Hiring a CEO is a difficult decision for any startup, but the Danish company Ageras found an innovative way: by buying the entire company run by their desired candidate. Jamie Siminoff, successful founder of Ring, was sought after to be the new CEO of Latch, and with acquisition of his new company Honest Day’s Work, Siminoff soon found himself in the CEO seat. This is an example of how founders can get a soft landing with one lucky job opportunity.
The tech world is changing rapidly, and start-up layoffs have been happening quickly due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, for those lucky enough to still have resources to hire, there is a plethora of incredible people looking for work. Some tech workers have turned to generative AI to create custom content and chip building, while others have experimented with ChatGPT-3, showing how close we are to being able to replace writers with AI. Google’s PaLM 2, a next-generation large language model, may be the closest yet but they’re not quite ready to share all the details on how it was trained.
Taking climate change seriously is important, and Pale Blue Dot has responded with a $100 million fund. One of their investments went to Amini, an African climate tech start-up trying to solve environmental data scarcity. Though progress is being made, there needs to be more support for Black representation in climate tech and venture capital funding for female climate tech founders.
On the more criminal side of tech, the founder of Terraform, Do Kwon, has pled not guilty after being arrested for holding false passports. Meanwhile, the court has also finally taken action on Elizabeth Holmes of former Theranos, after she was sentenced to 11 years in jail and forced to pay almost half a billion dollars restitution to those affected by her fraud.
The goal of the article is to provide high-quality content that informs readers of the current state of the startup world. It provides information on recent acquisitions, layoffs, and advancements in the technology field, as well as news on topics such as climate change and criminal activity. It also provides information on specific people, companies, and investments mentioned in the article. Ultimately, it is written to provide users with valuable information and potential opportunities.