Ukrainian-made Varta 2 combat vehicle ready for mass production following tests
Source: Ukrainian Armor, Ukraine's largest private arms manufacturer
Details: The company's Chief Executive, Vladyslav Belbas, stated that Ukrainian Armor is ready to launch mass production of the Varta 2. He highlighted the significant demand for vehicles of this class on the front line.
"Since the prototype's unveiling, we have received numerous requests from the military regarding the Varta 2, indicating a strong need for armoured vehicles of this class at the front.
In addition to speed and mobility, essential in modern warfare, the Varta 2 offers a high level of protection. Its payload capacity allows integration of the Sich combat module, providing unprecedented firepower for its class, enabling infantry support and the destruction of enemy armoured vehicles," Belbas noted.
He added that the company has certified various modifications of the Varta 2, including those equipped with a turret and the Sich combat module.
Background
Ukrainian Armor presented the Varta 2 armoured wheeled combat vehicle at the MSPO 2024 International Defence Industry Exhibition in Kielce (Poland). Developed in just six months, the vehicle features a modern fire suppression system and enhanced mine protection.
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Newsweek
2 days ago
- Newsweek
The Youngest Self-Made Female Billionaire Thinks You Should Take More Risks
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Lucy Guo is firing on all cylinders, all the time. She wakes up before the sun rises to take two, sometimes three, sometimes four back-to-back classes at Barry's Bootcamp. She has both her motorcycle license and scuba diving license, although she prefers to zip around on her electric scooter. Even the speed at which she talks feels like a train zooming by. In that sense, her professional success has mirrored the breakneck pace at which she operates. In the last decade alone, Guo has been selected for a Thiel Fellowship, worked at Snapchat as the company's first female designer, co-founded artificial intelligence firm Scale AI, left Scale AI, founded a venture firm and launched her own social platform Passes. In May, the 30-year-old unseated Taylor Swift as the world's youngest self-made female billionaire with her net worth of $1.3 billion, which largely stems from her nearly 5 percent stake in Scale AI. (The firm achieved unicorn status in 2019 after a $100 million investment from the Founders Fund.) To no one's surprise, all of this happened much slower than Guo had anticipated. "I thought I was going to build another company right away," she told Newsweek about her 2018 departure from Scale AI. But Passes wouldn't come until years later. Women's Global Impact: Lucy Guo Women's Global Impact: Lucy Guo Newsweek Illustration Launched in 2022, the platform offers a way for creators to monetize direct-to-fan content, like subscriptions, livestreaming, pay-per-minute one-on-one calls, paid messaging and e-commerce stores. "You've built the audience. Now it's time to monetize your fanbase," its website states. The platform, whose slogan is "Passes makes millionaires—become the next one," appeals to creators through its low revenue split. On Passes, creators can keep up to 90 percent of their earnings, while the platform takes a 10 percent cut and charges a 30-cent transaction fee. Comparably, creators on OnlyFans only take home 80 percent of their earnings. Patreon, another competitor to Passes, takes 8 to 12 percent as well as payout fees, with most creators reporting deductions of 15 to 20 percent. Passes has largely been positioned as an alternative to OnlyFans, which was originally created as a general subscription platform but since become synonymous with explicit content. Asked about the comparison, Guo admitted that popular culture has made it a lot more difficult for Passes to stand on its own. "It is definitely an uphill battle, but I do think that as we continue gaining more creators and launching different features, hopefully we're able to fight that stereotype, and people are going to see the full vision of Passes," she said. The platform has already signed deals with well-known figures like influencer Jake Paul, NCAA gymnast Olivia Dunne, DJ and producer Kygo and media personality Paris Hilton. Paul has 28.4 million followers on Instagram, while Dunne, Kygo and Hilton each have 5.8 million, 5.5 million and 2.8 million followers on the app, respectively. Currently, the platform supports thousands of creators creators and millions of fans, with top creators earning seven figures per year, Passes A SPOKESPERSON? told Newsweek. Guo launched Passes after she realized it was really difficult for creators to strike deals with larger companies. "At some point, I was like, 'You know what? Maybe I'll do it myself," she said. Between 2022 to 2024, Guo raised $50 million for Passes over three rounds, bringing the company's valuation to $150 million. Lucy Guo launched Passes in 2022. The platform offers a way for creators to monetize direct-to-fan content, like subscriptions, livestreaming, pay-per-minute one-on-one calls, paid messaging and e-commerce stores. Guo currently serves as founder and CEO. Lucy Guo launched Passes in 2022. The platform offers a way for creators to monetize direct-to-fan content, like subscriptions, livestreaming, pay-per-minute one-on-one calls, paid messaging and e-commerce stores. Guo currently serves as founder and CEO. Passes The move from AI to the creator economy has been an adjustment. Guo said that creating an enterprise or business-to-business company, like Scale AI, is the obvious route to becoming a unicorn company, noting that "you can brute force your way into success." On the other hand, taking the consumer route into the creator economy is a lot more unpredictable. "It requires a lot of patience," Guo said. She likened it to working in Hollywood, pointing out that there are "a lot of personalities you have to deal with," and acknowledged that, "oftentimes, consumers don't know what they want." "You kind of just build it and see what gets adopted," she said. The tech founder tries to solve creator problems by observing the ways they connect with their fans, finding solutions that would make it easier for them to communicate and interact. Choosing to build a platform for creators may not have been the easiest move, but Guo recalls that she's "always optimized for learning." Every time she's had to figure out her next step, she tends to lean into areas where she's unfamiliar. "I think of what I'm leaving and what I'm gaining," she said. "If I'm not leaving life-changing money on the table, but I'm gaining more knowledge, that knowledge is going to be valuable down the road. Like, even if your first company doesn't work out, you're going to be able to take that knowledge and either get a job that pays more or start something else." Guo is thrilled to see more women enter the tech industry and become founders in their own right, explaining that these women will typically go onto become investors who fund tech project led by other female founders. She said the best advice she could offer another aspiring woman in tech is to hold off on fundraising until minimum viable product (MVP), an initial, scaled-down version of a product with just enough features for early adopters to provide feedback on. "MVPs can be created without using any technology sometimes," Guo said. "Let's say you wanted to create a babysitter-matching app. You can literally run it off of Google Forms and start getting revenue that way. Or if you wanted to create a B2B enterprise software tool. You can can start collecting [letters of intent] from companies because that makes your fundraising so much stronger." Guo will join Newsweek at this year's inaugural Women's Global Impact forum. The August 5 event, hosted at Newsweek's headquarters in New York City, will bring together some of the world's top female executives and connect them with rising stars across industries and job functions. For more information on the event and entry guidelines, please visit the Women's Global Impact homepage.

Miami Herald
24-07-2025
- Miami Herald
How creators can launch businesses and reclaim their audiences
In the heyday of the creator economy, stars are made in living rooms. Ordinary people prove capable of extraordinary things, turning content into cash and ideas into empires. But while creator power is growing, the control they have over their own brands on social media is not. Payment structures for sponsored brand content have shifted, as have algorithms and platform rules. A significant majority of creators view their monthly incomes on social platforms as unpredictable, while 78% say appeasing algorithms impacts what they create, according to a 2024 Patreon survey. As many of them wade into entrepreneurship and launch businesses of their own, this restrictive social media environment can hinder their growth. According to Shopify research, almost a quarter of businesses that added the platform as a sales channel did so to gain full control over their online presence. Ownership matters, especially for creators who build their audiences around their deeply personal identities. Learn how two creators, Katie Sturino and Rajiv Surendra, pursued entrepreneurship to diversify their projects and income streams-and keep doing what they love, on their own terms. When "too real" is just right Katie Sturino started in the same way as many of today's top creators: posting authentic content that attracted a niche audience. But she was before her time. "I was warned by people that I was too raw, too real," she says. A decade ago, filtered images of perfectly poached eggs and sleek manicured hands reigned on Instagram. Sturino was here for real talk. "I started my platform because I just wanted to help bigger girls find clothes," she says. "Then I realized women of all sizes were feeling bad about their bodies." Her content appealed to a wider audience than expected, and expanded to cover other body issues. The internet was ready for it. In the years since Sturino launched her personal brand, creator aesthetic has taken on a more authentic quality. "I'm very comfortable with the new landscape because it's all about being real. That's easy for me," she says. For Sturino, starting a business was about filling a gap she identified by listening to her audience. "I wanted to challenge the beauty industry to put out products that help with actual problems, not made up problems," she says. Problems like chafing, sweating, and even hemorrhoids. Megababe launched in 2017, founded by Katie, her sister Jenny, and friend Kate McPherson. At the time, Sturino had around 55,000 loyal followers on Instagram. "It's not a lot of followers to launch a gigantic beauty brand," she says. But it presented another way to deliver value to her fans and deepen the relationship. Go-live day was tense, with Sturino's parents' garage filled with product that wasn't flying out the door. Then, after landing a spot on The Today Show, the flood of sales happened. Megababe has since grown into a force in the beauty industry, expanding product lines and leaning into major retail partnerships. And Sturino's personal brand has grown alongside it. She's become a leading advocate for size inclusivity and published her first book, "Body Talk," a guide to self-acceptance. Still, her social content isn't reaching everyone. "For the past two years, I've been on and off shadow banned," she says. She's seeing it in her own data. "Plus size bodies often get flagged as inappropriate." Some 60% of creators say Instagram does not always show fans their best work, according to the same Patreon survey. "It's a real balance trying to figure out how to feed it correctly while also putting out content that you want your audience to see," Sturino says. "Platforms change, algorithms change," she says. Diversifying her projects and platforms-she's now on Substack and is publishing a second book-means she has more control over her message. And through Megababe's website, Sturino isn't at the mercy of the algorithm. She calls the shots on how and when her brand shows up. Her success with entrepreneurship hasn't changed Sturino's approach to authenticity. "I think people are shocked at how hands-on I am," she says. "It probably feels like someone else is answering my DMs. I'm still here talking to people about their armpits." A little dark, in a good way Unlike Sturino, scaling an empire isn't in Rajiv Surendra's plans. While the world may know him best for playing the charismatic and shameless Kevin Gnapoor in "Mean Girls", Surendra lives a decidedly quieter life these days. In 2021, HGTV toured Surendra's NYC apartment. The resulting video has garnered over 4 million YouTube views. Prompted by the enthusiasm for his lifestyle, he started his own YouTube channel, broadcast from that very apartment. That channel became a window into Surendra's world, a place where he shared his passions for art, vintage, and creating by hand. It's a blueprint for slow living, a throwback to simplicity. Fans follow along as he collects silver antiques, canes a chair, and makes candles and soaps from scratch. It's the latter that opened up a new opportunity for Surendra: His fans wanted to buy his products. "I didn't even know how to make that work. I only make like twelve bars of soap a year," he says. Eventually, he relented, though, and launched his own online shop. "I finally decided to say, 'OK, but you can only buy what I have.'" Alongside soaps, Surendra sells his watercolor studies and clay pots, also made by hand. "It was a big question mark for me whether people would be willing to pay $50 for a bar of handmade soap, but they were," he says, "and the soap actually is the fastest-selling thing on my website." While his approach means the store is often out of stock (awaiting the next drop of slow-crafted goods), the move unlocked a few things for Surendra as an artist. First, the store became a natural extension of his personal brand and YouTube channel, unbound by platform parameters. He worked with a close friend to design it after the feeling and aesthetic of his own apartment-the space that started it all. "The website feels kind of quiet, it feels a little dark in a good way," he says. "It really feels like me." Having full ownership over his brand like this is a stark contrast from his days in the entertainment business. "You would not believe how restrictive these contracts are. They want to own the rights to everything and have a say in everything," he says. "When I'm creating stuff in my apartment, no one's telling me what to do and how to do it." This new shop, launched in late 2024, isn't Surendra's first foray into entrepreneurship. He ran a calligraphy business for 10 years, producing signage and other projects for clients. It was here that he set boundaries for himself, once even turning down a massive client while he was struggling to pay rent. "A lot of people would say it was a stupid decision," he says. "But I knew that the goal was longevity and the only way to get there was by keeping the passion, by being excited about it." And he's able to do just that with his new venture, controlling what-and how much-he makes and sells. Selling products on his own site means he's closer than ever to his fans, too. "Now that I'm engaging in transactions with viewers, there's an added element of obligation," he says. "There's this new facet to the relationship that feels more personal." Forging these relationships is critical in a reality where more than half of creators say it's harder to reach their followers today than it was five years ago, according to Patreon data. These days, Surendra is thinking a lot about compromise. While in the past he's rejected the idea of mass producing something so personal, he's now entertaining ways to scale. "Maybe there are people or companies that can make the soap exactly as I make it," he says. "I am starting to think about ways of making it work, but still keeping the passion alive." This story was produced by Shopify and reviewed and distributed by Stacker. © Stacker Media, LLC.


Entrepreneur
23-07-2025
- Entrepreneur
TikTok Tactics & Instagram Gold: How Gen Z Is Monetising Faster Than Millennials Ever Did
Why Today's Teens Are Building Businesses Before They Can Legally Toast to Them You're reading Entrepreneur United Kingdom, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. A new breed of entrepreneurs are redefining how to make it in business and they are doing it better, quicker and cleverer than ever before. Gen Z does not wait when there are promotions or funding rounds. They are selling their lives, personalities and interests on the fly, in places such as TikTok and Instagram. Although Millennials were the first ones to jump into the influencer economy, Gen Z has mastered it. Not to mention, now they are driving viral content into six-figure incomes, brand affiliate billings into equity, and online influence into entrepreneurial gild. Scroll to Sale: Real Time Monetising Social media has become a business model to Gen Z and not merely a highlight reel. They speak the language of virality and play well at aesthetics, and are unashamed of selling out. Contrastingly to Millennials who in most cases took brand-building and monetisation as two distinct options, Gen Z has merged the two since the initial post. Whether displayed in the form of affiliate links on a GRWM video or behind a Patreon paywall or even disguised as a meme page that operates a drop-shipping business, monetisation is no longer a milestone, it is the baseline. Young artists as young as 16 years old are signing brand contracts, starting skincare products and selling virtual items without driving to a conference hall. The Algorithm as a Business Partner Gen Z does not want followers but rather the algorithm. They experiment with what does well and they copy, paste and frame until the recipe sticks. Their currency is the short-form video, strategy is storytelling, and an asset is attention. Consider Tik Tok: a 30-second tutorial, haul, or video of a day in your life, is powering everything, including e-commerce surges and personal brands dynasties. The distance between Media and Money is closing, as TikTok Shop and Instagram affiliate tools are increasingly being window-shot, and Gen Z is making money. Creator First, Entrepreneur Always Whereas Millennials took years to create credibility in order to start a business, Gen Z does the opposite. They build the product after becoming influential with many of them. Consider a university student that develops an account with a million followers to review tech devices. By the time they come up with their own line of gadgets, they already have the following, authentication, and demand. It is this creator to founder pipeline which is turbo-charging Gen Z. They do not even need to advertise in billboards because they are the billboard. They do not require focus groups because they read their comments. Nor do they require seed capital since their first drop can be financed by a single viral video. Authenticity Over Aesthetics If Millennials gave us curated feeds and polished perfection, Gen Z gave us realness. They'll post without makeup, film from messy bedrooms, and talk openly about burnout or breakups—all while monetising through it. And that's exactly why they convert. Their authenticity builds trust. Their relatability drives engagement. And their followers don't just scroll—they buy. Not Just Influence—Ownership Gen Z isn't content being the face of someone else's brand. They want ownership. We're seeing them launch e-books, merch lines, podcasts, and even tech platforms to keep more control (and profit) over their ideas. The creator economy, once ruled by brand sponsorships, is now being overtaken by digital products, community platforms, and recurring revenue models like subscription newsletters or paid Discords. They're also smarter about financial literacy. From crypto wallets to investing tutorials, they're sharing (and selling) knowledge at a pace Millennials never dared in their early 20s. So, What Can We Learn? At Entrepreneur UK, we see Gen Z not just as content creators—but as serious entrepreneurs. They're flipping the script on traditional business by monetising faster, scaling leaner, and owning more. Their model? Build influence, monetise early, keep it real, and evolve fast. In a world where attention is the new capital, Gen Z isn't waiting their turn. They're turning likes into livelihood—one reel, one trend, one swipe at a time.