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It’s Friday, and that means… We don’t even know what that means anymore, other than sitting in the sun and enjoying the last few days of warm weather before it’s time to envy the antipodes for the next six months. — Christine and hi
The ukbusinessupdates.com Top 3
- Fashionable late: Epic Games loved Hadean, a distributed computing startup, so much that it didn’t want to miss the chance to support it. Paul has more information on how Epic was able to land the $30 million Series A investment and why.
- From bland to bling: Life insurance isn’t often an exciting topic, but Strava co-founder Mark Shaw believes he’s found a way to “zhuzhen” it with Inclined, a company that provides loans against whole-life insurance policies. Mary Ann writes. The company is now level with a $15 million Series A.
- Shopping for Healthcare: Healthcare is an intricate web of doctors, labs, and payers that rarely seem to connect. Kenyan startup Ponea Health aims to change that with its healthcare marketplace offering that brings everyone together, annie reports.
Startups and VC
The crypto market is flooded with centralized (Binance, FTX) and decentralized ETH-based perpetuals and options trading platforms (Dydx, Opyn, Perpetual Protocol). Nibiru is trying to build the first mainstream decentralized multichain solution. The company was co-founded by Tribe Capital GP Arjun Sethi and has just raised $7.5 million in seed funding at a valuation of $100 million, manish reports.
A cloud kitchen — also known as a haunted kitchen or shared kitchen — provides restaurant owners and food entrepreneurs with commercial kitchen space at a lower cost for food delivery and takeout. A Manila-headquartered startup called CloudEats, which operates cloud kitchens in the Philippines and Vietnam, just raised a $7 million Series A extension to accelerate the digitization of food service in Southeast Asia. Kate reports.
Here are a few more…
8 Investors Discuss What’s Next For Reproductive Health Startups In A Post-Roe World
Image Credits: Alexander Ryabintsev / Getty Images
Dominic-Madori Davis surveyed eight investors about the role venture capital could play in this new era when Americans no longer have the legal right to have an abortion.
The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision had more ramifications than healthcare and personal privacy: Will capital and talent flee US states that restrict reproductive rights? Will investors support more startups expanding access to healthcare?
Given “the weak relationship between venture capital and ethics,” Dominic-Madori asked the group how they plan to exert influence — and how they prefer to be approached by entrepreneurs:
- Hessie Jones, Partner, MATR Ventures
- Lisa Calhoun, Gary Peat and William Leonard, Valor Ventures
- Mecca Tartt, Executive Director, Startup Runway
- Ed Zimmerman, Co-Founder, First Close Partners
- Theodora Lau, Founder, Unconventional Ventures
- McKeever Conwell, Founder, RareBreed Ventures
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Big Tech Inc.
Who knew a baseball simulation game would catch on so well at the height of a pandemic? The Game Band certainly did. Amanda talks to the creators of Blaseball about how they are building the game for the future.
- Breaking into a new show: If you are a fan of “Breaking Bad”, the creator of the show has announced a new show for Apple TV+, Ivan writes.
- clap back: The California Civil Rights Department is now reviewing Tesla’s counterclaim after a judge refused to dismiss a racially biased case against the electric car giant. Rebecca has more.
- New chef: Former Google ad manager Allan Thygesen has a new gig: the new CEO of DocuSign, Ron reports.
- No supply shortage here: Jaclyn reports on GM Ventures’ new investment in Lithion Recycling, a Canadian battery recycler, to keep the juice flowing for GM’s fleet of electric vehicles.
- Urgent message: Elections are taking place in Italy on Sunday, and the country is nervous about measures to disrupt the elections, so it sent a message to Meta asking for information on how Facebook plans to manage this, Natasha L writes.
