"I started to get emails from all kinds of people asking if I could glaze pieces of pottery with their loved ones' remains," he told the WSJ. Unfortunately, dealing with the flood of requests helped Crowe realize that pottery wasn't a great avenue for scaling a business, as it only uses a fraction of a person's dusty leftovers. He ended up revamping his enterprise, coming up with Parting Stones' "solidification service," which begins at $1,195 for pets and $2,495 for humans.
"We stopped Yara because we realized we were building in an impossible space. AI can be wonderful for everyday stress, sleep troubles, or processing a difficult conversation," he wrote on LinkedIn. "But the moment someone truly vulnerable reaches out-someone in crisis, someone with deep trauma, someone contemplating ending their life-AI becomes dangerous. Not just inadequate. Dangerous." In a reply to one commenter, he added, "the risks kept me up all night."
I've always wanted to live in San Francisco. It's the beating pulse of AI, and there are so many insanely ambitious and talented people to be surrounded by. You can literally walk into a coffee shop and end up in a two-hour deep dive conversation about AI agents or someone's YC application. Everyone's dreaming big, and you can feel that optimism in the air. It's a nice place to build a startup.
"Our users are very young," Pei said on Alex Heath's Access podcast this week. "It's pretty much impossible to be popular among everybody in the world at the very beginning, so we got to pick a lane." Pei said the company has found that its products resonate best with younger consumers who are motivated by a desire to "be different" and find their "own identity" in the devices they choose.
Andrew Lissimore has been running the audio apparel site Headphones.com for nearly a decade now. While audiophiles have a high affinity towards their gear and want to try out new gadgets, Lissimore wasn't satisfied with continuously spending money on platforms like Meta and Google to acquire new customers; he wanted to find a way to better retain the customers he already had.
A startup called Orion is ready to take on America's sleep loss epidemic with a new, AI-enabled mattress cover that can adjust its temperature throughout the night to maximize comfort and rest. Cofounder and CEO Harry Gestetner previously cofounded the startup Fanfix, which helped Gen Z content creators build paid subscription programs. After the company sold to SuperOrdinary for a reported $65 million, Gestetner says he became interested in sleep and its well-documented links to health and longevity.
The whole thing works like this: exhausted job seekers upload their résumé and format their personal info. Once up and running, they're presented with various gigs one by one, which they can swipe left to reject, or right to apply - just like a dating app. When a user swipes right, Sorce's "AI agent" navigates to the company's website and applies on their behalf.
We're building NexDash into Europe's first Neo-Carrier: electrified, AI-orchestrated, and soon autonomous. 🚛⚡ To keep pace with our growth, we're looking for a strong Operations & Finance Associate who acts as the founder's right hand and makes sure everything runs smoothly. Your responsibilities: Admin: build organization & structure across the company Finance: basic controlling, payments, investor reporting HR: contracts, onboarding, culture building Office management: keep the daily machine running
With Supercal's group scheduling feature, you can email a group of people and CC the service's AI, which reads everyone's calendars, finds a time that works for all, books the meeting, and replies to the email thread with the details. Supercal lets you sync up to six calendars, so you can keep work, personal, and other schedules in one place.
In the summer of 2016, I was 21, living in New York City, and working as an intern for a private-capital research firm. One weekend, I went to the Jersey shore with a group of friends. I'm from Seattle, so I'm not used to seeing airplanes flying banners every couple of minutes. They looked like they were from the 1940s. They were noisy and emitting a lot of smoke.
Starting a business from scratch may feel overwhelming, but the journey becomes easier with clear steps. Begin by finding a problem to solve and making sure there's real demand for your idea. Create a simple plan that covers your goals, budget, and strategy. Secure the right funding, complete the legal formalities, and focus on building a strong brand presence. Start small, test your product or service, and improve based on feedback. Use marketing to reach your audience and grow steadily.
Within 28 hours, AI startup Aurasell raised $30 million in seed funding to take on Salesforce and other legacy sales software companies. Aurasell, which is coming out of stealth and announced the seed funding on Tuesday, aims to automate sales and streamline the disparate tools - and more recently, the AI agents - built on top of customer relationship management (CRM) software like Salesforce. It includes sales tools for forecasting, prospecting, account population, and more.
Fourteen years ago, Silicon Valley startup August rethought the front door with its internet-connected smart locks. Its growth led to an acquisition in 2017 by lock manufacturer Yale-and it's still the top-selling smart lock brand in the U.S. But despite the relative ubiquity of connected-home products like August 's locks, Ring doorbells, and Nest thermostats, the true ideal of the smart home-a dwelling with built-in tech that seems to magically cater to your needs-seems no closer than it was when August launched.
Cluely's current product is described as an invisible desktop assistant that listens through microphones, transcribes speech, identifies speakers, and provides real-time summaries.
The mood was very bleak. Some people were upset about financial outcomes or colleagues leaving, while others were worried about the future. A few were in tears, and the Q&A had been understandably hostile.
Subscription-based revenue models, exemplified by Netflix, provide predictable revenue streams and enhance customer lifetime value, which can be applied even in traditional industries.
"Kiku is solving one of the most painful and under-invested challenges in hiring. Eric and Rasmus bring deep operational experience, product insight, and urgency to this problem. We believe Kiku will define the category for AI in frontline recruitment."
"'God Mode' refers to Whisper's advanced cybersecurity visibility, an unprecedented, real-time view of the entire internet's infrastructure. It enables organisations to detect and track cyber threats by exposing attacker infrastructure and hidden relationships before any damage occurs."
Samat sent a cold reach out to Sergey Brin in the middle of the night, asking the Google cofounder for advice. At the time, he didn't know Brin personally, but he had read Brin's research papers and held a deep level of respect for the company.