Author: Michelle Kung

It’s an understatement to say that the influencer marketing space is highly complex. New influencers, new types of content, and new ways to post and promote said content seem to pop up daily. Studio71, the LA-based digital network I joined seven years ago, has always been a great partner for brands to help them navigate the influencer marketing space.

Have you ever experienced notification fatigue? That’s the industry term for when your mobile apps prompt you to act so often that the notifications themselves become a burden, rather than a helpful reminder. Neura aims to change that.

We live in a golden age of travel, a time when it’s never been easier (or cheaper) to book a flight to a far-flung locale. It seems everyone is either planning a trip, on vacation, or sharing enviable photos from their latest jaunt. But according to Luke Shaughnessy, the operations manager of Fraugster, an anti-fraud startup, our credits cards haven’t been keeping pace.

Companies used to assume that computing infrastructures would remain on-premises before eventually moving over completely to the cloud. That assumption has been proved false, as more organizations recognize the need for a hybrid cloud. This could be for regulatory reasons—the financial and health care sectors, for example, might be required to keep some of their workloads on data centers—or other concerns.

Michael Huth, CTO of XAIN, talks about how his company’s products enable communication between systems, what industries benefit from their product, and what’s next.

Whether you’re adventuring through an unfamiliar  country or closing an overseas business deal, there’s no question that in our increasingly globalized world, conversation is key. And while functional multilingual AI transactions are likely on the technological horizon, when it comes to forging meaningful connections across cultures, true personal communication is essential. As Nehal Shah, director of engineering at Babbel, puts it, AI is “growing rapidly, evolving at a tremendous pace, but there’s still no replacement for human interaction or that human element.” Especially when it comes to picking up a new language, humans simply need to connect.

“There’s a burgeoning ecosystem of African entrepreneurs that wants to make products for the community. They want to see upliftment amongst their friends and family,” says Murray Legg, the accelerator director of Founders Factory Africa.

If you live at a distance from farm country, agriculture might seem like an unchanging industry, built around traditional methods and relatively low-tech tools. Even a Google Image search primarily brings up pictures of tractors plowing through fields. However, the economic risks of agriculture actually force farmers to be early adopters of new technology.

By any measure, according to a World Bank report last year, South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world. “The only hope that this country has is deep, inclusive growth,” says Jenny Retief, CEO of Riversands Incubation Hub, a startup initiative helping the country’s diverse entrepreneurs thrive.

In 2009, Johannes Reck, a student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, arrived in Beijing one day earlier than his friend and classmate, Tao Tao. Tao, who knew Beijing well, was able to serve as a local guide to Reck once he arrived, and the trip was a success. Without Tao, however, Reck found himself at a loss as to where to go or what to do.