THE METAVERSE IS ALREADY HERE — AND IT’S FULL OF POKEMON, SAYS NIANTIC CEO JOHN HANKE

John Hanke is the CEO of Niantic, a company that makes the wildly popular Pokémon Go mobile game in partnership with Nintendo and the Pokémon Company, but John actually started it as a skunkworks project when he was a Google Maps executive and spun it out.

Pokémon Go and its predecessor Ingress are now the largest and most successful augmented reality games in the industry, which means John has long been at the forefront of what we’ve all started calling the metaverse: digital worlds that interact with the real world.

Lots of companies are chasing metaverse hype. Mark Zuckerberg just renamed all of Facebook “Meta” to underline his shift in focus, and we just had Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth on Decoder to talk about it — but John’s been at it for a while, and I wanted to talk about the reality instead of the hype: is the technology for all this ready? What are the innovations that need to happen to enable some of these dreams? And how do you solve the problem of people walking around in headsets, experiencing wildly different realities from one another?

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Earned Wage Access & the American Overdraft Fee Crisis

You know we have a serious economic justice problem in this country when the poorest Americans are paying $8 billion in overdraft fees in $35 increments to the nation’s largest banks. But that’s exactly what happened in 2020 and as the CFPB found in their recent work on this issue, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, that staggering amount of money was actually a decrease from 2019. Unfortunately, the decrease in Americans paying these overdraft fees is not the trend and overdraft fees are predicted to hit their highest levels ever in 2021.

Despite the best efforts of consumer protection advocates and similarly aligned elected officials, overdraft fees charged in the United States have steadily risen since the FDIC began collecting this data in 2015 from banks that have more than $1 billion in assets. Last year, 2020, was the only exception when banks reported a 24% decrease in revenue from these fees after consumers curbed spending, public assistance reached record highs, and some fees were waived because of the pandemic. The total revenue banks earned from overdraft fees according to the Center for Responsible Lending is especially troubling since approximately 95% of that total is collected from financially vulnerable people each year.

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HData and Alabama Power Announce Business Intelligence Partnership

Alabama Power to deploy HData’s energy regulatory data platform enterprise-wide and partner to develop new regulatory business intelligence solutions.

Birmingham, Alabama, December 8, 2021 — HData, an early-stage RegTech startup delivering automated compliance and instant business intelligence to the U.S. regulated energy industry, has announced a strategic partnership with Alabama Power Company.

The announcement was made at the Techstars Alabama EnergyTech Accelerator’s Demo Day 2021. The event celebrated the completion of a three-month startup accelerator program, sponsored by Alabama Power, in which HData was one of nine companies selected to participate from across the U.S. and Canada. HData’s platform uses regulatory data to automate compliance and business intelligence for electric utilities, gas companies, and oil pipelines.

“Alabama Power is committed to deploying technological innovation to better serve our customers and elevate the state,” said Alabama Power Assistant Treasurer Chris Blake. “Our support for the Techstars Alabama EnergyTech Accelerator and our partnership with HData exemplify that commitment. HData digitally transforms the way we interact with certain regulatory data, providing better insight and creating a holistic view of our industry.”

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First Resonance snags $14M for an operating system designed for factories

First Resonance, a factory operating system for manufacturing customers, today announced that it raised $14 million in a series A round led by Craft Ventures with participation from Blue Bear Capital, Fika Ventures, Stage VP, Wavemaker, Village Global, Garuda Ventures, PLG, and Frontier. The company says that the proceeds will be put toward expanding First Resonance’s headcount and growing its customer base as it further develops its platform.

Today’s factories have evolved to the point where manufacturers test R&D alongside production workflows. That’s the assertion of First Resonance CEO Karan Talati, who cofounded the Los Angeles, California-based software company with Neal Sarraf in 2018. Talati was previously a manufacturing and software engineer at SpaceX, where he helped build a dynamics analysis module and introduced a company-wide barcode system.

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DailyPay CEO Jason Lee Named '2021 CEO Today USA Award Winner' by CEO Today Magazine

NEW YORK, Dec. 1, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Jason Lee, the Founder and CEO of DailyPay, the industry-leading technology platform that's disrupting the financial system, has been named a 2021 CEO Today USA Award Winner by CEO Today Magazine.

The CEO Today USA Awards celebrate the success, innovation and strategic vision of CEOs across a number of sectors and industries. The CEO Today research team combines annual reader voting data with an in-depth sector-by-sector research process to recognize American and international CEOs who are leading in their respective sectors and beyond.

"I am honored to have been selected by CEO Today Magazine as a CEO Today USA Award recipient, but none of this could have happened without the hard work and dedication of every DailyPay employee," said Jason Lee, CEO of DailyPay. "This award recognizes the efforts of the entire team and our dedication to supporting our clients and their millions of employees nationwide."

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