Latest news with #Fore
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Venture gets a rare Native American-led fund in Betsy Fore's Velveteen Ventures
When Betsy Fore was five, her grandmother got her a gift she has never forgotten: A Velveteen Rabbit from Goodwill that Fore believed, with enough love, could spring alive. Decades later, that rabbit has lent its name to Fore's venture firm, Velveteen Ventures, which came to life on Tuesday. 'I realized after building companies for nearly two decades that I could make the greatest ripple in this one precious life by being on the other side of the table,' she told TechCrunch. Her companies include the baby food company Tiny Organics (for which she became the first Native American woman to raise a Series A) and the app builder Wondermento. 'Instead of building one thing, I can help other founders build dozens of life-changing companies,' Fore said. Fore declined to share what amount the firm's fund would aim to raise, but SEC filings show it started raising in October. The firm, based in the Midwest, will look to invest $500,000 to $4 million in seed and Series A companies, focusing on the healthcare, climate, consumer, and community sectors. It hopes to invest in at least 15 to 20 companies. More interestingly, however, with this launch, Fore becomes one of the few Native American women to launch a venture firm in the U.S. A few years ago, when TechCrunch looked for funding statistics for Native American founders, the numbers were so low that they almost couldn't be accurately pulled. Fore has been working to change that — she has a nonprofit that has worked to offer mentorship and opportunities to Native American founders. Describing the fundraising process, Fore said it was 'thrilling to have held institutional closes out the gate,' and says she has the 'support of purpose-driven institutions' that believe a strong ROI also exists in the Midwest. 'I have found that when we do bring on an LP, it's because they were searching for us,' she said. Joining Fore at Velveteen is Karla Brollier, also of Native descent, who hails from Patagonia and will lead climate investments at the firm. Katherine Stabler is joining the firm as chief operating officer, after decades as an attorney at private funds. Fore said she hopes to honor her ancestors as she runs the fund, adding that a portion of Fund I's carry will go to Native American tribes. 'While not an impact fund,' she said, 'Velveteen plans on proving that profits and purpose go hand in hand.' Fore previously worked at XFactor Ventures and LongJump Ventures (and is about to publish a book on entrepreneurship and venture capital).
Montreal Gazette
27-06-2025
- Health
- Montreal Gazette
The Right Chemistry: There are skeletons in the Nobel Prize closet
Carleton Gajdusek was only five years old in 1928 when he and his entomologist aunt wandered through the woods overturning rocks, looking for insects. Then, they observed in petri dishes how some insects succumbed to insecticides while others were unaffected. That's all it took for Carleton to be bitten by the science bug. As a boy, he read voraciously and was so taken by Paul de Kruif's 1926 Microbe Hunters that he stencilled the names of the scientists in the book on the steps leading to the chemistry lab he had set up in the family's attic. Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, Élie Metchnikoff and Paul Ehrlich got steps, but the last step was left blank for himself. Like his heroes, Carleton was going to become a microbe hunter and earn his own step. He did that in 1976, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of a novel type of infectious agent that was causing a terrible ailment among the Fore tribe in Papua New Guinea. Known as 'kuru' in the language of the Fore, meaning 'shaking,' the disease starts with tremors and progresses to total incapacitation and then death within months. Gajdusek, who had obtained a medical degree from Harvard and further trained under Nobel laureates Linus Pauling, John Enders and Frank Macfarlane Burnet, believed that kuru was transmitted by a ritualistic practice followed by the Fore. As a form of respect and mourning, family members consumed the brains of deceased relatives. Gajdusek proved that this was the mode of transmission by drilling holes in the skull of chimps and inserting mashed tissue from the brains of kuru victims into their cerebellum, the part of the brain that coordinates voluntary movement. The chimps developed symptoms of kuru. Gajdusek was unable to isolate an infectious agent but theorized that it was 'unconventional virus.' That turned out to be incorrect. In 1997, Stanley Prusiner received the Nobel Prize for his discovery of a novel type of infectious agent, a misfolded protein he called a 'prion' that triggers normal proteins in the brain to fold abnormally. This turned out to be the cause of mad cow disease as well as kuru. The Nobel Prize is the most significant recognition of a scientist's work, but it also shines a spotlight that follows the recipient for the rest of their life. Such scrutiny can sometimes taint the awardee's reputation, as is the case with Gajdusek. Many of his research trips took him to the South Pacific, where he encountered impoverished children who had no opportunity for traditional education. In what seemed to be a benevolent and charitable act, he brought 56 mostly male children back with him to the U.S. and gave them the opportunity to go to high school and college. Events took a dramatic turn in 1996 when one of his adopted children accused him of sexual abuse. This led to an investigation that unveiled incriminating entries in his diary and resulted in a charge of child molestation. Subsequent to a plea bargain, he served about 12 months in jail, after which he left the U.S. and spent the rest of his years in Europe as a visiting scientist in a number of research institutes. Gajdusek is not the only Nobel winner with a blemished reputation. Fritz Haber was awarded the 1918 prize in chemistry for one of the most important discoveries in the annals of science, the synthesis of ammonia. Haber used a catalyst to react nitrogen, a gas that makes up 80 per cent of air, with hydrogen that was available from the reaction of natural gas with steam. The ammonia produced was reacted with nitric acid to form ammonium nitrate, an excellent fertilizer. This triggered the 'green revolution' that greatly decreased world hunger by increasing crop yields. Haber was widely celebrated as the man who 'made bread out of air.' But that was not all Haber made. As a patriotic German, during the First World War he developed a program to produce chlorine gas on a large scale as a chemical weapon. Not only did he develop the program, he supervised the release of the gas at the battle of Ypres in Belgium in 1915 that killed more than a thousand French and Algerian troops, earning him the title 'the father of chemical warfare.' Egas Moniz was a Portuguese neurologist who in 1949 was awarded the Nobel for 'his discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses.' Later renamed 'lobotomy,' this surgical procedure severed the connection between the prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain with the aim of treating such severe mental illnesses as schizophrenia and depression. Before experimenting with lobotomy, Moniz had established a reputation as an inventor by having devised 'cerebral angiography,' a procedure by which sodium iodide is injected into the carotid artery and travels to the brain. Since sodium iodide is opaque to X-rays, blood vessels in the brain can be visualized and tumours and aneurisms located. In 1935, he attended a conference where Yale neuroscientist John Fulton described an experiment in which he had removed the frontal cortex from the brains of chimps; they became docile and lost all aggressiveness. Moniz had been working with patients whose mental disease manifested as violent behaviour, so he thought that what works in chimps can work in humans as well. After performing 19 lobotomies, he reported that symptoms of schizophrenia and depression abated. Inspired by Moniz's results, American neuroscientist Walter Freeman also took up the 'leucotome,' a tool resembling an icepick that could be inserted through the eye socket to severe connections in the frontal lobe. He performed 3,500 lobotomies with an estimated 490 deaths as a direct result. One of his patients was President John F. Kennedy's sister Rosemary, who was institutionalized as a result. It soon became clear that even when aggressive behaviour subsided, the side effects of the procedure were intolerable. Patients suffered personality changes, cognitive impairment, infections and seizures. There has been much criticism of Moniz's Nobel Prize because by 1949, it was already apparent that the claims of efficacy were exaggerated and side effects minimized. A number of other Nobel laureates have been criticized for offering disturbing opinions on subjects outside their area of expertise. William Shockley, co-inventor of the transistor, and James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, both expressed racist views and gave credence to eugenics. Kary Mullis, who received the 1993 Nobel in Chemistry for the invention of the polymerase chain reaction, an invaluable tool for genetic testing, did not think that humans play a role in climate change and was skeptical about AIDS being caused by a virus. He also described a meeting with a fluorescent racoon that he thought could have been an extraterrestrial alien. Nobel laureates may bask in the spotlight, but that spotlight can sometimes illuminate dark corners.
Technical.ly
29-05-2025
- Business
- Technical.ly
Fore Biotherapeutics raises another $38M for cancer drug trial, bringing its latest round to $113M
Philly life sciences companies are still seeing massive raises, despite analyst chatter about the sector's shortcomings. Biotech company Fore Biotherapeutics brought in $38 million, the second installment to a later-stage round that began in 2023. Local orgs are also getting funding to expand tech education and job training in Philadelphia and beyond. Tech education nonprofit Hopeworks received a $1.2 million grant to expand its workforce development programming to two new cities on the East Coast. Plus, developers received $30 million from the state to continue creating manufacturing and commercialization space at the Navy Yard, which will hopefully eventually lead to business attraction and job creation, a partner organization said. Get all the details on the latest money moves below the chart, where we look at the top 10 companies hiring for tech jobs in the Philadelphia market and how that's changed since the previous month. Life sciences giant Fore Biotherapeutics rakes in another massive round University City-based biotech company Fore Biotherapeutics raised $38 million, it announced last week. The company develops therapies for cancer, specifically a treatment called plixorafenib. The funding will advance a phase two clinical trial for the drug called the FORTE Master Protocol. 'We are well-positioned to continue our capitally efficient execution and make significant strides in delivering the ongoing FORTE Master Protocol,' said William Hinshaw, CEO of Fore. 'As we look to multiple anticipated interim analyses and clinical data supporting potential registration under the accelerated approval pathway, with FDA submissions potentially at the end of next year.' This round was an extension of its $75 million Series D in 2023, meaning the round now totals $113 million. Hopeworks plans expansion thanks to $1.2M grant Tech education and workforce development organization Hopeworks received a $1.2 million grant from the Hg Foundation earlier this month. Over the next three years, the grant will help expand the nonprofit's reach to two new cities: Newark, New Jersey, and an undetermined second location. The plan is to expand to Newark first, Dan Rhoton, CEO of Hopeworks, told The plan for the second location is to target somewhere along the I-95 corridor, likely in Delaware or Maryland. But Hopeworks isn't in a rush to move forward with this expansion, it wants to make sure the program in Newark is solid before moving forward, he said. 'We don't need Hopeworks to be in 20 cities,' he said. 'We need young adults to get their lives changed. That's the really important part.' Hopeworks' model provides trauma-informed tech training and paid work opportunities to young adults with the goal of getting young adults from low-income backgrounds into sustainable, well-paying careers. The organization started in Camden in 1999 and expanded to Kensington in 2022. In those locations, it offers programs in web design, geographic information services, data analytics and business. Only the web design program will be expanding to the new cities. 'We continue to prove that young adults in Camden, Kensington and now maybe Newark are the folks who can fill the jobs you need,' Rhoton said. 'It's changing the conversation about where you go looking for talent.' DCED awards $30M to the Philly Navy Yard The Shapiro administration awarded $30 million to real estate developers Ensemble/Mosaic Navy Yard to build the Navy Yard Greenway District. This money comes from the Pennsylvania Strategic Investments to Enhance Sites program run by the Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED), which awarded $64 million to 11 projects throughout the state in its first round. The funding will specifically be used for utility infrastructure, soil excavation, grading and stormwater management to eventually turn 700,000 square feet into advanced manufacturing and commercialization space. '[The funding] will help attract new businesses, support the expansion of our life sciences and advanced manufacturing industries, and create hundreds of good-paying jobs across a wide range of skill and educational levels,' said Jodie Harris, president of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, which partners with Ensemble/Mosaic. More money moves: The Montgomery County Investment Development Authority plans to commit $500,000 to the Montco Made Investment Initiative, a partnership with Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania. King of Prussia-based fintech company PowerPay closed a $400 million 'committed warehouse facility,' which means the company can borrow up to that amount to fund its customers' loans. The DCED awarded $2 million to venture capital firm Neovate Life Sciences through the Ben Franklin Technology Development Authority. This funding will be invested in life sciences companies in Pennsylvania. Governor Josh Shapiro's 2025 to 2026 budget proposes $50 million for a new PA Innovation program. This is broken down into a $30 million initiative to expand life sciences job growth and $20 million to support large-scale innovation. 2025 RealLIST Startup Civic received a $50,000 grant from the Draper Foundation through the Wharton Bridge Fund, the company told Biotech company Nuevocor, which is based in Singapore but has its US headquarters in Montgomery County, raised a $45 million Series B round.
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Indonesia's Fore Coffee plans IPO
Singapore-based venture capital company East Ventures is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) for its coffee shop chain, Fore Coffee, as reported by Bloomberg. East Ventures is preparing an IPO that may propel the valuation of Fore to Rp1.8tn ($110m), tapping into Indonesia's fast-growing coffee market. The chain, which originated as an in-house venture at East Ventures, is aiming to raise a minimum of Rp300bn ($18.3m) aconsidering a listing on the Jakarta exchange as early as April 2025. Sources of information prefer anonymity due to the private nature of the discussions. While the IPO's specifics, including its size and precise timing, are still under review and subject to change, insiders have revealed that existing shareholders, including East Ventures, do not intend to sell their stakes during the listing. The funds raised are earmarked for further expansion of the coffee chain. A representative from East Ventures declined to comment on the plans. Fore, established in 2018, has rapidly expanded to more than 200 locations across 44 cities in Indonesia. The chain is leveraging the country's growing middle class, which is increasingly spending on lifestyle products, including speciality coffee. Fore's strategy involves a mix of quick-service storefronts for efficient pick-up and delivery, complemented by traditional sit-down cafés. The company's application, which facilitates pre-ordering, has played a key role in reducing service times and operational costs. Fore is competing in a burgeoning market with a mix of local and international players such as Kopi Kenangan, Luckin Coffee, and Arabica. With a population of 280 million, Indonesia's annual coffee consumption is expected to climb 11% by 2030, making it one of the fastest-growing markets worldwide according to Redseer Strategy Consultants. "Indonesia's Fore Coffee plans IPO" was originally created and published by Verdict Food Service, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.
