News 2

04 May In Tanzania, This Startup Will Pay For Plastic Trash And Make 3-D Printer Filament

It's hard to make a living as a waste picker. In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania—where most trash ends up illegally dumped—waste pickers spend up to 12 hours a day walking around the city, collecting and lugging other people's garbage in long plastic bags. It's a valuable service for the city, which doesn’t have a recycling program. But it doesn't pay very well. In a day, a full-time waste picker might make less than $1.50.

04 May Five Questions For: Joah Spearman, Founder of Austin’s Localeur

The tech community in Austin, TX, takes great pride in its reputation as an innovation hub. So when Joah Spearman, co-founder and CEO of online city guides Localeur, wrote in a recent blog post calling into question local venture capitalists’ dedication to supporting young tech companies.

04 May Women in Tech Band Together to Track Diversity, After Hours

Ellen Pao spent the last few years spotlighting the technology industry’s lack of diversity, in court and beyond. Erica Baker caused a stir at Google when she started a spreadsheet last year for employees to share their salaries, highlighting the pay disparities between those of different genders doing the same job. Laura I. Gómez founded a start-up focused on improving diversity in the hiring process.

03 May Funding Smart Business Ideas Outside Silicon Valley

Fresno, California, is a three-hour drive from Silicon Valley. You’re more likely to find acres of farmland there than you would a glut of smartphone app companies vying for attention. But the state’s fifth-largest city is in the Central Valley and therefore at the heart of something a bit more critical to life than hailing an Uber: Nearly 40 percent of all food consumed in the U.S. is produced there. And innovation is just as important.

03 May The $100 Million Fund That’s Fostering Detroit’s Minority Startup Entrepreneurs – Forbes

Justine Sheu didn’t have any plans of becoming an entrepreneur. The Detroit-based millennial spent her early career educating underserved youth in the area. But with the backing of a funding initiative specifically targeted to boost women and minority entrepreneurs in Southeast Michigan, Sheu cofounded two education-technology startups. Notably, she’s the CEO of Pro:Up, a mobile app that connects high school students with extracurricular and career opportunities via text message.

02 May Will.i.am’s Back With a New AI That Lives on Your Wrist—Or in Your Clothes

LOS ANGELES—WILL.I.AM SOUNDS congested and subdued, his batteries running low after a high-octane appearance on The Ellen Show earlier that day. He’s longing for 2025, when an artificial intelligence will be able to tell him to take it easy.