No Longer a Dream: Silicon Valley Takes On the Flying CarOn a recent afternoon, an aerospace engineer working for a small Silicon Valley company called Kitty Hawk piloted a flying car above a scenic lake about 100 miles north of San Francisco. Kitty Hawk’s flying car, if you insisted on calling it a “car,” looked like something Luke Skywalker would have built out of spare parts. It was an open-seated, 220-pound contraption with room for one person, powered by eight battery-powered propellers that howled as loudly as a speedboat. The tech industry, as we are often told, is fond of disrupting things, and lately the automakers have been a big target. Cars that use artificial intelligence to drive themselves, for example, have been in development for a few years and can be spotted on roads in a number of cities. And now, coming onto the radar screen, are flying machines that do not exactly look like your father’s Buick with wings. More than a dozen start-ups backed by deep-pocketed industry figures like Larry Page, a Google founder — along with big aerospace firms like Airbus, the ride-hailing company Uber and even the government of Dubai — are taking on the dream of the flying car. [ NY Times ] Uber’s C.E.O. Plays With Fire
Travis Kalanick, the chief executive of Uber, visited Apple’s headquarters in early 2015 to meet with Timothy D. Cook, who runs the iPhone maker. It was a session that Mr. Kalanick was dreading. For months, Mr. Kalanick had pulled a fast one on Apple by directing his employees to help camouflage the ride-hailing app from Apple’s engineers. The reason? So Apple would not find out that Uber had secretly been tracking iPhones even after its app had been deleted from the devices, violating Apple’s privacy guidelines. [ NY Times ] Q&A: 83North's Laurel Bowden 'very bullish' on UKEarlier this month, London- and Tel Aviv-based VC firm 83North closed its fourth fund at $250 million. We sat down with investing partner Laurel Bowden to discuss her investments and the likely effects of the Brexit negotiations on the UK’s VC and startup ecosystem. [ PitchBook ] The Independent Consigliere To Founders - Joanne WilsonJoanne Wilson, better known to her fans as “Gotham Gal” for her enduring blog of the same name, has been a fixture of New York investing for nearly a decade. She’s an independent voice unafraid of controversial points of view, and coupled with her husband and Union Square Ventures founder Fred Wilson, comprises one of the most powerful couples in venture finance. Learn more: https://shift.newco.co/the-independen.. RANKED: The 22 most prominent venture capital investors in Europe in 20172017 is a time of serious political upheaval — but in the startup world, life must go on. Like the US, Europe has been shaken by populism over the past year, with Britain voting to leave the European Union in June 2016. The vote rocked the London tech community, widely regarded as the epicentre of the tech industry on the continent, with concerns ranging from potential hiring difficulties to the availability of venture capital to help startups grow. [ Business Insider ] We’ve launched Esho Ventures for PropTech foundersA short note from me to let all you #PropTech founders know that we’ve launched Esho Ventures (EV). Initially, we’ll be working out of our Pyrmont office. We plan to have a New York presence too, just making sure we’re partnering with the right team. An announcement on that will be forthcoming. [ Medium ]Where’s The Money? Takeaways from SheWorx100 Summit NYCWhile the learning curve is steep, getting funding is about more than just an understanding of terms, it’s about the art of relationships. For female founders, the funding landscape has been less than friendly. According to Crunchbase, the number of female-founded, venture backed companies has plateaued at 17% since 2012. Is venture the only way to go? Certainly not. There are a diversity of funding sources founders can tap into. Crowdfunding, for example, is the only type of funding where women outperform men. The SheWorx100 Summit NYC brought together 200 female founders, over 30 leading investors, and a panel of top female investors and discussed actionable ways to leverage these different sources of capital. [ Medium ] Silicon Valley’s SecretDinner at Meredith Ackley’s house is like stepping into a dream. The walls are painted pink and purple. There’s a heated patio and arching branches over the backyard. The sun beams through the windows, music plays and three beautiful girls dance with their mother in the kitchen. The missing piece of the fairytale is Ackley’s husband, Eric Salvatierra. It’s been four years since he called to say his last “I love you.” [ CNN ] Most Important Lesson Learned: People FirstTony Tjan, CEO of Cue Ball I’ve spent much of my career reflecting on what it really means to be a good person and a good leader. Over the last three years, I’ve researched this topic extensively and collected my findings in my forthcoming book, Good People, on sale April 25. I researched nearly 100 case studies of leadership, and all unequivocally affirmed that real goodness is about quality of character, not measures of competence. Being “good” means many things, but certainly one of the most important is having a people-first philosophy. You can identify the best leaders by how well the understand that being people-first means creating more leaders, not mere followers. LIFE AFTER DEATHWhen she lost her husband, Sheryl Sandberg also lost her bearings. Now she wants to help others find a way through grief. [ Time ] BOX CEO Aaron Levie Talks Trump, Tech, And How To Stay Nimble As A Public Software CompanyAaron Levie's path to building a $2 billion publicly-traded, software company all started with a thumb-drive--or, to be more specific, his hatred of thumb-drives. As a college student in 2005, Levie was fed up with how hard it was to share data and documents. Instead of complaining, he dropped out. A few months later, he'd assembled a few entrepreneurial pals and settled outside San Francisco to build a data-sharing platform that would be better than USB drives and clunky email systems. [ Forbes ] |