Watch the full interview: Kara Swisher and MSNBC interview Google CEO Sundar Pichai and YouTube CEO Susan WojcickiSkip that Grammy party tonight and turn on Recode’s town hall with MSNBC instead. We partnered with MSNBC to produce a town hall event series that looks at how technology is impacting every aspect of our lives. While technology has brought much good to the world in the form of opportunity, innovation and jobs, it has also impacted our elections and democracy. And as technology moves forward, there is a fear that some will be left behind. Our first program airs tonight with Recode’s Kara Swisher and MSNBC’s Ari Melber interviewing Google CEO Sundar Pichai and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki. [ Re/Code ] Five myths of seed investingPre-seed has risen in prominence in recent months due to the growing gap between what founders are seeking at the seed stage and what the market is offering, yet conversations around pre-seed come with preconceived notions and false assumptions about the companies and investors who care about early stage funding. To break down these misconceptions, we’ve assembled a list of 5 common myths about pre-seed and share what’s behind our passion for feeding the ideas of tomorrow’s next great companies. [ TechCrunch ] How To Identify A SaaS Market That Machine Learning Will DisruptIn SaaS, machine learning has become an essential component to many different products. Whether it’s automating responses to inbound sales queries, identifying expense reports for audit, or surfacing anomalies in data, machine learning improves workflow software. To date, most software imbued with machine learning reduces costs rather than increase revenues. Why is this the case? Because machine learning is focused on efficiency gains. First, to train a machine learning model requires large amounts of data. Repetitive workflow processes produce this data. With enough data, a machine learning model can be applied to automate the workflow. For example, it’s straightforward to build machine learning models to automatically answer password reset questions. Second, automation reduce costs because they eliminate the need to hire additional people to handle more work. A bot replies to login reset questions with an automated response in a link to a knowledge base, freeing customer support reps to focus on more challenging questions. [ TOMASZ TUNGUZ ] Austin Emerges As A Hub For Crypto And Blockchain StartupsWhen it comes to hot cryptocurrency markets, Austin, Texas, is not the first city that comes to mind. But if you dig a little deeper, the Texas capital is increasingly becoming a hotbed of blockchain activity. A prime example in Austin is Factom, a top 30 global cryptocurrency company that uses the blockchain to keep records and identities more secure. It has a valuation of around $500 million and counts the Department of Homeland Security and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation among its customers. Menlo Park-based Draper Associates is a lead investor in the company. Factom co-founder and former CTO Jack Lu moved on from the startup to create a new crypto-focused company called Wanchain in late 2016. In about one year, the startup—which originated in Asia but has headquarters in Austin—quietly executed one of 2017’s largest ICOs. In the ICO for its currency, Wancoin, Wanchain raised approximately 120,000 ETH (ethereum) worth approximately $36M. Today, that ETH is worth an estimated $120 million. Wancoins will be listed on exchanges imminently in Q1 2018. Wanchain describes itself as the only distributed financial infrastructure powered by private cross-blockchain applications. [ CrunchBase ] Google confirms investment in Indonesia’s ride-hailing leader Go-JekGoogle has confirmed its investment in Go-Jek, the hail-railing service that rivals Uber and Grab in Indonesia.TechCrunch reported the investment last week, which was made alongside China’s Meituan-Dianping and Singaporean sovereign fund Temasek. The trio were part of a final tranche of a $1.2 billion round that Go-Jek began negotiating on last April, with commitments from the likes of Tencent and JD.com in China. The terms value Go-Jek at around $4 billion. This deal marks the first direct investment from the U.S. tech giant in Indonesia, coming right after its first such deal in India in December 2017. Go-Jek offers motorbikes and taxis on demand, as well as local services like grocery delivery and mobile payments. It is widely thought to be ahead of Grab and Uber in Indonesia, which is the largest economy in Southeast Asia, a region with more than 600 million consumers and rising internet adoption. More widely, Grab appears to have taken the lead across Southeast Asia as a whole. [ TechCrunch ] Sphero’s CEO discusses the company’s shift from Star Wars to schoolsIf hardware is hard, robotics are next to impossible. Even so, Sphero managed an impressive feat over its first five years, growing from a small Colorado startup with a glowing, smartphone-controlled ball into the maker of the most talked about piece of merchandise for cinema’s biggest blockbuster franchise. Over the course of the past year, the company ramped up its product line from between one and two releases a year to five. In 2017 alone, the company released two new Star Wars toys, a Spider-Man figure, a talking Lighting McQueen car and a new, smaller version of its titular RC controlled ball. But last week, it became abundantly clear that not all was rosy with the company — the company cut 45 jobs. That number represented more than a quarter of the company’s then 170-person staff. It was a regrettable end to a small hire spree Sphero had engaged in to ramp up for the demands of its Disney licensing deal. [ TechCrunch ] E16: "Angel": Arjun Sethi Social Capital: from founder MessageMe & Yahoo head of growth to investingScout networks are latest VC salvo in war for foundersFounders are extraordinarily busy, even for their own investors. A decade ago, they might have had relationships with a handful of VC partners as they scaled their businesses and raised additional rounds of capital. Today, it is hardly rare to see as many as fifteen or twenty investment firms and angels listed on the cap table following a seed round. If you add up all the partners at those funds, a first-time founder can have investment connections to literally dozens of VCs in just the first year or two of the company. That number can easily approach three digits as a startup grows. [ TechCrunch ] Richmond-based Harbert Growth Partners finds venture capital opportunities in the Southeast and Mid-AtlanticBefore you build your startup on Ethereum, consider the optionsArtificial Intelligence Nears the Summit of Hype in DavosIt's Surprising How Much Small Teams Can Get Done - Sam Chaudhary of ClassDojoSoFi Buys Teams From Mortgage Startup Clara to Boost OfferingsSydney transport marketplace startup Jayride lists on the ASXE791: All Ask Jason! FOMO strategies, right times to raise, crypto mania, investable media, more500 Startups' Cheung Says Bitcoin Is BoringPeaks and valleys: An honest look at the startup ecosystem in SwitzerlandHubba sees major start-up boom for 2018HUBBA has joined hands with its business partners to set up three new co-working spaces to support the high growth potential of start-up companies. The company is responding to an estimated 60-per-cent growth in start-ups through this year.Amarit Charoenphan, co-founder of co-working space provider Hubba, said the firm this year will scale up its business and work together with business partners to create three new co-working spaces with areas between 1,000 and 4,000 square metres. The first new co-working space will be officially announced in the first quarter, he said, declining to disclose the area or the investment at this time. The company currently has three co-working spaces located at Ekkamai, Onnuj and Siam Square with areas totalling 1,600 square metres. He said the number of start-up companies in Thailand this year would reach 1,000, a big jump from last year’s estimated 600 start-ups. [ Nation Multimedia ] Of Mice and Old Men: Silicon Valley's quest to beat ageingBank-based blockchain projects are going to transform the financial services industry |