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Happy Wednesday and 1st week of the year 🎉 We hope you and your teams are having a refreshing start ;)
The end of the year called for look-backs and celebrations for what we’ve achieved in 2021. Now, the start of the year calls for what’s to come: and we are more than thrilled to announce we’re making a few (big!) changes in how we present ourselves and operate. More about this below - if you have any cool ideas for us, feel free to reach out!
Here’s what we’ve put together for your weekly Spark reads:
💙 NEWS FROM OUR MATESHelping companies track employee wellbeing and happiness 🙇♀️
One thing we know very well, practice and preach is that there is no product/company without a team. Taking care of them, making sure that they are not only enjoying what they do but are also thriving, always comes first. But what do you do when 1 in 2 employees don’t ask for help when they’re stressed or burnt out?
Our mate Dr. Lavinia Ionita is solving this with Sorcova Health, to help companies better track their team’s mental health! She is launching a solution that employees can use to log their wellbeing (through energy, sleep, stress levels), lifestyle (nutrition, hydration, movement), work life, and more. Reports will be backed with comprehensive online assessments, stress biomarkers (for i.e. dopamine, serotonin levels), wearables (heart rate, blood pressure), advanced analysis reports for employers and personalized health plans.
Her website is coming out soon! Check out her pitch deck for the meantime and let her know what you think:
🤸 FUN PRODUCT WE LOVEDocumentations done in seconds with Tango 📑
If you create manuals for your clients or documentations for the team, you probably know how time-consuming and tedious it can be going back and forth, creating each step, and still having to re-explain things 😅 Luckily with Tango, it takes away the headache of it all!
Tango is a browser extension you can install (for free! until you need them branded) and automatically helps you document your actions as you show Tango how it’s done. All you’ll need to do is to Capture (turn Tango on when you’re ready) so it can write out all the steps for you, Edit so you can blur anything confidential or unneeded, and Share, with the workflow being added to Tango or exported as a PDF/Doc with screenshots - ready to add to Slack or Meta’s Workplace.
Tango is easy to use, they’ve got an awesome tour you should check out as well!
💭 TECH FOOD FOR THOUGHTParalyzed man sends tweet using brain chip 💽
Brain-computer Interfaces (BCI) is here, and will be the next big thing in technology to enhance human experiences! Synchron, a neurotech company based in New York, has been focused on giving patients with paralysis the ability to control digital devices with their thoughts. They’ve recently reached a huge milestone and gained a lot of traction from their 62 year-old Australian patient, Philip O’Keefe, sending out his first tweet using the brain chip (posted through Synchron’s CEO’s account) 🤯
The device, called Stentrode, connects into the motor cortex of the brain with a minimally invasive procedure through the jugular vein in the neck. Once implanted, the device helps translate brain activity into a standardized digital language to allow users to complete tasks on devices, such as texting, emailing, online shopping and banking. The future is here - how would you use BCI technology for your business?
🌱 TECH FOR SUSTAINABILITYRegenerating landscapes and forests with Drones 🚁
Australia alone lost more than 46 million acres (186,000 square kilometres) during the bushfires of 2019-2020, affecting more than 3 billion animals and driving a few into extinction. Healing from this loss can take years, but companies like Dendra Systems is exploring Aerial seeding to regenerate our lands even faster 🌳
Dendra’s drones carry biodegradable and nutrition-rich pods that are filled with seeds. Using AI, it can track optimal areas to disperse seeds while ensuring biodiversity, access remote areas, reduce chances of erosion and can cover at least 148 acres a day.
💥 WHAT’S ON @ SPARKMATESparkmate to get a makeover in 2022
We’ve learned and experienced a lot since we started in 2020, with the main goal of helping entrepreneurs and businesses imagine, build and launch their innovative products and solutions. But we’ve also always strived to provide whatever we could for any other support they might still need, like finding their first users and closing their first investment deals.
We noticed that most of the entrepreneurs and startups do need support in repelling their products and companies forward. And because we enjoy helping out in these areas too, in the past weeks we’ve decided to gradually expand our services to provide support in venture building. We’ll give you more information about this in time, but expect a full rebranding to better capture and represent these new changes!
Have any ideas on the direction we should take for rebranding? Want to see Sparkmate in certain colors or styles? Let us know - we’re collecting as many cool ideas as we can!
Exciting things are happening every day ⚡️ Follow us on social media to stay tuned!