UNVEILING THE WONDERS OF STARTUP WORLD: GLANCE, GRIT, AND GROWTH GALORE

The startup world constantly creates new histories, each week offering a new slate to contend with new and novel challenges, as well as exciting new opportunities to overcome them. Those who want to feel part of a story of elevation from humble roots will find plenty of sources of wonder.

WONDER #1: THE TRIALS AND TRIUMPHS OF FOUNDING DREAMS

Refocusing Amid Adversity: Oda's Strategic Pivot

The life cycle of startups is defined by navigating rough seas. Another SoftBank-backed online supermarket delivery startup, operating in Norway, has decided to refuse to give up. It is reducing operations in the Netherlands, Belgium and the rest of Europe to focus only on Norway and Sweden, while announcing 161 layoffs. The company hopes to reach profitability in the next year. This is another raid. Maybe new tech ventures will be born from the carnage. And perhaps some European countries will become startup factories once again.

When Hardware Meets Hardship

The innovation story has lots of twists because innovation has lots of moving parts. And not all the moving parts are cooperating. Aided by the new AI Pin, the hardware startup discussed previously had planned a launch for its first product. But the batteries in the companies’ new charging case were starting to catch on fire, so it asked customers to stop using the charging case while the company investigated ‘out of an abundance of caution’. The hardware startup works at the intersection of safety and innovation.

WONDER #2: UNCONVENTIONAL PATHS TO SUCCESS

Embracing Change for Transformative Growth

Case in point: The story of Solutions by Text (SBT), the organisation that’s re-engineering bill payments and loan applications through text messaging, started as a scrappy bootstrapped startup and then raised $110 million to fund a shift in leadership and a far more expansive vision. It’s a story that has more to do with wonder than it does with numbers, about what it’s like to re-invent a founder-led operation into a global innovator in digital communications.

The Bold Leap of Virtual Physical Therapy

Sword Health is one of the shining examples of the prophetic world of virtual care. Its latest fundraise, valued at $3 billion, marks something of a miracle when you consider it includes $130 million in secondary funding rounds and $30 million in primary funding. The story of this remarkable leap is, in itself, a fairytale of bold bets that physical therapy can be performed virtually and, when it is, a revolution in healthcare and rehabilitation rides on its shoulders.

WONDER #3: THE CREATIVE FORGE OF TECHNOLOGY

AI at the Forefront of Market Insight

Startups such as GetWhy, an AI-based business that uses AI to better understand consumers, represent the creativity core to the startup ecosystems. When GetWhy raised $34.5 million, the deep market insights derived from AI-powered search demonstrate for business leaders the competitive advantage that startups wield in using AI for enterprise intelligence.

Reinventing Content Management

Watching the Austrian startup Storyblok work on integrating AI into its headless CMS – and raising $80 million to do so – is a similar tale of progress. It’s a magical moment in the history of content management, delivering complex technology to the hands of non-technical writers.

UNTANGLING THE FUTURE: STARTUPS AND ANTITRUST HOPES

As the blockbuster revelations of the antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster continue to emerge, tech enthusiasts and startups alike are beginning to wonder: if regulators can break up a gigantic company and create room for new startups in ticketing, will they open the door for startups in other industries as well? This speculation implies that startups have a bright future ahead of them.

EPILOGUE: THE ESSENCE OF WONDER IN STARTUPS

From the pivots and strategic tweaks to the moonshots and growth quests, every one of the stories we’ve laid out above captures in miniature the soul of wonder – the sense of answering the call. Since startups are made of this stuff, they make mistakes, they bounce back, they fail, they reboot, they persist, and they deliver. The job of startups is to make it so, and today that’s more than typically true.