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
- LittlestarVR expands into South Korea
- Newswhip on social metrics
- Stratifyd achieves 300% growth in 2016
- What to consider if considering Snap by SocialFlow CEO Jim Anderson
Industry Trends
- 100 websites that rule the internet
- 10 breakthrough technologies in 2017
- Bottled water overtakes soda
- Why 2017 is a great year to raise venture capital
- Why today’s tech themes poor predictors of hot startups + zebras vs. unicorns + VC liquidity lagging behind expectations
- Will PE and VC funding decrease? New force on Wall Street – the family office?
- Will malls be the next credit crisis?
- Too much PE dry powder + PE backed exits trend downward
- This could be a good sign for private investment markets
- Google moving enterprise…such as with Hangouts to take on Slack
- 409A valuation
- State of SMB SaaS software + SaaS – from scarcity to overabundance
- For advertisers, Instagram outperforms Snap + another Snap clone from Facebook + a post-apps era
- Intel’s 15B autonomous vehicle bet
- Emerging growth companies from JOBS act
- Why on-demand (or taking) economy co’s may never be profitable - except for AirBnB or Postmates soon? Funding trends concur
- 2B phone-in orders ordered in 2016, a 20% increase from 2015
Artificial Intelligences
- How machine learning can improve supply chain efficiency + other opportunities for machine learning + the actuation gap + partners in mind
- Microsoft has created AI that can write its own code
- Voice and the uncanny valley of AI + ultimate guide to voice assistants + the humanity of our AI future + AI’s new new age
- Salesforce and IBM partner on AI
- Searching for lost knowledge in the age of machines
- Cuban on AI/ML
Commerce
- Why every brand needs an Amazon strategy + innovation in e-commerce
- How to improve brand storytelling + the 3 hour brand sprint + good vs. bad ads
- How commerce content sits uneasily in newsrooms + 7 companies using content marketing to take on Amazon
- Luxury brands – the final frontier for omni-channel e-commerce
IoT Software Stack
- Ring, the killer IoT product
- IoT will begin to make an impact at work in 2017 (#4) by understanding which objects to connect to the cloud
- Industrial IoT continues its hot streak
Work Platforms
- Zenefits co-founder launches Rippling
Content and Experiences
- Designing the new reality experience + why smells are so difficult to simulate in VR
- Augmented reality already improving worker performance
- VR - ISS in Oculus
- WebVR’s impact on VR
- AR/VR startups
Blockchain Beyond Currency
- Why we need blockchain security
Health
- What hospitals waste
- Health data startup diet
- Millions of consumer devices susceptible to hacking through sound waves
Business and Personal Strategy
- Teams with complementary skillsets increase organizational performance by 15%
- Can sleep deprivation cure depression?
- Decapitating consciousness
- The investment memo
- Why successful individuals wear the same thing everyday
- What CEOs do + work ethic + 8 principles for great leadership
- What changes at $50M ARR?
- Startup Ideas – why novelty can be overrated
- The new science of team chemistry