Personal blog of Yzmir Ramirez

 GV (formerly known as Google Ventures) and DBL Partners co-led a $40 million investment in Farmers Business Network Inc., the company announced on Tuesday. FBN started out as something of a professional network for farmers and other agronomists. It allowed people working in agriculture to anonymously share information about what they were paying for seeds, fertilizers, and other… Read More

 It hasn’t even been a year since EquipmentShare raised a Series A round of funding, but the “Airbnb of construction rentals,” has closed a $26 million Series B round. The Columbia, Missouri-based startup helps contractors rent out their under-utilized equipment, or rent safety tested equipment that they need from a fellow contractor. Last year, EquipmentShare also launched… Read More

 It’s hard to build a drone that’s high performance and affordable enough to compete with DJI’s popular and pervasive models. That’s something drone companies who built their own “platforms,” a.k.a. original hardware and proprietary software, are grappling with these days. The industry has seen belt-tightening measures at Parrot SA, a changing of the guard… Read More

 A San Diego startup called eSUB Construction Software has raised $5 million in a Series A round led by Revolution Ventures according to President and CEO Wendy Rogers. The company’s cloud-based project management apps help subcontractors track and get compensated for all the work they do on construction jobs. Rogers said, “There’s a saying that subcontractors get paid for… Read More

 Even before they began to graduate from college, millennials drove changes at work, from management and recruiting practices to the design of office interiors. But companies are still adapting and figuring out what matters most to this large demographic and employee base. Now, a tech startup called Zugata has raised $7 million in Series A venture funding to replace the crusty old… Read More

 Thanks to the Childrens’ Internet Protection Act, schools in the U.S. that provide internet access to their students must also generally use web filtering systems that block them from accessing obscene or harmful content online. The law, enacted originally in 2000 and updated in 2011, left school districts’ IT departments scrambling to adapt enterprise solutions that were built… Read More

 Remember when Target lost millions of customer credit card numbers to hackers who got in to their networks, of all things, through the company’s connected HVAC systems? A startup called Veriflow Systems Inc. just raised $8.2 million in a Series A round of venture funding to prevent that kind of thing with technology it’s calling “mathematical network verification.”… Read More

 Workday, the 10 year old company that specializes in finance and human resources software in the cloud, announced a new program today called Workday Ventures, an investment arm focusing on startups with a machine learning bent. It intends to fund 10-12 companies this year with executives Dan Beck, senior vice president of technology products and Adeyemi ‘Ade’ Ajao, vice… Read More