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
- Dopamine Labs was recently featured in the Hustle; Dopamine uses the latest in neurosciences and AI to boost app usage and reduce (Space) app addiction
- Mike Hirshland’s advice for early seed stage investing (invested in Greenhouse)
Industry Trends
- Not a bubble but a revolution…definition creep and micro VCs as the most attractive option to deploy risk capital
- Programming is the next blue collar job
- Cooley GO Visualize for venture deals and trends… smaller checks + East Coast redemption provisions in 25% of deals
- Reflecting on Uber and Airbnb … Airbnb winning on profit
- Blackberry now with 0% market share…and everyone’s favorite Nokia phone coming back
- IPhone supply chain contractors not predominately in China?
- Greycroft’s stage-agnostic growth fund (#2)
- Underestimating electric vehicles’ impact on oil + power of low-carbon tech…BP vs. Graham Institute; 2040 vs. 2020 demand halt
- 11 fastest startups to 2B valuation…Netflix foregoing 2B+ by not advertising
- Facebook and Google now own 8 of the top 10 apps + 2/3 don’t trust the news that they read + a solution to fake news?
- The YC annual newsletter…companies funded soon to surpass 100B in value + ACLU enrolls with YC
- Edu endowments report -1.9% return in 2016 as 10 year rate falls to 5% + Harvard’s endowment layoff
- Uber poised to enter the ad game by “maximizing” your commute having already produced restaurant guide using trip data. Uber also buying back shares from restless employees, and how many people actually did delete Uber
- Another sign buying automobiles may be dying…Beepi calls it quits after failed Fair.com merg + Cruise and self-driving app
- Unilever rejects 143B offer from Kraft Heinz + Unilever’s CEO mission to change the world
- The great unbundling…or the great re-bundling?
Artificial Intelligences
- Samsung’s Bixby AI assistant uses Galaxy camera for visual search and text recognition and testing button + the bribery watch
- Google’s new messaging app, Allo with AI + WebVR to Chrome + open source machine learning + collaborative robots
- IBM chief predicts AI won’t be a job killer + AI software within a software (within a software?)
- Goldman embracing automation…2 equity traders left, replaced by computer engineers (1 to replace 4 equity traders)
Commerce
- Are Daily Deals back? Or is this due to Groupon’s cheap acquisition of Living Social
- The most valuable brands by country
IoT Software Stack
- Applications of blockchain within IoT
- Top 5 IoT ideas + 6 tips for anticipating IoT’s impact
Content and Experiences
- Apple reaffirms its interest in AR with Tim Cook claiming AR will be as big as smartphones
- Is Tinder getting into video? And how voice came from nowhere
- Pinterest launches Lens, visual discovery Shazam
- Facebook closing 200 Best Buy Oculus pop ups
Blockchain Beyond Currency
- 16% of healthcare stakeholders plan to use blockchain by 2017
- How AI and blockchain are driving precision medicine
- Blockchain in healthcare report; blockchain in healthcare getting a lot of attention
Work Platforms
- Zenefits new CEO and laying off nearly half of its employees
- Talent, not employer, has priority
Health
- What’s the next billion dollar digit health company?
- Asking the wrong questions about healthcare and cost
- Why healthcare is behind the data curve
Business and Personal Strategy
- Mattermark’s startup content search
- Why learning may have become procrastination + managing strategy the right way
- 55 things learned from a 19 year old VC +11 great websites for education and personal development
- 5 biggest struggles as a 1st time founder
- Is your attention span shorter than a goldfish?
- Cons for shaping product, rebranding a SaaS startup, SaaS product on point, and 6 elements of a successful product launch
- Affirming good habits, managing habits, using AI to do the right thing at right time, and an AI time tracking app