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A Finnish church bishop who's on trial alongside a Finnish politician says Finland has replaced Christianity with a new state religion of "secularism" – a belief system that will block the Bible from being taught in public. from CBNNews.com https://ift.tt/hlrmVOM via IFTTT

Once upon a time, I had a truck. I loved that truck! I didn’t actually use the truck as a truck all that often, so eventually I sold it and bought something more in tune with my daily needs. Something more “practical,” I suppose. I still miss that truck. Now the few times a year I do need to use a truck as a truck, I’ve gotta convince a buddy to let me borrow theirs for the 34th time or try to nab a rental at the big box hardware store. Hope one is available by the time I get there, wait in line, fill out the paper work, run out to my car because I forgot my insurance card, get back in line, yadda yadda. Fetch , a company we first wrote about a few years ago , makes the process a bit easier: find a truck (or van!) nearby, reserve it through the app, walk up and unlock it from your phone, and be on your way. This week the team is announcing that it has raised $3.5 million to help expand their team and operations. To make Fetch happen, you could say. Fetch is up and running in a ha...

This time last year, Box  was fighting tooth and nail  to keep  activist investors led by Starboard Value from taking over its board and dictating the company’s direction. If the activist investors had won, CEO and co-founder Aaron Levie might have been forced out, and the company could have been sold . But Box prevailed , and the shareholders who backed the executive team were rewarded this week with a quarter that beat everyone’s expectations , including the company’s own. Now that the proxy fight is over, it’s clear that some of the initiatives that Box had been building over the past few years to move further into the true enterprise market are paying off. Alan Pelz-Sharpe, principal analyst, Deep Analysis Last quarter, Box’s revenue reached $233 million, up 17% from a year earlier, and beating analyst estimates of $229 million, according to the company. The revenue result also came in ahead of Box’s own estimates that growth would land somewhere around 12%. Its...

The D’Amelio family, including TikTok stars and digital creators Charli D’Amelio and sister Dixie , are formalizing their investments in startups with the launch of a new VC fund, 444 Capital. The family is teaming up with Doug Renert of Tandem Capital and producer Jeff Beacher of Beacher Media Group on the fund, which aims to back high-growth companies with strong end-user brands, including those in the direct-to-consumer space, fintech, edtech, healthcare, insurtech and other B2B2C platforms. The fund has a target of up to $25 million, some of which has already been raised and deployed. The D’Amelio family said the fund will have a particular focus on women- and minority-led startups. “Our family wants to help a new generation of female and minority entrepreneurs build great companies. We hope to play a growing role in leveling the startup playing field over time,” Dixie and Charli D’Amelio said in a joint statement. Though the sisters are the best-known family members du...

A shrewd entrepreneur joins the 100+ accelerator program sponsored by brewing giant AB Inbev and home consumables emporium Unilever , and spots a pattern. The breweries have tons of spent grain, and the home consumables have a plastics problem. Build a bridge between the two problems, and you have Mi Terro , a company that takes agricultural waste and processes it into proteins that can be used as a plastic replacement, animal feed and much more. The company just raised $1.5 million to start scaling up production. “Think of Tide Pods — our material is very similar to the polyvinyl alcohol material that Tide Pods are made out of,” says Robert Luo, the founder at Mi Terro. “Except our product has zero microplastics, unlike the Tide Pods that we use today. Our product is water soluble and can break down into water under room temperature. It is also biodegradable. Our in-house data indicates that to naturally degrade will take a year or so. In industrial composting facilities, it can d...

Yousuf Khan Contributor Share on Twitter Yousuf Khan is a partner at Ridge Ventures . Prior to joining Ridge, he was the first CIO of Automation Anywhere, CIO and vice president of Customer Success at cloud-based AI platform Moveworks, as well as CIO of Pure Storage, Qualys and Hult International Business School. More posts by this contributor Hiring is just the first step when building an early-stage comms team 3 keys to pricing early-stage SaaS products Technology vendors who have been successful over the long term all have something in common: they know how to sell to chief information officers. They understand that the work isn’t over after the handshakes and signatures — effectively managing and nurturing a vendor-CIO relationship requires attention. I’m a VC now, but my five CIO stints over the past two decades have taught me plenty about the before and after of the enterprise sales process. My daily conversations with existing CIOs reaffirm these insight...

Twitter has claimed it’s complying with an EU-wide ban on Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik which came into force yesterday as part of the package of sanctions imposed by the bloc on Russia following the invasion of Ukraine, albeit reluctantly. In a statement the social network has been circulating in response to press requests this week a Twitter spokesperson said: The European Union (EU) sanctions will legally require us to withhold certain content in EU member states, and we intend to comply. Our global approach outside of the EU will continue to focus on de-amplifying this type of state-affiliated media content across our service and providing important context through our labels. We continue to advocate for a free and open internet, particularly in times of crisis. However it’s not clear how well Twitter is actually complying with the legal order banning the distribution of RT’s content in the EU. While some users around Europe have reported encountering an “account withheld”...

Just because you know how the story ends doesn’t mean that it’s not fun to watch how it all went so horribly wrong. That’s the premise of an entire emerging genre of media, mostly produced by streaming platforms, which chronicle the most salacious stories in tech, startups and wealth gone wrong. Hulu’s “The Dropout,” which focuses on the fall of Theranos, is the latest. There’s also Apple TV+’s upcoming “WeCrashed” series, based on the podcast “WeCrashed: The Rise and Fall of WeWork,” and then there’s Showtime’s recent “Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber,” featuring stars like Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Uma Thurman. And lest we forget when Netflix and Hulu both released Fyre Fest documentaries the same week, or when Netflix rushed to option a film about the alleged husband-wife bitcoin launderers before their case has been resolved. But when you’re told the same story again and again without gleaning anything new, it loses its charm. Even before Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty of ...

This year, Ash Wednesday became a day of prayer and fasting for the people of Ukraine with Christians around the world heeding Pope Francis' call to prayer.  from CBNNews.com https://ift.tt/y3XFbTQ via IFTTT

TechCrunch is thrilled to announce a special event centered around the exploding scene in Austin, Texas on April 6 at 11:30 am PT / 2:30 pm ET . The area deserves a spotlight on the upcoming startups and recent milestones. It’s the city of unicorns and tech giants. Drawn to the laid-back lifestyle and lower cost of living — relatively speaking — nearly 185 people are moving to the Texas capital on a daily basis, and many of those people work in the tech industry. Austin wasn’t an overnight success. For years it was known primarily for its software scene. But today, new growing sectors include crypto, real estate tech, CPG and insurance technology. As in other maturing markets, companies that have seen success in the past are now spawning a new generation of entrepreneurs. Look at the companies that surpassed a $1 billion valuation in 2021: The Zebra, Firefly Aerospace, Abrigo, ZenBusiness and Iodine Software. In 2020 Tesla settled into the so-called Silicon Hills district, home to a...

Zeller’s EFTPOS terminal. Image Credits: Zeller Zeller , the Australian neobank for SMBs, has raised a $100 million AUD Series B (about $72.7 million USD), doubling its valuation to more than $1 billion AUD (about $727 million USD). The funding was led by Headline, with participation from Australian superannuation fund Hostplus. Returning investors included Square Peg, Addition and Spark Capital. The fintech was founded in 2020 by Ben Pfisterer, Square’s former Asia Pacific and Australian head and Dominic Yap, its strategy and growth lead. TechCrunch first covered Zeller in March 2021, when it announced a pre-launch Series A led by Addition , the venture capital firm founded by Lee Fixel. Zeller, a fintech founded by Square alumni, raises $25M AUD Series A led by Lee Fixel’s Addition Over the span of eight months, Zeller signed up over 10,000 Australian businesses, which is one of the reasons Headline decided to invest in it, principal King Goh told TechCrunch. “The grow...

UK-based TrueCircle , a computer vision startup founded just last year, has nabbed $5.5 million in pre-seed funding in a bid to bring data-driven AI to the recycling industry to improve recovery rates and quality — with the overarching goal of transforming the economics of waste reuse to shrink demand for virgin materials. So far the startup has its tech up and running in eight UK waste sorting facilities but is ramping up quickly, with more launches coming in Q2 — when it will be expanding internationally into Europe and the US. It tells TechCrunch it’s shooting to have some 30-40 customers using its tech within 12 months’ time.  The pre-seed is notable for its size. The round is led by Chris Sacca’s climate focused Lowercarbon Capital fund, with participation from Passion Capital, Giant Ventures and firstminute Capital, as well as the founders of companies including Revolut, Monzo, Infarm and Unity investing in a personal capacity. Commenting on TrueCircle’s pre-seed raise i...

CBN's Operation Blessing (OB) is sending a disaster relief team to Ukraine's border with Poland to help with the flood of refugees. from CBNNews.com https://ift.tt/0OLpEob via IFTTT

Happy Bandcamp Wednesday. Fortnite-maker Epic Games is treating itself to an entire Bandcamp . The music download site announced the acquisition in a blog post today, adding that it will continue to function as a standalone entity with co-founder and CEO Ethan Diamond at its helm. “We share a vision of building the most open, artist-friendly ecosystem in the world, and together we’ll be able to create even more opportunities for artists to be compensated fairly for their work,” Diamond wrote in the post. The relatively business-as-usual approach includes the continued operation of Bandcamp’s marketplace, community and editorial product, The Daily, as standalone entities. The company says it will also continue to operate Bandcamp Fridays as planned. The monthly event, which removes the service’s cut from purchases, has been a wildly popular features as many musician have struggled to make ends meet amid touring shutdowns. Bandcamp is joining Epic Games! Read more here: https://t.c...

Let’s get three truths out of the way. 1. Drugs are a sensitive topic. 2. In a lot of the world, many drugs that can be used recreationally — including psychedelics — are illegal. 3. A lot of people are willing to break the law to use psychedelic substances, whether recreationally, as part of spiritual practice or as a tool to explore and work on mental health issues. Given the legal status of these substances, people are hesitant to call 911 if they are experiencing a crisis, many don’t have access to peer groups that can offer support and there’s not a lot of other support available either. Fireside Project is a notable exception — the organization runs a hotline you can call when you need a bit of support when the walls are melting and it feels like your ego is sitting on a mushroom next to your body, arguing with the nearest lamp post. In the process of launching the hotline, Fireside is placing itself in a really interesting position. Mental health is getting a lot of attention...