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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).
💳 The hidden history behind modern card payments
Before Apple Pay, Stripe, or embedded checkout, there were paper vouchers, magnetic stripes, and punched cards. This short timeline shows how payments evolved — from forgotten wallets to biometric tokens.
🗓 From 1914 to 2024:
🔸 1914 — Western Union issues the first metal “buy now, pay later” cards
🔸 1949 — A forgotten wallet inspires the birth of Diners Club
🔸 1958 — AmEx launches a paper card, replaced by plastic in 1959
🔸 1967 — Barclays rolls out the first ATM in England
🔸 1974 — The smart card is patented in France
🔸 1979 — Visa introduces the magnetic stripe reader
🔸 1983–84 — Holograms become standard to prevent fraud
🔸 1990s — Chip & PIN and global EMV specs transform card security
🔸 2007 — Contactless payments go live
🔸 2023 — Mastercard announces a shift to biometrics and tokenization by 2030
From punched cards to payment tokens, this is what 110 years of financial UX looks like.
📊 Excel killer? Meet NanoCell — a blazing-fast, privacy-first spreadsheet tool
A new tool just dropped that might be the cleanest Excel alternative we’ve seen — NanoCell, built by a veteran analyst for speed, simplicity, and control.
🔸 Handles huge datasets, financial models, formulas, and visualizations — all lightning-fast
🔸No complex macros or formulas needed
🔸 Built with only the essentials — no bloat, no noise
🔸 Keeps all data intact — no auto-loss like some competitors
🔸 Runs fully on a static server — safe for sensitive docs, no data leaks
👉 Try it here 👈
Open-source on GitHub
One-click tables, no Excel pain.
🧠 OpenAI drops its first open AI model since GPT‑2
OpenAI has released GPT‑OSS, its first open-weight model family in over six years. It includes a 120B and 20B version — both available under Apache 2.0, optimized for local use, and surprisingly powerful.
🔸 GPT‑OSS 120B matches o4-mini in reasoning benchmarks
🔸 GPT‑OSS 20B runs on a laptop and rivals o3-mini
🔸 Supports chain-of-thought reasoning and tool use
🔸 Full commercial use allowed under a permissive license
🔸 Designed for transparency, privacy, and autonomy
🔸 First OpenAI release meant to compete with LLaMA, DeepSeek, Qwen
👉 Try it here 👈
This is OpenAI’s biggest step back toward open AI — and it’s fast, free, and local.
🧪 PlayerZero is building an immune system for your code
Most tools try to speed up developers. But bottlenecks often sit elsewhere — like in QA. That’s where PlayerZero steps in: AI agents that detect and fix bugs before production, trained on your repo’s history.
🔸 Learns from past incidents, patches, and test cases
🔸 Suggests auto-fixes directly in pull requests
🔸 Designed for complex monorepos and legacy systems
🔸 Hooks into CI/CD in minutes
🔸 Used by teams like Zuora to monitor billing infra
🔸 Just raised $15M from the likes of Databricks' founder and Vercel’s CEO
Fun fact: the founder demoed it to the creator of Next.js — who didn’t believe it at first, but then invested.
🎬 The ultimate AI toolkit for video creators — in one link
We found a goldmine for content creators: a browser-based platform with every top AI video tool in one place.
🔸 Text-to-video, subtitles, noise removal, face cloning — it’s all here
🔸 Supports trending models like Veo 3, Minimax, Kling, and more
👉 Save your dream video editor 👈
Perfect for creators who want speed, quality — and less post-production pain.
💰Why an AI engineer turned down $1.5B from Zuckerberg
In his bid to build the ultimate AI dream team, Mark Zuckerberg reportedly offered ex-Meta engineer Andrew Tulloch a staggering $1.5B deal to return — a 4-year package of salary, equity, and performance bonuses.
But Tulloch said no❕
🔸 He currently owns 3.75% of his AI startup, Thinking Machines
🔸 Based on current market buzz, that stake could be worth $3B in the next round
🔸 Turning down $1.5B wasn’t irrational — it was mathematical
🔸 Now it’s a race: will Thinking Machines hit IPO before the AI bubble deflates?
Zuck offered a fortune. Tulloch bet on more.
🌐 Build landing pages in seconds — meet Pagy
Pagy just launched: a blazing-fast browser-based tool for creating websites and personal pages without writing a single line of code.
🔸 No installs — works entirely in your browser
🔸 Pick a template, edit text/images/links right on the page
🔸 No designer, no developer, no code needed
🔸 Built-in hosting and analytics
🔸 100s of ready-made designs from devs and the community
👉 Try it here 👈
A perfect tool for fast MVPs, link-in-bio sites, or spinning up ideas on the fly.
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🖌 Photoshop adds new AI tool for seamless image blending
Adobe has launched a new feature in Photoshop called Harmonize — it automatically matches lighting, shadows, and colors to blend one image into another in seconds.
Perfect for creators, meme lords, and anyone tired of manual tweaking.
Drop it in, harmonize, done.
🧊 Frozen for 30 Years: The Oldest Embryo Baby Born in the US
A boy named Thaddeus Daniel Peirce was born in Ohio from an embryo frozen 30.5 years ago — the longest-known frozen embryo to result in a live birth.
🔸 The embryo was created in 1994 and stored by Linda Archerd, who gave birth to one child that year and kept the remaining embryos frozen for decades, paying $1,000 annually.
🔸 With age and menopause, Archerd decided to donate the embryos, but only to a white, Christian, married US couple.
🔸 The Snowflakes program from Nightlight Christian Adoptions matched the embryos to Lindsay and Tim Peirce, a couple who had tried to conceive for 7 years.
🔸 Rejoice Fertility Clinic in Tennessee performed the transfer — one embryo didn’t survive thawing, but two implanted, and one led to birth.
🔸 Most clinics refuse to work with outdated freezing methods. Rejoice’s founder believes every embryo “deserves a chance at life.”
A surreal mix of faith, biotech — and long-term moral investment.
📣 Why Sam Altman Says You Shouldn’t Track User Growth Early On
In the early stages of a startup, it’s not about how many users you have — it’s about how much they love your product.
Altman explains why obsession with absolute growth is a mistake, and what you should focus on instead:
🔸 A small group of obsessed users is better than a wide pool of casual ones
🔸 Deep engagement signals product-market fit more than raw numbers
🔸 Retention and frequency are your best early metrics
🔸 Word-of-mouth is the ultimate validation
Almost all great companies start with a product that a few people love.
🤖 Neural Agent — your AI-powered desktop assistant
A powerful open-source AI agent that can take full control of your computer: search files, browse the web, fill forms, send emails, and more.
🔸 Automates all routine tasks while you code, design, or think
🔸 Runs on Claude, GPT-4, Azure OpenAI, and Bedrock — top-tier models
🔸 Fully integrated UI — type commands into a small bar and get results instantly
🔸 Simple setup with an easy-to-use API and step-by-step install guide
👉 check it out 👈
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🧠 The Perplexity story: From DeepMind intern to Google’s challenger
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas is quietly building what Google once dreamed of—an “answer engine” that replaces search.
And the industry is starting to notice.
🔸 Srinivas grew up in the same Indian city as Sundar Pichai—his childhood hero
🔸 Inspired by Google’s origin story, he started Perplexity after a stint at DeepMind
🔸 Unlike OpenAI, the team refused to build their own model—focusing instead on product and UX
🔸 Their AI-native browser Comet is gaining traction with early adopters
🔸 Investors now value the company at $18B, while acquirers circle
Perplexity may be the most credible threat to Google’s search empire—and it’s still playing the long game.
⚙️ 100 free tools for every task
A single site with tools for all your daily needs — no sign-up, all free:
🔸 Text tools — grammar check, plagiarism, converters
🔸 PDF tools — merge, compress, split
🔸 Video tools — trim, convert, resize
🔸 Image tools — crop, remove background, compress
🔸 And many others across dozens of categories
Grab it here 👉 ezytoolz.com 👈
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🧠 1000+ ChatGPT prompts for every task
A massive prompt library for studying, coding, business, medicine, entertainment, and more.
Grab it here 👉 superhuman.ai 👈
Well-organized, easy to use, and completely free.
🚕 Pony AI goes 24/7 with robotaxis in three major cities
Unlike Tesla’s zigzagging path to full autonomy, China’s Pony AI is moving steadily. In Beijing, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou, the last restriction on commercial robotaxi service has been lifted — they now operate 24/7, including overnight hours.
That’s a big step: night coverage improves access for users and signals real confidence in the tech.
🔸 50M km driven fully autonomously
🔸 Fleet to exceed 1,000 vehicles by year-end
🔸 Coverage expanded across three of China’s biggest urban markets
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is still stuck in the sandbox.
⚙️ How to build a voice-enabled second brain in 3 hours
Capture ideas in seconds and turn them into content, strategy, or action — without dashboards or overengineering.
Here’s how the setup works:
🔸 Use Voicenotes.com to record and transcribe voice memos
🔸 Connect Voicenotes to Make.com via Webhook
🔸 A Gemini 2.5 model classifies each note: content, business idea, observation, or reading
🔸 Notes are routed into Notion databases automatically
🔸 Content ideas trigger AI-generated LinkedIn drafts, sent to Typefully
🔸 Business ideas get enriched with SWOT analysis and action plans
Built with just four tools: Voicenotes, Make, Notion, and optional AI APIs. Total setup time: ~3 hours.
🖌 New image model drop: Qwen Image goes public (and free)
China just dropped a beast — Qwen Image, a free, open-source image generator that’s already turning heads.
🔸 Handles any style: realistic, stylized, cartoons, posters, comics
🔸 Understands prompts like ChatGPT — with strong visual-text alignment
🔸 Can edit images with precision (think Flux Kontext quality)
🔸 Preserves original style — no plastic mess, no hallucinated chaos
🔸 Fully open-source and no usage limits
👉 Test the model here 👈
This might be the strongest free image model yet.
🔍 Motive lands $150M to expand its AI fleet platform to the UK
Motive, the AI-powered platform transforming physical operations for fleets and equipment, has raised $150M in new funding led by Kleiner Perkins. The company is now expanding into the UK to help solve challenges in logistics, safety, and driver shortages.
🔸 Motive serves 100,000 customers and 1.3M drivers, with nearly $500M ARR
🔸 AI detects risky driving with 4x better accuracy than competitors
🔸 Clients report 80% fewer accidents and up to 2,000% ROI
🔸 Platform covers safety, compliance, maintenance, and fraud prevention in one dashboard
🔸 The funding will accelerate global rollout, R&D in India, and UK go-to-market efforts
Motive’s edge lies in precision at scale — using AI trained on billions of miles to drive real-world impact across the global physical economy.
🔍 ChatGPT agent controls live cam, finds boat on request
A ChatGPT-powered agent was given access to a public webcam overlooking a marina — and asked to locate a specific boat.
It moved the camera, zoomed in, scanned the docks… and found it.
The line between digital agents and physical tasks is getting thinner by the day.
📣 Bezos on the power shift from marketing to product
In a 2012 interview, Jeff Bezos predicted a major change in how companies should think:
Word-of-mouth is more powerful than it has ever been before.
If I build a great product or service, my customers will tell each other.
🫂Your own AI team, no code needed
Eigent is a new app that lets you build a squad of AI agents to handle work tasks for you — like NPCs, but productive. Think of it as a plug-and-play stack of paid neural networks, working for you in the background.
🔸 Set up custom AI workflows without writing code
🔸 Agents take on tasks like cleaning files, reading PDFs, and crunching data
🔸 Handles everything from accounting to market research
🔸 Use cases include: sorting downloads, processing lab results, parsing CSVs for finance
🔸 Feels like Zapier meets AutoGPT — but actually usable
This isn’t just another AI toy — it’s a quiet power-up for anyone drowning in digital busywork.
🧠 Qwen rolls out new reasoning-focused open model
Qwen just released Qwen3-30B-A3B-Thinking-2507 — a new medium-sized open model optimized for logical reasoning across math, science, and code.
🔸 Strong performance on logic-heavy tasks
🔸 Comparable output quality to top competitors
🔸 Supports 256K tokens of native context — expandable to 1M
🔸 Available now via chat.qwen.ai (select the “Thinking” mode)
Qwen continues to quietly raise the bar for open-source LLMs — with serious context and reasoning firepower.
🧠 Y Combinator shares fresh ideas for AI-first startups
Ahead of its fall batch, Y Combinator revealed new directions it’s excited to fund — all rooted in the belief that modern startups should treat AI not as a feature, but as the foundation.
Here’s what YC wants to see 👇
🔸 AI-powered training for skilled trades
Think plumbers and electricians trained via VR, with AI tutors giving live feedback and adapting lessons in real time.
🔸 Generative video as a building block
Not final product, but part of the stack — from no-code game creation to virtual clothing try-ons and AI “calls” with digital versions of deceased relatives.
🔸 Infrastructure for multi-agent systems
Startups that can help developers manage huge webs of AI agents — prompt routing, context reliability, debugging at scale.
🔸 AI-native enterprise software
A new Salesforce or ServiceNow, but built for the AI era — tools that actually assist teams, not just log data.
🔸 Ultra-lean, AI-leveraged startups
YC believes a 10-person team can now build a $100B company — if it uses AI to move fast and stay small.
🔸 AI replacing legacy govtech
$100B/year goes to old software in the US government. YC wants startups like Caucus or Archon that cut this cost with modern, AI-native tools.
Applications for the fall batch close August 4.
And yes, they still offer $500K for 7% — plus another slice after your next raise.
The message is clear: build with AI at the core — or get left behind.
📈 Figma stock pops on IPO debut, hits $47B market cap
Figma finally went public—and Wall Street couldn’t get enough. The design platform opened at $33, surged to $124, and closed at $115.50, ending the day with a $47B market cap.
🔸 IPO demand was so high, trading was briefly halted due to volatility
🔸 Retail buyers joked online about being allocated just 1 share
🔸 Market cap doubled Adobe’s failed $20B acquisition offer from 2023
🔸 After-hours trading stayed hot, with continued price action
Figma didn’t just rebound from a blocked deal—it sprinted past it.
🚀 Australia's first orbital rocket lasted just 14 seconds in the air
Eris, the 30-ton rocket from Gilmour Space, launched from Bowen Spaceport — and promptly crashed. But the company is calling it a win.
🔸 First Australian-made rocket to launch from local soil
🔸 Flew for 14 seconds, with 23 seconds of engine burn
🔸 Crash caused no injuries or environmental harm
🔸 Valuable flight data collected for next test
🔸 Prior attempts were delayed by power surges and high winds
🔸 CEO: "Getting off the pad is a huge step forward"
💡Even failure is a milestone when you're building a space industry from scratch. Australia's now officially in the orbital launch game — and they’re just getting started.
🫂How small teams build big revenue
A new report from Growth Unhinged breaks down how early-stage SaaS startups structure their teams.
The takeaway?
You don’t need a huge headcount to hit $1M ARR.
Startups under $1M typically run lean — with just 7 people.
That’s your classic "two-pizza team."
Here’s what that usually looks like:
🔸 3 engineers
🔸 1 product/design
🔸 1 sales
🔸 1 support
🔸 1 admin/ops
Some skip marketing hires early on — founders often handle GTM themselves. Others outsource one-off tasks instead of hiring full-time.
The key is not just who you hire, but how clearly each role maps to revenue. If a founder understands that every teammate should drive profit, not just burn cash — investors will notice.
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🔑 30 Key Terms Every Founder Should Know
Project management isn’t just for PMs — every startup founder runs dozens of micro-projects every week.
This cheat sheet covers 30 must-know terms: from backlog and scope creep to MVP, burn rate, and milestone tracking.
A great refresher or onboarding tool for early team members.
💰OpenAI-backed health AI hits $1B+ valuation
Ambience Healthcare, a startup building AI tools to eliminate doctors’ admin work, has raised $243M at a valuation above $1B.
The round was led by a16z and Oak HC/FT, with support from the OpenAI Startup Fund and others.
🔸 The product uses OpenAI models to transcribe visits, prep records, and generate billing codes
🔸 Clients include Cleveland Clinic, Houston Methodist, and St. Luke’s
🔸 CEO says goal is to “fully offload paperwork” so doctors focus only on care
🔸 OpenAI’s deeper push into biotech includes Chai-1, Retro Biosciences, and more
A quiet reminder: OpenAI isn’t just building AGI — it’s building billion-dollar verticals.
🎬 “Bolt for video”: AI video editing by text command
Tailored Labs won the $1M Bolt hackathon with a tool that turns video editing into a conversation.
Built on the Bolt platform, it lets users edit videos just by describing changes in plain English — no timeline dragging or manual cuts.
🔸 One-Shot Generation: creates a finished video from raw clips in minutes
🔸 Chat-to-Edit: instantly applies text-based commands to the timeline
🔸 Smart Media Library: uses AI to find takes, trim footage, and sort scenes
🔸 Professional Timeline: supports multi-track editing and transitions
🔸 Cloud Rendering: renders high-quality videos via Remotion, no fan noise
More winners from the hackathon 👉 here
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🛠 Google launches Opal — an AI tool for "vibe coding"
Google is testing Opal, a new AI-powered app builder under Google Labs.
You describe what you want — Opal generates a working web app.
Users can edit each step or tweak the app visually. Final projects can be published and shared via link, and there’s a remixable project gallery.
No coding skills required — Opal is built for devs and non-devs alike.
Early access now live in the US.
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