Buzz Room
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
- Zingbox to showcase IoT security innovations at HIMSS17
- Affinio expanding into LinkedIn
- Codefight’s new “Interview Practice” lets engineering applicants see questions asked in interviews and then rates answers
Industry Trends
- Why the M&A boom is hurting PE firms + global tech M&A reaches record high in 2016
- Fed will soon ease quantitative easing + fed rate hike coming soon
- Tech job layoffs increase in 2016 + businesses ordered more robots last year than ever
- >Comparing VCs and corporate VCs
- Renewable energy patents + space startups are booming
- Winning the race for self-driving cars
- Facebook and Google funding journalism
- Olympics’ cities drop out for 2024, leaving Paris and LA
- Capitalism at a crossroads + the global network has become unstable
- Burger King buys Popeyes at highest multiple for 18B
- Revisiting Tim Ferris’s interview with Peter Thiel + how Palantir helped NSA spy on the world
- Acorns, a savings application, actually encourages purchasing
- Buffet’s 10B investment in airlines + what Ted Williams taught Buffet + will he take over one as he did with railroads?
- Apple Park to open in April with details
- Google just discovered a massive web leak
- Google’s Waze expanding ride sharing service + lawsuit against Otto and Uber
- AirBnB and Uber hit with regulations + substantial poor PR for Uber + subway rides at lowest point since 2009 – because of Uber?
- The worst response to automation…universal basic income?
- The end of employees? But most employees aren’t concerned + new office sensors know how hard you are working
- Don’t get too excited about the cyclical nature of non-tech acquisitions
- Yik Yak pivoting to group messaging
- Gartner’s BI analytics magic quadrant
- Steve Case on VC in underserved areas + finding innovation in old economy industries
- Taxi medallion bubble?
- Big Food’s Big Dilemma
- VC firms back record number of cybersecurity firms
- The problem with all female voice assistants
- What old school tech giants are doing to recruit talent
Artificial Intelligences
- Most promising AI companies
- The competitive value of data from analytics to machine learning
- Wells Fargo pushes into AI
Commerce
- How one VC believes virtual goods will be the next big gold rush
- AI + mobile commerce: no longer a nice-to-have
- Why m-commerce is the new e-commerce
Content and Experiences
- Tim Cook believes AR will be as big as iPhone + AR vs. VR
- MagicLeap acquires Dacuda and scrambles for prototype
- Surgeon VR sedates patients
- 2016 VR sales miss
- NBA goes VR at All-star game + VR gets magical
- Amazon’s Alexa with 10,000 apps, or skills
Blockchain Beyond Currency
Blockchain technology to
displace two factor authentication
?
9 things learned from
Health
- AI startups in healthcare
- Advancing private markets to achieve better health, lower costs
- FitBit’s turnaround strategy
- Elderly care goes mobile on-demand
Business and Personal Strategy
- The evolution of marketing thanks to SaaS
- How to stop using filler words + how being bored makes you creative
- Options for selling your company + exit strategy is not an oxymoron
- Business ops and sales integration paramount
- 12 key levers for SaaS success
- >What was learned as a first-time analyst on Angellist team
- How to build a winning routine
- Required reading for early business hires
- Ranking the best data science courses
- Name dropping backfires + getting human resources right
- Why facts don’t change minds + 6 months of learning in 2 days