Funding your bliss: mindfulness startups scale up The connected life is not necessarily the good life. Too often, it seems like we are squandering our time checking devices, losing touch with fellow humans and cultivating bad habits in the pursuit of instant gratification. If only an app could fix that. Preferably, it’d be one we could use all day long and did not require interacting with humans. It’d be nice to download in a couple of minutes, too. Welcome to the world of mindfulness and wellness apps. In the past year or so, investors have backed more than 20 startups developing apps and tools aimed at promoting mindfulness, happiness and other desirable mental states. To date, these companies have raised more than $150 million, according to Crunchbase data. Several of the largest rounds have been in recent months, with the vast majority of funding going to California-based startups. [ Tech Crunch ] The podcasts Americans listen to the most By nearly every metric, podcasts are growing more and more popular, according to Adweek. And they can be highly lucrative: NPR's podcasts added over a million listeners between 2015 to 2016, and Slate's podcast the Slate Political Gabfest made $1 million in revenue last year. But what do people listen to the most? Podtrac has a list of July's most popular podcasts:
Slack is making its way out of the office — and into the kitchen and onto the farmAs Slack and other cloud-based office productivity tools become more commonplace, they're making their way well beyond the land of cubicles and into more hands-on places of business like farms and restaurants. Rebecca Yazbek was six months pregnant when she first introduced Slack to her staff at Nomad, the Sydney, Australia-based restaurant she runs with her husband, Al. Then, her baby came early, and Yazbek ended up in the hospital with only her cellphone. "Slack was the only form of communication," she told Business Insider over the phone from her vacation in Croatia, with her now 1-year-old cooing in the background. [ Business Insider ] 20 months in, Microsoft Ventures shows promiseThere’s a new Microsoft in town, and the company has spent the past and a half year embedding itself into the worldwide venture capital ecosystem. It’s a move that’s supposed to keep the company in touch with the latest startup developments, something that CEO Satya Nadella believes is critical to its success. Making Microsoft an attractive resource to new companies is no small feat: While Nadella has spearheaded a massive effort to transform the company, it had to overcome a tough image of being stodgy, difficult to work with, and stuck in the past. As part of that work, Microsoft made a massive commitment to provide startups with funding and support through a venture capital arm. Called Microsoft Ventures, the team is charged with going out and helping to fund startups that would be useful for Microsoft to be in touch with and that would benefit from the company’s assistance. The team is led by Nagraj Kashyap, a veteran investor who previously led Qualcomm Ventures for 15 years. [ Venture Beat ] The best time for a startup to raise funds, according to Canva, SafetyCulture and VinomofoGrowing a startup into a successful business is a journey full of tough decisions, and one of them is deciding whether you should bootstrap your business, or get funding. This was a topic of discussion during a panel held following the Sydney premier of The New Hustle. The panelists were SafetyCulture founder Luke Anear, Vinomofo co-founders Justin Dry and Andre Eikmeier, and the co-founders of Canva, Mel Perkins and Cliff Obrecht. Each business had different experiences and different points of view on the best approach. [ Business Insider ] Ex-CIA Agent Raises $40M To Find Every 'Thing' On The Web In Just One HourQadium, a Peter Thiel-backed cybersecurity start-up from San Francisco, has raised a Series B of $40 million, as it expands its product that CEO and ex-CIA analyst Tim Junio claims can index almost every device connected to the public internet in just an hour. [ Forbes ] Understanding Roku’s IPO And Its Growing Platform Revenues In a pleasant Friday surprise, Roku dropped its S-1 document today, detailing its financial performance and corporate strategy. The filing indicates that the company intends to raise $100 million in its debut. The figure is a widely-recognized placeholder number. The company could raise more or less in its IPO. [ CrunchBase ] CSIRO and Monash University partner to launch M2 medical precinct to support healthtech startupsThe CSIRO has this week partnered with Monash University and the Monash Health Translation Precinct (MHTP) to launch M2, a new Melbourne-based facility that will help emerging medical technology companies and researchers commercialise their ideas. The precinct will aim to close the gaps between large pharmaceutical companies and small-to-medium enterprises by providing medtechs a space to prototype and clinically test their product – a traditionally expensive and time consuming process. [ Startup Daily ] From Fake Male Cofounders To Brain Food: August’s Top Leadership StoriesThis August, we learned about two women e-commerce entrepreneurs who circumvented (some of) the startup world’s sexism by creating a fictitious male cofounder, and how one Fast Company staff member fared after tweaking her diet to include foods meant to boost cognitive functioning. [ FastCompany ] Juicero, the $700 juicer startup, is looking for a buyer — and shutting down in the meantimeJuicero, the Silicon Valley startup that raised more than $100 million in venture capital for a $700 juicer that became a butt of industry jokes, announced on Friday that it is ceasing operations after just 16 months and looking for a buyer. The company, started by former Organic Avenue CEO Doug Evans, had cut the price of its juicer to $399 and had planned to unveil a new version at $199. It had also said it planned to reduce the price of the vegetable and juice packs required to make each glass of juice. [ Re/Code ] It's Not Snapchat Or Instagram's App That's #1 With Millennials, It's Amazon'sSmart Paddock collects biometric data from cattle to help farmers make informed decisionsTinder Hits $3 Billion Valuation After Match Group Converts OptionsWhere Major Corporations Like Salesforce And NVIDIA Are Investing In Artificial IntelligenceTech companies spend more on R&D than any other companies in the U.S. |