“Imagine a couple of caffeine-addled biochemistry majors late at night in their dorm kitchen cooking up a new medicine that proves remarkably effective at soothing colds but inadvertently causes permanent behavioral changes.” | learn more
Boston saved $5M annually routing school buses with an algorithm
Before that, they were using a team of 10 human route planners. Interestingly, no jobs were lost during the transition. | learn more
Scott Galloway’s entertaining thoughts on WeWork (video).
#hottake 🔥 #WeWork or, better yet, We What the F**k?
https://t.co/IZeh5O5olv
7:16 PM – 15 Aug 2019
Betterment now turning a profit from retail robo-advising
“In a June 22 interview at the firm’s Manhattan headquarters, CEO Jon Stein revealed that Betterment has crossed the $18 billion mark for assets under management and retail is now funding his firm’s growth.” | learn more
How discount brokerages make money
I thought I knew how the fintech startups of decades-past (the discount brokerages) made their money. It turns out I didn’t know. Now I’m better informed, and it feels great! This is also good background to have before reading the Betterment article below. | learn more
Which categories of seed-stage startups are thriving?
From VC Tom Tunguz. One spoiler: AI is still 🔥🔥🔥. “The answer has changed quite a bit over the last 8 years. Some sectors have hit their apogee and are declining. Others have grown by more than 3x. Yet others are growing geometrically. Let’s take a look.” | learn more
History of public SaaS returns and valuations
This is a very data-driven analysis worth skimming at least. “The overall returns from public SaaS companies have been remarkable — the average SaaS company has returned almost 5x from their IPO price. For context, most venture capital funds strive to return 3x+ funds over a 10-year fund lifecycle, whereas if you had a dollar in every SaaS IPO you’d be up 4.7x as of 9-July-2019, on an average timeframe of fewer than 4 years.” | learn more
China’s small businesses are now getting billions in near-instant loans
“Using real-time payments data and a risk-management system that analyzes more than 3,000 variables, [Alibaba founder Jack] Ma’s four-year-old MYbank has lent 2 trillion yuan ($290 billion) to nearly 16 million small companies. Borrowers apply with a few taps on a smartphone and receive cash almost instantly if they’re approved. The whole process takes three minutes and involves zero human bankers. The default rate so far: about 1%.” | learn more
14 CEOs who got axed after failing to navigate disruption
“Businesses aren’t the only ones feeling the pressure from technological innovation — the CEOs are feeling it too. Here are 14 executives who paid the price for their innovation failures.” | learn more
The state of AI 2019
This deck from MMC Ventures provides interesting updates and data about global AI adoption across geographies and industries. | learn more