked car at an airport is just that. FlightCar is a startup that puts your unused car to work while you travel, and it has just scored $13.5 million to continue doing so.
Continue reading… “FlightCar scores $13.5M to put your unused car to work while you travel”
Ultrathin zinc-polymer battery.
Imprint Energy is developing flexible, rechargeable batteries that can be printed cheaply on commonly used industrial screen printers. The California startup has been testing its ultrathin zinc-polymer batteries in wrist-worn devices and hopes to sell them to manufacturers of wearable electronics, medical devices, smart labels, and environmental sensors.
Continue reading… “Imprint Energy is developing flexible, printed batteries for wearable devices”
When will the driverless car become reality?
We know that driverless cars are the future. What we don’t know for sure, however, is when that future will arrive. The most recent entrant into this exciting field is Cruise Automation, a startup based in San Francisco.
Continue reading… “Investing in the driverless car future”
Entrepreneurs fared better taking less venture capital.
It seems that raising as much venture capital as humanly possible is Silicon Valley’s mantra, there are reasons to be cautious when signing termsheets. Startups raising a couple of million dollars had a median exit price of more than $10 million, while the outcome for those raising double that was actually worse, a recent study shows.
Continue reading… “Study shows startups are better off taking less venture capital”
Tile makes sure you never lose anything ever again.
Wouldn’t it be great if you never lost anything you cared about ever again: your keys, your wallet, your favorite leather jacket? You could even tap into a large group of strangers to help you track down a stolen bike.
Continue reading… “Tile creates the ‘world’s largest lost and found’”
A dual-carbon battery from a brand new startup out of Japan.
A young Japanese startup called Power Japan Plus, or PJP, has a new type of battery under development that lasts longer, is safer, charges faster and is less expensive than a standard lithium ion battery. The year-old company uses carbon for both the anode and the cathode portion of the battery and hopes to start producing it later this year.
Continue reading… “Japanese startup unveils a long-lasting and safer dual-carbon battery”
AirHelp
It can be hard to a book flight on an airline website, so imagine how hard it must be to claim compensation for delayed, canceled or overbooked flights. Meet AirHelp, the startup that will save you all the hassle and claim money for you. AirHelp has unveiled a major new feature, making the claiming process much easier. (Video)
Continue reading… “AirHelp gets you money back for canceled or delayed flights”
The SCiO is a handheld molecular analyzer.
If you wanted to look up the calorie content of a specific food you are eating you could take it to a lab and run it through a spectrometer. But accurate spectrometers are huge, expensive machines that are often only owned by institutions and require training to use. A new startup, however, wants to make it easy as running an app and pairing a bluetooth dongle. (Video)
Continue reading… “$150 smartphone spectrometer can tell the number of calories in your food”
SpoonRocket
There are dozens of services operating in and around San Francisco like – Homejoy for cleaning, BloomThat for flowers, Postmates for courier service, SpoonRocket a gourmet meal-delivery service, and on and on. Most of them provide cheap, convenient amenities at the tap of a smartphone app. Few of them are profitable on a corporate level. And together, they’ve formed the backbone of a strange urban economy: one in which massive venture-capital injections allow money-losing start-ups to flourish, while providing services that no traditional, unsubsidized business can match. It’s an economy built on patience, and the hope that someday, after the land grab is over and the dust has settled, a better business model will emerge.
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.