Despite the myth of the billionaire college dropout, most wealthy Americans have a degreeWhen Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was asked to give this year’s commencement address at Harvard, he asked for advice from Bill Gates. Zuckerberg said, “They know we didn’t actually graduate, right?” To which Gates replied, “Oh, that is the best part! They actually give you a degree!” This recent exchange between two famous Harvard dropouts might lead you to think college doesn’t matter. Numerous media stories and even famous billionaires are glamorizing dropouts or encouraging kids to skip college entirely. [ QZ ] Dear Uber, That Record Funding Means Didi Is Coming for YouChinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing just raised more than $5.5 billion, giving Uber Technologies Inc. Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick one more thing to worry about. Didi’s record funding round is said to value the company at more than $50 billion and gives it a war chest to ramp up efforts to harness artificial intelligence, build driverless cars, and compete more aggressively in foreign markets. The cash infusion coincides with a rough period for Uber, which is facing lawsuits and an image problem, and follows a detente in China after Uber agreed to essentially cede the market to Didi in exchange for a significant stake. [ Bloomberg ] Sheryl Sandberg: 'They Were Right. I Didn't Get It.'"Lean in." The phrase has become a part of the modern American workplace, largely because it was the title (and the main message) of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's2013 mega-bestseller. But it's also been criticized for being a little tone-deaf and dismissive of working women whose circumstances don't allow them to "lean in." [ INC ] E728: “Angel” Sneak Peek+Startup Tune-up: First-look & lessons from Jason's book + pitchesThe Networking Secret That Only Requires Writing Four Emails A YearWhen you’ve got a great professional network, you hear about good opportunities before others do. When you need to get in touch with somebody important, you have no trouble getting a warm introduction. When you travel, you’ve often got a friendly contact who can show you around or help you find somewhere to stay. [ Fast Company ] Jeff Bezos Is Just a Few Billion Dollars Away From Becoming the World’s Richest Person Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com and founder of aerospace company Blue Origin, is just a few billion dollars away from dethroning Bill Gates to become the world's richest person. The wealth of Bezos grew by $3.3 billion on an after-hours surge of Amazon stock Thursday, reports Bloomberg, on the back of the online retail giant's expectations-beating first quarter results. Silicon Dragon Beijing 2017: Venture Talk - Dave McClureThe Startups Economy Is Finally StabilizingAfter a prolonged retrenchment, startups in the U.S. are finally seeing better days. The Bloomberg U.S. Startups Barometer rose 0.6 percent from a year earlier, marking the first year-over-year increase since the end of 2015. Bigger funding totals and more exits buoyed the index. [ Bloomberg ] Women in tech: Why the industry needs to fix its gender problemAs the co-founder and chief executive of PledgeMe, Anna Guenther was naturally on the invite list to last year's Hi-Tech Awards, which celebrate New Zealand's tech industry. She went along with one of the awards' sponsors - a man. "I remember a guy approached us and complimented the man I was with on bringing such a 'hot date'. He didn't think that maybe I ran a tech company, nor did he even tell me to my face I looked nice," she told The Wireless. When the nominations were announced for this year's awards, held in Auckland's Viaduct Harbour next month, Guenther noticed a worrying trend. [ nzherald ] Tech companies may have a public-image issue in political battleground statesPresidential candidates obsess every four years over swing states like Florida and Pennsylvania, where undecided voters can make or break their campaigns. For tech companies like Airbnb, Facebook and Uber, those states appear to be proving just as tough — and critical — to make a dent politically. In a poll conducted at the end of April, Republican consultants with the firm Firehouse Strategies found that broad swaths of the likely voters they surveyed in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida and Wisconsin haven’t really made up their minds about these three tech giants. Tujia, Airbnb's Rival in China, Seeking to Raise $300 MillionAirbnb Inc.’s Chinese rival Tujia is in talks to raise more than $300 million, putting pressure on the U.S. home-sharing startup less than a month after it officially debuted in the country. Tujia Holdings is one of China’s biggest platforms for property owners seeking to turn their homes into temporary lodgings. It has 400,000 listings plus another 300,000 on its low-cost platform Mayi, as well as more acquired from travel giant Ctrip.Com. By comparison, Airbnb had 80,000 properties in China as of 2016. [ Bloomberg ] Sydney startup SnackableTV is creating a streaming platform for short form contentAs you may have noticed on your Facebook feed, video is everywhere, and brands are taking notice. According to data from eMarketer, digital video ad spending in the US is predicted to reach US$28 billion by 2020, up from $9.9 billion in 2016. Looking to take this video spend and create better content is Sydney startup SnackableTV, a free streaming platform, or network, for high quality short form content aimed at millennial viewers. [ Startup Daily ] AS NATIONALISM RISES, SILICON VALLEY’S BLACK LEADERS STRENGTHEN THEIR RESOLVE“Welcome to the Blacks in Silicon Valley Trump rally,” Andrea Hoffman said to boisterous laughter throughout the room. And with that, the 2017 Culture Shifting Awards Brunch was underway. Last weekend, on a cool Sunday morning at one of the nicest hotels in Silicon Valley overlooking the Santa Cruz mountains, black CEOs, entrepreneurs, engineers, and investors had gathered to network and to celebrate a handful of leaders who had broken down barriers and proven that skin color does not determine to which degree a person can succeed in Silicon Valley. [ The Verge ] A Tale of Two Squirrels: The Not So Simple Math on Venture Portfolio SizeBy now most VCs are familiar with Dave McClure’s large portfolio theory. In short, he believes that at seed stage, it doesn’t make sense to have a portfolio with fewer than 50–100 companies, because venture returns depend on outliers and you need a big enough portfolio to consistently capture them. In the post, he outlines a range of typical outcomes for a large batch of seed-stage investments. You can see some variation of this trend in most published venture returns data such as Crunchbase or PitchBook. [ Medium ] The past, present, and future of design in Silicon ValleyThe following is an excerpt from The Way to Design, a guide to becoming a designer founder and to building design-centric businesses. Adapted and reprinted with the author’s permission. Until very recently, success in Silicon Valley required focusing almost single-mindedly on an organization’s technical prowess. It meant having an unimpeachable technical founder, 10X engineers, a relentless devotion to computing dominance. Expending valuable time on anything else — particularly design — was evidence of distraction from the real work of the company. |