CEO Anzhelika Osmanova and her team are now launching their app in the Norwegian market, but have plans for international expansion.
Lendwill, a revolutionary peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform, has recently opened up community fundraising with the goal of making fair lending accessible to young people. By investing now, you can get early access to Lendwill and become part of a community-driven movement that seeks to help young people achieve their dreams.
Lenwill pre-registration campaign on Seedrs is open. Please click here to register.
P2P lending has long been a way to break down the barriers of traditional bank lending, and Lendwill take this to the next level. By collaborating with local communities and investors, Lendwill provide young people with a fair chance to achieve their financial goals. The platform offers borrowers the opportunity to apply for loans at lower rates than they would face at traditional banks, while investors get the chance to contribute to a good cause and earn returns on their investments.
Lendwill also has a unique approach to credit checking, taking into account more than just credit scores. By using advanced data modeling and social media analysis, Lendwill gives borrowers a chance to showcase their financial potential, even if they do not have an extensive credit history.
As an engaged journalist who is passionate about entrepreneurship, I strongly recommend Lendwill to young people who are looking to achieve their financial goals. By registering now, you will not only get early access to the platform, but you will also become part of a community-driven movement that seeks to help young people realize their dreams.
So what are you waiting for? Register now for Lendwill and become part of a movement for fair lending!
Plast Nordic has been working with the Nordic value chain of plastic- and textile waste since 2019, this because there is a technology developed by gr3n SA, that enables the chemical recycling of PET plastic and polyester, commonly used in beverage bottles, food packaging, and textiles. They are now planning their first chemical recycling plant.
The final product will be a polymer from recycled monomers (ie terephthalic acid, TPA and monoethylene glycol, MEG) with the same properties as that of petroleum, which currently dominates the global market.
With around 430,000 tons of PET waste every year in the Nordic region, Plast Nordic aims to both reduce CO2 emissions and provide a unique sustainable solution for waste management in the Nordic countries.
For more information, contact Rune Byremo, rune@plastnordic.com, book a meeting with Berg Moe here or sign up for New Venture Insights.
Many of us have seen the light in terms of how to use ChatGPT. I have done some research on how others use the tool, and I will also provide some examples of how I use it myself. I hope this can be an inspiration on how to use ChatGPT in your startup to have a more efficient day. There are also great opportunities here to create new business opportunities and disruptive solutions.
At the end of the article, there are some tips on how to get started, including registration and tips on other resources and tools that are available. What are your best tips?
Use in meetings
I am engaged as an advisor for a foundation based in Los Angeles that works with patents. In our last meeting, we used ChatGPT to create a list of Open AI platforms. We also asked a creative question about the use of NFTs (non-fungible tokens). We got suitable answers, which provided a basis for an excellent discussion.
Instead of the old “check it out and we’ll take it up at the next meeting,” we could clarify this in 2 minutes.
Here are some other examples:
Notes: You can use ChatGPT to take notes from the meeting automatically while you are talking. This can save you time and ensure that you don’t forget important points.
Questions and answers: You can use ChatGPT to answer questions that come up in the meeting, so you can stay focused on the discussion.
References and examples: You can use ChatGPT to find relevant references and examples that can help strengthen your arguments during the meeting.
Summary: After the meeting, you can use ChatGPT to create a summary of what we discussed and the important decisions that were made.
Translation: If the meeting is to be held in multiple languages, ChatGPT can help you translate what is being said into the desired language.
Content creation
Joshua Wöhle, co-founder and CEO of edtech company Mindstone and former co-founder and CTO of SuperAwesome, uses generative AI for a range of uses in his startup day-to-day. This includes a social media assistant he built with the help of ChatGPT and image generators DALL-E and Stable Diffusion.
Wöhle’s Excel app allows him to enter the text for a tweet in a single spreadsheet, which then creates graphics for use on social media. This includes a headline for the tweet, placed over an image that is automatically generated based on the text he writes.
“It just means that the time to go from an idea to something you can publish is now a minute or less, instead of it taking around 20 minutes,” says Wöhle.
He also uses ChatGPT in multiple ways to help him generate content for his startup. This includes feeding the system with examples of previous essays he has written and asking it to suggest ideas for new posts. He also uses ChatGPT to come up with suggestions for questions for guests on his podcast.
However, even though Wöhle says that generative AI has strengthened his ability to create high-quality content, he still plans to hire a head of product marketing at Mindstone, but with different expectations.
– I will still want an expert there, but my expectations for that person have skyrocketed. I expect them to do more work at the same time.
Joshua Wöhle
Integration with Google Search
ChatGPT for Google allows you to integrate ChatGPT into Google Chrome and get search results directly in the browser. This enhances the value of the search results. Keep in mind that the data used as the basis for answers is about two years old.
Features:
Access ChatGPT directly from the pop-up
Markdown rendering
Code highlights
Dark theme
Feedback to improve ChatGPT
Copy to clipboard
Taking notes and creating summaries of videos
Glasp is a tool for taking notes and adding markings from websites. You can find and save articles from friends. I use it mostly to transcribe and create summaries of videos. Supports all the most popular browsers.
Coding
Peter Nixey is the founder of the task management app Intentional. As a solo founder, Nixey is currently building the entire technology stack himself. Peter uses ChatGPT every day as a personal web development assistant.
He describes in an article on Sifted how it has given him the ability to speed up work with the development tool, Docker. He hadn’t used it before, and uses ChatGPT to ask for details about the tool.
“It’s been very good at explaining what I should do. It’s been very good at giving me code examples. ChatGPT explains distinct lines of code and why they’re there, and does it efficiently,” he says.
He says it would normally have taken him about two weeks to learn how to use the tool. With ChatGPT it took two days.
See also the videos further down in the article.
Who will own ChatGPT in the future?
According to The New York Times, Microsoft is in talks with OpenAI about an investment of up to $10 billion. They have previously invested $3 billion, and have a “right of first refusal” in the agreement.
I consider it likely that they will invest more.
Satya’s (Microsoft CEO) expectation is that we will push the boundaries of AI, and we will do this for all of our products.
Eric Boyd, head of Microsoft’s AI team
Other ways to use AI in your business
There are many ways to use artificial intelligence (AI) in a startup. Here are some other examples:
Prediction models: AI models can predict future trends and outcomes, such as in economics, customer behavior, and sales.
Automation: AI technology can automate repetitive tasks, such as responding to customer questions, following up on leads, or handling administration.
Analysis: AI tools can analyze large amounts of data, such as to identify patterns or to uncover new opportunities.
Image and sound recognition: AI tools can recognize objects or sounds, such as to sort images or to recognize voices.
Quantitative analysis: AI tools can analyze large amounts of data and generate reports that can help you make better decisions.
Development of new products: AI can develop new products or services that are more efficient or better suited to customers.
Join the conversation How are you using ChatGPT or other AI tools today and what plans do you have for the future?
Registration
ChatGPT is available via a website, so there is no need to download anything. OpenAI has not yet released an official app, although the app stores are full of fake versions. You should install and use these with caution, as they are not official ChatGPT apps.
Supposedly, you can download ChatGPT locally through GitHub, but I haven’t tried that yet.
Dou you want to learn more about how to use ChatGPT in your startup? Please connect with me on LinkedIn or other of my social channels and read more about me here.
Good luck with implementing ChatGTP into your workday and life!
ChatGPT is an advanced artificial intelligence (AI) model developed by OpenAI. It is a variant of the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) model. The specialization is to generate human-like text for conversational AI.
They trained ChatGPT on a large amount of conversations and dialogues. This gives it the ability to understand context and perform a range of tasks such as answering questions, generating responses, and writing text that resembles human-written text.
They used ChatGPT in a variety of applications, such as chatbots, virtual assistants, and automated text generation.
This article was first posted by Berg Moe in Norwegian at Gründervekst. This is the member portal of Gründerklubben – The Norwegian Entrepreneurs Club (35 000+ members).
Drake Star has published the Q3 2022 edition of its Global Gaming Industry Report providing key insights into the gaming deal activities for the first nine months of the year.
So far, the year had a record $123B+ in total deal value for almost 1000 announced and/or closed deals. The report also analyzes the key trends in the third quarter of the year.
“2022 has been a mixed year for gaming,” said Michael Metzger, Partner at Drake Star. “We saw some of the largest M&A deals ever at the start of the year and then experienced a notable slow-down in Q2’22 due to global macroeconomic challenges.
With an increase in M&A and Financings volume in Q3, we anticipate healthy deal activity and possibly even some mega deals for the rest of the year and beyond.”
Key stats for the first 9 months of the year:
$102B in announced and/or closed M&A activity across mobile, PC / console, and esports, including the largest-ever gaming acquisition of Activision by Microsoft. Embracer remained the most active consolidator in the industry. PC / console and mobile went head-to-head with 68 and 64 transactions, respectively.
$9.6B has been raised through 685 financing rounds for private companies, including 15 large $100M+ raises. The most active VCs included Bitkraft, a16z, Galaxy Interactive, and Griffin Gaming.
More than $3.4B was raised by blockchain / NFT gaming companies with almost half of the total amount raised by early-stage companies. The Q3 report analyzes the first nine months of 2022 in terms of deal activity and volume across market segments (M&A, private placements, public markets), M&A activity by volume and multiples, public market performance and valuations, and discusses the most active gaming buyers and venture capital (VC) investors.
The report further focuses on the market activities for Q3 2022 by breaking out the most significant deals across M&A, private financings, and public market updates. As the broader markets witnessed a slowdown, gaming was also impacted but M&A and financing activities remained largely stable.
Q3 saw a significant increase in M&A volume to 81 announced deals, up from 70 deals in Q2’22. Unity’s announced $4.4B acquisition of ironSource was the largest deal in the quarter.
While the majority of the deal values were undisclosed, many of the top buyers were active including Embracer with 8 deals (Middle-Earth Enterprises, Tripwire, etc.), NetEase (Quantic Dream), Sony (Savage Games, Repeat.gg), Zynga (Storemaven), and Scopely (Stumble Guys). Private financings also increased in Q3 to 216 deals, up from 169 financings last quarter. A total of $2.3B was raised, including large financings for FromSoftware ($260M from Tencent and Sony), Loot Mogul ($200M), Limit Break ($200M), and Animoca ($185M).
While the Crypto market continued to be under pressure, investors continued to show strong interest in blockchain gaming companies. Half of the total amount raised and 40% of all financing rounds for private gaming companies were investments in blockchain gaming.
In public markets, Faze Clan ($750M valuation) went public through a SPAC, while Valofe ($3.5B valuation) and Asia Innovations Group ($2.5B valuation) announced new SPAC deals. Technicolor Creative Studios spun off to focus on VFX and games, now listed on the Paris stock exchange at $1B valuation.
Here are some news articles and tweets I have been reading the last week. I hope you find some relevant stories! If not, send me your links and ideas and learn more about our community here.
Stay in the loop and get daily Angel Investor News at @entrahouse and if you missed out on the last edition, you find it here.
What a Market Downturn Means for Startups — www.alleywatch.com
About once a decade, the U.S. Financial Markets implode. It happened during the “Dot Com Bust” of 2001, again in the financial meltdown of 2007, and is now upon us in a Post-COVID recovery.
As you will see from the pitch presentations, there are some talented teams with potential. I am seriously proud that the Norwegian startups Stready have come to this level and will share their story next week.
Launch Africa, the VC firm that has backed over 100 startups, closes first fund at $36.3M — finance.yahoo.com
Pan-African venture capital fund Launch Africa Ventures today is announcing the close of its $36.3 million fund, which it has primarily used to invest in B2B and B2B2C startups across Africa. In an interview with TechCrunch, managing partner Zachariah George said Launch Africa has backed 108 startups across 21 African countries.
On Track To Become A World-Leading Provider Of Safety And Security Solutions. New Smart Technology That Can Save Lives.
We had a fantastic launch event for BEMS (bSafe Emergency Management Software AS) with talks from Trond Riiber Knudsen, Johann Olav Koss, Eva Helen Rognskog, Ken Roar Riis, Steve Cottingham and Tor Rune Raabye.
As a curator, there is nothing more helpful than feedback on what you think should be the focus of this newsletter. If you want to be a more active contributor, have an interesting startup, some great ideas for collaboration you want to share etc… Let’s have a chat.
I promise your voice is important and suggestions regularly incorporated into the digest. Please send me your ideas, exciting news, deals, tools and connect on LinkedIn and follow my blog at bergmoe.com and @berg_moe 🙂
Here are some news articles and tweets I have been reading the last week. I hope you find some relevant stories! If not, send me your links and ideas and learn more about our community here.
Stay in the loop and get daily Angel Investor News at @entrahouse and if you missed out on the last edition, you find it here.
Germany startup Okapi:Orbits raised 5.5 million euros ($5.7 million) in a seed funding round led by Munich Re Ventures with participation from Dolby Family Ventures, Herius Capital and APEX Ventures.
Why Early-Stage Venture Capital Makes Sense Right Now — www.techstars.com
Investing in startups is all about valuations. Everyone is looking for the next unicorn, disrupter, to whoever is “building a better mousetrap,” and many investors are on the hunt to find these companies at their earliest stages. The later you invest, the more you’re going to end up paying for less of the company.
Building strong business angel networks takes hustle and hard work. Join us on June 30 as top angel investor network leaders share tried and true models.
— This Week in Startups (@TWiStartups) June 14, 2022
Startup Weekend is a great place to connect with passionate people driven to build something new. There is no better place to meet new friends, colleagues, mentors, cofounders, and investors.@StartupWeekend@Techstarspic.twitter.com/v2Jd1HFx0k
— Techstars Startup Weekend Kampala (@SWKampala) June 13, 2022
As a curator, there is nothing more helpful than feedback on what you think should be the focus of this newsletter. If you want to be a more active contributor, have an interesting startup, some great ideas for collaboration you want to share etc… Let’s have a chat.
I promise your voice is important and suggestions regularly incorporated into the digest. Please send me your ideas, exciting news, deals, tools and connect on LinkedIn and follow my blog at bergmoe.com and @berg_moe 🙂
Here are some news articles and tweets I have been reading the last week. I hope you find some relevant stories! If not, send me your links and ideas and learn more about our community here.
Stay in the loop and get daily Angel Investor News at @entrahouse and if you missed out on the last edition, you find it here.
Marquee Equity Uses AI To Connect Startups With Investors — techstory.in
Marquee Equity – a bootstrapped Saas platform, that is disrupting the way companies raise funds, globally. Founded in 2016 by their current CEO, Ash Narain, and CTO, Raj Kabir, the Delhi-based fundraising platform aims to make it easier for early-stage companies to connect with quality investors and raise capital.
Talus’ platform enables the discovery of compounds that affect transcription factors, key proteins that interact with DNA and turn genes on and off. Many transcription factors are implicated in cancer, which results from aberrant gene activity, and other diseases.
Microlending Definition — www.investopedia.com
Microlending is the practice of granting small loans to people or businesses that might otherwise not qualify for such loans.
This week’s tweets
So EXCITED for the latest class of @Techstars_Chi an announced here -> https://t.co/H4X8gUdQlZ Our first accelerator was run back in 2010, what a journey it has been - @Techstars for life!
As a curator, there is nothing more helpful than feedback on what you think should be the focus of this newsletter. If you want to be a more active contributor, have an interesting startup, some great ideas for collaboration you want to share etc… Let’s have a chat.
I promise your voice is important and suggestions regularly incorporated into the digest. Please send me your ideas, exciting news, deals, tools and connect on LinkedIn and follow my blog at bergmoe.com and @berg_moe 🙂
Checkstep is a UK-based startup that provides AI products for contextual content moderation on social media platforms.
This round follows a pre-seed round of $1.8 million raised less than one year ago. Dawn Capital and Form Ventures co-led the round with participation from founders GoCardLess and Indeed.
The company plans to use the funds to develop its technology and to expand its marketing and sales efforts.
Guillaume Bouchard, CEO, and Jonathan Manfield (CTO) founded Checkstep in May 2020. It offers an Artificial Intelligence-powered solution for context moderation on social media and enterprise platforms.
Checkstep is currently developing machine learning models that are state-of the-art and integrating third-party solutions for clients. Checkstep empowers human moderators with the tools and intelligence to combat harmful content.
They found the company to combat misinformation propagation at the heights of the COVID pandemic. Since then, it has expanded its focus to address other customer needs. It now covers a wider range of harms like hate speech, Child Sexual Abuse Material, bullying, and spam. It recently developed the features to include copyright management capabilities, as creative platforms are becoming more responsible.
Warsaw was the European spot on Venture Capital Map for VC fund managers in the CEE region and Western economies. CEE VC Summit is an event organized by Vestbee. This leading matchmaking platform connecting startups with corporates, global VC funds, accelerators, and corporations in the region, is the only one of its kind. It focuses on strengthening cross-border relationships among funds. Also, it discusses the challenges facing the venture capital industry as well as the assessment of the CEE startup ecosystem.
The conference was attended by managers from leading funds who tried to answer questions about how to prepare for the upcoming crises and how to strengthen Central and Eastern Europe’s multi-dimensional position on the global VC map. This included quality of funds, startups and the attractiveness of Venture Capital as an investment class for institutional investors.
Representatives from leading VC funds were present at the conference, including Multiple Capital; 500 Istanbul; Next Road Ventures and Point Nine Capital; Credo Ventures; Speedinvest, EBRD Ventures Capita; Credo Ventures. 3VC, Market One Capital. Burda Principal Investments. OTB Ventures. Revo Capital. South Central Ventures. Movens Capital. Sunfish Partners. Tera Ventures. Flashpoint. Day One Capital. All Iron Ventures. Finch Capital.
Without Vestbee’s long-term Partners and Sponsors, the conference would not have been possible. We give a huge applause next Road Ventures, EIT InnoEnergy and Amazon Web Services.
Vestbee organized this event, which is not the first but definitely not the last, that focuses on the exchange and sharing of experiences during panel discussions and networking within the investment community
ConvertKit’s State of the Creator Economy landing page provides quick insights
Have you ever wondered which 5 types of content professional creators are most focused on? Is it possible to make more money as a creator? What are the most common working habits among creators?
All those questions can be answered by the State of the Creator Economy Report 2022.
ConvertKit, a creator marketing platform, has provided some interesting stats about the mindset, habits and challenges facing the creator economy in 2022. This report was created by 2,704 creators who shared their experiences. These creators have combined over 11,000 years worth of audience-building experience and will earn $66 million in 2021.
They have shown that the creator economy can grow and is large.
This industry is very dear to me, so I am excited to share it with you. I hope you find it as interesting and educational as I do.
ConvertKit’s State of the Creator Economy landing page provides quick insights. You can then download the full PDF report to see the details of what’s happening in creators in 2022.
