YC’S DANIEL GROSS ON HOW YC CAN DEMOCRATISE AI & REDUCE INCUMBENCY ADVANTAGES& WHY ML ENABLED SOFTWARE WILL EAT THE SOFTWARE THAT ATE THE WORLDDaniel Gross is a Partner @ Y Combinator, the world’s most successful accelerator with alumni that includes the likes of Airbnb, Dropbox, Reddit, Flexport and many more incredible companies. At Y Combinator Daniel heads up all things YC AI having been a Director @ Apple where he focused on machine learning, as a result of his prior company, Cue (also a YC company) being acquired by Apple in 2013. If that was not enough, Daniel also has one of the valley’s most impressive angel portfolios with investments in OpenDoor, Cruise (acquired by GM), Gusto and Github, just to name a few. [ 20 VC ] WHEN THE MONEY RUNS OUT. Fresco News was a growing, promising startup, until it wasn’t.On June 21, three dozen of Fresco News’s 40 employees gathered in the company’s cramped Manhattan office for a visit from a special guest: one of Fresco’s investors, Ashton Kutcher. Kutcher had clearly been asked to give a pep talk. He said he believed in the company’s mission to empower “citizen journalists” to join the media landscape by selling photos and videos to local outlets, which is why he had personally invested a lot of money, recalled an employee who was present. Then he told the staff they wouldn’t be getting paid on time. Again. VC firm is raising a $25 million fund to help foreign entrepreneursUnshackled Ventures, a three-year-old organization that funds and helps foreign entrepreneurs who want to base their startups in the U.S., is raising a targeted $25 million for a second fund, according to an SEC filing. Backdrop: Creative alternatives for foreign entrepreneurs, like Unshackled Ventures, are especially important right now after President Trump chose to delay the Obama-era International Entrepreneur Rule from taking effect last month. The policy would have made it easier for foreign entrepreneurs who aren't eligible for other types of visas and who meet certain requirements to stay in the U.S. for 2.5 years to get their startups going. [ Axios ] Cuban Wants to Buy Back Broadcast.com Name for New Chat Venture Mark Cuban has taken steps to buy back the name of the firm that made him rich, Broadcast.com, so he can use it in his latest business venture, said a person familiar Mr. Cuban’s plans. The entrepreneur wants to build a Twitter-like conversational platform for people to use cryptocurrency tokens to pay to talk with public figures and other influential people. For example, a person could ask Mr. Cuban for his view on President Donald Trump’s response to the violence in Charlottesville this weekend, “pay” for his attention, and then engage him in a one-on-one conversation, said the person. [ The Information ] In “Angel” episode 3, Jason speaks with Andrea Zurek, Founding Partner of XG Ventures (“ex-Googlers”), and angel investor since 2006. Andrea, whose portfolio includes Facebook, Twitter and Box, shares how she picks companies, her ideal terms and valuations, the trouble with TAM and solo founders, deciding when to follow on, how she applies lessons from building Google to help her founders, best advice for accredited and non-accredited investors, insights on increased opportunity for women in investing, portfolio greatest hits & misses, and much more. Thank you to Audible for sponsoring this podcast. CAN SILICON VALLEY DISRUPT ITS NEO-NAZI PROBLEM?There’s a hypothetical question about Nazis that is often posed to non-Nazis: if you could go back in time and kill baby Adolf Hitler, would you? Believe it or not, it’s actually a tough question for a lot of people to answer, with almost a third of those asked saying they’re unsure. I get it. Killing a baby is hard. Even if he did grow up to murder 6 million innocent people. But for those not so sure about such ethical and moral quandaries, let me ask an easier hypothetical question: if social media existed in the 1930s and 40s, and you could go back in time and ban Hitler from using Twitter (and a dozen other platforms) would you? To me, that question is a lot easier to answer with an unequivocal yes. But for most companies in Silicon Valley, it’s not so simple. Silicon Valley Power Broker - Nikesh Arora Of Google & SoftbankSEC Is Studying Spotify's Plan to Bypass IPO in NYSE Listing
Spotify Ltd. executives have met with U.S. regulators scrutinizing the music company’s plan to skip a traditional share sale and list directly on the New York Stock Exchange, according to people with knowledge of the matter. [ Bloomberg ] A California Senator wants to make it illegal for VCs to sexually harass entrepreneursA California senator is hoping to create a new law to end sexual harassment in the venture capital world. Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) is introducing a bill this week that would explicitly prohibit sexual harassment by venture capitalists as an amendment to a current civil rights law. [ Business Insider ] [ Tech Crunch ] Bitcoin Analysts Compete for the Highest Price ForecastEven the skeptics can’t avoid weighing in on bitcoin. It seems like everyone is coming up with a price forecast these days, with some of the biggest banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. jumping into the action, while speculators to long-time investors are also making their bets. [ Bloomberg ] For AI, a real-world reality checkFOR THE PAST three summers, around two dozen would-be computer scientists have come to Stanford University to learn about artificial intelligence from some of the field’s brightest. The attendees, culled from hundreds of applicants, take day trips to nearby tech companies, interact with social robots and hexacopters, and learn about computational linguistics (what machines do when words have multiple meanings, say) and the importance of time management (very). They play Frisbee. But if your mental picture of AI is a bunch of guys creating wilier enemies for their favorite videogames, well, this isn’t that. All the students here at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory’s Outreach Summer (SAILORS) program are girls who have just completed ninth grade, and their studies focus on finding ways to improve lives, not enhance their game play: How do we use AI to keep jumbo jets from careening into one another? To ensure that doctors wash their hands before hitting the OR? “Our goal was to rethink AI education in a way that encourages diversity and students from all walks of life,” says Fei-Fei Li, director of Stanford’s AI lab and a founder of the SAILORS program. “When you have a diverse range of future technologists, they really care that technology is being used for the good of humanity.” [ Google ] Founders of robotics and AI companies urge UN to take action on autonomous weaponsTrump isn't pro-business, he's pro-'white nationalism': Venture capital co-founder Blue Apron hit with multiple class action lawsuitsA new study says more teens than expected are leaving Facebook for Instagram and Snapchat |