SoftBank Group Corp. is a Japanese multinational investment holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan which focuses on investment management. The group primarily invests in companies operating in technology that offer goods and services to customers in a multitude of markets and industries ranging from the internet to automation. With over $100 billion in capital at its onset, SoftBank's Vision Fund is the world's largest technology-focused venture capital fund. Fund investors included sovereign wealth funds from countries in the Middle East.
Jason McCabe Calacanis is an American Internet entrepreneur, angel investor, author and podcaster.
Startup Digest is a media company that publishes curated email newsletters on startup events and educational content in more than 300 cities. Startup Digest was founded by Christopher McCann and Brendan McManus in 2009.
Derrick Fung is an entrepreneur, former foreign exchange trader and contributing writer for Forbes. He is currently the CEO of Drop. He is best known as the founder and CEO of Tunezy, a music company founded in Toronto, Ontario and now based in New York City. Tunezy was acquired in 2013 by SFX Entertainment. In 2014, Derrick was listed on the Forbes Top 30 under 30 list in Music.
Housing.com is a Mumbai-based real estate search portal which allows customers to search for housing based on geography, number of rooms, and various other filters. The company has 6,000 brokers and serves 40 cities in India including Chennai, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Delhi.
Sapphire Ventures is a venture capital firm with offices in Menlo Park, San Francisco, Austin, and London. The firm is considered one of the world's premier venture capital firms.
Maplebear Inc., doing business as Instacart, is an American delivery company based in San Francisco that operates a grocery delivery and pick-up service in the United States and Canada accessible via a website and mobile app. It allows customers to order groceries from participating retailers with the shopping being done by a personal shopper. The company also provides alcohol delivery in states and provinces where it is allowed. It has partnerships with 1,500 retail banners comprising 85,000 stores. Instacart reaches nearly 98% of SNAP households, offering delivery services from nearly 180 retail banners, including ALDI, Food Lion, Publix, The Save Mart Companies and Walgreens, spanning more than 30,000 stores across all 50 states and Washington D.C. Since its founding, Instacart Marketplace has powered more than $100 billion of GTV and over 900 million orders with approximately 20 billion items ordered.
Sidewalk Labs LLC is an urban planning and infrastructure subsidiary of Google. Its stated goal is to improve urban infrastructure through technological solutions, and tackle issues such as cost of living, efficient transportation and energy usage. The company was headed by Daniel L. Doctoroff, former Deputy Mayor of New York City for economic development and former chief executive of Bloomberg L.P. until 2021. Other notable employees include Craig Nevill-Manning, co-founder of Google's New York office and inventor of Froogle, and Rohit Aggarwala, who served as chief policy officer of the company and is now Commissioner of New York City Department of Environmental Protection. It was originally part of Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company, before being absorbed into Google in 2022 following Doctoroff's departure from the company.
The Skimm is an American media company, founded in 2012 by Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin, providing a subscription-only newsletter. The newsletter is a digest of news stories intended to be simple and easy to read.
Paktor is a location-based dating and networking mobile application that connects mutually interested users and allows them to chat individually or as a group. Founded in Singapore, the app was launched in June 2013, and has over 5 billion swipes to date. In late 2013, Paktor launched a subsidiary called GaiGai, an offline dating service that focuses on match-making and dating events. The word 'Paktor' originates from the Cantonese word for 'dating'.
Axios is an American news website based in Arlington, Virginia. It was founded in 2016 and launched the following year by former Politico journalists Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz. The site's name is based on the Greek: ἄξιος, meaning "worthy of".
Philo is an American internet television company based in San Francisco, California. First founded at Harvard University in 2010 by Tuan Ho and Nicholas Krasney, investors in the company include HBO, Andrew McCollum, and Mark Cuban. The company and its service is named in honor of one of the pioneering engineers of television, Philo T. Farnsworth. As of 2021, their OTT streaming television service has over 800,000 subscribers.
Blavity is an American digital media company and website based in Los Angeles targeting black millennials. Their mission is to "economically and creatively support Black millennials across the African scape, so they can pursue the work they love, and change the world in the process."
The Athletic is a subscription-based sports journalism department of The New York Times.
HelloFresh SE is a German meal-kit company based in Berlin. It is the largest meal-kit provider in the United States, and also has operations in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Europe.
Pine Labs is an Indian company that provides point of sales systems and payment systems, founded in 1998. The company has a valuation of over US$5 billion.
Rheaply, Inc. is a privately held B2B Software as a service company that specializes in enterprise asset management technology for the circular economy. The company markets resource exchange technology to improve asset recovery outcomes and internal reuse of physical assets within large organizations. Rheaply operates a progressive web application for resource management in higher education, government, enterprise, biopharma, built environment and retail organizations. The company is located in Chicago, Illinois.
Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters. It allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers. Founded in 2017, Substack is headquartered in San Francisco.
Garry Cooper Jr. is an American entrepreneur, scientist, and business leader. He currently serves as the CEO of Rheaply, an enterprise asset management company for the circular economy, which he co-founded in 2015. He is also a founding member of LongJump, a venture capital firm dedicated to funding underrepresented founders.
Puck is an American digital media company founded in 2021. Puck's coverage aims to cover the 'four centers of power' in the United States: Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Washington and Wall Street.
