Palantir Knows Everything About YouPeter Thiel’s data-mining company is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens. The scary thing? Palantir is desperate for new customers. [ Bloomberg ] Uber denies its CTO met with Cambridge AnalyticaUber has denied that its sitting CTO, Thuan Pham, met with Cambridge Analytica — the controversial political consultancy at the center of a Facebook user data misuse scandal. But it has not been able to confirm that no meetings between anyone else on its payroll and Cambridge Analytica took place. [ Tech Crunch ] How John Doerr Keeps Companies On the Right TrackWhy are so many of our great companies, organizations, and institutions failing us? Because they’re setting the wrong objectives. Or worse, they’re setting none at all. At the TED conference here on Saturday, John Doerr took to the stage to make an impassioned case for the importance of OKRs, or Objectives and Key Results. Too many organizations have taken us to the wrong objectives, he said. Often those objectives lack a sense of purpose to energize teams—a sense of why. “This has to stop,” Doerr said. [ Fortune ] FuboTV, an online TV service, has raised $75 million from TV programmers and other investors Here comes more money to help you watch TV on the internet. And some of the money is coming from the TV guys. FuboTV, a startup that sells a cable-TV-like “bundle” of live TV you can stream to your laptop, phone or TV, has raised $75 million from a group of investors that includes AMC Networks, 21st Century Fox and Discovery. Traditional VC investors Northzone and Luminari Capital are also in this round. [ Recode ] Over 400 Startups Are Trying To Become the Next Warby Parker. Inside the Wild Race To Overthrow Every Consumer CategoryJames McKean wants to revolutionize the manual toothbrush. It's January 2018. The 31-year-old MBA candidate at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School whirls his laptop around to show me the prototype designs. Bristle, as the product might be called, has a detachable head and a colorful pattern on the handle--like faux wood grain, flowers, or plaid. Customers would pay somewhere around $15 for their first purchase, and then get replacement heads, at $3 or $4 a pop, through a subscription service. [ Inc. ] The making of a hardware founder Working in tech, it’s hard to avoid the many stories and congratulatory tweets about the latest company to close a funding round, and little wonder. It’s a milestone worth celebrating before getting back to work. Yet what’s happening in the trenches before those funding announcements roll out is often more instructive. How does one decide to make the leap in the first place? How do you mold a product or service into something that you can present to outsiders? How can you enlist people to help you when everyone you want to meet has more pressing demands on their time? [ TechCrunch ] Venture capital firms urged SEC to exempt digital currencies from regulations: reportSurveyMonkey defies Silicon Valley labor caste system, offering contract workers full benefitsVenture capital firm Fort Ross aims to bring more U.S. startups to RussiaStart-Up Aims to Fix America’s Doctor Crisis the Online WayThe Process Of Getting A Startup Funded Looks Very Different If You're A WomanUK start-up aims to slash the cost of satellite launchesVC industry at risk as politicians square off against Silicon ValleyBacking the Underserved: Alumna Co-Founds Venture Capital Firm to Fund Women, Minority and Military VeteransRealSelf raises $40 million for online plastic surgery review siteBezos-Backed Cancer Startup Wants to Raise $1 BillionElon Musk still hasn’t decided what to do with board member Steve Jurvetson after allegations of misconductSusan Fowler’s next act: Ending forced arbitration, which blocks workers from suing their employersStartup aims to democratize synthetic biology3D-printing marketplace Shapeways raises a $30 million Series E |