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With a global portfolio of more than 2,500 companies in 77 countries, 500 Global has a window on trends worldwide. Hear from those at the forefront of innovation on our podcast Rise of the Next what it takes to spot opportunities and the challenging and rewarding task of turning ideas into reality. Tune in for future episodes on major podcast streaming platforms and the Global VC. LEGAL DISCLAIMER - THIS PODCAST IS INTENDED SOLELY FOR GENERAL INFORMATIONAL OR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD ANY CONTENT PROVIDED AS PART OF ANY SUCH PROGRAMS, SERVICES OR EVENTS BE CONSTRUED AS INVESTMENT, LEGAL, TAX OR ACCOUNTING ADVICE BY 500 STARTUPS MANAGEMENT COMPANY, L.L.C. OR ANY OF ITS AFFILIATES (“500 GLOBAL”). 500 GLOBAL MAKES NO REPRESENTATION AS TO THE ACCURACY OR INFORMATION IN THIS PODCAST AND WHILE REASONABLE STEPS HAVE BEEN TAKEN TO ENSURE THAT THE INFORMATION HEREIN IS ACCURATE AND UP-TO-DATE, NO LIABILITY CAN BE ACCEPTED FOR ANY ERROR OR OMISSIONS AND 500 GLOBAL ACCEPTS NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY LOSS WHICH MAY ARISE FROM RELIANCE ON THE INFORMATION IN THIS PODCAST. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD ANY INFORMATION OR CONTENT IN THIS PODCAST, BE CONSIDERED AS AN OFFER TO SELL OR SOLICITATION OF INTEREST TO PURCHASE ANY SECURITIES ADVISED BY 500 GLOBAL OR ANY OF ITS AFFILIATES OR REPRESENTATIVES. FURTHER, NO CONTENT OR INFORMATION IN THIS PODCAST IS INTENDED AS AN OFFER TO PROVIDE ANY INVESTMENT ADVISORY SERVICE WITH REGARD TO SECURITIES BY 500 GLOBAL. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD ANYTHING HEREIN BE CONSTRUED AS FUND MARKETING MATERIALS BY PROSPECTIVE INVESTORS CONSIDERING AN INVESTMENT INTO ANY 500 GLOBAL INVESTMENT FUND. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD ANY STATISTICS, QUOTATIONS OR OTHER CONTENT BE INTERPRETED AS TESTIMONIALS OR ENDORSEMENT OF THE INVESTMENT PERFORMANCE OF ANY 500 GLOBAL FUND BY A PROSPECTIVE INVESTOR CONSIDERING AN INVESTMENT INTO ANY 500 GLOBAL FUND. THIS PODCAST MAY CONTAIN FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS WHICH INVOLVE RISKS AND UNCERTAINTIES, AND ACTUAL RESULTS MAY DIFFER MATERIALLY FROM ANY EXPECTATIONS, PROJECTIONS OR PREDICTIONS MADE OR IMPLICATED IN SUCH FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS. THE PODCAST INCLUDES CONTENT DELIVERED BY AN INDEPENDENT THIRD PARTY THAT IS NOT RELATED TO OR CONTROLLED BY 500 GLOBAL. ALL VIEWS AND OPINIONS PRESENTED IN THE PODCAST BY SUCH THIRD PARTY ARE THEIR OWN VIEWS AND OPINIONS AND DO NOT REPRESENT THOSE OF 500 GLOBAL. 500 GLOBAL MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS AS TO OR GUARANTEES OF SPECIFIC OUTCOMES FROM ATTENDING OR RELYING ON THE CONTENTS OF THE PODCAST.
21 Episodes
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In the fall of 2019, Honghao Deng and his co-founder Jiani Zeng joined 500 Global’s accelerator program, as part of Batch 26. Their company Butlr, an MIT Media Lab spin-out, had developed sensors that anonymously track through body heat how people move indoors, to help businesses manage the use of commercial space. Applications include monitoring foot traffic, maintaining clean bathrooms, or activating air conditioning when needed.Butlr was set on deploying its sensors in commercial buildings...
Vishal Harnal has had more than a ringside seat to Southeast Asia’s transformation into a hotbed of innovation. He was an active enabler of the ecosystem–along with Managing Partner Khailee Ng. 500 Global is a prominent backer of the region’s 52 unicorns, according to TechInAsia. They include Grab, Bukalapak, Carsome, and FinAccel. Those companies are now giving birth to a pool of new entrepreneurs, who will further enrich the ecosystem. Waiting to be deployed into those startups, says Vishal...
A techie, Christina Cai stumbled into healthcare when she realized that her AI-enabled technology could unlock insights from previously unused data in electronic health records, wearables and other digital health tools, such as glucose and blood pressure monitors. That information could provide a different assessment of a person’s health risk, and potentially lower the barrier to getting health insurance. As an example, she says people who have diabetes but maintain a healthy lifestyle, can h...
With funding for female founders still dismally low, female investors can make a differenceWhen Ankita Vashistha began making angel investments in Singapore, India, and the U.S. more than a decade ago, she was struck by the dearth of female founders–a problem that persists to this day. In the U.S., female-founded startups still garner only 2% of venture capital funding.This led her to launch her first fund in 2015 and StrongHer Ventures two years ago, both focusing on early stage startups tha...
Happy birthday 500 Latin America! Ten years ago, Managing Partner Santiago Zavala joined 500 Global to help set up our Mexico City office. Things have come a long way since. “It was very hard to get people from the U.S. to invest into the startups because they didn't know the industry,” he recalls of the early days.No more. Last year, Latin America experienced record levels of venture funding, which remained strong in Q1 2022 compared to Q1 2021. Over the past decade, 500 Latin America has m...
500 Global has been helping portfolio companies over the past two years implement ESG policies and practices from the start, by providing resources and guidance. Spearheading the effort is Tracy Barba, who has spent two decades in the impact investing space. On Rise of the Next, Tracy sets the record straight on the difference between impact and ESG — something many people confuse, why the SEC's proposed rules to prevent greenwashing is a good thing, and shares some of the steps she’s ta...
Earlier this year, the No Surprises Act went into effect to protect patients from such unexpected situations and fine healthcare providers who violate patient billing regulations. That’s all good, but the fact remains that nearly half of provider directories remain inaccurate according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Besides out of network surprises, that includes wrong phone numbers or addresses.Kevin Krauth, the founder of Orderly Health, is trying to solve this persisten...
Wai Hong Fong learned the ropes in retail by helping his uncle in Melbourne, Australia sell giftware online. That later led him to spot an opportunity to supply small shops and cafés in Southeast Asia with point of sale tools to manage their inventory, orders and payments, and track performance. Previously with no easy access to technology, his customers were able to make the leap online. Wai Hong estimates there are 20 million such small businesses in Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippi...
Ammanuel Selameab worked for more than a decade as a pricing expert at various companies, including Carta, Gap and Cargill, before founding Accrue in 2020. He realized that companies lack the right tools when it comes to pricing their products–one of the most consequential business decisions. Set your price too high, and you can lose customers; set it too low, and you can lose revenue. More than anything, pricing tends to be a process, and it’s important to get it right, especially for g...
Megha Agarwal came to the U.S. in 2014 from India to attend the University of Chicago Booth School of Business before working in fintech and founding Neon at the onset of the pandemic in 2020. Her company allows users to “buy now pay later” for essential recurring bills, such as rent, utilities, and insurance–all on one platform. It also lets consumers make payments in installments and free of interest. In this episode of Rise of the Next, Megha explains how she’s able to take on that ri...
Klaus Wehage and Aaron McDaniel of 10X Innovation Lab are coming out with a book called Global Class on August 23rd, which gives advice to founders on how to scale globally–an area familiar to 500 Global. In this episode, they share interesting and helpful tidbits on common mistakes founders make, as well as successful strategies, many based on interviews with companies, such as Airbnb, Zoom, Spotify, and Pinterest.Subscribe here to episodes of Rise of the Next on major streaming platfo...
Although e-commerce accelerated during the pandemic, conversion rates still hover at nearly 3%, whereas in-store conversion is more than 20%, says Donny Ouyang, the founder and CEO of Toronto-based Blackcart. To help online merchants boost that KPI, Blackcart runs a risk score on buyers which makes them eligible–or not–for a “try before you buy” option. Donny joins us on this episode of Rise of the Next to tell us how he stumbled on that idea, and some of the trends he sees shaping...
Finishing a construction project on time and on budget can be an elusive pursuit. Matt Daly and Philip Lorenzo know this well from having walked around job sites with nothing more than a set of paper drawings and a highlighter to keep track of progress. Their company StructionSite is now helping to digitize a trillion dollar industry, by allowing their customers–typically trade contractors–to inspect a job site with a 360-degree video that documents ongoing work with the help of AI.“Ther...
Amal Dokhan is a Partner at 500 Global MENA, and one of a handful of female venture capitalists in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. Amal joined 500 Global more than a year ago to lead the Sanabil 500 MENA seed Accelerator fund and accelerator, a 12-week program based in Riyadh that invests in pre-seed and seed-stage companies in the Middle East and North Africa. Prior to that, she was heavily involved in Saudi Arabia’s startup ecosystem overseeing entrepreneurship programs, and as an an...
Simeon Ononobi and his co-founders Madonna Ononobi (his wife), Suraj Supekar and Harshal Gandole launched Connected Analytics in 2017 in Lagos to offer rewards programs to customers. They've since amassed some 600,000 users and a network of nearly 1,500 merchants, from pharmacies to supermarkets and barber shops in Nigeria. The startup is also entering Kenya, with plans to offer its service in Ghana, Uganda and Rwanda. Living in San Francisco, while attending 500 Global’s accelerator pro...
During her college freshman year, Crystal experienced severe abdominal pain. Facing finals, and unable to quickly get into the school clinic, she resorted to googling her symptoms, but an erroneous diagnosis landed her in the hospital. That unfortunate experience became the genesis for Kiira, a telehealth service which gives primarily college-age women access to a network of physicians and healthcare professionals. On this Rise of the Next episode, Crystal talks about her journey an...
E-commerce is growing rapidly in Latin America, driven in large part by the pandemic and the adoption of digital payment solutions. One company we believe is well positioned to take advantage of the e-commerce boom is Mexico-based logistics company 99minutos. To date, it has delivered more than 16 million packages. 99minutos recently announced that it raised $82 million in series C funding to further help e-commerce companies fulfill customer orders across several countries in Latin Amer...
Mark Chahwan co-founded Sarwa more than four years ago after moving from Montreal to Dubai to address gaps in the market: a local population that was still largely parking its money in real estate and savings accounts, and a banking sector that mostly focused on high net worth individuals. Sarwa made it easy for customers to open an account, and offered the opportunity to build a diversified investment portfolio, including crypto.In this episode of Rise of the Next, Mark talks about some...
Furquan Kidwai left his career as a banker in London and moved to Karachi to found Dawaai in 2013, an online pharmacy aiming to modernize a highly fragmented market made up of small independent pharmacies. It’s a model, he says, that has a lot in common with PillPack.In this episode of Rise of the Next, Furquan talks about wading into a market where an estimated 40% of drugs are fake, inventory issues abound, and patient trust is low. It’s one of many opportunities for founders to transform i...
On December 2, 2021, 500 Global convened the global venture capital community in Miami to its PreMoney 2021 conference for an interactive experience at the nexus of culture, technology, investment and global finance. Mac Conwell joined us on a panel of emerging VCs. He founded Baltimore-based RareBreed Ventures a little more than a year ago to invest in pre-seed and seed founders outside of the major tech hubs. On our podcast Rise of the Next, Mac tells us how he raised his fund the...
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