Small Business Labs

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The Rise of the Solopreneur Travel Agent

Small Business Labs

Fora is a new platform that provides full and part-time independent travel agents with the tools needed to run their travel business.  They recently raised $5  million in seed funding.  Fora joins a growing list of vertical market platforms providing solopreneurs with infrastructure tools for operating their own business.   The VC firm leading Fora's round, Forerunner Ventures, refers to independent workers as "the entrepreneur next door"   Key quo

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VCs Betting Big on the Metaverse

Small Business Labs

Crunchbase's VCs Will Spend Billions More To Make The Metaverse A Reality covers the growing amounts of venture capital going to companies involved in the metaverse. For those not familiar with the metaverse, here's how Crunchbase describes it: While still a fairly nebulous concept, the metaverse is, broadly speaking, viewed by many as the next phase of the internet, where online experiences will combine to form something of an immersive virtual experience.

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Telehealth for Pets

Small Business Labs

Forerunner's Pet health is going the way of human health; our investment in Dutch covers the reasons the VC firm has invested in the pet telehealth startup Dutch. The main reason is fairly obvious. The pandemic accelerated the already growing trend towards pet ownership.   According to the ASPCA, 23 million American households acquired a dog or cat during the pandemic.    And as the article points out, the increases in pet ownership came with increases in the demand f

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3D Printed Houses Cementing Their Place in the Housing Industry

Small Business Labs

3D-printed houses offer the potential to reduce the cost and increase the efficiency of the home building process. A leader in this field, ICONN, recently announced a commitment to build the largest community of 3D-printed homes to date using ICON’s robotic 3D printer (see the short video below).   The current plan is to build 100 houses in Austin, Texas, and the project will break ground in 2022.  Lennar, a large homebuilder, is partnering with ICONN on this project.

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Social Commerce Forecast to Boom

Small Business Labs

One of the hottest investment firms is Ark Investment Management.  Their investment focus is on firms creating disruptive innovation and their stable of exchange-traded funds has around $40 billion invested in them. Their recent article Social Commerce:  The Next Wave in Online Shopping outlines why they're forecasting social commerce to boom over the next 5 years.

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Forerunner Ventures on Solopreneur Commerce

Small Business Labs

Forerunner Ventures was founded about a decade ago with a focus on direct-to-consumer ecommerce brands.  And they've invested in some of the most successful companies in this space, including Bonobos, Warby Parker, Jet, Dollar Shave Club and others. They are now investing in a space they call The Empowerment Economy, which they describe as: "The true power of digital connectivity is set to upend the economy at large, powering a new generation of solopreneuers and financial freedom.

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McKinsey on Technology Trends

Small Business Labs

McKinsey, which is best known as a strategy consulting firm serving CEOs and seniors executives at large corporations, recently released its top trends in tech list. They say the list was developed using a "unique methodology" that identifies the trends "most relevant to competitive advantage and technology investments."  The list is below (click to enlarge).