Is Your Business Sector at Risk of Human Trafficking?

U.S. Department of State report identifies 11 sectors found to be the most likely to have risk of human trafficking.

Fishing Industry May Be Connected to Human Trafficking

Huffington Post reports that one out of three fish being consumed may be connected to human trafficking.

Woman or Child Trafficked Every 10 Minutes in the United States

Force of Compassion reveals a statistic of a woman or child being trafficked every 10 minutes in the United States.

Fighting Human Trafficking 400 Miles Above the Earth

Education Startup Panaroma Raises $12 Million in Funding

Panorama Education secured $12 million in new funding to help schools better understand their students. The company seeks to find the best ways to gather and organize feedback from students to their schools.

“‘’There’s all this talk about data and education, but ‘data’ has really been a buzzword and not very meaningful because we’re still looking at test scores, not at how engaged students are,’ says Feuer. ‘There’s a disconnect between the things we care about and the things that we’re actually measuring and judging schools by.’”

Source: Tech Crunch

Netflix Launches First Market in Asia

Netflix announces it will launch in Japan, making it the first country in Asia to receive the video-streaming service. The company already has markets across the Americas, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

Source: Venture Beat

Facebook's Mission To Connect Internet With Drones

As one of their missions, Facebook wants to connect rural areas with the Internet using drones. The company uses balloons to life the drones up to 90,000 feet, which will fly up to three months and transmit information.

“'We want to actually speed up Internet adoption -- and in order to speed that up we need to work on the infrastructure challenges we’re working on today,' said Jay Parikh, Facebook’s vice president of engineering. 'Our mission in the company is to connect everybody in the world.'"

Source: Bloomberg

Security Firm Zscaler Lands $100 Million in Funding

Zscaler, a cloud-based security company, has raised $100 million in its second round of funding led by TPG Growth. The business focuses on "making it safe for enterprise networks to connect to the internet by scanning and filtering traffic for possible malware, viruses, or advanced persistent threats -- anything that indicates network information has leaked."

To date, the company has secured 5,000 enterprises and 13 million users globally, with about 50% of sales from the United States.

Source: Venture Beat

Latest View of Tesla's Gigafactory

Tesla's new gigafactory in the desert near Reno, Nevada is soon to become the biggest battery factory in the world. These batteries will be needed to launch the company's first electric SUV, the Model X, and the Model 3 in 2017.

Source: Bloomberg

UpCounsel Raises $10 Million in New Funding

Led by Menlo Ventures, UpCounsel, a legal service that provides small businesses with big law attorneys, raised $10 million in new funding. 

"'By eliminating the partner pool and reducing overhead costs with its free practice management software, UpCounsel charges clients a third of what a major law firm would charge, on average, while their attorneys bring in comparable salary.'"

Source: TechCrunch

Oliver, A New Apartment Finding App, Seeks to Eliminate Brokers

After raising $1 million seed round from New York real estate angels, Oliver, a new apartment-fixing app that aggregates rent inventory directly from landlords and managers, seeks to eliminate the brokerage layer, or “the middleman,” by connecting renters seamlessly with apartments.

"'All the other players - Zillow, Trulia, StreetEasy, RentHop, NakedApartments - are 'lead generation' platforms and their revenue model comes from charging middle men. We plan on eliminating that by becoming Uber for rental where you actually connect directly, seamlessly with the apartment/landlord,' said Shemesh."