Optellum, an Oxford-based medtech company that provides a breakthrough AI platform to diagnose and treat early-stage lung cancer, has raised $14 million in a Series A funding round. The investment will enable the company to scale its base, operations and commercial launches in the UK and USA, accelerate its research and development, and expand its platform into personalized therapy decisions, integrating imaging with molecular data, robotics, and liquid biopsies.
Creativity has always played a deeply important role in my life, so when I became a founder, giving creativity a seat at the table felt like the most natural, vital thing I could do for my business. And my journey to becoming CEO of my agency, Grizzly, couldn’t have happened if I hadn’t had a creative vision that I now share with my whole team.
Growth is often the number one priority for any startup. With growth comes revenue and with revenue should come profit, eventually. However, growth is all about finding the sweet spot – too much, too quickly and your startup could be left short of resources or without the proper structure in place to support your expansion. Too slow and your business could face stagnation and lose the race to turn profitable. The sweet spot is what’s known as sustainable growth – the rate at which your resources, structure and systems can support growth without risking the quality of your product or service, or operations as a whole. Below we’ll explore some of the areas of your startup that you should be focusing on to help generate sustainable growth.
Vendease, a Y Combinator-backed digital platform that allows restaurants in Africa to buy supplies, access financial services and power their business operations, has raised $30 million in an equity and debt funding round to consolidate its growth and operations in Nigeria and Ghana, and to support its expansion across the continent.
‘Net-zero’, or the principle of achieving complete carbon neutrality, is a principle that has been adopted by several nation states in recent years. The growing severity of the climate crisis has inspired necessary action from governments around the world, all working in concert via recommendations and accords achieved through the COP summits.
Darren Goode, former President and Global Chief Marketing Officer at Elvie, is taking up a new role as a leading Advisor at femtech startup Béa Fertility. Darren led Elvie to become a global healthtech brand with revenues exceeding $26m. He now joins Béa as the team gears up to bring its hotly anticipated fertility device to market.
The last decade has seen a huge boom in the global startup ecosystem, with digital and tech startups driving innovation across every industry imaginable. Last year, VC investment in startups hit an all-time high, almost doubling to reach $621 billion globally and shatter historic funding records. In recent years, the UK has created more tech unicorns than any other country except the US and China. Following a turbulent couple of years, post-pandemic investor confidence in startups seemed to have skyrocketed, and it seemed the startup sector was on the path to an unprecedented recovery.
Infobip Shift, the largest developer conference in Southeast Europe, gathered more than 4,000 attendees in its 11th edition held last week. Developers, software engineers, and IT experts from more than 30 countries worldwide came to Zadar, Croatia for a two-day event featuring more than 75 talks, and almost a hundred speakers.
Majid Al Futtaim, the leading shopping mall, communities, retail and leisure pioneer across the Middle East, Africa and Asia, has revealed 14 start-ups and SME winners to join its Launchpad accelerator programme across three categories, Homegrown, Health and Beauty, and Proptech. The successful companies will now receive unrivalled access to business growth incentives, mentorship programmes and the vast Majid Al Futtaim innovation ecosystem to strengthen their commercial viability across the region.










