Trends

Private equity giant Blackstone acquired the video advertising startup Vungle last week in a reported $750m deal.

Just the thought of online dating elicits a collective groan among anyone who’s done it. And that’s precisely why Dawoon Kang and her two sisters founded Coffee Meets Bagel: They wanted to improve one of the most anxiety-filled stages of people’s lives with technology that makes them forget the pain points.

This year Away, a suitcase startup, raised $100m in new funding at a staggering $1.4 billion valuation. The company has raised a total of $181m and is rumored to have over $125m in revenue. The stats alone are quite amazing.

Joe Speiser started his first business when he was still in middle school. The New York-based entrepreneur has had his hands in many industries, from DVD review sites to an ad network that brought in $200m in annual revenue. And that was just in his 20s.

I was in a band until my early 30s. But my real passion in music was composing, and so I started writing film scores. And writing film scores, it’s a very particular kind of discipline where you sort of deconstruct music and you first try to figure out what a film director wants for a movie, which is part of the art of being a film composer.

Brian Scudamore is a man who believes in human connection before technology, so it’s no wonder he founded a company that has a heavy dose of both.