Welcome to the latest edition of The Frontline
Intel, insights, highlights and news from the Silicon Foundry community.
On tap for this month’s edition: Outlook for the year ahead around cleantech, F500 executives navigating uncertain economic circumstances, and innovation considerations for logistics & supply chain; as well as an interview with a leading African fintech entrepreneur. |
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The Road Ahead: Navigating Uncertain Times as a Corporate VC or Sponsor |
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As corporations navigate the VC and innovation world in current times of uncertainty, they may be rethinking long term innovation investments in favor of near-term profitability. While it's reasonable to consider pulling back in a difficult economic environment, it can result in a failure to capitalize on external innovation at the moment when investing can generate the best returns.
While leaders are subject to near-term profit pressures, what should they do?
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Ecosystem Spotlight: Chris Folayan, CEO & MD of Interswitch (North America) |
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Chris Folayan is CEO/MD of Interswitch (North America), an African-born multi-billion dollar fintech business. He was born and raised in Nigeria and is a serial entrepreneur who was recently named one of Africa's most influential people in 2022. We sat down with Chris to ask about his journey to his role with Interswitch, how they are planning their continued international expansion and partnerships, as well as his thoughts around payments innovation. |
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Ready for a Rebound? Cleantech Trends, Barriers, and Predictions for 2023 |
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We ushered in the start of the twenty-first century with massive hype surrounding the emergence of clean energy technologies and their promise of a better tomorrow. Only a handful of projects survived the initial frenzy. Today, cleantech is once again on an optimistic trajectory, but this time around, the space is cemented in truth and timelines, not overvaluations and hype. |
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Where’s The Investment At? A Take On Venture Capital In The Supply Chain |
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The effect of COVID-19 on supply chains led to massive interest among venture capital firms in potential solutions for the logistics industry that was riddled with challenges and inefficiences. But after two years of unprecedented retail demand, growth seems to be flatlining. What has been the impact on logistics startups and what's the outlook for logistics investment activity? Camille Manso shared her thoughts with
The Logistics Rundown. |
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Commercial Disruption Meets Social Innovation: Reflections from SOCAP & TechCrunch Disrupt |
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Silicon Foundry's John Zamora shares his impressions from attending SOCAP and TechCrunch Disrupt in late 2022, along with his thoughts on how the unique audiences of the two conferences represent an opportunity for the year ahead: more overlap between the impact investing community and the attention focused on disruptive technologies. |
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Upcoming events on the radar that our team will be attending in the coming months. |
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The world's premier gathering of the corporate venturing ecosystem. An unparalleled, unprecedented experience for top tier corporate strategics. From March 15-16th.
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The Montgomery Summit is one of the premier technology conferences, drawing highly accomplished entrepreneurs, investors, and leading executives to discover the most important innovations in business and technology. March 7-8th.
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The annual Roth Conference is one of the largest in the nation for small-cap companies. The conference is comprised of a variety of sessions and social components with companies across a broad range of sectors, including consumer, energy, healthcare, sustainability, industrial growth, services, technology and more. From March 12-14th. |
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The SXSW Conference provides an opportunity for the global community of digital creatives to encounter cutting-edge ideas, discover new interests, and network with other professionals who share a similar appetite for forward-focused experiences. From March 10-19th. |
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MemCon is the first memory event focused on end users and systems. MemCon empowers engineers and architects working on memory-constrained problems with peer insights from case studies in genomics, AIML, datacenter, HPC, computational fluid dynamics, in-memory databases, and enterprise knowledge graphs. March 28-29th. |
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