Twelve teams of artificial intelligence entrepreneurs will begin the six-month AI Accelerator – part of a wider Data Driven Entrepreneurship programme at the University – on 22 September. Its purpose is to help AI-driven start-ups with high growth potential to set foundations to become world-leading companies. The Accelerator’s cohort has been selected from 66 applicants worldwide. It [...]
The Pew Charitable Trusts announced today the six pairs of researchers who will make up its 2021 class of Innovation Fund investigators. These scientists—alumni of Pew’s biomedical programs in the United States and Latin America—will partner on interdisciplinary research to tackle some of the most pressing questions in human biology and disease. By combining their [...]
The Black Venture Capital Consortium (BVCC) and the Ford Foundation closed a $7.5 million fund that students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) will help manage while learning from experienced venture capitalists. Less than 2% of venture capitalists are people of color. And studies have shown that white investors tend to be racially biased in [...]
Geoffrey Moore wrote the seminal book Crossing the Chasm about how tech companies can get from a few early-adopter customers to the many mainstream customers they need for growth and success. But my experience is that the biggest “chasm” for most entrepreneurs to cross is the one that happens much earlier in the process— it’s the chasm [...]
In fiscal year 2021, more than $1.2 billion in venture funding went to startups affiliated with Johns Hopkins Tech Ventures. That’s according to a recently released annual report from the Baltimore university’s department that works with faculty to bring discoveries from the lab to market, and incubates new companies. From July 2020 to June 2021, startups connected to [...]
Dr. Pooja Viswanathan is used to being the only woman in the room. She studied computer science, artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Toronto, University of Waterloo and UBC. “I think I was probably the only woman getting a PhD in robotics at UBC at the time,” Dr. Viswanathan recalls. When she transformed [...]
While those paying attention to Capitol Hill recently have been focused on the massive infrastructure and budget packages, Congress has also been making progress on another bill of equal significance. If Congress can put that measure over the finish line, the U.S. will be in a much better position to compete with China and to [...]
The Accelerating Charitable Efforts Act, introduced by two key U.S. Senators, seeks to revamp federal law so that donors and foundations have new incentives to make sure gifts to donor-advised funds and in foundation endowments don’t pile up but flow swiftly to nonprofits in need. Join us for a free online briefing to learn why: [...]
Rice University’s Office of Research is launching three Creative Ventures Funds to seed new faculty initiatives and help guide them towards commercialization of their discoveries. The university will also open applications for two legacy grant programs to kickstart conferences and creativity. The programs, launching immediately, are the ARPA-H Strategic Initiative Seed Fund, the Technology Development Fund and the Patent [...]
Many early-stage startups have a common problem: it’s hard to attract investors without proof that customers will pay for their product. Yet without investment to fund product development, it’s difficult to obtain market validation. The key to overcoming this challenge is to find creative and inexpensive ways to conduct market validation — a step in [...]