Things That Make You Go Hmmm! – Vol.23
Sustainability and positive social change is front-of-mind for many next-generation business leaders. We all know it’s a tough nut to crack – but we’ve got a few insights from our recent ClimateTech Summit that might be just the inspiration the doctor ordered. And if that doesn’t get you going, read on to see why digital sports cards are riding high right now, just for good measure.
This Way Up:
ClimateTech Inaugural Summit 2021 Insights Report
Sustainability | Climate Crisis | Innovation
Our recent ClimateTech Summit brought together a brand new sustainability-focused global community, including the most forward-looking climate-focused founders, investors, government and thought leaders to discuss what and how we can make the changes we need, including:
- Restoring our climate – Making the entrepreneurial bets that will drive Sustainable Growth
- Changing behaviours – Driving demand for climate conscious products and services
- Structuring for change – Fuelling the next-generation of Climate Moonshots
To read more, and to discover the opportunities emerging for your business, check out our full insights pack from the event.
Zooming In:
Facebook Community Accelerator
Communities | Accelerator | Social Media
Facebook announced the participants of their brand-new Community Accelerator Programme, and we are proud to be supporting the 20 incredible communities in Germany, Switzerland and the UK who were selected.
The Community Accelerator Programme aims to support the leaders of groups that tackle the many challenges our societies face in education, diversity, equality, health and wellbeing. We train and mentor the participants and Facebook’s also allocated $7M of funding to extend the influence and impact of the groups they’ve built.
In The Know:
What’s fresh and what can I do next?
A billion-dollar fantasy? French fantasy football start-up, Sorare, has raised $680m Series B funding led by SoftBank (obviously), giving Sorare a $4.3bn valuation, the largest of any French unicorn. Essentially, Sorare has built the digital version of baseball cards for football. Their unique cards are traded as NFTs and run to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, Dapper Labs, the company behind fantasy basketball card marketplace Topshot, has raised $250m. Is this a validation of gaming as a use case for NFTs and blockchain, or a fantasy football bubble, or both?
So what? VCs are in love with NFTs – and rightly so. As innovators around the globe are building metaverses for our digital selves to interact in, NFTs are emerging as an entirely new asset class designed for these digital worlds. Even pre-pandemic, the world was going this way – add in a distrust of traditional asset classes, trillions of dollars of extra liquidity sponsored by governments and a generation of crypto-gazillionaires who like to show off virtually to friends they’ve never met, and you get to the point where digital playing cards are being traded for real estate prices. Sure, these markets might cool – but one way or another, NFTs are going to continue to make their way into new industries and use cases.
Fancy a little bit more innovation insight? Absolutely you do.
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