Inspired by spiders and wasps, these tiny drones pull 40x their own weight

If we want drones to do our dirty work for us, they’re going to need to get pretty good at hauling stuff around. But due to the pesky yet unavoidable restraints of physics, it’s hard for them to muster the forces necessary to do so while airborne — so these drones brace themselves against the ground to get the requisite torque.

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Lessons from building Brex into a billion-dollar startup

When I think about my experience as an immigrant and entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, I remember growing up in Brazil and how we saw tech founders and CEOs as kings. We imagined what it would be like to assume the throne.

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Jane VC, a new fund for female entrepreneurs, wants founders to cold email them

Want to pitch a venture capitalist? You’ll need a “warm introduction” first. At least that’s what most in the business will advise. Find a person, typically a man, who made the VC you’re interested in pitching a whole bunch of money at some point and have them introduce you. Why? Because VCs love people who’ve […]

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How the 22-year-old founders of Brex built a billion-dollar business in less than 2 years

Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi, the co-founders of Brex, have raised $125 million at a $1.1 billion valuation just four months after the startup’s public launch.

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Former Uber exec Andrew Chapin takes the wraps off his stealth mental health startup

Basis, a mental wellness app, has raised $3.75 million in funding from Bedrock, Wave Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

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uBiome is jumping into therapeutics with a healthy $83 million in Series C financing

23andMe, IBM and now uBiome is the next tech company to jump into the lucrative multi-billion dollar drug discovery market. The company started out with a consumer gut health test to check whether your intestines carry the right kind of bacteria for healthy digestion but has since expanded to include over 250,000 samples for everything […]

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Meet the startups in the latest Alchemist class

Alchemist is the Valley’s premiere enterprise accelerator and every season they feature a group of promising startups. They are also trying something new this year: they’re putting a reserve button next to each company, allowing angels to express their interest in investing immediately. It’s a clever addition to the demo day model. You can watch […]

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Base10’s debut fund is the largest-ever for a Black-led VC firm

Adeyemi Ajao, the co-founder and managing director of Base10 Partners, was surprised to hear his firm’s $137 million fund was the largest debut to date for a black-led venture capital firm.

He and his co-founder — managing director TJ Nahigian — found out from none other than their fund’s own limited partners, who told them they should seek out institutions looking to invest in diverse fund managers.

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The alumni of these universities raised the most VC in the past year

Joanna Glasner Contributor More posts by this contributor Global unicorn exits hit multi-year high in 2018 Boston-area startups are on pace to overtake NYC venture totals Whatever criteria we look at, whether it’s schools with the highest number of well-capitalized founders, highest funding totals or even where startup investors went to college, the same names top […]

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VR optics could help old folks keep the world in focus

The complex optics involved with putting a screen an inch away from the eye in VR headsets could make for smart glasses that correct for vision problems. These prototype “autofocals” from Stanford researchers use depth sensing and gaze tracking to bring the world into focus when someone lacks the ability to do it on their own.

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Outgoing Facebook CSO Alex Stamos will join Disrupt SF to talk cybersecurity

At Disrupt SF 2018, Facebook’s soon-to-be-former chief security officer Alex Stamos will join us to chat about his tenure in the top security role for the world’s biggest social network, how it feels to have weathered some of the biggest security and privacy scandals to ever hit the tech industry and securing U.S. elections in […]

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