We’re in the era of the General Contractor CEO.

In Asia there’s been a rise of One Person Companies, or OPCs. In the West, many are speculating that soon billion dollar businesses could be single-founder creations, leveraging the output and coordination advantages with AI. I wrote on this idea a few years ago in what I called “The Rise of the Thin Company,” which I first referenced in terms of our portfolio company, Finalis, in May 2023.

The idea around Thin Companies, those enabled largely by AI, builds on the premise that not only can AI can supercharge a founder’s skillset, but also help them dynamically coordinate inputs based on business demands. More like creating a house, a circus or a movie, where skills are assembled and disassembled based on the immediate goals, AI can help in this task coordination and optimization. The company itself need not fully employ everyone to have those output advantages.

CEOs may yet become like General Contractors, bringing together loose ties to achieve organizational objectives, dynamically enabled by marketplaces and AI, rather than needing to bring all of these skills in-house permanently. A GC need not understand every part of the home building process, but they are the coordination authority bringing together foundation, electrical, plumbing, etc. The CEO has long been a lauded position; it’s moving the way of coordination maven.

Federico Baradello, CEO of Finalis, expanded further on this idea. “When we founded Finalis, we asked a radical question: what if the next elite investment bank wasn’t a skyscraper of analysts—but a lean, AI-enabled network of independent dealmakers working from anywhere?” Finalis aims to build the platform that enables 1,000 “investment banks OF one,” rather than a single skyscraper full of 1,000 investment bankers IN one. The reason this is possible, is because the economies of scale, the former advantages of established organizations with regulatory licenses, processes, are dwindling. In other words, you used to have to join a bulge bracket to get your laptop, get your market access, get your licenses, get your capital. No longer.

As the AI-enabled advantages accrue to the independent “General Contractor” CEO or GC-CEO, and to the Thin Company, they soon begin to outweigh the disadvantages associated with bureaucratic scale, working inside the skyscraper.

History repeats as a series of aggregations and disaggregations. The industrial revolution took independent craftsmen and consolidated processes and automation that led to economies of scale, and an inability for a single car manufacturer to compete. Now AI is doing the opposite, pulling on the string that unravels the benefits of being part of a large organization, and providing sufficient advantages to independent operators that they can not only compete, but win with AI.

As Baradello points out, “A Thin Company is lean in headcount but thick in leverage. Rather than scaling with humans, it scales through networks, automation, and intelligent infrastructure.” And so this General Contractor CEO must be adept at assembly, like a movie producer bringing together the components of a film (actors, DPs, gaffers, editors etc), to create art, and stay on budget. These new Thin Company leaders will increasingly be the conductors of AI tools, an agentic workforce, and the fluid human networks when episodic loose-ties are required. Finalis allows bankers to operate independently, but where they are thin on headcount, they’re thick on leverage around deal origination, market making, and info sharing.

I’m not of the belief that every new unicorn will be developed by a single AI-enabled vibe coder in a basement, but I do think we are in a burgeoning period of disaggregation, where AI enabled tools, and loose-tie networks like Finalis will empower far more Thin Companies to compete with bulge bracket players. There will be a break-even where the costs of bureaucracy are outweighed by the AI-enabled advantages of speed, independence, and coordination.

And as to that break-even point, we’re probably already there.

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Thanks to Michael Barone and Federico Baradello for contributions to this piece.

Scott Hartley is Co-Founder and General Partner at Everywhere Ventures, a $100 million-dollar early stage venture capital fund that has backed over 250 companies

Freight forwarding remains one of the most relationship-driven parts of global trade. Local expertise, customer trust, and operational judgment still matter deeply. But smaller and mid-sized forwarders are increasingly under pressure from thin margins, manual workflows, and larger competitors with more advanced technology. Starboard is building for that gap.

In a recent feature in The Loadstar, Sumeet Trehan shared how the company is using AI to help smaller forwarders compete more effectively. Trehan’s perspective is shaped by his experience across Maersk, BCG, and Flexport, where he saw firsthand that digital freight was not always solving the right problem.

The issue is not that small forwarders lack expertise. In many cases, they are closer to their customers and better understand the operational nuances of each shipment. The challenge is that much of their day-to-day work is still buried in emails, PDFs, spreadsheets, carrier portals, agent replies, and constantly changing rates.

That friction is especially visible in the quoting process. A forwarder may receive dozens of quote requests a day, with each one requiring manual work across multiple systems and sources. When response times stretch from hours into days, business can be lost to whoever replies first.

Starboard’s approach is to bring AI into the quote desk. The platform connects to a forwarder’s inbox, reads incoming RFQs, extracts cargo and routing details, breaks shipments into legs, searches contract and spot rates, and helps gather missing information from agents or co-loaders.

The goal is not to replace the forwarder. It is to give them the kind of speed, structure, and procurement intelligence that larger players have historically been better positioned to access.

That distinction matters. Freight forwarding is still exception-heavy and local by nature. The person who knows which carrier office to call, which routing may fall apart, or which customer needs extra attention remains central to the process. Starboard is building around that reality rather than trying to erase it.

The company’s broader thesis is that AI can help turn messy, unstructured freight data into something usable without forcing forwarders to rip out their existing systems. For an industry that still runs on inconsistent documents, emails, and fragmented workflows, that is a meaningful unlock.

As AI becomes more embedded in logistics, the most valuable applications may not be the flashiest demos. They may be the tools that make core workflows faster, more accurate, and more profitable.

For smaller forwarders, Starboard is positioning AI not as a replacement for local operators, but as a way to help them respond faster, quote better, and protect the customer relationships that make them valuable in the first place.

Read the full article in The Loadstar.

Led by founders Marc Hermann and Anshul Jain, Everlab is building around a different model: identify risks earlier and make it easier to act on them.

The team raised a A$65 million in Series A funding led by Airtree, with participation from Plural, b2venture, Left Lane Capital, and several angel investors, including Australian cricket captain Pat Cummins.

Everlab combines advanced diagnostic testing with doctors, specialists, prescriptions, wearable data, and AI-supported care through a single platform. Rather than leaving patients to interpret isolated test results, the platform organizes their health information and helps coordinate the screenings, interventions, and follow-up steps that come next.

The company has already analyzed more than 20,000 clients across Australia and New Zealand. The company’s testing has uncovered previously undetected health issues in more than one-quarter of clients.

That is the larger opportunity behind the round. Preventive care is not only about running more tests. It requires an operating layer capable of connecting fragmented health data to meaningful clinical action.

Everlab will use the new capital to expand into the UK and continue building its clinical and technology infrastructure. As healthcare shifts from episodic treatment toward continuous prevention, platforms that can hold the full picture of a person’s health may become an increasingly important part of the system.

Read the full article on the Startup Daily.

As technologies roll out, initial advantages go to incumbents who can adopt the new technologies for efficiency gains, and margin expansion. I’ve heard a number of friends say, “If companies like Harvey and Legora are growing so quickly, how come my law firm bills haven’t gone down?” If a lawyer is able to perform commoditized legal work in a fraction of the time, shouldn’t this hit billable hours, and therefore the cost for services? In the short run, this margin accrues to the incumbents.

But let’s take radiology as an example.

A decade ago many heralded the death of radiology as a field. The logic went as follows: radiologists predominately look at pictures of MRIs, AI driven image recognition and cognition was getting better and better, so therefore an image-heavy field like radiology would be one of the first things to disappear.

What happened, however, was two-fold:

1. AI impacted hardware (atoms): MRI machines became more powerful, faster, cheaper to build, manage and operate, and more came online

2. AI impacted software (bits): image-processing obviated the need for radiological review on rote and routine cases, and shifted their focus to the edge, where practitioner experience mattered, nuance and context were needed

These two impacts meant that more MRI machines became available to more people, and the number of radiologists needed to process the images went down. For a brief interregnum, image labs could have accrued margin due to being able to run MRI scans more cheaply, and perhaps with fewer doctors on staff as overhead.

But then something perhaps curious, or perhaps obvious, happened. New entrants flooded the market offering MRI scans for orders of magnitude cheaper prices, harvesting the delta between old price and new cost, and offered these services at prices that drastically undercut historical offerings. And because at these new price points there were entirely new use cases for MRIs, like preventative scans, demand skyrocketed, new companies were formed, further compressing margins in a race for user acquisition, and the total number of not just MRI machines and scans, but radiologists reviewing these scans, went through the roof.

This is a phenomena known as the Jevons Paradox, dating back to 1865. William Stanley Jevons first observed the phenomena with coal. Technological efficiencies lead to a rise in production capabilities, a reduction in price, and an ensuing expansion of demand. The very efficiencies thought to eliminate jobs create such a great expansion in production, and fall in price, that it’s net positive for both demand expansion and therefore the need for more human labor, not less. NPR recently did a great deep dive on exactly this phenomena as relates to the expansive effects of AI.

This three part movie will likely play out in legal, and many other industries:

1. AI affords advantages to incumbents who harvest new margins, and there’s a brief interregnum where incumbents continue to dominate, and prices don’t change (this is the valley of disbelief, where people think AI hasn’t changed much)

2. New entrants leveraging these new cost advantages undercut industry norms, and attack this new margin, closing the gap between price and cost

3. Prices for the same services fall, and there is net new demand for these services at new price points, probably leading to market expansion and growth

Both incumbent and new player may continue to exist, but because the incumbent’s fixed costs are likely commensurate with old price points, they’ll have a structural disadvantage to the new players who are AI-native, and don’t carry some of the same deadweight fixed costs, making them more nimble and immune from margin erosion.

Overall, like we saw with Prenuvo, Ezra (now Function Health), EverLab, Axo and many of the consumer-facing health companies offering preventative MRI scans at a fraction of the traditional costs, we’ll likely see new supercharged AI-native law firms who will be able to offer commensurate quality to a top-tier firm, at a fraction of the price. They’ll eat into those incumbent law firm margins and profits, drive the fee per service down, and in turn perhaps create net new market expansion.

At firms like Omar Haroun’s Eudia supercharging in-house counsel with AI tools, they’re providing an AI-native toolbox for in-house counsel to drastically slash legal budgets. While they still may pay premium dollar for white-shoe litigators, mainly for the optical threat of power against peers, commoditized legal will be a race to the bottom, with new entrants cutting into incumbent partner rate charts by being able to do comparable quality work at a fraction of the cost for clients.

Early AI efficiencies accrue to legacy incumbents. Net new AI-native players leverage new cost advantages to attack margin. Prices reduce and clear. Net demand increases for services, market expands, and net new jobs are likely created due to growth. Like was experienced with coal, with radiology, legal might be next. If my legal bills fell from $2,000 an hour to $200, I might actually ask more than 10x my demand. But this new value accrual won’t go to legacy players hoarding margin. It’ll go to new players, or those AI-native firms with the structural cost advantages to support it.

—

Scott Hartley is Co-Founder and General Partner at Everywhere Ventures, a $100 million-dollar early stage venture capital fund that has backed over 250 companies.

Special thanks to Omar Haroun at Eudia, and Michael Barone at Everywhere.

Tax season creates a familiar kind of urgency. Refunds, assessments, payment notices, and compliance updates all arrive at once, often through the same digital channels people already trust. That familiarity is exactly what scammers are using.

Orca Fraud CEO Thalia Pillay is warning South Africans to watch for a predictable spike in SARS impersonation scams this filing season. The messages vary, from fake settlement notices and refund SMSes to letters of demand and auto-assessment prompts, but the playbook is the same: make the message feel official, make the deadline feel urgent, and push people to click before they verify.

What makes these scams more convincing is the shift to digital. With SARS now relying fully on digital correspondence for system-generated letters, legitimate communication is already happening through inboxes and SMS threads. That gives fraudsters more cover to imitate the process.

The core advice is simple: do not trust the link, trust the source. SARS will not ask for banking or credit card details by SMS or email, will not send payment instructions through random accounts, and will not route taxpayers to external sites for compliance steps. Anything suspicious should be checked directly through eFiling or the SARS website.

For Orca, the broader issue is not just scam awareness. It is about helping people recognize fraud in the moment it matters, before urgency turns into action. As more financial and government interactions move online, that layer of trust and verification is becoming increasingly important.

Read the full article on the Business Explainer.

Insurance remains one of the largest industries in the world, but many brokerage workflows still depend on manual processes, disconnected tools, and institutional knowledge.

Outmarket AI is working to change that by building an AI platform purpose-built for insurance brokerages.

The team announced its $17 million Series A, led by Permanent Capital Ventures, with participation from SignalFire, Fika Ventures, TTV Capital, Dash Fund, and strategic investors across the insurance ecosystem. The round brings Outmarket’s total funding to $21.7 million and reflects growing confidence in the company’s vision for the future of insurance operations.

Outmarket’s platform connects directly to agency management systems and transforms structured and unstructured brokerage data into an intelligence layer that powers key workflows across commercial, benefits, personal lines, and specialty insurance.

The company is already seeing strong market adoption. Since launching in March 2025, Outmarket has grown ARR 5x year-over-year and is now used by more than 250 leading insurance brokerages. Its platform processes millions of quotes, policies, applications, and loss runs documents, helping customers save more than a decade of manual work each month.

The impact extends beyond efficiency. Customers have reported up to a 65% reduction in errors and omissions through AI-assisted policy comparison and gap detection. Brokerages are also using Outmarket to improve win rates, identify cross-sell opportunities, and deliver better service to clients in less time.

The broader shift across insurance is clear. Brokerages are moving from manual, fragmented processes toward connected, AI-enabled infrastructure that can support every stage of the brokerage workflow.

The funding will support continued platform expansion, including new AI-driven workflows for complex, high-stakes insurance processes. Outmarket also plans to more than double its product capabilities in 2026 as it expands across commercial lines, benefits, personal lines, and specialty insurance.

For Vishal, Anshu, and the team, the opportunity is to build the operating system for the modern insurance brokerage and help define how the industry works in the years ahead.

Read the full article on PRNewswire.

Every day, marketplaces need to move money to thousands of people at once: hosts, creators, sellers, contractors, and distributed workers across different markets. The workflow sounds simple, but behind it is a complex web of banking integrations, compliance requirements, reconciliation, and local payment infrastructure.

Radar is focused on making that infrastructure work.

The company automates financial operations for platforms that need to pay large groups of people simultaneously. Its specialty is payment dispersion, helping companies like Airbnb, TikTok, and Booking move money across Latin America more efficiently and reliably.

In a region where many fintechs are competing for the largest markets, Radar has gone after countries that are often underserved by global payment infrastructure, including Ecuador, Bolivia, and Paraguay. These markets may be smaller individually, but together they represent a meaningful opportunity, especially for global platforms looking to operate across Latin America without rebuilding payment rails country by country.

That focus has shaped the company’s operating discipline as well. Founded in 2022, Radar has raised just $1.5 million, became profitable within three years, closed 2024 with $2.9 million in revenue, and is projecting $12 million by 2026.

Early on, when banks would not give Radar direct access to their systems, Herbert Schulz and the team built their own workaround using a physical bank token, a webcam, and AI to read authentication codes in real time. It was scrappy, imperfect, and exactly what the moment required.

Today, that shoebox is no longer needed. Radar now connects directly into banking systems and processes more than one million transfers per month.

From our lens, this is where durable infrastructure companies are often formed: in the messy operational gaps that incumbents are too slow to solve and larger players are too broad to localize.

As marketplaces, creator platforms, and cross-border commerce continue expanding across Latin America, payment infrastructure will need to become more embedded, more flexible, and more regional by design.

Radar is building in that direction, toward a world where global platforms can move money across overlooked markets with the same speed and reliability they expect in the largest ones.

Read the full article on Diario Sustentable

Real-world evidence is becoming a critical layer of modern drug development, but much of the clinical data needed to generate it remains fragmented across specialty care settings.

Century Health is working to change that by building a platform that accelerates drug development and commercialization by applying AI to real-world data.

The team announced their oversubscribed $5 million raise to expand its platform and accelerate adoption across the healthcare ecosystem. Co-founder and CEO Vish Srivastava and co-founder and CTO Sanjay Hariharan are focused on building infrastructure that allows life sciences teams to better organize, analyze, and generate insights from complex clinical data.

The need for this infrastructure is growing rapidly. Providers are sitting on valuable clinical insights, while life sciences teams need better access to actionable data for clinical insights, market access, and outcomes analysis.

Century’s proprietary AI abstraction engine, CHARM, extracts clinical variables from unstructured clinical data with validated accuracy and traceability to the source. This helps turn fragmented records into datasets that can support research and decision-making.

The broader shift happening across healthcare is clear. Clinical data is moving from siloed and difficult to access toward connected, disease-specific, and AI-ready infrastructure.

The funding will support continued product development, expansion of the company’s network, and broader deployment of its platform as Century continues building tools for providers, researchers, and life sciences organizations.

For Vish, Sanjay, and the team, the opportunity is to create a stronger foundation for real-world evidence generation and help accelerate medical breakthroughs.

Read the full article on MobiHealthNews

Recognition often follows companies that are quietly reshaping everyday categories. Wagmo is one of them.

Christie Horvath, founder and CEO of Wagmo, was named a finalist for the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year award. The recognition reflects not only her leadership, but also the company’s growing role in redefining how pet care is accessed and managed.

Wagmo focuses on preventative care and pet insurance, offering a model that helps pet owners better plan for both routine and unexpected expenses. Rather than treating care as reactive, the platform encourages ongoing wellness through structured coverage and reimbursement.

Horvath’s approach is grounded in a simple insight. Pet owners increasingly view their pets as family, but the systems supporting their care have not fully evolved to match that shift. Costs can be unpredictable, and traditional insurance models often lack flexibility or clarity.

By building a more accessible and transparent platform, Wagmo is helping address that gap. The company’s offering supports everyday care while also providing coverage for larger medical needs, creating a more continuous and manageable experience for pet owners.

The recognition from EY highlights a broader trend. As consumer expectations rise, categories that were once considered routine are being reimagined through better design, clearer pricing, and more user-friendly experiences.

For Horvath, the focus remains on building a product that aligns with how people actually care for their pets. The goal is not just to offer coverage, but to support healthier, more proactive care over time.

As Wagmo continues to grow, its model reflects how even established industries can evolve when approached with a clearer understanding of user needs. Recognition like this signals that the shift is already underway.

Read the full article on Citybiz

Wildfires rarely begin as large-scale disasters. They start as subtle shifts—drier vegetation, rising temperatures, changing wind patterns—signals that, if understood early enough, can change outcomes entirely. But increasingly, the systems designed to monitor and interpret those signals are under strain. Research stations are closing. Data pipelines are thinning. And in many cases, the people responsible for managing risk are left operating with incomplete visibility.

That’s the gap Rhizome is stepping into.

Rhizome works with utilities and grid operators—organizations that sit directly in the path of wildfire exposure. Their platform translates environmental and infrastructure data into clear, operational insight: where risk is forming, how it’s evolving, and what actions can be taken before a spark becomes something far more costly.

From the outside, it can look like a data problem. In reality, it’s a decision-making problem. When risk isn’t well understood, responses tend to be blunt—broad power shutoffs, reactive measures, and trade-offs that carry real consequences for communities. What Rhizome enables is something more precise. A way to act with context, not just caution.

When we first spent time with the team, what stood out wasn’t just the technical approach, but how grounded it was in the realities of the people using it. Utilities don’t need more dashboards—they need clarity in moments that matter. That focus on usability, on translating complexity into something actionable, felt both pragmatic and necessary.

It’s also where Mishal Thadani brings a clear point of view. He’s spoken about the growing concern around the loss of wildfire research infrastructure, particularly in high-risk regions like California and Oregon. The implication is straightforward: as foundational systems weaken, the burden shifts to new layers of intelligence to fill that gap. Not as a replacement, but as an adaptation to a changing reality.

That perspective shaped how Rhizome is being built. Not as a static model of risk, but as a living system—one that continuously ingests environmental signals and reflects how conditions are changing in real time. It’s less about predicting a single outcome, and more about helping operators stay aligned with a dynamic environment.

From an investment standpoint, this is the kind of work that tends to matter more over time. It sits at the intersection of climate, infrastructure, and decision-making—areas where the cost of inaction is rising, and where better tools can meaningfully shift outcomes.

What makes it compelling isn’t just the scale of the problem, but the specificity of the solution. Rhizome isn’t trying to solve everything. It’s focused on a critical layer—helping the systems we rely on every day become more aware, more responsive, and ultimately more resilient.

Looking ahead, it’s hard to imagine a future where infrastructure operates without this kind of intelligence embedded into it. As risks become more complex and less predictable, the ability to see clearly—and act early—becomes foundational.

Rhizome is building toward that future, one decision at a time.

Read the full article on Fast Company

Some of the most meaningful shifts in technology don’t arrive all at once. They show up in workflows—quietly changing how things get done until the old way no longer fits.

That’s what’s happening with AI-generated code.

Developers today are increasingly guiding systems that can write, test, and deploy code on their own. It’s a leap in speed and capability, but it also introduces a new kind of risk—one that’s harder to see. When code is created autonomously, understanding how it was generated, what it accessed, and where vulnerabilities may exist becomes far less straightforward.

This is where Operant AI is focused.

With its Endpoint Protector, the company is addressing the rise of “shadow AI” and autonomous coding agents operating beyond traditional oversight. Instead of relying on static defenses, Operant AI focuses on runtime behavior—observing how AI systems interact with code, data, and infrastructure in real time.

What stood out to us early was the clarity of that approach. As AI changes how software is built, security needs to evolve alongside it—not as a constraint, but as an embedded layer of understanding.

That perspective is shaped in part by Vrajesh Bhavsar, who has consistently pointed to the growing gap between how quickly AI is being adopted and how slowly traditional security models are adapting. It’s not a future problem—it’s already here.

From our lens, this is where new categories begin to form. When foundational workflows shift, the infrastructure around them has to be rebuilt. And the companies that matter most tend to be the ones that recognize that early.

Operant AI is building in that direction—toward a world where AI-driven development is not only faster, but also more visible, accountable, and secure.

Read the full article on CXOtoday.com

E-prescribing was meant to modernize how prescriptions move through the healthcare system. In practice, it often digitized the same fragmentation. Scripts are sent, but patients are left to navigate pricing, availability, and fulfillment on their own.

Photon is taking a different approach. Rather than treating prescribing as a handoff, the company is rebuilding it as an end-to-end experience that connects providers, pharmacies, and patients in a single flow.

At the center of this shift is Otto Sipe, who is focused on making prescriptions more transparent and actionable. The goal is not just to send a prescription electronically, but to give patients clarity and control at the moment decisions are made.

Photon’s platform allows providers to guide patients through key steps during the visit itself. Pricing options, pharmacy selection, and fulfillment paths are surfaced upfront, reducing the uncertainty that typically follows a prescription. Instead of a fragmented process, it becomes a coordinated one.

This reframing addresses a deeper issue. E-prescribing has long been optimized for transmission, not experience. By shifting the focus to outcomes and usability, Photon is redefining what that infrastructure layer can do.

The approach also aligns with broader expectations in healthcare. Patients increasingly expect visibility into cost and choice, while providers are looking for tools that reduce friction rather than add to it. Bridging that gap requires systems that work across stakeholders, not in silos.

Photon’s model suggests that the next phase of healthcare infrastructure will be less about digitization alone and more about integration. Connecting the full lifecycle of a prescription, from decision to fulfillment, creates a more reliable and patient-centered experience.

As platforms like Photon gain traction, the definition of e-prescribing itself begins to shift. What was once a simple electronic transfer is becoming a coordinated system that supports both clinical decisions and patient outcomes.

Read the full announcement on Hospitalogy

Healthcare is increasingly moving toward convenience, privacy, and accessibility. &you is part of that shift, offering a model that brings consultations, treatments, and ongoing care into a more seamless digital experience.

In a recent Tatler Asia feature, Emil Eriksen, founder and CEO of &you, shared how the company is addressing gaps in how people access healthcare. Many patients still face barriers such as stigma, limited availability of specialists, or the inconvenience of traditional clinical visits. These challenges are particularly visible in areas like sexual health, dermatology, and wellness, where discretion and ease of access matter.

&you’s approach is to remove those barriers by combining telehealth consultations with end-to-end treatment and delivery. Patients can consult with licensed doctors online, receive prescriptions when appropriate, and have treatments delivered directly to their homes. The experience is designed to feel simple, private, and continuous rather than fragmented.

Eriksen’s perspective is rooted in the idea that healthcare should fit into people’s lives, not the other way around. By focusing on accessibility and user experience, the platform is helping normalize conversations around conditions that are often under-addressed in traditional systems.

The company’s growth reflects a broader shift in consumer expectations. Patients are increasingly seeking healthcare that is not only clinically effective but also convenient and discreet. Digital platforms are becoming an important layer in meeting those expectations, particularly in regions where access to care can be uneven.

&you is positioning itself within that evolution by building a model that integrates consultation, treatment, and follow-up into a single experience. This reduces friction for patients while improving continuity of care.

As digital healthcare continues to expand, platforms that prioritize both access and experience are likely to play a larger role in shaping how care is delivered. Under Eriksen’s leadership, &you is building toward a future where healthcare is more approachable, responsive, and aligned with how people live.

Read the full article on Tatler Asia

Tinned fish is having an unexpected resurgence. What was once considered a pantry staple is now being reintroduced as a premium, design-forward product with growing cultural relevance. Fishwife is at the center of that shift.

In a recent Chowhound feature, the brand received a notable nod from Alton Brown, who highlighted Fishwife as a standout in the category. The recognition reflects a broader movement, where consumers are rediscovering tinned seafood not just for convenience, but for quality, sourcing, and experience.

Built alongside co-founder Becca Millstein, Fishwife has approached the category differently from the start. Rather than competing on price or shelf space alone, the company has focused on elevating both the product and the brand. From packaging to storytelling, Fishwife positions tinned fish as something to be enjoyed and shared, not just stored.

This approach aligns with changing consumer behavior. As food culture continues to evolve, there is growing interest in products that combine quality, sustainability, and aesthetic appeal. Tinned fish, once overlooked, is benefiting from that shift.

The mention from Alton Brown underscores how far the category has come. Influential voices in food are helping reframe perceptions, introducing tinned seafood to a new audience that values both taste and presentation.

For Fishwife, the opportunity goes beyond a single product category. By redefining how consumers engage with tinned fish, the company is contributing to a broader reimagination of pantry staples.

As demand continues to grow, brands that combine strong product quality with thoughtful positioning are likely to shape the next phase of the category. Fishwife’s rise reflects how even the most traditional products can find new life when approached with a fresh perspective.

Read the full article on Chowhound

Fertility care remains one of the most expensive and unpredictable areas of healthcare. Flora Fertility is working to change that by introducing a new approach to how fertility treatments are financed and accessed.

In a recent Athletech News piece, the company announced a $5 million raise to expand its platform and bring its model to more patients. Laura J. McDonald, co-founder and CEO is focused on creating a system that aligns incentives between patients, providers, and outcomes.

Flora’s model is built around the idea of customer-owned reproductive insurance. Instead of traditional insurance structures that can be restrictive or opaque, the platform allows individuals to contribute toward fertility care in a more flexible and transparent way. The goal is to reduce financial uncertainty while improving access to treatment.

The need for new solutions in this space is clear. Fertility treatments often come with high costs and variable success rates, leaving many patients navigating both emotional and financial challenges. Existing insurance options are limited, and out-of-pocket expenses can be significant.

Flora aims to address this by creating a system where patients have greater visibility and control. By aligning financial incentives with outcomes, the platform is designed to support better decision making throughout the treatment process.

The funding will be used to further develop the product and expand access, as the company continues to build its network and refine its offering. The broader vision is to create a more patient-centered approach to fertility care, where financial structures support rather than hinder access.

Flora’s approach reflects a growing trend in healthcare innovation. Companies are rethinking traditional insurance models to make them more flexible, transparent, and aligned with patient needs.

For Laura and the team, the opportunity lies in transforming how fertility care is financed, making it more accessible while giving patients a stronger role in their healthcare journey.

Read the full article on Athletech News

Healthcare systems are under increasing pressure to manage risk, improve outcomes, and operate more efficiently. Keebler Health is focused on addressing that challenge by applying artificial intelligence to clinical and operational decision making.

In coverage by Fierce Healthcare, the company announced $16 million in new funding to expand its platform and accelerate adoption. At the center of the company is Isaac Park, CEO of Keebler Health, who is leading the effort to bring AI driven insights into everyday healthcare workflows.

Keebler Health’s platform is designed to help providers identify risks earlier, using data to surface patterns that may not be immediately visible. By doing so, healthcare teams can intervene sooner, improve patient outcomes, and reduce downstream costs.

The need for this type of technology continues to grow. As healthcare data becomes more complex and abundant, providers are looking for tools that can translate that data into actionable insights. Traditional systems often fall short, leaving gaps in visibility and delayed decision making.

Keebler Health is positioning itself within that gap. By integrating AI into clinical workflows, the platform supports more proactive care, helping organizations move from reactive treatment to earlier intervention.

The funding will support continued product development and expansion as the company scales its impact across healthcare systems. It also reflects broader momentum in AI driven healthcare solutions, where investors are backing platforms that can deliver measurable improvements in both outcomes and efficiency.

For Keebler Health, the focus remains on building tools that fit naturally into how providers operate, ensuring that technology enhances rather than complicates care delivery.

As the healthcare industry continues to evolve, platforms that can combine data, intelligence, and usability will play an increasingly important role. Keebler Health is working to be part of that transformation.

Read the full article on Fierce Healthcare

Managing seized assets is a complex and often overlooked part of law enforcement and financial crime. Asset Reality is focused on solving that problem by bringing structure and transparency to how these assets are handled.

In a recent Techstars profile, Aidan Larkin, founder and CEO of Asset Reality, shared how the company is addressing inefficiencies in the seizure and recovery process. Governments and agencies frequently deal with a wide range of assets, from physical goods to digital currencies, yet the systems used to manage them are often fragmented and manual.

Asset Reality’s platform is designed to centralize and streamline these workflows. By providing a unified system, it enables agencies to track, manage, and ultimately recover value from seized assets in a more organized and efficient way.

Larkin’s background in law enforcement shaped the company’s direction. Having experienced the challenges firsthand, he built Asset Reality to address gaps in visibility, coordination, and accountability across asset management processes.

The need for this type of infrastructure is growing. As financial crime becomes more sophisticated and digital assets become more common, agencies require tools that can keep pace with the evolving landscape. Managing cryptocurrencies, in particular, introduces new layers of complexity that traditional systems were not designed to handle.

Asset Reality is positioning itself at the intersection of technology and law enforcement, helping agencies modernize how they approach asset recovery. By improving processes and increasing transparency, the platform supports better outcomes for governments and the communities they serve.

The Techstars profile highlights a broader shift toward digitizing critical but underdeveloped areas of public sector operations. Companies like Asset Reality are bringing modern software solutions to spaces that have historically relied on outdated systems.

For Larkin and his team, the mission is clear. By making asset management more efficient and accessible, they are helping unlock value that might otherwise remain lost within complex legal and operational processes.

Read the full article on Techstars

Startups are often encouraged to move quickly from one fundraising milestone to the next. Each round is seen as validation, momentum, and progress. But moving too fast can create pressure that compounds over time, especially when valuation begins to outpace traction.

Scott Hartley outlines how this dynamic often leads to one of the most difficult outcomes in venture: the down round. When companies raise ahead of their metrics, expectations increase faster than the business can support. Eventually, that gap has to close, and when it does, it can result in dilution, complex terms, and strained investor relationships.

The article introduces what it calls the “Billy Madison approach” to fundraising. The idea challenges the conventional push to advance as quickly as possible. Instead, it suggests that founders should remain in their current stage longer, using that time to mature, and build strength before moving up.

The concept draws from the idea of “staying back a grade” to become the strongest in the class, rather than the precocious student skipping grades. In startup terms, this means continuing to operate at Pre-Seed or Seed while outperforming the expectations tied to that stage. Rather than stretching to meet the demands of a higher round, companies position themselves as leaders within their cohort.

This creates both strategic and practical advantages. Companies that exceed expectations and key metrics at their stage often have stronger leverage when they do raise. They are able to negotiate better terms and avoid unnecessary complexity that can come with larger, premature rounds.

The piece also emphasizes the importance of optics. Even small differences in raise size and stage name can shift how a company is perceived. A round that moves slightly beyond typical Seed levels can bring Series A expectations, changing how performance is evaluated. Managing that boundary carefully allows founders to control both narrative and trajectory.

Beyond optics, the approach reinforces fundamentals. Taking more time at the current stage allows founders to refine product, build a repeatable sales motion, define customer base, and develop a clear understanding of unit economics. These elements become critical as companies scale and face higher expectations in later rounds.

The takeaway is not to avoid raising capital, but to align fundraising with readiness. Growth should be supported by traction, not just ambition. By pacing rounds thoughtfully, startups can build stronger foundations and move forward with greater confidence when the time comes.

Read more on Scott Hartley’s Substack.

As &you expanded across markets, its financial infrastructure began to show strain. What started as a fast-growing healthcare platform quickly ran into the realities of operating across borders.

Opening bank accounts took months. International transaction fees cut into margins. Spending across entities was fragmented across tools that were not designed to work together. As the business scaled, finance became a bottleneck.

Led by Emil Eriksen, &you set out to solve this by rethinking how its financial operations were structured. The goal was not just efficiency, but building a system that could support growth across multiple markets without added complexity.

By adopting Airwallex, &you consolidated accounts, payouts, cards, and spend management into a single platform. The shift allowed the company to operate with a more unified and scalable financial layer.

The impact was immediate. Account setup timelines dropped from months to just 48 hours. International transaction costs were reduced by 80 percent. Card spend became more efficient, with measurable savings at scale.

For Emil and the team, the difference was not just operational. It changed how the company approached expansion. Finance moved from being a constraint to becoming an enabler of growth.

The broader takeaway reflects a common challenge for startups operating across borders. As companies scale internationally, fragmented financial systems can slow progress. Infrastructure that is designed for global operations from the start becomes a competitive advantage.

For &you, aligning its financial stack with its growth ambitions has created a more durable foundation. As the company continues to expand access to healthcare for Filipinos and beyond, the systems supporting it are now built to scale alongside it.

Learn more at Airwallex

As Latin America’s fintech ecosystem evolves, the focus is shifting from rapid expansion to sustainable business models. Radar is navigating that transition by aligning growth with profitability, according to reporting by Contxto.

At the center of this shift is Herbert Schulz, CEO and co-founder of Radar, who is steering the company toward a more disciplined operating model. After a period where startups across the region prioritized scale, the environment is now rewarding efficiency, stronger unit economics, and clear paths to profitability.

Radar’s strategy reflects that broader change. The company is focused on building solutions that help organizations improve operational visibility and streamline financial processes, while also ensuring that its own growth is sustainable.

The article highlights how the fintech landscape in Latin America is entering a new phase. Capital is more selective, and companies are being measured not only by growth metrics but by their ability to generate long term value. For Radar, this has meant refining its approach, optimizing operations, and focusing on the fundamentals of the business.

Schulz emphasizes the importance of discipline in this environment. Rather than pursuing growth at any cost, the company is prioritizing efficiency and product value, ensuring that expansion is supported by strong operational foundations.

This shift is not unique to Radar, but the company’s trajectory reflects how leading fintechs in the region are adapting. As markets mature, the ability to balance growth with profitability becomes a defining factor for long term success.

For Radar, the focus on sustainability positions the company to navigate changing market conditions while continuing to support customers with tools that improve financial operations.

The broader message from the article is clear. The next phase of fintech in Latin America will be shaped not just by innovation, but by execution and resilience.

Read the full article on Contxto