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The Week the World Changed

The Week the World Changed

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Image by Eduard Oertle from Pixabay

It was an odd week, between the devastating Los Angeles fires and Mark Zuckerberg burning the US government censorship apparatus to the ground. Or at least sent up a few smoke signals, and where there’s smoke…

We’re not going to get into the politics of the fire. There’s certainly enough on that out there. This is about tech. While it was reported that the reservoir and fire hydrants were empty, isn’t California the jewel in the crown of technology? And there is technology out there to combat water shortages and fires. Los Angeles is built on a desert. Before you put a major city in place, good idea to consider the water problem, which self-train civil engineer William Mulholland did back re Los Angeles in the day (think the movie Chinatown), but the city has since then greatly expanded and water shortages are not a rarity in Southern California. In Israel, which is also built on a desert, measures were put in place to ensure that water would get to where it was needed in order to support the population: How Israel’s Water Surplus Is TRANSFORMING the Middle East. It’s basic urban planning.

Cloud-seeding has brought rain to the otherwise parched Middle East, and while there is some debate about whether or not the science was responsible for the flooding in Dubai last year, well, that is the only incident of flooding/water manipulation in the desert, the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus aside, but that’s literally another story. Read More...

Talk About a Killer App…

Talk About a Killer App…

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Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

The tech sector has a bad habit of releasing tech before it has been tested over time, sending it out into the wild, no matter the potential harm it may do. This is a warning we saw in the Age of Social, but tech is always about pushing the envelope, no matter that someone’s standing there in ready with a lit match. Case in point: Facebook contended that it was there to bring the world closer together. Remember Facebook’s Terrible, Horrible, Very Bad Day when whistleblower Frances Haugen went public about the platform’s manipulations and the damage it was doing to young people? To this day, the problems have not been eliminated.

And you do have to wonder how dangerous a platform truly is when it’s the whistleblower himself who is eliminated.

“A former researcher at OpenAI has come out against the company’s business model, writing, in a personal blog, that he believes the company is not complying with U.S. copyright law. That makes him one of a growing chorus of voices that sees the tech giant’s data-hoovering business as based on shaky (if not plainly illegitimate) legal ground…OpenAI is currently being sued by a broad variety of celebrities, artists, authors, and coders, all of whom claim to have had their work ripped off by the company’s data-hoovering algorithms. Other well-known folks/organizations who have sued OpenAI include Sarah Silverman, Ta-Nahisi Coates, George R. R. Martin, Jonathan Franzen, John Grisham, the Center for Investigative Reporting, The Intercept, a variety of newspapers (including The Denver Post and the Chicago Tribune), and a variety of YouTubers, among others,” Gizmodo reported. Read More...

The Great American Exodus

The Great American Exodus

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Image by John Howard from Pixabay

No full-on editorial due to the holiday weekend and hope you enjoyed yours!

Thanksgiving is the biggest travel weekend of the year. Then again, Americans seem to always be on the move.

It’s not just the country itself that people are leaving. For the curious or those whose for whom home was not where it was last Thanksgiving, here are The Top 5 States Americans Are Leaving, with California once again being the big winner. Or in this case, loser. Read More...

The French Fries Test

The French Fries Test

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Image by Matthias Böckel from Pixabay

From what we’ve been hearing from the investors whom we know personally, the funding purse strings are opening up again, and mergers are moving forward.

We hosted Jonathan Hakakian of SoundBoard VC at last week’s Online Insights, and part of the discussion centered around changes on how VCs vet startups. Yes, they’re still vetting decks, doing their due diligence and all that, but many meetings are still held over Zoom or some other such platform. Which means that funds have eased the requirements in terms of geolocation. Many VC/Angel firms don’t even feel the need to have a dedicated office. Some use co-working spaces to have somewhere to hold meetings from time to time, and for conference room access. Offices, for both investors and founders, are no longer necessary, at least, in some cases, not until you’ve reached a certain stage.

Jonathan has returned to taking in-person meetings, circumstances permitting, meaning, when it’s geographically possible for him and the founder/founding team. And there are times when they’ll keep it casual, meeting at a diner or restaurant. There is a different dynamic at in-person meetings, but still important to mind your Ps and Qs – and your table manners. Read More...

Data Collection 2.0 aka Defcon 3

Data Collection 2.0 aka Defcon 3

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 Said the Wall Street Journal, “More companies and government agencies out in the wild want to read our body parts. The Transportation Security Administration, for example, started scanning passengers’ faces instead of checking IDs. These groups say the biometric processes are meant to eliminate friction, save time and reduce lines.”

Why is that always the party line? To make our lives easier? To save us time? Does it? Ask anyone who has been a victim of identity theft, and remember “the huge Facebook data breach, in which upwards of 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries had personal data leaked online, including phone numbers, Facebook IDs, birthdates — you name it,” The Verge reported. Not that Facebook even bothered to tell users.

Yes, your phone has your fingerprint or faceprint. Fine, that’s native to your phone – or so they say. What about once the info is sent to the cloud? Cybersecurity is not top of mind for many tech companies, as we well know by the number of hacks reported and that continue to be reported and FYI, Ransomware Attacks Reach Record Highs: Demands and Payments Continue to Soar – and are we even informed about what data of ours might have been compromised? Read More...

X Marked the Spot

X Marked the Spot

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Before you get your backs up, this is not about politics, and sung to the tune of ‘Let’s Talk About Sex:’ It’s about tech, baby, it’s about you and me, it’s about all the good things and the bad things that can be, It’s about tech. Let’s talk about tech.

At the dawn of the Age of Social, it was widely proclaimed that we, the users, were the product. Is a shift underway at a tectonic level?

Two men engaged in a conversation on X’s Spaces last week and the audience numbers were off the charts. Live, watched later, or simulcast over various sites, it was reported that between a quarter billion to a billion people tuned in. Read More...

A Much-Needed Perspective on Investors

A Much-Needed Perspective on Investors

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Image by Stefan Schweihofer from Pixabay

We were in an online webinar recently, with a young investor as the guest speaker on the virtual dais. He is a former founder with several failures and one success under his belt. Given the fact that he has sat on both sides of the table, we were particularly curious about his investment approach, especially since he is a partner in a quite large fund.

While he is new to the investment side of the table, he has already developed his philosophy: if he is predisposed to investing in a company, he advises the founder to get some traction – meaning paying customers – and check back with him in a few months, whether the founder had achieved this or not. After said time, provided the founder is in the same position monetarily, he advises a pivot.

He does position himself as a very early-stage investor. Maybe not back-of-the-napkin, but fairly close. Read More...

CHARGE!

CHARGE!

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Photo by Harri P on Unsplash

We recently hosted a very successful serial founder and sometime investor at our online Investor Insights, who just launched yet another company – his third. It was fascinating to listen to both his advice – and his history. His first company was quickly acquired by Google, which was ‘clearly’ a win, but careful there, founders: great to be ‘adopted,’ but not all ‘parent’ companies are the same. He served his time, celebrated the day the golden handcuffs came off, and quickly launched his next company, which pivoted a few times, as all companies do, but did find its footing and a sustainable revenue stream. Acquisition offers were proffered and rejected, perhaps since the entrepreneur had been there, done that.

The company is still alive and well and turning a profit to the tune of hundreds of millions a year.

Nice revenue stream. Read More...

Scary Tales of Tech

Scary Tales of Tech

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Photo by Mark Bishop on Unsplash

According to the Farmer’s Almanac, “The origin of Halloween … can be traced to Samhain, an ancient pagan Celtic festival that is Gaelic for “summer’s end,” a day to bid good-bye to warmth and light. It marks the end of the harvest season and the start of winter (the darker “half” of the year).

“The ancient Celts believed that the veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest during Samhain, making it the ideal time to communicate with the deceased and divine the future.”

When the Romans arrived, they combined the old traditions with their own, and Samhain evolved into All Hallows’ Day, “hallow” meaning “to sanctify.” Read More...

He’s Baa-aack!

He’s Baa-aack!

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Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

Meta – the company formerly known as Facebook – has gone all in on the metaverse and judging from this past week’s press conference where Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg showcased his latest and greatest, it looks like this time, it might just have legs. Pun intended, of course, for those of us who remember his past iteration of the space and the legless floating torsos.

Now he’s back, like a bad penny, and in case you missed it, here is Everything Revealed in 10 Minutes, including “the launch of 28 chatbots (conversational agents), which supposedly have their own personalities and have been specially designed for younger users. These include Victor, a so-called triathlete who can motivate “you to be your best self”, and Sally, the “free-spirited friend who’ll tell you when to take a deep breath,” France24 reported.

“Meta sees these as “fun” artificial intelligence,” the piece continues. “Others…feel that this latest technological development could mark the first step towards creating “the most dangerous artefacts in human history”, to quote from American philosopher Daniel C. Dennett’s essay about “counterfeit people.” Read More...