For our second talk on How to Build a Product, we are joined by Aaron Levie, CEO and co-founder of Box. [ YC ] Can a machine learn aesthetics in a way a human would? Could it then look at a set of photos, and draw on those same aesthetics to reproduce a different set? It’s a big question because it has long-term implications for how AI is going to develop. What are aesthetics anyway? Is it just what you “like”? How does it all work? When you as a human find it hard to express what you like do you think a machine going to find it easy? Above is an image by Pantea Naghavi Anaraki, winner of The Photojournalist category at The 2016 EyeEm Awards. [ Tech Crunch ] Payments company Square has acquired the engineering team behind Yik Yak for less than $3 million, according to a new report form Bloomberg, citing sources. The anonymous chat app used to be valued at $4oo million after raising more than $73 million in venture capital. At its prime, Yik Yak was considered the darling of the anonymous messaging space, having attracted a young user base of college students that would compulsively open the app multiple times a day to stay informed. [ Business Insider ] Back in February, the Facebook-led Telecom Infrastructure Project led a call to put $170 million into startups focusing on solutions to improve infrastructure: the switching technologies, engineering, cabling and other components that go into building networking for internet and other communications services. Today comes one more advance on that front: Facebook and the TIP are working with French telco Orange to launch a new “Telecom Track” in the Orange Fab accelerator based in Paris to find more startups to fill this niche. [ Tech Crunch ] BuzzFeed isn’t the first media company to try to make money by pointing you to stuff you should buy on Amazon. But it may be one of the most aggressive. Over the past year, the popular online publisher has built a 12-person team that’s churning out pieces like “26 Useful Gifts College Grads Will Actually Want” and “19 Subscription Boxes For People Who Don't Want To Grow Up” that they hope readers will share on social networks as much as they do its regular posts. [ Re/code ] Grocery delivery startup Instacart recently closed a $400 million Series D round of funding at a valuation of $3.4 billion. Now, the company is putting that capital to work by accelerating its expansion across the U.S., and offering free Instacart Express memberships to entice new users wherever it goes. According to the company’s vice president of product, Elliot Shmukler, the company is operating in 41 U.S. markets today and is launching into four new markets this week, including Detroit, Las Vegas, Columbus, Ohio and across Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. Computers are on the rise as Wall Street’s brave new stock pickers. Now some Silicon Valley startup investors are giving big-data analytics a prominent role in the venture-capital arena. In recent years a small group of emerging venture firms have been testing ways to remake the art of venture capital and turn it into more of a science. They’re relying to varying degrees on what are, for their industry, radical new uses of software and data to help guide their investments. [ WSJ ] With fake news continuing to dominate the discussion about the future of the media and role of social networks in spreading it, many in the tech world have tried to come up with ways to fight this new cancer. Various pronouncements have been made by Google, Facebook and Twitter about tweaking their algorithms. But it’s hard to get away from the fact that human beings are probably going to have to be involved somewhere along the line. [ Tech Crunch ] CB Insights Many investors — including our team at Village Capital — evaluate founding teams on a largely subjective level: “He just gets it” or “She has grit.” Sure, investors look at what founders have previously done — if they previously exited a company, or have an MBA — but this focuses on actions more than character. Some investors look to studies on leadership traits by Bloomberg and Gallup, but these don’t give a full picture. For the most part, investors rely on instinct, leaving one of the most important pieces of the investment decision on “a feeling” that is surely interpreted differently by different people. [ Medium ] Far too many startups approach their fundraising round in panic mode. They’re not ready, their businesses are not ready, and they don’t really know what they need. As a result, they’re running around in desperation trying to find an investor, but not necessarily the right investor. Unfortunately, this is a situation we come across all too often. In my mind the first contact you make with an investor should not be a cold email with a pitch deck attached. Meanwhile, the following words are rarely heard: “I would like you to get to know my company and myself before considering investment.” [ Startup Daily ] Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s world came to a sudden halt when her husband, Dave Goldberg, died suddenly, at age 47, during a spring 2015 trip to Mexico. In the months that followed, the self-assured author of Lean In found herself lost in grief, adrift from the life she and Goldberg had built. “[My self-confidence] just kind of crumbled in every area,” she tells Timemagazine in this month’s cover story. “I didn’t think I could be a good friend. I didn’t feel like I could do my job.” [ Fast Company ]
Beji Sasaki, a maverick businessman who first challenged Tokyo’s status quo four decades ago, says his bidding war with the $13 billion computer giant Fujitsu Ltd. is just the start of his plan to use takeovers to change Japan Inc. Sasaki, a 61-year-old entrepreneur, fashion designer and supermarathon runner, says he’s setting up a fund backed by Taiwanese money to help ambitious Japanese executives and employees buy out their companies and expand into China and Southeast Asia. [ Bloomberg ] |