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Startup Watch: It’s all about the money, money, money and solar power

Startup Watch: It’s all about the money, money, money and solar power

The world of entrepreneurship news is a complex one, with people ever ready to give their two cents on how you should be running your business, pitching your business and what’s trending.

Here’s what we read on money going out of, and into the Middle East, how war in Yemen is driving a solar power business, digitizing healthcare is a problem area, and how you need that GPS tracker for your pooch.

MENA’s dollah dollah bills y’all. Investors in the MENA are busy bees. They’ve participated in global private market funding with 12 billion US dollars across 523 deals since 2012, according to this CB Insights webinar from the other night. Interestingly, the US has been the biggest beneficiary of those bucks.

Say no to the noise. We love studies from the ‘university of the obvious’, and this one is about carving time for quiet. It will help you succeed. Take yourself away from the social media, the email, and the hubbub of modern life and enjoy some silence. Apparently, this will help restore your nervous system, sustain energy, and conditions your mind ‘to be more adaptive and responsive to the complex environments in which so many of us now live, work, and lead’. Of course, if it wasn’t for Facebook, this article wouldn’t have found it’s way onto SW. LOL.

See, she found her quiet place. (Image via Pexels)

Wamda of the week: what this lady knows about fab labs. Science journalist turned fab lab network builder Sherry Lassiter shared with Wamda all that she knows about fab labs. She cofounded Fab Foundation in 2009, and now the network includes 200 digital fabrication facilities in 34 countries.

Civil war = solar power. In Yemen, there seems to be a little bit of a solar power boom because the war there has rendered the power grid useless. A Yemeni called Anwar Al-Haddad has built an ap, PV Solar, to help people work out what size of solar panel system they need. Apparently, it’s been downloaded 60,000 times so far. Necessity….mothers...you know the rest.

The rise of pet-tech. Forget Fitbits for humans, now it’s the turn of pets. Pet tech is now a booming industry according to research, which predicted it will reach a global market growth of $2.36 billion by 2022. So, now you can track your pooch every time it runs off for a squirrel, or worse yet, someone decides to steal it.

Bye bye orthodontist, hello 3D printer. Beauty does have a price, usually a hefty one, or does it? To get your teeth straightened with clear aligners is pricey but this undergrad in the US decided to print his own aligners out with a 3D printer. Rather than paying thousands of dollars, he just spent $60. Bargain!

The problems with the digitalization of healthcare. When it comes to the thought processes of doctors treating patients, there are going to be many exceptions to the rule and that is just one of the problems facing medicine when it comes to being totally digital, with say electronic medical records (EMR). Just look at how the NHS in the UK messed up.

Image, how we carry money in the Middle East, via Pexels.

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