A compendium of what our partners read each week, highlighting macro industry trends, our investment focus areas, and general personal and business strategies.
News About Our Portfolio Companies
· Boxed CEO featured on Today Show for generosity to employees
· VendorHawk raises 1.2M with Social Starts participating
· Vinepair shows a data-driven look at bartending
· RentHop’s analysis reveals negative correlation between rent prices and crime
· Glassbreakers on building an enterprise grade platform
· Snaps introduces conversational marketing cloud + SocialFlow’s new whitepaper
· Thinglink wins EdTechXGlobal All Stars Rise award
· YouEarnedIt named one of the best places to work in Austin
· Ambassador on what’s missing from your multichannel marketing strategy
· LeagueApps launches FundPlay, an initiative to allow children to play sports who don’t have access
Industry Trends
· App economy to grow to 6.3T in 2021 (5x) and user base to double to 6.3B
· How Americans spend their time, by income
· What’s different about unicorns + unicorn class of 2017 + 7 startups that recently shut their doors with massive funding + interesting analysis on unicorns
· Amazon reaches 85M Prime members, up 35% from last year
· Angel Funds + Y Combinator has gone supernova
· Waymo backs off 3 of 4 patent lawsuits against Uber + Uber board conflicts and no Kalanick: a sale to Alphabet?
· Semil Shah: Venture Investing is still an apprenticeship business
· The angst of endangered CEOs
· Who came to America and when?
· MIT’s new 3D chip could be key to powerful edge computing
· Gordon Gekko’s cell phone + the iPhone decade in 12 charts
Artificial Intelligences
· Instagram launches an AI system to blast away nasty comments
· Original Stitch and AI
· Ford creates dedicated AI team
Commerce
· Has the death of manufacturing been overexaggerated?
· QVC to merge with HSN in 2.1B deal
· How the growth in ecommerce is shifting retail jobs
Edtech
· How Edtech can gain market share with the teacher of tomorrow
· VC investment in Edtech is rising again
Work Platforms
· Insights on on-demand economy workers
· CodeFights unveils new interview practice to help programmers ace technical job interviews
Content and Experiences
· How AR could save tech from itself
· Blocks by Google
· Adaptly on understanding the new generation of Gen Z platforms
· NewsWhip report on top media publishers on Instagram
Blockchain
· Here’s when to buy bitcoin and ethereum
· Cuban investing in Unikrn after calling bitcoin bubble
· Mapping the decentralized world of tomorrow
· Bitcoin bubble unmatched
· Pantera rising ICO fund
Health
· With 6.5B so far, 2017 is on track to be the biggest digital health funding year yet
· Jawbone to be liquidated (3B+ former valuation)
Business and Personal Strategy
· 5 ideas for starting an online business
· Patterns in startup M&A process
· Sweden eliminating taxes for startup stock options
· What to do if your product isn’t growing
· Why onboarding is so crucial to your growth strategy
· Look beyond existing customers when building product
· The five questions to answer about your company’s strategy