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A hub for startup news, trends, and insights, covering the global startup ecosystem for founders, investors, and innovators. Community: @startupdis Buy Ads: @strategy (this is our only account).
💊 “Boba pills” from China aim to rival Ozempic
Researchers at Sichuan University have developed plant-based microbeads that resemble bubble-tea pearls and may promote weight loss.
Packed with green tea polyphenols, vitamin E, and seaweed polymers, the beads trap dietary fats in the gut and block absorption.
🔸 Tested on rats fed a high-fat diet, those given beads lost ~17% of body weight in 30 days
🔸 Human trials are planned, with hopes of at least 3–5% weight loss over months
🔸 Works like orlistat (fat-blocking drug) but without its notorious side effects
🔸 Even 10–20% of Ozempic’s effect could make them an attractive alternative
If trials hold up, many may choose safe, edible “boba” over injections of synthetic hormones.
🚀 Satellites are drowning out the night sky
Astronomers warn that mega-constellations like Starlink and BlueWalker are far brighter than recommended limits, interfering with telescopes and even naked-eye stargazing. There are now 12,000+ active satellites in orbit, double the number just three years ago.
🔸 IAU recommends satellites stay dimmer than +7 magnitude, but most exceed this
🔸 SpaceX’s early Starlinks were +3, later dimmed to +5–6, but new Gen 2 Minis orbit lower and shine brighter
🔸 AST SpaceMobile’s BlueWalker satellites are the worst offenders at +3.3, with arrays spanning 693 sq ft
🔸 Only OneWeb’s constellation meets brightness guidelines, averaging +7.85
With no binding rules in place, space is getting brighter and the stars dimmer. Without regulation, the night sky may soon belong more to corporations than to humanity.
🌐 First social network for prompt engineers
A new platform has launched where prompt engineers can share experiments, guides, and courses for AI tinkering.
It’s built as a community-driven library of working prompts and insights.
🔸 Users upload their own working prompts and discoveries
🔸 Easy to test others’ prompts and share results
🔸 Search and filters by models and task types
A dedicated space for the craft of prompting is here
🏠 AI becomes your personal interior designer
Genspark just rolled out a big update: the AI can now generate full interior designs from scratch, not just static images.
It finds references, suggests options, and delivers complete layouts - all at no cost.
🔸 Creates full room concepts automatically
🔸 Provides design ideas and variations
🔸 Delivers polished final results
🔸 Free to use for anyone
👉 Grab it here 👈
🎧 Spotify: The Startup That Changed Music Forever
In the early 2000s, the music industry was in chaos. Piracy was everywhere, CD sales were collapsing, and legal streaming barely existed.
That’s when two Swedes - Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon - came up with Spotify.
The idea was simple but revolutionary:
🔸 All music in one app — no more pirated MP3 files or endless downloads.
🔸 Instant playback — songs loaded in
milliseconds thanks to P2P tech under the hood.
🔸 Freemium model — free with ads or premium without, a bold bet in an industry built on $15 albums.
The journey wasn’t easy:
🎥2008 — Spotify launched in Sweden, quickly becoming a local hit.
🎥2011 — US entry required convincing skeptical record labels who feared “another Napster.”
🎥2015 — Discover Weekly arrived, turning personalized playlists into a cultural phenomenon.
🎥2018 — Spotify went public in New York with a direct listing — no banks, no roadshows.
🎥2025 — The platform has nearly 700M users, with 276M paying subscribers.
Spotify didn’t just survive - it rewired the entire music industry. Piracy lost its appeal, streaming became the norm, and artists found a new (though controversial) business model.
The success came down to three things:
1️⃣Relentless focus on user convenience — instant, unlimited access.
2️⃣A bold freemium model that converted free listeners into paying customers.
3️⃣Negotiation power — persuading labels to take a leap of faith when no one believed.
Today, Spotify isn’t just an app - it’s the blueprint for modern music consumption. Wrapped, curated playlists, and algorithm-driven discovery have turned it into a cultural force.
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🎱 Prophet Arena: a prediction market run only by AI
Prophet Arena is a new kind of prediction market where the only participants are LLMs.
Models compete by estimating the probability of future events - from politics to sports to tech.
Early results show these AI forecasters perform surprisingly well, on average even beating human traders on Polymarket.
👉 Check it out 👈
🔥 Perplexity: Google is our only competitor
An interview with Perplexity’s head of communications shows how the company is carving its own path in AI.
Unlike OpenAI or Anthropic, Perplexity doesn’t build foundation models, it builds a product. They integrate the best models on the market and focus entirely on usability.
🔸 Jesse Dwyer, comms chief, said: “We certainly see Google as our only competitor.”
🔸 Perplexity treats hallucinations as a bug, not a feature - every answer is source-linked, making it easy to verify.
🔸 Their Comet browser, now rolling out, works like a “second brain”: it searches, books, fills forms, and can be controlled by voice.
🔸 The company doesn’t hide from controversy — from Cloudflare’s accusations of “stealth crawling” to Truth Social adopting its API — but keeps doubling down on accuracy and product.
The point is simple: while others chase model supremacy, Perplexity is building an AI-native search and browsing experience from the ground up.
For anyone who has tried it, it already feels closer to the future of the internet than Google.
📺 China’s new sales force: AI streamers
China’s e-commerce platforms are being flooded with virtual streamers - avatars powered by Baidu and DeepSeek that run 24/7 shopping shows.
For many brands, these “digital sellers” already outperform human hosts.
🔸 Live commerce makes up over a third of online sales in China, with half the population buying through streams.
🔸 Brands like Brother report a 30% sales boost after switching to AI streamers - one avatar pulled in $2,500 in just two hours.
🔸 Startups such as PLTFRM, Silicon Intelligence, and Xiaoice build avatars for as little as $1,000, trained to mimic gestures, answer comments in real time, and even adjust strategy mid-stream.
🔸 Some companies run hybrid streams: humans open, AI takes over for the long haul. The result is consistency — no fatigue, no loss of energy.
🔸 In total, AI streamers have already generated millions in sales, squeezing out mid-tier human hosts while complementing top influencers.
The small glitches in lip-sync or gestures don’t outweigh the cost savings and scalability.
For China’s brands, the “always-on” shopping channel is becoming less about people, and more about perfectly tireless clones.
⚡️ Jack Dorsey’s #1 fundraising rule: show them it works
When Dorsey and McKelvey built Square, they hacked together a working prototype in just a month.
Jack would literally swipe cards and email receipts to investors - charging them $5–50 on the spot. That demo helped secure $10M from Khosla Ventures.
🔸 A working product inspires more than any deck or vision
🔸 With Twitter, many investors were already users, making the pitch effortless
🔸 Proof > promises: traction or even a scrappy prototype tells the story better than words
Dorsey’s lesson is simple: don’t just pitch an idea - show something real.
✈️ Oway wants to be the Uber for freight
San Francisco startup Oway, backed by YC and General Catalyst, has raised $4M to tackle America’s $100B problem: half-empty trucks on long-haul routes.
By matching cargo with unused trailer space, Oway claims it can slash shipping costs by up to 70%.
🖱 Founded in 2023, team of 12
🖱 Cuts LA–Dallas pallet shipping from $220 → $60
🖱 Uses AI to match loads and automate paperwork
🖱 Built on truck ELD data for real-time routing
🖱 Promises speed of full-truckload with cost of less-than-truckload
🖱 Already piloting with large undisclosed fleets
Oway’s pitch is simple:
Turn wasted truck space into an efficient, decentralized logistics network.
⚡️ The brutal truth about fundraising
Most founders believe fundraising is about running a clean process, lining up warm intros, and pitching every VC.
In reality, venture capital works more like outbound sales, and 90% of the money flows to founders that investors proactively chase.
Tier-1 VCs openly admit:
🖱 Analysts scan the market nonstop to spot breakout teams.
🖱 Associates reach out, follow up, and push for meetings.
🖱 Partners spend months convincing founders to take their capital.
LPs do the same when backing funds, most allocations are outbound, not inbound.
That means if you’re the one knocking on doors, you’re competing in the 10% bucket of deals that investors didn’t originally prioritize.
The $30M seed your classmate closed?
It wasn’t because they ran a better process, it’s because VCs wanted to chase them.
The real takeaway: don’t just optimize your pitch. Build a company so compelling, with traction or vision so strong, that VCs feel they must come after you. Great companies are bought, not sold.
📣 Elon Musk’s go-to interview question
Musk doesn’t start with brainteasers or case studies. He simply asks candidates to tell the story of their career, the hardest problems they faced, how they solved them, and how they made key decisions.
🔸 He’s looking for evidence of exceptional ability, proven by overcoming tough challenges
🔸 To test credibility, he asks for details — real problem-solvers don’t forget the struggle
🔸 Degrees don’t matter: Gates, Jobs, Ellison are proof talent can trump credentials
Musk’s rule of thumb: past exceptional achievement is the best predictor of future impact.
🧽 Scrub Daddy: the billion-dollar sponge
Scrub Daddy started as a simple idea on Shark Tank in 2012, a sponge that changes texture with water temperature. Firm in cold, soft in hot, odor-free and long-lasting, it quickly became a household hit.
🔸 Sold 42,000 units in 7 minutes on QVC after the show
🔸 Viral on TikTok with 3.3B+ views of #scrubdaddy
🔸 $340M revenue in 2024
🔸 Lifetime sales passed $1B in 2025
🔸 Products now in 257K stores with 160 SKUs
From a $100K TV investment to a billion-dollar brand - Scrub Daddy proves even the simplest product can turn into a global startup phenomenon.
🔥 Free Rizz Generator: AI wingman for any situation
An AI trained on 200 books and courses from dating coaches and pickup pros promises to turn you into the ultimate smooth talker.
🔸 Drop in a message from your crush - get a ready-made pickup line and follow-up script
🔸 Built to work in real-time, even mid-date
🔸 Marketed as the tool to escape the friend zone and boost confidence
Your personal AI pickup coach here
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💻 Bending Spoons: the brand resuscitator
Based in Milan, Bending Spoons isn’t a VC fund or a quick flipper, it buys mature digital products, puts in its own operators, and revives them with new growth.
Recent €500M debt raise (≈€1B total so far) fuels even more acquisitions, backed by JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and HSBC. Their playbook: pick strong brands with PMF, then optimize from code to unit economics.
Chances are you’ve already used something in their portfolio:
🔸 Remini: boosted revenue, added video generation
🔸 Evernote: redesign + stabilized sync
🔸 StreamYard: better UX and integrations
🔸 WeTransfer: stronger team, API upgrades
🔸 Komoot: new markets + offline mode
Named after the Matrix spoon-bending scene - the idea is that reality itself can bend if you know how. And they seem to be proving it by reanimating products most others would have written off.
So which “dead” product would you send to their rehab ward?
📱 Apple to unveil iPhone 17 on September 9
Apple’s next event will bring the full iPhone 17 lineup — base, Air, Pro, and Pro Max.
Pre-orders open September 12, sales start September 19.
🔸 All models get 120 Hz ProMotion OLED
🔸 Pro/Pro Max: A19 Pro chip, Wi-Fi 7, up to 12GB RAM
🔸 Pro Max: triple 48MP cameras with 8K video
🔸 Air: thinnest iPhone yet at ~6 mm
🔸 Front camera jumps to 24MP across the line
This is Apple’s biggest iPhone refresh in years — slimmer, faster, and aimed squarely at creators.
🐪 Meta races to fix and relaunch Llama
Meta is pushing to release Llama 4.X (a.k.a. 4.5) by year-end, after the April launch of Llama 4 drew criticism for weak performance in coding, reasoning, and instruction-following.
🔸 The project is one of the first under Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), formed in June
🔸 A subgroup called TBD is handling training and scaling of large models, including work on an “omni model”
🔸 Earlier Llama 4 variants (Scout, Maverick) disappointed developers, prompting bug fixes and upgrades
🔸 A planned rollout of “Behemoth,” another Llama 4 family model, was postponed
🔸 Despite Zuckerberg’s aggressive hiring spree, MSL has already lost at least eight staff in two months
Meta wants Llama back in the race against OpenAI and Anthropic. Whether 4.X delivers on the “superintelligence” promise will decide if it can catch up.
⏳ Trace builds the “first line” for your workflows
Trace is a platform that splits complex workflows into parts and routes them to either humans or AI agents. The goal is to offload repetitive work to AI while leaving humans to handle tasks that truly need expertise.
🔸 Integrates with Slack, Jira, and Notion to analyze processes
🔸 Breaks tasks into steps automatically
🔸 AI agents handle routine updates, docs, and coordination
🔸 Workflows can be built from a single prompt
🔸 Supports custom templates, roles, triggers, and scheduling
Backed by Y Combinator and already a Product Hunt hit, Trace is carving out a niche: an internal “first line” of AI agents that keeps specialists free for real problems.
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🖼 Google drops new ‘Nano Banana’ model for photo editing
Google has launched its new Nano Banana model, designed for next-level image editing.
It can add objects, adjust photos, and handle creative tweaks with surprising precision - good enough to replace Photoshop for many everyday tasks.
🔸 Built into Google’s Gemini ecosystem
🔸 Available to try for free via AI Studio
🔸 Focused on fast, accessible image edits for anyone
A fun name, but the bigger story is clear: AI tools are steadily eating into traditional creative software.
👉 Try it here 👈
🪼 Cyborg jellyfish dive into ocean research
At Caltech’s Dabiri Lab, scientists are turning moon jellies into “biohybrid” devices by embedding microelectric controllers and sensors.
The goal is to create low-cost, scalable underwater explorers that can gather data where expensive robots cannot.
🔸 Electrodes trigger muscle contractions, letting researchers steer jellyfish up and down while recording pH, salinity, temperature and pressure.
🔸 Jellyfish are ideal test subjects: no pain receptors, regenerative bodies, and natural ability to survive at crushing deep-sea depths.
🔸 Current limits include weak materials at extreme pressures and lack of horizontal steering, but new designs with servo arms and glass spheres are underway.
🔸 Different jellyfish species are being tested to match regional ecosystems and minimize ecological risks.
Instead of building artificial swimmers from scratch, scientists may have found a way to use nature’s own designs - scaling fleets of living, regenerating ocean sensors.
🕷Firecrawl - the AI web-crawler
Firecrawl.dev is turning web scraping from tedious copy-paste into an AI-native tool.
The YC 2023 alum raised $14.5M Series A, hitting $1.5M revenue in 2024 with only 10 people, and it’s already profitable.
🔸 Bypasses site protections and handles dynamic content
🔸 Extracts clean structure and context, outputs JSON, markdown and more
🔸 Used for price tracking, reviews analysis, lead generation, and AI training datasets
🔸 Partners with publishers to offer “fair compensation” for content used by AI
The demand for data keeps exploding.
The real question: will sites fight harder to block crawlers, or monetize access with models like Cloudflare’s “pay-per-crawl”?
⚡️Learn circuits the fun way
Interactive textbook on electronics - in game-like form you’ll learn how to read schematics and understand how things actually work.
🔸 Build devices in real time
🔸 Access dozens of step-by-step tutorials
🔸 See electronics explained visually and clearly
🔸 Runs free in your browser
👉 Start tinkering here 👈
🤖 The AGI-pilled and the damned
As AI moves from hype to looming reality, people in tech are splitting into strange camps.
Some see an age of superabundance. Others see extinction. And they’re changing their lives accordingly.
🔸 AI safety researchers in the Bay Area are building DIY bioshelters for <$10K, stocking food and HEPA filters in case of AI-engineered pandemics.
🔸 Investors and startup founders are spending down savings - convinced there are only a few years left to build wealth before “intellectual labor” becomes obsolete.
🔸 A new “smart-to-hot” ethos is emerging: if AI eats brains, charisma and fitness may become the true social currency.
🔸 Some Rationalists throw wild parties “before the end,” while others buy Wyoming land or Southeast Asian survival sanctuaries.
🔸 Even relationships are fracturing — activists in groups like Pause AI are divorcing over different strategies for fighting the labs.
For every bunker builder, there’s someone pivoting to leisure, fitness, or bucket-lists. Whether AGI means utopia or collapse, Silicon Valley is living like the clock is ticking.
Would you prep for an AI apocalypse, or just party through it?
🎧 Your personal bandmate is here: AI that finishes your demos
Musicians just got their dream tool - an AI that turns a riff into a full track.
🖱 Upload your guitar (or any instrument) - it adds drums, bass, and layers.
🖱 Picks up your style, rhythm, and energy to keep the vibe intact.
🖱 Customize the parts with grooves and fills.
🖱 One-click mix and master for pro sound, even on a cheap mic.
🖱 Free and works right in the browser.
Try it here 👉 Moises Studio
🚀 Palmer Luckey: why sci-fi is the best source of startup ideas
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey says none of his ideas have ever been “new” - every concept he’s worked on already existed in science fiction decades earlier.
🖱 Sci-fi authors don’t wait for tech to be possible — they imagine freely, often years ahead of reality
🖱 Many AR/VR military tools he’s building today appeared in Starship Troopers (1959)
🖱 Autonomous fighter jets? Written about for nearly a century, long before modern computing
His advice:
If you’re struggling to find startup ideas, read science fiction. The future is often hiding in plain sight, on the page.
🚀 Alibaba introduces Qoder – an agentic coding platform
Alibaba has launched Qoder, a tool that can take on full-stack tasks, from writing code to testing and final assembly.
🖱 Works in Agent Mode (pair programming with full control) or Quest Mode (autonomous coding from task to production).
🖱 Can deeply parse large codebases, including architecture and patterns.
🖱 Provides smart hints, auto-documentation, and long-term memory for team style.
🖱 Automatically selects the best AI model (Claude, Gemini, GPT, etc.) for the job.
Qoder is now available in public preview and free to try.
The line between “developer” and “AI agent” just got a little thinner.
🤖 Food delivery goes robotic in Zurich
Just Eat Takeaway.com has rolled out robot dogs from Swiss startup RIVR in Zurich - Europe’s first pilot of autonomous ground robots designed for real city environments.
The bots move at up to 15 km/h, climb stairs, carry 40 litres of food, and last 30 km per charge.
🔸 Customers order via JET app, unlock delivery with a QR code
🔸 12 robots will cover 5 km² across three neighbourhoods
🔸 Target: 90% on-time rate and lower costs vs. human couriers
🔸 Expansion plans include Amsterdam, Berlin, and Paris
🔸 Operating cost: ~€0.40 per km, with 18-month payback
For Europe’s foodtech, this marks a shift from lab tests to real urban streets, a preview of how automation could reshape delivery at scale.
⏳ Brian Armstrong on building Coinbase after hours
While working full-time at Airbnb, Brian Armstrong spent nights and weekends coding what would become Coinbase.
He avoided using company time or laptops - “if you build it on company hardware, they probably own the IP.”
🔸 Workdays: Airbnb until 7pm, Coinbase from 8pm to midnight, 3–4 nights a week
🔸 Weekends: Sunday afternoons, 7–8 hours straight
🔸 This grind lasted ~18 months until Y Combinator funded him
🔸 He admits friendships took a hit, but says urgency and mortality pushed him forward
His advice:
Go hard at it. Launch your thing.
Just start - even if you don’t know what to do, action produces information.
🔎 New UAE startup offers $20M for smartphone zero-days
Advanced Security Solutions, a newly launched firm in the UAE, is offering up to $20 million for tools that can hack any smartphone via text message - one of the highest publicly known bounties in the zero-day market.
🔸 $20M for universal smartphone exploits; $15M for iOS or Android zero-days
🔸 $10M for Windows, $5M for Chrome, $1M for Safari/Edge
🔸 Claims cooperation with 25+ governments and intelligence agencies
🔸Staffed by veterans of elite intelligence units and private military contractors
🔸 Refuses to disclose owners, funding, or customer list
The zero-day market has ballooned in the last decade - from $1M iPhone exploits in 2015 to today’s $20M offers.
But with anonymous buyers and state-level stakes, the ethical questions are growing just as fast as the payouts.
❗️ Vlad Tenev admits remote-first was a mistake
Robinhood’s founder says declaring the company remote-first in 2022 was “the wrong decision”, and one he regretted almost immediately.
Now the firm runs on an office-heavy model:
🔸 Executives in-office 5 days a week
🔸 Managers 4 days
🔸 Individual contributors 3 days
Tenev’s logic: leaders should take on more pain than their teams.
If you want people to move fast, you start by setting the example at the top.