Is Silicon Valley losing its shine? Venture capitalists find no clear alternative.

This year, the partners at Founders Fund — a prominent San Francisco venture capital firm that has backed Airbnb, Palantir Technologies and other leading companies — took an informal internal poll: If the fund could open a major new office outside the Bay Area, where would it go? It’s a question many venture capitalists and […]

U Florida Atsena Therapeutics Raises $55 Million Series A Financing to 

Atsena Therapeutics, a clinical-stage gene therapy company focused on bringing the life-changing power of genetic medicine to reverse or prevent blindness, today announced it has closed an oversubscribed $55 million Series A financing led by Sofinnova Investments with participation from additional new investors Abingworth and Lightstone Ventures. Founding investors Hatteras Venture Partners and the Foundation […]

North East university spin-out fund invests £500,000 in local businesses 

An investment fund founded by four of the North East’s universities has invested £500,000 in local firms since its launch. Northern Accelerator is a partnership between Newcastle University, Northumbria University, Durham University, and the University of Sunderland and has been designed to develop businesses with a high growth potential that have spun out of the […]

Future Returns: Impact Investing Through Donor Advised Funds | Barron’s

Toward the end of the year, donor advised funds (DAFs) become a popular vehicle for year-end tax breaks and philanthropic aims. But Casey van der Stricht, principal of Solve Innovation Future, a donor-advised venture fund, hopes DAFs will become something more: a forum for disruptive philanthropy as a source of impact capital. A donor advised […]

Purdue Startup Fund providing support to move technologies across the world

A new funding option is helping provide support for Purdue-affiliated startups looking to gain traction and improve the world through innovative technologies. The Purdue Startup Fund was started in 2020 by Purdue Ventures, an arm of the Purdue Foundry. The Foundry is an entrepreneurship and commercialization hub whose professionals help Purdue innovators create and grow startups. “This […]

Skandalaris LEAP winners announced @ Wash U

The Skandalaris Center’s Fall 2020 LEAP Cycle has ended and a new set of translational research projects have been funded. LEAP is an asset-development program and gap fund designed to provide intellectual and financial capital to WashU-affiliated translational projects. A panel of industry experts and community partners evaluated 22 projects based on three criteria: their […]

UMSL Accelerate accepts six founders into its first Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Accelerator cohort 

Excitement and tears overcame Michelle Robinson on Wednesday morning. That was completely understandable as she’d just learned that her business, DEMIBlue Natural Nails & Creative, had been chosen as a winning founder for the inaugural Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Accelerator at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. In doing so, Robinson had become one of six startups to receive $50,000 […]