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Is the Long Arm of Silicon Valley Being Cut Off at the Knees?

Is the Long Arm of Silicon Valley Being Cut Off at the Knees?

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f you’ve been following what’s been going on lately in tech and focusing on the headlines, you might have missed the forest through the trees.

Silicon Valley Disruption Part 1:

Facebook just lost half a million users, the headlines screamed (out of nearly 2B, and no bigs, you’d think, but a) they’re not growing, b) those users are in the US: prime market, which meant they took a big hit on their profits and c) it’s the first time ever that FB lost users), and the stock was devalued 20%, wiping  $200BN off the value of parent-firm Meta. Of course, founder  Mark Zuckerberg was quick to come up with the excuses, par usual (ever notice that it’s never his bad?): Read More...

The Sili-CON Game

The Sili-CON Game

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image by Leuchtturm81 at Pixabay

What captured the attention of the Twitterverse of late was the thread from Bolt founder Ryan Breslow (@theryanking) who called out the Silicon Valley Mob. We quote: “two forces have the most power in Silicon Valley. And like… tenfold more than anyone else. Their names: Stripe and YCombinator. The kicker → Their power is in how they work together. Stripe is the darling child of Silicon Valley. Early to YC (YCombinator), Stripe made payment processing APIs easy and signed up all their YC batchmates to use their product. The “official payment processor for YC”, Stripe became a HOT company. Sequoia, the most powerful VC firm in the world, went all-in. Their position today is upwards of $20-$30B in Stripe stock.

 

By the Numbers

“Three forces combined quickly: 1/ The most powerful VC firm in the world. 2/ The most powerful startup accelerator in the world. 3/ The most powerful startup in the world, with the help of #1 and #2.” Read More...

Where in the World Is Travis Kalanick?

Where in the World Is Travis Kalanick?

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If your reaction to the above was ‘who cares?,’ do not pass go, do not collect $200. How can we so quickly forget one of the seminal unicorns of Web 2.0.

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of four of the 11 counts of fraud brought against her (three of the charges were dismissed and the jury was deadlocked on the other four, so it may not be over yet), and while she may serve (a reportedly fairly negligible amount of) jailtime, did this send chills through Silicon Valley, which at this point has become a generic term, like ‘Band-Aid’ and ‘google,’ considering that Report: Californians Leaving for Texas So Rapidly, U-Haul Ran Out of Trucks?

Will this verdict be a wake-up call? The Elizabeth Holmes verdict: Silicon Valley’s reckoning or a single bad apple? Will the guilty verdict change “fake it ’till you make it” culture?, the Mercury News asked. “Experts say the guilty verdict and the potential prison sentence it carries are sure to send a chill down the spines of entrepreneurs and investors — especially in the health care field — and prompt them to tread carefully. But it may not be the major reckoning that some have been clamoring for in Silicon Valley, where criminal charges remain rare and money continues to flow.” Read More...

Fake It Til You Make It – To the Witness Stand.

Fake It Til You Make It – To the Witness Stand.

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We are all aware that fake it til you make it is one of the premier mantras of the tech industry. At this point, we should also keep in mind that you can fake it for just so long – Adam Neumann’s WeWork being a notable case in point – and careful what you fake: in the case of Theranos and the company’s founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes, it led to 11 counts of fraud that are being litigated as we speak.

As the Mercury News reported, “Holmes is charged with allegedly bilking investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars, and defrauding patients with false claims that the company’s machines could conduct a full range of tests using just a few drops of blood.”

Here’s a cautionary tale for you: despite the fact that Holmes followed the Silicon Valley playbook – attend an Ivy League school (Stanford dropout); be mediagenic (the tech might have been flawed, but in every photo of Holmes that the media proffered, she looked perfect); get a LOT of press (aka due diligence for clueless investors). Bonus points: dress in a manner that recalls a tech icon – in this case, Steve Jobs (easy one: black turtlenecks. Done!). Read More...

Whose Metaverse Is It, Anyway?

Whose Metaverse Is It, Anyway?

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Image by Okan Caliskan from Pixabay

The line is a reference to a comedic variety show hosted by Drew Carey, Whose Line Is It, Anyway?, which was basically an homage to the absurd.

Enter Meta, the Company Formerly Known as Facebook, which some wags have referred to as Mark Zuckerberg’s attempt to escape his many problems in the physical world.  Not the least of which is his loss of a younger audience, and every advertiser knows that it’s best to get them when they’re young.  Even Instagram can’t seem to hold on to those younger eyeballs. In Meta, kids can strap on their headsets (and CFKAF is betting that they will) and enter their own virtual worlds – with friends too, if they choose. Although it won’t be the Oculus headset, since FB is killing off the brand, which means, btw, as Techcrunch pointed out, that  it took Zuck roughly 15 seconds to tell his first lie: “Our mission remains the same — it’s still about bringing people together. Our apps and our brands — they’re not changing either.”

“Mr. Zuckerberg painted a picture of the metaverse as a clean, well-lit virtual world, entered with virtual and augmented reality hardware at first and more advanced body sensors (or neural implants?) later on, in which people can play virtual games, attend virtual concerts, go shopping for virtual goods, collect virtual art, hang out with each other’s virtual avatars and attend virtual work meetings,” wrote The New York Times. Read More...

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life, Investor Pitch Decks and All That

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life, Investor Pitch Decks and All That

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The subject line references a book by Douglas Adams: the second in his Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy trilogy.

We’ve been out here in the countryside for over a year now, in the woods, not far from a small town. Quality restaurants are few and far between, if not basically non-existent, compared to the NYC restaurants to which we are accustomed.

We were doing errands a few years back and stopped for lunch at a restaurant right next door to one of the shops we’d visited. The décor was very ‘50s, and they did have a salad bar, which we took as a good sign, so we agreed to be seated. There was ‘50s and maybe early ’60s memorabilia everywhere, including in the salad bar, which offered up iceberg lettuce, onions, canned olives and what appeared to be cucumber and tomato slices. The latter two were the appropriate colors and shapes for said vegetables, so we’re assuming that that’s what they were. As for the lunch itself: all the vegetables came out of cans. In the middle of summer, in the midst of farm country, and where farm stands abound. Next, or as Oscar Wilde said, “Once is an experiment; twice is a perversion.” We never returned to that establishment. Read More...

Summer Reading: Lessons from the Pros

Summer Reading: Lessons from the Pros

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We’re full on into summer, when people kick back a bit and even take some time to read. If you’re looking for recommendation and are in the midst of raising capital or plan to very soon, one our readers have suggested Foundry Group founder and Techstars co-founder Brad Feld’s Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist. As well as former New York Angels Chairman and NY Venture Partners founder Brian Cohen’s What Every Angel Investor Wants You to Know: An Insider Reveals How to Get Smart Funding for Your Billion Dollar Idea. Finally, there’s angel investor Jason Calacanis’s Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups–Timeless Advice from an Angel Investor Who Turned $100,000 into $100,000,000, and as one reviewer noted: Should have titled this book: ‘The ABC Angel: Arrogant, Brilliant, and Confident!’ Then again, for those of us who know him well, that’s Jason, what, eh?

 

Feld also offers a free Venture Deals course that “demystifies venture capital deals and startup financing to give both first-time and experienced entrepreneurs a definitive guide to secure funding.” Sign up and make sure that you’re notified as to when the next session is starting, which will most likely be Fall. Read More...

The Latest Global Moonshot

The Latest Global Moonshot

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As more cities and states ease up on lockdown restrictions, and the emergency-use only Covid vaccines are becoming more readily available, the concept of requiring vaccine passports for travel, attending events and who knows what all else is getting a lot of press – a cause for concern, whether you’ve been vaccinated or not. According to the Cleveland Clinic: Already Had COVID? Vaccine Provides No Added Benefit. In fact, according to the study, “Of all infections during the study period, 99.3% occurred in participants who were not infected previously and remained unvaccinated. In contrast, 0.7% of infections occurred in participants who were not previously infected but were currently vaccinated. Significantly, not one of the 1,359 previously infected subjects who remained unvaccinated had a SARS-CoV-2 infection over the duration of the study.”

 

We’re hearing more and more about events where proof of vaccination is required.  What about the deaths and serious injuries resulting from the vaccines themselves? Again, they were approved for emergency use only, as they did not go through the usual rigorous testing. Yet Reports Indicate Vaccines Causing More Injuries, Deaths Than Natural COVID-19 Infections. This is not about conspiracy theories. It’s a heads up to you, entrepreneurs and important to pay attention to everything: every coin has two sides. Read More...

Think Small

Think Small

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Companies are easy to start, right? People do it all the time. Seeing it through to it becoming a thriving business and/or having a successful exit, well, that’s quite a different story. Stated another way, we had a professor in a fiction writing class in college who started the semester with: “I met a fellow at a party and asked, ‘So, what do you do?’ To which he replied, ‘I write the beginnings of novels.’”

Which, for the record, doesn’t make you a novelist. You’ve got to see it through to that last page. And publish!

Igor Jablokov, who is a founder rather than investor, spoke at one of our investor breakfasts a while back, and it’s amazing what you can learn from someone who has been there, done that – and who has had a successful exit. Igor had a company, and as he was building, he would go to various conferences and expos to network, and to see what he might learn. At one conference, he spoke to a group who had had a very successful exit and he asked how it had happened. Read More...

The Earthquake in Chile: A Parable for a Green World

The Earthquake in Chile: A Parable for a Green World

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The reference is to a novel by Heinrich von Kleist, where nothing happens the way one would expect, and all things are not what they seem.

Jenny Fielding, Managing Director of Techstars New York City Accelerator, which recently selected its latest batch of cohorts, penned a piece (New World, New Focus. How Application Trends at Techstars NYC Point to a Changing World) about the shift in focus of the entrepreneurs, given the current climate. And always important for founders to look to what the problems are, find the white space, and take it from there.

Speaking of climate, much attention has been given in the past few years to climate change. As always, important to look around, see what the problems are and find the white space. Glaringly obvious this past week were the events in Texas, when a devastating cold snap caused the windmills to freeze and the power grid to fail. Read More...