The Information offers a free sample of their usually-paid articles, and its great! This is a thoroughly written piece sharing the story of how Uber Eats went from struggles to success. | learn more
Category: tech, startups, internet
Using AI to fix Wikipedia’s gender problem.
Men are disproportionately represented on Wikipedia – only 18% of biographies are of women. So, software company Primer built a tool that helps serve up bios of relevant women (focused on women in science) for Wikipedia’s editors to vet and publish. | learn more
Why “Uber for X” startups failed.
VC Andrew Chen analyzes why most of the marketplace startups billed as “Uber for X market” have failed. Spot on! | learn more
Path dependence and AI.
Rob May of Talla questions the impact of path-dependence in machine learning models. Humans definitely approach ideas differently depending on what they learned before – should machines? | learn more
Automating industry with cobots.
“Robots in factories have historically been unwieldy, dangerous, and confined to large industrial settings. But now, smaller, cheaper collaborative robots are overcoming traditional challenges in the robotics industry, paving the way for ubiquitous robot technology that gets us much closer to our Jetsons-like future.” | learn more
The websites of 35 unicorn startups before they made it big.
“Would you have seen these websites from Uber, Airbnb, and others and predicted they would one day be billion-dollar companies?” | learn more
a16z bio fund invests in Ciitizen.
Vijay Pande explains their investment thesis in Ciitizen, “a platform that helps patients securely collect and share their personal health data.” The startup looks to address one of the biggest underlying issues in healthcare: the structural lack of transparency when it comes to data. | learn more
How to hack a neural network.
One of the only YouTube channels I subscribe to is called Two Minute Papers. They create short video synopses of AI-related papers in scientific journals. This particular video is a worthwhile way to spend a couple minuets. | learn more
China and the race for AI dominance.
Here’s an interesting perspective from Wired UK that’s heavy on quotes from Kai-Fu Lee, one of the most famous technologists in China (he’s been an exec at Apple, Microsoft and Google). The author thinks China will win the global race. I think the jury’s still out. | learn more
Jason Calacanis warns founders to fasten seat belts.
This is reminiscent of the famed Sequoia RIP good times deck from 2008. Jason sent this email to 250+ founders he’s invested in basically warning them to get ready for “an event” in the markets. He’s not alone: KKR predicted a recession is imminent within 24 months back in early 2018. | learn more
The state of AI 2018.
These 156 slides by VC Nathan Benaich and Songkick founder Ian Hogarth will get you up to speed on state of the art in artificial intelligence. “Consider this report as a compilation of the most interesting things we’ve seen that seeks to trigger informed conversation about the state of AI and its implication for the future.” | learn more
Slack one step closer to winning the chat war.
Software company Atlassian had two competing products: Stride and HipChat. Now it’s shutting both down and selling the IP to Slack. It’s also making a small investment into Slack because, “if you can’t beat them, join them.” | learn more
AI facial recognition deciphers your personality.
“The Biometric Mirror, the only one of its kind in the world, is tucked away in a foyer at the University of Melbourne. … It has been programmed to read faces based on thousands of photos of people that were assessed and ranked by humans according to 14 characteristics, from gender, age and ethnicity to attractiveness, weirdness and emotional stability.” | learn more
Oscar the AI trashcan sorts recyclables from garbage.
It costs $1,000, but some people really need help (me included). | learn more
Ways to think about machine learning.
The always-thoughtful Benedict Evans discusses machine learning in this post. He shuts down some of the oft-repeated sayings like “data is the new oil” in favor of more practical ways to understand the technology shift we’re living through. |learn more
Inside Amazon’s competition to make Alexa chat like a human.
“Amazon’s Alexa Prize is a multimillion-dollar competition to build AI that can chat like a human. On the face of it, Amazon isn’t asking much: just create a chatbot using Alexa that can talk to a human for 20 minutes without messing up, and you get a $1.5 million prize.” | learn more
How to profit from software companies.
“Robert Smith’s private-equity firm, Vista Equity Partners, revamps software companies by following detailed protocols and gauging employees’ personalities and cognitive abilities. ‘Their process is like a factory,’ says one investor.” | learn more
Look into the future of augmented reality.
This short video demos live image detection with digital information attaching to a physical object. This is a peek into the future, and I like it! | learn more
Why A/B test results aren’t as effective as they look.
Andrew Chen published a post that all internet marketers should read. It gets to the heart of why we must discount vanity A/B test results and vendor-promised “conversion rate lift”. He calls it conservation of intent. | learn more
AI is acquiring a sense of smell that can detect illnesses in human breath.
Compared to many other species, humans are relatively week at processing the signals that scents offer. It seems like we may soon be able to compensate by using deep learning to process and interpret the signals found in smells. | learn more
The data-backed case for electric scooters in SF.
Lime, one of the hot electric scooter companies, published a bunch of survey data to help make the case for how they’re improving mobility in San Francisco. | learn more
The scooter platform play.
Andrew Chen, investor at a16z, explains why he thinks scooter startups are important and strategic to the future of transportation. I, for one, can’t wait for some bold company to bring these to Chicago so I can try! | learn more
How to get customers.
Suhail Doshi, founder of analytics company Mixpanel, shared 17 tweets about his experience getting his first 100 customers, his first 1,000, and beyond. Really good stuff! | learn more
Rapid experimentation.
Venture capitalist Fred Wilson remarks on the explosion of startup activity over the course of his career. “And so, we are in a golden era of tech entrepreneurship where anyone with an idea can make a go of it.” | learn more