Startup companies

Startup companies

The startup began as a "weekend hackathon" sparked by a question by Cooper's mother, who is an executive coach: could an AI tool automate the drudgery of report writing so she could spend more time on the human coaching work she loves? Over the past two years, Convogo has helped "thousands" of coaches and partnered with the "world's top leadership development firms," per an email bearing news of the acquisition sent by Convogo.

Tailwind, like many startups, has a small head count. In a podcast posted on X, Wathan said that the company had four engineers on staff. Now, there's one. Wathan's post highlights the challenges that startups, which already face tough odds of success, can encounter as AI models grow more capable. The CEO founded the web developer tool in 2017. Tailwind's model is free and open-source, with a paid "pro" tier driving the company's revenue.

The ElectricFish 400squared can be installed in as little as a few hours instead of months. That's because it doesn't need costly grid upgradesand the secret lies inside the box. America's EV charging infrastructure is growing nicely, but there's still more to do if charging anxiety is to become a thing of the past. The U.S. has over 14,000 DC fast charging stations with more than 67,000 individual ports, but one startup reckons it can speed up installations by eliminating one of the main bottlenecks:

Life as a CEO is busy, and I start my days early with exercise, meditation, and a strong cup of coffee, before I jump into a morning of back-to-back meetings. I'm very disciplined about how I work and communicate, but I try to keep time for thinking and being outside, especially at the end of the week. In the evenings, I slow down with family, simple rituals, and sleep, so I can do it all again the next day.

The small microprocessor enables accurate positioning via Galileo, GPS, and Beidou. Invest-NL is investing €10 million in Qualinx and considers it to be a unique Dutch technology, according to the FD. "The chip is not only very economical compared to competing products, but also universal. If it is used to connect to another satellite system, only a software update is required," says investment manager Johan Stins. Invest-NL sees wireless communication chips as a huge market.

In practice, Lemkin, the founder of SaaStr, the world's largest community of business-to-business founders, said on Lenny's Podcast recently that this means he will stop hiring humans in his sales department. Instead, SaaStr is going all in on agents, which are commonly defined as virtual assistants that can complete tasks autonomously. They break down problems, outline plans, and take action without being prompted by a user.

The acquisition brings together two of Africa's leading fintech infrastructure companies. Flutterwave operates one of the continent's widest payments networks, while Mono, often described as the "Plaid for Africa," has built APIs that allow businesses to access bank data, initiate payments, and verify customers. Mono has raised about $17.5 million from investors, including Tiger Global, General Catalyst, and Target Global.

Most successful SaaS companies begin with strong intuition. Founders understand the problem deeply. Early decisions are fast, informal, and often correct. The closeness between insight and action creates momentum that is hard to replicate later. As companies grow, that intuition becomes harder to rely on. Teams expand, customers diversify, and systems become more complex. Decisions that once felt obvious now feel risky. Many organisations respond by pushing harder on the same instincts that drove early success. Rupon Anandanadarajah has seen where that leads.

Rivian delivered 42,247 vehicles in 2025, a drop from 51,579 the year prior. The startup automaker took a sharp hit in the fourth quarter, as electric-vehicle tax credits came to an end. Rivian is now hanging its future on the more affordable R2, due out this year, as well as improvements to its autonomous driving platform and a technical partnership with Volkswagen.

Over the last year or so, Silicon Valley made an all-out push for employees to return to the office. Now that the industry has people back at their desks, it's trying to figure out how to make them happy. The influx of office dwellers, including a growing number of Gen Z representatives, has the Valley trying new things, like shoeless offices.

In the past, bringing that idea to life required capital, a team, and time. Today, it requires a laptop and a collection of AI tools. With AI filling the gaps, a working prototype can be vibe coded in weeks, if not hours. The product is tested, refined, and launched, and for a brief moment it appears successful. Then reality intervenes. Within months, near-identical products emerge, copied and shipped at machine speed.

Everyone is constantly asking for more resources, Of course, where we can afford to and where it's appropriate, new resources arrive, but it is really important to me that we feel that we've deliberately understaffed every project at the company.

In 2024, they launched Sauron - named after the sinister, all-seeing eye from "The Lord of the Rings" - to build what they envisioned as a military-grade home security system for tech elites. The concept resonated in Bay Area circles, where crime had become a constant topic during and after the pandemic, despite San Francisco Police Department statistics showing property crime and homicide rates declining last year.

MayimFlow, the Built World stage winner at this year's TechCrunch Disrupt, is a good example. The startup is focused on essentially one task: preventing damaging water leaks. Data centers use a lot of water, and that water can present a big risk, even if a leak is small. Founder John Khazraee told TechCrunch that many data centers only have reactive solutions for water leaks. That can saddle companies with downtime and set them back millions of dollars if one occurs.

When I was younger, I started an e-commerce grip socks brand called Alpha Grips. It failed, but that's what got me interested in business. I was 12. A lot of kids' first businesses is always something to do with e-commerce, like drop-shipping or clothing brands. Social media does saturate you with that "get rich quick" idea with drop-shipping or crypto. Although 90% of the time it's a scam, it still ignites an interest.

I was entirely on my own when I was 19. While I was enrolled in college, I worked full-time at night in the call center of a fintech company, Jack Henry & Associates. It was a gritty, hands-on role, but an exciting time to be with the company, which was growing quickly. I didn't have a typical college experience. I worked a lot so I could pay for my car and home. At work, I put my hand up any chance I could. I was never the smartest person, but I worked really hard and was always willing to figure out problems. Even if I'd never done something, I would figure it out. I couldn't afford to fail, personally or professionally.

Now, nearly four years later, the insect farming company has been placed into judicial liquidation - essentially bankruptcy - for insolvency. Ultimately, Ÿnsect failed to fulfill its ambition to "revolutionize the food chain" with insect-based protein. But don't be too quick to attribute its failure to the 'ick' factor that many Westerners feel about bugs. Human food was never its core focus.

When I turned 15, like all my friends, I wanted to get a job at a café to earn money. But my father pushed me to start my company young, and it's the reason I'm now financially independent at 20. I started selling origami butterfly artwork, a skill I picked up from a school trip to Japan and honed during the COVID-19 lockdown. I started selling them at markets in Melbourne when I was 16.

Shalini Aggarwal: Andy and I began working together in 2015, after I relocated to the US from India. He was a dev engineer, and I worked on the product and program execution side. Aggarwal: We quickly realized that we took a lot of systems and tools for granted when we were in an enterprise company. The startup world is completely different; here, we have to build from scratch, and there was a lot about our mindset we had to unlearn.

Cryptocurrency has gone from a niche idea to a global tool for business. But behind the scenes, it still takes real work to make digital payments safe, fast, and reliable. Few companies have taken on that challenge with as much focus and discipline as ZixiPay. Founded in 2017 by a small team of engineers and early blockchain investors, ZixiPay has grown into a trusted name in crypto payment processing and business wallet technology.

Series, a small New York-based start-up, thinks it has a shot at winning a profitable share of the market. The business, only launched last year, is today revealing it has now signed up 10,000 daily active users who have collectively exchanged more than a million messages so far. Series is the brainchild of two Yale University students, Nathaneo Johnson and Sean Hargrow, who saw an opportunity to do something different in the social networking space.

Got any cheap Mew? asks one buyer, deploying the frantic tone of an addict, albeit one craving a rectangle depicting a creature from the all-conquering Japanese media franchise. Yet more buyers are gathering for a break a session in which they can bid for merchandise such as cards featuring Pokemon or elite footballers, drawn at random from a real or virtual box.

A separate survey by Omnisend of more than 1,200 U.S. adults confirms that side hustles have shifted from exception to standard practice. 31% of U.S. adults currently run a side hustle, and 73% are motivated by financial need. More than half launched their side hustle within the past year, and collectively they are already generating billions of dollars in extra income each month.

The logistics industry plays a critical role in global trade, e-commerce, manufacturing, and retail. As supply chains grow more complex and customer expectations for speed and reliability increase, opportunities in logistics continue to expand. If you are considering entrepreneurship in this field, learning how to start a logistics business requires careful planning, industry knowledge, and strategic execution. This in-depth guide explores every essential aspect of building a successful logistics company-from market research and legal setup to technology, operations, and long-term growth strategies.

Global supply chains move over $15T in goods annually, yet the retail industry operates on razor-thin margins while drowning in disconnected, siloed data that creates massive inefficiencies and waste. When retailers and CPG brands lack real-time visibility into sales, inventory, and supply chain performance, the results cascade throughout the system: out-of-stocks cost the industry billions in lost sales, overstock leads to food waste on an epic scale, and manual data processes consume resources that could drive strategic growth.

A so-called focused research organization, Forest Neurotech has been working on an ultrasound-based brain-computer interface for the past few years. The nonprofit launched in 2023 out of the philanthropic incubator Convergent Research, which is funded in part by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, his wife Wendy Schmidt, and billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin. Forest and Convergent declined to comment.

"His Vespa had gotten stolen and we just kinda had this crazy idea ... if we were to design one for the future that was all-electric, had the best technology, what would it look like? What would it feel like?" Cohen explained. As I stood beside P1, a $10,000 electric seated scooter, and Olto, a $3,495 bike-lane legal class 2 e-bike, that question had been answered. The brothers' company started shipping the P1 to customers in October and expects to deliver Olto in early 2026.