google-site-verification=cXrcMGa94PjI5BEhkIFIyc9eZiIwZzNJc4mTXSXtGRM Frontline Ventures raises $200 million to help B2B companies in Europe and the US enter the Atlantic - 360WISE MEDIA
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Frontline Ventures raises $200 million to help B2B companies in Europe and the US enter the Atlantic

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Europe’s resilience and long-term prospects amid a worldwide investment slowdown likely explain why LPs currently favor transatlantic VC firms. In January, Giant Ventures closed two recent funds totaling $250 million that it can invest in startups on each side of the Atlantic, and today TechCrunch has learned exclusively that Frontline Ventures has also raised $200 million in two funds: Frontline Growth and Frontline Seed.

Frontline has invested in each Europe and North America in the past, and its recent funds will proceed to pursue this strategy by targeting B2B software companies. The recent seed fund will favor European ventures, while the growth fund will give attention to American startups.

The enterprise firm’s logic is that U.S. integrated companies have a much greater likelihood of success once they expand across the Atlantic. “While traditionally an underserved market, Europe generates more than 30% of global revenue for top B2B software companies at IPO,” Brennan O’Donnell, who will lead Frontline Growth with fellow partner Stephen McIntyre, said in an announcement.

“Traditionally undervalued” is a preferred description of the European enterprise landscape, but the situation shouldn’t be as bad as the headlines seem to say for those who stop comparing recent investment trends with the boom times in 2021 and early 2022. Europe experienced, for instance, According to a report by law firm Orrick, enterprise investment has fallen significantly over the past few years, but startups on the continent still raised more capital last 12 months than in 2019. Indeed, Europe was the only major region where investment levels remained above pre-pandemic standards – in this respect, Asia and North America performed poorly.

O’Donnell and his partners at Frontline have been vocal about Europe’s values ​​for a while now, and even affirm it some research own. Frontline essentially wants to be sure that its U.S. companies don’t leave money on the table by not expanding to Europe once they should, and according to O’Donnell it goals to help startups get a foothold by making their expertise available once they’re ready increase.

Development plan

O’Donnell told TechCrunch that Frontline focuses on 4 features when helping portfolio companies expand into one other market: timing, go-to-market strategy, talent, and organizational design and location.

This is in order of importance, and the location of the company needs to be a derivative of the previous three features, O’Donnell said. “Ultimately, location depends on where your customers are and where the talent base needed to effectively support those customers is.”

Frontline has already put this framework into motion over the previous couple of years, supporting portfolio companies akin to HR software company Lattice and compliance platform Vanta to expand into Europe.

“The grate expanded at a time when it wasn’t obvious,” O’Donnell explained. While the company implemented its plan during the pandemic, when people were still not actively getting on planes, there was also a way that the decline in 2020 wouldn’t be sustainable, he said, adding that there have been some tailwinds for HR technology. A number of years later, this decision turned out to be “very successful”.

One of the pitfalls Frontline warns against is “success amnesia”: simply because an organization has had some success in the US doesn’t suggest it can do well in Europe with out a careful strategy.

“With Frontline’s guidance, Vanta has grown as rapidly as we did in our first 18 months in Europe,” said Christina Cacioppo, co-founder and CEO of Vanta. “We have tripled our customer base, quadrupled our team and established Vanta as a market leader globally thanks to Brennan, Stephen and the Frontline team.”

In addition to partners and offices in London, Dublin, Palo Alto and New York, Frontline has also built an executive community across the Europe and Middle East region, making a network that its portfolio companies can leverage. “Over the last few years, we have built a community of 200-250 of the top VPs and GMs in EMEA and host regular events.”

Talking about the company’s current portfolio, O’Donnell said he expects an initial public offering inside the next 18 months. Of course, it can take for much longer for initial bets to reach the exit stage, but Frontline also wants to help them get from one stage to the next.

Speaking about Frontline Seed, O’Donnell noted that the company has “particularly strong experience when it comes to helping companies raise their Series A.” Given that investment in the pre-seed and seed stages has not slowed down as much as in the later stages, avoiding this bottleneck may very well be useful for European start-ups looking to turn into transatlantic scale-ups, and maybe even IPO candidates.

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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Google funds a guaranteed income program in San Francisco

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Google Headquarters, San Francisco, Guaranteed Income Program

The pilot program will help greater than 200 families, lots of that are led by single women of color.


Google partners with San Francisco-area nonprofits to supply financial support to families battling homelessness.

The It all adds up The program will provide financial assistance to eligible families. To be eligible for the program, families should be near the top of rental assistance programs provided by local nonprofit agencies.

According to reports, 225 randomly chosen participants will receive monthly money payments of $1,000 for a 12 months, and a further 225 families will receive $50. Participants can use the cash nonetheless, they select.

“We hope this will provide a soft landing for families exiting our grant programs and help them maintain financial stability,” said Hamilton Families CEO Kyriell Noon. he told the San Francisco Chronicle..

Currently, roughly 30 families participate in the program. Additional participants shall be added every month until all 450 spots are filled. More than 70% of families currently in programs are led by single moms of color with children under five.

Kompas Family Services AND Hamilton families will operate a pilot program in San Francisco that shall be funded by Google and J-Buddy.

According to the program website, volThe initiative relies on a five-year study of the impact of a guaranteed basic income on families.

“Over the next five years, with the support of Google.org and J-PAL North America and in partnership with New York University, this pilot is on a mission to prove that housing stability is easier to achieve when families who have recently experienced homelessness have a little more room to breathe.”

NYU’s Housing Solutions Lab will just do that study the outcomes of the program to find out how effective the payments are in helping families stay in long-term homes. Scientists will do that too assess the impact on participants’ health and financial results.

Google’s participation in this program is an element of it $1 billion pledge to combat the housing crisis in the San Francisco area.


This article was originally published on : www.blackenterprise.com
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TikTok will automatically tag AI-generated content created on platforms such as DALL·E 3

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A laptop keyboard and TikTok logo displayed on a phone screen are seen in this multiple exposure illustration photo taken in Poland on March 17, 2024. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The company announced Thursday that TikTok is beginning to automatically tag AI-generated content that was created on other platforms. With this modification, if a creator posts content created using a service like OpenAI’s DALL·E 3 on TikTok, it will automatically have an “AI-generated” label attached to it, informing viewers that it was created using AI.

The social video platform does this by implementing Content Credentials, a technology developed by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), co-founded by Microsoft and Adobe. Content credentials attach specific metadata to content, which TikTok can then use to immediately recognize and mark AI-generated content.

As a result, TikTok will begin automatically labeling AI-generated content that’s uploaded to the platform with content credentials attached. The change will go live on Thursday and will apply to all users worldwide in the approaching weeks.

While TikTok already tags content created using TikTok’s AI effects, it will now tag content created on other platforms which have implemented content credentials, such as OpenAI’s DALL·E 3 and Microsoft’s Bing Image Creator. Although Microsoft, Adobe and OpenAI already use content credentials, Google promised to handle content credentials.

Image credits: ICT Tok

While TikTok already requires creators to reveal after they post content created or enhanced using AI, the corporate told TechCrunch that it sees the brand new change as an extra technique to be sure that AI-generated content is flagged, while also considering the pressure on creators .

In the approaching months, TikTok will also begin attaching content credentials to AI-generated content created on the platform using TikTok’s AI effects. Content credentials metadata will include details about where and the way the AI-generated content was created or edited and will remain attached to the content once downloaded. Other platforms that accept content credentials will give you the option to automatically mark content as AI-generated.

So while TikTok has committed to labeling AI content on its own service, additionally it is attempting to help be sure that AI content created on TikTok can be properly labeled when published on one other platform.

“AI-generated content is an incredible way to be creative, but transparency for viewers is crucial,” Adam Presser, director of operations and trust and safety at TikTok, said in a press release. “By collaborating with others to flag content across platforms, we make it easier for creators to responsibly view AI-generated content while continuing to deter harmful or misleading AIGC, which is prohibited on TikTok.”

TikTok touts that it’s the first video-sharing platform to implement content authentication. This is value mentioning (*3*)Meta announced back in February that it plans to make use of the C2PA solution so as to add content origins.

In Thursday’s announcement, TikTok said it’s committed to combating using fraudulent AI in elections and that its policies strongly prohibit misleading AI-generated content – whether it’s flagged or unlabeled.

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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Serena Williams’ Husband Spends Cinco De Mayo With Early Reddit Investor Snoop Dogg, ‘Never Forget These Days’

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Serena Williams, Snoop Dogg, Alexis Ohanian


Serena Williams’ tech entrepreneur husband Alexis Ohanian spent the Cinco De Mayo holiday with certainly one of his wife’s hometown heroes, who was certainly one of the early investors on his Reddit platform.

On Sunday, May 5, Ohanian was outside celebrating a “beautiful day” in Los Angeles with certainly one of the town’s most outstanding figures. In a photograph shared on Twitter, the Reddit co-founder praised Snoop Dogg’s early support for his billion-dollar company.

“Beautiful day in Los Angeles. I appreciate this city very much. Have to meet lots of friends” wrote Ohanian.

“Some of you might know that @SnoopDogg was certainly one of our first investors in @reddit during our spin-off and pivot. Few people wanted to speculate in us then. Snoop managed to do it. And you’ll always remember the primary day.

Launched in 2005 on Reddit serves as an internet community where people from everywhere in the world can connect and communicate about any topic. Ohanian co-founded the corporate with Steve Huffman while they were each attending the University of Virginia. The company began to grow after connecting with Aaron Swartz of Infogami, who rewrote the coding for Reddit.

Just a yr after launching, Ohanian and Huffman sold Reddit to Conde Nast for about $10 million to $20 million. As user numbers and valuations continued to grow, investment flowed in. Until 2014, when Reddit was precious with a reported $500 million, Snoop Dogg has joined a bunch of investors in a $50 million funding round on the link-sharing and discussion site.

It was the investment group’s organizer who approached Snoop due to his celebrity status and recognition on the location’s “Ask Me Anything” message boards. Snoop was also high on Reddit’s wish list of investors trying to join the corporate.

“He’s like a Reddit superstar,” Sam Altman, CEO and co-founder of Open AI, said of Snoop Dogg. “The site loves him. Snoop was high on the list. We asked him to speculate and he agreed.

The “Gin and Juice” rapper doesn’t actually discuss his early investment in Reddit, but he has previously shared how he got into the market.

“I went inside. Understand me? I didn’t wish to tell everyone, but I’m a part of Reddit too.” – Snoop Dogg he told Ohanian on GGN News in 2017.

Reddit is currently valued at $10.68 billion, with a share price of $67.67. This is a drastic jump from the $5 billion valuation in 2021.


This article was originally published on : www.blackenterprise.com
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