U.S.

US U-17 Women's Youth National Team Opens Concacaf World Cup Qualifying Campaign With Record 20-0 Win Against Grenada – U.S. Soccer

SAN CRISTÓBAL, Dominican Republic (April 23, 2022) – The U.S. U-17 Women’s Youth National Team opened its World Cup Qualifying campaign at the 2022 Concacaf Women’s U-17 Championship with a 20-0 victory against Grenada that set a record for most goals in a single World Cup qualifying match for a U.S. Women’s National Team at any level. Led by four-goal performances from midfielders Shae Harvey and Charlotte Kohler plus a hat trick from forward Melina Rebimbas, the USA scored nine goals in the first half and 11 in the second.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which put U.S. Soccer’s Youth National Team programming on hold for a long stretch, this game marked the first U-17 international match for every U.S. player who stepped on the field.

The USA looked sharp in the attack in the opening minutes, creating a series of dangerous chances early on before Rebimbas opened the floodgates in the eighth. The USA doubled the lead just three minutes later as Harvey scored her first of the night with a volley from close range before defender Mia Oliaro added her first of two goals in the 17^th minute.

The team displayed a lethal touch in its attacking play from the wings, scoring three goals in the span of 10 minutes beginning in the 20^th, which included Kohler’s first of the night and two from Harvey. Forward Nicollette Kiorpes scored her lone goal of the night in the 34^th minute before Rebimbas tallied her second just one minute later. An own goal from Grenada in the 43^rd minute gave the USA a 9-0 lead heading into the break after a first 45which was played in mostly pouring rain.

The USA’s day was far from over as Kohler opened the second half with two goals to round out her hat trick in the 48^th and 49^th minutes before Rebimbas completed her own in the 55^th with a strike from 15 yards out. In the 59^th , Harvey scored her fourth of the night as the team tied the previous record for most goals scored in a U-17 World Cup qualifier with its 13^th of the night. Just one minute later, Oliaro did the honors of breaking the record with a one-touch shot from six yards out. Four minutes later, center back Cameron Roller added her name to the score sheet.

A handful of USA substitutions proceeded to make their mark on the game as midfielder Claire Hutton scored a brace with goals in the 71^st and in stoppage time, while midfielder Lauren Martinho, and forward Amalia Villareal added goals in the 76^th and 81^st minutes, respectively. Kohler then rounded out the night in the second minute of stoppage time with a strong effort to shield off her defender and bury a powerful strike off the goalkeeper’s gloves and across the line for the team’s remarkable 20^th goal.

The win also marks the first for Natalia Astrain, who was appointed as U-17 USWYNT head coach on Nov. 17, 2021 and was coaching in her first U-17 international match.

The U-17 WYNT continues Group G play on Monday, April 25 against Puerto Rico (4 p.m. / FS2, ViX App in Spanish) at Estadio Panamericano and finishes the first round on Wednesday, April 27 vs. Costa Rica (4 p.m. / FS2, ViX App in Spanish) at Estadio Olimpico Felix Sanchez in Santo Domingo.

Follow the U-17 WNT throughout the tournament on ussoccer.com as well as U.S. Soccer Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

USA – Melina Rebimbas (Onyeka Gamero), 8th minute – Gamero received the ball on the right flank and dribbled into the box, avoiding two defenders with nifty footwork before poking the ball toward Rebimbas near the penalty spot. From there, she buried a low, right-footed shot from 12 yards out. USA 1, GRN 0

USA – Shae Harvey (Mia Oliaro), 11th minute – Oliaro collected the ball on the right inside the penalty box following a clean tackle from a Grenada defender and sent a cross toward the far-post where Harvey connected with a right-footed volley from six yards out to double the lead. USA 2, GRN 0

USA – Mia Oliaro, 17th minute – Oliaro picked up the ball at the top of the box near the right side after a dispossession from Granada and fired a powerful left-footed shot from about 20 yards out to beat the ‘keeper high and into the center of the goal. USA 3, GRN 0

USA – Charlotte Kohler (Shae Harvey), 21st minute – A run of play up the wing concluded with Harvey finding the end of a through-ball near the end line and cutting back a low cross toward the heart of the box which Kohler finished on her first touch from about 10 yards out. USA 4, GRN 0

USA – Shae Harvey (Onyeka Gamero), 26th minute – Oliaro played Gamero out on the right wing and she sent in a cross deep into the box to Harvey, who finished on her first touch from about seven yards out. USA 5, GRN 0

USA – Shae Harvey (Charlotte Kohler), 30th minute – Kohler received the ball on the right wing and sent in a cross which Harvey finished with a one-touch right footed volley from seven yards out. USA 6, GRN 0

USA – Nicolette Kiorpes (Onyeka Gamero), 34th minute – Gamero chipped a perfectly weighted ball into the left side of the box to Kiorpes on the run and she finished with a skillful left footed volley from the left corner of the six-yard box. USA 7, GRN 0

USA – Melina Rebimbas, 35th minute – After a USA run up the left wing, the goalkeeper stretched out to deflect a cross coming into the box but accidentally played it straight to Rebimbas’ feet just in front of the penalty spot and she buried a powerful strike. USA 8, GRN 0

USA – Abigail Williams (Own Goal), 43rd minute – Following a run of quality build-up play, Gamero received the ball at the top of the box and dribbled toward goal. Williams attempted to pounce on Gamero’s touch inside the box but accidentally redirected it into her own net. USA 9, GRN 0

USA – Charlotte Kohler (Taylor Suarez), 48th minute – The halftime substitute Suarez worked her way down the left wing and beat a defender with speed to dribble into the box before crossing a low ball into the center of the area which Kohler finished with her left foot from eight yards out. USA 10, GRN 0

USA – Charlotte Kohler, 49^th minute – Gamero worked her way up the right flank and sent a cross into the box which deflected off a defender and landed at Kohler’s feet. She turned toward goal and fired back-post with her right foot from 15 yards out to complete her hat trick. USA 11, GRN 0

USA – Melina Rebimbas (Mia Oliaro), 55^th minute – Oliaro sent a perfect cross from deep on the right wing to the back post after dribbling past a defender and Rebimbas finished calmly with her left foot from one yard out. USA 12, GRN 0

USA – Shae Harvey (Taylor Suarez), 59^th minute – Oliaro played Suarez through on the left side. Suarez crossed the ball into the box and Harvey finished from about 10 yards out to tally her fourth of the night. USA 13, GRN 0

USA – Mia Oliaro (Nicola Fraser), 60^th minute – Fraser took on three defenders with a slithery dribble on the left wing and crossed the ball across the mouth of goal to find Oliaro near the corner of the six-yard box. From there, she finished with a one-touch shot. USA 14, GRN 0

USA – Cameron Roller (Melina Rebimbas), 64^th minute – Following a corner kick and a flicked on header from Rebimbas, Roller pounced the loose ball at at the edge of the six-yard box and she fired ball off the crossbar and into the back of the net first international goal. USA 15, GRN 0

USA – Claire Hutton, 71^st minute – A corner kick from Kohler deflected off a defender and out toward Hutton, who fired a low shot from 15 yards out to score her first. USA 16, GRN 0

USA – Lauren Martinho (Cameron Roller), 76^th minute – Roller played the ball to Martinho at the top of the box, where she took a touch and fired from 19 yards out, bouncing the ball off the right post and across the goal line. USA 17, GRN 0

USA – Amalia Villareal (Nicola Fraser), 81^st minute – Fraser played a long ball over the back line through the middle of the field and Villareal ran past the defense, dribbled into the box and slotted a low shot past the goalkeeper into the right side of the net. USA 18, GRN 0

USA – Claire Hutton (Lauren Martinho), 90+1 minute – Martinho found Hutton inside the box with a low pass. Hutton dribbled past a defender and fired from 12 yards out in the heart of the box to beat the goalkeeper low and to the right. USA 19, GRN 0

USA – Charlotte Kohler (Lauren Martinho), 90+3 minute – Martinho played Kohler inside the box, where she battled with a defender to shield the ball and fire a powerful strike that bounced off the ‘keeper’s gloves and into the net in the dying moments of the match. USA 20, GRN 0

Match: United States Under-20 Women’s Youth National Team vs. Granada
Date: April 23, 2022
Competition: Concacaf Women’s Under-17 Championship
Venue: Estadio Panamericano; San Cristóbal, Dominican Republic
Attendance: 50
Kickoff: 4 p.m. ET
Weather: 85 degrees, partly cloudy, intermittent rain

Scoring Summary:   1          2          F
USA                            9          11        20
GRN                            0          0          0

USA – Melina Rebimbas (Onyeka Gamero)              8^th minute
USA – Shae Harvey (Mia Oliaro)                               11
USA – Mia Oliaro                                                        17
USA – Charlotte Kohler (Shae Harvey)                     21
USA – Shae Harvey (Onyeka Gamero)                     26
USA – Shae Harvey (Charlotte Kohler)                     30
USA – Nicollette Kiorpes (Oneyka Gamero)              34
USA – Melina Rebimbas                                            35
USA – Own Goal (Abigail Williams)                           43
USA – Charlotte Kohler (Taylor Suarez)                    48
USA – Charlotte Kohler                                              49
USA – Melina Rebimbas (Mia Oliaro)                        55
USA – Shae Harvey (Taylor Suarez)                         59
USA – Mia Oliaro (Nicola Fraser)                              60
USA – Cameron Roller (Melina Rebimbas)               63
USA – Claire Hutton                                                   71
USA – Lauren Martinho (Cameron Roller)                 76
USA – Amalia Villareal (Nicole Fraser)                      81
USA – Claire Hutton (Lauren Martinho)                     90+1
USA – Charlotte Kohler (Taylor Suarez)                    90+3

Lineups:
USA: 12-Victoria Safradin; 6-Mia Oliaro, 2-Nicola Fraser, 4-Cameron Roller, 3-Savannah King (5-Keegan Schmeiser, 46); 10-Mia Bhuta (Capt.), 15-Shae Harvey (19-Lauren Martinho, 63), 8-Charlotte Kohler; 18-Onyeka Gamero (13-Claire Hutton, 63), 14-Melina Rebimbas (16-Amalia Villarreal, 77), 11-Nicollette Kiorpes (9-Taylor Suarez, 46)
Substitutes Not Used: 1-Abigail Gundry, 7-Riley Jackson, 17-Alyssa Gonzalez, 20-Gisele Thompson
Head Coach: Natalia Astrain

GRN: 12-Kristina Bartholomew (1-Tiara McIntosh, 46); 6-Jadine Baptiste (Capt.), 5-Tiyana Lewis, 15-Kimberly McQueen (14-Monque Noel, 46), 3-Teasia Jones (17-Joshenie Fortune, 85); 10-Melania Fullerton, 19-Nhyela Hillaira (4-Sharleen Francois, 85); 8-Abigail Williams, 16-Javelle Alexander, 13-Cassima Langaigne (20-Shannel Britton, 56); 9-Amelia Bubb
Substitutes not used: 18-Nickada Courtney
Head coach: Randy Boca

Stats Summary: USA / GRN
Shots: 51 / 2
Shots on Goal: 27 / 1
Saves: 1 / 7
Corner Kicks: 16 / 0
Fouls: 5 / 5
Offside: 8 / 0

Misconduct Summary:
GRN – Abigail Williams (Caution)                  53^rd minute

Officials:
Referee: Smeedly Saint Jean (HAI)
1^st Assistant Referee: Kindria Aguero (CRC)
2^nd Assistant Referee: Falone Dieurisma (HAI)
4^th Official: Itzel Hernandez (MEX)
Get unrivaled matchday access

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U.S.

Rally bags $12M to build the future of e-commerce checkout

E-commerce had a moment during the global pandemic, but not only have things chilled since then, it’s gotten downright competitive as the economy cooled in the past year, according to Jordan Gal, co-founder and CEO of Rally.

“Founders in this space used to speak of optimism, but that has turned into realism, and people are more careful,” Gal told TechCrunch. “The pie seems to have stopped growing, and there’s more ferocious competition for what’s left in that pie.”

Gal went on to explain that merchants are having to make harder decisions, including whether they can afford to invest in software.

That’s why Rally, a composable checkout platform for e-commerce merchants, has broken up its business into two segments: the first to meet merchants where they are with integrations to commerce tools, like Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Magento and BigCommerce; the second to offer merchants a “headless” ecosystem.

The term “headless” refers to the ability to change the front end or back end of a website without affecting the other. Gal said he was not able to provide details just yet, but said Rally is close to announcing a partnership with companies specializing in front end and back end to offer headless-as-a-service.

Gal started Rally with Rok Knez to create checkout tools for merchants outside of the Shopify ecosystem. Both were previously involved with another checkout company, CartHook, and led the company to process nearly $3 billion in transactions for Shopify merchants before selling to Pantastic in 2021, Gal said.

Rally, which is working with 50 e-commerce merchants currently, provides one-click checkout with payment processing and tools for post-purchase offers that turns the purchase into a multi-revenue channel by allowing the merchant to inject offers after the checkout. For example, rather than going right to a “thank you” page, consumers would be offered the option of upgrading to a subscription or purchasing additional similar products in a way that doesn’t interrupt the payment flow.

Implementing the post-purchase offer has helped merchants increase revenue by over 12% on average, Gal said.

Meanwhile, over the past 12 months, Rally has doubled the size of its team and is “doing millions in monthly GMV (gross merchandise volume),” Gal said.

TechCrunch previously profiled the company when it raised $6 million in seed funding. Today, the company announced additional funding of $12 million in Series A funding. It was led by March Capital, which was joined by Felix Capital, Commerce Ventures, Afore Capital, Alumni Ventures and Kraken Ventures. The new investment, which closed in the first quarter of 2023, gives Rally $18 million in total venture-backed capital.

Gal plans to focus the new funding on go-to-market, including entering new markets, like enterprise and international, and expanding integrations beyond Swell, BigCommerce and others, including Salesforce Commerce Cloud, commercetools, Affirm and AfterPay. Rally will also focus on strengthening its fraud protection offering and build out web3 features, starting with allowing merchants to accept cryptocurrencies in their checkout.

“We want to establish a reputation as the best choice when a merchant is looking to either upgrade their checkout or build a new site without having to build their own checkout,” Gal said. “You can’t just build it and leave it alone, so merchants are looking for a partner that they can trust so they can focus on what they’re best at.”

U.S.

So you want to launch an AI startup

t seems like it’s the best of times for founders thinking about launching an AI startup, especially with OpenAI releasing ChatGPT to the masses, as it has the potential to really put AI front and center in business and perhaps everything we do technologically. Who wouldn’t want to launch a startup right now with the energy and hype surrounding the industry?

But it also could be the worst of times for founders thinking about launching an AI startup, especially one that can grow and be defensible against incumbents in a fast-changing environment. And that’s a real problem for companies thinking about this area: AI is evolving so rapidly that your idea could be obsolete before it’s even off the ground.

How do you come up with a startup idea that can endure in such a challenging and rapidly evolving landscape? The bottom line is that the same principles that apply to previously successful startups apply here, too. It just may be a bit harder this time because of how quickly everything is moving.

A bunch of successful founders and entrepreneurs spoke last week at the Imagination in Action conference at MIT. Their advice could help founders understand what they need to do to be successful and take advantage of this technological leap.

What’s working?
CB Insights compiled data from 2021 and 2022 to understand where VC investment money has been going when it comes to generative AI startups. Given the recent hype around this area, it’s reasonable to think that the volume of investment will increase, and perhaps the allocation will be different, but this is what we have for now.

U.S.

New Zealander without college degree couldn’t talk his way into NASA and Boeing—so he built a $1.8 billion rocket company

This story is part of CNBC Make It’s The Moment series, where highly successful people reveal the critical moment that changed the trajectory of their lives and careers, discussing what drove them to make the leap into the unknown.

In early 2006, Peter Beck took a “rocket pilgrimage” to the U.S.

The native New Zealander always dreamed of sending a rocket into space. He even skipped college because of it, taking an apprenticeship at a tools manufacturer so he could learn to work with his hands, tinkering with model rockets and propellants in his free time.

By the time of his pilgrimage, he’d built a steam-powered rocket bicycle that traveled nearly 90 mph. He hoped his experiments were enough to convince NASA or companies like Boeing to hire him as an intern. Instead, he was escorted off the premises of multiple rocket labs.

“On the face of it, here’s a foreign national turning up to an Air Force base asking a whole bunch of questions about rockets — that doesn’t look good,” Beck, now 45, tells CNBC Make It.

Still, he learned that few companies were actually building what he wanted to build: lightweight, suborbital rockets to transport small satellites. On the flight back to New Zealand, he plotted his future startup, even drawing a logo on a napkin.

Convincing investors to back someone without a college degree in an industry where he couldn’t even land an internship wouldn’t be easy. Failure would push him even further away from his lifelong dream.

Beck launched the company, Rocket Lab, later that same year. In 2009, it became the Southern Hemisphere’s first private company to reach space. Today, it’s a Long Beach, California-based public company with a market cap of $1.8 billion. It has completed more than 35 space launches, including a moon-bound NASA satellite last year.

Here, Beck discusses how he turned his disappointment into opportunity, the biggest challenges he faced, and whether he ever regrets his decision to create Rocket Lab.

CNBC Make It: When you didn’t land an aerospace job in the U.S., you immediately started thinking about launching your own company. Why?

Beck: One of the things I’m always frustrated with is how long everything takes. Ask anybody who works around me: There’s a great urgency in everything. I don’t walk upstairs, I run upstairs. As we’ve grown as a company, it’s always a sprint.

I wish things would get faster. I’m always battling time.

How do you recognize a window of opportunity opening, and when is it worth the risk to jump through it?

Back your intuition and go for it.

I would classify my job as taking an enormous risk and then mitigating that risk to the nth degree. Given that, you have to see windows of opportunity and run into them.

The challenge is that, especially within this industry, you have to poke your head into the corner but not commit too deeply. Otherwise, you’ll get your head cut off. I start by being very analytical: “OK, we’re here. What happened for us to get here? And how do we get out of here?”

Sometimes, you can take big risks. Sometimes, you need to be very safe and methodical about how to back out of situations. Control the things you can control and acknowledge the things you can’t control.

Running a rocket company is kind of like that scene in “Indiana Jones,” where he’s getting chased by that giant ball. You have to flawlessly execute, because the moment that you don’t, the consequences can be terminal for the company pretty quickly.

What do you wish you’d known when you decided to start your own rocket company?

At the end of the day, I probably wouldn’t change anything. There were plenty of errors and failures along the way, but ultimately, those things create the DNA of a company.

Getting your first rocket to orbit is the easiest part. On rocket No. 1, you’ve got all your engineers and technicians poring over one rocket for a large period of time. Now, there’s one rocket that rolls out of that production line every 18 days. That’s just immensely more difficult.

Sometimes, it’s really good to have a bit of a bad day. Not during a flight, obviously, but during testing. Just when you think things are going good, you’re reminded of how hard this business really is. Every time that you take too much of a breath, you’ll be humbled very quickly.

What’s the biggest challenge you faced getting started?

Nothing happens without funding in this business. When I first started Rocket Lab, I ran around Silicon Valley trying to raise $5 million.

At that time, that was an absurd amount of money for a rocket startup. A rocket startup was absurd [in general], it was only SpaceX then. A rocket startup from someone living in New Zealand was even more absurd.

We grew up and tried to raise really small amounts of funding. That really shaped us about being ruthlessly efficient and absolutely laser-focused on execution. The hardest thing [we did] is actually the thing that shaped the company into the most successful form it could be.

When do you feel the most pressure?

The most terrifying thing I’ve ever done is the staff Christmas party. That’s the moment you realize that your decisions are responsible for these people’s livelihoods. As a public company, I take that even more seriously. It’s a tremendous amount of pressure.

On top of that, you have a customer. That can be a national security customer, where lives are depending on you delivering that asset to orbit. It can be a startup, and there can be hundreds of people at a company that you can destroy just by putting the payload into the ocean.

So I absolutely hate launch days. Now that we’ve done 35 launches, I’m not puking in the toilet like I used to. But man, I still really don’t enjoy it, because there’s just so much invested in each launch. So much responsibility.