All posts tagged: Founder

Brazil’s Inhotim Marks 20 Years and Looks to Future Beyond Its Founder

Brazil’s Inhotim Marks 20 Years and Looks to Future Beyond Its Founder

Twenty years after it opened to the public, Inhotim is going through one of the most decisive transitions in its history. The contemporary art museum and botanical garden, which collector Bernardo Paz imagined on an unprecedented scale in the Brazilian mining town of Brumadinho, with individual pavilions for specific artists, monumental works, and paths stretching across 346 acres, recorded its highest annual attendance in 2025, welcoming 365,000 visitors. But Paz, who donated the land, galleries, and 326 works to Inhotim in 2022, is no longer involved in its operations. (He announced earlier this year that he is building another museum right next door, on land that Inhotim had planned to expand.) Source link

Founder Summit’s agenda revealed

Founder Summit’s agenda revealed

On November 4, TechCrunch’s Founder Summit will bring a vital one-day crash course on startup building to Boston’s SoWa Power Station. Founders shouldn’t have to learn the hardest lessons the hardest way, and this event is designed to make the challenges of starting a company easier and the highs that much greater. Instead of months of trial and error, you get direct access to the investors and founders who’ve already made the calls you’re now facing. We’re talking everything from fundraising and hiring to AI strategy, and topping your category. Don’t take our word for it. Explore the full agenda of speakers and sessions we have planned for Founder Summit below, and lock in your spot at the event. All tickets are available for the lowest prices you’ll see, so now’s the best time to act. The official TechCrunch Founder Summit agenda reveal Without further ado, here’s the official agenda. Get to know each session and speaker on the event agenda page. The New Rules of Raising Capital  Fundraising has never been easy, but the …

This founder is making cheaper, cleaner steel

This founder is making cheaper, cleaner steel

The process relies on coal, and it generates roughly 7% of the carbon emissions that drive climate change—about as much as the fashion industry. Decarbonization has proved difficult: Profit margins are tight and furnaces have long service lives, making investment tough to justify. Now Laureen Meroueh may have found a way to clean up steelmaking without driving up the price. Meroueh, the founder of Hertha Metals, invented a new furnace that simplifies the chemistry behind the process. Her method turns iron ore into refined liquid steel in a single step, and it swaps coal for natural gas. Together, those changes slash emissions by at least half, she says, and cut costs by 25% compared with steelmaking business as usual. If it catches on, the tech could be transformative. “There’s huge value in reducing the size of this production system,” says Iryna Zenyuk, director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center at the University of California, Irvine. “They’re massive. They’re inefficient and require a lot of energy input, so even if they just save energy efficiency, …

ESPN Founder Bill Rasmussen Was Ted Turner Before Ted Turner

ESPN Founder Bill Rasmussen Was Ted Turner Before Ted Turner

Bill Rasmussen set out to create a local sports channel in his home state of Connecticut. Instead, he changed the global television landscape. Rasmussen, the founder of ESPN (Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) died following a lengthy illness on Tuesday. He was 93. When asked about the legacy of his long-ago boss, Bob Ley, SportsCenter‘s first full-time anchor, opened with a very recent anecdote to describe the last 47 years of sports media: “The Lakers wouldn’t be worth $12 billion rather for Bill Rasmussen,” Ley told The Hollywood Reporter. Talk about a full-circle moment. Rasmussen was a pioneer of the satellite television delivery system when he launched ESPN in 1979 — it was just last week when the former CEO (twice!) of ESPN’s current parent company, Disney, purchased the Los Angeles Lakers for a record-shattering sum. (OK, so Bob Iger had some financial help.) It was Rasmussen and ESPN that brought the nation the “Showtime” Lakers, also born in ’79. There are very few coincidences. At the time, Iger was a low-level ABC Sports executive; …

‘How’s this joker got my details?’: BrewDog founder faces complaints over emails to ‘equity punks’

‘How’s this joker got my details?’: BrewDog founder faces complaints over emails to ‘equity punks’

James Watt, the BrewDog founder who sold the debt-laden “punk” brewer earlier this year, is the subject of complaints to the UK’s data privacy watchdog linked to his surprise bid to buy the company back, the Guardian has learned. BrewDog’s brand, intellectual property, UK breweries and 11 bars were sold to the US cannabis and drinks firm Tilray in March for £33m, in a deal that rendered the shares of more than 200,000 crowdfunding investors worthless. On Wednesday, Watt unexpectedly announced a plan to wrest back control of the beer company, with support from 43,000 of those investors, labelled “equity punks”, via a new venture called Second Best. The audacious proposal involved Watt contacting thousands of shareholders to offer them the “exact same stake in Second Best that you once held in BrewDog, for free”. Several sources who received an email from Watt said they did not understand how he had their contact details, giving rise to concerns about a potential breach of the general data protection regulation (GDPR) – strict rules governing how organisations …

The Hispanic Founder

The Hispanic Founder

One of the biggest Independence Day celebrations outside of North America takes place in Macharaviaya, Spain, a mountain town, population 500, in the southern province of Málaga. Thousands of people attend the festivities, during which villagers wearing 18th-century period costumes reenact the 1781 Siege of Pensacola, a turning point in the American Revolution. The flag of the United States features prominently. To the tune of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” an actor delivers a dramatic reading, in Spanish, of Francis Scott Key’s poem “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” on which the song was based. The evening ends with fireworks. Macharaviaya observes the independence of the United States because a hero of the American Revolution, Bernardo de Gálvez, was born there. Gálvez was the Spanish governor of Louisiana whose troops, including Spaniards, Spanish Americans, American Indians, and Black people, both enslaved and free, defeated the British in Florida. He had a hand in securing Spanish silver from Havana that George Washington used to pay and provision the troops fighting for him in the Battle of Yorktown. He also helped …

Steven Adrian Stewart, Founder of Kansas Gallery, Dead at 46

Steven Adrian Stewart, Founder of Kansas Gallery, Dead at 46

Steven Adrian Stewart, founder of the Lower East Side’s Kansas Gallery, is dead at 46. The gallerist, who later cofounded Futures Gallery in Melbourne, Australia, died on May 26 in Lawrence, Kansas, near where he grew up. No cause of death was provided. Stewart was best known for Kansas, the gallery he founded in 2011. Through Kansas, Stewart exhibited or represented Michael Berryhill, Mira Dancy, Carey Denniston, Ethan Greenbaum, Clay Ketter, Sylvan Lionni, David J. Merritt, Halsey Rodman, Jessica Sanders, Strauss Bourque-LaFrance, Rachel de Joode, John Houck, Ryan Lauderdale, Rob McLeish, Scott Nedrelow, Virginia Poundstone, and Tamara Zahaykevich. The gallery closed in 2016. Source link

Founder of Shark Tank-backed startup Scholly sues his acquirer Sallie Mae

Founder of Shark Tank-backed startup Scholly sues his acquirer Sallie Mae

When Chris Gray sold his Shark Tank-backed scholarship search startup Scholly to Sallie Mae in 2023, he thought he had it all. Now he’s suing the student loan giant for wrongful termination and alleging that it’s selling the data his app collected, which includes personal info on minors, without properly informing users.  Gray co-founded the company a decade prior with the hope of helping students more easily find college scholarships that were going untapped. Within two years, he nabbed Sharks Daymond John and Lori Greiner as investors after an appearance on the show.  With the acquisition, Gray became one of the few Black venture-backed fintech founders to exit their company, despite receiving some blowback that he was “selling out.” “I think being one of the first Black tech companies to get acquired by a bank, that’s really a big achievement,” he said at the time.  He took a vice president role at Sallie Mae and expected to settle in nicely at his new gig, while helping scale Scholly and making it free to use, he …

Maison Q founder Suhana Ab on kidswear that lasts

Maison Q founder Suhana Ab on kidswear that lasts

Kids could enjoy a Style the Butler Bear experience, while families could dine at the hotel’s rooftop restaurant – all decked out in Maison Q fabrics, of course – as well as pick up limited edition merchandise at the hotel’s gift shop.  Suhana shared that the collaboration felt surreal, beyond her wildest dreams. Having long suffered from imposter syndrome – an outsider entering the retail realm – it gave her the confidence boost she had always yearned for. “I didn’t expect it…but I think with [the St. Regis] association, it really positioned us as a brand that created things that are refined and elegant.” A FAMILY AFFAIR Being a mother of three kids – Arissa, 13; Omar, 10; and Eissa, 6 – no doubt influenced Suhana when conceiving Maison Q’s product lineup. “Comfort always comes first. If, for example, the fabrics feel ‘scratchy’ against the skin, forget it. My kids won’t be comfortable.” But motherhood isn’t the sole driving force behind her inspirations. A lot of ideas stem from Suhana’s own childhood experiences, both positive …