A lot has changed since the lockdowns and the Submit or Flight response that ensued, when the migration from the Draconian rules of the tech hubs – Silicon Valley and New York in particular – began.
Working conditions shift with each new industrial revolution and despite the fact that the Information/Internet Era has been somewhat established for close to 20 years, we haven’t really seen a change. Until now.
Since we’re in the heat of summer in most parts of the world, it’s a good opportunity to address climate change. For the record, according to Weather.com, last “July (was) on track to be the coolest in the U.S. since 2015, according to Todd Crawford, Director of Meteorology at Atmospheric G2.” Although not many of us were around to experience those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer, to quote Nat King Cole, re last summer, how quickly we forget.
CNN has been all over ‘climate change’ and recently hosted the founder (whom CNN misidentified as the co-founder) of the Weather Channel, climatologist John Coleman.
Everyone’s waiting for the outcome of whether or not Elon Musk will eventually own Twitter. He’s purportedly walking away from the deal, claiming that Twitter users are primarily bots, and the company isn’t offering any hard evidence to prove otherwise. In fact, as TruthTent reported, “Twitter’s bot check sample size was only 100 users, Musk reveals.”
Then again, he didn’t do his due diligence before making the offer…
The stock price is way down, which employees are blaming on Musk, even though the market is way down in general, but if ‘users’ are primarily AI-generated bots, well, that does affect whether or not advertisers and marketers will pay a premium to the platform, so it may well be Musk’s fault for pointing that out, and further depressing the stock price.
An issue that the mainstream tech seems bent on ignoring is whether or not AI is sentient. As Yahoo!Finance reported, “the issue of machine sentience – and what it means – hit the headlines…when Google placed senior software engineer Blake Lemoine on leave after he went public with his belief that the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot LaMDA was a self-aware person… Google and many leading scientists were quick to dismiss Lemoine’s views as misguided, saying LaMDA is simply a complex algorithm designed to generate convincing human language.”
The holiday weekend is coming up, so short and well, ok, maybe not so sweet. No surprise there.
Crypto meltdown, Celsius crash deepen rift between Web3 fans and skeptics, PitchBook recently noted. “Proponents of Web3 hope that this new iteration of the internet, characterized by decentralized platforms based on blockchain technology, will eventually overturn the “evil” of big tech and traditional banks, allowing all users—not just founders, investors and employees—to benefit financially from their participation.”
Back in 2010, Mark Suster penned a blog post entitled Invest in Lines, Not Dots and like many investors, Suster has sat on both sides of the table. It a must read for entrepreneurs, especially if you plan on raising money from investors, now or any time in the not-too-distant future, or ever. It’s also a great explanation of the importance of establishing relationships with investors before you need the money – and gives you something of an idea of a good investor’s mindset.
Why can’t investors simply understand what a monster company you’re building and just write the bloody check?
As Suster points out, “We want to make sure we’re in love. This sometimes frustrates entrepreneurs who just want to “get back to running the business.” But if you understand it you’ll see that it is perfectly rational and it should also influence how you form relationships with investors. And remember, if we get married you’re stuck with us, too.”
Although you might believe that we meant to say ‘Meta,’ no, we meant Facebook, which is a division of Meta.
According to Techcrunch, Meta says its metaverse biz lost another $3B in Q1 – but the 2030s will be ‘exciting’ and damn the torpedoes. Make no mistake about it and according to Input, Mark Zuckerberg is hell-bent on the metaverse — and getting you to work in VR, pointing out that “The Facebook CEO…sees it as the “successor to the mobile internet”…The big question is if anyone will follow Zuckerberg into the metaverse.”
Certainly not Sheryl Sandberg. According to the Wall Street Journal, “One of the world’s most powerful executives became increasingly burned out and disconnected from the mega-business she was instrumental in building. That dovetailed with a company investigation into her activities.
We have entered a new era of tech. Web 3.0, including blockchain/the distributed web, cryptocurrency, the metaverse, 5G and before too long, quantum computing (The Need, Promise, and Reality of Quantum Computing), which will certainly be a huge game-changer.
After all the loss of privacy we’d experienced during Web 2.0h???, as we now like to call it, as capturing all our personal data was supposedly all in the name of selling us yet another pair of, say, sneakers. Oh, and connecting the world through social, too, as it was the social web after all, no matter how anti-social it became over time. But considering how much more the next era in tech is promising – and let’s not forget robotics, connected glasses, eg the upcoming Apple Glasses, the Internet of Things, AI, Smart Cities, Smart Agriculture, et al are also in the mix – what a wonderful era of promise awaits us! We’re finally going to get it all right and in fact, to help you prepare, head’s up: “To succeed in the future, you MUST learn web3, @Mishadavinci tweeted. These 7 world-changing concepts get you up to speed.”
Just a reminder that June is the year’s midway point and always a good idea to take stock of where we are so far.
The big tech stocks have all taken a long-overdue hit, as has the rest of the stock market and the word is that it has become harder to raise funding. It’s true that investors aren’t writing checks at the rate that they did, but then again, we’re coming off a 13-year tech high, and many people who cashed out or who were acquired suddenly became investors. But were they qualified? All things considered, that’s part of the broken VC model. Do they add value, or just money? There is a difference, and the distinction is important, especially in times like these.
Even the so-called high-flying seasoned investors are feeling the pain. It’s one thing to be a genius in the good times. We’ll see who the true outliers are moving forward.
