Nobody knows what Palantir is worth.
The tech unicorn is in a fight with Morgan Stanley. A fund of MS owns a small bit of Palantir and values it around $4B. Meanwhile, the MS investment bankers want to take them public…
Category: tech, startups, internet
Data scientist: marketers don’t know what they’re asking for.
“In the latest installment of our Confessions series, where we exchange anonymity for honesty, Digiday spoke with a data scientist inside the marketing department of a company who says marketers are still lost when it…
Startup uses augmented reality to make physical therapy fun for kids.
“The software hooked into Piper’s home TV screen, which displayed an image of Piper standing next to robot avatar. When the avatar marched in place, jumped or balanced on one foot, Piper mimicked its movement. Piper…
The end of the beginning.
In yet another example of top-notch content from the a16z team, Benedict Evans posted a video of his presentation at the firm’s annual tech conference. “Close to three quarters of all the adults on earth…
A conversation with Amazon CTO Werner Vogels.
“Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon, joins YC Software Engineer Kyle Corbitt to share his experience and insights on tech and startups.” | learn more
Red flags and magic numbers in startup metrics.
Andrew Chen created this 80-page deck as part of his interview process at a16z, and now he’s sharing it with us. He digs deep into acquisition & retention metrics, and it’s wonderfully educational. | learn more
Is this AI? A flowchart.
Karen Hao from MIT Technology Review helps clear things up with a handy dandy flowchart. | learn more
SpaceX wins FCC approval to deploy 7,518 satellites.
As context, there are currently fewer than 2,000 operating satellites in space. | learn more
How a promising anti-aging field turned into a battleground.
“In 2013, David Sinclair, a geneticist at Harvard, published a high-profile paper showing that aging mice became more youthful when they were dosed with a NAD-enhancing compound.” Now there are two high-profile well-financed direct-to-consumer companies…
First look at how Musk’s space internet could work.
“Elon Musk has revealed little about his plans to provide internet from space, but a new simulation shows how it could work and who will be able to afford it.” |learn more
Amazon’s struggle with home services.
CNN Business digs into Amazon’s journey to establish itself in the services business from cleaning to installation. This is one area where I think Amazon has made more headlines than headway. | learn more
Some of the latest Techstars companies.
If you’re curious what sort of innovative startups are being supported by the global incubator, here’s a quick speed round of about 10 per link: Toronto, New York, Montreal, Paris, Berlin, Oslo.
Let’s complexify it.
Brad Feld wrote this short post about the process of letting complexity creep in to startups. “We just got it simplified – now let’s complexify it.” | learn more
The VC Ponzi scheme theory.
Chamath Palihapitiya is the founder of the uber-successful investment firm Social Capital, which has recently been in the news for some serious drama (google it if you’re curious). Chamath is interviewed here by Jason Calacanis…
Q3 2018 Venture Monitor report.
Are you interested in the state of venture capital broadly? PitchBook and the NVCA publish this report together. | learn more
Winamp returns in 2019 to whip the llama’s ass harder than ever.
The headline for this TechCrunch article was so great I had to read it. | learn more
Onion: Uber hires marketing firm to help decrease brand awareness.
“In an effort to simultaneously improve and diminish public perception of the ride-sharing company, Uber announced the hiring of a top marketing and consulting firm Tuesday to help decrease awareness of their brand.” |learn more
Google wants to kill the URL.
“Whatever we propose is going to be controversial. But it’s important we do something, because everyone is unsatisfied by URLs. They kind of suck.” | learn more
Is the lean startup dead?
Steve Blank, one of the founders of the Lean Startup movement, opines on the current state of innovation funding. He explains when lean startup methodology applies, and when it might be a good bet to…
A stats-based look behind the venture capital curtain.
Eric Feng from Kleiner Perkins shares interesting data and graphs about how the VC business has changed over the past 15 years. | learn more
Japanese construction robot demonstrates the future of building.
“A new video from AIST shows a prototype robot designed to work on construction sites in situations where there is a shortage of human workers. The robot in undeniably slow but also strikingly accurate, suggesting…
China’s big hack.
You may have seen some headlines about China managing to slip extra chips onto servers operated by Apple, Amazon and other US tech companies. This is a link to the Bloomberg piece with the original…
50 big companies that started with little or no money.
Never forget that it does not require VC funding to build a great business! In fact, most great businesses did not raise money from venture capitalists. | learn more
Video: Andrew Ng on the state of artificial intelligence.
This is a 30-minute talk by Stanford Professor (and former chief scientist at Baidu) Andrew Ng breaking down the state of AI and it’s excellent. The beginning is going to be redundant for those who…
Amazon: to the moon!
Amazon is developing new space and satellite services. You’ll probably see me share more about space startups and technology over time as I grow more interested in the possibilities unlocked by lower launch prices. If…