Meet the Woman Who Took Bill O'Reilly Down
He was the most popular figure on the country's highest-rated television network. But he was no match for New York Times reporter Emily Steel.
I 'm not the story," Emily Steel insists. It's Monday morning and the 33-year-old reporter is sitting near her desk at the New York Times, taking a break from her regular media-business writing to give an interview herself. She is petite, with a soft high-pitched voice, in pearl earrings and a pussy-bow blouse—exactly the kind of woman that a man like Bill O'Reilly might underestimate.
[ Marie Claire ]
Y Combinator loses first COO Qasar Younis after 2 years
Former Y Combinator partner and chief operating officer Qasar Younis has left the company to work “on something new,” according to the departing executive’s personal site and Facebook account. Younis first participated in the accelerator in 2010 as an entrepreneur. Three years later, he joined Y Combinator as an investor after selling his company, TalkBin, to Google.
Y Combinator president Sam Altman made Younis the accelerator’s first COO in August
2015 and tasked him with scaling the “organization and operations as we tackle bigger and more ambitious projects,” Altman wrote at the time. Younis was at one point in charge of managing both Y Combinator’s daily affairs and its slate of events, including demo days and the Female Founders conference. [ Venture Beat ]
Doree Shafrir’s new novel ‘Startup’ is all about sex, lies and digital media
When BuzzFeed News writer Doree Shafrir embarked on her first book, she took the age-old advice, “write what you know.” But even though “Startup: A Novel” is about the New York tech and media scene, she says it’s not about BuzzFeed at all. [ Re/code ]
From Burning Millions to Turning Profitable in Seven Months — How HotelTonight Did It
For five years, the company had been grinding away to drive high growth rates. I had spent the summer trying to raise our next round of funding. It was as if every VC spoke from the same script: “Your growth is good, but damn, your burn is astronomical.” With a monthly burn of $2.5 million, our fundraising seemed destined to end in a deal with really awful terms. It was time to deliver the news to the executive team. I'd practiced many times before, but my voice cracked as I started to tell them that we were changing course. Instead of raising our Series E, we were going to become profitable with the resources we had in the bank. [ First Round Review ]
How the Son of a Chinese Factory Worker Built a $1.5 Billion Startup
Meet the Google Alum Who Created China's Facebook-Groupon Mashup.
Colin Huang belongs to a rarefied cohort of Chinese entrepreneurs who launched their careers in Silicon Valley and then returned home to start successful tech companies. Huang, an ex-Google engineer who worked on early search algorithms for e-commerce, is already on his fourth and most ambitious startup. Pinduoduo, or PDD, is a kind of Facebook-Groupon mashup that Huang believes could revolutionize e-commerce. PDD just raised more than $100 million, according to people familiar with the matter, valuing the company at more than 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) less than two years after its founding. Huang, featured in
the latest episode of the Decrypted podcast (subscribe here), is one reason China has created as many $1 billion startups this year as the U.S. [ Bloomberg ]
Required Reading for Aspiring VCs
Sara Thomas Deshpande
As the level of interest in starting and joining early-stage tech companies grows, so does interest in funding them. Usually once a week or so, I’ll hear from a new college grad, fresh MBA, or career soul-searcher who is eager to break into the Venture Capital industry. I’ve gathered the snippets below to share whenever someone is seeking input and advice. For the first time, I’m sharing the list publicly. [ Medium ]
What will it take for Uber to change?
Mike Isaac of NY Times
Isaac penned a recent 4,000-word profile of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, the “man” in question, for the NYT. He said Kalanick’s pugnacious personality served him well in life and business, but might not so easily work for one of the highest-profile business leaders in the world. [ Re/code ]
Meet the 30 Most Brilliant Young Entrepreneurs of 2017
They've Founded Million-Dollar Companies. And They're Not Even 30. Millennials get a bad rap for being overindulgent, needy and entitled, but these young founders would beg to differ. Besides landing sales and hiring hundreds of employees, Inc.'s 30 Under 30 honorees for 2017 are tackling the world's most intractable problems--from overcoming infant mortality in the developing world to resolving shipping nightmares for burgeoning businesses. Meet this year's top
young founders. [ Inc. ]
Tech legends warm to "bold" Trump
For the past 20 years, Cisco Chairman John Chambers and Kleiner Perkins Chairman John Doerr have been bringing tech execs to Washington to meet with government officials about the issues Silicon Valley cares about, like corporate tax reform, high-skilled immigration and science education. The biggest game-changer over the past two decades? Trump.
Between the lines: Despite the tech industry's overall skeptical view of Trump, two longtime Silicon Valley leaders see
positive momentum for driving pro-business policies that will spur startup investment and, most of all, jobs. [ Axios ]
The on-demand economy is a bubble—and it’s about to burst
Enjoy on-demand services while you can. Whether it’s getting a lift whenever you want or ordering pad thai from the comfort of your couch, the rise of the on-demand economy has made a lot of people’s lives more convenient. But many of the services we know and love might not be around in a few years. Those that survive will continue to make aspects of your life as easy as touching a button—but there will be many more that will die a swift, quiet death. [ QZ ]
Is "Goodbye, Things" the New "Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up"?
Marie Kondo is more than a household name. She's crossed over to the next level and has become a verb for those of us who write, think and obsess about all things home. Yes, "KonMari-ing" and "Kondoizing" are things now. We need our socks to spark joy if we are going to keep them around; why should we settle for anything less? Well, it's possible we should actually go for less - a lot less - according to a new
book I've just read which aims to inspire us to consider living an ultra pared down minimalist life, right down to our socks. [ AT ]
Why Raising Money For a Startup Idea Has The Opposite Effect
When entrepreneurs ask me how to raise money to build their product idea, my answer is always the same: you’re asking the wrong question. I managed to raise investment off a PowerPoint presentation twice over the last 10 years. It sounds like a great idea to start off with money in the bank — but it turns out that it’s not that simple.
The cost of investment goes beyond equity dilution. Raising capital changes your mindset — often in
unhelpful ways. Here’s why I’d never raise outside capital at the idea stage ever again.
[ Medium ]
Silicon Valley is a creepy place full of megalomaniacs, according to ‘The Circle’, arriving in theaters April 28
With our culture already full of hate and distrust for Silicon Valley, one must ask if the epicenter of innovation deserves one more knee to the groin from the world of popular entertainment.
The answer, most assuredly, is Yes. The latest smackdown arrives Friday in the form of a movie called The Circle, which is based on the book of the same name by Dave Eggers. The movie stars Forrest Gump as the Steve Zuckerbergian CEO villain who hires Hermione Granger to work in
his lair of evil that not so coincidentally looks EXACTLY like Apple’s new spaceship campus that opens this month. At work, she befriends that guilt-ridden Stormtrooper who appears to have emerged from his coma at the end of The Force Returns. [ Venture Beat ]