Not surprisingly, companies from the region’s two largest economies—Brazil and Mexico—are well represented on this year’s list of Latin America’s most innovative companies. But they’re bumping up against businesses based in emerging startup hubs like Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Lima. In 2021, Latin American startups raised $14.8 billion across nearly 800 deals, according to PitchBook data, making this the fastest-growing region in the world for venture
When people sit down to be entertained, they generally like seeing more of what they already like. It’s the guiding principle behind Hollywood’s love affair with sequels, spinoffs, reboots, adaptations, and sequels to spinoffs of rebooted adaptations. Last year may not have been an exception, but it was also a creative phase in which original material came roaring back. New streaming services brought fresh perspectives. WarnerMedia and HBO Max redefined the theatrical release
Jigsaw, a unit within Google devoted to developing technology to address global threats like censorship and disinformation, just launched an open source tool for combatting harassment on Twitter. It’s intended to help female journalists, activists, and public figures, many of whom have been the victim of harassment on the social media platform. The new program, called Harassment Manager, is available on Github. The tool is an application programming interface (API), meaning it allows apps
I did some reporting on Ukraine-based tech companies at the outset of the Russian invasion of Ukraine last month. Despite the grim situation on the ground, I was surprised at how responsive people in these companies were, how willing they were to talk about their situation. As the crisis continues, I’ve managed to keep in touch with some of those people. One is Julia Petryk, a communications executive at MacPaw, a major name among Mac software companies. Petryk and her family live in a hi
The question, from journalist Kara Swisher to Sweetgreen cofounder and CEO Jonathan Neman, following a discussion on kale and robotics, was simple. “Are you profitable?” she asked, as a 2018 episode of her Recode Decode podcast drew to a close. “We are,” Neman replied. But when the Los Angeles-based salad chain filed to go public last October, it revealed financials that directly contradicted Neman’s response to Swisher. Sweetgreen had lost $31 million in 2018.
“Let’s end cancer as we know it,” President Biden told Americans during last week’s State of the Union address. Earlier this year, Biden rebooted the Cancer Moonshot program he started in 2017 to cure the disease that took the life of his son Beau and kills 600,000 Americans a year–a rate second only to heart disease. The initial program was granted $1.8 billion in funding over a seven-year period toward cancer research (which some argue is not that much money)
As we wait patiently for Old Man Winter to pack his bags and move south, let’s take a look at three interesting new apps. This month, we’ve got a budgeting app that dovetails with your paycheck, an up-and-coming group calendar app that aims to make short work of busy schedules, and a new podcasting app that makes high-quality recordings a cinch—even when you’re away from your computer. EveryTwo: Budgeting that aligns to your pay New budgeting app EveryTwo enters a cro
We are a society that shops—a lot. It is among the things we do the most—particularly during this pandemic. We’ve procured supplies, feathered our nests, replaced and renewed items in our homes, and bought more survival supplies and personal protective equipment than we’d ever imagined. So, how are we going to shop in the metaverse? We should start by asking ourselves what we want to buy and where and how we will be using it. If venture capitalists and Mark Zuckerberg
If you’re sending a text message or chatting on a work chat app such as Slack, you have a limited number of ways to express yourself. You can use plain text, of course, or emoji, or drop in a meme, or a Bitmoji, or a GIF from a TV show. And if you’re artistically inclined and have the time and software, you can devise your own memes or GIFs, but that’s a lot of work for most everyday communications. A new app called HiNote, currently available for iOS, helps bridge that gap.
The list of big U.S. tech companies halting sales of products in Russia expanded Friday, with Microsoft joining Apple and others in a growing show of solidarity with Ukraine. Microsoft president Brad Smith said in a blog post Friday that his company would suspend all new sales of Microsoft products and services in Russia. “Like the rest of the world, we are horrified, angered, and saddened by the images and news coming from the war in Ukraine and condemn this unjustified, unprovoked, and