💬 Quoted…​​ "Although our vision is technically ambitious, our technology is real now."

Earlier this month, Blue Origin quietly announced that scientists at the Jeff Bezos-founded space company managed to create working solar panels and electricity transmission wires out of a simulated version of … Moon dust (literally – we’re talking about the dust and dirt found on its surface).

• This accomplishment is something researchers have been trying to do for more than five decades, ever since astronauts first brought lunar soil back to Earth.

📉 Number of the Day: $20.6 billion = the amount of new funds raised by all venture-capital firms last quarter, per new data from Preqin Ltd; that figure represents a 65% drop from the previous year, and the lowest Q4 amount since 2013.

🤯 Did You Know?... Between the ages of 20 and 60, the average American English speaker learns a new word about once every two days, per a peer-reviewed study from 2016.

📖 Worth a Read: How to make friends as an adult → (Startup Social)