NVTC Newsletter No. 5
Happy Tech Tuesday, and welcome to the NVTC weekly newsletter! Here you’ll find recent updates from the tech world, insightful articles related to startups and highlights from NV portfolio companies.
THIS WEEK’S FEATURES ⚡
💡Volunteer – Should we host an info session with Develop for Good? Click here to learn more.
💳 Nomba – Digital payments for underserved businesses.
⭐ The Reign of Robots – Tesla’s AI Day and Walgreen’s new drug-fillers.
⭐ Market Mayday – What’s happening to unicorns and op(Porsche)tunities.
⭐ A Wild Yeast – Genetically modified … yeast? A potential player for cancer drugs.
VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITY 🔔
Develop for Good links professionals with opportunities to mentor students working on technical projects at nonprofits. This is an incredible way to stay involved with the tech community and contribute to impactful projects.
As we mentioned last week, we’re considering hosting an information session with Develop for Good. We received great responses from our last poll, so we wanted to reach out one more time in case you missed it. Stay tuned for an email regarding scheduling!
NV PORTFOLIO HIGHLIGHT 🎢
Let’s reflect on an experience many of us take for granted: a morning trip to your local coffee shop. You wake up too late. You rush to get ready before placing an online order for a latte and breakfast sandwich. It’s ready just in time. You make it to work ahead of schedule.
But what if you couldn’t order online? What if digital payments didn’t exist and you were doomed to wait in line for 20 minutes just to get a cup of joe? In Nigeria, small businesses are responsible for 86% of the workforce, but only 60% of those businesses accept any form of digital payment. Those who do lack a unified platform.
Nomba is the first FinTech startup of its kind based in Nigeria. Nomba offers a comprehensive range of tools for businesses to accept, process and manage payments online and offline. Businesses can self-onboard in five minutes and order a full-service integrated dashboard to manage all their payment needs.
As of April this year, Nomba handled payments for over 150,000 companies on its platform, and it onboards 15,000 new companies monthly. People are taking notice of Nomba's fast growth – it was listed as a YCombinator Top Company for 2022. Check out this site if you want to explore where your skills might help with Nomba’s mission.
NEWS & ARTICLES 📖
At Tesla’s AI day last Friday, Elon Musk unveiled a slightly wobbly, cable-wrapped robot. This robot was an immense upgrade from the previous year’s demonstration by a dude in a suit. Eventually, the robot will be able to carry a 20-pound bag, use tools, and have precision grip – as well as walk efficiently. It’s all part of Musk’s vision to create “a useful humanoid robot as quickly as possible.”
Grappling with a nationwide shortage of pharmacists, Walgreens has started setting up robotic drug-filling centers. Robotic arms will sort and bottle prescriptions to free up capacity for skilled professionals. Walgreens claims it cuts workloads by at least 25%. That’s not such a hard pill to swallow!
Amidst warnings of global recession and rampant inflation, Porsche somehow made one of the biggest market debuts in European history. Though the IPO-market has become increasingly stagnant, Porsche’s public offering lended a much-needed boost. The company opened at €84, up 2% from its IPO price, and ended with a market price of over €75 billion.
If you haven’t studied up on SynBio yet, now is the time. Scientists from the Technical University of Denmark have genetically modified yeast to produce vindoline and catharanthine, two key components of a chemo drug currently in shortage. This could develop an entirely new assembly line for essential drugs against cancer.
At Salesforce’s annual software and developer conference, it revealed big plans for a new carbon offsets marketplace. The marketplace will allow carbon-negative projects to sell credits to companies responsible for pollution. While this is a great step in the right direction, many questions remain to determine the quality of offsets and how that contributes to the evolving concept of carbon credits.
As Q3 comes to a close, it is evident that unicorns are no longer seen as the prized possessions they used to be. Where early startup valuations were once reaching stratospheric levels, the pace at which unicorn companies are raising capital is slowing down. Venture capital rounds are tightening, and unicorns might be added to the endangered species list soon.
REDDIT HIGHLIGHT 📈
Reddit is particularly excited about Tesla’s Optimus robot. Here’s what r/wallstreetbets has to say about it:
This is a comment to give you a bright new perspective on the bot:
OUTRO
Feel free to reply to this email with all questions, feedback, or comments. We’ll be iterating and curating the NVTC newsletter according to your interests.
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