Startup companies

Startup companies

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.

California startup Natilus announced Wednesday that Indian carrier SpiceJet will order up to 100 of its new airliner called Horizon. The triangle-shaped "blended-wing body" (BWB) aircraft ditches the traditional tube-and-wing design for one giant, sweeping wing with the cabin built inside. It's a more efficient aircraft that allows for more space and fewer emissions. Natilus hopes to launch Horizon in the early 2030s.

HardScope is designed to give independent creators access to c-suite capabilities, including help and tools around strategy, creative assets, production, social media, distribution and commercialization to help them build their media companies. Specifically, HardScope aims to help creators scale their audiences and content in a way that doesn't sacrifice quality while growing equity by developing original IP as well as new products and ventures.

The Helsingborg-based platform connects students with internships. Designed to streamline recruitment, the platform helps businesses quickly find qualified interns who match their needs, thanks to detailed student profiles that provide clear insights into each candidate's skills. For students, it's an easy way to discover opportunities and connect with potential employers.

Five Welsh entrepreneurs have been recognised for outstanding progress after completing the Business Wales Start-Up Accelerator, with the latest cohort underlining how intensive, targeted support can turn early-stage ideas into investment-ready businesses. The award winners completed the ten-week accelerator programme and were recognised across five categories, reflecting both the breadth and quality of entrepreneurial talent emerging across Wales. Collectively, the cohort demonstrated strong momentum in moving from concept to customer, validating propositions and building clear growth strategies.

All they need is a working product: an embodiment of their mission. As a product manager, you do the usual. In a short duration, you conjure up enough details to come up with a roadmap. A plan with all the required features to put the product in the hands of potential users. It is well-detailed, with release dates and launch timelines. You align the team and start development. What could go wrong?

"Just checked, 176,000 job applications at Figure the last 3 years," he wrote in an X post on Saturday. "We've hired ~425 people." That amounts to a hiring rate of about .24% within the three years. Adcock wrote that most of the submissions were "slop." The spread of the 176,000 applications over the three years is unclear. Adcock did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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"Here we go again, I thought", as I listened to the board member tell me how frustrated he was with the founder of one of their venture firm's most promising investments. Sadly, I knew the call was likely too late to prevent an inevitable cascade of emotional and financial consequences. Working as an executive coach in Silicon Valley with venture capital firms and the companies where they have placed their investments means being at the confluence of high-stakes financial and career risk.

Bailey Baumbick traded a career as a national security consultant to build tech solutions for the challenges she saw at the Pentagon. Elias Rosenfeld left a job in social impact consulting to start a career aimed at revitalizing America's industrial base. Lee Kantowski spent eight years in the Army before switching to defense tech, where he hopes to fix the military's outdated tools.

On Me, a digital gift card startup founded by former Google employees, is aiming to redefine the gift card industry with its mobile-first gifting platform that lets users purchase digital gift cards categorized by interests rather than being restricted to specific retailers. The company on Thursday said it had raised $6 million in a seed funding round, which it will use to expand its gift categories to include things like horseback riding lessons, wine tastings, and theme park trips.

The company is seeking a $1.5 trillion valuation - the richest listing in history, per Bloomberg. Combined with other possible listings, Bloomberg estimates that as much as $2.9 trillion worth of private companies could go public next year. Other AI-linked "centicorns" - companies valued at $100-billion plus-are reportedly weighing listings, including Databricks and Anthropic. OpenAI has an implied valuation of over $500 billion, fueling speculation about a future stock listing, though it has attempted to tamp that down.