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23 Memorable People and Peccadillos of Tech in ’23 – Part Two

23 Memorable People and Peccadillos of Tech in ’23 – Part Two

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Photo by alexandru vicol on Unsplash

As we were saying last week, with the year drawing to a close, here are our final dozen picks for the people and peccadillos in a very odd year.

While not everything mentioned in these points might not necessarily have started this year, it was a year when they’ve certainly been ramped up and time to take a closer look. In no particular order:

Climate change. Fact: the climate has been changing since long before mankind came along and started exploiting fossil fuels, but never underestimate hubris. Or (dare we say it?) possible manipulation. Read More...

The Bad Boys of Tech, Part 2

The Bad Boys of Tech, Part 2

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 Unless you’ve been cut off from all worldly communications, you’ve heard that co-founder and CEO Sam Altman was very unceremoniously booted from OpenAI – and was informed in a Google Meet, despite Microsoft being a major OpenAI investor and partner.

No one seems to know the precise reason why he was terminated. Malfeasance? Was it his reported lack of transparency with the board, which now consists of three independent directors holding no equity, and its Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever? A coup?

Or something quite different transpiring behind the curtain… Read More...

The Thing that’s Truly Driving Tech

The Thing that’s Truly Driving Tech

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Silicon Valley is on the ballot this year – in its home state, no less.

California’s Proposition 22 is up for a vote November 3, where AB (Assembly Bill) 5, the state’s gig worker law that, among other things, forced Uber and Lyft to classify their drivers as employees, passed in September of 2019. Prop 22 aims to exempt ridesharing and food-delivery firms from AB5.

Said The New York Times, “Prop 22 would exempt the companies from complying with (AB5), while offering limited benefits to drivers. The law is intended to force them to treat gig workers as employees, but Uber and its peers have resisted, fearing that the cost of benefits like unemployment insurance and health care could tip them into a downward financial spiral. Read More...

How to Pitch to Investors (Trust Us, You’ve Got It All Wrong)

How to Pitch to Investors (Trust Us, You’ve Got It All Wrong)

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Image by Just killing time from Pixabay

We attended Peak Pitch last week, and thought we’d share some of the lessons that we gleaned from the experience. Namely, points about pitching to investors that every entrepreneur needs to know.

FYI, every year, Peak Pitch brings together 40 or 50 seed and series A investors (some of whom may come from finance, while others are recovering entrepreneurs themselves) and 40 to 60 curated founders for networking and informal pitches on the slopes. Skiing is not mandatory. Pitches can also be done fireside, speaking of warm introductions.  There is no shortage of investors there to listen, give constructive criticism or offer advice. The activities and shared experiences are enjoyable, to be sure, but at the end of the day (actually, all day long), everyone is there to do business.

We reviewed What Investors Are Really Looking For in a pitch deck just last week. Since Peak Pitch is the next stage – your deck has passed muster and you’ve moved up to the next level – what’s the drill once you have the ear of an investor – or 40? It’s not just a rehash of your deck. It’s the points that are going to pique and keep an investor’s interest. Read More...

Dudes, just dudin’ it up: Softbank and the Bro Culture

Dudes, just dudin’ it up: Softbank and the Bro Culture

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Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

The Softbank Vision Fund hasn’t had an easy time of it and we use this as an example of the bro-cul (bro-culture) focus that might have contributed to some of their current woes.

They’re not alone. Simply more heavily tracked by the tech media.

First, there was WeWork, which very publicly and unceremoniously came crashing down (time will tell if new CEO Sandeep Mathrani, who comes from the real estate sector and has a successful turnaround history, according to the Bloomberg News, will save the company), despite CEO Masayoshi Son’s abundant/blind faith in ousted founder/tech-bro Adam Neumann (we are aware that WeWork is not nor was it ever a tech company, but Neumann did manage to spin it that way). Read More...

Does There Have to Be an App for That? The Votes Aren’t All In Yet

Does There Have to Be an App for That? The Votes Aren’t All In Yet

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Despite the fact that it is ubiquitous, software is never easy to build and/or scale. In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, or from the various virulent viruses and flus that are going around, the Democratic Iowa caucus decided to go the tech route to capture and tabulate their voting results last week, and why not? We all have apps on our phones. Which we use seemingly constantly, if the numbers are any indication (Americans check their cell phones 150 times a day) and since we’re all so cell phone-enabled, why not a voting app? The tech community has been advocating for this for quite some time. Although, given the number of hacks we’ve seen and/or experienced and the tech community’s seeming unwilling to address security flaws (Google discovered several iPhone security flaws, and Apple still hasn’t patched one), what could possibly go wrong?

Enter the Iowa caucus debacle, where everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

But this isn’t about what went wrong: since this is an election year, rife with contentious candidates and no shortage of social media platforms, this is a heads up to entrepreneurs who wish to step into the fray with their own tech offerings and we know that you’re out there. Read More...

No Is an Acronym, Revisited

No Is an Acronym, Revisited

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When you were a kid how many times did your parents say No! N-O, NO! More than once, we’d wager. How many times did they say, Yes, Y-E-S, YES!’ Bet I can count the number of times on one hand – zero. Never happened.

We did notice this at a fairly young age – long before we knew that there was such a word – that NO is an acronym. It was parent-code for ‘keep trying’ or ‘change the talking points.’ In some cases, and we found that if we changed our approach or arguments, we could get a yes. Persistence pays. And the same can be said of investors. Investors hate to miss opportunities, so they don’t really like to say No. Investors like to hedge their bets and keep their options open. Sometimes they will give you a hard and fast No and mean it. Still, that said, things change, so one never knows if it truly is a hard No. Read More...

Facebook: The 2019 Feel-Good Tour

Facebook: The 2019 Feel-Good Tour

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Mark Zuckerberg was back on Capitol Hill last week, testifying before Congress about the proposed cryptocurrency, Libra.

“I don’t control Libra” was the central theme of the Facebook  CEO’s testimony,” according to TechCrunch. “The House of Representatives unleashed critiques of his approach to cryptocurrency, privacy, encryption and running a giant corporation during six hours of hearings. Zuckerberg tried to assuage their fears while stoking concerns that if Facebook doesn’t build Libra, the world will end up using China’s version.” Read More...