As the world watches infamous tech giants such as Google, Tesla and Meta implement hiring freezes, small businesses are left wondering if they should follow suit, but what are the benefits and what should you consider?

Just one year after being launched on Shopify (2021), Virtue closed a pre-seed round led by SFC Capital, and has also joined the Techstars accelerator.

Years ago, as a younger officer who had just joined the Singapore public service, I sat in a classroom listening to a senior civil servant share his philosophy for policy making. “Policy is implementation.” He said, “what’s on paper is only as good as what is actually practiced on the ground.” It sounded like good advice; I scribbled it in my notebook at the time and kept it at the back of my mind.

Aero Technologies, Inc. the next-generation premium air travel company, which serves routes in both the US and Europe, announced a $65M capital raise, $50M in Series B funding and $15M in convertible notes, for a total post-money valuation of $300M.

As Miami’s office market continues to witness strong demand and benefit from an influx of new businesses, Mindspace has signed a lease for 435 workstations spread across the entire sixth floor at The Gateway at Wynwood. Mindspace, a global boutique flex office operator, will occupy in excess of 30,000 square feet at the recently completed Class A office building located at the intersection of the iconic Wynwood and Midtown Miami neighborhoods. Mindspace Gateway is scheduled to open in spring 2023. 

Building on its year of hypergrowth, Brite Payments has appointed Jan Plasberg, formerly CTO of SOFORT and VP Engineering at Klarna to its board, highlighting the company’s commitment to technology innovation in support of its upcoming market expansion plans.

Seedrs, a private investment platform with over £2BN in investments recorded to date, has launched the Seedrs Venture Partner programme, a new curated community for VCs, accelerators, ecosystem builders and serial entrepreneurs. 

8vdX, a technology-enabled category-first venture debt marketplace for startups, has announced that it is expanding its operations in leading international geographies like the United Kingdom (UK), Singapore, and Australia.

On October 11th, Prague will host the continental Startup Champions League finals and the sixth edition of the Startup World Cup. This grand finale of the EU Startup League is happening during the Disraptors Summit (formerly Startup World Cup & Summit).

iDenfy, the tech startup that provides identity verification and fraud prevention solutions, has announced its partnership with Payset, a global payment platform that offers multi-currency accounts, prepaid cards, and currency exchange services. For Payset, collaborating with iDenfy will ensure a frictionless, four-step identity verification journey.

This is the second of a two-part series we at Colorintech have put together on the topic of “What Early-Stage VCs Think About Traction”.

HiBob, the company behind Bob, the HR platform transforming how organisations operate in the modern world of work, has announced it has raised an additional $150m in growth funding, just ten months after raising a $150m Series C in October 2021.

UK inflation has risen to 10.1% in July, the first time it's hit double digits in 40 years, according to the ONS – up from 9.4% in June. Driven by rising costs in energy, food, and fuel, this has resulted in a drastic drop in funding and valuations across the startup arena, with a report from Tech Nation revealing that 50% of earlier-stage startups were struggling to scale beyond the seed and pre-seed stages.

EdTech startup Microverse, an online school for remote software developers where students around the world pay nothing until they land a life-changing job, has doubled its valuation with an extension of $4M to its Series A round.

Business owners have to juggle day-to-day operations, finances, marketing, managing a team, legal requirements, and much more. But the harsh reality is that, overnight, their efforts can all be made irrelevant.

ProcurementTech Startup, Matchory, has raised €1.6m in a seed funding round led by Earlybird Venture Capital’s UNI-X team, alongside angel investors from industry and procurement.

A significant amount of the new unicorns added last year came from the web3 market. This is in line with the overall trend of growth in the cryptocurrency industry and the rise in popularity of decentralised applications (dApps).

The Royal Academy of Engineering’s Enterprise Hub has published a new Entrepreneur’s Handbook to support founders of spinout companies.

With research showing that 70-90% of M&As fail even during favourable economic conditions, expert advisers have become even more critical in helping deals get over the line in the current climate.

AeroCloud Systems (AeroCloud), the 100% cloud native software platform dedicated to the support of airports, has won a contract to provide the Flight Information Display Systems (FIDS) and gate management systems (GMS) for the largest international airport in The Bahamas and the 4th largest airport in the Caribbean.