Fred Wilson on BlockchainNick Tomaino has started a new publication called The Control to provide “high brow” (my word not his) reporting on the Blockchain sector. If Coindesk is the TechCrunch of the blockchain sector, Nick wants The Control to be The Economist of the sector. Here is how Nick describes his ambitions for The Control. The Control will be a largely free site so that the content can be consumed broadly on Reddit (very important for the blockchain sector), Twitter, and Facebook. But you can become a member of The Control. And you can even become a patron of The Control for $5/month. I wish that I could support The Control for 0.005BTC a month instead of $5/month. So does Nick. Maybe that will happen someday but using Medium as his publishing platform limits what Nick can do in that regard. [ AVC ] A Tale of Two Mattress CompaniesWe live in an era that venerates venture capital. It can sometimes seem that a business is just a means to serve an investment fund rather than vice versa. What if—we’ll whisper this to avoid incurring the wrath of the Silicon Valley gods—it’s sometimes better not to take VC money? Is it possible that some companies could do better without it? Casper and Saatva provide a revealing prism to examine that question. Both are young companies that sell mattresses to consumers over the Internet and allow customers to try them for several months and return them for a full refund. Both have succeeded, with Casper’s revenues vaulting to $200 million and Saatva’s to $168 million. [ Fortune ] 15 interesting startups to watch in 2017People are gearing up to say good riddance to 2016, and as the Earth completes another revolution around the sun, we’re all eager to try our hand at predicting the next big thing. Will virtual reality, on-demand services, and bots shine again in 2017? Or will the spotlight turn to messaging apps, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence? Here are 15 startups that I believe are worth watching over the next 12 months. [ Venture Beat ] The Ugly Unethical Underside of Silicon ValleyAs the list of startup scandals grows, it’s time to ask whether entrepreneurs are taking “fake it till you make it” too far. Vinod Khosla did not show up at TechCrunch Disrupt to be harangued by some smartass, know-nothing journalist. The venture capitalist came to talk about disruption and revolutions to an audience of 1,000 potential disrupters and revolutionaries, laptop glow illuminating their faces in a San Francisco warehouse. But of course the journalist had to bring up Hampton Creek, the vegan-food company that had fashioned itself—and more important, valued itself—like a tech company. Khosla, a legend in Silicon Valley, was a Hampton Creek investor, alongside Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Salesforce CRM 0.09% CEO Marc Benioff. Despite media reports of shoddy science at the company on things like shelf-life testing, and an FDA battle over misleading labeling, Khosla declared Hampton Creek was “doing awesome.” [ Fortune ] $3.8 billion Slack just lost another high-profile executiveSlack's head of product, Jason Shellen, has suddenly left the company, less than a year after joining the $3.8 billion startup,Recode's Kara Swisher reported Thursday. It's unclear why Shellen left or where he is headed. While his LinkedIn profile still says he's at Slack, the company confirmed with Business Insider that Shellen had indeed left. [ Business Insider ] The Best And Worst User Interfaces Of 2016 The human neck was not designed to be used like a joystick, and other things we learned from this year's most notable UX. [ Fast Company ] 2016 Africa roundup: drone delivery, VC, unicorns, exits and ZuckTwenty-sixteen was a pivotal year for African tech. The continent’s IT scene attracted major investment, produced its first $1 billion startup, launched a national drone delivery program, and drew one of Silicon Valley’s biggest icons to tour its innovation hubs. This from a region that only a decade ago generated almost no Google News hits for tech. That certainly wasn’t the case this year. Though Africa has yet to produce big startup profits, IT IPOs, or even its own dot-com bubble, it did register significant tech events over the last 12 months. [ Tech Crunch ] Curated by Venture Pulse Team. Find us on : [ Venturepulse.org, CrunchBase,
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