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With $1.8 billion under management, Mala Gaonkar’s SurgoCap Partners began trading and made history as the largest debut of a woman-led hedge fund in the industry’s history.
SurgoCap Partners invests in technology’s influence on financials, industrials, healthcare, and corporate data. The 20-person company bets on and against equities and can invest 25% of its assets in privately held enterprises.
At an investor conference in June, Gaonkar expressed her support for ServiceNow Inc., an enterprise software provider that aids in workflow automation.
Born in the US and raised in Bengaluru, India, Mala was a Kauffman Fellow. After graduating from Harvard with an MBA and economics degree, she founded Lone Pine in 1998. Later, she managed technology, media, internet, and telecom bets as a portfolio manager. She led the firm’s long-only funds.
She is also a founding trustee of Ariadne Labs, the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, the Tate Foundation, and Surgo Ventures, a charity that produces data-driven social and health solutions.
She is setting aside $100 million in capacity at SurgoCap for smaller endowments, foundations, and organizations that support marginalized populations or address climate change. She has amassed $35 million thus far.
Mala signed the Giving Pledge that she would devote the majority of her wealth to charitable causes.
- 2 min read
News
Legacies of War (LoW) CEO Sera Koulabdara is the new Chair of the US Campaign to Ban Landmines – Cluster Munition Coalition (USCBL-CMC). She will be the first millennial, BIPOC, and afflicted nation native to assume the job.
LoW is the only worldwide U.S. advocacy and educational organisation that addresses the repercussions of the American Secret War in Laos and its battles in Cambodia and Vietnam during the Vietnam War, including UXO disposal and victim/survivor support.
Héctor Guerra, Director of International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), has welcomed LoW, acknowledging their work as a great example of global collaborative efforts in supporting communities affected by landmines and cluster munitions.
According to Mary Wareham, Arms Advocacy Director of Human Rights Watch, there could not be a better placed organization to coordinate the USCBL-CMC than LoW, as it is committed to ensuring that the US joins and adheres to the international treaties prohibiting antipersonnel landmines and cluster munitions.
CEO of Roots of Peace, Heidi Kuhn, also recognized how fortunate USCBL-CMC is to have Sera as Chair, with her unique qualifications as a leader in mine action, and her family heritage in Laos as the basis of her passion. She claimed that Sera brings a renewed spirit of home to the UXO campaign.
Sera shared in her bio in LoW’s website, that she hopes to make a positive difference in the lives of the people in her father’s beloved homeland, Laos, and to create hope for future generations.
- 2 min read
Stories
Rice is an essential part of the Asian diet, and it is enjoyed in many different forms. One of these is the classic fried rice, which everybody knows is a tasty and easy meal.
At the age of 21 years old, Briko Galeon from Tarlac City, Philippines, was able to expand his Korean Spam BKB Fried Rice business to 5 branches in just a span of 3 months. Aside from this, he also has a takoyaki business that he was able to expand into 30 branches within 1 and a half years of operation.
One of Briko’s franchisees, Sharmaine Anne De Leon, shared that she used to scroll social media posts about Korean fried rice and have cravings for it. She also said that BKB Fried Rice products are really good, and that’s why getting a franchise with BKB was an easy decision for her.
Briko shared that his inspiration for putting up businesses was his parents. He wanted to give back to his parents and be able to buy them gifts using his own money. Due to his success, he was able to buy 2 cars and is now providing for his family’s needs.
There isn’t an age too young or too old for a person to become an entrepreneur. Briko’s advice is to find a product that you genuinely love or are passionate about. Once you do this, it will be easier for you to learn about the product, its market, and how to serve it.
- 2 min read
News
LOS ANGELES, January 11, 2023 — Blaze.tech, the smarter no-code platform that’s revolutionizing the way teams build web apps and tools, announced its official launch and has raised a $3.5 million pre-seed round led by Flybridge Capital and MaC Venture Capital. The round also included participation from investors and unicorn founders in enterprise SaaS including Vlad Magdalin (CEO, Webflow), Mada Seghete (Co-founder, Branch), Mark Schopmeyer (Co-CEO, CaptivateIQ), ACTAI Ventures, Sangha Capital, and Bill Tai. This funding round will accelerate Blaze’s growing customer base, increase the platforms’ integrations, and expand its AI capabilities.
Today’s public launch follows a successful beta phase in which Fortune 500 companies and startups used Blaze to build dashboards, HIPAA compliant apps, complex workflows, automated invoice generators, and inventory management systems all without writing any code. Because of Blaze’s emphasis on security and its robust suite of enterprise security features, the company has found popularity with organizations in highly regulated industries like healthcare, legal, construction, transportation and logistics, and finance.
With Blaze’s AI-powered no-code platform, teams are able to create and launch highly custom and secure applications and internal tools in minutes. Blaze gives non-technical people the superpower to be entrepreneurial product builders with an intuitive all-in-one drag-and-drop interface and AI system. Blaze AI is powered by OpenAI’s GPT-3 model, the same one used by ChatGPT. App creators can tell Blaze AI to create complex workflows, automatic triggers, custom filters, advanced calculations, and more.
Blaze improves operations and productivity, and with pre-built integrations into Airtable, DocuSign, Freshdesk, Google Sheets, Salesforce, Stripe, Shopify, and many more tools, users can build multiple apps on top of their existing tech stack.
The no-code/low-code market is one of the fastest growing markets (from $25 Billion to $187 Billion in 2030), and Blaze’s unique positioning is enabling teams to build software with complexity, customizability, and security that otherwise would require writing code.
“We’re so excited to maximize the talents of people inside organizations by giving them the ability to solve business problems with software,” said Nanxi Liu, Co-CEO of Blaze. “We’re seeing individuals supercharge and significantly increase the efficiency of their team’s operations with Blaze.”
“Our users can implement their app’s business logic in just a few clicks because Blaze has done all the difficult work on the technical side to provide a platform that generates intuitive front-ends and secure, scalable back-ends,” said Tina Denuit-Wojcik, Co-CEO of Blaze.
“We are thrilled to support the Blaze team in their mission to create powerful tools and dashboards without the need for expensive engineering resources,” said Adrian Fenty, General Partner and Co-Founder of MaC Venture Capital. “Nanxi and Tina have the business acumen to be huge disruptors in the industry, and because they’ve experienced these challenges first-hand, we know Blaze is building a top-tier product.”
“Nanxi and Tina are exceptionally talented founders with deep insights into the needs of Blaze’s customer base. Having watched how well they led and capital efficiently managed their prior company to significant success, we were delighted to invest in this dynamic duo,” said Chip Hazard, General Partner and Co-Founder of Flybridge Capital.
Additional investors in the round include Dean Schnider (Partner, Najafi Companies), Felicia Curcuru (CEO of Binti), Holly Liu (Co-Founder, Kabam), Lin Capital, Michael Einziger (co-founder of the band Incubus), Mike Lu (co-founder of Triller), Root and Shoot Ventures, Socially Financed, and The K Fund.
About Blaze.tech
Blaze.tech is the smarter no-code platform that’s revolutionizing the way teams build web apps and tools. Blaze’s AI-powered platform improves operations and productivity by enabling non-technical people to build and launch custom software in minutes, without writing any code! From dashboards and workflows to portals and more, Blaze’s all-in-one-builder has pre-built integrations, security and reliability.
Blaze is headquartered in Los Angeles and was founded in 2022. The founders, Nanxi Liu and Tina Denuit-Wojcik, previously founded Enplug, a leading digital signage software, which was acquired in 2021.
For more information, visit Blaze.tech.
Press Contact:
press@blaze.tech
Press release documents here.
- 4 min read