A weekly 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
- Werk on how to close the gender gap
Industry Trends
- Still a prosperous time for seed investors
- Snap, a camera company, plus a glance into Snap’s IPO filing – is it too soon for Snap’s IPO? How does it compare to Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn? Product lessons from Snap’s IPO, Snap’s stance on fake news, the 3rd cofounder, the 6 most interesting things about its IPO, and publisher revenue trend comparison - Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram
- Visualizing Alphabet’s 4B bets; will GE buy more startups than Google in 2017?
- NYC and LA GDP surpasses 46 of 50 US states; NYC would rank 13th in GDP vs. countries
- Facebook continues growth and dominance in mobile revenue
- A paradigm shift? GenX, not millennials, are more frequent users of Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter
- Will the next unicorn come from outside the Valley?
- Upending the VC model
- Walmart takes on Amazon with 2 day delivery without a membership fee and commits $250B to manufacturing jobs through 2023
- Lyft launching in 40 new cities but Uber dominating US business traveler market, and Pittsburgh/Uber’s relationship becoming tense
- Amazon’s 2016 online sales growth, visualizing Amazon’s growth, and Amazon’s employee growth
- Software ate the world; now it’s automation’s turn
Artificial Intelligences
- An introduction to AI
- Fun in machine learning
- China is catching up to the US in AI
- AI to identify skin cancer
- Distinguishing AI value from hype
- Is AI driving society to socialism?
Commerce
- Credit card thieves move online with new chips
- The US dollar had its worst month in 30 years
IoT Software Stack
- Making sense of IoT analytics in the industrial space
- What makes a device smart
- 5 IoT trends to watch
Content and Experiences
- The current state of VR and the Valley’s problems with VR
- How GE created AR buzz with internal wearables
- 2017 updates for Google voice
Blockchain Beyond Currency
- 9 things to know about blockchain in healthcare and 8 healthcare blockchain startups to know
- 2016 blockchain healthcare report
- 2017 could be blockchain’s biggest year
Work Platforms
- Recruiting and retention in the gig economy
- Is the gig economy the way of the future?
Health
- Telemedicine booming under the ACA
- Jawbone pivoting to digital health
- Patients without control of their bodies can now communicate
- Quantum computing breakthrough allows for the impossible
- Blame technology, not increased life spans, for technology increase
Business and Personal Strategy
- What elite VC investors read each morning
- Stop calling them soft skills; generosity is key – but how to avoid burnout
- How statistics have lost their power
- How entrepreneurs can raise money more effectively, how to build VC relationships, and a red flag list from top VCs
- How network effects are essential
- Measuring leadership and navigating mid success with startups from YC
- Why revenue projections are important for early stage startups
- Life in numbers
- Where development related to ending poverty is going wrong