Faced with obstacles like gender discrimination, financial security, geographical bias, or availability of funding, entrepreneurs are demanding stronger community support. As a response, a new global movement of ecosystem builders is raising €2.7mn within two years to implement innovation projects that will democratise entrepreneurship and empower founders.

Creative workspace and accelerator, Huckletree has announced the launch of its Futures Hub, a redesign of their flagship space in its White City workspace - including three new focused ecosystems for innovative businesses to make their home - Future Living, FoodTech and Creative Labs.

Tanso Technologies, a Munich-based sustainability tech startup has announced the closing of its $1.9m pre-seed financing round. The round was led by UVC Partners, a B2B technology investor with a strong focus on enterprise software, with participation of early-stage investors Picus Capital, Possible Ventures (formerly Inventures), and business angels.

WeWork has launched Growth Campus Europe, an initiative targeted to boost economic recovery across nine European countries; Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Norway and Czech Republic.

Investment firm, Spex Capital and London’s life sciences cluster organisation, MedCity open today their first joint call as part of their exclusive partnership to identify and fund the next generation of digital health and medtech innovators.

Microsoft Deputy CTO brings decades of climate science, technology, and business acumen to the Climate Intelligence innovator.

Leaps by Bayer, the impact investment arm of Bayer AG, announced that it has co-led a $15m Series A investment round in agriculture and biotechnology innovator, Andes, with Cavallo Ventures. Other new investors Builders VC, Germin8, Accelr8 and Wilson Sonsini participated, alongside existing investors KdT Ventures and Endurance.

British mental health startup, MYNDUP has raised £300,000 in an oversubscribed third round of seed funding. Founded in February 2020, the company has now received £500,000 in investment and grants since December last year, with investors recognising MYNDUP’s innovative offering and potential for further growth.

Akribian, a Swedish startup, is spearheading the way in which children learn maths through short adventure game-based learning that helps children retain information and encourages long term academic success. Its first product 'Count on me!' is a maths app based on a new concept of Game-Embedded Teaching (GET) which combines science and game design to encourage children to discover the magic of mathematics and accelerate their learning. 

Bobacino, the startup bringing a unique boba experience to a growing audience of boba enthusiasts, announced it is partnering with PopID, the facial recognition payment company, to offer consumers a faster, easier and safer way to pay.

Whether these businesses will opt for working from home full time or hybrid working - where employees split their time between home and the office - remains somewhat unclear at this point. For some, a return to pre-pandemic office life is on the cards, but for others, there's simply no going back to the way things were.

Releaf, an agtech startup that develops proprietary hardware and software solutions that makes African farmers and food factories more efficient and profitable, has raised $2.7m seed funding in a round led by Samurai Incubate Africa, Future Africa and Consonance Investment Managers with participation from Stephen Pagliuca, Chairman of Bain Capital and Justin Kan (Twitch). Releaf also secured $1.5m in grants from The Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CFYE) and USAID.

Tech Nation has announced the 32 climate tech companies who have been accepted into Net Zero 2.0 - the second iteration of the Net Zero programme.

FedEx Express has announced the launch of the Small Business Grant Competition in Europe. The competition offers a total grant pool of nearly €250.000 to European small businesses to help them grow and achieve their ambitions. For the first time, the competition will be run as a single pan-European contest, open to small businesses based in 16 countries.

Has COVID made you complacent to other workplace risks? Adapting to a new way of operating has now become the norm for many small businesses. Demonstrating a fair presentation of all workplace risks could save SMEs money on insurance premiums.

OLIO, the community sustainability app, has announced a $43m Series B round to fund its fight against the $1.3trn of food waste created globally each year.

Following what INvolve call the biggest set-back for women’s equality in a generation, and as children and workers finally return to school and workplace, Suki Sandhu OBE has called on all companies to ‘stop shelving gender equality and set the precedent’ if we are to solve the gender inequality crisis caused by the pandemic.

Digital technology companies from Greater Manchester are set to receive a free to access two-day masterclass to support with securing funding to help develop innovations and accelerate their growth in the region. 

Research by DNV and World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) reveals that despite the growing attention in the public, among legislators and companies, the shift to business models that design waste out of the system seems to progress slowly, and circular economy is rising on corporate agendas across geographies.