A compendium of what our partners are reading each week, highlighting macro industry trends, our investment focus areas, and general personal and business strategies.
News About Our Portfolio Companies
- Top 5 tech skills to look for via ProSky
- Unaliwear raises their Series A…with Social Starts committing 250K.
Industry Trends
- Just how badly did Theranos screw up? And only 200M in the bank, 25% of money raised
- Nano funds within micro VC continue to stay hot + why winter was so short for VC funding
- Up to 22B valuation for Snap + investor skepticism + the dangers of an IPO + Spectacles available for purchase online + defending against copycats + a Snapfad + the 12 most important IPO numbers + is Snap like Facebook or Twitter?
- How the like button took over the internet + Zuckerberg on building a global community + is he destroying the internet? A journalist-free world?
- Investing in 2017 + startup hiring outlook for 2017
- Google launches Spanner to take on AWS
- VC firms unicorn-spotting rate + the world’s 50 most innovative companies
- Clear Channel Outdoors America to track how you use your mobile phone
- Kind bar CEO to take on food lobbying through Feed the Truth
- Human embryo editing gets the green light
- Facebook changing its mission + taking on LinkedIn + auditing ad metrics + video app with Amazon/Apple + edu file sharing
- Should robots pay taxes? Bill Gates thinks so
- Apple needs a media deal + failing at revolutionizing TV + struggling with the big deals + joining wireless power consortium/QI so no longer wireless charging for IPhone 8 + Berkshire increases holding + potential dividend hike
- The era of data center consolidation
- Steve Young - a superior athlete and even more successful businessman
- Car insurance rates increasing due to mobile phone use
- SpaceX successfully lands Falcon 9 rocket
- 2017 economic outlook from a chief economist of a hedge fund
Artificial Intelligences
- Humans and AIs – they must merge according to Elon Musk and create a symbiosis + good read on automation and employment
- Google taking on internet trolls with Jigsaw + turning voice into home phones + losing AV employees because of too much money
- AI as the new mobile, commerce, marketing, and future of commerce…a short term fad or the new mobile?
- Using machine learning to predict parking difficulty
- Robots learning the sounds of mechanical breakdown
- AI learning less data?
- Adjusting the H1B visa lottery
Commerce
- Thoughts on maintaining your brand image in the market
- Fashion and vertical commerce
IoT Software Stack
- A successful IoT journey
- Agents + things, the graduate of apps + mobile
Content and Experiences
Hardware startups should lower expectations
- A wearable to break bad habits
- Is live streaming boring? Not for Generation Z
- NBA starts a video-game pro league
- Content exposure, not clicks will drive motivation
Blockchain Beyond Currency
- What is blockchain + how blockchain will evolve in 2017
- Leveraging blockchain to change prisons
- 3 big blockchain ideas at MIT
Work Platforms
- Amazon launches Chime + Amazon/Google turn smart speakers into homephones
- IBM’s Watson for business
- Loom connects entrepreneurs and developers + RapidAPI, creating a backend for apps + a real-time feed of hottest business software
- Staffjoy is shutting down
Health
- Fitbit facing criminal probe alleging theft of Jawbone secrets
- Should we die?
Business and Personal Strategy
- The startup idea matrix
- Maximize engagement to build unicorns + shaping your retention strategy
- The right customers at the right time + growth efficiency and quantitative-driven best practices
- 12K index – the tech media analyzer
- Are your selfies funny but others' narcissistic?
- Mathematical models to build a successful company
- Get your co-workers to trust you more
- 2 mental shifts highly successful people make
- 39 book recommendations