LAS VEGAS (AP) — From electric cars and boats to wireless TVs to the latest phones and tablets, there was a wide range of innovations on display at the CES tech show in Last Vegas last week. Some of it aimed to solve big real world problems. Some of it aimed to make your life more fun. And some of it was just a little out there.

Associated Press journalists spent last week combing cavernous exhibit halls for the most exciting, interesting and unusual tech innovations.

Here’s what caught our eye:

Image: Mohamed Soliman of Atmos Gear shows off the Atmos Gear inline electric skates during CES Unveiled before the start of the CES tech show, Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2023, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

As one venture capital investor recently described it to me, it feels like a “tough” time for fintech right now.

Though VCs invested record amounts of cash into fintech startups in 2021, per PitchBook data, deal value tumbled in 2022. Many investors predict the funding environment will remain tricky this year, but they’re still super upbeat about the sector: “The opportunity is so large and could dwarf most of software as these business models figure it out,” Jesse Wedler, a general partner at Google parent Alphabet’s independent growth fund, CapitalG, told me on a recent visit to their San Francisco office.

Image: Clockwise from top left: Christina Melas-Kyriazi, partner at Bain Capital Ventures; Sarah Hinkfuss, partner at Bain Capital Ventures; Amit Kumar, partner at Accel; Charles Birnbaum of Bessemer Venture Partners; Jesse Wedler, general partner at CapitalG; Sumi Das, partner at CapitalG; Laura Bock, partner at QED; and Grace Isford, partner at Lux Capital. PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF BAIN CAPITAL VENTURES, ACCEL, BESSEMER VENTURE PARTNERS, CAPITALG, LUX CAPITAL, QED

When you first start your business, you must essentially build your company culture from the ground up. This can often mean taking the personalities and values of your small team into consideration and also defining what the overall values and mission of the company will be. But as your company grows and you add more team members into the mix, the original culture can get muddled or lost entirely as you face new challenges.

Image: Members pictured from left to right.PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS.

It's hardly news that mobile phones and other devices are more and more widely used each year. Many businesses, however, still haven't caught on to another, related trend: the massive growth of mobile marketing. Let's look at why this is the ideal time to take advantage of this important marketing development.

Many people are ditching the 5-to-9 to be their own boss. Unfortunately, with rare exceptions like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Elon Musk, most entrepreneurs who venture into business fail by year five. Almost 50% of start-ups survive five years or longer, and only 33% survive by year 10.

Most entrepreneurs fail to scale, meaning they do not adapt their leadership style as their business grows. All this may sound awfully discouraging. Yet, entrepreneurs run out of gas because they make one or more common mistakes: targeting the wrong market, choosing a bad location, not having enough capital and ignoring the competition. These are some of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs should be aware of to improve their chances of success.

Should the Entrepreneurial Development infrastructure, i.e., business schools, incubators, and area developers, shift from product-focus, that helped 1% of unicorn-entrepreneurs (UEs), to strategy-focus, that helped 99%?

Entrepreneurial Development today focuses on finding viable products, promoting them via pitch contests and shark tanks, and funding them with angel capital, and venture capital (VC), i.e., the Product-Angels-VC method, to build a growth venture.

Threats to the future of democracy look overrated these days, given the glaring leadership weaknesses now evident in Russia, China, and Iran. Add relief that the U.S. midterm election came off with few of the stresses we saw in 2020. And don’t overlook increasingly strong cohesion in EU policymaking.

But there are still important (and growing) risks to preoccupy world leaders, business decisionmakers, and the rest of us in 2023. Here are the ten most important.

A man told he had less than 12 months to live is now cancer-free following a successful UK drug trial. Robert Glynn, 51, from Greater Manchester, was diagnosed with bile duct cancer after suffering severe pain in his shoulder in 2020 - one of only 1,000 people diagnosed with it each year. “I feel very lucky as I had the cancer for two years and had no idea”, he told PA. “When something like this happens you realise life is for living.” Click here to sign up for our newsletters. Read More Moment terminally ill grandfather meets his grandchild for the first time Tom Parker’s widow says late husband would be ‘happy’ for her if she found love again Five dead after blaze rages in South Korean motorway tunnel

Image: https://flipboard.com - From Video

The momentum behind hydrogen has remained strong over the past year, but unexpected twists are changing what insiders are calling the "hydrogen race."

The European Union, the region which just two years ago held a competitive know-how advantage, is now getting caught up in defining its own regulatory framework. These rules are needed to create certainties to implement local hydrogen projects and define a hydrogen supply chain to unlock export projects abroad.

It was the perfect political photo op. The occasion was the September 2022 groundbreaking for Intel’s INTC, +2.33% massive $20 billion chip-manufacturing complex in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. Backhoes dotted a construction site that stretched across hundreds of flat, empty acres. At a simple podium with the presidential seal, President Joe Biden talked about putting an end to the term “Rust Belt,” a name popularized in the 1980s in reference to the Midwest’s rapidly declining manufacturing sector.

Every year, we pick the 10 technologies that matter the most right now. You’ll recognize some; others might surprise you.

We look for advances that will have a big impact on our lives and then break down why they matter.

I have been replaced.

Not just fired like a Twitter employee, not just pushed to the sidelines like the gas-guzzling car by the electric vehicle, not just put out to pasture because I can’t remember my last name. No sir, I have met the future, and there is no country for old columnists with ChatGPT — Open AI’s new artificial intelligence chatbot.

The world's biggest electronics companies are flaunting their goods at CES in Las Vegas, giving you a look into the laptops, TVs and weird gadgets they hope will end up in your house sometime in 2023. That can be dazzling enough, but the really fun stuff at CES is the tech that's not necessarily going to go on sale anytime soon.

Image: Aska

Visa founder and modern payments pioneer Dee Hock, who passed away this past August, transformed the way we spend. While he didn’t invent the credit card, his outsider status and visionary approach to the very concept of money changed the world. And despite commentary that the credit card is a relic of Hock’s generation and ripe for disruption, today’s credit card is stronger than ever.

As we enter 2023, the expected flow of economic forecasts is well underway. Some say the global recession is inevitable. Others acknowledge the changes in geopolitics and economics but are trying to find a silver lining.

Anyway, we’re all feeling the effects of the current financial crisis. But one thing is certain, now is not the time to retreat. Don’t stop marketing, and don’t forget about your customers during these difficult times.

The past three years have been tumultuous for founders.

COVID-19 altered the way many ran their businesses, talk of a possible recession dominated the second half of the last year, and recent high-profile layoffs at major tech companies have stoked fears about future employment. But it's also been a good time to learn valuable lessons, founders told Insider.

I spend a lot of time in meetings and am surprised to see the stance that Shopify is taking to curb the amount of time their employees are spending in meetings.

Shopify's approach, implementing a set of rules about how, when, and who can attend meetings, isn't addressing the issue. That employees are meeting isn't the problem--it's how the meeting is conducted that makes the difference.

A team of University of Arkansas physicists has successfully developed a circuit capable of capturing graphene's thermal motion and converting it into an electrical current.

“An energy-harvesting circuit based on graphene could be incorporated into a chip to provide clean, limitless, low-voltage power for small devices or sensors,” said Paul Thibado, professor of physics and lead researcher in the discovery.

Image: Paul Thibado, professor of physics, with sample energy-harvesting chips under development. (CREDIT: University of Arkansas)

The past few months have seen conversations around initial public offering offerings (IPOs) of start-ups garnering greater momentum. Entrepreneur and investor Nithin Kamath shared his thoughts on start-ups making their stock market debut in a post on the professional networking platform, LinkedIn on Thursday.

Kamath rolled out some advice for B2C businesses and revealed, “Setting the right expectations, being transparent, & not overselling are great ways to reduce the volatility of the stock price pre & post-IPO.”

As it prepares to launch a global lineup of electric cars and trucks, Stellantis is also planning to build a very different kind of electric vehicle.

At CES in Las Vegas, the automaker announced that it will build the Archer Midnight electric aircraft, as well as provide $150 million in funding to California-based Archer Aviation in 2023 and 2024.

Image: Archer Midnight electric aircraft to be manufactured with Stellantis