Newsletter

Pittsburgh daily roundup: Astrobotic hires NASA veterans; WealthMore for smart investing; Cal Tec Labs acquired

Plus, four trends to watch in venture capital investing.

A depiction of Astrobotic's Griffin lunar landar. It's set to visit the moon's south polar regions in late 2024. (Astrobotic)

New platform democratizes wealth advisors

WealthMore CEO and founder Mical Jeanlys-White launched her platform to connect people with personalized advice to make the best investments possible. As a first-generation American, her parents lacked access to that kind of info, which she sees as a huge missed opportunity.

“The reality is those who have a wealth advisor grow two times more wealth,” Jeanlys-White said — and stats back her up: A 2016 study found that households using financial advisors for at least 15 years accumulated 290% more assets than those that didn’t.

➡️ Read more about WealthMore’s mission from my colleague Sarah here

How VC is evolving: 4 trends to watch

After rising steadily through last decade, VC investing spiked after the pandemic hit — and then fell back to earth. What does that mean for the future? Technical.ly CEO Chris Wink talked to founders at SXSW, and identified several trends.

Raising venture capital is an already difficult sales process that has gotten more difficult, for example, but entrepreneurs these days aren’t constrained by geography. and while founders are getting more diverse. they aren’t all yet growing the same.

➡️ Read the discussion, with a couple of insightful charts about VC over the years

News Incubator: What else to know today

• Cal Tec Labs Inc, a Green Tree-based calibration lab, has been acquired by Florida’s Medical Technology Associates. [Pittsburgh Business Times

• After the lesson-filled failure of its Peregrine lander, North Side’s Astrobotic has hired four NASA veterans for its second attempt at a moon landing. [Technical.ly/Space News]

• Baltimore’s Key Bridge collapsed last night after getting hit by a cargo ship, and my colleague Sameer Rao has all the details. Local officials say it’s unlikely Pittsburgh could experience a similar event because the waterway traffic is so different. [Technical.ly/Pittsburgh Trib]

• Thanks to a collaboration between the Citizens Science Lab and YBMKQ, Penn Hills students will be granted increased access to STEM programming. [Kidsburgh]

🗓️ On the Calendar

• On April 13, Code & Coffee is providing coders the opportunity to meet new friends and practice their coding skills. [Details here]

Atiya Irvin-Mitchell is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Heinz Endowments.

Welcome to the daily roundup of the latest from Pittsburgh's tech and entrepreneurship scene. Want this in your inbox? Subscribe for free.

Engagement

Join our growing Slack community

Join 5,000 tech professionals and entrepreneurs in our community Slack today!

Donate to the Journalism Fund

Your support powers our independent journalism. Unlike most business-media outlets, we don’t have a paywall. Instead, we count on your personal and organizational contributions.

Trending

What internet speed do you really need?

How DC protesters are protecting themselves online while calling out the Trump administration

Developing tech for government agencies? Participant advisory councils can help get it right.

Pittsburgh railroad tech company spends $2B buying up the competition and scores a major Africa contract 

Technically Media