Life As a FA

Interesting Niches – Simply Interests (Notes from March 30 to April 5, 2020) December 30, 2020

Posted by Anthony in Acquisitions, Automation, Blockchain, Coronavirus, Data Science, Digital, education, experience, finance, FinTech, Founders, global, Healthcare, marketing, questions, social, Strategy, Uncategorized, Venture.
Tags: Data, Downturn, finance, Open Source, Package, Risk, SDLC, Services
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Nat Eliason, of Roam and productivity-type videos fame, mentioned that consistency has been the primary driver for his content rise. It’s refreshing to come across his newsletters as well as Tiago Forte and David Perrell’s for how varied their content is. Typically, we don’t have one specific idea we follow. It’s a collection of all of our readings and experiences. My collection has probably been more evident in this – especially if you pay attention to the notes – generally around startups but also finance, vc, sports, media. Plenty that interest me.

So, this is hopefully my last WordPress post on here and moving to Webflow to move my thoughts and musings for the recent time further.

In light of this, I am going to be doing something with lists. Specifically, around startups. But I’ve been obsessed with historical rankings / lists for a long while. Only now going to be putting the together (I lied – I’ve been piecing the together for a while). Hopefully it leads to explorations and transparency with connecting various lists around them. Be it industry, job hunt, maybe put some clarity to the lists that are typically without much detail. We’ll see! Look out for further info.

Corona Investing (Meb Faber Podcast Part II, III)
- Staying rich and dealing with downtrends
- Cash / yield / gold all have drawdowns > 48%, so if you lose half of your money, does it matter?
- Mixture of trend following and yield can get drawdown to ~30%s
16min on the News
Yaron Haviv, CTO of Iguazio & Mahesh (ML Ops Webinar 3/31/20)
- Develop and test locally and then turning it into production
  - Package (dependencies, parameters, run scripts, build)
  - Scale-out (load-balance, data partitions, model distribution, AutoML)
  - Tune (parallelism, GPU support, Query tuning, caching)
  - Instrument (monitoring, logging, versioning, security)
  - Automate
- Streamlining collection of data, prepare at scale, accelerate training and deployment
- Why are ML Projects not deployed seamlessly? (Survey results)
  - No starting with clear business obj – why are we doing this? Similarly, not a good business case
  - Management failure including insufficient investment
  - Poor communication or not having the right skills for the job
  - Management resistance (“gut” and “real-world insight” over analytics and data)
  - Selecting the wrong uses, especially in an overly ambitious project
  - Data scientists asking the wrong questions due to lack of domain knowledge, primarily
  - Disagree on enterprise strategy
  - Big data silos
- Analytic Lifecycle – ML Eye
  - Define business mission (eg – Reduce churn rate in cc usage by 15%)
  - Project definition and resource evaluation (eg – Estimate propensity for cardholders to churn)
  - Analytic solution design – translating objectives into data science tasks, workflow (eg design churn prediction solution)
  - Capture and data preparation leading in to Algorithm Prototyping (eg prototype)
- ML Ops – key drivers for success for ML Platform
  - Resource management (ability for multiple people to use multiple GPUs/machines running environment)
  - Experiment management (ability to trace code, CL parameters, dataset for trained model – ability to keep track of result with envs)
    - Capability to store models automatically, hyperparameter optimization (framework that helps search over optimal hyper param settings)
    - Provision to store and manage ML datasets, models using tagging, automated versioning and querying capabilities
  - ML Flows (drag and drop, visual tool to build pipelines), rapid experimentation, share & re-use
  - Deployment
- Data science needs to quickly adapt
  - What worked before won’t work now or in the future – concept drift
  - Need for fast, iterative changes
  - Synthetic data to create a basis for models in times of uncertainty – no time to deal with complexities in deployment
  - Need to see business impact quickly
Wade Arnold, Founder of Moov.io with Sam Maule MP of North America at 11:FS (11:FS FinTech 4/2/20 morning)
- Services consuming vs what we’re paying for
- Moov.io as free connection of services for banks using GitHub and pulling data from gov sites, for instance
  - Project in Australia to update them
- For the big 3 core banking – they weren’t to be used on the internet originally
  - He helped add an abstraction layer
- He wants fintech to be more of a d2c term than services and layers in banking
- In the past, using Microsoft SQL or Oracle – now, you wouldn’t want that
  - All Open Source, especially internet and cloud providers enabling them
  - Not much different than IBM adding mainframes before
  - Open Source vs proprietary tech is scale

Reflecting on the Year (Notes from March 23 to 29, 2020) December 17, 2020

Posted by Anthony in Automation, Blockchain, Digital, education, experience, finance, FinTech, Founders, global, Hiring, Leadership, Learning, marketing, social, Strategy, Streaming, Time, training, Uncategorized.
Tags: AI, Business, Business Cards, Extension, investing, Platforms, remote, Startups
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When you just want to produce something for the day but you’ve been helping out others more than yourself, seek a site you use repeatedly for inspiration. Today’s Farnam Street and its post on quotes from AMAs 2020.

Shane Parrish, FS Founder – Jan 2020

I don’t want to optimize for work, and I don’t want to optimize for family time. I want to optimize for life. I get one life and I don’t want to look back at ninety yelling at myself because I regret doing or not doing something. I always try to keep that end in mind.

Anese Cavanaugh, IEP Method Founder – Feb 2020

Culture is the energy, the container, we create together to do our best work, show up as our best selves, be productive, and feel safe. It’s how we feel when we’re doing our work together.

Jeff Hunter, Talentism Founder – March 2020

All of us do work that matters. It may matter in a little way, it may matter in a big way. We’re surrounded by signals all the time that say some work is more valuable than others. But as I like to say, the person who cleans the bathroom and does that excellently is probably more valuable than somebody who’s the head of an organization and does it terribly.

Katherine Eban, Investigative Journalist – April 2020

As a journalist doing a book, it’s like a marriage; and I know this sounds a little cynical but,
marriages only get worse as they go along so you have to be really in love to start with. So, there’s got to be a real love there with the topic because the project and the reporting and the work is only going to get deeper and worse the further you get into the project. Start from a good strong place.

Marc Tarpenning, Tesla Co-Founder – July 2020

Long-term thinking is really this idea of always keeping as much optionality in the future as you can. Because you don’t know what the future is going to bring. So what you don’t want to do is constrain your future possible options because you’re on some trajectory.

Jesse Mecham, YNAB Founder – August 2020

Budgeting just means you’re deciding. We don’t want people spending less, we really want people spending without guilt. That approach of thinking you’re going to push through and restrict yourself just fits and starts. People do that again and again. Give yourself room to learn how you spend money and learn what you care about, and slowly as you work the four rules, you’ve found something sustainable.

Gretchen Rubin, Happiness Project Author – Sept 2020

People who have habits that work for them have a happier, healthier, more productive, more creative life. People whose habits don’t work for them have a lot more challenges. It’s a question of thinking more about how to make something [which makes you happier] into a habit.

Stefanie Johnson, Management Professor – Oct 2020

One of the amazing things about inclusion is that it’s really something that any of us can do. It’s not like you have to be a leader to make someone feel seen. Any of us can do that.

here

Transform Your Data Science Projects with 5 Steps for Design Thinking (HumAIn Podcast 3/22/20)
1. Data Collection – thorough data navigation skills
  1. Where is my data stored?
  2. How large is the data size?
  3. What quantity or quality do I need to launch?
  4. Who manages the data?
  5. When is it updated?
  6. Why is it relevant?
2. Data Refinement – Large quantities of data are good, but high quality is better – invest in refining data
  1. Who has data insight or dictionaries/features?
  2. What data requires querying, feature engineering or preprocessing? By what techniques?
  3. When will the data be ready to move to next place?
  4. Where will it be stored?
  5. Why will it need to be refined?
  6. How can it be tested/validated for consistent performance?
3. Data Expansion – With best data, problem may not be solvable. Integrations with APIs, feature enrichment.
  1. Who controls data access?
  2. What budget is available for obtaining more data?
  3. When do you stop expanding or iterating?
  4. Where can you get high quality data sources?
  5. Why are more data features needed?
  6. How do we decide what is most relevant?
4. Data Learning – Models or features for insights for the product to accelerate the workflow
  1. Who determines the benchmarks for the model?
  2. What ML framework/algos are chosen for what you will predict?
  3. When do you decide that modeling results are ready?
  4. Where will you process the data locally or in cloud?
  5. Why does product/feature require ML?
  6. How much compute time or resources are available to model?
5. Data Maintenance – Implementing into Production, while the data degrades over time
  1. Who is responsible for making changes to models with performance changes?
  2. What triggers/pipelines/data jobs implemented to monitor quality of data?
  3. If data falls below benchmarks, what do you action?
  4. Where do you commit time in schedule to monitor pipeline for qc?
  5. Why do your data modeling results decrease in quality in production?
  6. How do you communicate the results to PM, Data engineers, software engineers and in what frequency?
Remote Work and Our New Reality (a16z Podcast #529, 3/23/20)
- With GP Connie Chan for consumers, David Ulevitch for enterprise
- Scaling enterprise and infrastructure operations
  - Prioritization, scaling and outages – platforms that are cut and pasted
  - Legacy technology or video codecs make it tough to scale for the way you’re doing
    - Tandem (watercooler), Zoom, Around the World
- More people to chat / participate in a virtual setting
  - Recording and autodocumenting/archiving is easier than real world
- Online classes and verticals – v2 curriculum beyond streaming and animation, A/R or interactive ways
- Classes can fill up in the real world and now, with online settings, it can’t
- Krisp – background noise elimination or Muzzel – popup notifications off during screen sharing
  - David is used to WebEx (from time at Cisco) for being always-on video conf
  - More engaged for virtual
  - Tandem will show you what you’re doing / what app – collaborate if shared google doc
- Gaming and entertainment – playing with friends, children and maintaining relationships like Roblox
  - David installing an Xbox One even as a software dev moreso than gaming, but alone
- Asana / Workboard to align teams and communicating what’s important for org transparency
- Telehealth or telemedicine – more people going remote
- Remote work – myth for jobs that aren’t possible to successfully do remote
  - Test case – most people aren’t comfortable video conferencing, but forced to
  - Some like the separation of work and home life – people do want to work where they want and live otherwise
- What are the products/features – A/R or fashion show – save items for later when you overlay digital as a second screen
  - Browser extensions or different destination websites
  - Is it a horizontal or vertical platform that wins?
Investing in the Time of Corona Part I (Meb Faber podcast #206, 3/20/20)
- Preseason training – running after practice to make it easier for games
- His firm has 45k+ investors and he’s heard from only a few of them
- Get rich – more money, and all relative
- 100k in net worth is Top 10% globally but 1M is top 1% globally – people want roughly twice as much
- Luck as out of our hands – marrying into wealth or winning the lottery, Ken Fisher had a chapter on marrying rich
  - 88% of millionaires are self-made, other book said 80%+
  - High-earning exec, upper level management, professionally as the path to wealth
- Morgan Housel as saying “I want to be a millionaire” is instead “I want to spend a million dollars”
- Timing – best (yearly, 17%) and worst (0.06% loss), market-cap weighted equities don’t work
  - Small cap value and momentum is about 16% – drawdowns are inevitable in these types of strategies
  - Portfolio manager hat for 20% returns – would look for concentrated tilts toward global value, momentum and trend following
    - Lever up to 1.5-2x but the risk is there
- Small minority of companies with big winners – 100 baggers in investments
  - Sizing in private investments – sidestep threats to money, which is you (eg AMZN 95% drawdown on way up)
  - Money locked in – largest financial asset is house often – annuities are another
    - Paul Merriman where he gifts annuities to his grandchildren and wraps in a trust
  - Inconsistent opinion of illiquidity of house vs private
- Startup investing – QSBS treatment – investors can exclude 100% of cap gains ($10mln cap or 10x cost basis of stock)
  - Investments into retirement accounts to gain – Thiel and Levchin doing this, along with Romney
- Opportunity zones in long-term, as well
- Angel List is one of his favorite, but there are others – own sweat or your labor or with others on behaving properly
Manu Kumar, CEO of HiHello (20min VC 3/23/20)
- Founder at K9 Ventures, seed firm with investments in Carta, Lyft, Twilio, Auth0, LucidChart
- Founder of 3 prior cos, 3 with successful exits and then Carta
- Graduated in 2007, started his first company at 20, also
  - Noticed gap in ecosystem and created a job he wanted to do with K9 and seed/pre-seed
  - More capital being deployed and companies staying private longer, also
  - Seed before was $500k and now multi million
- He’s a big fan of former operators starting venture funds but doesn’t have experience with many scouts
- Founders taking early money, especially with multi stage funds – harder for option vat
  - Simpler answer for bigger firms – they’ve added new people, so what’s better than getting ball running with smaller checks
  - Safe playground and training for the newer folks at the firm as they grow
    - He believes this may phase out eventually
- At pre-seed, he has luxury to get to know teams before investing, especially since he does only 3-4 investments a year
  - At later stages, there’s a concern for how quickly rounds are progressing
  - His investment fund cycle is 5 years – 15-20 portfolio companies per fund (Fund I – 19, II – 14, III – 1/3 at 6)
  - Check sizes have inched up marginally ($400-600k now but probably closer to $600k now)
    - He has no FOMO in term sheet plays for chasing – he wants a mutual agreement on investments
- His LPs prefer concentrated portfolio, not diversification larger (Harry at 35-40)
- How do you avoid adverse selection – general issue at preseed funds (he and Tim Connors)
  - For K9 – number of investments per year means he has a very tight filter – fit for investment thesis/model and mutual fit
  - Making the call on people – diamond in the rough – help them seek the diamond
- How does he think about decision making as a solo GP? For LPs and fund itself?
  - Benefit of being a solo founder from 1996 – dealt with it already and on his own – comfortable in making judgment call
  - Leaps of faith – incomplete data
  - 100% accountable / responsible on both ends
- Venture firms fall prey to group think – limit to where it’s healthy
  - Group think and consensus is dangerous – most innovative companies are doing something unusual and different
- In 2009, for first investment out of K9 – he received a stock certificate and massive stack of papers
  - Called GPs – hands to CFO and gives to safe deposit box – what’s he do? Became the kernel for Carta (never touch paper)
  - Spent 3 years discussing this with teams before finally meeting Henry to pitch and pitch a second time
- Running HiHello has changed what he looks for in companies he invests in
  - From before, no outsourcing or distributed or remote teams on his blog on K9 – recruiting has become a nightmare
  - Remote belief was wrong for him – learn and adapt – now he is comfortable in advocating for remote
  - As an investor, you aren’t at the cutting edge of products/technology – didn’t understand Slack until HiHello usage
    - Get to experience new stack in starting a company – comm, hr, resources, tech, etc
- Fav book – How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
- Best board member – different ones add value in number of ways
- What does he know now that he wished he had known before – Nothing
  - If you know too much, it can be a deterrent. Being naïve may be a good thing – learn things at the right time.
- Worst thing for venture – mega funding rounds from multistage
- Best for venture – operators turning investors more often
- Workona as most recent investment – mostly working inside a web browser, building a desktop in the cloud
Misha Esipov, founder & CEO of Nova Credit (20min VC 3/20/20)
- Using international credit history for application of cc, apt rental, loans and more
- Misha raised $69M and KP, Index, First Round, Pear and Core Innovation Capital
- Misha spent 5+ years in private equity at Apollo, I/B at Goldman
- Goldman established a rigor for being first-principle, arbitrage, structure and similar in natural resources
  - Hunt for global raw materials (credit is unique pieces of data, formula for synthesizing and refine into pipelines)
- For value – business without a clear path to generating cash isn’t an enduring business
  - Press and publicity can create the aura, but margin profile can contract and needs to thought out
- Grad school in valley and got into YC summer program and incredible access to the venture funds in the valley
  - Authentic mission for what you’re doing and being honest – brings up the challenges and why they’re comfortable
- He wants to see more VC’s creating more value by helping execs to get to world-class and small portfolios
- He admired Matt Harris at Bain Capital – one of best fintech investors with a long-dated outlook across cycles
  - Not an investor but has a curiosity for the space and decisions for data usage
- How do you manage the psychology of being a CEO? It’s his life’s work, so it’s hard to find a balance.
- David Bradford at Stanford Interpersonal Dynamics told him – at onboarding and 1:1, deliberately enter a contract with you
  - If I’m micromanaging, you have a duty and obligation to call me out – I can’t scale as a CEO without that
  - If it’s not a tier 1, company-killing, decision, he lets the team decide and make mistakes
- Leadership team must signal some diversity to go down – 3 cofounders scaled to 10 (and all new 7 were male, by accident)
  - Company example for future hiring managers for ensuring the proper candidates – reaching out to VCs
- Here is what I believe, look for and expect for you in a role – no misalignment in expectations
  - Inevitably early on, it becomes on you to determine judgment for slipping on KPIs, individual may not be responsible
- Mastery by Robert Green – when he was debating on starting Nova or go back to finance world
  - Purpose is to figure out the craft he wanted to master – financial engineering vs building org, team and pursuit
- Superpower in company building – attention, listening and spotting subtleties for following up
- Weakness – boundless potential on core business and pmf, wants to go into new thing but have to strengthen core
- Financial access for newcomers that are new/migrants to the states – strengthening this global infrastructure

Transitioning Broader (Notes from March 16 to March 22, 2020) December 8, 2020

Posted by Anthony in Acquisitions, Automation, community, Digital, education, experience, finance, FinTech, Founders, global, Hiring, Leadership, Learning, marketing, social, storytelling, Strategy, Uncategorized, Venture.
Tags: email, growth, investing, marketing, Operators, remote, Trends, VC, Venture
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I’ve been thinking of a transfer. WP pro? Off-site? Drive some different traffic, engagement.

But everywhere I look, it seems they focus on a very specific niche. Well, that’d bore me if I had to do multiple niches or pick a single to do first.

There’s a weird balance I can find between bouncing between options. Finance. Data. Products. Strategy. Read some startups here. Read funding notes here. Research there.

I think we’ll go with Webflow and try to let this be simple, easy and straightforward. Focus on the platform template and let them do the rest. Should speed up the site, also.

Why am I writing this and letting you know? Likely because I’m at an impasse personally and professionally. Got stuck professionally in consulting and contracting. When the work doesn’t seem like it can lead to further opportunities directly, we seek out others. How do we transition? What do we transition to?

I’ve overseen many projects in my time, some products, some features. If we’re looking for a broader sense – forest among the trees birds-eye view, maybe a few programs in my day. The designation wasn’t that in title, but it’s arguable. Finding the differences between product + project + program management has been interesting to read through literature in what I’d define as each. And even more interesting is going through the roles / titles in job opportunities among different companies. Loose definitions that encompass quite a bit.

I’m reading No Rules Rules. Co-writers Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, and Erin Meyer, author of Culture Map among others, dive into the transparency laid out at Netflix. Somewhat woven between stories and employee accounts is a framework for how to create this culture. It’s not for everyone, but it certainly entices to see how efficient an organization can be when employees feel emboldened and autonomous. It’s exciting, and leaves room to run. Processes and the chain of command are what hinder action so commonly throughout business. So far, the book is a fresh take on that. I’d consider checking it out! Otherwise, hope you enjoy the notes.

Adena Hefets, Co-founder at Divvy Homes (20min VC 3/13/20)
- Early stage fintech investor at DFJ and original team at Square Capital
  - Started Square Capital, the lending platform on their business – talented, dedicated group that was very successful internal
  - multiB within Square itself, by now – thinking of what she wanted to do after
- Started in P/E at TPG, as well – they wanted her to go to business school initially, but felt weird doing that without doing anything
- Fintech – not as much innovation as she’d like to see – which industries that should be changing the most
  - Inflection points in the market like housing
- Perspective as being everything – time as operator/ee at Square gave her insight to grow super fast
  - As an investor, she saw the forest of overall landscape – as founder, takes a lot to scale company
  - Believes she’d be a better investor now than before
- “Growth is challenging” – may need to think distribution channels or what it means to develop one
  - Having a hard time prioritizing what product builds we have – to understand depth, have to see and work out a solution
  - Here are the 5 Prioritizations and which allows me to go down 1 product build
- Unit economics – finance/p/e run by Jim Coulter and value-investing
  - Company’s ability to cash flow and unit economics for product (make more than you spend on each user/customer)
- Level of deploying too much capital and trying to find optimal spend for seeking new customers
  - $X to acquire the next customers (paid vs blended) – Divvy gets quite a bit of organic distribution channels
- 3 addictions for founder of a company – paid marketing, over hiring (most people want to build out a team right away), lower pricing
  - Growing and successful company shouldn’t be indicated by how many employees – no hires and 10x revenue better
  - Lower prices by 10-20% for incremental growth – careful in discipline for value of product and being worth your price
- She had an easy fundraise – her support prepared her very well and lucky
  - Debt raising compared to equity raising is far harder for diligence – home tap
  - Her investment bankers that she approached had no interest
- She is far more devoted to execution focused while her cofounder is culture, feeling and empathetic for the company
  - Tough that people may expect females to be overly empathetic when she’s focused on customers and owning how/who you are
- Pushing people hard – don’t really have “yes people” – instead, “how have you thought about x, y, z?” and “does it deviate from what we’ve done?”
  - TPG – inv committee would always have red tape – if you took exact opposite, how’s that look?
- Evicted by Matthew Desmond – challenges with rent & housing in US – don’t want to be at Divvy
- Persistence is strength – as a group, run through walls
  - Weakness can be patience
- First check into Divvy was Max Levchin, incubated by HVF and Eric Wu at Nextdoor as a mentor
- Hard role to hire for – (In valley may be VP of Sales) but for her, COO role
  - Jack of all trades – understand finance, marketing spend and other like HVAC in her business
  - 100k homes in next 5 years for large amount of Americans (where the largest REIT is 80k)
Toni Shneider, Partner at True Ventures (20min VC 3/16/20)
- Portfolio of early-stage investments includes Peloton, Hashicorp, Fitbit, Automattic, Tray.io
  - CEO of Automattic for 8 years helping WordPress get to top 10 global internet sites
  - VP of Yahoo after acquisition of former CEO post at Oddpost
- Up and down on Sand Hill road for 1999 with Uplister and then Oddpost
  - Phil and John had asked him if he was interested in venture as they were going out to new fund
  - He said yes to both True Ventures and CEO of Automattic after being asked
- Founder friendly and coaching investors/VC’s instead of bosses
  - Collaborative, where everyone is working closely, sharing credit/blame
- Being an investor and operator while at Automattic
  - Helped that Automattic was distributed because he could respond to emails/texts/Slack
  - True designed for partners to pursue deals, co’s in their own way – could multi-task
- Qualities of a great CEO and founder at companies – having seen wildly talented founders
  - Driven, generous, creative and optimistic – sales wizards
  - Love to focus deeply or obsessively (mentioned Blue Bottle Coffee – origin, experience of café, smell, prep and feel of cup – 10 years)
- Changing as investor – originally s/w eng, product mindset & overestimate product importance / idea
- He’s missed some deals, definitely
  - Instagram pass very early before they pivoted there – sometimes the timing is off and that’s okay
  - Focus on doing a great job for those that he makes a deal on
- Remote teams – where do people go wrong?
  - If you work on something that can be done remotely – it should be a win because people can work how they want
  - Fewer distractions with other stuff
  - Centralized companies that don’t trust the remote model instead of going all-in from the get-go
  - Salesperson that has to deal with geographies and sales should be in that area but you can have some centralized teams
- True had 3 very large exits – Ring (LA) to Amazon, Duo Security (NYC) to Cisco and Peleton (Ann Arbor) IPO – all built outside of SV
  - Bay Area is fantastic but it’s possible outside of that – 25% SV, half in the US and another quarter outside of that
- Pros/cons of distributed
  - Pros: access to global talent pool, happy employees
  - Cons: how to build relationship/trust without an in-person connection, so far
  - If remote, need to figure out a way to be together (Automattic is once or twice a year together)
- Favorite book – Their Eyes Were Watching, then Jim Collins’ Good to Great, also Predictably Irrational
- Time allocation for a portfolio – super responsive when they need him, half with existing portfolio and half for new
- Zero inbox person by end of week
- Biggest challenge at True Ventures – de-carbonization because it’s a completely new area and that it’s not a good place for VC
- Best board member so far – one for him was Ellen Pao from Project Include
- Most recently investment and why he said yes?
  - PiaVita – med diagnostics platform for vets – impressed by founders – wanted to work with them
Sam Parr, CEO of The Hustle (webinar on cold email 3/19)
- Crafting a message for cold email – AIDA
  - A: Attention – interesting or curious – subject line and aligning the value add there
  - I: Interest – interesting facts or use cases
    - Hustle Con to CEO, for instance, interest that people at conf are avid learners and hustlers
    - “Hate Salesforce” in reply to a tweet – hate the upload feature, for instance & you’ve an answer
  - D: Desire – Show them how life/task is better with your product
    - Do it by hand, sew dresses faster. X got a better
  - A: Action – single specific action from this point – tell them what’s next. Signup or make a scale.

I want to include how awesome The Hustle and their Facebook group Trends is. If you’re looking for ideas or new solutions to improve business/create a hell of a network or simply reach out to knowledgable people, it’s worth it. Yes, I posted an affiliate link – yes, it’s still worth its weight. Try it for $1.

Better Foundations in Learning (Notes from March 9 – March 15, 2020) November 24, 2020

Posted by Anthony in community, Coronavirus, Digital, education, experience, Founders, global, Hiring, Leadership, Learning, marketing, NFL, questions, social, sports, storytelling, Time, training, Uncategorized.
Tags: Author, Coaching, Coronavirus, Learning, marketing, NBA, NFL, NYT, Professor, Records, Teaching, Vulnerability
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Foundations. Linear effects. And continuous learning. How are they interrelated?

If you skip foundational learning because we’re too task-focused or hoping to land at an end result, you may luck into some 1:1 mapping of a linear effect. If successful, it may not even be a bad thing. After all, you completed your project / passed your test, whatever it may have been. However, that foundation that you may have missed out on (whether known or unknown) leaves something to be wanted. If the foundation is there, or often when you have the time to recognize the weakness and think systematically from there, you can make connections that surpass linear effects. Learning up from there doesn’t just climb a ladder, it adds others and helps you make connections that can be fruitful in further and further adjacent areas.

We see quite a bit of the ‘jack-of-all-trades’ or ‘generalist vs specialist’ conversations, especially in tech / data science. It’s hard to cover the depth if you start in a niche, unless you had or build a great foundation. Then it becomes easier to recognize opportunities that are similar to what you have done or learned previously. Cross referencing or adapting yourself to new language and key points that pretty much match. Then, knowledge over your foundation compounds and connections present new ideas in a better light. I’m sure this fails in some roles of various industries – but the deeper / broader your foundation is, the more likely you land on a similarity that can make it easier.

In this age of more information, it’s hard to sift through where to start foundation-wise. I think we could do a bit better on that front. I suppose this is somewhat the appeal of schooling – you get someone to hand you a syllabus and a guideline for what the frameworks are for some sort of foundation for a topic. Not up to you at that point, but it’s a block to start. After schooling, you hope that a job is a good starting point for giving you those basics while also creating your own style / fitting into processes. Rough to find yourself a machine in the cog where there’s little room for your own flare – blockers for expanding into other avenues.

What are the best ways to develop these foundations? Are there online curricula that demonstrate starter points or ones that people have found topic-specific? Each of us have our own style, so feel free to share – videos / courses / online / books / etc….

Matt Mochary, Coach to VC’s and Founders (20min VC 3/9/20)
- Benchmark, Sequoia, Brex, Coinbase, Flexport, Plaid and others
- Investor at Spectrum Equity & cofounded Totality – sold to Verizon
  - Growth equity fund in late 90s, heyday of growth internet – junior partner but couldn’t make a wave yet
  - Founded Totality with a friend, raised $130mln and hired a ton of employees
- Academy Award shortlist for shortlist documentary and Doing Good for Mochary Foundation
- Came back to SV after having kids, best place to raise a family but didn’t want to start a company
  - Wanted to become a coach, strategic thinking and coaching – students at Stanford were his first
    - They recc’ed to friends that had graduated already
- Replaced fear with joy as the motivator
  - Prefrontal cortex where creative thought occurs, amygdala is fear and anger – fight/flight
  - In world of modern thoughts, recognizing fear/anger is being self-aware – he tells others to tell him if he has them
    - If there isn’t urgency, he can wait – but otherwise, he tells someone else and has them decide
- When he has a group together – withholding neg thoughts is bad
  - Think about it and once you have it, that’s powerful – if you don’t hear the thought process, you can’t fix it
  - How to share difficult subjects that doesn’t trigger the counterparty – books “Difficult Conversations” or “Radical Candor”
  - Timing of this has to be a good thing
- Having anger named and thoughts named “Hey, I sense that you’re feeling a lot of anger and I guess is that your thoughts are _”
  - The person visibly relaxes but often less than what he says
- Imposter syndrome is fear – pick where you feel joy and take the things you don’t feel joy and remove them
  - Energy audit, essentially – hour by hour (red/green markers)
    - Could outsource tasks, stop doing them, or find out ways to be energy-raising for the things that need to get done
  - Repeat the process in 30 days and then again in 60 days
- CEO role has to take care a lot of things – need to get done and get done well
  - Cofounder example – extreme introvert and extrovert (half reports one, half reports other)
    - Introvert loved internal meetings and extroverts loved external ones
- Boards are the death of every great investor – if you sell to founders, you join their board forever – lots of time (4x year)
  - 10, 15, 20 where 40-50% are board meetings and 20-30% with partners, other time for support of portfolio co’s
    - Lose time to do what you really want to do – instead, ask “How can I be the most helpful to you?”
  - You have a network and they need introductions, customers, recruits, etc
- Every single interaction he has – always asks for feedback “What did you like?” and “What was effective?”, brutal, possible
  - Declares an action for recognition of the questions
  - If feedback doesn’t resonate with you, don’t need to accept it
- Favorite book “High Output Management”
- He was a glutton for coaching, not seeing his family – really enjoys both but needs to find balance
  - He gains energy from coaching vs the draining
- How does he feel about rising Chiefs of Staff – extension of yourself after automating and inbox zero but people still asking for more
  - Training them is key – full access to your email/calendar and sitting beside you for every meeting/call for ~2 months
  - Correlate and pattern match as you on your behalf – start with them and that gets your shit together
- If I don’t respect you, I won’t tell you about it – other will hate you for it – letting someone KNOW about being on time
- All companies should try to do Pledge 1% and act on it – feels SV doesn’t quite do its part
Peter Feigin, Kevin Quealy, Graphics Editor at The Upshot and NYT (Wharton Moneyball 3/11/20)
- Propensity scoring for people matching on probability of using a shot – marathons and faster times with shoes
- Would love to randomize experiments for everything, but tough to do that with marathon winners
  - How big an effect might a shoe matter?
- Regulations for heel heights are at 40mm but 38mm is where Alpha are (popular shoes)
  - World records have kept coming down
- Why are early returns nonrepresentative – cities tend to report last
- Rule changes for NFL that they’ll vote on: sky booth ref, continue/restart a possession after scoring as 4th and 15
- With no crowds in NBA games, possibly to identify randomness of home/away splits
  - Is it refs that end up being influenced or is it the crowd/home cooking, etc
David Brooks, NYT author (KindredCast on WhartonXM)
- Was going through a tough time while a professor and told his class – they proceeded to let him know if he needed anything, they’d be available
  - One of most powerful times of showing vulnerability and changing the design of the class thereafter
- Relationships on which are the most important – focus in class – Marriage, Vocation, etc

Into Building/Growing? Check out these Communities (Notes from March 2 – March 8, 2020) November 2, 2020

Posted by Anthony in Acquisitions, Automation, community, Data Science, Digital, experience, finance, FinTech, Founders, global, Hiring, marketing, questions, social, Strategy, Time, Uncategorized.
Tags: Building, ecommerce, finance, FinTech, Hiring, IndieHackers, low-code, Makerpad, No-code, SaaS, Strategy
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I think we can see a bit where we’re going as a society. Need some more community and less individual pieces. This has likely been exasperated by the current pandemic and the uncertainty of the approach taken to present a future. Thankfully, the internet does allow us connections from nearly any and all places, so for that, we can be grateful.

So, Trends would be if you want to learn from some excellent experts in the widest variety of industries. It’s for the curious, bold and excited. Ecommerce, SaaS, storage facilities, other real estate, business, professional services, whomever. There’s someone for every problem, ideas aplenty for solutions otherwise. Talk to a ton of people who just seek to do. This is all without even mentioning there’s a newsletter with a wide swath of input on the most prevalent (or soon to be) trends based on a heavy dose of research.

If that’s not enough, then whoever/wherever you are in your career, there are members that have volunteered to be mentors depending on what you’re seeking. Bounce ideas? They have that. Grow to $1mln, sure. Exit plans? Check. It’s the group to figure out what you think may be the next step. See it here: Trends link (yes, referral but I promise it’s worth it)

Next two revolve around code/no-code and building/hacking your way to product. IndieHackers, fairly split I’d guess between those that can code / develop and those that choose not to – as well Makerpad – a community of no/low-code people trying to replicate big scale/functionality with little effort. If you’re a student, especially, these are incredible – Makerpad‘s community/videos/walkthroughs are awesome value. Better if you’re a student, too. It should inspire you to start something – or at least see what it may look like.

IndieHackers – similar. Plenty of hustlers and side businesses there that you can interact with, as well as a podcast that is top notch, both for inspiration as well as knowledge/insights. See basic problems with solutions turn into full-blown businesses (Rent a Card Sign to Wedding Card printing, as two examples). The knowledge and people, from a straight global environment, is intoxicating. With the good kind.

Hopefully you’ll take these to heart and check them out. For now, these are the notes below. Some more experts, successes and adventures.

Mark Goldberg, Partner at Index Ventures (20min VC 3/2/20)
- Dropbox, Revolut, Supercell, Plaid and Transferwise – all financial things
  - BizOps at Dropbox, where company 10x’ed while he was there
  - Went from 200-1500 people while he was managing there
- Was looking for a new thing, possible operator – talked to Index and some of other best ventures
- Importance of hiring / hypergrowth – 8 week interview process at time at DropBox
  - 80% of time would be on hiring, not what he was looking forward to doing
- Highly commoditized as venture capital now – industry sees more money but offer is needed
  - Evolution over last decade – Andreesen as services, others as sector expertise, data for a few
  - Relationships as differentiator – connecting good investors, trust as foundation
- He was 30 years old in joining Index as an associate – flat hierarchy though, ton of autonomy and start investments
  - Had been associate in a p/e firm 8+ years prior
  - Find platform for the autonomy to increase your risk and search there
  - Titles have become meaningless – true question: can you lead your round? Associates can at Index.
- To ask partner for looking for seed or traditional venture fund – are you going to dedicate the time to help get to next stage?
  - If answer is no because it’s a rounding error, not worth it, likely. Earlier stage investments = more time, often.
- More angels joining – extremely risky and making money is hard
  - Upside has limitations
- If he were to leave Index, he’d ask who are the smartest people to add to cap table – rolodex for increase business
  - Historically, meeting the demand – all these great founders/operators on deeper side
- As an early board member – listen – don’t need a loud voice or overplay position as new member
  - Being judicious about when to weigh in, praise, critique – impactful areas for you to dive in
  - Favorite board member – getting to be in meetings with many at Index – Mike Volpi
    - Offering hard conversations and messages to founders
- Lessons learned while passing or no – not focused, be direct
  - Meet with an investor and then they get ghost you – try to close meetings
  - Complement or help founders with an intro or interesting cases
- Thinks fintech is booming – not a bubble currently – trillion dollars in incumbents
  - Just beginning to shift to the new crop – the 50th largest bank is $50bn in market cap
  - Rise of Monzo and Revolut for UK / Europe – are they not going to just add student loans/mortgage/lending
  - Best ones should, he thinks – Robinhood / Chime / New Bank (Brazil) – current account and then cross sell otherwise
- Favorite book – Barbarian Days by William Finnegan about surfing and surfing in SF
- Looks to see more climate tech investing
- Plaid selling to VISA – as a big win
- Enterprise software founders – “Have to get to $1mil ARR to get series A” – not true if it’s a solid business
- Data privacy company investment – new category of software to go after data privacy
Jeff Lawson, founder & CEO of Twilio (Invest Like the Best ep 158, 3/3/20)
- How to build a platform – cloud comms platform to customers like Twitch, Lyft and Yelp
- At his office – “Draw the Owl” – best values as needing to explain
  - Call to action for builders – go figure it out – doing what you do as 2 step process of draw a few circles, then beautiful
  - Early customers needed product (as API) opposed to the investor method which said it’s not a product
- Content center app, marketing – developers can take APIs that provide infrastructure to build an app at scale, quickly
- Twilio has virtualized the communications center much like AWS does computing and storage
  - Stripe / Google Maps for similar functionality
- New era for enterprise software – initially, CIO made the buying decisions and things cost millions of dollars, years to implement
  - On prem and expensive
- SaaS around turn of millennium could buy online and their heads could provision the services they needed
- For the scale and software – it’s a platform of things in their API
  - Build or die compared to buy or build
- Incorporating software into business model – company would need new back-office financial
  - Buy from vendor or build it – already built / reinvent but this would be solution after solution
- Banks with core competency for amazing software – digital banks
  - In response, incumbents can do the same thing (one of Twilio’s is ING – few years ago promoted a new CEO)
    - Becoming Agile, outside of devs, set of Agile teams – each part of small team
  - Agile at ING video on YouTube – one of largest banks’ leadership in business saying they have to build to be successful
- At AWS – customer intimacy to align by customer needs
  - A product company with a solution makes a lot of assumptions for what their customers’ needs – may not intersect with differences
  - A platform, however, can be utilized to build anything by customers – ING built a whole contact center on Twilio
    - Lots of companies as on-prem for contact centers because the contact center market was broken – move to cloud
- Their billboard in SF that’s been there for 6+ years – “Ask Your Developer”
  - Merging business with tech and developers but many companies just give them the tasks instead of the big business decisions
  - How can we do that?
- Developers often enjoy doing the work over the weekend – Hack-a-thons over weekends or doing stuff then
- Finding what it means to be a part of your tribe – heroes, symbols and rituals
  - Skip Potter – CTO of Nike, building unbreakable relationships with customers, being Agile, serving Nike
  - ING story
  - Nations / religions have many rituals – companies have rituals (say, bagels on Thursdays for all-hands)
  - Wednesday night dinner at the offices – defining who they are, with a theme each week
  - Symbols – what matters to the tribe – powerful thing you have are the values
    - Culture: what you feel when you walk into work every day, whether articulated or not
      - Can be good, can be bad during the interactions within the company
    - Values: handles on the culture – allow for you to describe and guide the culture
      - No shenanigans, foolish/nonsense – can’t just create/invent values
      - Introspect the feeling when you walk in early – pooled 15 of people about 1/3 at the time to debate
      - Be an owner
      - Wear the customer shoes – customer-centricity
        Way you are customer-centric, looking at problem/company from perspective
        Go to a customer – I will trade you a Twilio-branded shoes for your shoes
- Kindest thing anyone’s done – Kevin O’Connor as founder of DoubleClick was an angel investor in one of his first company’s (dotcom era)
  - Come to my Hampton’s house in the winter, bring a cofounder and figure out what you’re going to do, I’ll put in some money
  - No plowing of roads – would order Amazon/UPS would plow the road for them – took about 9 months
  - Invested in first company, and then believed in him as entrepreneurs
Tomer London, Gusto co-founder (20min VC 2/28/20)
- Raised $520mln for Gusto, people platform for small businesses providing one place to run payroll, manage benefits, support
  - General Catalyst, CapitalG, KP, T Rowe, Fidelity, and more – also angels Shopify founder Tobias Luttke, Sam Altman, Max Levchin,
    Matt Mullenweg, Kevin Hartz and Elad Gil – did a PhD in EE at Stanford before founder/CEO at Vizmo (customer care for enterprise)
- Originally from Israel, parents have a small clothing store in Hypha – started by picking up a VisualBasic book for the store at 11 yrs old
  - Count inventory, sizing, and could do it via a computer with inventory management software – helped his dad, grandpa, cousins and friends
- 10 years ago, moved to the Bay Area to start his PhD at Stanford – met his cofounders Josh and Eddie – family history and connection to SMB
- Fundraising = creating change as a tool
  - New channel to acquire customers that may be able to scale – $100mln ARR in 7 years, but maybe take 4 years with funding
  - Might be making promises that can’t be fulfilled
  - If you have a product, but you see an R&D opportunity for a new product to similar customer-set that may have a good opportunity
  - Investors have a lot of time to talk about start-ups so they set the tone for “requirements” for seed/A/B/C
- Fin/VC Twitter and social media – he tries to be away and off of it
  - Echo chamber may not enable the creativity of different thoughts
  - Hard to have the mental space to think different/contrarily
- Gusto started in YC 2012 Winter – had good traction, knew people and were oversubscribed
  - Josh came up with thinking about investors similarly to culture fit – values/motivation alignment sharing with Gusto
- Raised a $200mln round, working with 100k small businesses including dentists, lawyers, tech, barbershops and working
  - Look for opportunities and purpose – less about being big but around specific R&D initiatives, scaling growth channels
- Try to make sure to bring people on the cap table that can add value – specifically, VP of Product Adam Nash at DropBox has been sounding board
  - Be really picky about the people you bring on
- Delightful experience really matters
  - Product / design reviews: product quality with function, ease of use, and delight (can’t add this later, has to be inherent)
    - Delight is something of value and in a way that may be unexpected
  - People come to them because someone has told the prospects that they love their payroll/benefits provider
  - They don’t use the MVP, they use MLP (lovable product) – don’t waste time building things people won’t use
    - Scoping down to test and ship it
- How does it feel like to get paid? Maybe not anything at all – boring, just a check in the bank, missed opportunity
  - Did a design sprint (a la Google Ventures) – short period of time/process for an email experience in payday – celebration
- When you meet someone for the first time – first 20-30 seconds really matter, personality shines
  - If you understand personality of a product and brand, you can bring people in through copy/illustrations
Justin Jackson, founder of Transistor.fm and Tyler Tringas, Earnest Capital founder (The Indie Hackers podcast #152, 3/6/20)
- Picking the right market to get started in that originated from Justin’s blog post called “The Main Thing”
  - Justin was following curiosity – somewhat interesting after talking with Nathan Bashez – main thing swallows most value
    - Eating out in college with limited $, he’d order entrée and water – most folks just do that
    - Is that applicable to how we think of products? Can we frame it the way we build products?
    - Josh was doing subscription forms for embedding in Medium posts – Medium increasing audience
      - It was a nice-to-have to store
  - Insightful posts for nice, concise wrappers around important things to consider
    - Justin has a series and Tyler’s been the “reply guy”
    - This is important to think about, and then what should we think about?
    - Areas of disagreement are the implications for doing business outside of this – narrower (think: bootstrappers/indiehackers)
      - Currently, Tyler believes indiehackers should be shying away from big things and verticals
      - New twists on WP hosting, Todo app – not paying attention to 2nd order effects and incumbents
- Don’t build on top of other platforms vs building on top of others (Jason Cohen on an app store where someone else pulls you with)
  - To get traction, need big ideas and concepts and then niche down by product or audience
    - Distribution or differentiation – typically this is often in main spaces
      - CRM, PM tool, ToDo, basic ecommerce, CMS hosting – chock full of stuff
    - Tons of successful ones, lately (last 5 years), are apps – automated collections on Stripe, error collections on Rails, bolt-ons
  - Developer market is one of most unique markets – things that work there may not work outside of it
    - Devs have a larger #, avg revenue and highly incentivized to get better at what they do – maybe parallels with doctors
    - Reachable online, congregates online and tons of opportunity to reach them
    - Ecommerce first may share this, content-based, ad/news/blogs similarly compared to pure offline markets
- ConvertKit – state of union surveys between bloggers and creators – cognitive ceilings of bubbles after meet-ups and conferences
  - Differences of WP plug-in, Shopify extensions for ecommerce entrepreneurs, etc – big market differences
    - Characteristics of markets matter – pointing yourself in some direction to pull yourself, it matters what you’re first 1% is
- Size of market does matter – leaning too far – have to quantify the demand for a product in a specific category
  - Number of potential customers, new customers, average spend, frequency of purchase, growth rate, % reachable
  - His market for Transistor.fm as moderate sized podcast hosting – say, 70k customers, potentially
  - Tyler considering “side dishes” in the main verticals because of differentiation for your product and jump into distributions
- $10k MRR per founder may be the “default alive” amount but completely depends on what you’re doing
  - Young Indie Hacker as total time without massive audience/trust can’t launch a direct competitor to Google Analytics
  - Privacy-focused analytics as a trend, simple analytics, too – big audiences launch failed products all the time
  - Experience matters, everything you bring to bare matters – Justin started blogging in 2008 – built the audience over time
    - Reuben Gamez doesn’t care for audience – he knew SEO and had timing to help
- What trade-offs do you have to make for a market?
  - Where are you in your life? Stage matters – spend some time on the slopes/get your experience
- Affiliates for Justin’s foot off the ground to succeed
  - Nathan Berry – pattern in his life earlier than Justin – early 20s blogging and publishing then, selling early
  - The practice and experience matters
- Main thing for niche audience or side thing for huge audience – questionable unfair advantages, main thing in huge market
  - Pretty core product for them – “Crossfit gyms, for instance – Mind/Body went after yoga studios and everything for it as SaaS product”
    - If you have a particular product insight into P/M or payment txns – try to match the niche product where insight is overvalued
- IndieHackers as afraid of competition they make this product that nobody really wants to pay for as Unique
  - Justin brought up going to meetups in other cities/states to be the outsider and find out what they want
Gaming & Chrome OS / Steam, Going Cashless, Coronavirus Latest (a16z 16min on the News 3/8/20)
- Jonathan Lai and Andrew Chen from Consumer team, Alex Rampell from fintech team
- Steam – Valve corporation as the largest PC distributor of games after starting as Valve game
- Publishers controlled access to physical retail points – devs would take 20-30% of their games
  - Developers actually made it 70% with Steam partnership – just took 30% otherwise, indie developers rise
  - 30k games under Steam – not all would run on ChromeOS hardware, but can see smaller indies get access
    - 90mn MAU, 1 bn registered accounts – social graph that may get ChromeOS more information
- K12 education – 60% of computers are Chromebooks now – Roblox, Stadia, Minecraft as possibilities for younger
- Google Stadia may unlock tiers of games for longer sit-down sessions because they wouldn’t be able to target all platforms
  - Entertainment over long-term, new gameplay experiences – click to play alongside as an ad or video, social onboarding
- Going cashless – no employee theft, checkout line, armed trucks vs cash only (cc fees and tracking)
  - Both sides of consumer cutting and for small businesses – rich people monetized at interest margin but others on fees

What’s Teaching Done? (Notes from Feb 24 to March 1, 2020) October 16, 2020

Posted by Anthony in Acquisitions, Digital, finance, FinTech, global, gym, marketing, sports, Strategy, Uncategorized.
Tags: Ads, Business, CMS, D2C, Digital, finance, FinTech, ideas, marketing, NFL, SaaS, sports, Startup, Teaching
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It’s 2020. I plan to revisit a number of journeys and roles that have ultimately made the person that I am today and landed me in my current place. Being comfortable with where that is, but not satisfied, has enabled an uncommon, jagged path. In realizing that everyone has different paths, it’s definitely fun to be able to share and learn from others – how they’ve arrived in their current states, what they think they learned, how they’ve best come into their place and where they may want to be shortly. That reflection is something that I believe should be a rote process for people age into their late 20s and early 30s.

I really enjoy keeping myself sharp and helpful in teaching/tutoring. I’ve set aside somewhere between 5-50 hours for every week since I was finishing high school for this. It was informal at first in high school – neighborhood kids or younger siblings of family friends. Similar with college – classmates who wanted some help. Right out of school, I took a role with a tutoring company in addition to a recruiter role where I didn’t quite appreciate it as much. Different focus when I was first entering the workplace. There was a challenge of learning a bit inside of tech (IT recruiting), talking with founders and hiring managers there, across many industries. Sourcing candidates, gathering requirements and putting everything in line seemed like a role that had more pieces than the teaching side. However, I left that after almost 2 years to go full-time with the teaching company. I was going to become a head trainer of the full west region and manage/oversee the tutors in each of the 9 locations as well as expanding 5 more.

Over the course of nearly 2 years where I got to oversee much of the training and processes for the NorCal’s tutors, as well as auditing results for students, talking with parents/students/center directors at each location for action plans, it was all very process-oriented. There were people in these students where you had to match how they may learn best, or how they operated. You can have a teacher who knows their stuff but if there isn’t an adaptation, it doesn’t help always. Everyone can teach but it’s learning to adapt that really finetunes the learning process – both for the teacher and student. I’ve heard this repeatedly in talking with those still learning now – teachers that blatantly declared “online/virtual isn’t the way to teach” or that they would only do video recordings or to “just read the textbook” and they’ve given up. That’s not the norm, but it’s a bit too common. Hopefully pointing out that not everyone enjoys their job and work day in and day out – it’s something they can do. And, more importantly, it’s not something you want to eat/sleep/breathe outside of work.

I left the full-time role due to that last point. And that’s why I made it more about teaching those that I wanted to teach or saw those that were willing/able to adapt. It’s fun when I know that my students know I’m helping because I want to. And that’s allowed me to teach some fantastic people. There are connections I have from all of this that have attended some of the best institutions, gone on to do some very interesting work, traveled all over, have positions at some of the best firms. Others still have started business, data and finance clubs after some of our discussions. Siblings of others who recognize the work and time that was put on from both sides. It’s rewarding.

It’s also sometimes difficult. There are failures. And my close interaction with them puts me in the wake – deservedly so. I set extremely high expectations for most of the students and they get scared to tell me – most do still, but I’m more worried that that pressure is externalized from what they’re putting on themselves. A few that I enjoy seeing or emailing back and forth every year or semester or so – check in to see that they’re on a track that they’re comfortable with – not that we ever know what that means in the future, but one that they’re good with. Their development will always intrigue me. Then, I continue when I adapt.

All of this to say that I’m curious. Some days, talking with those that are younger teaches me about new things. Other days, it’s talking to older mentors or someone out at a coffee shop who can drop some knowledge. If you can inspire someone, they may light a fire for you. Being there by just being there is adequate – a peculiar repeated check-in does more than we believe, so reach out.

Who gets paid, and who doesn’t? (Build Your SaaS – bootstrap in 2020, 1/28/20)
- Talking about not using percentages in year/life but we do in Kindle / ebooks
  - The Timeless Way of Building, Christopher Alexander
  - Working for yourself or remotely – some sense of not being grounded, lonely possibly
- Environment contributing to an interaction – people aren’t present as often, anymore
- Wanting to rebuild the dashboard for Transistor.fm – going from SemanticUI (all-in-one library, CSS and JS)
  - New Rails app and getting integrated with Tailwind UI
- Not truly valuing the CMS because of WordPress/Webflow, etc
  - In podcasting, tools like Audacity and Grabband are free
Dave Sims, co-CEO of Floify, Flux (The Indie Hackers Podcast 11/18/19)
- Start with naivete – starting first business in 2000, 2 initial failed and the third took hold
  - Started another 13 years later, had recruited and retained important people
- 90% Floify and 10% Flux
- Successful CEOs of mortgage companies with hundreds of employees, who partner with motivated entrepreneurs to help
  - Partner legally – each own shares and do it together – pumping out profits
- Used short-term financing to get into house when moving to Boulder with his wife – did long-term refinance after 90 days
  - Talked to local credit union – worker emailed requests for the long-list of papers
    - Didn’t want to email tax returns – for security, he encrypted and sent them
  - Wanted to make the loan officer assistant’s life easier, so he figured he could solve it with 5 people
- 400k loan officers in the US, big enough market
  - Had another idea – meeting with JPMC where you can create bank accounts with APIs
    - Excited but not sufficient enough people that were interested, and it was too slow
- Finding a business idea – medium level of effort and insight
  - Work on what you know, but industries are so deep where you never knew much of it or tech need or business
  - He knew nothing about the mortgage industry other than as a consumer
  - Some small software companies that weren’t that big, not with much traction doing similar stuff
    - Borrower/loan officer assistant in operations don’t get the same love as officers/compliance
- He wanted to make Floify as 1 screen that a borrower could go to where he could interact with the mortgage loan officer/co, bank/cu
  - Make it easier to do encrypted docs, w2, pay stubs and DL, such (at the start)
  - First customer – down in Austin, TX and he’d visit the office a few days a week to see how it worked
    - Built capabilities for messaging realtors
  - He thought the loan officer would be his customer – but occasionally the loan officers would be part of company to wrap up
- What’s happening in email? Spreadsheets? – he has customers in other real estate, solar, commercial
  - Could use it as attorneys or accountants, also – but stayed niche
- To get someone to pay – GitHub check-in from June ’13
  - He wrote a press release in August of 2013 – was doing thirty day trials, screen share and trying
  - He called and took the credit card over the phone in September
  - Backend was Java, NoSQL D/B (no longer there) and helped for speed of development – just had to work, MVP and value
- Selling $50-100 subscriptions a month, want <2% churn
  - Went after smaller customers first – shorter sales cycles – actually doing loans compared to higher up who said they had software
- Missing cloud with Salesforce in 1999, 2000 – had kept other people’s files on his computer in 1984 (DropBox)
Paul Gift, Joe Lemire (Wharton Moneyball, 2/26/20)
- Playoff expansion discussion – what are the leagues looking to optimize
  - Find best team, more teams in, more randomness
- Stylistic conflict for Heinke and the 76ers
- MMA analytics – round by round currently for FightMetrics (owned by UFC owners)
  - Not many camps have this data, let alone the money to get it
    - Training has quite a bit of analytics but not necessarily fight/cage data
- Testing fight dynamics for smaller/larger cages
- Technology is training for Lemire at Sporttechie – clothes that add to energy/effort
  - Wearables and exertion data anecdotes – including Nate Burleson being told to leave field by Browns’ trainer
    - Was feeling good so decided to stay, despite wearable saying otherwise – tore his hamstring, retired
- Combine differences – getting into more of the details in sports for how much analytics there really is
- Sports apparel for positional tracking and now more information about wearables
  - Machine only to “techstile” and smart apparel – work with others
Rebecca Kaden, Managing Partner at USV (USV webinar for SimulMedia 2/27/20)
- Incumbent advertising with Google and Facebook – audience has been aggregated extensively
  - Suddenly had increasing parts of the global audience in two places
  - Imperfect markets become perfect as you get closer to saturation of a market
- Starting to lose market with younger audience as it becomes fragmented
- Companies could before, over last 10 years, could mine for performance
  - How can cos use the channels to grab the TV mantle – creating brands to enable mental/emotional shortcuts for recognition
  - Facebook or other things try to sell that the brand awareness is in a click-through, but it’s more a longstanding form
- Build high-quality, easy-to-use and the companies looking to scale will scale with you
  - Slack, Zoom, Expensify, Twilio, Cloudflare, Stripe, etc…
- Split out CAC to steady and experimental – permission to experiment in different channels
  - Kill them quickly for what works or not – open to try many things
  - What’s a good influencer CAC and value (blended, potentially)
    - Modern Fertility startup – work with many influencers as authentic/emotional, telling stories
      - Influencers were buying off of other influencers – then having them talk about their story
- Knowing your funnel and not will determine your marketing channels/spends
- How do you build trust? (D2C question) – any beautiful design won’t build trust day one
  - Very clear on what your brand value is to give to consumer – 1 core promise
  - Nothing more valuable than loud customers willing to evangelize for you
- Finding channels – hypothesis for success needs to be clear initially
  - Bandwidth – as you spend increasingly, you should see the same or better results
    - Scaling doesn’t work, then
  - Unit economics need to work, LTV as tough to figure out early on
What’s Up With All These FinTech Acquisitions, SEC Rules (a16z 16 Minutes News, 2/28/20)
- Anish Acharya and Scott Kupor on Credit Karma’s acquisition by Intuit and VISA acquiring Plaid
- Best companies own distributions instead of products
  - Products aren’t sophisticated, but the reach is wild – CK with 100mln members
  - eTrade in wealth management couldn’t have been easy for Morgan Stanley
- Intuit owns the point of transaction for filing taxes but not durable with customer
  - No ongoing conversation or re-engagement of services/products – bought frequency of engagement
- Morgan Stanley/Etrade to get access of portfolio of consumers – buying/selling stocks
  - Wealthy today on way to retirement, also Amshare Works (co’s with vested/unvested equity)
  - Pre-wealth management and exposure to next gen wealthy folks
- Markets mature with tech innovation (engineers has leverage), product innovation (tech commoditized) and marketing then BD innovations
  - In the most mature phase now – need to reach new generation of consumers, fintech startups are at the right scale
  - No single one app to rule them all – bespoke – company can have old-world money folder (vs button)
- Best companies own distribution and product, having one great won’t be sufficient without other
  - Competitive edge changes over time – macro and micro
  - Company builders should build best product in front of customers and make sure it’s durable
- SEC and cryptocurrency matters – main issue is to clear the underwriter concept and when they’re deemed as such
  - Telegram sold as an investment contract to investors – “grams” as in the future and you’ll have a portion of that
  - If you buy the investment contract for “grams”, you are effectively an underwriter – cannot sell currently
    - Rule 144 (buying private securities holding them for a period of time, you can sell them currently)
  - This type of transaction occurs daily in venture – buy privately, follow rules, you have availability to sell later
  - Very important policy issue is to have a reasoned discussion with the SEC – downstream discussions

What next? (Notes from Feb. 17 – Feb 23, 2020) September 25, 2020

Posted by Anthony in Acquisitions, Automation, Digital, experience, finance, Founders, Gaming, global, Hiring, marketing, questions, Real estate, social, storytelling, Uncategorized.
Tags: Ads, Automation, experience, Founders, Gaming, global, Investors, Learning, Operators, Privacy, video
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So, we are into September of the pandemic year. Fires, hurricanes off the Gulf Coast, bubbliness of tech, political turmoil, and chaos in general driving the narratives. I know that it’s been a while since we last talked. Whirlwind of finding a new place (without seeing it in person), hiring movers, figuring out the best way to move, when to pack up from my place, when to pack up everything in the girlfriend’s, moving physically, purchasing new furniture, building and organizing has swallowed almost all of the time and sapped creative energy. Pile on to that that there were fires in southern California that had reached our new paradise, enveloping the sun. Suffice to say, we finally enjoyed a weekend (still very active, though) and now room to breathe this week brought me back to WordPress.

You know how many boxes there are in moving? I can completely relate to streamers or Dave Portnoy’s adventure. It’s rough. Covid seemed to jack up prices, as well, which seemed annoying. People that had moved double the size and similar distances were 30-50% less simply due to covid risks, I suppose? The misunderstanding of how contagious or how volatile the infection is clearly resulted in a few industries that got to take advantage in the name of “safety” (moving holds the same risk as it normally would unless you weren’t being cautious/careful in who you hired and brought onto jobs employee-wise). But hey, in options, you pay for the tail risks or you implode.

I still think drones or a body camera that projects out house / apartment layouts would be fantastic for realtors, buyers, sellers, websites related to the space. However, I’m more convinced now that moving companies could do a quick consultation of job requirements with them, designers could customize spaces with accurate measurements of space (blueprints / measurements of rooms don’t do justice to the nooks and crannies, as well as the ‘efficient’ space there may be with windows, shelves, etc). I know that various websites have independently done ‘customize your room’ with their products but if there’s an easy way to copy/paste urls or route APIs with image requests to an easily-replicable copy of your room (a la body-camera / drone), you may have an easier time selling across many products/offerings/sites.

Again, the drone technology continues to improve, so it’s possible we’ll have this or something from the phone to test out as image and object recognition improve. Could likely hack together something that did this. Attach a camera to one of those Costco drones that are $15 that are supposed to stay above ground upon simply detection of walls.

Anyhow, take a look at these awesome founders and investors that I listened to on various podcasts. The mix of serial entrepreneurs, big tech aspirations and side hustles was very fun to listen to.

Ashton Kutcher, Founder & GP at Sound Ventures (20min VC 2/17/20)
- Portfolio including Lambda, Calm, Gitlab, Affirm, Bird and others
  - Ashton’s wins include Spotify, Alibaba, Skype, Airbnb, Optimizely and Time’s 100 Most Influential
- Started at Univ of Iowa studying biochem engineering – power of a computer and learning to program
  - Piqued his curiosity but he wanted to be an actor – started a production company at 25 (reality TV including Punkd, Beauty & Geek)
  - AOL Chatrooms early on – marketing Dude, Sweet in various rooms – continuation in marketing movie
  - Buffering speeds increasing – content would be digital
- He wanted to find companies that could quantify distribution of content and accelerate distribution of content
  - Met Sarah Ross over at T/C, working for Mike Arrington – hired her to run his digital divison
    - Introduce me to everyone that matters in the Valley (T/C 50), Jason Calacanis, Mike Cuban, Kevin Rose, etc…
    - Asking all the questions – made his first investment into Optimizely (A/B testing platform)
- Arianna Huffington as how does he introduce himself – as a father, first, apparently
  - Future of internet are perpetually young, tech capability – learning and an ambition for new/useful/different
  - Cutting edge of technology became his 3 teenage step-daughters so he mined them for ideas (as he was 35+)
- Major VCs and partners have a technical background, as entrepreneurs formerly or study to allow understanding of tech
  - Toward companies with technical innovation and build company off of it – but isn’t their first lens
    - Cultural narrative that may be important and valuable that you can build a product from
    - Example – #metoo as here to stay or enduring – shift towards filling the void as rightful demand
      - Looking at fertility space as trend for expansion
  - Send a snapshot of the home screens for people’s phone on Twitter/Instagram and source ones he’s unaware of
- Most brilliant people going to companies – which – did a survey with the founders
  - Distance traveled by an individual – $1k to $1mil, a dime to $100k (as incredible)
  - Growing up, he would probably say that his twin brother going through a heart transplant at age 12
  - Going through a divorce of his parents that was tough
  - Companies failed that didn’t feel good – not particularly rough since there are multiple
- Strong intuition in products not familiar – hard to get familiar
  - Eating the dog food – before investing in Airbnb, he lived in them for 6 months
  - Apple-ification of app ecosystem for UI/UX, enterprises getting smart also
    - Consumers would use their enterprise software and to use the nomenclature would be better for their CTR
    - Understanding what people want and simplify that – 3 things on a screen, where would you put the most important
- Spending time with founders mostly
  - Ability to increase distribution funnel (his 5-10+ million Twitter followers), Spotify gave him an affiliate site with a discount code
  - Largest music management side for partner, collective on branding and helping
  - Versed on being in PR – public mistakes, apologize or utilize to get out of jams, crisis/preventative PR
  - Product-sensibility, where you want to be – business, also – what does a company need to measure
    - Which metrics matter, industry standards on metrics, how to improve them
  - Portfolio manager from growth team on Stripe that works with them – narrative/storytelling
- Scaling angel to much larger institutional checks – Ron Conway was one of his earlier mentors, as well as Dan Rosensweig
  - Cap table becomes your early board – value add outside of employees, low burn, grow team, disciplines
- The Undoing Project, Scale by Jeffrey West, Trillion Dollar Coach about Bill Campbell
- Misnomer about him – he’s cold (social animal, but super awkward)
- True happiness is being able to take your time
- Biggest challenge – Building a high quality team is hard with Sound Ventures
- Celebrity investing rise – lot of people are going to lose money, Wish he’d known: kindness doesn’t always come back around
- Recent investment with Sound Ventures that he’s excited by – Community (partner helped incubate) – luxury text messaging
Jude Gomila, Founder & CEO at Golden (20min VC 2/10/20)
- Self-constructing knowledge database built by AI and human-intelligence
  - Raised from Founders Fund, a16z, SV Angel and others
- Also a successful angel in 150 companies including Carta, Airtable, Superhuman, Gusto, Linear and others
- Jude started Heyzap alongside the founder of Mercury, Immad
- Passions around tech, learning, universe working – physics in tech form (hardcore engineering) or abstract theorems (randomness/computability)
  - Never wanted to work for someone – wanted to build things, but wasn’t aware of tech scene in London
  - In uni, at 18, he wanted to start a company – formed a consultancy with a few friends
    - Large Chinese manufacturer of egg packaging into Europe – wrote a plan to how they could do this
    - They wanted them to run the business – he called every farm in the UK but they didn’t want to change
  - Wanted to find something they could do themselves for a product that people would want with margin
    - Digital photo frames – own brand into higher side of market – surprising
- April, had burnt through YC money and wanted to raise a round for Heyzap – 6 per day back to back
  - Not impressive investors, go back on their word, converged on better investors instead
    - USV pitched and they got the deal – Naval and USV for board – cool conversations on angel investing
    - Mechanics on legal terms, contracts – part of something larger
  - Put all of his money into angel investing in the next 7 years, advising as well
- Reality is out there, fairly objective – all follows similar rules, working together
  - Ethics – both sides should have ethical framework/grounds – how to act during exit or bad situation
  - One side making money, one on future – is it to top Roth IRA or something else?
  - VC wants you to win the gold medal – that’s what is important because of model
    - A personal best for you is better risk:reward, $20mln or 50 or 100 that’s fantastic, but not for VC
- Praying / spraying – he doesn’t like the praying part – more rational
  - Numbers do matter, so spraying doesn’t fit this
  - If there are nonlinear returns, you have to do 10-20+ investments (since network effects are nonlinear)
    - Nonlinear market caps of monopoly or something like this are higher but capped at $1tn, likely
  - Need to see different learning processes for various investments – has a lot of bullets and time
  - Red/black flags for situations that you’ll always say no – yellow flags that you may be able to fix
    - Markets and dynamics shift, but not human behavior – processes that identify these are very good
- Ability to get in to deals – how did he convince founders to take the money ahead of market?
  - What companies need to exist? Knew that Paychex and ADP were terrible software, similar share, org charts broken
    - Put it into a blog post of ideas that he wanted to see. Simple UI and great CX around payroll.
    - Talked about culture of Gusto that wanted to exist and be unique. An hour of no business stuff, just the culture.
  - Difficult to say whether you have confirmation or not – didn’t do well for a certain reason, can go again on the hypothesis (2-4 times)
David Sellinger, Founder of Deep Sentinel (OkDork w/ Noah Kagan, 2/14/20)
- Early Amazon work on ad-buying tech & first AI systems, directly with Bezos
  - Started RedFin, real estate, as a side hustle (8pm – 4am)
    - UX as the centerpiece, especially for investment deck:
      - They wanted to build quick, interactive maps, simple straightforward
      - He stumbled into Amazon after doing another ecommerce problem
        Google AdWords in 2001 – $0.50 per click for niche products with 50% conversion and 100-300% margin
        VP of Consumer wanted to go thru economics – $0.50 per click, $1 per conversion & repeated
  - Bezos funded Deep Sentinel
    - Provides 24/7 guards that monitor your home and best in market at a reasonable price
    - He’s not in a place to solve climate change or global politics, but can build this safety of people in their homes
- Looks like Howie Mandel & he can pull it off fairly easily (but taller)
- Line between crazy and brilliant is quite blurred – Shawn Parker for Kagan
  - Bigger visions? He has AppSumo where it’s like Amazon for software
  - Big problems that are chosen – in-depth interviews (Shawn’s with Fortune) realizing the craziness, intellect, drive to problem selection
  - Safety net for trying things worth trying because you get to rich, or super rich
- Day he launched RedFin (after year of working on it), was on the front page of Seattle Times in 2004, Imran Real Estate
  - 400k visitors on first day – ISP called saying they don’t support porn sites (didn’t believe traffic numbers)
  - Left Amazon 2 weeks after launching
- Believes that Amazon is a culture of Bezos – future holds more change than today, destroy the business today and go forward
  - Senior executives to try out and do this – categories that don’t work, Fire Phone, Amazon Music or Photos
    - David says he pays for Google Photos $150/yr – embodying the mantra
    - One day in 2003-04, advertised Madonna book “Sex” and lost $100k Google Advertising Project but they weren’t looking for it
  - Initially, Amazon didn’t run ads at first, for a while
    - If you’re looking at Samsung TV, you’ll find a cheaper or different TV for conversion
      - Had CATE algorithm (ML, Bayesian optimization) – stumbled on ad on website Code Red at Amazon credit card
        No matter what they showed before that, the most profitable thing to show the user was this ad
      - Proved the ad was the way to do it – data backed it up (after saying it was terrible and they’d never do it as retailer)
  - Balance is always a judgment call – willingness to re-litigate with any suggestion by new data
    - Process of optimization vs innovation, Thomas S Koo by Structure of Scientific Revolutions book
      - s-curve with normal science (optimization – some paradigm to optimize with evidence), build up that the model doesn’t work
        Early – matter was earth, water, fire and air before coming to atomic model
      - What are the things that don’t fit into the model – the exceptions to figure out a rationalization
- Jeff giving advice to him while starting at Deep Sentinel, launching
  - Design of the product, speed at which they move, and willing to experiment with the way they interact with customers
  - Design award for being most aggressive camera – top part is LED light ring, battery-powered and was initially designed to not turn on
    - Changed it so that the AI turns on the ring and spins – accidental launch after his team came to him saying it
    - Camera will turn on red LED light on and say “we’re watching”
- Top of funnel for Deep Sentinel – cheeky top of funnel, but tech is done very well
  - If you shoot someone, you’re the suspect, even if righteously
  - Israeli security system, and he does contracts for background checks – (In California, has to do that) – uses HireSafe once he does that
  - Mentioning that an Uber driver would be a security agent for a billionaire in the bay area – Noah asked him and it was $70k to sleep outside
- All the pieces but what would keep you from being larger?
  - Markets can be very engrained and it’s a trick to get a customer to buy a different way
    - Enterprise – wiggle your way into customer market and then switch it
  - Nobody searching “cameras with someone that actually protects house” – should be this way, but not since people are used to others
    - Redfin as them figuring out hook – address searches, neighborhoods and data for it – found the customers
    - Have to take people buying burglar alarms and getting the market that they don’t work (99% false alarms)
      - 15% of LA County budget is spent on false alarms – once people pass yard sign, it’s ineffective
- After his neighbor got burglarized, he went through and called all the security companies
  - ADT, Bay Alarm, Brinks, SimpliSafe, camera people, all standard questions – how does it prevent crime? How does it work? What do you do?
  - Salesman for ADT at his home, what’s the new tech that PREVENTS crime? “The sensor was wireless.”
  - Value was the slice of time in the interactions – AI changes the business process to make the human part efficient
    - Average home needs 24/7 availability for ~700 seconds of security a day – when people are entering or exiting the property
- Intense decision for lifetime of relationships – pitched investors, got feedback
  - Bunch of his money in to build his prototype to do first tests, F&F of $1mil for in-market prototypes
    - Put together market research, addressable market, problem and pricing
  - Shasta with Series A went from $7mil to $23mil round, did it over tranches because hardware expense
  - Using other people’s cameras, 3 months, to get to own cameras and prototype about 18 months, then 6 months for market
- Noah did his own checklist for “Operation Dragon Flame” to keep his house safe – reddit as one of the best in home security
  - CPTED – Crime Protection Through Environmental Design – active crime and other stuff
    - Front door with ivy, for instance, or a fountain with stones in it – rule #1 – answer the door
  - Ring as picking up because insurance policy and Amazon as the biggest thing for packages getting stolen
- Peleton as interesting because of being expensive enough to only get people with the money, so they don’t even notice the subscription
  - Choosing to not give away the camera because of attracting the wrong customers
- For Deep Sentinel in the future – looking at small business offerings and working on making AI faster, as well as faster hardware
  - New one coming out in 6 months, new stuff broadening platform
Emmett Shear, Twitch co-founder and CEO (20min VC 2/21/20)
- Starting Kiko calendar, just wanting an online, collaborative calendar
  - Getting funding and going to YC with a $15k fund for the summer – felt like they were doing something
  - Eventually raised $60k, used to build it out until Google launched their calendar
    - Went to sell on ebay – had a bid for $50k – took listing down because of 2 links they had
    - Ended up getting traction and selling for approx $250k – seemed like it was worth it compared to other classmates
- Took the money and made Justin.tv with his cofounder – other cofounder had a visa issue and had to work elsewhere
  - Turned it into Twitch, saw how they had to change around 400 to managing people, letting go of product control
Gabriel Weinberg, founder & CEO of DuckDuckGo (20min VC 2/14/20)
- Physics major who didn’t want to do academia and startups seemed the thing to do in 99-00
  - Idealistic right out of college – started an educational software co that went nowhere – liked the industry, though
  - Tried to raise money but failed – started next company in the bust and didn’t think about raising
    - Sold but didn’t have investors or employees – just him and a partner
  - Didn’t take venture until series A
- Bootstrapped DuckDuckGo until series A in 2011, 4 years in
  - Relatively risk averse, world heading toward data collection and saw privacy
  - Wrote every line of code, marketing and such
- Some founders have lots of net worth tied up into company (uses himself as 12 years in to DDG) – take some money off the table
- Data monopolies that underlie the data duopoly due to the network effects
  - He did a “do not track” litigation and he tried to put teeth to automatic parts for browsers
  - Scale of market and advertising auctions in place are much stronger than the previous generations of tech strength
- One channel often drives the bulk of a winning strategy – experimentation in different channels
  - Diversification play for doubling down – ends up as creative solution
  - Andrew Chen’s “Law of Shitty Click Throughs” – over time, channels saturate and CTR go down
    - CTR used to be 30%, now 1-2% – with a new channel, can be through the roof
      - He was one of the original Reddit advertisers
  - Constant measurement to see if it’s reaching a diminishing return – trying to find next channel
  - Avoid spreading yourself too thin
- Market is pretty big & DuckDuckGo has crossed 30% for market awareness – standard of trust online, be the consumer priv. brand
- Traction trumps everything – metrics depend on business you’re in
  - Generally, if you have highly engaged users, you’ll attract anyone – no numbers/tractions is all narrative/storytelling
  - Numbers there – storytelling can be terrible and you’ll still be able to get funding
  - Marketing will only get you so far – PMF underneath – constantly find counter-metric of retention/inbound funnel
    - Look at both – for Gabe, his metric was # of searches (was public as DDG.com/traffic) and now they have apps/extensions for privacy
    - Tracker blocking, private search, browser extension and now look at MAU’s (and can’t track their users as policy)
- Key is to keep business processes going – everyone on same page, develop them as 15 employees because of a distributed company
  - Scaled nicely once they figured it out but was chaotic at first – Advantage by Patrick Lencioni
  - Building a remote team – all organized and tactical – everything in one place so people can see
    - For them, it’s Asana (big view called “Our Current Objectives” – all projects and anyone can follow along, owner/responsibility)
- Feedback mechanisms and culture of accountability – has to be built into the values of the company
  - Experimental mindset – fails are good if the hypothesis and data is there at the end, running a good post-mortem for experiments
- Post-mortems for every single project – no stigma for them in the first place
  - Good projects have no blame – what could have been done better? What could change and nobody to blame?
  - Action items, templated and what went right/wrong/different
- Wrote a book called Superthinking on Mental Models – what he learned is that you can skip to the strategic thinking
- His first check into DDG was his own, but angel was Scott Banister that was a user who followed and emailed him to reach out
- Tons of people that are great in Philly, but distributed surpasses this because being open to this creates a talent pool

Razor’s Edge (Notes from Feb. 10 – Feb 16, 2020) August 5, 2020

Posted by Anthony in Acquisitions, Automation, Blockchain, Data Science, Digital, experience, finance, Founders, Gaming, global, Healthcare, Leadership, marketing, MLB, NFL, Uncategorized.
Tags: Building, Digital, health, IndieHackers, investing, Living, MLB, Money, sports, TrueFans
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Razor’s Edge – Jack Welch autobiography for how many times he’s been knocked to his senses.

“Eventually I learned that I was really looking for people who were filled with passion and a desire to get things done. A resume didn’t tell me much about that inner hunger.” After learning to select for mindsets and not pedigrees.

Growth, not self-importance. Chapter in book “Too Full of Myself”. He promised to develop.

Questions for podcast: Honest feedback – ask execs what they liked/disliked and how they thought it would change.

Kidder, Peabody (WS ib firm with Enron-type culture in acquisition by Welch) – didn’t work out – cost GE hundreds of millions of dollars – self-confidence vs hubris.

Lou Gerstner after taking IBM role – asking frontline employees what could be changed. Sometimes taking a role and coming in to ask those that have been around for a long while what may work, what doesn’t work, and doing it with humility to figure out internal ideas around efficiencies is the best option. Probably more often than not, even.

Vlad Magdalin, Founder of Webflow (The Indie Hackers Podcast #144, 1/24/20)
- Visual s/d platform, without writing code – web design and website builder initially
  - 155 people as of the morning of Jan 24, started 7 years ago
  - 70% remote, 20 countries, 30 states
- 70k customers and 1.5 years ago, $10mln in revenue (with guide to double – lagging indicator, though)
  - Empower more people to build software (est. of 5% there)
- Original idea – (search as solved problem in 90s before Google did it slightly better)
  - He was a web dev, taking photoshop files and turning them into CMS repeatedly, thought there would be a better way
  - Video he saw (Inventing on Principle talk on creating games/animation) – could marry the tools for front-end and back-end after seeing it
  - He wanted to make his and his brother’s life easier, initially (agency work working with businesses, dentists/doctors in Sac that he could help)
  - Late 2011-12 started becoming more prominent with tools like WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Wibli
- Someone encouraged him to apply to YC for a bigger opportunity – he had started Webflow in 2005 and others to get discouraged
  - Created a small prototype with a 3 month runway (savings and credit cards), Kickstarter video for ~$300k for a year or two, build product
  - Kickstarter wanted to take them down because they don’t do SaaS stuff ($20k into video already), running out of money, Sac/SD returns
  - Put together 5 week plan for shipping – read-only on HackerNews (design tool that went crazy on dev site – side-by-side for CSS changes)
    - Within a week, 25k people were on the waiting list (also had a lot of detractors), had a year to try to convert them as they built it
- When product launched, it was so limited that only converted 100 people, needed the investment to finance further product
  - Got enough blind optimism from that list, though, to push through
- At seed, investors not really taking board seats, but if you don’t get to profitability, control/equity seeps out in desperation in the new round
  - People believed in web tools from believing in you as a person
  - Ron from Rainfall Ventures would do breakfasts & walks in SF with Vlad – he’d tell to take 6 months off to get inspired (long-term, Patagonia)
  - Knew they wanted to climb mountains and find a sherpa for doing it faster, safer – investor true partnership (could wait since earning)
    - Found that in Accel – LPs were pension funds so they were seeking global maxima
- Making money to break-even as “default alive” vs “default dead”
  - Not optimizing for revenue, much more long-term project for a goal to help that many people
    - Probably from his childhood in Russia, being poor, religious craziness, refugees entering America
  - Leadership model isn’t “I know everything, do it” – bringing other ideas to products/teams/processes
    - Baked it into the mission of the company – empower people to build software without code
  - Create the company where each individual can live an impactful and fulfilling life – whatever it means to them
    - Glue/foundation to doing the right thing
  - Believes that team comes 1st – wasn’t thinking about team, structure, values & core behaviors of the company as a system
    - Considered architecture, features, code base and tests – much harder to build the organism of people than this
- Still maintaining activity with prod management and vision of the company plus features
  - Creators and developers, leadership becomes its own challenge and reward, where YOU are the code base that can be improved
- No-code conf: knew I wanted to build, create and software and now we can see there are others like me
  - How do you market Excel, for instance? How do they look at Webflow? Find a vertical.
    - Clients expect a certain level of custom work that need to move fast for a project – Webflow persona
  - Those using Webflow get a feel for what they may be able to do next once they’re a user
David Sinclair, PhD (Rich Roll Podcast 2/10/20, via Kevin)
- Professor in Genetics at Harvard Med School
- Lifespan book, NYT bestseller now – aging is a disease that is treatable
- Laird Hamilton morning pool workout (had done it the morning of podcast)
  - Start out at 250 degree sauna (wtf?), shower, and jump into the pool – swim until out of breath
  - Get weights and jump up and down, drinking water if you don’t get it (ScarJo talk about 5 minute holding breath)
    - He’d made mistake going too far into the deep end
  - Warmed up in sauna before jumping into an ice bath – said this wasn’t too bad
    - Got to 3 minutes, as well
- Ray Cronise work and Metabolic winter hypothesis – bundling up at night and temperature comfort zones
  - Ray did a book, Healthspan Solution, with Julieanna Hever
- Polyphenolic as bright colors, white/watery as less so
  - Growing oranges – harming plants, for instance, where you nail the trunk a day before picking
  - Great wine – just as they’re stressed, without rainfall, for instance
  - Organic vs real organic – sunlight, rougher conditions (“hyperorganic”, with a chuckle)
- When you eat, hot and cold, plenty of exercises
  - Breakthrough in longevity – exercise, less food, all of these things through the same mechanisms
    - Found this in yeast cells aging – one gene, PNC-1 that makes NAD
    - Give the yeast stress, they live longer, less sugar, higher heat, otherwise
- 2013, oleic acid is a great potent nanomolar activator, similar to resveritrol
  - Needs to be in a fatty food to get 5-10x, not a capsule
- Hoping to breakthrough drug-wise and aging, but naysayers have delayed 10 years
  - Easier for him to not talk to media so as not to get misquoted, especially like at Harvard
  - Always being worried about jobs/too many people/issues surrounding that
- Mobilization of research and technology
  - Old london in 1858 – cholera outbreak, had to figure it out with politicians getting in their way
  - Cholera from water well, removed handle and it went away – people didn’t want to admit this, so politicians replaced handle
- 80% aging as lifestyle and 20% genetics, metformin trials with FDA
  - Doctors treat disease, not lifestyle – people have already gotten to the cliff – whack-a-mole medicine
- Wealthier countries and education ends up being more sustainable on a population level – less than 2 kids per couple
- He’d suggest restricting food (food 3 times and snacks is perma-glucose) is best for restriction
  - Polyphenols where plants are stressed out – Okinawans and South Indians
  - Carnivore diet – arguing that it doesn’t anticipate stress diet, body will age long-term still? Weird.
  - Body’s clock is screwed up by longevity cycles
- NAD levels increase – he won’t get effects of jet lag (seen this myself with a workout after flight)
- Not taking metformin on days he works out
  - TAME (targeting aging metformin) – susceptibility for aging and diseases, clocks slowing or not
Peter Diamandis, author of “Future is Faster Than You Think” (Wharton XM, 2/12/20)
- Autonomous, hyperloop or AI taxis
Tim Wigmore, staff writer at The Daily Telegraph (Wharton XM Moneyball 2/12/20)
- Checking z-scores for Total Strikeouts in MLB for talking about Astros/Red Sox variation
  - Largest in modern HISTORY for the Astros (5-6 sd’s)
  - Can measure the differences – it’s possible first and second order effects
    - Other teams realize this is happening, breaking balls not swung out outside zone, for instance
  - Good teams play generally more innings on the road than at home because if you’re winning, only play 8 at home
- Rates could be different, regression to the mean
- Highest point differential through this point for the Bucks – 46-7, though weird distribution of wins for league
  - u-shaped, 80% in tails and 20% in the middle .400-.600
- Tim as Cricket writer for many other publications – speed one, as well
- Home-field advantage in playoffs for MLB is only a few % points, much lower compared to the NBA
Cory Zue, Founder of Place Card Me, Pegasus (The Indie Hackers Podcast #147, 2/12/20)
- Having fun on the path to independence, living in South Africa – Cape Town (5 years after growing up in Boston)
- Was CTO of high-growth startup before going to a sabbatical
  - Working on breadth vs depth – across multiple projects, trying to get to not having to work by 2023 – collectively $26k profit annual
  - Seeing the adjustment of not having the cache as CTO – not all of his ideas as brilliant
- Spending so much of lives working, so he’s really enjoyed launching and getting users
  - Joined Dimagi in 2006 as ee #1, CTO until 2017
- He wanted to make money – needed to design his life (as time spent on his sabbatical)
  - Hasn’t been full-time on any personal projects over last 3 yrs
  - His wedding was the inspiration for Place Card Me (could do in Word with MailMerge if you know how to do that)
    - Had 2-3 days before happened that it wasn’t going to come in
  - His goal was $1 for the 6 months – took about that long but only a week or two for the website
    - Started at $10, $5 as he figured out the SEO (HackerNews/Noon,FreeCodeCamp, etc… by ending signatures/posts with it)
- Every possible reason for why it wouldn’t work
  - Nobody would ever pay for it. Went on Etsy and they were going for $8 without automatic template and features
  - Has to be traffic, then – didn’t know if it was $5/mo, or $100/mo or something else
  - First year – $1k, 2018 – $10k, 2019 – $20k revenues and he hadn’t worked on it much, organic growth as primary
- Seeing how the growth could be done to optimize revenue growth
  - Wedding stuff works almost entirely on affiliate advertising – Pinterest or Etsy or otherwise, he sees Google
  - Getting into the printing game ($5 digital templates) – cards are up to $1/card (200 person wedding, for instance)
- Keeps track of hours in total for each project and his total is ~450 hours, so 12 work weeks for $30k
  - Strategic decision to decide on a business (especially since as CTO, he’d get a call for servers down if out at a bar)
    - Shouldn’t scale with people – wanted to be small or independent – no services/support team
- Work in an industry that you want to tell people about – though he says wedding is a weird one to him
  - Project that he can tell his friends about (though he can’t even tell about his new project, either, too complicated)
  - Choose the customer that you want – he says a lot of developers would love to have developers as their customers
    - They understand them, can overcome bad UX, bugs, and certain understanding (Tuple founder as well)
- Pegasus – code template that allows you to get up and running with a SaaS application faster
  - Web framework base language: Python, Ruby, JS – framework: Jango, Rails, Node
  - Sitting on top of Jango, including out of the box- user stuff (login/acct manager/password – multi-tenant orgs)
  - UI and Stripe integration, as well
  - Started to work when he started Place Card Me (2.5 yrs)
- Had a more mature product development with Pegasus, so it went a bit better
  - Identity gets wrapped up with the products, though
Truth about 1000 True Fans, Pricing of Our Attention (a16z 1/27/20)
- Kevin Kelly, first proposed in 2008 and updated – just need a thousand true fans
- Attention to widget – hire ad agencies, make ads that people will see the ad and take their attention from the consumer
  - Can short circuit this by paying the audience directly for their attention – call out – $0.25 to watch ad, email
  - Why do we give this away for free? Can fight the spam problem.
    - Bad economic models break in having to pay for attention
    - In media, publications/magazine/newspapers don’t have a choice for ads they run – decided by advertiser
      - What if anyone could run an ad and you get the benefits of the ad if people clicked on it?
      - Crowd decentralized version of ad network – money flowing through system through blockchain
    - Creative people making ads that worked and sponsors have to pay when they’re watched
    - Decentralized ad system that puts power back to the audience, that requires blockchain to maintain integrity
- Proposed ad idea in The Inevitable (his book)
  - In TikTok, people are doing ads (ideas/product/content) viral purely AI-based can do learned intent
    - Any creator can go viral despite not having a huge audience/following
  - Economic just needs to be built in to get the paid side
- True fans that you get money directly from – number you need to get to make a living, about 1000 true fans
  - Your true fans become the marketers for the casual fans – they do the hard work, promoting, evangelizing network
  - 1 in a million of people on earth will still enable you 1000+ fans, so find that idea that can work
- Published an idea called “I’ll Pay You to Read My Book” – people don’t care about selling books, want them to read it
  - He said he’d pay people to read the book, and make money doing it
    - Sell for $4 and pay $5 – ebook on Amazon can determine yay/nay since fewer people finish it
  - Gaming economy and gaming narratives as bigger economies than others – endless narratives
    - Optimize for the few, rare completers but making money off of the ones who dip in and out
  - The actual book is a container for the thought – most don’t make lots of money on them, it’s the speaking outside
    - On average, we surrender our attention for $3/hr for books, let’s say
Dickson Chu, Global Head of PortManagement at BBVA (Mastering Innovation 10/10/19)
- Next Phase of the Fintech Phenomenon
- 25 years in finance, before fintech was cool
- Innovation in banking – common perception of not going together (tech + banking)
  - Citibank in 60s and 70s had quite a bit of innovation, ATM and otherwise
  - From 80s and 90s on, not so much innovating – mobile has now changed everything
  - Enabled different experiences, compute device as always connected
- What’s old as what’s new – has been accelerated in mobile
- Fundamental challenges in risk + security – credit card numbers leaking, retailers as ancillary players that get hacked
  - Some as consequences of the high growth freemium model – banks as spending a considerable amount of money to prevent
  - Pharma as lowering cost and better ideas for outsourcing innovation and research – high R&D industries, in particular
- At BBVA – run a series of events around world for open call to participate culminating in November finalists to Madrid
  - They see 1000+ new ideas and companies – sometimes within the bank or regional differences
  - Much larger % of students is going into students 20-25% compared to 5-10%
- How do we replicate NY/SV ecosystems elsewhere? Hard to get an engineering element of this.
  - Lots of graduates requirement would put many geographies in play
  - Dickson mentioned London, Berlin, and Toronto
- Running Simple, as one of the first neobanks out in Brooklyn before going to Portland to find community skill-base
  - Tagline was to make banking simple – simplicity, transparency and great value
    - Questioning hidden and overdraft fees
Rina Shainski (@rinasha), Chair & Co-founder of Duality Technologies (TechRepublic with Scott Matteson, 1/29/20)
- Trend of right to personal privacy, specifically data privacy driven by ML / AI power that needs more data
  - GDPR in 2018, CCPA in 2020 and harsher sanctions
- Challenges and potential solutions?
  - AI/ML as the commonly blamed parties, but tech can solve it
  - Privacy enhancing tech (PETs) can be used to protect privacy while enabling the usage of data
    - Previously, de-identification and anonymization such as personally identifiable info (PII) fields from data
      - These are increasingly useless because of re-identification of anonymized data
    - PETs as secure computing – homomorphic encryption, multi-party computing (MPC), zero knowledge & diff privacy
  - Her company (Duality Tech) allows d/s computations to be performed on encrypted data
- Privacy difference between consumers and businesses?
  - Consumers are the owners and source of private data. Enterprises as aggregators and custodians
    - Creation of data after providing services, or result of that
  - Digital footprints for benefit of better services, research, progress but if falls in the wrong hands, exploited
- Social media isn’t the only thing – lots of apps using location that user willingly/knowingly sometimes
Legends Brunch for NBA All-Star Weekend (NBA TV Radio, 2/15/20)
- Horace Grant and Frank Isola talking to Bryan Colangelo and Sheryl Swoopes
- Colangelo on starting in Chicago as the expansion team there – going all over for scouting tournaments
  - Exploding growth of NBA, including the following year – got an offer from Seattle, originally
  - He didn’t think there was anything in Seattle, so he passed
    - Received a MIL offer – wife asked why not in PHX
    - Next day, he got a call from the owner inviting him down there
  - Picking the Olympics – anyone that wanted “in” and had been there, no 1st or 2nd year players
    - 44 down to 12 without a tryout with Popp
- Sheryl on Kobe/Gigi’s loss – both for the past and present
  - Mentioned growing up watching Michael, since no WNBA until 1997
  - Houston squad used to support them in Houston – Cuttino, Francis, Moochie Norris
  - That’s different than Kobe wearing WNBA stuff, coming to All-Star game the prior summer with GiGi
    - Deserved to be better pay / if others see him, gives more credibility and questions can arise properly

Disorganized Trying to Organize (Notes from Feb 3 – Feb 9, 2020) August 4, 2020

Posted by Anthony in Acquisitions, Automation, Blockchain, Coronavirus, Daily fantasy football, Digital, experience, finance, Founders, global, Healthcare, Leadership, NBA, questions, social, sports, Strategy, Streaming, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
Tags: Bill Gurley, Bitcoin, Blockchain, contracts, Coronavirus, Gaming, Healthcare, ideas, investing, Investments, medtech, sports, Strategy
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Productivity tools have been all the rage. Those familiar with adoption of new technology or tools in an office setting bigger than 20 people have likely been through what’s described as the J curve for adoption, popularized by Erik Brynjolfsson and Daniel Rock in their paper (see: https://economics.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj9386/f/brynrocksyv_j-curve_final.pdf) of September 2018 on general purpose technologies. There is a slope downward to start for the adoption because the productivity decrease and difficulty in trying to set it up often leads to a loss. Over time and the consistent use, it can go away and lead to the productivity gains we sought in the first place.

Well, I’m in that too many tools, too many valleys section. Bundle and use a tool that tries to do it all? Or unbundle and use multiple tools. If you are trying to optimize notes for one platform and it doesn’t work for your other platforms (mobile/to-go/car), is it optimal? Is 90% great if you miss on the 10% you don’t have a good solution for? I’m not sure. I’m hopeful that audio can work easily – may even jump into Otter.ai for transcription there.

A family friend of ours was so obsessed with keeping track of all his clothes, colors and features that he took it upon himself to build a database of his closet. Upon telling someone else, I recall a similar story for someone who went further and did bar codes on their clothes. You spend so much time obsessing over something you’d love organization over until that organizing takes up the time you were hoping to save. We could take this further and draw similar analogies to corporate, big companies compared to start-ups in growth as an early employee – always something to be done, may not be optimizing the work, just attempting to get something out compared to optimization runs for something that worked until it breaks. Exciting work on either end but ultimately, there’s a line you must draw.

There are tons of benefits to organization for notes, processes, documentation in that someone could come in at any point and figure out what connects to what. There’s a context. I think YourStacks is doing something like this for personal / professional use of tools and games and everything one comes into contact. There have been corporate / enterprise stack technology sites that break down webpage technology or company technologies. Then there are transparent people / companies who document it both privately and publicly for others to see. We try what we think may improve but it’s tough to know where to start.

There’s a lesson to be learned here in starting, trying to going from there. Some of us want to try to optimize all the tools or one tool to its fullest before moving forward. How good is good? Or not good enough? At what point do you pass to the next or add another tool? How many tools are too many? And will we get a bundling or unbundling of different aspects? I’m hopeful we get voice tools that enable bundling for all sorts of this. Currently, I’ve yet to find the solution. Let me know what your set is!

Dr. Tara Smith, Professor of Epidemiology at Kent State University College of PH, Erik Moses (Wharton Moneyball 2/5/20)
- Hockey – East and West split of conferences currently, top 4 teams in the East and defending champs Blues in the West are 5th
  - More or less deterministic (coin flips previously) – 50% as max from a conference if coin flips
- Mookie Betts as trying to get 10 year, $40 mil per because he’s so young
- Joined in August 2013 after being at Univ of Iowa in Emerging Infectious Diseases
Chetan Puttagunta, GP at Benchmark Capital (Invest like the Best 1/28/20)
- Investing in early-stage, MongoDB, Elastic, Mulesoft and advice for POS in enterprise software building Canvas
- MongoDB – 2012 and had experience building consumer apps from 2007-08 trying to build tech that was pretty limited
  - Felt like an advantage between large companies with proprietary data and tools compared to DIY
  - Met Elliott (MongoDB founder, from DoubleClick) – would ask best devs to work with Mongo and they responded “Don’t need”
  - DB expert – MySQL can work with everything but would miss the class of devs that wanted without planning for scale, app may not work
  - DB could handle scale, millions of users, transactional data by 2015-16, right place right time
  - Oracle as building a great database business and moved into application tier with their apps built on their db
    - CRM, HCM (Peoplesoft) to serve application – 1977 to true leader in databases in 80s, relational
  - Other timing – 1992, for instance, and it would not have worked. Cloud has been so open to these techs.
  - Cockroach for globally scalable, relational db – TimeScale for time-series IoT model, for instance after cloud enabled it
    - Specific use cases have more specifically-tailored results
  - Initiating and potential TAM Salesforce estimates from the start compared to now, where it’s much larger now than suspected
- Now, enterprise software permeates into companies all over for IoT and consumer tech
  - Caterpillar, Pharma, Financial Services, Shipping companies are all buyers
  - Diva built a CRM system for healthcare vertical on general CRM, Salesforce – multibillion dollar company
  - Client facing software is very important – system that will be helpful and customers will tackle that and tell you directly
- People come to work and complete a specific job or task – not to work or be an expert with your software
  - New tool into a workflow, only certain amount of walls to learn the software before leaving
  - Go slow to go fast – if you’re building a software solution in the start, build for 5-10 important users
    - Address the needs of those customers – generally applicable to the market (not just the single customer)
    - Won’t become an outside services or dev shop if you deliver services to the general customer
  - Workday and Viva early days – 50% of revenue were services since they entered enterprises (large installation of PeopleSoft)
    - On-prem CRM for Viva – lots of handholding, data migration and such
- Duffel (Global Distribution System) for airlines selling to consumers
  - Convoluted system to sell and the flows is astounding – entrepreneurs in payments looking to innovate in these instances
  - Found airlines and approached them to “Shouldn’t it work like this?” to get your first partners/customers
  - Patient capital of “go slow to go fast” to super efficient business – spreadsheet vs software
    - Example at Greg Shaw – Mulesoft – burned $8mln from $100mln to 200mln in revenue and burned $4mln from 2-300mln
      - Inside Salesforce, they’ve grown top-line revenues further
- Unlikely that someone else is building what you’re building
  - 2004 – Salesforce selling CRM, main competitor was Seibel – Salesforce had ACV of $4k and 15 licenses at a time vs Seibel $100k/1k
    - Go after the larger competitors when you have thousands of customers and users ecstatic about your product
  - Won’t run into competitors directly, just objections to your own system, since it’s incomplete
    - Valuing you against their internal/custom solution – take time to create product maturity before prematurely scaling
- If you’re not missing as an investor, you aren’t taking enough shots
  - 1x your capital if you miss compared to if you pass, miss on 10x or 100x
  - At Benchmark, they’re making 5-10 investments per year, so it’s 1-2 per partner
- Recruiting and sales – candidates have to feel very good as they go through the proces
  - Only way to scale the software business is to hire the best people to make the software
- Hard to stand out in SF as an enterprise software integration problem (Mulesoft)
  - Competing with FAANG in a limited labor market, have to be able to recruit amazing talent
  - For start-ups, they have 2 advantages: really exciting for them to embrace remote talent (global market)
    - Running a remote company at scale has very little to do with the tools, and more so with the work culture that’s friendly
    - Everyone meets remotely on video, even in same room
    - Writing a lot of documentation, transparency about thinking in the wikis docs so anyone can catch up
  - Offline ad inventory is very efficient – account-based enterprise software ads at airports – targeting top of funnels
  - How do you transmit a culture that was highly efficient in 10 person to 20 or 100 or 1000 and further, if you’re doing 100% each year
    - 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 haven’t been there for more than 1 year, 2 years, 3, etc..
- Most portable of early stage investing – Bill Gurley’s blog on CAC and LTV
  - Going down unit economic traps are widely applicable to all tech businesses, consumer, enterprise, etc
    - Can’t drive spreadsheet growth with CAC/inorganic growth for LTV numbers
  - Product engagement – customers in consumer and enterprise
- Benchmark as 5 equal partners at the firm, no juniors or others
  - Don’t have a NEXT topic that they have to move on to because of this, so open-ended discussions can go very deep
    - Wide networks so they can get useful people to talk
  - Probably not a question that they can’t answer
Adam Draper, Founder & CEO of Boost VC (20min VC 2/24/16)
- Seed stage accelerator, blockchain and VR
- Before Boost, angel invested in 20+ co’s, including Coinbase, Plangrid, Practice Fusion
  - Geography – heart of SV and ecosystem of entrepreneurs, recently adding V/R to build
- Founder of Xpert Financial after UCLA graduation, helping later stage companies raise capital in private markets
  - Made every mistake – funding, hiring, firing, product
  - Helped early-stage companies build product and raise capital, including for a friend – wanted to mentor in bulk
    - As a family, helping people get to where they want to go
- Meeting a lot of people while raising money and helping – took him 12 months to raise his fund
  - $6.6mln after reaching out to 3k, 350 meetings and closed ~35 – basically rule of 10
- Had 52 investments in blockchain accelerator (had about ~120 companies) among currency/contracts-based work
  - Been in industry for 3 years, seeing mature products and higher quality
- Mentioned MuggleNet as his favorite blog and TechCrunch
- JoyStream by a solo founder, trying to merge BitTorrent / BTC
Coronavirus (a16z 16min on the News #21, 1/29/20)
- Judy Savitskaya – 2019-nCoV – 10-20% common cold vs epidemic ones would be severity
- Sequencing this virus has been incredibly quick (within 2 weeks of genome) whereas it’s taken longer in past
  - If someone in SF said they had a cold at a general clinic, they could decide if it’s this or not
  - Figuring out treatments and protocols based on genome and live medicine
- Spike proteins used to enter into lung cells didn’t look as bad as SARS, so they thought it was fine
  - Turns out that it’s actually very similar to the protein
- Nobody really knows – animal sources of viruses (evolving away from human hosts, time in animals)
  - R0 – number of people you’d expect to get sick for every one person that has it
  - Breaking down variables in R0 – how well does virus transmit itself (easy in air, for instance)
    - Is it good at infecting cells? What’s the population like? (Chinese New Year and traveling often)
  - If virus is not that deadly, additional time in the host that can get infected (individually, if deadly and fast, population better)
- Increase in genomic medicine – Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations gave out 3 grants to pharma co’s totaling $12.5mln
  - 12-16 weeks time to develop new drugs based on the new sequence
Epic Battles in Healthcare, FICO Changes (a16z 16min on the News #22, 2/6/20)
- FinTech GP’s Angela Strange and Anish Acharya
- Starting with what is a FICO score – 5 factors: payment history, credit utilization, length of history, new credit, credit mix
  - FICO 2, 3, and 10 now as FICO comes out with reweighting
    - 1 trillion in credit card debt now, so people refi from 25% to 12% loans, but it doesn’t change user spending habits
    - Better job of incorporating debt over a long period of time
  - Designed in 1950s to create a proxy for willingness to pay, originally – now, it’s mostly lenders that have their own algorithms
  - Good lenders will use FICO as a factor but they have their own robust models
- Hacks such as adding kids as authorized users
- Old time, 50-100 years credit decisions made on generations, kids play ball with bankers, etc
  - Bank of Italy (now Bank of America), would make loans to Italian immigrants that other banks wouldn’t lend to
  - 2 drivers – willingness and ability to pay
- International vs US – in US, most decisions decided on score/report, not alternative data
  - In international countries, great way to bootstrap a lending business as a proxy for consumer
  - Difficult to introduce alternative data in the US , cash flow streams for instance
- Epic’s CEO (EHR information on data) letter sent – with Julie Yoo bio GP
  - Rule that’s been around for 1 year in context of a longer standing law
    - Opening healthcare records from ONC (Office of National Coordinator for CMS), gov agencies overseeing healthcare spend
  - 21st Century CURES Act – Upton and Waldon – means by which we implement the act (healthcare costs will rise, care will suffer)
    - Contending with nonprofit orgs with slim margins
  - Uniquely stored in healthcare data is the doctors’ context (and dialogue) – for what reason would you need the context vs “code”
  - Connecting data between APIs and interoperability – major concept
- Clause in rule about screenshot sharing – contractual obligations not to share screenshots
  - In trying to see a workflow in a system to connect yours efficiently – one of Julie’s customers at EHR company got hand-slapped for sharing
- Annual meeting with OMB and ONC for driving sharing and interoperability – Epic wasn’t there – everyone else, systems, plans, incumbents, big tech, EHRc
  - HHS secretary was saying that scare tactics won’t affect what they’re looking for
Introduction to ARK’s Big Ideas 2020 (FYI 1/13/20)
- James Wang interviewing Cathie Wood, CEO/CIO at ARK Invest
  - Building on other years – DL, EV, 3D printing, autonomous ride hailing, automation, genome sequencing, digital wallets and Bitcoin
- New ones – streaming media, aerial drones and biotech R&D efficiency
- Streaming media – changing behavior patterns should catapult the industry, roughly $80-90bn, projecting $400bn+ in next 4 years
  - Most people couldn’t understand why she was buying Amazon at $5bn cap at her old firm (when no profits)
    - Believed about their revenues would increase CAGR at 25% for 20 years, deep value play (exp growth wasn’t understood)
  - Terrible sales out of box retailers – want to survive and go to online
  - Gaming could consume media, so is value in content or platforms (say, Tencent showing the way, maybe) – larger than box office now
    - Every time music has come out, it has cannibalized the other, older parts as replacement
    - Gaming was different – expansive, explosive market as stacking (mobile only added to consoles and others)
- Aerial drones – early side of S curve still – released a paper in 2014 suggesting that if FAA would allow Amazon to deliver parcels over 10 mi
  - Amazon, at that time, could have done it profitably for just $1 per parcel for 5 lb package, for instance
  - Food delivery now, air taxis / passenger drones and given battery tech, could save 20k lives associated with heart attacks – drone faster than ambulance
    - Projecting $275bn food delivery (3mi Delivery for cars is about $4.85 – $5) – drones could do it for $.20, profitably
- Biotech R&D Efficiency as converging Nextgen sequencing, AI, CRISPR editing
  - Impact on pharma and biotech sector
  - Fewer trial failures with DNA sequencing and companion diagnostics for trials, time to market decrease
    - Human trials, CRISPR is curing things such as Beta-_ and sickle cell (2 people)
  - Value-based pricing could be installment payments, for every year you live – reduction of trials and drugs to market, higher pricing utility
    - Margin structure could follow more of 1980s and 90s (mid20-30s) – innovations were exhausted from there, but now should be innovative
  - CRISPR and gene therapies are delivering great results, cures and evidence of these
    - AI and software side with mundane, life science has supported SaaS company in Viva – extremely motivated for productivity structure
    - Most AI companies doing R&D drug discovery are early, M&A ripe – tech in Alpha Go search problems, for instance
  - Analysts can’t just be healthcare, have to be technology as well – permeating every sector
- Over past year, innovation has been highly valued in private space – too few opportunities with too much capital
  - Private is valued much higher – seeing some disappointments, public markets should be ripe (P/E ratio is not ideal)
  - 5 year opportunities, not 1-2 timeline and finding out how much growth they’re going to deliver

How to Motivate Yourself to Build (Notes from Jan. 27 to Feb. 2, 2020) July 22, 2020

Posted by Anthony in cannabis, DFS, Digital, Draftkings, education, experience, FanDuel, global, Leadership, medicine, NFL, social, sports, Strategy, Time, training, WomenInWork.
Tags: cannabs, datascience, eye test, Fantasy football, growth, Kobe, machine learning, medicine, sports, training
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Nope, I’m asking. Not telling. It’s constantly a challenge.

Let’s see. A will to win. Certain things provide you a much clearer picture of an end goal. In life or careers, there is often always a next step for those that are driven. I know many people that have said it’s not a linear path, and therefore you see steps/ladders that may be uneven. It’s hard to take that into consideration to pursue action, then, especially if you’re back at square one. It must be some secondary motivator that keeps us looking forward.

I have an idea page of things I want to pursue. Talking about potential pursuits may be a first step. Talking with others, another. Writing them down allows a concrete step toward accountability. Then, what’s next? Talk to potential customers, people in the space, people that could be of interest. Design something, wireframe or code out a rough sketch. Maybe it’s something to see how much of a concrete idea it is. Ideas sometimes just need another opinion to spur passion – whatever can provide the spark to go further.

With a next step in a career, an idea written out for the next step can be a good thing. Approaching mentors or potential mentors or bosses (strategically) may be that step of accountability. The more people involved, the more likely that path could be disrupted as incentives to provide clear steps wane. The earlier you find that out, the better. It’s unfortunate but situations and circumstances can change on a whim for anyone, so it compounds with involvement of others. I’ve seen that time and time again with friends.

Now, I hope I didn’t discourage with that last paragraph. That wasn’t my intention. So, here’s some good news – work has become increasingly global with the progression of the internet / web, more so this year. There are more people online sharing, collaborating, open to discussion with minimal work except seeking the communities out. Tools are better organized and more broadly applied to help, and more people are generally sharing their experience for us to pattern match or adjust. Action is the step. Or asking what the action may be. Take it together.

Coach Paul Alexander, Josh Hermsmeyer (Wharton Moneyball 1/22/20)
- If you pit OL vs DL – OL is more reliable, similar to pitcher vs batter and pitcher wins
- Beane in Moneyball – didn’t have money to spend so he wanted to get shots at college players since they were less random
  - PFF using survival curves (as time) for measuring lines (from PFF data scientist Timo Riske)
- 16 of 17 INTs for Mahomes has been < 5 rushers
- Coach – more hand-oriented now in passing game than leg-driving or shoulders for the evolution of run blocking
- Josh – turned his attention to music and predicting the first song for halftime show
  - Prop from last year – how long will the national anthem last?
    - Over time, singer spent on song increased (ARIMA model) and he looked at male and female but female was longer at end
    - Gladys ended up going over
  - Billboard is predicting JLo’s most popular song – 20% as Let’s Get Loud or On The Floor (books, too)
    - Acts don’t often start with the most popular song, they end it
    - Setlist.fm as going through common starts
  - Game plan to push as many in the box with the numbers advantage, force Jimmy G to beat them
- Some quantitative coaching models at PFF and other places
  - Mostert as the 2nd fastest athlete in NFL at the line, behind only Lamar Jackson, by mph
- Helpful to sit behind someone as QB? (Jimmy, Rodgers, Mahomes) but counters as Peyton (thrown in), Steve Young
  - Qb as living embodiment of the system, not necessarily ‘system qb’
  - When do we get a handle on a QB?
- Owners as billionaires that earned money in a different industry and hope to be able to transition to teams
  - Experience may or may not come – putting right people in there, getting lucky with all of the processes
  - Little edges, enough chances and them adding up together to finally have success while living through the ups and downs
Ian Levy, Michael Hill (Wharton Moneyball 1/29/20)
- Super Bowl week, Kobe Bryant death – Shaq statement and Kendrick Perkins clamoring for hatchet to be buried with Kdurant
- MJ’s 3 and 2 years off and then another 3 – only had Scottie as the overlap of players
  - Kobe – 2 rings but 3 straight finals with Pau, sans Shaq, Lebron – taking some poor players and winning rings
  - Teams and styles that have changed to give credit to the great ones
- Sac down 17 points with 2min 49 sec – broke a streak of 8,378 straight games of losses
Dr. Shaili Jain, Prof of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, PTSD Treatment, author of “Unspeakable Mind” (Wharton XM, Future of Everything)
- Father was a war vet & born in India, Shaili grew up in England and what she ever knew
- Muted emotions, insidious infiltration of how people work, play and create beyond mind and brain
  - Infiltrates organs, independent risk factors for heart disease, cancer
- Too many factors, 1/3 genetic (not on marker-level, though) to determine PTSD levels or exposure
  - Dose matters – more deployments = more likely, and cumulative effects
- Average clinicians outside of VA have a tough time to diagnose & treat whereas vets and exposed know where they can see it
  - Adherence is much lower in people with PTSD and this is massively under-recognized
- Last thing people want to do is talk to therapists – avoided trauma or be cut off, isolated
  - Health problems often make them lose control
- Hippocampus is smaller in those with PTSD (not sure if it’s cause or effect), amygdala (part of brain that controls danger)
  - Lot of work done in epigenetics, learned behaviors and environment (followed moms that were pregnant during 9/11, escaped)
    - Work done by Rachel at Mt Sinai to follow their children based on biomarkers – PTSD in them/child
- Her take – future is in prevention on three levels – primary, secondary and tertiary
  - Primary: prevent the traumas and crimes
    - Lots of people were starting programs that FELT like it worked w/o evidence or metrics for them
      - How do you train women to defend themselves effectively? If you have it, you can scale and replicate. Still need $
  - Secondary: before and after trauma – “Golden Hours” – can you intervene to prevent onset of PTSD?
    - Showing up in ER, instead of waiting for weeks/months/years when they show up to a therapist
    - Group out of Atlanta’s Emory University in the ER that did RCTs to show those that got prolonged exposure medicine improved
      - Cortisol recipients had less PTSD compared to those that didn’t – brain can heal quickly, comparatively
  - Tertiary: integrated care – 10 years prior, she ditched her other-campus psychiatry office to primary care
    - People show up in primary care, not often in specialty offices, attack head on
- Treatment – first line, standard therapy would be talk therapy (prolonged exposure, EMDR – eye movement desensitization & reprocessing)
  - Focus on dismantling trauma, discussing the event
  - Biggest body of evidence for this being successful as first-line treatment, discussion capability without emotional/physical stress
    - Exposure exercises – measurable body response
  - Meds as second-line treatment (prozac and friends)

Power of Consistency (Notes from Jan. 20 to Jan 26, 2020) July 8, 2020

Posted by Anthony in Acquisitions, Automation, Blockchain, Data Science, Digital, experience, finance, Gaming, global, Leadership, marketing, RPA, Strategy, Time, TV.
Tags: 8K, Acquisitions, AI, Capital, CES, Cisco, Digital, efficiency, IoT, screens, Smart, Strategy, Tech, VC, WiFi
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It’s impressive for how much consistency matters, as long as you’re open.

Sometimes, it’s every week. Maybe it’s daily. Maybe more than that? Is it a post? Is it a photo? Tweeting 10x a day? There is probably some magic number for each frequency, based on platform and content that, over time, eventually takes off. I don’t think it’s spelled out because there are likely ranges for each. That’s the beauty of the internet, now. Niches are actually very large – and if you’re consistent in posting about something you enjoy – eventually, if you landed in a sweet spot, you may be rewarded for it. The opportunity arises where you land on an audience of a community you enjoy being a part of – and now you can share at will. It becomes easier to be public.

Maybe the ease by which any of us continue down this path is rooted in the writing or habit itself. Maybe it’s your work. Maybe how you spend your money. A tool you use? Something you picked up knowledge from friends or a trend you happened to stumble on in a podcast that piqued your interest. Any way you draw it up, if you can repeatedly talk about it and enjoy it, it stays the course. If you’re public in a manner that others can find you, you can reach that audience.

It feels like we have plenty of solutions to get this out – it takes the effort of an individual or group of individuals to be motivated enough to repeatedly produce that content. Thankfully, I write a bit here and on Twitter, mostly. Should be more consistent myself. Used to be a part of a weekly podcast. Now I feel like I have ideas to push others – without accountability, it falls off. Groups and communities like Indie Hackers, No-code and Makerpad or other niches on Facebook/LinkedIn/Slack/Discord, Substack or even WordPress here provide that. Seek your people out!

CES 2020 – Screens, 8K, 5G, Cars, Micromobility, Smart Home (16 Minutes News by a16z 1/18/20)
- Flexible screens in phones (Samsung), folding – around a business as billboard
  - Fold and unfold – suboptimal experience for usage of the phone outside of big screens
  - Phones as biggest volume driver in displays – grow market
  - Should make folding PC was next step – Dell, Lenovo, Intel (B5 is half A4 – tablet-sized to 11 or 12″ notebook)
    - Mainstream high-performance folding screens and touch surfaces – everywhere you go
- Screens and production process now on Moore’s Law, as well
  - Production too fragmented, software in tv slows down innovation
  - 8K will happen but it will cost more
- WiFi 6, 5G at current and new mm
  - 20 carriers are spending $100bn extra a year to roll this out
  - Last mile is the battle – IEEE for WiFi – commodity access points, sim cards
- Cars stealing show – Sony, this year
- Power battery – USB-C is now the AC input of the home
  - Batteries and storage for energy will be everything very shortly
Rob Salvagno, VP of Corp Dev at Cisco Investments (20min VC 12/30/19)
- M&A efforts, investment capital, lead Meraki ($1.2bn acquisition) and AppDynamics ($3.7bn), along with recent Duo ($2.3bn)
  - Prior investment banker at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette
- Went to Stanford thinking he wanted to be a doctor, Netscape went public in early days there and wanted a way into tech
  - Wanted to go into investment banking or consulting – entry into tech was IB, first in SF then in Sand Hill – analyst at DLJ (president at Oracle’s first analyst)
  - Very transactional without any role or ownership – sent resume into resume @ Cisco . Com and got his role
- Investments or M&A, bringing perspective – boom over past decade but we lived through 2000-01 and 07-08
  - How’s this business model stand up without capital flowing? How’s the CEO going to perform in challenging times? Growth multiple of 20-30x
  - Capital efficiency: attractive of business model – will look at valuations
    - Cisco wants to know if they create value in business, what are the levers for that – distribution channel, product within their architecture
    - Can improve operating model in a few ways – accelerate profitability with Cisco (growing at 30%, but maybe 60%)
- Cisco starts with their measure of CorpDev – can they get company to do something that they wouldn’t be able to do with them
  - Companies think they can often do things on their own – Cisco recognizes the broader source of innovation within VC and outside capital
  - Strategy first and deal second – work hand-in-hand with biz unit to collaborate with teams inside to shift pov for where to go
    - Acquisitions can get them there – magic happens with the business units inside Cisco
- Motivation for investment wants to make portfolio companies successful to help Cisco
  - Believe opp to invest in best-in-class company in market that is interesting – tight partnership over 2 quarters or 3 years, shared expectations
  - High multiple transaction to be avoided isn’t necessarily true
- If you’re GM of Cisco Security Business – outside innovation as strategy is fundamental for the business
  - If you decided acquisition makes sense, have to position it for success inside Cisco from financial, opex, funding position
  - Levels of approval to CFO, CEO compared to billion-dollar acq with board (mentions AppDynamics acquisition within 3 days of their IPO)
  - More PE firms getting involved into tech companies is better for the business and more innovation
    - Multiples that are unprecedented for PE firms
- SDRAM, iRAM – 10-12 startups for big market and seemingly new oppy
  - Cisco had an internal company and went out to talk to startup called MetaCloud
    - Market started to take off and they looked at M&A – scan of industry, acquired
- Cisco has done 200+ acquisitions, knows their mistakes
  - Platform to accelerate founder visions, they’re also enabled – David Yooliwitch (Founder of OpenDNS, former Cisco investment)
    - Acquired, 100mln company but David became head GM of Security of Cisco – multibillion
- Difficult with Cisco – going from hardware to cloud – belief in a successful transition
- Changing about tech industry – entrepreneurs not getting best advice when they need it (first time vs multiple, etc..)
- CloudCherry – acq in collab – customer journey and future of work – predictive analytics on contact center (how to deal with customers)
  - 2nd acq – Voicea – AI and ML on top of Cisco portfolio (ex WebEx – transcribe, meeting notes, flag action items agreed and integrate into workflow)

Best Ways to Push People to Create (Notes from Jan 13 to Jan 19, 2020) June 30, 2020

Posted by Anthony in Automation, Blockchain, Data Science, Digital, education, experience, finance, Founders, Gaming, global, Hiring, Leadership, marketing, medicine, NBA, social, sports, storytelling, Strategy, Time, TV, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
Tags: books, broadcasting, drugs, equality, esports, experiences, FDA, media, medicine, movies, sports
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So, my title is a bit misleading because I don’t have the answer. It’s a bit annoying. I have many friends and family members that will cite an interest in making something, or even more generally, wanting something to be made. I try to encourage if there’s even an interest of a consistency in what they’re looking to do. It’s worth sharing if they enjoy it. Encouragement isn’t the part that’s lacking. There’s an accountability or fear of not having the time be worth it.

To me, that’s a bit of a weakness. Sure, you can be scared that it won’t be monetarily advantageous to do it – but that’s the part where your own curious/enjoyment makes up for it. If you’re interested, you may be more likely to generally share and stay consistent than if you’re not. Immediate gratification doesn’t go hand-in-hand with consistency, though. And then the starting point usually has a bit of work. All of this adds up to psyching oneself out before ever starting. All the while, we continue scrolling to the next thing, wondering aloud how nice it seems to be sharing something that we’re moderately interested in.

Peter Guber, Dodgers/Warriors co-owner (KindredCast – WhartonXM)
- Lion Tree CEO Aria Borkhov with Chairman/CEO of Mandalay Entertainment, 4 sports teams
- Hollywood productions for 5 Best Picture nominations (Rain Man winner), Midnight Express, Flash Dance, Batman, Soulsurfer
  - “Tell to Win” best-selling author
- Also owner of Team Liquid and LA FC, professor at UCLA Anderson, Media
- Recorded at the end of WS 2018 – never before having World Series Game 7 at Dodgers stadium
- Can’t just make hits – ups-and-downs are part of the journey, can’t fail will make it so you don’t have success
- Missed out on Dodgers originally when McCourt was buying from FOX, but asked to put up money at last hour, so he backed out
  - Magic brought him in 9 years later and he was more familiar since he owned the AAA team in Oklahoma City
  - Culture providing leadership and top-down, being managing partner
  - Bring best talent, resourcefulness, undervalued performance from someone as surprises, having a long and short-game
    - If short-term doesn’t work, the long-term rarely is cared for
- Caring fully for his team – listen to the audience and imagine their experience is theirs and creating relationships
  - Crucial since you can’t get another audience every time – music, movies, sports
  - Brand affinity as breeding success – crucial that word-of-mouth is more powerful than a 30second clip anywhere
    - Looks at it like bond / what the product means for people
  - Audiences expect experiences (how do they feel, what’s the benefit, life) – customers/consumers are looking to spend only / wallets
- Media – Game 6 had 2nd best since 2009 for viewership
  - How do you get technology into media? Twitter paid $10mln with football, Amazon paid $50mln, Facebook with MLB
  - Linear broadcasting – audience getting every media at once, same way – can’t act on it (analog to digital)
    - Know the individual audience, can talk to friends/you directly – interface with social group, react and a participant
    - Cultivate participation – don’t know about all people generally but now, know the particulars
  - Digital natives – always growing, never had cords – companies need both linear and digital sense
  - Dancing with the enemy – like to kill the other, one is an ally/adversary at different times
  - Can’t take an analog advertisement and plunk it on to digital – won’t be the same
  - When he was in China doing business, he had to go through an interpreter – didn’t have the same feeling/attitude
  - Each sport has unique challenges (and movies) – movie-going has turned into “going to a movie”
    - Driving away from habituation (movie on Fridays) vs (“Let’s go to A movie”)
- Narrative of baseball – can look at different things, fantasy, play-by-play and story
  - Basketball is rapid so you have to address down-time in a different format – paces are more important (digital can help)
  - Gambling will introduce a new evolution – betting on emotions, last-pitch, blowouts will be important still
- Esports – Team Liquid in SC2, LoL, HotS, Overwatch, Halo, CoD, DotA
  - True digital native and a culture change – lifestyle connection is different
  - Became invested in technology after joining Sony and his unique way – his life is connection of artists and audiences
    - How do you create value and multiply value?
    - Consumption with esports as 3 things – expansion, underserving market, global, participatory (could play along)
    - Esports as the music for 18-25 now, lights up their heart (“shut off that music”), engagement attraction
  - Have to understand the language, special – challenge to make money
- Escape velocity for colleges and training, scholarships – getting older
  - Only got into esports Mark Merrill (Riot Games) came to leadership course and was talking about League of Legends, lit him up
- Advertising planning, consumer information, still very early
  - 1 to 1 engagement is the biggest difference – 1 to many probably outdated or less effective
- Made a long bet on VR – 5 years ago – they’re the director – mediators give you the meaning
  - Technology as existing for PoC for phone call where you could turn the fight or a game on
- Fav movie: Godfather 2, Witness — Fav person: Fidel Castro when Peter was doing a show on diving
  - Unbelievably interesting (Castro)
- Reading: Sapiens (rec for Undoing Project), Thinking Fast & Slow
Amy Abernethy (@DrAbernethyFDA), Principal Commissioner of FDA, Vijay Pande, GP on Bio Fund at a16z (a16z Podcast 1/14/20)
- Food, Drugs, and Tech – 100 Years of Public Health
- 113 years ago formed out of 100 laws – hygiene issues as science-based agency
  - Safe and effective medical products to be used with your patients
- Have to come up with flexible mechanisms to avoid and take risks when appropriate
  - Risk-based scientific decision-making, review and expectation of certain risk in products
  - Hepatic failure, may take a person’s life, urgency of problem with number of people of impact, public perception/expectation
  - De-risk: try to ensure pre-conditions are met, toxicity, consistent expectations around clinical effectiveness
- How does FDA (mentions possible show for crises a la CSI: FDA) deal and think of crises?
  - Medical products could have any crises issues (animals, vapes, food, drugs, biologics, devices, cosmetics)
    - Distribution of potential crises are very real – opioid crisis as slowly creeping up – as information accumulates, problem ID
  - Agency – action plan for several parts on what FDA responsible for
    - What can they do to reduce problem? Reduce patient tablets accessible to, for instance.
      - Can increase methods for access for patient-informed labeling.
    - New treatments for pain and solving problem otherwise
- 20% of international GDP regulation under FDA and 15% of food imported so needs to be safely labeled, available in country
  - Investigate trucks across border that aren’t available over borders
  - PREDICT program – 10 years old rules engine where they are most likely to have unsafe food
- Drug shortages – have intervened ahead of 160 drugs for shortages there along with the opposite – what happens if there is one
  - Food-borne illnesses to avert problems and they have these discussions in the morning
- Kits off Amazon for CRISPR – dog glow in the dark, for instance
  - CAR-T as T-cells to re-engineer to supercharge and put back into patient
- Improving software products that help the world of controls
  - How does FDA think about data privacy and ownership?
    - Practically, proprietary information and confidential. Drug surveillance that might be more publicly available.
  - In CIO role, she wants a Chief Privacy Role – when brought up, data even in HIPAA may be re-identifiable
- Platform trials – enabling features within 21st century cures
- Some company/investigators not wanting to subject only product into clinical evidence framework to figure out – especially only shot on goal
  - Taking a while to determine this
  - Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 – contemplation of new payment delivery models, Institute of Medicine research for digital infra in 2007
  - 2008 – GFCrisis for stimulus bill to get the High Tech Act for full-scale distribution of Elec Health Records in 2009
  - Nov 2016 – 21st Century Cures got pulled from shelf as they tried to figure out which was bipartisan opinions
- Food – FDA part, genetic engineer and synthetic biology – talking with USDA to draw the lines here
  - With new innovations, do we need to change regulatory paradigm?
  - How do we ensure consumers know what’s going on? Labels / consistent language (ex: almond milk)
- Smarter Food Safety – possibility for each food to have a full supply chain that we can check on (whether app-enabled, blockchain)
- For future of FDA – far more processes automated using the glut of more data
Seth Walder (@sethwalder), ESPN Sports Analytics Writer; Alexandra Mandrycky, Dir of Hockey Admin for Seattle (Wharton Moneyball, 1/15/20)
- Plus minus for receivers, how the NFL will do statistics
  - Different than hockey +/- but far more team-involved
- Talking an Analytics Coverage for the CFP Championship – what is advantageous, expected, etc
  - Good sports information – bettors can make it as they will – actionable or not
- Daily Wager show – betting and sports and new statistics
  - “Sacks created”, for instance – Zendarius Smith, lead league with 20+ and we’re double-teamed the most often
- Sherman as only targeted 14%, very low for outside corner (one side only – right side)
- Quantitative Analyst, Danny Chu for second person on the hockey side
Cynthia Medina, Founder & CEO of WAGER (Women at Work, WhartonXM)
- Pay equity discussion – safe space for transparent talks
- 15 years as exec recruiter, talent consultant, leadership coach and technical recruiting
  - International relations and policy expert for DoHS, Treasury, JPM
  - Served in Peace Corps as well, and founded Cheeky Monkey (women who don’t want to network)
- Thinking in 3-5 year intervals for Jones C Mitchell – personal level for Cynthia, though
  - Short windows of time, managed by feel – not vision
  - She has 29 aunts/uncles (parents of 15, 14) – curiosity for her but not overall something she was chasing
  - 0 had gone to college, first in family to graduate, get a passport, live abroad
- Lots of layaway for Kmart (waiting 6-9 months), also used to visit Puerto Rico every summer with family – layaway, also
  - Friend group established college as a norm – chose Georgetown since her uncle liked the basketball team
  - She had no sense of the power structure in the US – information and what she was learning
    - Pushes people to apply to hard universities – to be able to make change
- After college – didn’t have a job – got an internship, needed to know she could do it without help
  - Finance area for GAP HQ, could do it (had stayed on a couch initially when she went to SF)
  - Then, decided what she wanted – went to Peace Corp and was the “chicken girl” in Nicaragua
    - Taught how to make a business with microlending loans ($100)
- After Peace Corps – big picture idea for what’s next? Same person – senior year teacher who told her to apply for GU
  - Applies to Harvard – needed a big push – elevating yourself on your own, focus on international affairs
  - Friend at the time was in the area for 9/11 – saw / felt things on 9/11, so 9/12 she went to NY and been with her husband since
  - Felt like she’d done enough for herself, now wanted to serve again – worked for NYPD CT unit, Treasury – anti-terrorist financing
    - Latin American policy expert for the anti-terrorist work
  - She was in DC, husband in NY at the time
- Started a family – husband had to go to SF for his job, 1 child (3-6months but turns out to be 2 years)
  - Everyone else was happy, now time to do what she wanted
  - Wanted flexibility, good at basics, people – razor-like skills on interview process (first for free, then charge)
  - Told what she was doing, advertised it, did her LinkedIn
- Driven by wanting other people to feel content. Having lots of conversations with people who aren’t doing it correctly
  - Asking for right amount, not asking for what they should get
  - Let’s keep good people by being radically transparent – telling husband that she wished all salaries for two days were public
    - Husband, a manager, gave reasons against it (creates more work for managers) – jealousy and infrastructure
  - She BCCed 500 friends – sent email to pair people for salary conversations (1:1) in industry
    - Send LinkedIn and tell her how much everyone made – nothing happened for 12 hours
      - Men, often, would say it’s too personal / we’re good / exec-level where info would be adversely used
      - “My wife doesn’t even know how much I make”
  - Example for 2 people who are now friends of hers – exec woman, exec man – he was making $100/hr more
    - She didn’t want to know how much he was making (he offered)
    - Big data problem – once you know, you have to do something and that’s often where people will fall off
    - Creating database, sheets and sharing this – nothing to do with action / companies doing different things
- With more data, what did she discover and finding the needs?
  - Certain industries, large pay gaps – media, marketing, certain places
    - conversation / article at Google – same levels, women > men but because they were staying longer at levels
  - Making the same in cases but women felt like they didn’t have the same respect / something they weren’t getting
    - Baggage conversations still – persistent imposter syndrome, even when paid well, still work to be done
      - Ability to self-advocate is always around – empowerment to demand space
  - Does workshops out/in companies – compensation with employees in large companies (inc. tech)
  - Example: new shift to tech company – not CEO but 2nd in command or “I’m young”
    - Often hear “well my husband makes more than enough so I don’t need to push”
    - “Money is not as important to me” – don’t see it as failing, afraid, embarrassed to say they want more, know I’m great
  - People will justify when CEOs or execs leave, company wants to bring in diversity hire and pay 60% – women go in to find
- Have to ask what you want? If you want to be a manager but haven’t managed anyone.
  - Is there an ability or opportunity for you where you want to be?
  - If you don’t know what you want – someone will put you where they need you.
    - Haven’t made a decision. If it matters for $125k to do these 4 things, need to make actions to get there.
  - She likes helping people negotiate when they don’t have to – “have to” in short timeframe – next job is when you get promoted
  - Networking as you build relationships before you need them – started Cheeky Monkey because of motivation and clients
Elroy Dimson, Emeritus Professor at London Business School, chairman at Centre for Endowment Asset Management at Cambridge (Meb Faber #100, 3/19/18)
- Author of Triumph of the Optimists – producing the indexes, small cap 100 in London
- 10 countries, a century of data, including the UK for returns
  - Found lots of researchers had general interest in more financial returns historically and added them to the book #2 (2000 years Millennium Book #2)
  - Optimists were those that invested in common shares over bonds/T-bills in companies, which is why they named it thus
- Found out that about 80% of industries that existed at start of century disappeared, and 2/3 of those that exist today didn’t exist then
- Bond market in 1900 existed of some bonds with short maturity like 6-8 years, or in London, had perpetual bonds
  - Composition of mutual fund then vs now – always changing, industries decline and come up
  - Very few survive over the long term – perfectly viable investment strategy as changing
- Countries that were utterly important – assets survived but ownership changed completely (1917 – Russia and 1940s – China)
  - Making the World Index, history for each country, assets going to zero and Index as the same
- Idea that economic growth, GDP growth and stock market returns – discovered a negative relationship between them
- Thinking about valuations – market caps (Japan in 1980s as biggest, US as 50% now)
  - Market cap-weighting as only consistent one
  - Interest rates in 21st century have been way down, real interest rates TIPS / inflation-linked bond of 4%
    - Average now is negative .5 %, promising $1 now, < $1 back later. Gordon model – value of a financial security = D / (r – g)
  - Focus is on real interest rates, nominal is adjusted by inflations in each country (which can be different)
    - Real interest rates were lower in 1970s (minus 10% when inflation was 25%+ and yields were 10-15%)
    - Negative real interest rates are about 1/3 of their 2000+ country years (118+ years, 20+ countries)
      - What’s different/rare now – low real interest rates with low inflation and low nominal interest rates
- Want to bring currency back – most is driven by relative inflation compared to the US – long term it protects you, short term, hurts
- Tilting away from market cap-weighting, seeing other factors that may or may not make sense
  - Factors measure exposure to attributes of companies (relative size, growth, otherwise)
  - Some factors have a reward – growth companies do well (no premium), value companies instead that show reward
    - Rewards for exposure to particular factors (in hindsight, clear) may not sustain into the future
    - Smart beta, Five Factor model, liquid common stock vs illiquid maybe (mutual fund wanting liquidity may take lower return)
- For his book’s update, added a new chapter for Global Investment Returns Yearbook
  - Looking at durable, tangible assets – real estate is smaller (domestic aggregate real estate is smaller)
    - Expected return on housing – between financial return for long-term bonds and equities
      - Expected volatility is also in between those
- His grandmother had a wine shop, he’s done studies on investment returns for 1900 on, postage stamps, wine, etc
  - Best wine as Claret, First Growth Bordeaux, Premier Cru
- Best investment – his education, PhD at LBS and then Cambridge

What Do You Want to Happen (Notes Jan 6 – Jan 12, 2020) June 22, 2020

Posted by Anthony in Automation, Data Science, Digital, experience, finance, Founders, global, Hiring, Leadership, marketing, medicine, Politics, storytelling, Strategy, Time, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
Tags: #business, Building, Design, Domains, Luxury, People, RealEstate, Retail, Strategy, Venture
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It’s amazing how quickly the weeks go by in this pandemic time. Wherever you’re reading, I hope the lack of patience of the general public to rush outside was limited because in the bay area over the last 2 weekends, it’s the opposite. A rush of public places opening up brought all of the public in droves. Streets are crowded again and the freeways were packed through the weekend.

I posted earlier today about continuing to see webinars/conferences that are occurring remotely. This does increase access. But as far as engagement, I’m afraid for many, the reason for past attendance of the big conferences was the networking / interacting face-to-face. Also, there’s a staying power of people being in person. In reflecting on many of my own conferences, there’s the coffee chats each morning, the lunches of discussions, happy hours or dinners thereafter. These cannot be replicated in the virtual world to the same effect for many. It’s likely split – the increase of attendance by anyone anywhere is certainly a boon to the industry – wider spread of important and fundamental ideas/people is probably worth the loss. However, it’s a bit unfortunate in the spirit of the big conferences.

I’d be fascinated to see sponsorship groups, facility and hospitality adjustments to the different trend. DataScience Go was this weekend, which has had both remote events and annual treks to San Diego over the past ~5 years with excellent people. I’ve made quite a bit of virtual and real friendships from these events, and hope to be able to in the future. They had a solid platform with an Expo virtual room, “main stage”, as well as sponsored chats and hackathons. I do think that this was a good step in providing the opportunity to do many of the things we look for in reality – better could be the illusion of a real-world conference, maybe in augmented / virtual reality where you’re controlling an avatar and attending in a piece – 5 years maybe? Likely 10 for the areas that would need to catch up tech-wise. I’m hopeful.

Hope you enjoy the following notes – Naveed has progressed many companies forward that inspire future technology or movements into new spaces, Pauline Brown discussed LVMH and luxury retails control over items of want instead of need, as well as Cesar Kuriyama’s obsession with TED talks, building and design of 1 Second Everyday.

Naveen Jain, entrepreneur of 7 co’s (Launch Pad, Wharton XM)
- Founder of Moon Express, Viome, InfoSpace
- As we get older, part of aging to be human and why we should be sick
  - Yes – lifestyle diseases compared to being healthy (being sick as a choice, as well)
- What is gut bacteria? Wrong – humans have more foreign cells than human cells from parents
  - Genes from parents are 22k protein-producing genes vs 40 tn microbes in the gut (viruses, bacteria, etc)
  - Those 40tn microbes/organisms produce 2 to 20 million genes (at best, 1% human)
- Tuning your body and food testing repeatedly – can change every 3 months
- Parkinson’s and microbiome, obesity, autoimmune, etc
- Why is healthcare making money when there is a disease?
  - Nobody is making money – incentives don’t agree. Same with educatio.
- Moon Express – high degradation, low gravity, and figuring out an interplanetary society
  - Wrong question – “How to grow food on planet?” to “What do we need to keep people alive on the moon?”
    - Energy may come from radiation, photosynthesis, nitrogen/hydrogen or something else
  - Too many people look at the symptoms of the problem compared to the root
  - Based out of Cape Canaveral, FL and has around ~35 people, Viome is 150 (Seattle)
  - Only company allowed to leave Earth orbit
- Entrepreneurs will be the next super powers – first time in history where individuals are capable
- Starting as passing the test in programming without knowing or having seen a computer
  - Phone interview and apparently aced it (byte vs bit – big and small) – before being sent from India to New Jersey
  - Never seen a non-white person there and he was an alien
  - Working on MS DOS 1.0 – wanted to get back to India and go back
- Moved to SV after applying for an interview with Convergent Technologies
  - Faxed his resume – half a dozen companies
  - After a few years, he decided he wouldn’t be the best programmer – first microprocessors at Intel
  - Moved up to Microsoft in Seattle after a few startups, then OS 2 (“half the operating system”) as a program manager
- Wanted to start InfoSpace because he saw that there would be a paradigm shift
  - Good at understanding what is coming up next – fundamental for companies doing business
  - Couldn’t see how MS could grasp how to see it in the construct of the company – too much to lose if it succeeds
  - Friday evening he decided he was done, resigned Microsoft – went home to his wife and she chewed him out [pregnant]
- As an entrepreneur, most people want to focus on where tech is vs where it will be
  - 2.5 years he took the company public, in 1999 – bigger than Boeing and others
  - Best you can do as you become an expert – can improve product by 10-15% but can’t do 10-100x better
    - Must fundamentally challenge the foundation of the question
- For Moon Express – asked “why do people eat food?”, for healthcare not “What organisms in your gut?” but instead “what do the organisms produce?”
  - Come up with most disruptive idea that can help a billion people and multi-100 billion company
  - Ex: lack of fresh water, can solve it – help 1 billion – if you come up with filter and desalination, can feel really good
    - Why do we have shortage of fresh water? Agriculture – solve the root cause. Aquaponic, hydroponic, aeroponic to get more water.
    - Ask next: Where does agriculture water get used for? Majority is used to feed the cattle. Can do plenty of fresh water.
      - Take stem cell from cow – just grow muscle tissues, not eyes and otherwise.
- If you’re successful with what you’re doing – is it going to actually help millions live their life?
  - Am I passionate or truly obsessed about it? “Passion is for losers” – if you don’t jump out of bed, you’re doing something wrong.
  - What are you willing to die for? And live for it.
  - If I had everything in my life, what would I do? And you can go get it.
Domains 1: The .com King with Rick Schwartz (StartUp Podcast 8/31/17)
- May 1993 could call up ATT and get (800) numbers as ‘vanity’ numbers
- 1-800-makeout as a recording call chatline – owns the number and rents it out
  - He had $1/mo for 150 of the phone numbers, got a nice check for $7700
- Domain name .coms after the phone numbers – December 26, 1995 – lipservice.com first
  - Used it to advertise his numbers after he pestered his brother for registering the domain names
- Friend called him saying dick.com was available – got $200 in the first night
  - Domain collectors started secondary market – he bought porno.com for $42k
  - He offered $10k, 15k, up to 42k after kid had done $5k originally
- Sold porno . Com for $9mil after collecting around $20 mil on the site with only “Enter Here” and selling it temporarily
- Seat at tables of all kinds of domains – path dependency for .com (different is a bigger deal)
  - He has hotproduct, candy, ass, shoes
- Tried to buy Gimlet.com originally – $43k at start, then $76k (or $5k down and $1k for 48 mos)
  - Owner of the registry was called and he knew the value
  - Since, they still own Gimlet.fm, .audio, .media
Domains 2: Sex dot com with Gary Kremen (StartUp Podcast 9/7/17)
- 1994 Stanford MBA and undergrad in engineer, internet seemed a good place for classified ads
  - Registered domains for all the places – housing, match, sex, jobs (.com)
  - Gets investors for Match.com and brings all domains to the company except for the primary one
  - Had a falling out with the investors and he left the company, plus the domains
- Got a call from a friend in the industry who said he didn’t own the site – Stephen Cohen
  - Cohen had claimed he had received the domain via a letter from Kremen’s old address
    - Lots of issues with letter from typos and idea that a letter saying Online Classifieds (Kremen’s company) didn’t have internet
  - Legal defamation and suit back and forth
- Cohen would make up stuff to tie up proceedings of dropping the case while legal fees signed up
  - Friends got tired of hearing it from Gary, except Cohen who would call him (Cohen believed that Gary had stolen it from him)
  - Gary was broke – lawsuits cost him a ton and started drug spiraling out of his mind
  - In 2001, won the suit as federal judge ruled in his favor – $40mn made and $25mn to damages for Gary
  - Dozens of companies offshore and money in his wife’s name – fled to Mexico before ruling and stayed
    - Gary went after Network Solutions (one who accepted forged letter) in 2002 and ruled in his favor in 2003
    - Digital property as domain and traced from this single lawsuit
- He was owed a ton of money – 20% was his offer for information on his reward
- Gary was able to collect Steve’s house (used to drive him crazy) in Rancho Sante Fe on 9k sq ft
  - Had ripped out all the wires, drawers, and it was a dump – Steve’s mansion cost a fortune with maintenance
  - Tries to reinvent himself as a porn entrepreneur – trying to play the part
  - Gets an offer to sell sex.com and he closes it – can’t let go though without getting the $65mn
- Gary invited Tim, lawyer, over in 2005 – brought on as tracking down what Steve had
  - 3 primary attorneys, 1 in Mexico, private investigator – 5 months and $200k in legal time
    - Look for assets in other parts of the world, Estonia, Norway, Bahamas, Caymans, etc
  - In 2005, Steve is arrested in Mexico and given to Border Patrol and sent to jail in San Diego
    - Pony up or don’t leave – refused to reveal money for more than a year, also deposed by Gary’s lawyers
- Steve is released and sent back to Mexico – they have tabs on him for new businesses
- Gary collected $14mn for the domain, house for $4mn and settlement from Network Solutions (~$12mn)
  - Steve lives on the beach and never paid a penny, while also living comfortably
Pauline Brown, former Chairman of North America for LVMH (Wharton XM, Marketing Matters)
- Recent author of Aesthetic Intelligence: How to Boost It and Use It in Biz and Beyond
- Steve Jobs had the clarity of a vision for the design
  - Aesthetic empathy as the emotional effect on people in design – not just judged by strength of processor
  - Have to start at the organizational level, not individual – if it’s not prioritized and embraced, it won’t continue
  - Low on EQ, his genius extended to the silhouettes, textures, materials – generally lifting the senses
- Radio show called Taste Makers on Starz channel, English undergrad at Dartmouth before Wharton MBA
  - First job after Wharton – consulting in 1995 to Leveraged buyouts and private equity, at Bain
  - Moved to Estee Lauder shortly after they had gone public – Head of Strategy (one of two)
    - Strategy to move from home-grown brand with same models (US dept store-driven)
      - Move to different distributions, geographic roots and strategically acquire – M&A movement
  - 1999 splash for Sephora (from France) – had mass vs class – clear differences between the two
- LVMH has roughly 70 individual brands – almost all stems from Europe but US is largest market
  - Her role was the regional leader in a large market – take what could’ve been complex business to insight in others
    - Mobility of talent and other areas of underleveraged points
- Between the 2 companies, $15bn (EL) and $40 bn (LVMH) produce 0 products that people actually NEED
  - If people were asked what they expected to see on the Paris Fashion Runway, it’d look nothing like what shows up
- If you ask what a favorite restaurant is – you expect that the food is good
  - Won’t tell you that the lighting is so good, or the acoustics are so great, or utensils
    - She used the different glasses for wine as an example of what may draw the experience
  - With Apple Store – lighting of stores, choice of textiles/absence, windows as all glass
  - Navigation to the restaurant itself – CX
- Awareness / Taste – differences for music, taste, style and career aspects
  - We numb our senses to get through the day – she does workshops to get back into senses
  - Chairs that force poor posture, fluorescent lighting (toxicity), buzzing or background sounds and awareness of others
- Second step – interpretation, after awareness
  - How do you feel about the senses? Why do you feel that way? Some things are good, some things are unpleasant.
    - Rock music can be energizing to one, others may react negatively
- Third Step – articulation (Steve Jobs)
  - Masterful at articulating with precision and command what felt good to him so thousands could execute on it
  - Hiring on a designer for their home, most people are too vague, imprecise or sloppy in communicating
- Fourth – curation
  - Presenting at a store, menu coming together – CEO, presenting a story and visual accompaniment
  - Editorial command
    - Hosting a dinner and you want to make a great meal with 10 favorite ingredients, may not go together
  - Coco Chanel – elegance is refusal
- Course of creativity at Wharton – some best results on creativity to inspire is with constraints
- Rarely do the most successful people have the best style – once you have the means, you don’t really care
  - Easier to make decisions on constraints occasionally – cited some students that perform better there
Bruce Mehlman, founder at Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas (Behind the Markets 1/10/20)
- One of biggest things – Chinese media co can come to US but not the reverse
  - Fundamental for way China governs, see very little chance for a resolution
- Taiwan elections coming up – current president get re-elected (pro-independence camp)
  - Market in Taiwan was higher than S&P over the past year, will get elected priced in
  - Running against her – from Traditional Taiwan Party (original that left China in 1949) – considered non-establishment
    - Lost steam as we near elections – China would prefer him as pro-China, one-China/two-systems
- Bruce’s opinion: size of China’s market and economic power is worrisome
  - Believed greater engagement of rest of world would lead to liberalizing and reform in China
    - Have seen rise of Western-type companies, technologically
  - We don’t see greater political freedom or cooperative economics by companies
    - National champions groomed to dominate across the world, rise of new power integrating without others
  - Graham Allison, prof of Harvard went back through history back to Sparta and Athens where rising power confronted existing power
    - 12 of 16 were war, 4 of 16 peacefully
- 1 child policy result of demographic challenges – lead to massive aging workforce to retiree where they don’t have a safety net
  - Decelerating growth and pressure on Communist party – 2 choices: fault others abroad or become an integrated, trusted global partner
- Perceiving an era of heightened disruption, financial collapse and angry at income equality
  - Couple that with technology, historic immigration and country changing faster than expected – then throw in politics
  - Gilded Age description of 1880-1900 parallels the current (income inequality, immigration with electricity, auto, railroad)
- When system was built, it was 15 workers to 1 retiree, 5-10 years of retirement
  - Now, 2.5 workers to 1 retiree and 1/3+ of your life in retirement, along with not having full career path
  - More businesses started in the Carter administration weekly than now in the Trump admin
  - May need to reimagine policies and regulation for innovating
  - Rising prices may not be the only measure
    - How do we expand the winner circle? Superstar Economy by McKinsey
      - Right skills, edu, sector, city – never had more opportunity to be successful and command share of spoils
      - If most people don’t have this opportunity, they’ll vote for change/populace
- Splinter-net – Bruce thinks we’re there and it gets worse
  - Core: goals of 3 regions are radically different – regionalized internet with these rules
  - Europe: protect people and very regulatory toward tech platforms (leaders in privacy, AI regulations)
  - US: empowering people, free speech (platforms with protection for users’ saying), tons of startups but maybe not protective
  - China: control, social credit scores, access to information and anonymity – successful in AI, TenCent, Alipay, Alibaba
  - Privacy of EU regulation – allowed Google and Facebook to grow market share because others can’t comply or afford
Danielle Cohn, VP of Entrepreneurial Engagement and head of LIFT Labs at Comcast (Wharton XM)
- Further research
Cesar Kuriyama, creator of 1SE (Indie Hackers #141, 1/2/20)
- Bootstrapping an app to millions through persistence
- He’s been doing it for 8.5 years, each day
- Background in visual effects and animation, agencies/advertising at the start of his career post-art school
  - Lots of media, thought he was CS – wanted to be an animator
  - Took some time in advertising to realize that he was executing others’ ideas, not his own, so became disenfranchised
- Saw TED Talk of Stefan Sagmeister, also an alum of Pratt school in Brooklyn – Power of Time Off
  - Every 7 years, closes down his studio and does a retirement for a year – can do different things when young than old
  - Cesar would do 100 hour weeks on deadlines
  - Memory trigger as 1 second – not quite a photograph, still bonus of sound and wanted easy to rewatch
  - Can ALWAYS relive 6 minutes (1 year)
- Day to day life was “being creative” in lieu of a brand or project
  - 1 second everyday was to keep a journal where he wouldn’t stop after 3 days – video
  - Courtland did 6 months to take to himself – drained half his bank account and had to figure it out
- Cesar came up with the idea – didn’t intend to squander a year off – how does he make a living on something he’s passionate toward?
  - First 6 months – not sure what he wanted to do, directed a music video in the past and in spare time
  - Techie, but wasn’t sure how to build the app – asked everyone for questions / programs / dev shops
    - This was 2012 – $100k dev shops where they said it was difficult
  - iOS dev meetups and blend in – make friends that way
    - He went to agency party that friend had invited him to – sat next to a developer at a shop
      - Was at their office (had just started after they quit their finance jobs – wanted to get biz) and met up
      - Wanted to make sure they could do it – he brought credibility, TED talk and their video – they could do $20k
      - He didn’t have $20k, he’ll launch the KickStarter to get the funding BUT he didn’t want to do it without a prototype
      - They agreed – launched in months and it worked – most backers ever, lot of press, 11k backers
    - January 2013 launch and 2 weeks after the ending of the KickStarter
- He would watch the TED Talk of the Day everyday – Facebook posted about the first TED auditions
  - He needed to do it so he wouldn’t regret it later – counselor when he was in high school said to “Live to regret things you do, not didn’t”
  - 1 minute – 60 sec video, included 30 seconds of his 1second everyday – they chose him and 17 others to speak at an event in NYC
  - Broadcasting his idea to everyone – not caring about those that steal or hack together a clone / idea
- Execution is what matters and he paid enough attention and love into it
- Built app, wanted it to exist and be on the app store – make enough money passively that he can use it to supplement other work
  - Terrible business decision – app was $1, 8k pledges were $1 – rest weren’t
  - $5 would have KickStarter backer section of 3-4k names in the credits of the app
    - Tried to create higher pledges for not a lot of work
  - At time, limited to 100 beta testers and he filled them quickly (or unlimited now)
  - 50k downloads first day – support ticket per second – it was him full-time and dev shop part-time
- First 2 years – “would finish the app” – don’t finish tech, always an update or feature
- Liked comics growing up; interned at Marvel in college
  - Tweeted, was eventually in movie Chef because Jon Favreau enjoyed the app
  - He tweeted it off in the morning and Jon looked at his profile with the app, TED talk
    - All from because Jon said something nice about showing up to Iron Man 3 (after producing/directing IM1+2)
- Immediate awareness of business – can’t do it himself, first couple of years – endless emails
  - Couldn’t answer support tickets because of time it took to fix the things they were about
  - Coming from art and different space, without business – not tech or Silicon Valley
- Going to Tim Ferriss book signing at an Apple store – waited it out until 10 people were left
  - Don’t raise money, figure out a way to build without investors, a prototype (how he landed on KickStarter)
  - First year of tech ecosystem – privy to VC-land
    - Charging was weird, no tech developer/CTO was red flag, video wasn’t native yet
- Not everyone meant to start a company, be an entrepreneur – scratch the itch, though
  - Consumes a lot, now very little excuses to start (30% of ideas estimate as without coding)
  - Moving from #17 in app store, #3, #1 in 2018 (then first week) – paid app – New Year’s was always big time
    - Made it free at start of that year with subscription tier
    - Revenue 2x (2018 – $2mn, 2017 – $1mn, etc)
- Decided to raise without venture – Bryce Roberts, Indie.vc, Earnest Capital after recognizing need for more devs
  - 13 in September and hired 7 more alone there – company retreat
  - Joel from Buffer also invested – wanted to emulate
- If role of social media is to incentivize more scrolling so that they can show you more ads (engagement as metric)
  - He wants to bring max value for least amount of time – exactly what you wanted to consume in 5 minutes (vs 45)
  - Being acquired isn’t particularly a goal – private life for 7+ years for some
    - Notifications to turn them on – don’t need to know these instantly (1se does 1 a day / batch)
  - Created a habit for 1 second video – fix for friends/family and that’s it – Instagram as highlights
    - He has his 1SE video – would look to be meaningless if you watch others’, potentially
    - Ex: Apple email from “Best of 2019” that he posted a video recording
  - Social media as this generation’s fast food – probably worse for us than we believe
    - Maybe his will be 50 million people and not multiple billion
- Who does he need to pay to not get targeted by ads? – Hopes for a better decade ahead
- Find Venn diagram of what you’re capable of doing – if anything lingering in your head, have to start it
  - No limit to resources online – how to eat an elephant “one bite at a time” 2 years after he did the first TED talk
  - “Divide divide divide” – he grew up ashamed he couldn’t ride a bike because he was embarrassed
    - Ate at him all the time and jealous of bikers in NY – how does he start?
    - Needed a bike – (got a foldable one), could do a straight line, then went to just do that and brakes in bike lane
    - Would make a turn, another turn and within a year – he was that prick going between cars, as fast, thru red

Failures as Public (Notes from December 30, 2019 to Jan 5, 2020) June 9, 2020

Posted by Anthony in Automation, Data Science, Digital, education, experience, finance, global, marketing, medicine, questions, RPA, Strategy, Time, training, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
Tags: #business, content, experiences, fitness, health, humanity, ideas, life, marketing, Microsoft, reading, research, social, training
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In the book “The Rise and Fall of Nations”, Ruchir Sharma goes through the emerging and developing countries that have shown patterns in growth or stagnation. How do we see that they failed? How did they succeed? Was it spending as a percentage of GDP? Is it the change in political party? Infrastructure? Social services? So many factors are at play for a nation. And any that have risen have also seen falls. It’s the natural business cycle that we see happen in macro all the way to micro. Why do I bring this up?

Because it happens to the smallest business units like startups, as well as individuals. We can’t help it. Some of us hide the falls, others wear it on our sleeves, open. I think there’s a combination of good for both. I will say that more reviews such as Top 10 Startup Failures of 2019 can be interesting case studies.

Maybe it’s not the companies themselves doing the reflection, but instead outsiders. This is a review exercise that can be useful for any individual to provide thoughtful reasoning. Granted, there were likely other, unseen circumstances that created a downfall but the exercise still works to recognize a large event like that. If more people see that through a lens, we would expect some growth overall. That content creation drives more people to start their own things. And that can only be good.

On to the notes!

Seth Juarez (@sethjuarez), Microsoft cloud advocate (Data Skeptic 12/15/19)
- ML: don’t want to write an algorithm because it’s too messy but use data to extract knowledge, use ML
- “I don’t know how to do ML, so call an API” vs “I know how to do TF, PyTorch, Deep Learning-custom stuff”
  - Build in control things
- Unstructured data into folder, word doc, picture, extract knowledge into an intelligent way (any set of files)
  - Making more intelligent Indexing with Skills
  - When a doc is indexed, an Indexer cracks open doc (text, images, metadata)
    - Skillset aggregates series of skills in step order to go through them (ex: sentiment of text, added to tree)
  - Very similar to an ETL but customized
- Predictions inside PowerBI, for instance – ML on rows of data to show this
  - Azure ML ModelInsights – vary features and see how it affects the predictions
  - Hoping bad ML models don’t affect or bias other models
- Video Indexer – upload video, take text out, show when different people start talking (pictures in a row, for instance)
  - Sequence of audio and pictures – can get sentiment with text
  - When you create an indexer, you marry it together with data storage (where files are) and the SkillSet
- Skill-builders as Excel-jockeys – his interview with a Rotterdam woman Faelina and getting innovation there
- His question: Ethics in AI – models building and make sure there is fairness in their generation
- Azure Cognitive Search links
Greg Zuckerman (@gzuckerman), WSJ writer, author of The Man Who Solved the Market (Resolve’s Gestalt University 12/23/19)
- How asset management has changed after Renaissance book, how relationships have evolved since releasing
- Was fascinated by buy-side investors, bewildered by trade ideas but over time, become cynical
  - 2 and 20 aren’t providing unique, much value
- When you don’t have outside LP’s, you can do other things that you can’t otherwise
- Trend following in clusters of stocks, not necessarily a single stock – baskets against each other
  - Unique methodology into one equities model
- When you talk to Simons and others in the firm early, you’d think they’d be quants but not the case
  - Still human – family office still will look at the office anyhow
- 30 pages of NDA, had issues when he was starting the book
- Everything they have is pattern investing and trading, so this is a problem eventually changing
  - Sophisticated or others that have money in market, but happening gradually
Dr. Rhonda Patrick (@foundmyfitness), scientist (Kevin Rose Show, 1/1/20)
- Discussing Omega3, metformin, sulforaphane research
- Published paper on phospholipid form of omega3 supplementation, DHA – found in marine sources
  - Interest in getting it to the brain – DHA that is bound to albumane
    - DHA-free fatty acid transported blood-brain by passive transfusion
    - Blood-brain barrier erodes as you age
- Brain glucose levels as important for Alzheimer’s disease
- Fish contain 1 – 1.5% of DHA in phospholipid form, whereas fish roe contain 70-75% (including flying fish)
- More from a gram of fish oil (she takes 3g) and eating fish/salmon roe – Nordic Pure3 for Rhonda Patrick
  - High dose EPA can have issues with blood thin
- Epithelia cancers vs blood cancers (in mice)
  - Much of metformin studies are based on Type 2 diabetics – lived longer after metformin with age controls
  - Physical exercise and metformin were not synergistic
- Activation of pulsing metformin – half-life
  - Exercise activates and lasts 48 hours, metformin does 36 hours after last dose
- During fasting, NAD levels increase
- 36 hour monk fast
Roy Bahat (@roybahat), Head of Bloomberg Beta (20min VC 10/18/19)
- - NYC / Valley with portfolio companies in Kobalt, Textio, Rigetti Computing, Flexport
  - Former co-founder at Ouya, new kind of games console raising over $33mn
- “Messy career” where he ran a nonprofit in government in nyc, fortune 500 media company, started the company and now investor
- This day – October 18 – started a third fund, same build as the prior 2 – $75mn, same thing and sticking to strategy
  - Fund size is fund strategy
    - In terms of valuations – company valuation as marker of VCs rating company, but that’s a mistake
    - Want to own as much of the few winners
    - Competitive lanes issue – every time you write a check, you lose out on other companies in the space in a category
- Egg toss of trust – model to be careful, customer calls at the end
  - VCs that ask to talk to customers immediately – slow them down, could be out of order
  - When he met Ryan Peterson at Flexport, he was still a board member at his hardware company and could try it out
    - Flexport reached out easily and offered to help him with his freight of hardware and team member made connection to CEO
- As companies become successful and grow quickly, expectations keep raising
- Fear from 6 years ago was if the VC was founder-friendly – not going to screw you
  - Greylock led a Series A for a friend’s company because Reid Hoffman had said Greylock wouldn’t screw you
  - Most people now are behaving to nudge the company’s upward – at Bloomberg Beta, company is the customer
- Investment decision making – speed of investment decision
  - They try to avoid asking about other VC’s in the process (but want to know if there are timing issues)
  - Their offers are encouraged to be shopped – lots of funds moving down to write checks
  - Concerned about Seqoia, NEA, other funds? Frustrated because they’ve lost a few but have won a few.
    - Had a founder called them after 2 years prior – shouldn’t have taken that money to convince you – nothing
    - Founder mentioned he could do the raise and turn to others and they’d know who it was
- Dependent variable – valuation (not the independent variable as most think)
  - Fund has strategy, do you want to invest? Check size – determined by fund size.
  - Strategy is to know the ownership target. 10-25% (Valuation as a function of fund size and check sizes with the ownership target)
- Ownership to build over time – bigger check – they own what they want to own the day they invest
  - He wants to be on the team the day they want to be on the team
  - Generally, if new investors are there, pro rata and investment is hot
  - First check – anyone can say yes – good accountability, avoid groupthink
  - Following checks – unanimous to follow on
- Greater fool dynamic – if actions reveal that you prey on greater fools at later times
  - Viable strategy in the current market, but maybe not going forward
- Boards at the earliest stages – pretty useless but has sit in Series B’s
- Favorite book: Waters Shut Down, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennit, Ain’t No Making It – how to develop empathy
- Founder secondaries – fan of this, most personal and important underdiscussed aspects of a company
  - Will drive the decisions of a company because the founder is distracted – many valuable reasons
- Thinks the heroes that are set up in the technology industry now have too much power – mainly as a result of money success
- Mistakenly believed that starting a company and investing in a company are similar
  - Completely different roles – wanted to focus on one of these
- Scout programs – Bloomberg Beta has Open Angels – giving money to individual investors is awesome
  - Angels, dollar for dollar, are more valuable in the ecosystem – issues can be lack of transparency (money comes from X)
- Most recent investment – founder named Max Sinkhov – business help close businesses on home purchases
  - Title insurance States Title – validation that the owner in fact owns the home – super big before a website
Arvid Kahl (@arvidkahl), founders of Feedback Panda (The Indie Hackers Podcast, #140 12/16/19)
- Him and girlfriend are founders of Feedback Panda, 2 years to $55k MRR and sold it
- Commuted from Hamburg and Berlin 3 times a week – 2.5 hours each way, 15+ a week
  - Connection was poor so he read and listened to podcasts – automating and taking yourself out of the business
  - Built to Sell book and podcasts – SaaS as online teacher feedback
- An agency keeps you as a freelancer, essentially – so try to make it so that it doesn’t have to be you
- All advice being anecdotal – truth can be applicable to every business, just a matter of you selecting it
- Started with the docparser and mailparser founder podcast with Indie Hackers (sold to Fortress Capital, also)
  - Found it interesting that there would be people to acquire the type of company
  - Received an email from them
- Documentation of prcoesses, business processes and building – make it easy to transition into them
  - Connection from beginning and met Kevin recently
- He started a blog after vacation, thebootstrappedfounder.com
  - Started out Feedback Panda – he was a software developer part-time, she was an opera singer & teaching English to Chinese
    - Feedback writing process took forever – 20 students ~5 min for next lesson and what was taught
    - Built her own system and templates to reduce the extra 2+ hours automatically
  - Knew what the market was because it was her exact same issue. If they could fix the problem, it’d be all over.
- $10/mo would save hours and made one Facebook post as advertising, then word-of-mouth
  - Allowed them to communicate and have discussions – teaching online blog posts
  - VIPanda – interesting person from user base and interview them
  - Engaging enough, relatable content for their strategy – she’d already been in her groups before she got to the part
- Teachers as very underpaid and overworked – good spot for business opportunity but not great for employment
- How to run – he said he probably should have hired for customer service – always did it from the beginning
  - Live chat and messages, would build up an article if others saw the issue again
  - Time when volume happens will be interrupting because there’s new stuff going on while features were coding
  - Forced him to do as much automation as he could build from the software stack
    - Deployment, failure errors, alerting and restarting system
    - Elixir Phoenix, Docker containers and on Kubernetes with ViewJS and other API / browser extension
  - If something broke, it’d come back up – errors automatically reported, etc
- He didn’t know how to hire, so he didn’t do it
  - Did an 11 hour video series for his next developer so he could send the link and felt great for it
- Adding a yearly plan near the start was productive – $110 where people would commit to something for a year
  - After a year, noticed they added a lot of features – had a cloud template sharing system
  - Machine learning for pronoun translation, snippets with text extender and manipulation
  - Product was much better – charge more – grandfathered all existing customers to $10 before $15/mo
- Hooked by Nir Eyal – instrumental – trigger, action, reward, investment – putting own template to share
Keith Devlin (@profkeithdevlin), “Math Guy” at NPR Weekend Edition, Stanford Mathematician (School’s In on Wharton XM, 9/1/18)
- Math throughout the week and your life day-to-day
- Using Tupperware dish – missing the size repeatedly, for instance
- In Alaska, teaching algebra to students – remembers having to teach the quadratic equation repeatedly and lengthily
  - Math as a discipline, potentially
- Math Guy license plate – content of math has changed throughout history, but not necessarily how we’ve done it
  - Save for 2 exceptions that are the printing press and then computing
  - Changes throughout history as connection with ancient Greeks, geometry, and in response to how society grows
    - 18-19th century – chemistry and physics drives, 20th and 21st century – biology and math through commerce, society
- Cell phones as answering 95% of undergraduate exam questions in fractions of a second, execution of procedure that can be coded
  - Faster, better, quicker for as many variables as you want, just from your phone
  - Shouldn’t test these things anymore but how to do them and when to use them
- People should have a general sense of numbers sense – different people have levels of it
  - Tips, for instance – example of doubling tax and then taxi cabs or restaurants starting at 20/25/30% since min ppl will enter own
  - Don’t need to learn to execute – won’t get the right degree of understanding without doing it
    - Teach not for execution, but for understanding now – bunch of high school students reverse engineering UPS/FedEx algorithms
    - Had to understand little things to figure out what would go on – Nueva school
- If you start with technology to interest them, they’re already engaged – good teacher can ask interesting questions given the motivation
  - We shouldn’t have to ask Why’s and How’s and What’s
- Research in 1990s watching adults after buying things and seeing things
  - If they have to do it mathematically, can get to near 98% quickly
    - if you take it out of the context but the same types of problems, it goes to 37%
    - Children doing licorice (to count 10s) won’t work once you remove it from the context
  - Embodiment of math in video games (Kevin’s been working on it) – reward in it to achieve the reward which pulls away from content
    - Small number that do it right – find a way to represent it that’s natural (in process, for instance – thinking process is math)
    - Slides he shows audiences with the same problem and same situation – one side is math symbols, other is game designed
- He got a grant for games where the problem adjusts for the game and shows the manipulation of the symbolic representations
  - Intuitive quantitative symbols – working on online course for teachers/parents
  - Introduce problems (from movies, for instance) where you have to begin with writing a paper

Prioritizing Personal Projects (Notes from December 23 – 29, 2019) June 1, 2020

Posted by Anthony in Digital, experience, finance, Founders, Gaming, global, Leadership, marketing, social, sports, storytelling, Strategy, Time, TV, Uncategorized.
Tags: #business, Amazon, books, community, content, experiences, finance, freedom, humanity, ideas, investing, Jobs, life, marketing, Money, NBA, questions, reading, social, Strategy, Time, training, TV, video
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We overestimate what we can do in a short time but underestimate what we can do in a longer period. This has been reiterated by Jamie Siminoff, Bill Gates, many others. It’s telling but a great mantra if you can zoom out and high level back off. Scheduling makes this so much better.

I have wanted for the longest time to get Spotify or another podcast to listen to me in the car and allow me to say something basic like “Make a note 30 seconds ago” and let me review the notes later. This could work for audiobooks or podcasts. Even allowing ebooks and articles to bookmark this type of stuff for where the page is would be useful. But maybe that’s through an API in the podcast or Kindle? I’ll have to see and report back.

In light of planning further career-wise, I have taken it upon myself to take on projects that I plan on making public for analysis sake. As an external consultant, much of my work has been NDA / kept private in general for good reasons (VC firms and start-ups are likely some of the more controlled privacy-wise). Some aren’t, and those are typically the ones that I’ve noticed have a much better, transparent brand or have less questions around their business models. A few things have stood out to me about predictions/forecasting, especially in annual or quarterly time frames that publications will release. I have focused on ML/Fintech/Edtech/Data companies over the last 5 years more heavily, so looking through the Fintech 50, Next Billion Dollar (Unicorn) Startups and Hottest 50 LA Startups. Outside the bay area / silicon valley, scanning through the different ecosystems can be an interesting landscape for focused, scaling and growing startups. LA because it’s still in California, somewhat close proximity but ultimately an alternative driving force than typical elsewhere (namely the bay).

So, I’ll have a chance to update my preliminary thoughts on the year-to-year changes – how many startups dropped off, which proceeded to move up the list, any funding raises, product progress or expansion. Hope you enjoy the notes!

Decade in Tech (Wharton XM)
- 4G entering 2011 compared to 5G now
- iPad introduction – better than netbook
  - Tablet rampup – Microsoft following with the Slate
- Social media launching
  - Instagram launch in September 2010 – 2 guys at Stanford
  - Taking photo class from a plastic camera that a professor had given him – best, soft focus and filtered photography
  - Offering to buy Instagram in April 2012 for $1bn
- Tesla as “gift of light” Model S – first time supercharging across the country
  - Musk took CEO role in 2008 (Model S 2012)
- WeWork – likeminded individuals wanting to work with others outside of making money
  - Sharing space to be something bigger
  - $16bn in 2016 to pulling IPO in 2019
  - Strength as marketing capability, not necessarily management
- Controversial events
  - Kendall Jenner at BLM Pepsi commercial
  - United – offering money for ‘volunteers’ until 4 people get off flight
    - $400 voucher and up to $800 – escalation, dragging the Chicago doctor kicking and screaming
    - Many other airlines improving overbookings
- Ice bucket challenge for ALS – 70k tweets per day at peak
- A/R rise as it started with Pokemon Go
- Cutting the chord – rise of unbundling
Brant Pinvidic, author of 3-Minute Rule: Say Less to Get More (Wharton XM, Career Talk)
- Mostly reminding people of what they’re doing badly / guilty – awareness but wanted to change it to make it productive
- Help you get as much info in 3 minutes as possible since “elevator pitch” doesn’t really work anymore
  - Meaningful engagement or not now
- Small ideas not actually small ideas – respect the knowledge of your audience
  - Your excitement is a long history of building information – feed them piece by piece
    - Ex – AirBnb for horses: people that travel with horses need to stick them where they’re going
  - Clarity as super compelling – complications are messed up
- Don’t open with the hook – audience needs to build into the potential
  - Katy Perry example: more Guinness book of World Record accomplishments, for instance
- Selling a show in 12 minutes in Hollywood as junior producer between Simon Cowell and Mark Burnett – had gotten down on himself
- People looking for hook – less dynamic personalities (biotech, oil & gas) that pulls the nervous energy out for why it will be great
- Bringing an idea to life on post-it with just a few words – see the value come together
  - 25 bullet points to pitch his show as well as he did (core piece of information)
- Halfway to understanding what the hook is when you can place the hook
Jonathan Lai (@tocelot), cnsmr team; Joel De La Garza, CIO at Box (16min on News #17, 12/20/19)
- Star Wars trailer premier in Fortnite – JJ Abrams coming out of Millennium Falcon and asked to choose which trailer
  - Interactive and persistent collaboration with Avengers and now Star Wars (lightsaber)
  - 12 million people showed up for Marshmello’s in-game concert (of 250 million users)
- Scarcity in a world of abundance – getting people there
- Brand advertisers have a limited set of options to reach Gen Z – no display ads, billboards, maybe Snapchat or TikTok
  - Hundred hours of watching YouTube or Twitch or in-game events that eventually go out after to share
- Fortnite’s Chapter 2 server downtime of 3 days as “Black Hole” that went viral and video
- Security and backdoor encryption – creating escrow keys to get backdoors
  - Can’t create backdoors undermines the trust in general, even if good guys
- Any discussion around weakening crypto doesn’t make sense
  - Conflation between a few things: we have systems that are built and they should provide backdoors/access to law enforcement
    - Backdoor to phones, for instance
  - Phone uses strong cryptography and backdoor there – focus on cryptography
  - Phone and put in safe – nobody talks about the steel of the safe – access
- End-to-end encryption vs getting phone stolen, for instance
  - Roger Stone investigation: WhatsApp and Signal to communicate but iCloud turned on which saved all messages anyhow unencrypted
  - Metadata and other encryption can tell you far more than even the messages themselves
- If you build devices, how much gov access do you want to provide?
  - Joel (grad student, involved in CDN – bad actors, like pedos, would use and work with Interpol to find them)
What to Know about CFIUS (a16z 12/23/19)
- Committee on Foreign Investment in US on Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018, updated in September ’19
- Katie Haun interviewing Michael Leiter (law firm Skadden Arps) about function to review any foreign investment in US business with natsec concerns
  - 13 agencies ran by Dept of Treasury split between 2 camps: want foreign investment and concerned about security (intelligence, NSA, FBI)
  - Semiconductor moving from US to Japan, for instance, that would limit Japanese investments
- CFIUS limiting in 2006 for Saudi Arabia and Emirates and now is Chinese investment in the US
  - Changes in technology, expansion of data and things that weren’t present even 10 years ago
  - Tech, data touch, real estate, work with US gov or anything else (dog food sold to SEALs)
- Everyone working in fintech, credit reports, broad financial data will have more than a 16-digit credit card number and will be subject
  - 1 million people for arbitrary amount of data
- Prior to CFIUS reform, if Alibaba acquired someone, it was up to both parties to submit to CFIUS – vast txns were never seen, no req
  - Both parties come together, transaction description, foreign acquirer, motivation, business reason
    - Good, very bad (president can veto using Article 2), can impose mitigation for sec risk (board of US citizens, data controls, etc)
  - Pieces of reform that are not voluntary – fines and compliance possible
  - Mandatory if company operates in sensitive sector listed, or produce/design export control tech
    - Includes encryption, investment over some size – mandatory filing
    - High-end types of LIDAR – controlled vs standard for automobile, not controlled
  - Could range from (ER99 not, or export-controlled) – computing power, battery storage, sensors
  - Software tends not to fall under CFIUS unless encryption
- WSJ civil military cooperation – some stuff is mandatory and more stuff will be
- US business – interstate commerce, could be French office with US office in US – CFIUS gets to look at US element of transaction if French company is picked
  - Green-field investments – foreign investments can be made and won’t be looked at, really
  - Ultimate parent and ultimate ownership of acquirer or investment (private equity, capital)
- More than 9.9% equity or some other controlling interest – board seat, for instance
Josh Sapan, CEO AMC Network (Wharton XM)
- Challenging to get through people’s gateways to get to audiences
- Base incumbent business for United States – affiliates, selling ads and that represents their financial fundamental part of company
  - Video prices coming down in different options
  - Spending less money on AMC Networks in the skinny bundles
- Toughest marketplace for Netflix to deal with – Indonesia, as CEO said
  - Vertical scaling vs horizontal
Adam D’Augelli (@adaugelli), Partner at True Ventures (20min VC 12/16/19)
- Investments in Fitbit, Peloton, Hashicorp, Splice, Ring, Automattic, Tray.io
- Instructor at Uflorida in Business Finance, founder of Perfect Wave Records (donations)
- Full-time in June 2010, 10 people total about to invest in second fund
  - Met them through vstocksolutions portfolio company (had worked there internship)
  - Reached out potentially – didn’t know where to start at intersection business/finance/tech – UF not as well-known
  - Phil had offered a role – we like you but haven’t hired someone as junior so come and we’ll see
- Joining as a young one – new firm where you have a ton to do and roles not really defined, structured
- Thinking about portfolio construction and business models (under-represented in vc discussions)
  - Fund-level returns for partners – funds at True are around $300mln with specific institutional capital at pre-seed, seed
  - Investments $500k-$3.5mln targeting 20-25% ownership, $2mln for 22.5%
  - Self-selection bias for why they have a better way for them
- They back founders early, invest $1-3mln and try to own 20-25% where the downside is 1% and it will be a maximize risk for timing
- 28 people twice, 8 people three times for the founders they’re backing now
- Amy Errett – starting Madison Reed, wanted $2mln to get off ground for equity
- In ’06, convincing founders to try not to raise as much
- Lead investment amount – meaningful bias for single lead with deep pockets
  - New group of firms that will work with emerging founders where they can bring others in, potentially
- Ring or Splice are interesting businesses now, but in earliest stages, True able to support them through risks at start
- In each fund, make 45-50 initial investments and reserve heavily
  - 1 or 2 founders, investment in company, will generate the whole fund and 6-8 will be fund-level return (25%+)
  - Inputs to each investment: founder taking tons of product, market size market-risk at their price and raising their type of money
- Culture at True: decisions done by protagonist with support of 1 or 2 others in nonconsensus way
  - Support for whole team and company – investment loss as part of process for repeatable out-performance
  - 1 of 10 says the company fits the model, bring on team and then get excited
- Investing at seed stage – 65% near or at company inception, 1 to 3 founders super early
  - Board is access to True, investment team and founder network – monthly call for an hour or so, call me when you learn
  - Board coffees – 15min conversations on this – enable for speed
  - Take board seat at series A – 90 minutes every 8 weeks, roughly, when they have multiple investors, etc…
- Select funds – pitch to founders: be here day 1, continue to invest as you go further, what’s best for company
  - He was on board at Ring during acquisition – partner John still on at Peloton
- Learned a ton from Jamie Siminoff – how fast you can grow is much faster than you think
  - Taking asymmetric risk early on within business is valuable – ex. DoorBot – Jamie rebranded
    - Ring.com domain found, was going to raise $3.5 mln – ultimate cost was $1mln ($200k on that day)
- Favorite book: Doing Capitalism in Innovation Economy by Bill Janeway and Carlota Perez Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital
- Biggest challenge in role: Doing more doesn’t correlate with improved performance – Mitchell and Hashicorp had left a portco and later invested in him
  - Steve and Splice – met in Bogota at a conference and happened to meet him in NYC for breakfast after
  - Don’t know which activities are the right ones
- Knowing more about a market – false sense of security to catch up with knowledge
  - Investing in the Unknown and Unknowable – academic paper – markets in many unknowns where knowing more leads to worse decisions
- David Scott at Matrix – software metrics and repeatable business growth
- Randy Glide at DFJ Growth – embraces risk and has a human approach
- Andy Wiseman at USV – small significant syndicate being a great co-investor
- Pat at Sequoia – depth of knowledge on being a great board member and partner to CEOs
- Recent investment: MemBio – mission-driven bio and positive impact creating red blood cells outside the body

Listening and Encouraging (Notes from December 16 to Dec 22, 2019) May 21, 2020

Posted by Anthony in Automation, Blockchain, Data Science, DFS, Digital, experience, finance, Founders, Gaming, global, Hiring, Leadership, NFL, NLP, RPA, social, sports, Strategy, Uncategorized.
Tags: #business, Amazon, college, community, content, experiences, finance, Google, humanity, ideas, investing, Jobs, life, Money, questions, reading, research, social, sports, Strategy, Time, training
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Sometimes it doesn’t work. Asking the right questions to people in conversations to get a sense of what they’re truly passionate about gives me hope for those that may eventually try something different, new. However, unless I followed up repeatedly, most people let their passion slowly pass, or just remain in thought.

This is a big part of how I learn, engage and stay passionate for the things I’m curious about. Other than being scared of stagnation, hearing people come up with ideas, test them, build and hopefully succeed repeatedly gives me an energy to try to convince others to do the same. I understand the difference between being told of something that has been mulling around in someone’s head or even light discussion among friends compared to prototyping or validating with potential customers or asking people in the field if something’s viable.

A few examples of ideas people have told me they wanted to start and hadn’t (yet some that I believe have done well, just have room in the market) include an HR in Tech stories podcast, traveling medicine / tourism aggregator, and a d2c ecommerce diamond shop (which I’ll go into more detail), more social podcast sharing among friends, and still a market-taking happy hour app (yes, I had to insert my own – I’m leaning toward Glide.app through Google Sheets).

For diamond shop – this was by someone who graduated with entrepreneurship degree, had a validation for the idea and then was told by others it wasn’t worth doing because it’d be high cost. Granted, that was a few years ago, but it would’ve been hackable then. It’s certainly easier now with ecommerce shops via Facebook/Etsy/Shopify and other support, not to mention the audience you’d be in front of. The premise is that a diamond historically took the role of what a pearl represented because of the hardness – you could pass this on as an heirloom to further generations, and you know it won’t be breaking. It’s yours. There’s a legitimate attachment there that defines a core part of the worth/value. For the idea – it’s increasingly cheaper to 3D print a model you can build/customize on CAD (or related tools). This would be printed in plastic that can be melted to be replaced by silver – these rings would be sent to customers that are ordering (possibly with a small down payment / shipping covered, ie $5-20). It’s a model of what the ring would look like, just without the diamond part – but as far as sizing/size/bulk and the other key parts of the ring, customers can try them on and feel it. There’s an emotional attachment here that should occur. If they’re loving it, or have requests for changes, they can do that. Possibly a back and forth could take place, but once it’s settled, the wax/plastic mold can be printed as they would normally do a custom ring and use the materials that have been requested. We’ve removed the in-shop aspect and made it personal, simply by removing much of the fixed costs and labor costs that would go in to this. She was an expert in jewelry and had years of experience. Someone just told her no. 3D printing is now a hobby and can be done there. Many jewelers have other shops do the molding. I’ve been thinking of helping her start by just simply creating a mockup of the site. Can certainly figure out the rest.

Anyhow, let’s see the notes.

Week of December 16, 2019

Tyler Willis (@tylerwillis), angel investor (20min VC 2/16/16)
- Raised with seed companies at Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures
- Port co’s include Lyft, Patreon, Change.org
- First co that he was on founding team on was acquired by Oracle, then had a friend raising a seed round for concept in CV
  - Preproduct, premarket where he did a small investment (decided it was bad to keep all eggs in one basket)
  - Decided to invest in Patreon, Loungebuddy (Airport lounges) and ShopApp inside of Shopify
- Rocketship – valuation doesn’t play a role but ID opps for big (10x path, seed > 10k)
- Customer acq and growth as a lightweight process to get a core part of the company
  - Optimizing for experiments – 1 week to test compared to 8 week deployment
- Founder type – uniquely insightful to the place they’re in
  - Bias for people when he can sit down and get a high-octane thinking / smarts – hard to hang out to the rocketship
  - False dichotomy of domain expertise – could have learned wrong lessons or may not know anything in enterprise, for instance
- East of Eden, Innovator’s Dilemma as great books
- Favorite investors – Naval, Sam Altman, Gus Tai at Trinity Ventures
- Favorite app – Omni (stuff storage), Delectable (learning about wine)
Ash Fontana (@ashfontana)- GP Zetta, Leo Pelovets – GP Susa Ventures (Venture Stories 12/17/19)
- Getting pricing power – need to find balance between incentivizing founders and price, but not a big deal
  - If they get 80% of company, 20% for founders – may not keep them looking ahead
- Company and VC differences – companies have different roles but VC has very similar, solitary roles
- On non-investing side, COO or Head of Ops to run operations but not particularly CEO or investing side needed
- Working with best founders, LPs aren’t as important (but they are the primary VC customers)
  - None matters unless you have results for LPs and providing value – founders need the platform or help
- If you were an LP, what would you want to be in: YC, First Round or Benchmark?
  - YC for Ash – lots of opportunity for capital deployment at many different levels
  - Benchmark for Leo – very large differentiated returns, ~30x according to Leo (YC may be 5x-7x possibly)
    - More variance because of smaller portfolios in Benchmark
  - YC may be beatable but it would be in losing their way as a general accelerator
    - Ash brought up operational risk for LPs – more points of failure because of all the touchpoints
- AngelList as trading to be profitable and dynamic system for new things
- LinkedIn as insurmountable lead in enterprise/business space of social network (as opposed to consumers)
  - Hard to disrupt with multiple verticals
- Requests for startups: data generation/building data (synthetically) – ex w/ params
  - 10k examples of chairs that are brown that have 4 legs, in low light, at this angle
  - Weather climate, also
  - AutoML – making it easy for non-specialist engineers to experiment with ML
- Leo Requests: ISA with bundling with coaching, training, VISAs – realigning incentives
Ben Tossell, founder Makerpad, Sahil Lavingia (@shl), founder GumRoad (Indie Hackers 11/11/19)
- No-code vs code – building a solution to a problem without being technical
- First web-sites like Dreamweaver and tables for no-code – like WYSIWYG
  - Halfway things like WordPress where you can customize or use framework
  - Building a newsletter, can use Substack, for instance – Marc Andreesen
- Sahil’s opinion that we’re unlikely to see a billion dollar start-up without a code base
  - But likely to see many creatives build on their own, have the options
- Choice of no-code compared to code – using Circle as their integration testing methods
- Nontechnical founders that had cofounders for developers or finding for cheap
- Ben as bringing up Lambda School (Airtable, Slack, Zoom, Notion) and Makerpad member who was just starting to say it’s breaking
  - $150mn in Series A to get to worry about things breaking first
  - “What’s my Airbnb version look like?” but should focus on the first $10, 100 before there
- GumRoad as being built in a weekend – not competent enough for him to do no-code
  - Ben argued it was easy to do in no-code but they’re each discussing the same thing from different experiences
- Queries on data for code – tools like Clay/Retool where you can work together – can run queries easily
  - No-coder does query and can recognize it to manipulate
- Powerful for on-code is git and version controls – clear log of security, feedback, quality of code
  - Apply it to other things – pull requests/merge (conflicts)/conflicts in document setting on Notion, for instance
  - 100+ tutorials in MakerPad now – what’s interesting or grab attention
- No-code as Patreon/Cameo/Airbnb/Uber where the overhead for coding sucks so much value from (Patreon at $30-40mln burn)
  - Creator would be interesting with price-motivating factors because you could have a more affordable option
  - “What’s the point of trying if I can’t even get to the ceiling?”
  - Meetup clone – need the “this is how you build it” – go look at the tutorials
- Not enough answers for “Where can it go?” because they haven’t seen enough
Niccolo De Masi (@niccolodemasi), CEO and Chairman at Glu Mobile (20min VC 2/18/16)
- Kendall and Kylie game (#1 at app store at time), Kim K game, Deer Hunter and others
- Was CEO at Hands on Mobile as well as CEO at Monstermob Group Plc
- No money to be made in games in 2003 because they were for feature films, polyphonic, true tracks and he ran a public co before selling in 2007
  - Raised money to get bid for Glu from Hands on Mobile but got a call from Egahn Zander to transition to paid from f2p as CEO
  - Original IP value with games specifically for mobile on hardware
- How will you make money in late-stage startup for future? Next year or two vs past.
  - Forward looking and professional managers – no founders anymore. Built from 350-850 people.
- Moore’s Law as quite predictable but believes there are different models, utilities, and price models
  - Last gen console power in pockets now
- Barometer of quarterly calls driving placements and interim 6 week calls for how they’re doing
  - If transparent in bad times, you may have quick punishment vs window-dressing
  - Rewarded more quickly in the upside, as well – private markets vs public markets
- New startups as worth more than incumbents – bay as more regular here
  - Well ahead in private markets compared to public markets (his counter – at least they have earnings)
- No BD or CorpDev – scour market and wait for inbounds of compellingly priced assets (often distressed), significant private markets
  - When Glu is $6-7, they can pick up companies easily but not so much at $2-4
  - Savings to be had for core customers when they have scale within Glu (mentioned PlayFirst)
  - “retirement community for young people” – startups subsidized, food, clothing and sharing app
- By 2020 – more discipline in different sectors potentially – overvalued will have to come in line
  - King that was acquired by Activision Blizzard – consolidation forced by VC funding and people flow
- Better to be #1 in smaller market than #10 in a larger one – be great w/ you’re good at
Tim Draper (@timdraper), founding partner at Draper Associates and DFJ (20min VC 2/22/16)
- Original suggestion for viral marketing in web-based email to geometrically spread an Internet product to its market
  - Standard marketing technique now
- EE at Stanford before going to Apollo Computer as assistant to President before HBS
  - Came out and wanted to be a VC (grandpa/father both were VCs and didn’t want to do it) – wanted to be a consultant / cheerleader
  - Helped him having an entrepreneurial base but some can certainly do it if it’s your goal
- Borrowed money from gov to get started – knocked on doors with software on them
  - Most VCs needed others to help fund a company so they worked together – moreso now for angels, but not necessarily VC because of money
  - VC has gone global and has enjoyed that expansion – affecting the whole industry
- His son’s accelerator, Boost, focusing so they can accelerate any business – he enjoys investing in 2-3 people with a good mission
  - Get people set up in the right way – medical, eshares, network accounting, and other operational methods
- Favorite pitch – Nicholas Zenstrom at Skyper – most smooth, effective way and he’d agreed before calling and changing business model
  - Enthusiastic, quiet confidence for the enormous successes – Robin Lee (Baidu), Hotmail’s founder, Martin Everhart (Tesla)
- Draper Uni of Heroes (entrepreneurs/founders) creating school during crash for better people
  - Give these people the confidence + tools while ridding them of shielding
  - DraperUniversity and StartupU – great marketing for school
- Bitcoin interesting for a year ahead of the time, and then post-Mt Gox hack it went down only 20% so he jumped in
  - Micropayments, fees in journalism and podcasting as well as ending credits and cross-country
- Enjoys hearing Andreesen, Moritz, McClure at 500 Startups, Plug-n-Play as first incubator, Ron Conway
- Reflects on The Startup Game (his father’s) and Rothschild’s Bionomics and concept of evolution of econ and bio
- Recent investment Laurel & Wolfe (interior decorating as best furniture for crowdsourcing) – closed update Dec ’19
- Also invested in Favor, marketplace food delivery – acquired by HE Butt Grocery
Brandon Deer (@bdeer26), VP of Ops & Strategy at UIPath (20min VC 12/20/19)
- Using RPA combined with business processes for automation
- Using Gary Kasparov’s loss to IBM in chess before saying it’s no longer a chess or human – combination where average + average is optimum
- Having growth and breaking things
Wharton Moneyball, Ken Pomeroy and Brian Burke (@bburkeespn) (Wharton XM)
- Discussing the biggest predictors, NCAA basketball or in football
- Pomeroy and how he’s adjusted his football predictions

Organizing the Mind, Studying (Notes from Dec 9 to Dec 15, 2019) May 6, 2020

Posted by Anthony in Automation, Data Science, Digital, education, experience, finance, Founders, global, Hiring, Leadership, medicine, questions, social, Strategy, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
Tags: #business, books, content, directlistings, experiences, finance, humanity, ideas, IPO, life, marketing, medicine, Money, Netflix, questions, reading, research, sports, Time
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As I try to stay organized overall, and especially in our current environment, it does seem that I have hit a snag in where/how to curate all information. I’ve attempted to settle on Roam to do notes since it keeps bi-directional links and essentially enables a personal wiki. However, this is awesome once we get to enough notes/details/lists. It’s a pain in the ass until then because it’s just not set up.

Until I get to the point where I can export all of what I want and stylistically group it, it will be a very large work-in-progress. Why? Well, I started to list a few things of what I like to keep track of. Here’s a few off the top of my head:

Notes from Podcasts/Webinars that I usually keep in OneNote (top include 20min VC, FinTech Insider, a16z, Wharton Moneyball, The Indie Hackers podcast, among others)
Book notes that are either in OneNote if they’re older or, if in my Kindle, potentially on Readwise/Overdrive
Daily/weekly updates including investment research via Crunchbase, lay of the land from a16z, Futurism interesting stories, StockTwits Daily Rip, Makerpad/Product Hunt updates, as well as Beta List products
Newsletters and Trends – Morgan’s Blogging, Nat Eliason’s Medley and other notes, Justin Gage’s Technicality, Trends report from The Hustle, Polina Marinova’s The Profile
Then there are the finance and investment articles that go to my RSS feed (OfDollarsandData, Ritholz, Datanami, Tomas Tungaz updates, plenty of others
Last but not least – bookmarked websites, Twitter likes/bookmarks that I just don’t get a chance to go back to, GitHub starred pages, anything shared in Slack or LinkedIn groups

How the hell do I organize all of that? Well, we’re trying and I’ll update you on where we land. All I know is that I should curate it down to my favorites or just try to learn less. Who wants to do that, though?

Week of December 9, 2019

Yaron Kniajer, Jared Kash, Cofounders of Sababa Ventures (Wharton XM)
- Discussing how safe and nice Tel-Aviv is
  - Rising of AI and tech in Israel ecosystem
- Bridging the gap between entrepreneurs and investors
- Talkspace – mental health app from Israeli creator
- 18 million in revenue to New York, knowing the market and opening doors
- Host, Randi, is a GP
David Sinclair (@davidasinclair), Prof in Genetics and Aging at HMS (Kevin Rose Show, 10/30/19)
- Cofounder of 7 biotech co’s, co-editor of Aging journal, boardmember and 25+ patents
- Book – Lifespan most recently Book link
- Genes in yeast cells for aging while 29 entering Harvard finding red wine part
  - Media swinging from “wow we’ll live forever” to the opposite
  - Mice had a healthy longevity even if obese on wine part (caloric restriction without)
- Sirtris Pharma – 2004 started and focusing on activators of Sirtuins – GSK purchased in 2008 for $720mln
  - 2010 people at Pfizer and Amgen published saying their research was wrong
  - 1 amino acid and 1 protein in living mouse as not living longer for resveratrol
  - Scientific debate limiting patients, potentially (needs to be taken with fat / drug-like molecules at GSK)
    - Patent life is 20 years and he doesn’t have the extra $20mln to get the clinical trials going again
- For his book, we age similarly to yeast cells aging – loss of information (1 is genetic and other is, fragile, analog)
  - Backup copy of information for aging / cells came in 2018
- Claude Shannon as one of his heroes – backup copy, need an observer and the rest of backup (when he did computer science/internet)
  - Remembering in 1999 that he woke up in middle of night to write out the theory of aging
  - Gene therapy doesn’t work in the eye – compared to a clock for memory of time, cog, removing hands or resetting
- Nanoworld and subatomic in DNA – if secret is there, Methane compared to subatomic
- Going as fast and safely to get it to humans – eye regeneration for a few cases
  - Nerve crush (spinal damage), glycoma in mice and restore vision, 1 year old blind mice with gene therapy can see
- NAD and InsideTracker for genetic results and following the mixture / output
- Nuances to how CGM and monitors react to individual foods (brown rice vs others, for instance)
- NR, NMN and NAD checking for longevity and how to raise NAD
  - All cells need NAD to grow – if you put them up to levels of younger, you likely won’t cause cancer
  - Guesses for couple hundred thousand people on NMN supplements and nobody has died, to date
- Pulsing and hormesis – what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger
  - Information on trees where older ones will send a notice to younger ones that a danger is coming
- His father as 80 and healthiest in a while – post-stroke, heart attack and had heart disease
  - Taking metformin, NMN, resveratrol for a bit now
  - 500mg metformin with resveratrol and yogurt (stomach gets upset a bit) in morning – may have some in evening
  - 1g a day of resveratrol – 150mg typical (he mentioned knowing 14 years of research on animals, toxicity and human trials)
    - Min dose from animals at 250mg typically – liver enzymes are fine
Ryan Caldbeck (@ryan_caldbeck), founder & CEO of CircleUp (20min VC 2/11/16)
- Online investing platform that allows to invest in consumer companies
- Previously, worked in consumer product and retail-focused p/e at TSG Consumer Partners and Encore Consumer Capital
  - Hundreds of investment firms that love consumer retail and its returns, love cash-flow characteristics, only after $10-15mln revenue
  - 3.5x average in ~4 years for younger companies – not enough money in that space
- Crowdfunding as group of people coming together to fund something (debt, equity, product, donations)
  - Separate as an investing platform so the investors should thrive
- Title 3 of JOBS Act – if company raises capital there from non-accredited investors, the hoops you have to go through aren’t worth it
  - Less cost to going with accredited investors without benefit – Title 3 will require the yearly book opening
    - Majority of companies don’t need the significant amount of users 100-200 to make a dent in what they’re looking for
  - Would have to prove to a company before taking on the cost – more likely that companies will fail at accredited investors and go to unaccredited
    - Maybe a tech raises up for the inefficiencies to solve this, but not so far
- Lack of institutional capital in the sector of crowdfunding – for Ryan, explosion of institutional on the platform
  - Average in 2012 was $12k individual accredited to 2015 where the check was $100k into one deal and half is institutional
    - Similar to LendingClub growth as individuals to ind, then family offices, small funds and larger funds
- Seed round was with Maveron and Clayton Christenson after ~60 some investors that passed (hard to get them excited)
  - Union Square had said they would never invest in online equity investing platform and changed view for Series A – marketplaces solve need
  - Series B was 30 days from start to invest and series C was easier
- When someone else doesn’t believe in him, he further believes in himself – energizes him (when teammates believe in him and opponents don’t – at his best)
  - Very small details for most meetings that are still vivid for him – uses as fuel
Arielle Zuckerberg (@ariellezuck), Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers (20min VC 2/14/16)
- Joined in 2015 and focuses on early stage investment in digital practice
- Started as PM after CS and Philosophy at Claremont McKenna
  - Wildfire Interactive acquired by Google in 2012 where she then worked on social ads
  - then went to small startup called Humin for 2 years and started angel investing
- A lot of investments since you chase after 1 company that likely returns the portfolio
  - How to evaluate the team, market, differentiated product, terms of valuation
- Being a great listener – give them feedback and they would come back every time with a better pitch
  - First few months of venture – personal challenge for thinking of people based on their intellectual capital
    - How can they be helpful? Will this person be helpful toward portfolio? Will this person be a potential founder?
    - Struggles with this as she’s becoming more transactional. Didn’t experience it as an angel investor.
- While interviewing for firms, many people offered to give her introductions (warm, mostly)
  - Small handful of interviews – conversational in nature, questions on background – what motivates her and how she’d fit
  - Taking Tyler’s class gave her energy for VC
- Google, AI and CV – AI as a service – ubiquitous as in the cloud
  - Many industries being productized for first time – likes blockchain and smart contracts
- Goals: Source a deal for Kleiner within a year that will have invested where world is better place/impactful
  - Inspire more women to be in VC and female founders – although talked about finding and talking with many women in VC
- NYE: blog more for 2016, had concrete resolutions for doing a pull-up and moonwalk – did at firm holiday event
- Favorite book: The Symposium by Plato
- Respecting founders who have a belief that others don’t really have – ex: Evan Spiegel as phones being more a camera than anything else
  - John Doerr and Mary Meeker
- Best part of VC – talking to amazing people and hearing other opinions (as youngest of 4 siblings)
  - Introduction of creative conflict, vision for where future is going
- Firm’s recent investment – team execution is crazy, tons of time with customers, great listeners, improved deck 20% each time
Barry McCarthy, CFO of Spotify (former CFO of Netflix), Stacey Cunningham, Pres of NYSE (a16z 12/10/19)
- Direct Listings, Myths and Facts – architecting the direct listing as it currently stands and how they talked to the SEC
- The Street interpreting compared to guidance and what to expect – analysts wanted to BEAT guidance instead of get something close
- Pricing inequities – price discovery in direct listings compared to offerings
  - Large portfolio (AUM) has IPO immaterial – first day pop is meaningless and they have limited ownership in IPO but not direct listing
  - Institutional investors can dump the truck for direct listings for how they want
- Lock-ups are artificial constraints
- DMMs and financial advisors exist anyhow – still need s1 and filing/investor days involve same people
Michael Salfino, Ben Baldwin (Wharton Moneyball 12/11/19)

The Parallel for Company Building (Notes from Dec. 2 – Dec 8, 2019) April 13, 2020

Posted by Anthony in Automation, Data Science, Digital, experience, finance, Founders, global, medicine, NLP, questions, social, Uncategorized.
Tags: #business, content, datascience, ideas, Money, questions, research
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Keeping this short because I’m working at putting the idea together. Love the parallel for a gym atmosphere and company building.

I bet it’s already forming in your head. Imagine the big class at a big box gym, the personal ones, classes, aggressive combat, cycling, different personalities in weight lifting, cardio spending and all the pairs of trainer + clients you can imagine. It’s in the works!

I do hope you enjoy the deep dive and notes I took in hearing Buck Woody’s AI podcast. You should also review Louis’s app for Total Brain. Wrap that up with Dustin Dolginow’s review on how to utilize the power of the internet to own the VC and investing interest.

Week of December 2, 2019

Louis Gagnon, CEO, Cofounder of TotalBrain (Work and Life, WhartonXM)
- Talking about each person having different brains, therefore different treatments
- Making sure that the brain is merely a part of you, not all of you – racing
  - In these years, it’s a large amount of stress – good or bad
Buck Woody (@buckwoodymsft), Applied D/S at Microsoft (Data Skeptic 12/3/19)
- Lots of intricacies in bonsai trees
  - Last thing you get to learn is the watering can – easily under/over-water trees
  - Scissors as the primary tool
- ML/AI/BI and advanced data analysis – rigor of right spread, amount, representation, statistics things are the watering can
  - If base data is wrong, the model is pointless
- He works in the industries teaching classes on MS platform for SQL Server (which contains Spark and many other things), data science
  - Simply looking at the data – where did I get this? Say, financial projections: financial data (how do you know it’s here)
  - Predictions as pedantic/boring: preventative/maintenance predictions – wanted to ensure units wouldn’t fail
    - Half the time, predictions worked well, half the time, worked awful
      - How did the data report from the machines? Had to go to manual of machine (there was older, newer) to see data
      - Anomaly was that the older machine was reporting every 60 minutes, not minutes (which the newer was doing)
- Works with many users – fraud and anomaly detection
  - Use case example of gaming company with cheating and making sure the data was good
- Regionalized languages – programming as how you think of your solutions
  - Big things to do: Kubernetes and Containers – be very familiar with environments to make sure infrastructure is done well
- Looking through data science process – who wears what hats, data engineers and DBA having overlapping roles
  - Many he comes across that don’t know that database guys can do much of what they’re looking for
  - Often the requirement, if given to data scientists late, will be multiple projects
- Containers run-time – (docker) vs Docker
  - Text file (yaml) with Python 3.5, MySQL and code as file – compose into an image (gathered up version of those runtimes)
    - Tell Docker to run it – container – description to image to container – not representing memory and disc, just using that on station
    - Docker smart enough to recognize that it will run similar versions
- Kubernetes – KAS
  - Another yaml file and engine, on a node (physical or virtual) with docker runtime, couple of services (networking, part of cluster) with

Master node that makes sure everything is happening – wrangles everything for you in a persistent volume for the pod since storage was an issue

Thinking of SQL as declarative language – select * from mytable isn’t what we do
- Containers are declarative language for computers, essentially
- Kubernetes is the platform or network for a full declarative network
Business intelligence in 90s – specialized people as parts of it with only some people knowing how to use, prechew for users and it took months
- 5-6 years ago, this still remained – data scientist would spend 99% of time in economic data or weather data or whatever model, version or experiment
  - Walk out with tablets, thus save the data – maybe another she was working with, maybe not
- Data engineer is most sought after job title – “everything but the algorithm” at Microsoft (LinkedIn)
  - Link – aka.ms\tdsp, defines out team structure for data science team with guides – devops, mlops, aiops, mlops
  - People are used to BI projects – one cube, answer lots of questions but with a data scientist, if you question “this and this and this..” – separate
    - 2 or 3 different data sets, can’t answer clustering question with regression algo, how many of these vs which things do they belong to
For large orgs: Do you know if you have a DB team? All data in its forms.
- Showed someone SSIS done after a minute after they started pulling up R and his algorithms – “wizardry”
  - Used to work at NASA, talked of a friend scientist who landed a round camera on the moon ahead – had to turn it away from sun because it’d melt film
  - Some of cast of Star Trek would show up all the time at NASA, large glass rooms (lab coat, tie, white shirt)
    - James Doohan, Scotty was gonna show up. Scientists would go to break room and watch Star Trek in 60s (debate whether or not stuff was possible)
      - Mentions automatic door as someone being off camera in the 60s, possible or not on physics
    - Taking notes and turns camera back on – “Fascinating” from Leonard Nimoy on the outside of glass
- He wants to make people know that they have people that can fold into data science team
  - Cultural that DBAs think they’ll need to be data scientists and data scientists that are territorial (don’t want people messing around)
Young: computational basics, logics, data processing
- High level math – stats/linear algebra
- Domain expert: particular vertical like healthcare, finance or patterns available for a width of an application of a tech
- Learning to learn: how to pick up and put down knowledge – pace of learning something (can’t be an expert in the timeframe)
  - Pick language you like and then figure out how you’re learning it – then, do it again for others
- Hours of studying that can be pre-chewed – lack of focused time, spend too much time on all of it
  - Confs where people get away to focus on a topic (until they get on their phone and blow it)
Where’s AI going? He says – going away. “Nobody says they have computers at the company anymore”
- “I” or “e” in front of company and get funding anymore, same with cloud – just ubiquitous, computing/drive
- Predictive/prebuilt AI now – text analysis, image processing, predictions
- Need to know how to trust it or trusting it too much – aka.ms\ai-ethics
- Flash fill, for instance, in Excel – Microsoft Research done in PROSE AI in the cell, disappears into product
Ex: PowerPoint presentation coach with mic on and it will critique you

Dustin Dolginow (@dolginow), GP at Maiden Lane (20min VC 2/10/16)
- Online venture fund using AngelList as its o/s, capital partner to best angels in the world, investments in Getable, PipeDrive, Beepi
  - Also venture partner with Accomplice, was previous operator at Social Swipe allowing merchants to gain value from txn data
- Went to college in East Coast, Wall Street at Lehman Brothers during crash and decided to do a product idea in payments for 1.5 years
  - Product dev, front-end and shifting from finance world – introduced to partner Jeff (running Atlas Ventures, renamed to Accomplice)
- Started taking introductions to companies as Nidhi, Naval and AngelList would be giving them – since 2010 and normal user
  - Atlas lead the AngelList series A and every round since – 2012 moved to SF and make VC legal – 2013 for syndicates start
    - Lead a syndicates fund only in 2013 with Jeff – learn by doing and figure out what it meant – $25mln named for Maiden Lane in SF
      - Irony was AngelList HQ was on it, one of bailout funds for Goldman Sachs real estate was Maiden Lane
  - Figured Syndicates could be impactful for institutional investors, also
- Moved to SF in 2014 to close the fund, April started investing in the fund
  - Native app on AngelList – (like saying Uber is Apple because on Apple) – put in their docs 50% off-A/L, 50% on but realized it was moving quickly
  - AngelList as unbundling the activities of VC – funds are containers for capital / infrastructure
    - AngelList has more flexibility but it’s a small container – box – they’re doing product first with data that it creates
- Working with set of angel investors that take their money and invest on their behalf – share carried interest within GP’s (30% carry, no mgmt fee)
  - 15-20% of carried interest goes to syndicate leads – driving brand, operating within company, adding value, interacting
  - His goal is to shepherd to create resources for community (most syndicate leads have other jobs) – live work loft, for instance
- Community and flexibility is a big part of it – consensus-based decisions, non-consensus (conviction for solo), LPs as direct investments for bigger broader
- Entrepreneurs as understanding users’ needs – great community done by Ryan Hoover at Product Hunt
- Most overhyped – prescription delivery, underhyped – Canada as country, developer tax credits
- Goal for Maiden Lane – kickass set of syndicate leads that get called upon by lane
- Last impression from a book: Development is Freedom by Amartya Sen
- AtVenu – as most recent investment

If You’re Not Sure, Ask (Notes from Nov 25 – Dec 1, 2019) March 26, 2020

Posted by Anthony in Automation, Digital, education, experience, finance, Founders, global, Hiring, Leadership, marketing, medicine, social, sports, Strategy, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
Tags: #business, books, content, education, experiences, finance, humanity, ideas, Jobs, life, medicine, questions, research, social, sports, training, video
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Hopefully everyone is staying safe in this current environment of CoVid19. A wild start to the year and March, especially. Seems prescient to identify those of this week of notes, especially with Domm at Fast trying to make things easier/painless in checkouts for ecommerce, Iman at Incredible Health trying to gain power for nurses and the healthcare workers on the front lines, as well as the investment questions we should be asking with Rob Carver and Meb Faber.

Before jumping in, though, I just wanted to reiterate something I’d heard in a few times across forums/channels and communities I participate in – just ask if you have a question or hesitating! It’ll be worth it – or you’ll be in the same position you’re in now. Social interaction and discussion will be key in how we come out better than where we started. I implore you – ASK. Anyone. Hope you enjoy!

Domm (@domm) Holland, founder and CEO of Fast (20min VC 11/15/19)
- Raised seed round from Jan Hammer at Index, Susa, Kleiner Perkins, Global Founders and angels (Inc Harry)
- Director at Tap Tins and CEO/Founder at Tows
- Introduced at 15, started programming and in Australia when it wasn’t cool, building was what he enjoyed
  - Had a large startup in Australia for a bit
  - Wife/him were in the hospital looking after son/daughter and he was home with the wife’s grandmother when she couldn’t order
    - Forgot her password and wouldn’t take credit card because of arbitrary string – pw-less solution, auth as simple solution
    - Put it on ProductHunt and it was #2 for the day
  - Doesn’t make sense that customers can’t move between businesses with their authentication
- Ran out of money in a legal battle with Tows – $17mln that government decided to not pay
- Many people don’t want to solve the problem – they do band-aid fixes, complex solutions
  - Build network of independent contractors of tow trucks
- He just looks at what he’s doing as solving problems, solutions – Stripe gave businesses the infrastructure to process credit card payments
  - Built critical infrastructure that others didn’t have – similar to authentication, Shopify, etc
- Everyone has been building payment, authentication, registration forms all first-party and customer tokens
  - Alternative business models and sharing data conflicts with their independence
- Deciding to be SF-based – he only has certain hours in a day, but limited output and larger market and tech companies
  - People in SF value equity far more since Australia has issues with company stock and issuing options
  - 50, 100, 150 bp in SF to make it worthwhile
- Had done an angel round of $600k Australian, ~$400k to continue product development and areas he didn’t have expertise in
  - Put out job ad for remote role thinking they’d get 1 or 2, had a fantastic applicant from Nigeria for talent
  - Money was so much less than what was budgeted – average earnings, paying 50% above market and fantastic employee
    - So much so, they have 10 employees there – Nigeria with 190 million people, remote and solid advocates
  - Managing engineers in person/remote are similar anyhow – adjusts his time zone to them, checks in to each daily
  - Structured time for functional areas and 15min calls to go over work regularly
- His differentiator is speed, time – act promptly, efficiently and doing things early by operating in that manner
  - Walks 3-4 miles through Tenderloin in SF to make sure he sees inaction as a reminder
- Thirst for knowledge – difficult to not come across new things (Twitter as a tool for exposure to people, tools)
Frank Fiume (@frankfiume), Founder and CEO of i9 Sports (Wharton XM)
- Talking about burnout – body’s anticipation of requiring a form of change
  - Entrepreneur burnout – results not meeting expectations for an extended period of time
- Using behavior tests to filter out the people who may be too similar once you’re looking to hire for expansion
  - He made mistake of hiring people he liked and matched with, as opposed to those that he needed
Meb Faber (@mebfaber), founder of Cambria Investments on The Road Less Traveled (Resolve’s Gestalt University, ep.05 6/27/19)
- Discussing with Adam about his bs meter – how crazy it is to be overweight US equities
- Canada is worse – 86% of advisors
- Global allocation and strategy – always keeping files on board for ETF, not sure when they are needed or will be used
- Launching 2006 with trend following paper and opening ETFs as broadly better managed strategy/fee structure
  - Agnostic – just wants to offer best client experience, strategy
  - Holding for long periods as how the strategy should be assessed, not weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly
    - Managers tough to judge on this long time frame
- Being on call with asset managers where they ask what the best funds are – why? So to avoid them?
- Currently, tax efficient in emerging small/medium cap for long-term 15+ years
- Market cap as terrible way to weight portfolio – as you select highest cap-weighted company, they don’t often stay there
Jon & Justin, cofounders of Transistor.fm (Build Your SaaS – bootstrapping in 2019, 11/26/19)
- Building and looking at Transistor.fm and other podcasts
- Dropping the revenue numbers on Baremetrics – not just competitors, but eventually there won’t be 50% mom growth
Mythology Manager (Marketing Matters)
- Marvel and having a different marketing aspect for big films and otherwise
- Different projects and input for actors/characters
Rob Carver (@investingidiocy), Systematic Money, author (ReSolve’s Gestalt U ep. 03, 5/9/19)
- Discussing different risk metrics – hard to predict or calculate Sharpe ratios so he assumes they’re the same, often
  - Sharpe as primary vs secondary metric – meta-factor
- Construction of portfolio as time frame and strategy – used to start with $100k (first book), most recent book with $500 capital
- Performing out of sample vs in sample – binary strategy vs weighting
- If you don’t select a strategy, you’re biased against it – “Three Judases”
  - Properly keeping strategies in the files/repo to backcheck (if you get rid of some that you’ve used and got out of, others can’t replicate)
  - Proper weighting would be signals that activate / de-activate strategies, maybe keeping the ones above a threshold
- Private equity and private assets discussions – what’s optimum? 1, 2, 10, 50, 100? Take on risks for this, should be rewarded appropriately.
  - Is it 5, 10% of portfolio? Size matters and type of assets. Mentions GE as having a bunch of minor bets on the private side with more liquidity.’
Beth Hendler-Grunt, President and Founder at Next Great Step (Career Change, Wharton XM)
- College attendees going after internships early – not just through career fairs
  - Not everything career-wise is linear, can be creative
- Portfolio & value add – “What happens if you didn’t return tomorrow, next week, etc…?”
Iman Abuzeid (@imanabuzeid), CEO and founder Incredible Health (a16z 11/28/19)
- Nursing Today, From the Bedside and Beyond
- 2018 Biggest industry in terms of number of workers – clinical workers are 60% nurses – 3million of them
  - Regulated in California where the ratio is 5 patients to 1 nurse
  - Beyond 12 hour shift, 2.5x more likely to make medication errors – documentation as well
- Shortage of faculty, nurses and all cities – also pays well, compensation-wise (California $100k, SF $140k, LA $120k)
  - Magnate certified is hospitals with majority of nurses bachelors recipients
  - When overstaffed, higher cost of overtime to contractors and less patients (in a thin margin business of hospitals, ~3%)
- Talent / HR teams as inefficiency across the board – haven’t changed since ’90s
  - Tech tools don’t work for specialization/unique cases – job platforms are just ziprecruiter, indeed, LinkedIn but not matching certs/degrees
  - If you’re trying to fill oncology nurse, CEO and sales – one horizontal platform vs vertical platform
- Most healthcare workers aren’t on LI, search and discovery is hard and fields aren’t specific enough, InMail response is < 10%
  - Narrow vertical, one job description and complexity is enormous – takes level of focus and optimization to add value to healthcare system/nurses
  - Incredible Health: Employers apply to talent, automated screening of certs/licenses/experience/skills with tech, custom matching
- Hospital/health systems are able to fill positions in < 30 days when average is 90+ days – topline benefit
  - Churning nurses costs more on patients, complex environments for matching, high-stakes in retention (moreso than others)
  - 20% turnover with tight labor market – overworked, burnt out, better staffed, commute times, 90% women, higher pay
  - Hired in 11 days – have their act together and higher employee engagement
- Hospital recruiters have a 7 day countdown for interview requests, scarcity for competitive nurses
  - Only platform that nurses get to make their profile and sit back after for interviews

When Innovating Away Staleness (Notes from Nov 18 – Nov 24, 2019) February 25, 2020

Posted by Anthony in Blockchain, Digital, finance, Founders, global, medicine, Politics, Strategy, training, Uncategorized.
Tags: #business, content, experiences, finance, Google, humanity, ideas, life, medicine, Politics, research, social, TV
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Entrenched. The longtime incumbents. When industry becomes too single-minded, others may start to notice. Each of these individuals from the podcast episodes are in very different industries – media/news, investing/venture, monetary policy system, and regulatory updating of provider-side healthcare. All very large, important systems that beget those that have lived the longest.

Each of the guests, however, saw opportunities in how stale an industry had/has become and attempted to take advantage. Whether that’s building something on their own directly (Jon Steinberg with Cheddar News Network) or indirectly (Gil Penchina with Flights.vc), they have a penchant for seeing innovation through. I loved hearing a few of them mention that it’s nuts to have the incumbents stagnate over some of the most advanced couple of decades we’ve ever seen.

I hope you enjoy the notes for how they structured the framework for the innovation, what opportunities they tried or came to realize, and which crazy people do you back.

Jon Steinberg (@jonsteinberg), COO of Cheddar News Network (Launch Pad, Wharton XM)
- Large appetite for live news and sports, very few people had done any in 20-30 years
- Younger, faster, better as a business network
  - Younger, diverse anchors & audience in their 20s, 30s, 40s vs 60s and older
- First round raised was $3mln, no big iron of typical broadcaster – different look and feel, same structural format for guest formats
- Former president of Buzzfeed (2010-2014), DailyMail after – CNBC and live production as the best production
- Lightspeed Capital friend who wanted to give him a first check – being part of a startup management team that’s successful to go from there
  - His first success was with Buzzfeed – played a role with many others, but combined his luck and effort to get the check
  - Gave up 20% for the $3mil
- Showed up at the WeWork with Peter Gornstein, first partner and Chief Content Officer – looked at each other and “What now?”
  - Bought computers, then what now? Looked for vendors for equipment and build set.
  - Shot a 3min sizzle reel – shot sample video packages.
  - Next, go live from 9-10am one hour a day, basically – then how to ramp it up to 3 hours and more
- Facebook Live launched, then they enabled the API so they could connect professional network equipment to it
- Carriage fees – ESPN gets several dollars for every cable subscriber
  - Cheddar does advertisers and partnerships for their money and business
- Purchasing Ratemyprofessor, MTVU – college market and network
- Competitors are part of the network and counterparties still
- Runs all news and advertising for Altice (after being bought by Viacom)
Gil Penchina (@gilpenchina), Founder at Flight.vc (20min VC 2/7/16)
- Note that this was the first day Harry had been to SF (meeting Jason Lemkin)
- Network of AngelList syndicates that covers a wide range of sectors, SaaS, security, geographies
  - Biggest raise for syndicates to date – PayPal, LinkedIn, AngelList, Indiegogo – nominated for Angel of Year at Crunchys
- One of early engineers at eBay (100 employees to 15000, 8 years)
  - Ran a spin-off of Wikipedia called Wikia – consumer content site, went to Fastly and angel investing
  - Wanted to work with entrepreneurs to fund small checks to other entrepreneurs as a community of helping
    - Didn’t want to do the full-time thing and thought he didn’t want to focus on terms all the time
- At Flight, at time, they have 25 syndicate managers, 100+ volunteers to join the list – 2 groups – 1 analysis/learning companies, other sales/scouts
  - 3000 backers and they ask them to help their companies, small tasks (AngelMob) to improve or give introductions and recruiting
- 5 years time – become a place for consumers to invest and save
  - Expansion fund and new projects – Eric working on traditional venture fund for follow-on in angel investments
- 15 years ago, cost $10-15mln to get a website now and now it’s $10 or free for URLs (Reed’s blitz-scaling)
- Next sector to be disrupted – education (investment seed and B into Allschool)
- Start a syndicate – come up with thesis, going out and finding the deals (1 click to start), getting traction is hard
- Investment ethos – people that are actually crazy
- User of Nuzzel – best content for all of his friends
- Similarity of Happn to “Chance Encounters” from newspaper – hoping someone sees it and reacts
Patrick Harker, President of Philadelphia Fed (Behind the Markets, Wharton XM)
- About 1/5 of jobs are at risk of being automated out – minorities and women in his district
  - Creating and destroying jobs with automation – not necessarily ridding them, but training will be important
  - Philadelphia Works – job training model for America, partnering with Comcast
    - Typically, it’s been “train and pray” – training and upskill, Comcast will reimburse out of the HR budget if successful
- Biggest surprise – outside the lens of monetary policy – breadth of what they do is stunning
  - Largest collection of economic talent for all sorts of issues that aren’t celebrated
Pharma Drones, Veteran Health (16min on the News #14, 11/15/19)
- Venkat Mocherla – market dev on bio team, GP Julie Yoo, Joel de la Garza security operating partner a16z
- Pharmacy-patient relationship is highest volume/frequency interactions with healthcare system, owning node is good
  - Lots of startups on logistics on pharm, last mile and full-stack delivery/pharm, nontraditional care centers
  - Medicines/therapeutics work for patients, compliance is one of the biggest pains
- MediPlus, Whatsapp your prescription and you can get delivery within 24 hours
  - Fastest regulatory arbitrage – where are opportunities – Zipline in Rwanda, for instance
  - Antiquated for brick-and-mortar to innovate, but instead mobile-first and digital distribution
  - Pills, small molecule drugs that are cheaper, chronic that can be easier
- Last mile delivery solution is cost – one-off deliveries to patients to homes has cost issues – more expensive
  - All come to hub because of delivery efficiency
- Apple opened up health records service to vets with iPhones – give them access to their medical information regardless of provider
  - VA is mired in healthcare challenges (came up with EHR)
  - Knock on digital health industry – great for pilots but unable to scale so far, VA and NHS populations are one-go scale
    - Not bastions of innovation but more captive population (1mil to 10-20mil)
  - Last decade, provider-side heads down for data that’s digitized but not interoperability
    - Get at the data is not a given, Apple unleashing data to consumers is great but is there utility in it? (no imaging data, limited)
  - Match data to patient, or doctors, scheduling appointments – technology for technology’s sake isn’t usually great
- Voice commands as being sent by light – specific microphone design that’s vulnerable to the attack
  - Area of research to use frequencies of energy to affect systems – light to mimic sound, for instance
  - Advent of radio has been different research – cathode ray tubes, radio surveillance
- Enabling hardware manufacturers to guard against this – microfilms or filtering fraud and security

Back from Vacation (Notes from Nov 11 to 17, 2019) February 11, 2020

Posted by Anthony in Automation, Blockchain, cannabis, Digital, education, experience, finance, Founders, global, gym, Leadership, marketing, NFL, NLP, questions, social, Strategy, training, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
Tags: #business, Analysis, cannabis, college, content, education, experiences, finance, freedom, Google, humanity, ideas, investing, life, marketing, Money, NASCAR, NFL, questions, reading, research, social, sports, Strategy, Time, training, Transition, TV, video
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It had been a long while – 9? months since taking more than 1 day off extra and closer to 20 months since I’d had a week off in a row. I visited the Big Island in Hawaii and stayed primarily on the west side of the island. Gorgeous weather and awesome beaches will bring me back, hopefully shortly.

I want to write a bit further about the escape, but I also want to get these notes out, so I’ll write further in later this week – Thursday.

Enjoy these notes on some of the fascinating people of Eniac Ventures, other investors, founder of EasyPoint, ReSolve quant, research professors, former professional football player and a Nascar driver.

Hadley Harris (@Hadley), Founding GP at Eniac Ventures (20min VC 2/3/16)
- First mobile venture, Soundcloud, Airbnb, Vungel
- 2x entrepreneur in mobile – Vlingo (acq by Nuance for $225mln) and Thumb (acq by Wipulse)
  - Was one of first employees and execs running marketing and bd while working with product
- Worked at Samsung and Charles Rivers Ventures
- Studied engi & math as undergrad @ Penn, joined MSFT & Samsung
  - His 2 really good friends at Penn and him came together for Eniac in 2009
  - Mobile – next place for computing – cleantech was hot at that time, as well
- SF was 50%, NY as 25% and the rest was elsewhere – won’t lead but will do a pro rata and be key in fundraising for next
- Living & breathing the co – coming to right valuation, inevitable for down or flat rounds
- 18-24 months from seed to series A or pre-seed to seed – funds becoming more institutionalized
  - Leading rounds for Eniac at $1.2 – $2mln
- Favorite book: Freakanomics, read it in one sitting
- Tools: gmail, relayedIQ for deal tracking, as todo list, also
- Don Valentine – godfather of VC, great investors but great entrepreneurs and fund raisers
- Favorite blog: Nuzzel – curation of reposts
- Underhyped: mobile enterprise; Overhyped industry: big fan and he does work in social, but lot to weed through
- Most recent investment: Phhhoto – knew the founders, they’d known each other for a while, great design and numbers – self-funded
Zach Resnick (@trumpetisawesom), founding EasyPoint (IndieHackers #130, 10/28/19)
- Iterating your way to founder-product fit, currently at 10 people, 5 full-time, $600k ytd with 15% yoy organic growth
- Traveled, worked and lived abroad in Jerusalem before school, infected with wanderlust
  - CC churning and manufactured spending while he was learning at school in Ohio – VISA gift cards to $1k
- Banking often makes more money on the chance that you’ll become a customer for other areas of business (mortgage, checking account, brokerage, etc)
- Started when he was 19 – would give advice to parents/family/friends on the year before getting an hourly rate for paying customer as consultant
  - Enjoyed his help, he liked helping others – he was getting $1k/mo from hourly before going up
  - Consulting clients – he was helping optimize for business or vacation trip for the points
- Started Land Happier to solve a problem of having everything in one place
  - Cultural norms, transportation, 6 other things for information in a fun and compelling app product (MVP on app store)
  - Wasn’t solving a problem that nobody has, but nobody would pay for – product/founder fit wasn’t there, either
- What he wants – enjoys negotiating, strategic thinking, interesting conversations and sales moreso than product focused than customer focused
- While working on Land, he productized his consulting – generally was helping family friends that were parents’ age
  - Amount of effort he was putting in compared to the value wasn’t the same – not high enough
  - Started to focus on small business or medium enterprise owners to put spending on the right cards and get 6 figures on spend return
  - Focused on people he knew through referrals, points optimization plans for small owners – acquisition and spending for more value
- Early stage owners – hey, this isn’t free
- Playing poker for relatively high stakes – teaching important principles, statistics, risk management and psychology
- Consulting to productized consulting service – had a family friend with small business who would see a $50k in increased return on spend
  - He could do a quick analysis and understand business more, try to get a customized points optimization plan for points
  - Small business owners are leaving 1.5%, maybe 2.5% on the table – using points better for things you already want to do
- Providing value but people didn’t know what it is or weren’t hurting – show them math for 5 figures within a year saving
  - Guarantee: if you sign up points optimization plan, if he doesn’t get you double what his fee is within first year, he gives money back and $10k
  - Making people aware of the problem was going to be a lot of work – never really got off the ground for outbound
    - Was just a way to make money, not necessarily grow it really fast – customers’ needs
- Concierge service now (v3 EasyPoint) focusing on business and first-class international long-haul service
  - Over whatsapp and telegram groups – makes a flight request and they get back to them 24/7
  - They use miles and points that they buy from clients and then use those to book for others
  - Brokers buying all kinds of points and miles – so the arbitrage there contained issues with ToS and such
    - They’re buying transferable points like Chase / AMEX directly to frequent flier accounts
- Working for someone else – interned with The Points Guy and when he was looking at doing it, he posted on the Facebook group
  - Cameron, now their COO, was very good – would he want to have his hires over for dinner?
  - Team of 10 now: Cameron manages concierge, growth marketing (5 on team, looking for Asia now)
    - Part-time business development consultants, full-time that have been searching
  - Revenues and loans for growth/cash flow, venture debt and possibly equity raise
- Concierge service with product-market fit and being focused – enterprise value of $100mln probably but not billions
  - Not much needs to be tweaked for core product – fund raise would be for a different product
    - Help consumers decide on if they want to use their points or cash when booking – trying to automate this for concierge/back-end
    - Chrome extension and booking engine to use or not – this may be billion dollar opportunity
Andrew Butler, ReSolve’s Head of Quant Research (Gestalt University, 10/2/19)
- Machine learning in markets: Silver bullet or Pandora’s box
  - Unsupervised, supervised and reinforcement learning differences in application or finance
- Student of mathematics, physics in undergrad, keen on not memorizing a lot of stuff – enjoyed the applied side
  - Oil reservoir simulators that modeled tidal flow in Bay of Fundy, wind turbines in giant field for optimization
  - Next step was working on a sub problem of simulators – complex, computationally expensive and trying to optimize NPV in 60d oil field
    - Navigating the nonlinear, nonconvex solutions – how to make a reasonable model approximation by sampling sparse reps of simulator
- How would simulator/emulator apply to financial world in momentum and moving averages
  - Sample distribution would fit well to out-of-sample distributions in physical world but finance wouldn’t – nonstationary
  - Caused him to use simpler models, momentum models (and transformations) and ensembles of simple factor models
    - Mean-variance optimization, error maximizing, in-sample won’t perform well out of sample
- Wanted formal training in financial engineering, so went and got a MFE
- Practitioner compared to theorist – after a conference talk, his construct was mean-variance was same as regression
  - Subspace reduction and regularization as identical terms for mean-variance
- Machine Learning as 3 subspaces
  - Unsupervised learning -> clustering and dimensionality reduction
    - Targeted marketing, customer segmentation and in finance: signal processing, optimization or portfolio construction
    - Trying to uncover relationships/groupings/clusters contained within a dataset
  - If total error is dominated by bias, it’s likely overly simplistic – X as model complexity and Y as Total Error (Bias / Variance)
    - Increase complexity, bias term can decrease, increasing the variance (instability/overfitting)
Kelly Peeler (@kellypeeler), founder / CEO NextGenVest (20min VC FF#034, 2/5/16)
- College Money mentor, empowering students to live full lives, history of financial crisis for motivation to start
  - Went over to Iraq, started and enabled some companies to build there in 2012
- Went to JPMC after graduating to make some money before starting NGV for students
- Financial organization to financial efficiency – going from Mint (organizing money for a user’s financial lives)
  - Now people need efficiency – time priority, optimizing time through automation and personalization
    - Leverage trust to improve time in the background (automation and not wanting to have to look)
- High school trust and students have nobody they can trust for guidance – 8% trust banks and financial institutions
  - If you can build a product/service, on your way to building trust
    - Save users time, money, customized experience
- Serving their customers with SMS and Snapchat – smarter push notifications for the right service in the right way
  - Couldn’t customize communication inside an app, so they did channels that they chose
- NGV clubs at high schools across country – new high schools brought in, engagement and grassroots
- First product that they brought on was for the financial literacy test that 17 states need
- Favorite book: The Thank You Economy – best people outhustle to get more customers
- As visual person, can focus on 1-3 things at a time – preps in the evening, large index cards
- Adam Nash at Wealthfront – build trust with dynamics of product and the culture of company
- Spent too much time at focusing her weaknesses but has tried to get better on that side
Sam Yagan (@samyagan), Starting OkCupid, Sparknotes (Wharton XM, Marketing Matters)
- Turning down consulting job for OkCupid start – told he was crazy but wanted to take the chance
  - Free model and how do you value customers but competitors were Match and eHarmony
  - Had to get enough people on all sides of the market and then could use the data to help
- Internet wasn’t designed to take an expert’s ideas and just use those – bigger than that
  - “You know what you want.” We’ll pull it out and figure it out.
  - Google comparison – index all the pages and figure those out to place on first page
  - Creating a platform to ask all the questions and focus on them
- Sold Sparknotes in 11 months, took OKCupid 8 years (sold to Match, was there for a year)
  - Got the job running the company for another 3.5 years as Match CEO and created Tinder
Rob Gronkowski (@robgronkowski), All-Pro tight end (The Corp, 10/1/19)
- A-Rod investing into Rob’s brother’s, Chris, company Ice Shaker
  - Were able to put money in, along with Mark Cuban, when they were on Shark Tank (all brothers)
  - Rob, upon retiring, bought Arod out of his shares in the business with Chris
- Fitplan – Arod gave Rob a discount on the shares in Ice Shaker and he just wanted Rob to look through his company
  - Rob invested with Arod – parents were in business (gym equipment for retail/commercial for 28+ years)
- Kraft being an owner for the team and being around the game – interested in everything
  - Rare to see owners in the locker room and talking with players – many players say they’ve never seen others
  - Brady, Kraft and Belichick as being the greatest people and diagnosing problems/plays and adjusting
- Rob wants to travel – done a lot in the US
  - Traveling a week from that day to Israel with CEO Barry of CBDMedic there
- Being reckless as single Gronk in the NFL (loves Camille now, though)
Horst Simon (@hdsimon), Chief Research Officer at LBNL (Curious Investor 9/3/19)
- Difference between ML and programming – validity of an email, for instance
  - Computer looks for “@” and domain name, iterative of if-then’s, marking valid or invalid
  - ML – give details of valid and invalid email addresses and have the computer figure it out with a statistical model for rules
    - Relationship between information
  - ML more as being able to see if something is a cat in a picture – hard to program that
- Helped establish the Berkeley supercomputing center – big role all across the world now to complement theory by simulations
- More data than ever before, 90% of digital data created in last 2 years – more in 2018 than all of human history
  - Finance can’t generate more data like autonomous cars, for instance (100 cars means 100 more data points)
  - Markets/economics are dynamic – return predictions of signal:noise approaches zero
    - Driven by economic features of markets – competitive, profit-seeking traders that act on it
  - HFT as real barriers to entry so they’re less efficient and more predictable, potentially
  - Quantitative traders don’t use raw data – they use transformations such as log of equity, cross-sectional rank of book to market ratio
    - Neural network tries to find what the best transformations are (X -> Y and explore all the connections)
- Bonds example: predict if issuer will default or not with firm information using random forest
Rajiv Shah (@rajcs4), Data Scientist @ Data Robot, Adjunct Prof UChicago (DataSkeptic, 10/22/19)
- Started engineering, studied philosophy and law, PhD in Comms before doing research as academic
  - Worked at State Farm and Caterpillar before going to Data Robot
- Deep learning applications in motion data like NBA player data, motion tracking arms and legs (PoseNET, for instance)
  - Nature paper published that used deep learning to study after-shock patterns for earthquakes
- Going through paper – simple starting point or baseline model was skipped – how much value is really added, then?
  - Looking at the 6-layer problem – approach wasn’t unexpected when using keras to add layers
  - Results generated: AUC of 0.85 compared to naïve benchmark of simple, physical model – AUC of 0.58
  - When he reproduced it, test set results were higher than training set – yellow or red flag for model
- Group partitioning – 130 earthquakes happening right after each other, near each other and related
  - Make sure the information for an earthquake/customer doesn’t get split between training / test sites to avoid leakage
  - Basic grounding of fundamentals for setting up initial training data, partition based on time to avoid that, as well
- As community, ensure that there are best practices and guidelines – reproducibility as a large problem lately
  - How to police boundaries for the general field – influence of institutions in publishing (for this, Harvard/Google/Nature mag researchers)
  - Good from them: the data and model for the code was freely available and he could do it on his laptop / notebooks
  - Academics from the earthquake field reached out to him with some qualms and he’s partnered with them for a blog on efforts
- Interpretability focus trade-off with accuracy – that he’ll speak on at Open DS Conf
  - Lots of tools for explaining models with transparency now, though
Julia Landauer (@julialandauer), NASCAR driver (Stanford Pathfinders, Wharton XM)
- Being on Survivor (suggested by a friend while Soph in college), racecar driver
  - Picking Stanford because of so many people that were awesome / ambitious
  - Mentioning Andrew Luck saying that this was why he chose it – people wouldn’t particularly care
- Driving at such a young age and in Manhattan – not getting a license there until 18 on campus
- Having to pitch and learn how to pitch at a young age for sponsorships, running a team and the cost, even at minors – $500k+
- Some 12 female drivers and being competitive

Find Your Own Value (Notes from Nov 4 to Nov 10, 2019) January 21, 2020

Posted by Anthony in Blockchain, Digital, education, experience, finance, Founders, global, Hiring, Leadership, marketing, questions, social, Strategy, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
Tags: #business, books, community, content, credit, experiences, finance, freedom, Google, humanity, ideas, investing, life, marketing, questions, reading, research, social, Time, TV
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One of my favorite pieces and follows on Twitter of the last 3 months has been Tyler Tringas, founder of Earnest Capital. He came to realize that there existed a massive opportunity to fund companies that may not require or need the VC model of capital infusion – just a starter amount to do testing, easiest when people look to make sales and revenues early (maybe not the model for certain industries – marketplaces/user-dependent network effects not-withstanding).

Wild for micro and seed funding, when companies have yet to establish a true product-market fit or business model each time, typically stick with one financing style. I wonder how much innovation has been restricted by the funding style. There are advantages and disadvantages for each of those. But I’ve yet to come across more than 2-3 VC’s (out of 1000s) that do multiple and have a separation / adjustment. Makes sense from the LPs sense, but not necessarily if you want the companies to be SOMEHOW getting to a growth/scale that fits.

Less Annoying CRM Tyler King was cognizant about the capital and efficiency standpoint in business – everyone that doesn’t create value seemed expendable. Those that did will make it. I find that an important takeaway and general attitude toward either doing your own thing or being a part of a bigger company.

Hopefully each of these excite everyone enough to check the fantastic people/content out further!

Tyler Tringas (@tylertringas), founder of Earnest Capital (Indiehackers #131, 11/1/19)
- Funding for entrepreneurs, founders, outside of the ecosystem – profitable and sustainable
  - Not competing with other options – just found a large group of bootstrappers that aligns with the goals
  - RBF doesn’t work for some
- Green field space in the past – no competitors and could gobble the market – big risk early but if it’s worked, it can be massive
  - Launching and building became cheaper and more niche for diversifying the opportunities – limiting VC scale
  - When he sold his first business, he handed over his Stripe account, Github and Roku
- Software companies – no retail shop meant your option was “raise money” = “raise venture capital”
  - If you were doing a bakery or something, you had a plethora of options
- 5 years ago, he was one of the loudest critics and blogger
  - If he was bootstrapping, can you work backwards and what would you have wanted to work with
    - Is it actually a fit for you
  - No board seat, mentors for long-term
- Raise money when you believe the money will unlock value in the business
- Had Storemapper – where he figured out what he wanted to do next
  - Derek Sivers – Tarzan move – need the second vine before letting go of the first vine
  - Pivoted to finance to do finance models behind wind/solar farms
  - Then to micro SaaS Indiehacker before noticing people struggled to get businesses off the ground early (his $50k cc debt)
- His basic bet is that it’s not an iron law of physics that 90% will fail
  - His fund will fail if it is an iron law – and his investors are aware of this
  - He believes the VC model is circular in that if you require growth is 11% a month for 12+ months, more likely to become unicorn
    - But if they don’t hit that, then they’re failing
- Really interested in niche markets for a piece of software that serves a market – eg Hostify, Endcrawl post-production credits, etc
Tyler King (@lessannoyingcrm), cofounder of Less Annoying CRM (Indie Hackers #128, 10/21/19)
- Bouncing between companies after college, had joined a startup that grew after Series A, only to be acquired
  - Everyone was fired except for 5 cheapest employees (including him)
- Marketing channels not working – word of mouth, sometimes paid ads, Google AdWords or Facebook
- Customer support – competitive advantage as going slow, not being held to revenue standards
  - Can focus on customer service and product features
Maren Bannon (@maren_bannon), cofounder & Partner at Jane VC (50inTech Podcast #11)
- Cold-pitching VC – for cold emails, take time to research the investor and explain why they’d be interested
  - Adjacent industries, past role in competitive area, resonating project
- Nailing the one-liner / 10 second offering in a sentence
- Bullet points, succinct including certain things
  - Traction for user/revenue/notable customers
  - Advocates, angels with industry expertise
- Why you? Brief description for the ideal team.
- Include an ask – why are you contacting? Advice, seed round, etc…
- Include right materials (letter can be brief, but more info attached or deck or 1-pager)
Ok Boomer, Microtransactions (16min on the News by a16z #13, 11/3/19)
- NYT Taylor Lorenz – (perennially behind others but gets credit for the writing of it)
- Taking on a meme, protest for what’s rigged – Gen Z affected by Boomers “hurting us”
  - How memes can turn into clothing, sales for songs, be further monetized
  - Social media generating social phenomenon and transactions and merchandise
    - V1 was ad-based, then quasi-based for sponsored ads (protein powers and such), direct transactions for monetizations
    - Can get demand and feedback for multiple types of merchandise before launching and sending out efficiently
- In China, commerce is already in the app – button after 2nd loop you can complete purchase inside the app
  - Close the loop on-platform in China
- Marketplace on games for platform – supporting size/scales that fraudsters can open up accounts and quickly find monetization structure
  - Build false economy and cash out quickly – advanced fraudsters for automation, maybe with virtual trades and purchases
  - If it’s $10k, they’re wrong – probably multiple millions, if not more
AI in B2B (a16z 10/23/19)
- Oleg Rogynskyy from People.AI, for sales and marketing
- Very few users that give you private, anonymized data is much harder to make them comfortable with this data
  - How valuable is the promise you’re making to customers vs the cost to achieve it
- For entrepreneurs: if there is human activity that generates data for how they do it that isn’t being captured, there’s a ripe opportunity
  - Shipping containers, wind farm, location of Uber driver – reliable data, aggregate and figure out what may be the next best action would be
    - Significant growth and acceleration for these actions once network effects apply
  - More sensors, edge computing, salespeople, drivers in network – more data collected and more patterns you can see
    - Smarter the graph becomes, better the predictions may be allowed to become – then, more money and lures in other network participants
  - Wind farm operators: know it will break after it breaks but someone in comes in that was there collecting data ahead of you, they are up still
    - Competitor automates process, you can go to same vendor and catch up but if you miss AI, you can’t catch up
  - Oleg mentions that he thinks AI is zero-sum and that the Fortune 500 will look very different in 10 years
- All customers benefit from generalized data – first customers have to do a lot more than others
  - People writing contracts: only sell to me, but customers would be relics
- When the data model changes, systems of records die – Andreesen
  - Hierarchical first, then on SQL, then cloud SQL and Salesforce
    - Next gen data model should be graph – federated shared graph model – instead of you pulling data and searching, it will push to you
    - Personalized actionable insights – pushed through the channel you’re most likely to engage with – maximum focus
  - Level of intent for the user should be known – don’t have to expose the complexity but you can be shown and execute that
- Difference between autopilot and co-pilot
  - As human, something mundane or repetitive – automating the functions to make it more efficient use of your neurons
  - Augmenting ability to make decisions – racecar that may know what’s around the curve, making us super-productive – more human
- Needs to be 10x on the platform vs off the platform if you’re afraid of the set-up
- Sales & Marketers specifically
  - Shifting how they work – day-to-day: 1/3 of time on manual data entry, 1/3 on prospecting (classic problem), 1/3 on face-to-face doing selling
    - First should be gone, 2nd should be done with help on ML and AI for value-add prospecting and automate outreach
    - Face-to-face: Machines can’t replace this but may be able to help out
  - Training on the end point – best way to sell, unbundling learning management system
- Wants to do bottoms-up but currently top-down – through standard procurement channels
  - Users will demand data-hungry approaches and solutions – apps that built AI on user data but not merging with enterprise data
    - Have easier time for value adding in these cases because you just want data to increase (single player can do single player)
- Biggest surprises: inside sales for Oleg starting in 2006 pounding phones, went out and did a software change before downturn
  - Learned timing matters at that time.
  - Then started Symantria – sentiment analysis API in 2011, size of market matters – 20-30 companies needed it (80% of market)
  - Remembered that he was put into a conference room with COO (head of sales), cleaned Salesforce and within a month it was in ruin again
  - Couldn’t understand sales team when he took over, why it wasn’t ramping up quickly, losing deals, hiring more people but productivity was fine
    - Supposed to have data in CRM but never had it
Martin Mignot, Investor at Index Ventures (20min VC 2/1/16)
- Investments including Deliveroo, Blablahcar, Algolia, SwiftKey, others
- Worked on 50 transactions like CodeAcademy, FlipBoard, Soundcloud
- UBS Investment Bank on TMT team and co-founded beauty subscription company called Boudoir Prive (acquired by BirchBox)
  - Comes from entrepreneur family and action/doer and the creative
  - VC seemed to be between acting and thinking part of the job as he’s followed it for 10-12 years
- Split on idea of career VC without operating experience
- 3 ways to look and slice companies: at Index, they have thematic and geographical approach since they need to have ppl on ground in Europe
  - Stage-focused: seed / growth
  - Thematic: fintech, adtech
  - Geographical: Germany, France, London, Amsterdam and building the network there with angels, seed funds
- 6 hour drive test or drunk test with founders – no formal founder test to determine invest-ability
  - Are they able to attract and hire the people they need
  - Trying to decide if the risk is worth reward – not beholding themselves to a valuation cap if they believe
- Favorite book: I have America Surrounded by Tim Leary
- Investor who has shaped his theses is Fred Wilson – being right, companies and sharing insight, communicating as USV and himself
Elaine Beak, consulting and HBS (Career Talk, Wharton XM)
- She wasn’t too scared but whenever she had problems, the solutions would arise
  - For others, the security blanket is the scariest for most people when she tries to help them on decisions or convincing them
- Writes her books in 2 weeks each – written and published 80+
- Word of mouth, should have 6 months saved up, and have 50 people that you can contact for saying you’re going out on your own
- Following own rules:
  - Billing clients the same day that you finish a project.
  - Clients may have 30 day billing window, so if you waited 2 weeks, they’ll forget or not be as appreciative.
- Don’t discount, add to the service instead – charge more
  - Bad reputation for discounting.
- Go for the big fish – large companies but the time to get smaller companies is the same for larger. Repeat business is there
  - Repeat business and more of a budget to continue work.
- Learn to say no. Non-paid speaking engagements should be limited.
- Manage your time well – make sure it pays off.
  - Find ways to automate things – invoices, payroll, accounting, responses to common questions
    - Make a standard paragraph or find an app/template once you have these
- Project will end but not relationship – stay until the end and do a good job for the client.
- Incorporating, LLC for sure

Reflect After, Not Before (Notes from Oct 28 – Nov 3, 2019) January 14, 2020

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I was a madman and finished through StartUp Podcast and their Gimlet story during the week of these notes. Pretty cool to hear a play-by-play for what was going through their thoughts, especially when they’re simple questions but hold such a vital block until the next challenge. It’s comforting, as well, that many people go through this. It truly doesn’t matter the size of a company or the hoopla associated at the start, there is a huge weight on the shoulders of first-time entrepreneurs coming from full-time employment. Even with the best managers or people in their roles, there are so many things that go into building – and it’s always changing.

Thankfully, there is an increasing amount of resources now to help you. A large number of people who have scratched the entrepreneur itch have produced reflections, notes and strategies to succeed/fail/avoid mistakes – all through the eyes of those who have succeeded marvelously, exited, failed spectacularly or even quietly. We’re lucky that we’re in this time, now, simply for the reason that all it takes to DO is just that – ACTION, DO. No longer is there a lack of playbook for the particular road to the madness. More tools, more options and it’s whatever you decide to go with. So, the biggest problem is probably now analysis paralysis. Want to make an educated guess as to what may work BEST, but it’s hard to know that. Experiment where you can and take leaps everywhere else.

I should take more of my own advice, and I’m glad I heard a few podcasts that push me further into this train of thought. The ideas will eat at you until you do it. Don’t want to regret inaction – hard to regret action since it’ll be what you did and how you took that path. Hope you all enjoy the notes / podcast in each of these paths.

Jeff Seibert (@jeffseibert), Sr Director of Product at Twitter (20min VC FF032)
- Former founder of Crashlytics, 2011 with Wayne Chang for 300mil users worldwide
  - Acquired by Twitter in 2013 for $259mn
- Cofounded Increo in 2007 and served as COO and lead architect until acquisition by Box in 2009
  - Build, share and innovate on their ideas – idea-sharing (doc-sharing, feedback, collaboration)
  - Had raised seed $500k in early 2008 – thought it would last about 18 months – for 2009 start, had 6 months to raise
    - Investors were pulling back, taking meetings but not investing – met with 34 / 36 firms on Sand Hill (says it was too much)
- Grew up in Maryland, got Mac for Dummies and had visual application where he changed “Hello, World” to orange color
  - Went to Stanford for college, wanted to think about startups so started group
- Transparency – full may be healthiest culture but it’s crazy high, crazy low (so CEOs should moderate) – entire team through cycle is actual stress
  - Productivity can dip if whole team feels this – at Increo it was very transparent
    - Acquisition discussions meant they had 2 months of not being productive – founder has to swallow the ups and downs
      - Box – still was furthering the mission for the acquisition – they had tons of documents and could provide lots of value
- For Twitter acquisition – their executive team had a deeply nuanced view of the mobile ecosystem
  - With one of largest apps, had tons of connections, users, and feedback – lead them to have a good scale and vision for the next few years
    - Mobile developers and could succeed in that environment – could provide Crashlytics to grow team and build out products
  - Twitter was acquiring 2 companies a month – total transparency of motivations for acquisition and why they were in plans
    - Why was it being considered by company – couldn’t guarantee technology, headcount but they were open
      - He moved out to SF because they wanted rep for the company
- For Crashlytics – he took both coast moneys – Flybridge (Jeff Musbridge who suggested a question for how he met cofounder)
  - Wayne Chang – few big startup events that people go to – friend had invited Jeff, was talking about side projects – agreed to meet later
    - He had a very deep understanding of the technology and intuition for mobile developers
      - Gave him a list 3 weeks later out of the blue with mobile apps, their lead, interview notes for feedback and commitment to use beta
      - Executes like crazy – fantastic relationship
  - Thought they were set up for success when they were acquired and reporting to VP of Eng – didn’t anticipate that they had a re-org
    - May put you on other location, lose some activity – should have been a “we want 6-9 months to report / integrate”
  - Goal for Crashlytics was to solve mobile bugs/crashes – 100s of millions of devices, 10s of k’s of customers
    - Could leverage Twitter name and offer the product for free – so instead of doing freemium and enterprise, they could do free everyone
    - Total distribution – it was the perfect opportunity – now have 1billion devices
  - Have entire team (save for 1) and it has tripled
  - He spent 2 years after deal leading developer’s platform (all over world on Twitter’s services) before moving to consumer product (BlueBird, Twitter app)
- Daring Fireball (Apple fanatic) for favorite blog, career highlight was speaking at Stanford (one of student coordinators originally for Entrepreneurship)
- Acquihires – not a fan for startup perspective, but understands from other side
Gimlet 8: Our New Show (StartUp Podcast 11/22/14)
- Hiring new people that could be superstars – TLDR hosts WNYC
  - Offering lower salary than before but a revenue sharing – “incapable of feeling joy, has had an anxiety stomach ache for the past 5 days”
  - They had a bunch of questions: Editorial/managerial relationship (bosses), ad spots for numbers, CPM rate, $ for ongoing web support, logo
    - Had gone through budget stuff initially – PJ & Alex had been part of a union, stability – 6 months later – can they get a commitment?
  - Tough to give security if they don’t have the security – 4 year vesting plan
Gimlet 9: We Made a Mistake (StartUp Podcast 12/6/14)
- Uploading first episode of Reply All – new podcast show
- Making a terrible mistake of not clarifying an ad intention for “This American Life” for a son’s Minecraft website for Squarespace
  - Having a discussion with Ryan’s (son) of Laura, who eventually came on to talk with Alex about how she’d felt and interpreted
  - Establishing processes and policies for the advertisements
Gimlet 10: Mixing Art and Business (StartUp podcast 12/22/14)
- Not wanting to add to spending part of business (75% pay cut for Alex)
- 3 months of initial episode of StartUp, 1 month for ReplyAll, and 8 employees in an office with salaries/benefits and advertisements
  - Brought in old spreadsheet for month to month project
  - Miscalculated the audience numbers – said they’d have 20k listeners after 4 months and they’re at 10x that
    - Plan was to have 3 shows and then spend a year to build audience
    - That plan is gone for audience numbers-wise, but to do another show would cost more money
- Ramping up spending is scary if the audience didn’t continue to grow
- Talked to their first hire, Caitlin, producer and her knowing and shouldering a lot of the anxiety
Nick Craig (@nickcraig1), author of Leading From Purpose (Wharton XM)
- Love as part of purpose statement when he was with West Point staff
  - Love of family, country, service
  - Where service meets purpose
- Purpose is what everyone can take between business and personal
  - Most people are smart but asked, as fish, to climb a tree (Einstein)
- Ben & Jerry’s turnaround – schweaty balls flavor – M&A / movement guy that stayed at B&J’s
  - Doubled revenue to $1 bn from 2011-2019
- Level of uncertainty has risen for almost every company
  - Used automotive example – what are we going to be selling, buying
  - Banks
  - Timelines are shrinking
- Talking to Bryn Abraham – love to figure out her purpose
  - Figured it out, then she says she wants to write the foreword for your book (what book – his response)
    - Set him up with her agent (Ariana Huffington and Peter Schultz’s), who had taken his Wharton class
    - The agent told him she’d represent him for his book

Wrapping Up the Year (Notes from Oct 21 – 27, 2019) January 6, 2020

Posted by Anthony in Automation, Blockchain, Digital, experience, finance, Founders, global, Hiring, marketing, questions, social, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
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Happy New Year’s, everyone! Hopefully the holidays treated everyone well. Mine were fairly quiet, filled with quite a bit of driving back and forth with family, though. Good mix and even the added bonus of getting in extended reading time, which I loved – and a good plug for the last podcast episode I had listened to in this set since Ellie Wheeler’s most recent investment at the time was Blinkist – an app summarizing nonfiction books.

Somewhat quick since the majority of the week was spent listening to Alex & Gimlet’s story continue on the StartUp podcast and how he thought about (and questioned others about starting) his podcasting company. From partnership splitting, to fundraising, to naming and branching out. Fascinating early, early stage process and how each day is a struggle of what to do. I saw someone (yes, I forget who) mentioned recently that startup founders/CEOs basically have an infinite to-do list and what makes or breaks the company is determining the order that will most benefit the development forward. Yes. And yes, it’s hard.

Recording that and releasing it was quite the project that probably helped launch the company in general as he promised to get there. Even more fun now that it’s been 5 years since the release and they’ve (check the logo) sold to Spotify. Podcasting still has a ways to go, I feel. In my opinion, audio and the video/reality experience will continue to merge as we go through the next 5-10 years. Few weeks ago, a friend helped try to hack together a form of visual note-taking app (say, pictures every 30 seconds turned to searchable text) – results weren’t great but next iteration would be possible with Snaptacles? Keep you posted. Having to organize everything using Notes / OneNote / Evernote / Notion / Docs / Apple Memo and bookmarks in your favorite browser – chaotic as hell. Shouldn’t be this hard to share relevant and recent readings/listenings. I bring it up because Alex in StartUp podcast discussed in that first episode the vision of how information can be shared. Those that learn and share can greatly accelerate action/excitement and get the flywheel moving if there was a tool (maybe 2) to facilitate this. I’m hopeful for this future – 5G and improvements there could enable the computing power for constant snippets?

The future holds the answers. Happy New Year!

Gimlet 2: Is Podcasting the Future or the Past? (StartUp Podcast 9/5/14)
- Working on his pitching before headed back to California to pitch Chris’ partner
- Matt had worked at CAA before joining Chris, he’d ran an in-house venture fund to team up with Hollywood talent, get other investors
  - Website FunnyOrDie with Ferrell and McKay to launch it
- Launching 3 new shows, 100k per episodes
  - Asks “Are you in or out?” – but he says that he wants to spend more time
  - Normally, would give him 3 reasons why he wasn’t interested, but he’s interested in the pedigree to launch into the space
    - Access to build brands and content (really, really hard) – is this entrepreneur the best at what they’re going to build?
  - Question about audience numbers – thinks he can build a larger audience (Landlord was 80mln for FunnyOrDie), even though podcasts aren’t
  - Not a lot of innovation here – is this really the best platform (podcasting) for the shows? App-based ecosystem instead?
    - Aggregator site or podcast – can’t tweet out a moment (clip), can’t figure out which friends are/have listened (can’t)
    - pictures on phone while on podcast, celebrities what they’re listening to – Instagram of audio
- Audio shows or vs podcasting – name sucks, new way – wife mentions pitching tech guys and getting feedback on tech platform for bigger
  - Scale for him is the largest he can’t envision, and that all seems to be small for Chris and Matt
Crypto Regulations, ATM fees (a16z 16 Minutes on the News #12, 10/20/19)
- Managing Partner, Scott Cooper, author of Secrets of Sand Hill Road
- ICOs as regulation, thing may not even exist – SEC fined the company with the ICO – if building blockchain and raise money from public before
  - Can’t sell security unless registered with SEC
  - Howie – did someone give you money? Did someone expect a profit/return? Did the profit come from the efforts of others?
- When we invest in start-up companies, exemption by accredited investors or register by SEC because no exemption
- Bill Hineman at SEC talked about mutability for security turning into non-security
  - ERC-20 token was frozen/suspended for Block 1 – eventually received EOS tokens, that persists today
  - Settlement with SEC didn’t impact EOS tokens to trade on the market – in theory, EOS wasn’t a security at the time – efforts for others
- First time Cooper had seen settlement that SEC distinguished a security in the initial part ERC before turning not a security by EOS
  - No bright-line for what the line is that draws centralization/decentralization
- ATM fees being the highest they’ve ever been $4.95 – growth of median income up 20% since 1995, healthcare 40%, education 80%, housing 50%
  - Overdraft fees as highest as well – $35bn lost there
  - Legacy banks as tons of fixed costs and infrastructure and people vs startups that can go to market and get the building blocks necessary
    - Anti-money laundering and KYC attention, also
Gimlet 3: How to Divide an Imaginary Pie (StartUp Podcast 9/17/14)
- Needing a business partner, potentially – wife helping him get to that point
- Micah Rosenbloom pitching – thing 1 – liked the idea, thing 2 – bet on 2 or 3 people, Finding a business partner – MBA grads, founder dating type and website
  - Settled on his partner Matt Leber, MIT Sloan grad, BCG consultant due for a soon promotion – sneaked around, knew the business side
- Agreeing on the clarity of the business partnership – going through legal/lawyers to agree on principle for the split of equity
  - People who he talked to mentioned 90-10 split, no more than 15%
  - Matt had mentioned 47% initially, gave an input to ask what he thought was important
    - Matt asks “What is important to you?” – some examples: important to be in charge, be CEO, his company, own 80%+
  - He’s worried about being a sucker, a rube, he got ripped off – though he thought 47% was too high “He’s key to success of company”
    - Wants that to be reflected in the cap table – “Matt is not”, Matt can’t imagine doing it for 10% – he’d treat it as a job
    - Didn’t come to terms with each other, had to go back to their wives
    - Extremely surprised at the number, adding – maybe he was seen as a consultant initially and it persisted – maybe anchored
    - Positional bargaining vs average of 15 and 45%
  - Everyone could come up with their answer – as long as it was fair to each
    - Thought the split should be 60/40 – founder’s agreement at the restaurant – needed to make it worth something, together
Gimlet 4: Startups are a Risky Business (StartUp Podcast 9/23/14)
- Discussing podcast with Matt Mazio – should be able to message back and forth, create new connections / friends, microtransactions, crowdfunding
- Going back to Micah for a second meeting – brought Alex Davidoff
  - Questioned the number of people (millions vs tens or hundreds – 40mln current was the answer)
  - Hard to be a hotel and Kayak – hard for whatever you do – content vs tech
  - Questioning the CAC and LTV for customers – wanted more than theories but answers for acquisition model
    - Venture scale is $100mln+ scale, opportunity
    - Costs X to produce a show, Y% are hits, Z amount of value to listeners, listeners pay and blended AC is W
    - How to scale because he knows what it looks like – wanted to de-risk the investment – credible theory of venture size
- Micah had been encouraging and excited to give him intros to other venture capitalists
- Chicago Board of Trade from school, some colleagues started an investment firm – Mike
  - Podcast newbies – never – bonded over one venture because he’d listened to Howard Stern – great interviewer / new content
  - Definitely different than what they’d focused on
- Investing partners on one – focused on numbers, other on user growth, different reasons
  - Former financial guy who’d explained to him a toxic asset – $50k was a fan, solid enough business
  - Media innovation fund – perhaps a revenue model for other journalism forms
  - Andrew Mason, Founder/CEO of Groupon ($100mln from there) – started a new company called Detour – guided audio tours
    - Needed content for the tours but had the tech side to build it – had his own project (podcast network)
    - Agreed to invest $100k – exploitative, can learn things, investment in himself to keep close, good at what he does, ppl
    - Hadn’t thought about monetary reason, higher likelihood for profitable business but lower likelihood for 100x
      - If not successful, because he didn’t want it enough – “Have a kid now, it’s an insane amount of work”
- Went to bank together and had $385k in the checking account – wanted $1.5mln for runway
  - Planning to still launch 3 shows, office space, 18 months runway
- The name: APC – no, unilaterally – including wife and partner
Gimlet 5: How to Name Your Company (StartUp Podcast 10/13/14)
- Transparency and the name: APC – no, including wife and partner
- Tried a ton of different options before going to Lexicon naming help
  - We can’t pay but we’ll have it on the air for the podcast
- Major Gimlet, gimlet eye, gimlet drinks – Matt bought the domain
Matt Charney (@mattcharney), Editor at RecruitingDaily (In the Workplace, Wharton XM)
- Went over digital numbers for the workplace – IoT as different than Digital Transformation
  - Digital transformation is a $60bn annual cost to consultants – max cash, short on ROIC
- Mentioning that the top ATS in hiring is still top now – since 1996
Gimlet 6: How to Value Your Startup (StartUp Podcast 10/25/14)
- Valuing your company as a starter for valuation cap, how much of the company
- Valuation cap set at $10mn with his lawyer – completely arbitrary
  - AngelList had average valuations for a startup in NY at the time between $3-5mn, other media companies had been $10mn
- Talking to Matt Mazio to check in – had a cofounder now, lots of meetings and having discussions with people
  - Price for pre-launch, content and no real tech – at least 2x what it was
  - Mazio in $100k with Chris Sacca, wasn’t worth arguing the price for $100k
    - $10mn cap would’ve needed a 10x to go to $100mn
Gimlet 7: How Listeners Become Owners (StartUp Podcast 11/8/14)
- Fully funded after going $200k in crowdfunding, getting the Tumblr founder Marco to put in $50k and additional $150k
- Building the sound booth studio randomly
- JOBS Act allowing the larger pool of American people to invest in startups, talking to AlphaWorks CEO Erin (had been there 4 days in NYC)
  - AlphaWorks – actual ownership stake, investor
    - Relationship with listeners was the biggest thing for the company – $5k
  - Wire from Sacca was late because original amount went to the wrong account, business in Gardenia somewhere
    - Local police weren’t convinced that receiving someone else’s money was a crime ($33k lost)
- Having worked for 6 months, quite early and then leaving at 6pm each night
  - Parenting strain now – can’t help even though he did pull more than his weight before
- Consumer Federation of America – actually, sort of, trying to protect the people
  - Regular people will get hosed is what they said – is it the business of government to look out for what’s best?
Ellie Wheeler (@ellie), Partner at Greycroft Partners (20min VC 1/27/16)
- Next-gen commerce, consumer mobile, SaaS solutions and investments in BaubleBar, Flashpoint Intel, Eloquii, Plain Vanilla Games
  - Was in a similar position at Lowercase Capital with Chris Sacca
- No “if you do this, you’ll get into venture” – hers was pre-med, medical school and dropped out before end of first semester
  - Started at Summit Partner – Growth Capital P/E in Boston w/o Excel skills
  - Wanted to understand more in context so she went to Cisco, moved to SF – C/D, M&A, Strategy on Enterprise Software
    - webEx and video conferencing, unified comms
  - Crash happened – $30bn on balance sheet and seeing everything for stunting M&A and tech
- Business school after Cisco
- Mobile commerce as off by consultants/analysts by orders of magnitude – conversion rates were still very low
  - Email to mobile as conversion driver – d2c, into funnel and into terrible experience
  - Web or app experiences
- Wearables – more integrated, into the fabric, athletic gear
- The Power of One as favorite book, Alan Patricof as the founder of Greycroft
  - Outlook app, Twitter (as blog), Todo list (Evernote, but she uses note cards)
- Recent investment is Blinkist, mobile summary for key nonfiction books

Love Hearing Some Aspirations (Notes from Oct 14 – Oct 20, 2019) December 19, 2019

Posted by Anthony in Automation, Blockchain, Digital, experience, finance, Founders, global, Hiring, Leadership, marketing, medicine, NLP, questions, social, Strategy, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
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Happy holidays, everyone! Hopefully you’re staying warm/dry – whether that’s inside or just generally in a better location. I’ll say I already wish that I purchased into that ski cabin for the holiday since we’ve had a bunch of rain over the last few weeks in the bay area and now fresh powder in the Sierras. But alas, I did not. Next time, next time.

I’m going to keep this brief, but primarily because I have fallen behind in writing and it pains me weekly. Habits break and that may need to be bumped up in the new year – try out substack or something similar. But, I think I’m finally going to launch something that I’ve been meaning to build. CV / Image recognition sourcing into a database to keep track of something that plays a prominent role for many. We’ll see if I can get the prototype usable and I’ll update here.

Aspirations – I love talking and listening to people who have big dreams. I think there are many who hold themselves back for all kinds of reasons. If I catch wind or hear it, I will push you to start – something, anything – for your sake. It’s rewarding to have to dive in and try it out. Maybe it falls off after 6 months. Maybe you run out of money that you allotted to the side. Maybe, you succeed. Or learn enough to accidentally fail upwards into a better / concrete idea. I hope for it all when people have these ideas. It’s inspiring – helps me go through my own models for how I interpret my world if I have to wrap my head around how friends/colleagues/Tweeps view their own. And how things can become better. Ultimately, that’s what we’re trying to do with many ideas. Is it a cool new thing? Is it something you wish you had? Is it an observation that you want to test? Build. You won’t regret it if you don’t in the grand scheme, but if it’s a big enough itch, it’s worth the learning experience in a world where not enough of us do (but it’s not for a lack of time).

Hope you enjoy the notes.

Patrick / Raamayan, Cofounder of Unify (Wharton XM)
- Global meditation, achieving state of flow
  - Could be gym, yoga, prayer, running
- If you have an hour, you have 15 minutes
Brianne Kimmel (@briannekimmel), Worklife Ventures (20min VC 10/14/19)
- Backed by Andreesen, Chris Dixon, Zoom’s Eric Yuan, and friends Alexis Ohanian, Garry Tan, Matt Mazzeo
- Teaching General Assembly while operating in performance/growth marketing role at Expedia before Head of Social Media
  - Go-to marketing bootcamp (SaaS school now)
  - SaaS school taught my brand name heads at SaaS top places
- Started with $25-50k angel checks in Webflow, Voiceflow, Airgarage and built a track record
  - Wanted to build a SaaS-fund to focus on go-to-market from bottoms-up
  - Enjoys building and structuring companies to get into the Venture-sized outcomes
  - Having a fund that’s open enough to maybe do private equity after stuck between $3-5mn ARR
- Optionality for early stage, inflection points, maybe getting growth PM to scale into CEO
  - $150k checks incrementally grown from $25k
- Proliferation of funds and capital – investing from own, micro-VC and angels platforms
  - Scouting for VC fund – operators at hot tech company
  - AngelList and Carta as platforms for own angel funds or boutique arrangements (flexibility with checks, numbers, still operate)
- Celebrities/athletes using investments in startups to match their brand or expand it
  - Intersection of work and life – seeing Faire and Shopify give access to a huge new audience
- Angels with leverage in cap table – “perfect one” and she grooms founders for this
- Worklife – services and programs to unlock human potential at scale
  - Hypevsaas – traditional language for b2b is dead, according to her
  - Great saas being built by operators spinning out of consumer tech (Airbnb, Coinbase, Uber)
    - Scaling too quickly where they end up building their own tools before open sourcing or monetizing
  - With self-serve SaaS companies, many APIs and workflow tools, are easy to build – what’s the competitive advantage
    - Your access to tech, building closed products (specific users in line with product vision)
  - Opposite of Hypevsaas as “Scrappy SaaS” – going away slowly, race similar to consumer product for paid marketing
    - Freemium to quickly launch/build but products too easy – race for free users and attempt to monetize later
    - Mirrors side hustle or application as experiment with a possible traction
- Consumer-grade experiments where users pay from day one – mentioned Superhuman and Rahul’s talk
  - SaaS school discussion about video game design and hook
- Pace as most recent investment – accessing software with lower monthly rate because they access the contracts
Justin Kan (@justinkan), Founder / CEO of Atrium (20min VC 6/21/19)
- Full-service corporate law firm for startups
- Started in 2004 with online calendar a la Gcalendar called Keeko, got into YC
  - Failed and sold it on ebay eventually
- Then started Justin.tv – terrible idea that mostly failed and eventually made it into a streaming site to do Twitch
  - Sold in 2014 to Amazon, started another company called Exec in 2015 – errand service
  - Became a partner at YC but realized after a few years that an investor full-time wasn’t for him
  - Forced, as a startup founder, to learn things (hadn’t been learning as an investor)
- 2017 – remembered how painful it was learning things – thinking of ideas
  - Conversation with a partner at a law firm in the city – asked her why they didn’t use any tech themselves
  - Full-stack corporate law firm in US – high growth companies that they’re building for last 2 years
- Had used legal services no matter what they had – big transactions pay attorneys regardless, stable market
  - Will exist in a downturn because things don’t just stop
- Remembered that every summer at the start of his startups, he would want to quit – think of new ideas or new things
  - Once out, he’d think he didn’t want to do it again, until it brought him back
  - First 3 months – thought he was great, figured it out due to 10 years’ experience, until stress came back
    - 6 months of stressful period – figured it out that he was still fine, reputation/old job
    - Self-improvement and growth had to come from culture
- Hard to detach yourself from company as entrepreneur
  - Has attachments and notifications to make sure that he’s being present
  - Having goals in life, company, entrepreneur – board game metaphor – friends play and being engaged
  - Put away a game – do you remember or care what happened?
- Started seeing a therapist 7 years prior – coach for dealing and discovering about what you’re going through
  - Cathartic, in his opinion – not alone and can talk to people
  - 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, Steve from Reddit
    - Radical responsibility – nobody else will come to save you, nobody to blame
    - Radical curiosity – whenever a new situation comes up, you approach it with what you’re supposed to learn
- Don’t have to suffer for doing a start-up – not saying “Don’t work hard”
  - Building up skills, expectation for suffering isn’t the case
  - Atomic Habits by James Clear for him following working out each day
- Zone of Genius – cares and loves to focus on, delegate rest
  - At Atrium, focus on business strategy, selling, culture
  - Build the team for the rest of it
- Much better at recognizing patterns after investing 100 companies
  - Implementing in company, business models and market dynamics
  - Bad – investor attitude (approached Atrium like this)
- Atrium – up to 150 employees in SF now – happy and proud for the culture and growth
Eric Kinariwala (@ekinariwala), founder / CEO at Capsule (DealMakers 10/15/19)
- Rebuilding pharmacy from inside out – raised $270mn from TCV, Thrive Capital, Sound Ventures, Virgin Group, M13
- Wharton undergrad, network from there as financial services, banking and decided to go to west coast – Stanford
  - Started at Bain Capital in Boston after graduating – worked in a hedge fund group investing
    - Retail, healthcare, tech – blending framework around business strategy, what makes it a good business
    - Judging management and the synergies – learning how to invest, as well
  - Making right judgment calls – tight feedback loops
- For Capsule, had moved back to NY, got a headache – called doctor and had a prescription ordered
  - Pharmacy is $350bn – most frequent interaction in healthcare
  - 2nd largest category of retail – 70k stores
  - Got headache and went to go pick up his meds but couldn’t find it, then they were out of stock and it was awful
- Hard to get advice from the pharmacy, don’t know the price until they go to pay
- Everybody touching the pharmacy has a headache, typically
- 3 pillars of Capsule: modern technology platform, emotionally resonant brand, pharmacy how your mom would treat you
  - Prototypical pharmacist as founder, 2nd was highly experienced technologist, 3rd woman that spent building consumer brands
- Business model – “10x better” than current existing – technologically enabled pharmacy – app with 5 pieces of information
  - 2 hour delivery windows, know price of medication, doctors know what you’re doing
  - Why are there so many pharmacies? Put money spent on rent back into beautiful design and technology to be seamless
- Launched in 2016, first customer in May – first challenges in early days
  - Strong word-of-mouth from friends, doctors who had learned about Capsule – telling patients and vice versa
  - Early pharmacist was well-versed in regulatory environment for anything that could’ve been broken
- He had raised in May ’15 to get started – raised $70 million to start
  - Ideal profile / entire business model needs to be aligned with values: objectives, values, strategy and metric
  - Asking to join and leaders need to have alignment in the same way – even the board – share vision and how / why you operate
- Team is bigger than 250 full-time, all in NYC now – encouraging people to read ahead of joining, also
  - Checklist Manifesto, On Wings of Eagles, Danny Meyer’s Setting the Table, and Who by Dan [Geoff?] Smartt
- For the future of Capsule – most important thing in your family’s life as healthcare (although I’d argue bank or something)
  - 5x more pharmacy visits than doctor (sheesh) – wants to make it mobile-first and on the home page of phone
- Piece of advice for his first day: be more confident earlier
Gimlet 1: How to Not Pitch a Billionaire (Startup Podcast 4/5/14)
- Pitching Chris Sacca – meeting at a hole-in-the-wall sushi place for lunch in LA
  - Deck as a crutch and did it outside the lunch – no slides
  - Most people consume audio in radio and are leaving to digital – audio dashboard, podcasts music all there
  - Wants to start company for the content for moving into the digital future
  - One question he asked: what’s the unfair advantage? Explained how to make money (ads, listeners)
    - Freemium – offer an extra for the listeners who want to pay.
    - He answered: making freemium model work – had to tighten it up
  - Chris Sacca – took 2 minutes and did the pitch
    - People willing to pay for this stuff – Planet Money where they gave $600k to buy tshirt with our logo
      - Integrated directly that we can replicate
    - $1.5mn to buy 3-4 guys for podcasts in next 12 months, can get to 300-400k net subscribers
      - Can get to breakeven on ads alone, CPMs where they are – more integration and episodes will be ultimately scale
      - 12-15 podcasts and we can do it
  - Then countered with the audio is a niche market – nonprofit and audio moving toward shorter content
- Met him on a Planet Money story when he was going over patent system and how it was slowing innovation
- Strategy/ideas at Google, writing seed investment check in PhotoBucket – didn’t have it, though
  - Just $50k and wrote 2 credit card checks – enjoyed the feeling so much he left Google
  - First investment was in a colleague, Evan Williams, for Twitter as a full-time angel
    - Wrote the check for $25k – was a lot of cash to him, needed it to work – wanted to help out, evangelist
    - Started buying more shares and doubling – believed in the company
- Kickstarter, Uber, Instagram, etc… looks hard at the conviction of the success
  - Missed on DropBox (Gdrive was going to crush them), Airbnb (someone will get raped or murdered, can’t work)
- Told him to come back, tighten the pitch and then do it for Chris’ partner Matt who was from the media world
Pankaj Risbood (@risbood), founder at Zendrive
- Discussing leveraging data and making it a platform instead of an app
  - Dealing with partners to ensure they can improve value
- Mission Street project – 6 months driver flow before and then after shutting down
  - Reducing poor driving / improve driver safety and it was fairly obvious
- Can deploy this in the form for insurances, as well
Jacqueline Courtney (@jac_courtney), Founder of Nearly Newlywed (Wharton XM)
- Pitching on Shark Tank to grab attention
- Starting as seeing option in fashion tech for underserved market
- Tough for Amazon to compete because of the marketplace factor and users are only in for 1 sale, 1 wedding
  - Taking 40% of the sale but trying to maximize the amount of cost for many
  - Realized photos that were posed / models with dresses didn’t sell as well as real wedding photos
    - Started asking customers for them this way
Noah Auerbahn (@noahauerbahn), co-founder and CEO of Robin Healthcare (Lindzanity 10/2/19)
- Robin as virtual scribe that sits on doctors desks and records video/audio from room – sits in exam room
  - Started with orthopedic physicians – 6 sub-specialties and they cover all of them so far
- Met Gary, Howard’s partner, when Noah was 21 and starting first company – ExtraBucks (cash back coupons)
  - Came up with at dorms in USC, raised enough money to move to SD with his cofounders
  - Were cash flow positive and had Gary and Alex as advisors – realized he didn’t want to be in ecommerce forever
    - Decided to sell and exit once they questioned it – had raised around $1million, no venture
- Believed college as what you make of it – did entrepreneurship / business in undergrad but taking it and questioning how to apply it
- Education, energy, and health were the lists of what he thought may have the most impact – health was the biggest for him
  - He would hire MIT PhD and UCLA MD to come to his office and tutor him – “pretty affordable, like $70/hr” to teach at pace you want
  - He wanted massive optionality within healthcare – not just ecommerce, if he wanted to do pharma, biotech, find the right entry point
  - 100s of research posts, 100s of conversations, started going to conferences (where he met his cofounder)
- Entire system – center of the system is the exam room – decisions get made there, so he wanted to build something interesting inside of that room
  - Patient, doctor, and EMR (not interested in sharing data)
    - Found out that there was a scribe in 5% of rooms and he asked why they aren’t remote or something
    - Lower burnout rates, better throughput and service, notes/quality control could have issues
    - Decided to tool in a good UX, ML additionally
- Wanted to do something big, had to raise money eventually but “How many assumptions could he kill or the idea before saving time?”
  - First paying customer, had $40k, webcams, notes (his cofounder doing them), device streaming and did it at his mom’s vet clinic (non-HIPAA)
    - Built own tech, had some handful of paying customers – had taken some friends/family $ that missed on his first company and then real
  - Didn’t anticipate hardware but couldn’t find something that could be used for solving this
    - Security cams aren’t great because of acoustic but could stream all the time
    - Conference ones which aren’t designed to run all the time – ran own software on it, but lot of work to keep it working all the time
    - Sonos speaker guys were helpful in producing what they ended up building (optional video)
- Device has about 2% of people where they don’t consent – video/audio and can be more in tune with the patient
- Having offices in SD, Berkeley (his reverse commute from SF) and Austin – where most pre-med scribes are for them
  - Mentioned 30% Stanford Med graduates don’t end up as doctors – go into tech
Morgan Housel, co-founder of Collaborative Fund (Lindzanity, 10/9/19)
- Howard’s favorite thinker/writer/storyteller and his interesting career arch – key to writing is writing
- Effective long-form is rough but when it’s good, it’s bar-belled (10 seconds is better than longer reading)
  - Only books he got through were Shoe Dogs and Agassi’s book – Munger’s “Don’t be burdened by bad books”
- Cramer’s “Confessions of a Street Addict” as good, as well
  - Coming from nowhere, knew how to write briefly, Howard as superfan – first modern financial professional that had personality
  - Howard feels like it’s an underachievement – Morgan said he’s not a great investor – so much trust built up that he should be running a massive firm
  - Access to people, financial celebrity
- Fascinated by Motley Fool – when Morgan had hedge fund, had CNBC but Dave and Tom Gardner – hats on, promotional and StockTwit before
  - Went for mom and pops – tremendous marketers, but made mistakes
- 2007 – dawn of financial disaster, studying econ at USC (his plan was p/e and ib) but finance was terrible
  - Didn’t think highly of Motley Fool – had gone through Yahoo finance boards and saw his friend, Sham Gad, at USC was writing for them
  - Thought he’d do Motley Fool shortly as contract, couple months, and was writing an article a day – (plan was initially p/e but they couldn’t bring him on)
  - For him, he was supposed to be banking industry, and writing other stuff as well – economy and macro issues (unemployment, fed reserve, budgets)
  - No explanation for decisions being rational – before, during, after no good explanations – psychology of investing
- Psychology of investing will always be there – different layers of edge and vs technical side – can be base of pyramid
  - Smartest analyst or data miner but without greed/fear, nothing would matter (Howard moving to angel – forced to go with it, prices were his weakness)
- Time split for Howard – 50/50 between public/priv (prices keep him up to date on news)
  - Selling at Uber at $10bn because he wasn’t allowed to sell at $1bn – he was in with David Cohen’s $4mn fund, $50k at $4mn valuation, so he had $2k
  - Sold a lot early and then sold at $40bn and that’s where it is now – public would’ve been very different
- New banks may be what Andreesen is doing – start as VC & get larger, for next 20 years
  - Citadel starting as hedge fund from dorm and now top-tier investment bank, doing everything – exchange, conglomerate
  - Partnership that can have trading stocks, wealth management, lean beast with trust/access – 2.5% fund without GS
  - Private becoming so large because of the liquidity area there
- Josh as being equally funny and smart, not caring about markets – gave a sponsor to Morgan and Jesse Livermore (pseudo) and Twitter explodes
  - Motley Fool for 10 years, contractor for 7 years – LA first and then Seattle, then Alexandria for 3 years – only time he’s had a desk and office
  - Wife went to grad school in Baltimore to move them out that way
  - Motley Fool as bigger than you think – P/E mistake, big tool and screwups to learn a lot about mistakes
    - Joining Collaborative Funds (Craig Shapiro splitting time between NYC and SF) was easiest decision, but leaving MF was hardest of his life
- What really can set you apart is not writing a check anymore – everyone has a checkbook
  - What do people know about you? What do you stand for? What is your vision?
  - If he could write what they wanted to read, it would draw back some attention to what they’re doing and standing behind.
- Went to plenty of conferences, 4-5 a year and learned to speak – had a CFA Institute where he was the interviewer
  - Did keynotes for Motley Fool, video made it to Washington Speakers Bureau and started to do that
  - Several dozen talks a year now – wasn’t the plan original (2016 as first year)
    - Doesn’t sketch out an idea, write out an outline – just knows that he enjoys some part and how to contextualize it
- Spends majority of his time going on walks to “write” – tough for him to grind the gears
  - 95% of his investing is house, checking acct and 3 Vanguards funds – saving dollar-cost-averaging there, since he isn’t really writing checks
  - Thinking about “enough” – 8% is fine, 10% would be nice but not worth stressing (says opposite of type A)
    - Odds are low to beat market, same with running – 3 miles is enough for him, doesn’t need to do half marathon
    - Biking for 1 – 2 hours, knows the burn, won’t need to do more
  - Why Howard says Andreesen’s model likely to make a difference
    - For Howard – indexing, 90% there and 10% to try to beat
  - If it bothers you, why are you torturing yourself? If you need to scratch the itch, take a small enough.
  - Hates idea that Vanguard gets to pick the 500 companies for him, not a fan of $5mln raise if you can do on $1mln
    - Similar to Risk gm – don’t start Europe, east Aus is better
- Indexing as Robinhood vs Vanguard – somewhere in between (not robo), but just de-selecting the companies you may not want to invest in
  - Feel better, maybe hold on more during drawdowns – incentivize riding the wave
  - Example from Morgan about mom hating Monsanto (then he pointed out she owned some – she wanted to sell)

Paralysis of Planning (Notes from Oct 7 – Oct 13, 2019) December 12, 2019

Posted by Anthony in Automation, Blockchain, Digital, education, experience, finance, Founders, global, Leadership, marketing, medicine, questions, social, Strategy, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
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Hello everyone! It’s been forever – a few weeks. That wasn’t my intention and my head’s been spinning around topics. However, nothing was clearing up idea-wise, at least enough to fit something in. As writing is an intentional habit of mine to try to memory-dump and stay organized, the slowdown has been a poor fall off from my routine. We’ll get it back.

I forget where I’d read it first, but there are some long-form bloggers who said just writing to write daily has helped them get to coherent, well-written posts about once a week. I may try a medium there and plan to write 3-4 days, even if it’s brief. Let’s see what comes of that (on initial thinking, I’d like to get 1 or 2 of those data-focused).

Last week, I attended #HustleCon in Oakland, which is focused on entrepreneurs (mostly non-technical) and the strength of pattern recognition and actions on ideas. A few of my prior posts have mentioned the flood of information available, so long as you have a plan to go through it. It’s likely why I found it funny to hear various founders with their “definitive” takes on fundraising, hiring and culture building processes. It’s possible the thing they all agreed on was just to focus on the product/customer feedback. The rest was completely in the air – some swore on fundraising and it was easy, others thought it was only necessary to scale to size they wanted later, some wanted to just get large customer traction, etc…. There’s no single track except your own past experiences. That’s the one track for ‘worked’ vs ‘doesn’t work’. Everything else has examples on both sides.

The commonality aside from product/customer-focus was in reflecting on actions – can you test an idea? Can it sell? Will there be a proper response? Is the response as you expected? Iterate from the basic idea that you had to begin with and see if you can’t improve it further. I am starting to agree that there are many ideas that fix many things we each interact with – our experience (usually bad) influence our ideas to improve them once you have that “I wonder why it can’t be easier – or why can’t it be done like X”. Acting on that idea to see if you can fix it is at least better for you and a handful of likeminded people – “2x improvements”. The iteration to move from that to providing an easier/painless/smooth/updated experience is the rest. And that determines success/fail of the business (if there was one). That’s a large jump but one that I may unpack in the future.

I think the notes below contain a solid mixture of hope for the future, business building, medicine and exploration.

Trae Vassallo (@trae), founder at Defy.vc (Wharton XM)
- Looking at focusing in early-stage connected software companies
- Avoiding stigma of young and white and male – although that’s lore/myth, despite what we see in SF
  - Founders as average age of 40
  - Very diverse, including in their portfolio co’s
- They lean on founders who they may have backed before
- Attending Stanford for Bach, Masters and MBA
  - After undergrad, interned at Boeing for summer before realizing corporate wasn’t really for her, true engineering
  - Had more of a design mind – Ideo (design firm) kept intriguing her in SF
- Niche for funding between big moves and some that don’t want massive venture deals – thought it was common enough to fit
Seyward Darby (@seywarddarby), Editor-in-Chief at The Atavist (Wharton XM)
- Discussing paper
Amazon to Deliver Healthcare, Google Quantum & VR/AR (16 Minutes on the News #10: 9/29/19)
- Cost of employer-based healthcare just passed $20k annually for the first time
- Often hear about “At least Amazon doesn’t deliver healthcare” – their position in the market is the source of fear
  - Haven’t hired nurses or physicians, partnered with Oasis
- What would counterpart for realities of healthcare working
  - How do you integrate into supply chain of broader healthcare landscape (Amazon as just inserting into primary care, not others)
    - Primary care is a minor part of total spend
  - Game for startups is to get distribution before incumbent gets innovation
- Oculus – advancing AR/VR very quickly – selling as fast as they can make them with Quest
  - Hand-tracking is working much better, technological advances
  - Verifocal lenses – different ways for seeing 3D
    - Big Screen as watching 3D films – true eye separation, although in VR, you don’t see great depth
- Eyes trade off high resolution (central) compared to the outside which would be low res
  - Mobile GPU for glasses as less powerful but improving compared to ones that are plugged into the pc
  - Enough users where developers can be incentivized
- Quantum computing as here – yes, but not broken for cryptography
  - You can run a computation / calculation on quantum computer
James Beshara (@jamesbeshara), cofounder at Tilt (20min VC FF#031, 1/22/16)
- Micro-crowdfunding platform, founded dvelo.org for crowdfunding loans and donations to poverty-alleviation
  - Then moved to friends funding
- Khaled as co-founder – said “he’s the luckiest thing that happened to company”, introduced by a friend
  - 26 yr old running strategy at Rackspace – needed someone to develop because he didn’t have the development skills
- College kids as the largest demographic here – wanted to make crowdfunding very easy
- Fundraising process for the two of them, trying to get investments from real estate, oil & gas, hardware – didn’t understand
  - Were in ATX and had to do value prop for 90 seconds – duh?
  - Got into YC and grinded until that point, even for raising $500k
  - Helpful for Series A – growth graph that they didn’t have for seed
- Destination in mind for investors – standalone, durable company (likely public)
- 5 years away – building crowdfunding platform and taking it mainstream
  - Update: Didn’t make it.
Bryan Johnson (@bryan_johnson), founder of OS Fund and Braintree (20min VC 1/25/16)
- Bought by ebay in 2013 for $800mil, and launched OS Fund with $100mil in personal capital to benefit humanity
- Extend human life, replicate visual cortex, reinvent transportation and food
- Key question of building technology and the world we want – governmental systems improvement
  - Balancing returns – money is a tool of power and influence
  - Can be decades and he’d be fine with it
- Interested in materials science and rearrangement of atoms – raw source inputs, business services and how to consume them
  - His portfolio is mostly genomics and synthetic biology
  - Has a sizable chunk of experts that they get advised by on specialties
- Blockchain technology – thinks of the start to the printing press
  - Tools of creation and platforms of creation are hard to predict what would be next
- Fav book: Shackleton’s Endurance Voyage, favorite person: Craig Ventur
- Most exciting recent investment: Ginkgo Bioworks
Kamran Fallahpour (Director at Brain Resource Center in NYC) and Geoffrey Woo (CEO, Founder at HVMN) Brain Hacking (Wharton XM, Dot Complicated)
- Bryan Johnson on Brain Hacking and founder/CEO of Kernel, not a matter of if / when
- Coming to Brain Resource Center: both children and adults, ADD, ADHD, brain injury, migraines, anxiety
  - Families with kids with attention issues or doing fine but want an advantage
- First do a brain mapping using EEG – over- or underactivation
- For Geoffrey, he had friends after Stanford trying to make machines or robots smarter, better and more efficient
  - He wanted to wonder how he could get humans to perform better – tinker with the body
  - Cognitive functions as being why we’re above the animals – n=1 experimental starts
- Pubmed research articles on nootropics, reports on Reddit for chemical stacks, substances that were supplements or foods
  - Prescription or off-label, scheduled drugs legal or illegal
- Improved sleep as best biohack, exercise for cardiac health and now regular exercise/weightlifting as brain cognition
  - Neuroplasticity growth and improving brain functions – any way to stimulate the brain, puzzles/language/out of comfort zone
  - Plateaus when looking at neural feedback
Andres Barriga (@andresbarriga), cofounder of Portola Growth Partners (Wharton XM)
- Chilean venture capital after business school in the states
- Growth in LATAM – primarily western countries and then up to Mexico for growth
- Talent is starting to be attracted to possibilities
- They got 3 US funds to invest
CRISPR! Policy, Platform, Trials (16 Minutes News by a16z #11)
- CCR5 gene as preventing HIV
- Alliance of 13 companies in the space to not do germline editing, but would still do therapeutic somatic cell genetics
  - Genome that runs the body and the one you pass on to generations – germline
  - Somatic cells will not be passed down to future generations (eyes, liver, etc…) and germline would
- 1970s had discovery of recombinant DNA – tech to cut/paste genes
  - 1980s had genetic applications outside of the body – initial cut healthy copy of gene and put into virus and stick into humans
  - Late 90s – patient Jessica Zellwinger – can’t randomly do gene splicing
  - Talons – gobbler proteins – zinc fingers took forever to remove mutated genes but would take PhD students months and $10ks
- Emergence of CRISPR as way to treat disease, in short order
  - Gene therapy, CRISPR, engineered cells to treat cancer, for instance
- Legislation in California – preemptive for what could go wrong and how to be productive
  - What if the kit is used improperly
- Applications – ex-vivo vs in-vivo (outside of bodies compared to in)
  - Vehicle/delivery compared to the load – which is ex-vivo and can be Quality Controlled
  - Eye as initial in-vivo CRISPR use since eye is immune-privileged (bacterial components of delivery)
  - CAR-T therapy for cancer patients – usually send cells to get edited and then put back in
Sarah Hum (@sarahhum), founder of Canny (Indiehackers #124 10/7/19)
- User feedback tool, feeling the pain of the data and trying to combine customer data
- Just crosses $50k MRR – team of 5, transparent and paying team with money they make
- Digital nomad – she was in the same place in SF with her cofounder – quit her full-time job but wasn’t making much
  - Team of 2 was easy as she traveled initially, couple
  - Indiehackers Courtland with his brother – know how to argue and disagree
- Had done quite a bit of hackathons – worked at Facebook for 1.5 yrs before starting
  - Worked on Messenger as product designer – felt limited by what she wanted to do
  - PD is ~20%, she’s learned about marketing and pricing and sales otherwise
- Started Product Pains as a community for people giving feedback over things – didn’t monetize initially
  - Had a community of 5000 people that primarily did consumer products
  - Rebranded to turn it into b2b and monetize – could change products with Product Pains (give them feedback, for instance)
  - Andrew had worked on team working with React – teammate had asked him after he left about what he was doing
    - Started using Product Pains to get information about developer pains – still a big mechanic
- Eventually they had companies join Product Pains who asked if they had a widget
  - Didn’t have widget initially, but they asked if they built it, would they pay for it? Basically said yes – $19/mo
  - Had been 3 months after she quit to rebrand and launch as Canny
    - Had to get a pricing page going for payments
- Get Satisfaction around 2008-2009 as Yelp for customer service / user feedback that got a ton of investor money
  - Raised $10-20mln and cratered in a short amount of time
- Launched Canny on Product Hunt as a good initial feedback and went to Oct ’17 for profitability (hit Hacker News)
  - May / June talked about digital nomads – week or so before leaving and took off – first little tour of US and then went to London
  - 26 cities in 2 years, Seoul as reliable cafés and wi-fi – Nomadlist and about a month in each place
- Writing 200 words a day – blogs every week then are almost 1400 words
  - Levers to grow a business (via Patrick Cambell, CEO of ProfitWell)
    - User acquisition – blogging, product via word of month
    - Monetization – pricing, how often to charge, how to upgrade, paid plan, etc
    - Retention – how long do people stick around
- Pricing strategies: haven’t tried freemium
  - SaaS, thought about – started initially at $2/mo (cheapium)
    - They’d have to chase people for this
  - May be a good time to try again – never set it and forget it – should be able to charge more for it
  - Tried to charge based on people as what they thought it was the business / how much willing to pay / user base
    - As they figured out the market niche, they landed on the best to target
- Having monthly goals and try to develop features or business things to help achieve those
- Hiring – her never being a manager
  - Helping people do what they’re supposed to be doing and supporting their jobs
  - Openness as key – working together much of the day and being on the same page, feeling good
  - They do 3-4 meetings a year
- For 1-2 years, they have quite a bit they want to build, features to grow bigger
  - Can see Canny working for larger businesses that have reached out – catered to small/medium-sized so far
  - Giant impact with very small teams
Amir Haleem (@amirhaleem), founder / CEO of Helium (talk on AVC / USV port co)
- Former esports champ in 90s, during dial-up days
- Dial-up days – most competitive time for internet access, separation of those that provided services
  - US Robotics for modems, ISP like Speakeasy, telephone co like Verizon
  - Once internet got adopted and page loads enlarged, they merged
- No option to use dial-up, cable appeared – “Internet got terrible”
  - Cable provider merged with ISP – physical lines vs provider
  - Comcast in SF as his example – local loop – LLUs – similar to telephone providers originally
- Google Fiber – became extremely challenging for them to dig – cities wouldn’t let them dig, so they converted to wireless
  - 75-85% of customers use whatever the cable company gives them
  - Hardware in home – LoRa network or “sharing” hotspots to clog networks
- Cellular market as too expensive soon, maybe contraction
- Net neutrality – internet access as common carriers (2015)
  - FTC won’t mandate to cover common carriers
  - Net neutrality was only rules that were in place to rule against – until it died and how we govern ISPs
- Cool companies in the decentralization of the internet
  - Orchid: tor-like system and rewarding nodes
  - FileCoin: store files anonymously, encrypted and hashed out
  - Brave: forced https and ads blocked, Tor as tab version
  - Helium: how to decentralize wireless links to base, especially with 5G and unlicensed spectrum
    - Blueprint of mesh of open technologies owned and operated by those that own and use the internet
- Helium: IoT of low power sensors, tracking devices, network devices for access by others
  - Fundamentally do it and reward people with coins for holding it and for others to use it
  - Talking about using applications for the IoT world
    - mentioned the fires in NorCal in ’18 and not being able to tell the air quality within 20 mi radius
    - IoT seems to be ripe for improvement but hasn’t seen the network yet
Dennis McNannay, CEO & founder for Curadite, Inc (Wharton XM)
- Bioscience focus on medicine adherance

Push back from a Raise (Notes from Sep 30 – Oct 6, 2019) November 27, 2019

Posted by Anthony in Automation, Blockchain, Digital, education, experience, finance, Founders, global, Hiring, Leadership, questions, social, Strategy, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
Tags: #business, books, community, content, education, experiences, finance, freedom, ideas, life, marketing, Money, questions, reading, research, shopping, social
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In the Bay Area, it’s inevitable to see and come across people celebrating rounds of fundraising, especially via the internet/news/Twitter/tech scenes. Primarily this is the case if you’re involved in start-ups, VC, finance and related meet-ups or online communities. Those are often great results for the investors (probably not celebrating, otherwise), but not exclusively great for the team of the company. Hopefully the raise or exit is by choice, part of the strategy in the short and long-term that the founders/team had in mind to either grow or expand or keep doing what they’d envisioned. Execution of the strategy and for it to go as planned is celebratory, don’t me wrong – but it’s a means to an end, not the end.

I don’t want to complain, but I think, along with many others, that the celebration of these types of wins give the wrong feedback for what constitutes celebration / achievement. This is simply a byproduct of this being the most visible / public part of a company’s journey, and certainly an investor wants to share what they can (especially seeing as they have plenty of updates that they’re often not allowed to disclose). Funding raise and new rounds, once public, allow them the chance to congratulate and feel accomplished on the journey. Though, really, capital is merely providing readiness to the next step.

The opposite side of this would be in sharing numbers, customers and wins outside of funding, a company/founder leaves themselves open to competitors or unfavorable partnerships/cycles/etc. There ends up being an information asymmetry that could be detrimental to the business. Or, worse, put it out altogether. Somehow, I find that even if you’re sharing in an effort to be transparent, at this current business climate and consumption of business/funding, there would be those that may complain even about a seemingly arbitrary high-margin or poke holes in pricing, despite offering a seamless customer experience, high value to a business or create ample time value for the enterprise. I’ve seen a few bootstrapping/side-project companies go from transparent early and once they hit traction, the growth and curve stage will prioritize the privacy of the business going forward. Who can blame them once there is the semblance of confirmation of a growing business potential?

I wanted to bring this up and I hope in the future there’s a designed method to somehow make more company information public/transparent (Baremetrics is one such company trying to make it more accessible). Maybe it will be an aggregation system that anonymizes data but has enough companies in certain spaces that you can compare (sorry consultants, that probably gets rid of quite a few of you). I think that would be a new frontier and create excitement that would get people other than investors and exit/money-focused-seekers on board with the true fun/value of creating something.

Hope you enjoy the rest of my notes!

Thirteen Minutes to the Moon
- Ep. 8: We’re Go for Powered Descent
  - Final 13 min begin in this episode
  - The team, on this day, will either land, abort or crash. 102 hours and 12 minutes into mission, 2 minutes 53 seconds to the acquisition
  - 1 million miles away at 1mi/sec moving toward the moon
  - Program 63 to determine when and where to fire off the engine – how to point for the proper trajectory
  - Radio link was lacking once they were in view, again – needed this to get telemetry data, for instance
    - Go or no-go for descent based on stale data and then had to make it through Michael Collins to relay to team
  - Lunar module was going 20 ft/s faster than it needed to be – if it went to 35+, they’d have to abort
    - Radar pointed at surface and ready to lock on – said that it’s going too fast
    - Episode 2 on Steve’s point of view on how the overloading machine – Eagle’s altitude vs estimates sense
  - High stress at that point, 150+ for Armstrong at 12:02, even though they weren’t doing anything at that point
    - Had to prioritize the mission critical tasks and lose some of the computer functions
    - Computer was diagnosed – delta h coming up was problem for P1668 – lot of alarms and wouldn’t have to do operation cognitive load
- Ep. 9: Tranquility Base
  - Halfway down, about 16000 feet above surface
  - Fuel as critical, but said as Fuel 2 gauge – needed a bit of gas when they land
  - P1202 Eagle computer coding too hard, overloading – repeatedly as they get to 2000 feet and 50 ft/s
    - All flying done by Eagle – thrust, rate of descent and flying (no video displays)
    - LPD (Landing Point Designator) – where to look for landing zone on degrees
  - Gas for hover level and below hover level – timing from controller within 10 seconds
  - 10 years and 400 engineers finally landing on the moon as they hit contact light – fall and shut off with 18 sec of abort time
  - Had dust kick up as falling – caused jerky movement and couldn’t see surface
    - Had to go through stay/no-stay calls to be ready to leave within 40sec of landing
  - Watch used for the timing had changed times because his daughter kept on timing herself as a twirler – he sent it to Smithsonian
Reshma Saujani (@reshmasaujani), CEO of Girls Who Code (Wharton XM)
- Author of Women Who Don’t Wait in Line
- Discussing how her failures running for public office as motivation to continue working
- Wanting to work at things you’re bad at (compared to an
- athlete repeatedly being told to perfect)
  - Guys will naturally have these things that they are poor at but continue with them, either out of enjoyment or otherwise
  - Girls often only want to do things they’re good at
- Not quitting a job, potentially, because of the comfort and not wanting to be bad at something
Barry Zekelman, Exec Chairman and CEO of Zekelman Industries (Wharton XM)
- Discussing being nearly broke in 1990s and then again in early 2000s
  - Getting lean, working on the business and margins
  - Got a $bn offer from Russia steel conglomerate in headed into 2008 – fell through with crash
    - Said this was one of best things that had happened to him
- Having the right people
CEO of Mirror.co
Patrick Conway, CEO of BCBS-NC, How to Pay for Healthcare based on Health (a16z 9/6/19)
(@patrickconwayMD)
- Started as state resource – TX – teacher unions, PNW – timber, NC, and 2 Blues brands (cross / shield)
- Need a willing payer to drive change, virtually integrated system at a state level (doesn’t think you can do it with single provider)
- All drivers of health and healthcare – biggest driver of readmission to hospital, couldn’t get transportation home
  - If you had to give a bus token and they had congenital heart failure – chance of seeing primary doctor – some will pick people up
  - Hospitalization and drugs for biggest costs for health care
- Food insecurity – failure to thrive
  - Hospitalized kid for lack of food cost $40k (could have fed kid for years)
  - Had a for-profit payer that was confused on why they were doing it – huge, positive outcomes for child obese
    - 10-15% of population, churn for term (vs near-term) – insure people often for decades, right thing to do
- Insure 60-70% of population so they can look at long-term view
  - Some countries will measure outcomes (churns may pay toll, or collect toll) – Medicare Advantage for 3-5 year cycle
    - MA instead of paying for service, you pay for health plan for year and they get better plans for controlled care ($0 premium)
  - Broadening investment window so they’ll take care of you
- What rarely happens (but more effective) to think about what makes the system better – policy proposals
  - Autism arena: here’s what you need to do in benefits, coverage and here’s a child/mother that brings personal side – data for effect
  - Drugs: pharma says PBM and middleman (senator called him Chair of the Death Panels) – wanted to pay for value for drugs
    - Everyone was against it (pharma lobby and doctors vested in drug prices going up)
- Interesting areas for real progress
  - CMMI Innovation Center for delivery system reform – bipartisan and paying for value
    - Social determinants – opportunities/drivers for health polls better with Democrat and Republicans (will pay taxes, uncommonly)
  - Effectively coordinating care across silos (especially with food, housing)
    - Ear infection – can click a button and it’s instant but for a kid that’s hungry, it takes forever – needs to be the same
- One of the board level metrics in company is food insecurity for the state – think they can bring it down 20% (state is 20% – some counties have 9 of 10)
  - Looking at partners for data analytics for screening, identifying and getting the next step – close the gap
    - Any state in America: who in the state is food insecure, needs housing and transportation
      - CDC data measures on an annual basis compared to real-time – needs to be at-scale through technology
      - Build the connectivity – scripts are now all electronic, for instance – clicks button to cosign
  - Benefits for scale across multiple states – investing in same things, data analytics, CX, seamless platforms, tech – accelerate pace of change
- Second day at BCBS was retirement party for Brad Wilson, former CEO after 20+ years – governors, CEOs, 1000s of people, donations
  - Fundamentally different than a national payer – not the same connective tissue than them for NC and Oregon
  - Partners across state (like theirs with Cambia) does drive value, lower cost and improve value and care
  - If you dominate a market and price set, it has negative effects (can’t recall any 2 hospital systems that merged where costs came down)
    - BCBS reduced individual costs by 5% driven by value-based arrangements with providers – UNC said they were willing, Duke said no
- Building the link between tech and total cost of care – new shiny thing “AI” and data and ML – what does it do?
  - Connective tissue has to go to outcomes and costs of outcomes – his hypothesis is for the companies to focus on the actual problem to solve
- Value-based care – independent physician groups (larger, organized) are the best
  - Hospitals are least successful
  - Advanced primary care models – compensation for primary care goes up, including down to provider level – most payers pay 6% (8% at BCBS – 10%+)
    - If you spend 10%, you get better health outcomes at a lower cost – become front door and invest in care management
  - How do you integrate and treat mental health conditions
- EY’s concentrate on administrative fees – he’ll guarantee savings of $15-30mln “Don’t know”
  - Guarantee he’ll beat them on price, then get them to join – done it multiple times, making it simple
  - “Don’t believe our simple math? Fine, we’ll guarantee it.” Every business is a healthcare business.
James Cameron (@jamesdcameron), investor at Accel (20min VC 1/20/16)
- Focuses on marketplaces, enterprise software, security and fintech
- Founded BipSync, SaaS-based research platform for investment management and was on tech banking team at Morgan Stanley
- Corp lawyer at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in London, Hong Kong, and Shanghai
- Aussie originally, wanted to get out and went to London and worked with M&A and IP law in UK
  - Law wasn’t for him, tried some other things like Morgan Stanley – went to SV and Stanford after a few years
- Pitched at Accel for BipSync and was turned down initially before getting the role he has now
- Ton of time on planes covering massive geography – methodical, premeditated approach with a prepared mind with ideas/areas
  - Helps identify what they want to find in great companies – prior year, looked at API companies, web hits
  - Uber, HotelTonight, InstaCart all connected and built on other people’s services and API – Apx conference
    - Algolia and Jason Lemkin, French company – CartaDB mapping company by API
- Opportunistic approach for being at right place right time – relationship driven and warm intros, relationships with VCs or angels, meeting early co’s
  - Approachable, open with events
- Exciting among B2B and enterprise, IT Infrastructure, security space (from UK to Israel)
  - Docker and container ecosystems – shift from VM to lightweight containers
  - CrowdStrike, Israeli one (country with 8mil ppl with more NASDAQ-listed companies than all of Europe, Japan and China combined)
- Expanding industries – Ireland, Spain along with typical start-up ecosystems in Europe
- Reads a lot of history books, Peter Akroyd, classics for Crossing the Chasm – scaling enterprise software companies
- Favorite blog – lots of Medium articles, but “The Morning Paper” for science explained simply
- Favorite founder for Will at Deliveroo – sheer willpower
Farbood Nivi, CEO cofounder of Coinmine (Lindzanity 9/25/19)
- First time on show was in April with BTC at $5k
- Randomly taking an Ambien or Adderall
- Coinmine – automating financial world, interoperable mining whatever exchanges to BTC at best rate
  - Handshake mining parallel DNS
  - Facebook and Shopify as the 2 main consumer markets – Shopify makes it so easy, Facebook – he said he’d give $1mil / month
    - Instagram is too good as a physical product and sharing
- OpenSource wins because of practical revolution – F500 can use them for better software for 200 less engineers
  - All big tech contributes to open source community
- Original Linux administration / system admin predicting 8th and 9th layers of internet
  - First 4 layers (OSI model) – data and physical layers, wiring, packets, buildings
    - Customers were academics, companies were Cisco, IBM, Deck winners
  - Internet portion – apps, websites are layers 5 through 7
    - Users, session, front end application layers
    - Businesses and eventually went personal
      - IBM, Apple as winners of business chunk (hardware, software, services)
  - 8th layer is finance, 9th layer is governance
    - First protocol was Bitcoin for finance – first solution for this layer
    - Discussion of governance – open protocol (vs closed protocol of army owning / developing it in the first place)
  - Tezos – really defined governance model, for instance
- Citizen tech for 8th and 9th layers – replacing a functional piece of society with Bitcoin participation
- What could go wrong? Gutenberg press as example – people sharing nasty things vs lead to Renaissance, Enlightenment
- Framework that captures societal level – sovereign individual (too big a word, book was good) – citizen / societal
- Problem with money being pushed in, formal understanding (YC as a factory, don’t leave the machine)
- Act like the CEO – service worker, just managing people above and below, provide services to entrepreneurs
  - Need to get out and have epiphanies by traveling or face-to-face with people

What’s Important for the Business (Notes from Sep. 16 – 22, 2019) November 5, 2019

Posted by Anthony in Automation, Digital, education, experience, finance, Founders, global, Hiring, Leadership, marketing, questions, social, training, Uncategorized.
Tags: #business, community, content, experiences, finance, humanity, ideas, Jobs, life, marketing, questions, reading, research, social
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Ah, the art of learning. What can you absorb in the time that you allotted? Hopefully it was the good stuff, the one you can apply and remember. We’re not going to retain it all – far from it. Different surveys and studies will say between 10-30%, depending if you’re reading, listening, seeing things. Repetition, talking about details or applying what you’re picking up can improve those numbers – and it’s why there is still a ton of money being raised/made on improving it (Blinkist, Anki, Quizlet, rise of audio books and podcasts). This is all without bringing in the idea that the internet has allowed such a flood of ideas that opposing ones can exist simultaneously, persisting through its strong supporters. So, if you’re not doing research and coming to your own conclusion, it’s likely to be lead to whichever way you resonate with someone/something most (or first).

In reading through Constellation Software President’s letters to shareholders, you see a valiant attempt at conveying how he, executives and board members looked at the business health for the year – and refreshingly so, not explicitly through rose-tinted glasses. He critiques and suggests an option that reversion to the mean is possible based on a lower adjusted net income and cash flow from operating activities per share. Then he went through the shareholders returns on invested capital, average invested capital, and questioned the organic net revenue growth’s performance (as he notes that this is a primary core to the main metric for their performance: ROIC+OGr). Once he goes through the metric and it’s cash flow, he mentions that they’re looking to increase acquisitions, but the environment isn’t conducive to great values, so FCF may not be fully invested at attractive levels for the future. Then, he suggests a metric to cover this with a reasonable pattern, one less subject to shareholder alterations. Open to suggestions while he develops the reasoning for what another member has suggested for a good metric, he settles on FCF increase per share compared to average net income per share.

I loved his breakdown for the shareholders – mentioning half the shares trade for the year. He breaks it down simply as short-term, indexers, enterprising investors (including institutional, but also generally long-term, long-haul holders). He openly asks them to help find directors and members of the board and the difficulty that they saw initially after their IPO. The next paragraph was a big one, so I’ll include it:

Qualified and competent Directors are very rare, and not surprisingly, the track record of most boards is awful. According to the 2017 Hendrik Bessembinder study of approximately 26,000 stocks in the CRSP database, only 4% of the stocks generated all of the stock market’s return in excess of one-month T-Bills during the last 90 years. The other 96% of the stocks generated, in aggregate, the T-bill rate over that period. This means that 4% of boards oversaw all the long-term wealth creation by markets during that period. Even more disturbing, the boards for over 50% of public companies saw their businesses generate negative returns during their entire existence as public companies.

Wow. A) The recognition of wanting to be the best and provide a great board of directors for a long-time and B) genuine concern for the long-term view and suspicion of complacency arising. Both, I’d imagine, lead him to mention that vision / strategy are not necessarily courses of action – instead, perpetual objectives as the guiding point. Whether that’s seeking them out or maintaining what they had, he made sure it was top of mind. He sees that profitable VMS businesses may no longer come to be acquirable, and that he’s on the lookout for other opportunities – without them being attractive, though, he’d responsibly return FCF to investors.

Interestingly, he looked for Constellation to be devoid of “sycophants, mercenaries and spin-doctors” and wanted it to be a place where meritocratic results bring in “entrepreneurs and corporate refugees to invest their lives and and their capital and thrive”. Quite the statement for a business of such magnitude, when, especially from the outside, many succumb to the former (hell, take a look at Tech Twitter these days and a complaint I’ve had is that people seem to be comfortable bouncing between 2-3 companies a year for 5, 8. 10+ years). I’d love to build something that sustained a drive through many levels of employees.

“I find there is no magic to managing and leading. If you are smart, work harder… treat people fairly, do not ask them to do anything would not or have not done, share the credit, keep learning and keep teaching, then pretty soon you have followers. If you make sure that the team members are energetic, intelligent, and ethical people….”

Yup. That’s the way to build a company. Find that and hold on. And then he finalizes with the board requirements (which I’ll include at the bottom).

Hope you enjoy the notes this week.

Mike Strasser (@mstrasser), Motiv ring founder (Wharton XM)
- Talking about the ring and how he knew the wearable would work
Lee Thompson (@flashpacklee), Flashpack founder, Marketing on a Budget (Wharton XM)
- Photo journalist for 15 years
- Talking about creating a brand through pictures, story-boarding, ethos of brand
- If you can’t tell what your hook / pitch is, probably won’t sell
- Went on first date with his now-wife from Match, wouldn’t tell him a great business idea
  - Post-wine glasses, she had a business idea for 30+ year olds wanting to travel – friends having too much of a family/kids
  - Adventure travel company for solo travelers in 30s and 40s, not tours via bus and such
  - Next few dates were researching travel industry, setting up a business
- Book trip as solo traveler, then have others that you are meeting everyone else
  - Boutique hotels, price points established and like-minded – typically well off in careers, cash-rich
- Launched with $15k each, savings and jumped in
  - Nobody would spend $1k+ on trips for a company that had no reviews
  - Generated a lot of PR, did a lot of viral videos by responding to twitter hashtags
  - Spent on Google ads and lost lots of money – built the website
- Took a trip to Egypt on a budget, “come to Jesus moment”
  - If I can get on top of that and take a picture (Christ the Redeemer picture of a workman doing damage repair)
  - Wanted to take a picture on top and took a selfie
Mehrdad Baghai, Alchemy Growth cofounder & CEO (Mastering Innovation)
- Boutique strategy advisory firm advising large companies on innovation strategies
- Designing organization architecture for growth, 5-10 years
- Active investor in tech and p/e spaces with Macquarie Group
- Former partner at McKinsey leading Growth Practice and then 3 years as Exec Dir at CSIR, Australia’s national science agency
  - Dozens of new tech companies
- Also launched High Resolves with his wife, Roya, in 2005
Fred Destin (@fdestin), GP at Accel (20min VC 1/18/16)
- Former partner at Atlas Venture working with Zoopla (public), Secret Escapes, Integral Ad Science, Dailymotion (acq by Orange), PriceMinister (acq by Rakuten)
- Studied life as derivatives at Goldman Sachs, first team on credit derivatives
  - Securitization of movie rights, derivatives in Pacific region for about 7 years
  - Opted out when it went from risk hedging to arbitrages
- Moved to Speed Ventures for investing at really early seed
- Spending a lot of time hiring the best 1-10 executives because you can’t spend time getting this wrong
  - Take a model that worked in 1 city (like Deliveroo), scaling it to 30+ and got there in under 3 years old
    - Fit consumer model and offering for the ones – brought new kinds of service to non-delivery food
  - Seed companies failing because you hire something you don’t understand – wrong team kills the team
    - Second mistake – overestimating the things you can do in the time – reality doesn’t match
- Setting arbitrary goals for not being worthy of being funded – most companies run out of money or come close, being patient and empathetic with founders
- Investors need mental plasticity for adjusting expectations on what to best deliver
- Founders feeling screwed over because it was never possible for them to communicate the right decisions being made
  - Mix of market difficulty or overambitious of timing – how to improve intimacy and mutual trust
- He likes to spend 3-6 months knowing founders – wants to do strategic sessions, whiteboard issues how you would solve it – discovery and disagree
  - Can work through disagreements, see how people work collaboratively
  - Engineer a situation of tension – hiring / decision made, create it to see pushback
  - Could we do an 8 hour wine test / road test – can we banter and have a pleasant time being together (Boston to Montreal, London to South of France)
- Needs to ensure performance and milestones, sounding board, interest of company / employees / customers and investor with fiduciary standards
  - Had to tell guys at Real3D and say that they couldn’t invest – told them early, though
  - Mentioned Boston VC that said he’s said “No” so often that he just fizzles out – Fred said he tries to give constructive feedback but not always
    - He used to send very detailed No emails but would receive replies about not understanding opportunity and pushback – called stupid or not getting it
    - Now he responds with “Busy with other opportunities”, but sometimes he has things fall through the cracks
- Favorite book: Mastering Margarita, missing and saying No to successful opportunities – doesn’t rue or look back like that because portfolio co’s do well enough
  - Success measure – how long it takes for knowing (16 years for him), took 10-12 for success as investor
- Wasn’t super excited about returning to London but was pleasantly surprised about how vibrant it was – still US is more tolerant about money and quicker pace
  - Competitors share, acquisitions are faster – Accel moves fast so it’s advantageous but not overall
  - Boston wants to import the well of technical talent and ML – hubs working together in Europe will improve it
Thirteen Minutes to the Moon
- Episode 7: Michael Collins: Third Man
  - Command module pilot for the mission
  - Test pilot before being selected as an astronaut – 90% luck he landed in that role
  - Someone wrote to Eisenhower that the best option for selection for astronauts would be experimental test pilots because apt to new scenarios and flight
    - Compared to deep sea divers or others
  - Collins had been turned down the first time to supplement that first 7 – after a year of more experience, selected in class of 1963 with Aldrin
    - First flight was 1966 on Gemini X, rendezvous and docking maneuvers
    - Once LEO Gemini flights were successful, Apollo XI was announced in January 1969
    - July 16, 1969 – launch sequence day – was responsible for launching lunar module to turn it around from Saturn V rocket
  - Was an English major and just did guidance verbs/nouns memorization to control it
  - As they neared moon, they were on far side and lost contact with Houston
    - Takes back everything bad he ever said about MIT – accuracy of system was ridiculous, 3000 ft/s and only had 0.1 ft/s in any one direction error
    - If something went wrong for landing lunar module, Michael couldn’t change his speed but it’d be up to him to figure out what to do
    - Mathematicians were responsible for coming up with a list of 18 variations for problems and what to do – some they hadn’t trained for
  - He felt alone, awareness of being on the other side of the moon, solo after Aldrin and Armstrong picked up speed on their way down

CSI Board Role Search Criteria
THE ROLE
Thought Partner – Thought partner for senior leadership.
Long-term Orientation – Unfazed by short term pressure. Focused on CSI’s long-term issues.
Timeframe – Able to serve on the board for 20+ years.
Investment in CSI – Willing to make a significant equity investment in CSI, above and beyond board comp.
THE CANDIDATE
High Quality Business – Understands what constitutes a high quality business.
Autonomy -Appreciates the motivational power of autonomy, decentralisation.
Cultural Fit – Respects and gets along with the current senior CSI management as well as the board.
Ownership – Believes in the motivational power of equity ownership.
High Impact / Low Ego – Will intervene when necessary, contribute meaningfully, but not dominate discourse.
Out of Kitchen – Can resist the urge to get into the kitchen when there’s a chef already in there.
EXPERIENCE
Builder – Helped build or maintain (as a director, manager or major shareholder) a large
organisation (>1000 employees) over an extended period, while providing a superior
return to owners (ideally including employee owners).
Decentralized – Experience with a decentralised company (nice, not necessary).
Capital Allocation – Experience in a capital allocation role (nice, not necessary).
LIKELY BACKGROUND
Family owned business operator or director.
CEO / #2 for exceptional business.
Entrepreneur
SEARCH PATHS
Multi-generational family owned businesses with high ROIC within reach of our
network and ideally local to CSI (increases involvement, eases reference checks, more
likely to know CSI, decreases absenteeism).
High quality businesses with strong shareholder alignment.
Great capital allocators in the corporate world.
CEOs with great shareholder letters and high quality businesses.

Unapologetic You (Notes from Sep 9 – 15, 2019) October 25, 2019

Posted by Anthony in Digital, experience, finance, Founders, global, Hiring, Leadership, marketing, medicine, questions, social, Strategy, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
Tags: #business, Amazon, books, community, content, experiences, finance, freedom, humanity, ideas, investing, life, marketing, medicine, Money, questions, reading, research, social, sports
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Every Sunday morning comes in The Profile newsletter to my inbox. It’s a great collection of what drew her eye on the week that focuses on profiles for individuals, good, bad, successful, unsuccessful, notorious, secretive, dangerous and generally people of all ilk. They’re almost all interesting, some more so than others. But yesterday, it caught my eye when Polina introduced the newsletter about her personal experience growing up and the first convention of being different. In reading it, I could see a bit of the problems and commonalities in many students I have seen over the years. And more than that – the ones who I’ve had the most enjoyment in teaching – were those that were unapologetic about who they are.

Many, as kids, were still working through it, but they were questioning the very thing Polina had described. And that’s of increasing importance as we get larger and larger webs of interconnected communities. The aggregate and the averages tell us how we should be or what you’re expected to score and how you fit relative to the rest. Rarely, if ever, does the crowd define any/every individual, though. The sooner we can all wrestle with that concept, the more comfortable we should be. Starting and doing a newsletter, for instance, should be as simple as writing what interests you. Yes, as it resonates and draws others in, there may be some curation to optimize what you decide to make it. And further, it’s probably good form to have some consistency in producing it (frequency/length/formatting) but that’s up to you, the individual.

I’d like to think that people want real, genuine thoughts, and less gimmicky writing. As an aside, that doesn’t mean people don’t consume if it’s not genuine – I just would venture that as soon as you break the mold on what APPEARS real (if actually not) would cause an uproar – as we see via YouTubers/Twitch streamers and even in some blog/vlog stuff. An act that is an act has an end, but an audience doesn’t then know what it’s getting. People don’t typically like change if it’s different, even if it may be “better”.

The best part of all of this? You get to choose what you want to do. Make the decision that makes you happiest and assess the aspects of your life that don’t. From there, create and prioritize how you may make the changes that lead you in that direction.

There are many people that I listened to over the course of this week.

Jen Stirrup (@jenstirrup), Data Whisperer & created consulting Data Relish (Data Skeptic 9/6/19)
- Deploying data science and impacting businesses
- Last mile of analytics problem – interesting work and how to finalize to take to production
- Cleaning data properly, putting data into dashboards for proper business intelligence – how long does it take to get to reports?
  - When you get reports, how long is your time to question (vs time to answer)?
- She takes them a health check and tries to check out where they are vs where they should be
  - How clean is data, what are the real problems
- Microsoft doing ML Ops and how it can fit into support, how to look after something when it’s gone live
  - Humans don’t want to appear stupid, so they want to be correct before starting
  - Start with end in mine: what are you trying to do?
  - Think about quality of data: still sees bad, missing data, incomplete data and things that they don’t use
- ML Ops examples of solutions – email management, how do you manage it
  - Program can reach the end bound email, what it can do with the email (cs dept with automated service and pass hard emails to people)
- Good customer success can be a chat bot – limited and what it can do but proper
  - Easing productivity issues – maybe tell me your phone number or putting in information to the chatbot to the crm
  - More and more requests for serverless technologies – spoke to university about container technology
    - Research can give the container with the paper and give to someone else to validate it
    - REST APIs or serverless or others can glaze over eyes if talking to business but others, early adopters, jump on it
Natalie Hampton, Founder/CEO of Sit With Us, Inc (Wharton XM)
- Talking about not having any background in coding, her art teacher pushed her to pursue it
  - Wanted to build the app and just found people/classes
  - Bullied and her art teacher was the one who would keep her door open for her
- Pledge to use the app – figure out that adults were using the app, as well
  - Good for conferences, schools, colleges, workplaces

Henry Ward (@henrysward), founder & CEO of Carta (20min VC 4/12/19)
- Carta helping private, public cos and investors manage cap tables, investments, and equity plans
  - $147mln in funding from K9, USV, Spark and Meritech
- Originally tried a version of Wealthfront and Betterment called SecondSite – never got off the ground
  - Met Manu, who introduced problem for financing infrastructure easily in private companies, providing liquidity and power
  - Noticing executive half-life of about 18 months (say, $20mln – $70mln – then again from $70-200)
    - Companies scaling from 150 to 500 and then after that
  - People scaling linearly but companies scale exponentially
    - If an exec isn’t scaling, they don’t say “Let’s hire a VP of FP&A to support execs weaknesses” but instead “Let’s replace CFO”
    - Why is it true? – Any particular problem in scaling a company, can find someone that’s done it before.
      - Founder is keeper of the mission – can’t replace that but job changes a lot more
        
        Smaller, personal relationships and people understood him for best intentions (but he’s a gunslinger and off-the-cuff)
        
        Less mulligans for him as they’re larger now – Jeff Lawson at Twilio had ran into someone for printed t-shirts and Jeff said “not a fan of color”
      - His job becomes very specialized – story for employees, candidates, investors and press; 2 – right execs in right place
- Was sole decision maker in early stage and he still is but he said it was a liability
  - Fewer day-to-day decisions to make but it matters more that they get it right and understand the context
- Investors thinking of markets in terms of size / how big could it be / what’s competitive advantage
  - Happy going after conventionally small sizes but he looks for 1 of n – microstructure economics / territory will support multiple competitors
    - If you win market, creates a defensive ability and that’s n of 1 – 1 platform (as ‘small’ cap tables)
    - By owning a market of 1, you have the platform to dominate others
      - Markets were too small – any market would run out of oxygen, so you need an org that can go further in places
    - Data network effects could block all other entrants
  1. Have to be n of 1 market
  2. Have to have a business model that creates n of 1
  3. Needs innovation on customer acquisition model to quickly take over market share
- In b2b – do you have a product that gives entry to commercial businesses?
  - Product and technology advantage are short-lived – best companies own lines of distribution, not great products repeatedly
  - Can go acquire great products and push them through distribution – both through M&A and through manufacturing
- Their biggest issue – tying all pieces of network together – 10k companies, 400 a month acquired, distribution to vc – managing electronic stock
  - Law firms are power users of product but don’t have product that tie them all together – linearly
- They love services markets adjacent to what they do – commodity product differentiated by brand – funded administration, for instance – 4-9a analysts
  - Paired a product team behind services group so the 4-9a runs at 70% margins – automate them to software
- Goal of R&D is how much value can you provide – go build it, otherwise they won’t
  - Of value created, how much can be extracted – like keeping them as independent variables (when to extract)
    - Early stage, add ton of value and then deliberately say they don’t want to extract much – leave a lot of consumer surplus
    - Investor products: want to extract a lot of value but provide a lot of value and change these decisions (as markets mature, get larger)
- Favorite book: Essays of Warren Buffett
- Economic discrepancy is enormous and how to bring wealth to more people – Carta mission for more owners
- Keeping investors up to date monthly and they love getting board members involved in the company (especially when they have 100 investors)
  - Meeting with VPs or execs to do weekly meetings of sorts
Joe Banner, President & CEO for Browns, Eagles (Wharton Moneyball)
- Discussing needing to find udfa at a time when it wasn’t sexy – needed talent, and cheap
  - Only had 5 draft picks, late rounds mostly but had to fill a roster of 22 more
  - Brought in all of the undrafted free agents and eventually had 20% playing, few starting also
- Making sure to prioritize talent over anything, not overvaluing high draft picks
- Culture of change with placing a system around high valued guys who others thought were low value
Alina Trigubenko, Founder & CEO of Awarenow (Wharton XM)
- Holistic and integrative nutrition
- Corporate and enterprise customers – consumers within those that will do it
- Calm / Headspace – next level and how
Shawn Burcham (@PFSbrands1), PFS founder, Open Book Management (Wharton XM)
- Being from the midwest and going to Tanzania for farmers
- Keeps open books, shares with employees, prices with farmers
  - Has 60% more return for farmers and will even return cash (after being above fair price and world commodity)
- Daughters played on same soccer team as John Sacks – read the book and was interested in changing to open book
Tim Chen (@timchen82), CEO of NerdWallet (Leadership in Action – Wharton XM)
- Going through board – including AMEX former CEO, Jim (both from Series A investors)
  - Board as governance body, weakness on exec team, okay with level of risk
- Initially believed he had to be smartest in the room but quickly realized the organization had to be working together
  - Have to switch mindset from point guard to coach – from Dalio
  - Investment committee – reasoning behind requests and resources, exec team reads through it and approves or not
  - Executive team depends and changes over time, common for product dev
    - Marketing, Product, Design, Legal, Eng, People, Content Heads
    - Monitoring (leading exec team similar to parenting) – irrelevant for what you say, but seeing what you do is the arbiter of what’s going on
      - Rewarding and punishing as consistent or constructive
    - Culture for what is okay and what is not, role of hiring and inspiring an adequate team to grow company
      - Maybe they don’t have right network for company, maybe can’t inspire
    - Have to be technically proficient in their space
- Went from very niche product to being widely known once they started covering nearly all financial products consumers cared
- Seeing around corners to bring himself and the org up the hill and grow
  - Surrounding himself with execs and others, getting named one of Top Workplaces in 2019
Adam Davis, CRO at Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment (Wharton XM)
- Discussing on-ice and on-court revenue for Devils and Prudential Center
- Coming and expanding Prudential Center into what it is now – leading entertainment center
- Up to 49 concerts recently, more than Devils games
  - Data driving who wants to go to games, concerts and how that can be used to improve experience
Rare as One Project, CDCN, Dr. David Fajgenbaum (Wharton XM)
- Partnering with Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
- Collective network and how do you widely adopt principles for other diseases
- Partnerships with hospitals / care providers
- Having a different background between Penn and medicine, MBA – not great for those that don’t have 5+ years
Nick Johnson (@NLJ1), Principal at Applico (Wharton XM)
- Author of Modern Monopolies
- Discussion of platform businesses and linear – trying to combine
- Encouraging linear businesses to, where applicable, try to get into platform business – didn’t provide any concrete details how
- 3-5 strategies compared to 5-7, where hard for CEO and board to stay the course without “being 1% of 1% of CEOs”
- Seemed to only mention Amazon, Airbnb, Walmart, Alibaba, ebay
Kulveer Taggar, founder & CEO of Zeus Living (20min VC 5/31/19)
- Raised $14mn from Initialized, NFX, Floodgate, YC, GV and Naval Ravikant
- Co-founded Auctomatic with Stripe’s Patrick Collison and sold for $5mn
- Angel investments include Boom, Airhelp, Meetings.io
- Went to work at Deustche Bank and had a friend who had started a company at 15 selling computers, went to uni and offered a PR role
  - Eyes open to entrepreneurship and SV tech start-ups, just before finals got to come to Bay Area and Google office
  - Cofounder Joe was moving from SF to Palo Alto because his wife got residency – took weeks to try to get home rented out
  - What would be the UX quantum leap for your problem? Joe’s problem sparked the idea
- Go to website, type address for your home and it gives you a price – you hit rent
  - Inspired by Opendoor, Stripe’s 7 lines taking payments, lot more rental data
    - Offer to sign lease with homeowner, gain data and solve the problem on demand side
- All being impatient and learned that long-term horizons could’ve been better after hearing Zuckerberg/Bezos
  - Being intentional with culture – lot of fun – 5 guys in 2 br apartment where things may have gotten too far
  - Create collaborative environment
- When you rewrite code, have to redo processes as well in tech-enabled
  - Acquiring and creating physical things – David Han at Instacart said thinking about output
    - Surface area of inputs: Zeus has to be good at many things
      - ID R/E, Pricing, Assessing, Designing, Furnishing, Marketing, Awesome CX, Marketplace matching
    - Then, you can get the output
- Garry as having a conviction quickly – sees something that can change and invests quickly
  - CoinBase – liquidity crunch and he wired money instantly and is supportive
- YC had an experiment funding teams w/o ideas – did it with Srinivas who’d done it
  - Got a check w/o any idea (had done YC in 2007) and YC had scaled a lot
  - NFC technology – was too early for scaling pmf and got into NFX with status app – status on your phone
  - Felt like he’d spent 3-4 years of working on stuff and hadn’t gotten anywhere – taking market risk with what you’re building
    - Instead, create a list of top 20 things by $ amount spent
    - List of top 20 things by $ amount frequency
  - If you have to ask whether you have PMF, you don’t – yanking your head forward with your nose, for instance
- Did 6 weeks of data experiments, conversions tests, 6 weeks of qualitative research talking to users, investors and r/e
  - After 2 months of diligence and testing, partner at NFX sent him a test: In 6 weeks, get 10 homes on your market.
    - What’s margin structure, is there a market? Strangers controlling home.
  - Took about 4-5 months
- Vulnerability strengthened his leadership, can’t be perfect CEO with all answers – motivated to go for culture
  - Once a quarter off-sites, “if you really knew me…” building stronger connections, team bonding
  - Work is where you have your professional self and you bring your whole self, manifests in itself
- Fav book: Midnight’s Children – historical fiction with India told; How The Mind Works by Pinker
- Change the bragging culture in tech – raised this much, vanity metrics and being counterproductive – not open or genuine
- Running into a bottleneck will use software to break through – automate something that may have been manual processes
Michele Romanow, Founder & CEO at Clearbanc (20min VC 5/10/19)
- Wants to spend $1bn in 2000 companies for access to capital
- Founded SnapSaves, mobile savings platform acquired by Groupon and before that, Buytopia, one of Canada’s top ecommerce sites with 2.5mn
- Engineering, started a coffee shop on campus
  - Figured out worldwide supply sturgeon caviar was down by 95% due to overfishing Caspian Sea – built to east coast for fishery
  - Chefs couldn’t get product, so they had a ton of buyers – giant recession in 08 as 21 yr old in luxury good space
    - Went to ecommerce space, didn’t raise funding, bought 10 competitors – controlled CAC and low
- Canada’s Shark Tank – Dragon’s Den – do 17 days of filming back-to-back, see 200 startups
  - Had a father and son who wanted $100k for 25% equity – really needed $100k but realized she could do different deal
    - Wanted to see Facebook ad account to make sure ROAS was what it was
    - Companies spending a ton on early CAC
  - Estimate that 40% of VC dollars go to Facebook and Google ad spend and marketing
- Works for positive unit economics and spending a lot of CAC – any ecommerce company, 70-90% spend cash
  - Subscription boxes, consumer apps/subs, b2b box even – can fund it for way less
- Data science time has to be very good – not lottery tickets, 6% is ideal for them
- VC as true risk capital – 0 to 1 risk, crazy piece of AI, solving disease, then it makes sense
  - If you know channels are working and repeatable, should be able to get capital
  - Comparison of Gates at Microsoft IPO or Lyft (50% ownership vs 3%)
  - Just celebrating when founders give up control / piece of company
    - Milestones for products, hitting 1mln users, etc…
    - Funding
Antonio Garcia Martinez, author of Chaos Monkeys (Launch Pad, Wharton XM)
- Comparison of Seattle and SF and NY
  - SF being loud, Seattle being quiet but not necessarily huge, NY has less loud but big
- Good mixture of deciding where to be

Inference Isn’t Just the Data (Notes from Sep 2 to Sep 8, 2019) October 14, 2019

Posted by Anthony in Automation, Blockchain, Digital, experience, finance, Founders, global, Leadership, marketing, questions, social, Strategy, Uncategorized.
Tags: #business, community, content, experiences, finance, Google, humanity, ideas, life, marketing, questions, reading, research, social
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Internet has enabled more data, but that’s not necessarily a good thing for most. I’ve seen this for all ages – somehow, this deluge of information provides a glut where, instead of doing more research (because more is available), we seem to do less. There’s a laziness that has arisen, where the least amount of work is done because the sources are abundant. And this is problematic. And emblematic for what has transpired over the last decade with the web 2.0.

I say that it is problematic, but I do suspect it’s actually created a ton of wealth. The opportunity of doing a small amount of extra effort to sift through or provide a more nuanced/researched view in order to extract a ton more value from a wider audience is awesome. That’s never before been more evident or available to a wider group of individuals. Especially when, with nearly the world online, communities that would normally (past) not have had markets, all of a sudden have vast reach – internet enabled the connection across many neighborhoods/cities/regions/countries/continents. A magical thing for those that wish to do the research, put in a bit more work, and most importantly here, share the work for the public, at the cost of potential exposure to those that disagree or have reached a different conclusion.

I, for one, am all for this abundance. A sharing of differing opinions and agreement or stories of anecdotes allow us to bring more data into the fold. That should enhance any inference/analysis on the information brought to the table – and real applications, at that. However, like many good things, there will be a small portion of people that are bad actors or looking to just ruin the good derived from a community or topic. Also, may see plagiarism or curation that doesn’t really add anything – worse, monetizing the curation of something where the value isn’t created. For 100 people, 1 bad actor would still be 99% good. 99.9% of 10,000 people is 10 bad. That’s a fair amount, but when you have a commonality among the people where some join for the purpose of providing poor information, or unproductive data or ruin the experience for the rest, it can tear it apart. And that’s becoming harder to gauge, I’d imagine (rise of community managers and insertion of social data and other related ‘checks’ inserted).

So that I can get off this little soapbox, I wanted to bring attention to those that have so far only consumed information – please share and try to bring some new insights. It will hopefully bring in a new person that sees it – refreshing eyes can be useful on new information- we all have different experiences. And for the bad actors, hopefully there’s an end goal that does provide some value – it’s tough early on but the right communities invite opposing views to allow others to draw conclusions. Inferences aren’t merely opinion on the shallowest, easiest data to gather, but rather a collection and reflection on a set that may agree or collectively provide information to allow a deeper understanding.

Enjoy the notes I had from this week! I do suggest going through the a16z podcast 16Min on the News (for news from the week).

Apple Card, BEC Scams Fed (16 Minutes on the News #7, 8/25/19)
- Became available this week – partnering with Goldman Sachs and Mastercard coated white and titanium
  - Apple moving into financial services, no typical sign-up fees or late / overdraft fees
- Apple as reinventing existing categories repeatedly, so even changing basic stuff like making the transparency feature
  - Reminder of SMS and Innovator’s Dilemma (making money in core with new business on horizon because you’d cannibalize yourself to enter)
  - B2b2c as incentivized to grow – GS not a big consumer lending (Marcus last 2 years), but can drive growth
- Offering 3% cash back when purchasing from Apple, 2% with Apple Pay, 1% from card – incentivizing payment mechanism
  - Interchange fee is expensive but if they become default payment mechanism, they can pivot
  - Money as emotionally driven vs functional and product – making sense in rational isn’t the move
  - Nobody wants to budget just as nobody wants to diet – instead, automate small financial decisions to help achieve better outcome
    - Self-driving money: not having to make the decisions to optimize your financial life (too high friction or don’t know about them)
- GS with $350 to acquire customers – traditionally, credit cards have been onerous
  - Future: everyone should have access to payments via unsecuritized debt without great credit
    - People that are creditworthy with great credit scores but those that never pay bills and have bad credit
    - Overly negative in a different sense (ones that are almost wealthy that end up getting in trouble)
- BEC scams – business email compromise
  - More than doubling each year – big deal on security
  - Sending email messages to send money – better technical systems are now just asking individuals (social eng as most effective form)
Ben Lorica, Chief Data Scientist at O’Reilly (Big Data Beard 8/13/19)
- Future of Big Data with O’Reilly’s
- Would take handle “5g” or something related for the future
- Collecting, aggregating and normalizing big data now – business intelligence reports, simple averages or trends
  - What else can we do? Improve or automate processes/workflows or extract higher revenue from systems
  - Natural evolution and what are the bottlenecks for the AI / ML processes (are you early stages, models in production?)
- Quintessential marketing for hype but developing a use case for the application
  - Tools for labeling data, data programming
  - Mentioned how to do ML with demo and user cases for interacting by Product Managers – SF O’Reilly conf
- RPA with proper use case and proper implementation (close to the task)
  - Successful organizations have figured out how to bridge that gap – technologists with communication/collab on business side
- On open source side, TensorFlow and PyTorch as top 2
  - Data science side – announcements about internal data science platforms to work together (share pipelines / features / models) openly
  - DataBricks, one company that he advises, also works on delivering enterprise data science platforms – IBM, cloud vendors
- MLFlow as DataBricks’ for managing and tracking ML development life cycle
  - Monitoring alerts for retrain model, feature drift, deploy model against live data (simulating on live data but not production)
  - Model governance as tools that excite him – highly regulated industries like banking, financial services – what models and metadata
    - When was it last touched, trained, on what data, etc…
- Managed services based on open source – managed Spark, for instance – minimal log in
  - If I have a better model but worse data, the better data should win, and that’s what drives competitive advantage
- Big push toward hardware space – training at the edge or even model training in general – specialized hardware for accelerating DL / ML
  - More researchers working on data cleaning and data repair
  - Snorkl from Stanford researchers – easier for more people to use the product
  - Reinforcement learning – he’s most interested in UC Berkeley’s RISE Club’s REY (sp?) – distributed computation platform in C++ low latency
    - Building on top of REY as Odin – can cover 80% of Pandas, faster and other libraries
Frank, Chief Business Officer at Edge Sports/Analytics (Wharton XM)
Becky Miller, co-founder & CEO at Tinyhood (Wharton XM)
- Wanting to connect with other supermoms and doing a community
- Deciding to do parenting classes online and helping subscriptions
Josh Phifer, co-founder at Barn Owl (Wharton XM)
- From Wyoming / Nebraska ranching, went to Wharton
- Starting with water sensors but wasn’t quite working or gaining traction, thought drones would work initially
- Pivoting as they were running out of money to find a product – camera with satellite / cell connection from China sourcing
  - Bootstrapping about $175k from friends and family
- Camera use case – all kinds of agriculture applications for checking – can send picture via app, timed or on certain amount of times
  - Solar and battery powered
- Obsession over the problem, not marriage to a solution – feed the need
- Initial app created with Bubble.io, introduced at Wharton – low code solution with logic programming
  - Hired on an employee – electrical systems who could help with building out full app and logistics
Mark Nathan, CEO of Zapari (Mastering Innovation / Wharton XM)
- Discussion of moving from engineering, building stuff to the medicine / insurance field
- Not necessarily working on analytics, but collecting and informing consumers and other stakeholders
- Doesn’t foresee regulation as a hindrance, since what they’re doing isn’t predicated on that
- Primarily started with SoCal, Medicare and getting adoption from pharmacies – assisting nurses on customer service end with their call center, ex
  - Not set up to deal with pharmacists or customers, can alleviate this and help with people fulfilling prescriptions
JD Long, VP of Risk Management for Renaissance Reinsurance (Data Framed #37, 8/27/18)
- Starting in R stackoverflow asking questions / answers and building the community with Mark Driscoll
- Graduated in undergrad, starting masters and asked where PhD’s were going (of Agri Econ): answers AMEX
  - Due to SAS and mainframes, UNIX, R-Cran hadn’t started
  - AMEX was explicitly recruiting in 1996 for these economists because of modeling, coding messy data, crop insurance, regression (econometrics)
- History of cultural agricultural yields, weather and prices from before 1996 – which was agricultural crop insurance start
- Simulate and stochastically getting a bunch of results that give you an idea of the distribution of the model
  - He does very little predicting of what may happen next year – looks at shape of distribution for the following year
  - Looking at improbable 1 in 1000 results that may be possible in that distribution
  - Book: “How to Measure Anything” – what’s the highest and lowest estimate
- Risk vs uncertainty: Risk is understanding underlying distribution but not sure what you’ll get; Uncertainty is not knowing the distribution
  - Flipping a coin has risk – can model the probabilities if you know the coin, but uncertainty would be not knowing if the coin is loaded / biased
  - Auto insurance is type of product that is mostly risk, less uncertainty – predictable patterns, historical distributions and tail events
    - Terror events – historical categorization of events but no reason to see world events as drawing from the distribution of that
      - Unstable random geopolitical events, component of risk vs higher uncertainty
- Reinsurance with risks that can be correlated based on underlying physical relationships, such as homeowners insurance in NYC should be correlated
  - Hurricane Sandy would be something that hits everything there
  - P&C companies with casualty claim could be connected among multiple companies
  - Legal change in framework could cause claims to increase 15% – have to understand the correlation when aggregating data
  - 2 distributions can be added or correlations using copula – artifact of some other process
    - Model data should be containing it already but this is only way to insert
- In 3000 BCE, Babylonians had disaster contingency – loans didn’t have to be repaid if losses happened for certain events
  - Edmond Haley (Haley’s comet) created modern-style mortality table in 1693
  - Lloyd’s coffee house emerged for shipping news and buy shipping insurance (turned into Lloyds of London – marketplace now)
  - 1992 – Hurricane Andrew recharged after ripping Florida and hit Alabama and Louisiana – big catastrophe for reinsurance companies
    - Hurricane reinsurance was a gentlemen’s game – big contraction of market after Andrew, filled by crop of reinsurers in Bermuda
    - Became a quantitative analysis market after this – turning point of reinsurance, reasonable proximity for US and capital-free
- Heuristics that make certain assumptions for the modeling of both finance, insurance
  - More effective models for sharing and coming together with actuaries, risks and methodology
  - Data science examples, actuaries methodology that would be working together (GLM combined with understanding on actuary side)
- If asker of question made it easier on the question answerer (on example for Stack Overflow)
  - Incomplete code or maybe not syntactically right so the answerer cannot answer it properly
  - Empathy for the receivers of your opinion or problem or otherwise
  - If doing analysis to equip underwriter for a deal – what information does the underwriter need to be well-equipped for negotiating their deal
    - Influences and drives thinking of how to serve that analysis / information
- “Hacking empathy”: from Agile development method would be User Stories
  - Hugo is a data scientist who is trying to understand X. He needs this tool to do Y so he can understand X.
    - Forces the person to do this to think about that user or other person
    - Think about who is consuming it to give nudges or reminding someone – doesn’t think that way
  - At DataCamp, how active or users or learning profiles that they are aimed at
    - Designing for average, you design for no one from podcast “99% Invisible”
    - Give target audience a name to relate to them; multidimensional space for ‘tyranny of mean’
      - If you have 3 dimensions of human body (leg length, height, hand size, arm length, etc..)
        any 3 with a small margin of error will be merely 6% of pop
- Where is market opportunity? Met with a headhunter in space.
  - Deep learning and AI for media and ink spill – interesting and have potential for revolutionary changes.
  - Former guest Jenny Bryan who talked of attempting to get people out of Excel – massive movement there, he believes
- If we don’t ask “Does our analysis change the outcome?”, we can do infinite analysis since it’s all that we don’t know
  - Never drive organization. Leaders should have candid conversations about if the research is going to change the answer of the decisions.
    - If it’s a no – why put resources toward it?
    - What’s the next best simplest alternative? Not comparing to doing nothing.
      - Deploying a complicated model should be compared to old forecasting method or cheaper, faster one. Is the added complexity worth it?
  - Hugo tells them to deploy basic baseline model, do 20 min of EDA and try to make own prediction. Then test the models against that.
    - In public policy, effectiveness isn’t against doing nothing, it’s the next best. Benchmarks are too often done at base.
    - “Plot your damn data”
Matt Lieber, cofounder & President of Gimlet Media (20min VC FF030 1/15/16)
- Produced radio shows Fair Game and On Point, worked as a management consultant at BCG
- Radio producer was his lifelong dream after being a radio head growing up
- Met Alex Bloomberg after his MBA and consulting, who is the cofounder – left to go learn business side
  - Distribution to big audience, too many gatekeepers, market-by-market he had to go to program directors to pick up the show
  - Exciting thing, creative, ambitious work was happening there
- Constraint breeding creativity – raising a series A
  - Had launched 3 or 4 shows in first year, scaling to some audiences and had worked
  - Revenue from start, ads in the beginning – VCs didn’t want to hear about those
  - Believed they could self-fund through profits, growth with revenues – don’t need to dilute, maintain control
    - Would need to build up the company after building some shows
- Keeping small culture – fairly strong but not explicitly communicating it yet
  - Behavior of leadership and design of signs – started Gimlet Guides around 25 employees for onboarding
    - Gimlet Guides are the mentors for establishing new employee onboarding – lunch once a month, questions
- Wanted to get a partner for VC who was aligned with the vision, experience investing in media for different return timelines and dynamics
  - Sea of change of how a whole generation will consume radio and shows
  - Simplest, direct way for market – size of radio ($18bn+ in US in advertising alone) – digital for mobile media market
    - Consumption shifting to mobile – advertisement doesn’t work (Gimlet is ~80% mobile)
- Deciding how to make new shows? Question from someone
  - Mentioned “Surprisingly Awesome” – people want to be entertained and learn something, recent ep was interest rates and economy
  - Teamed up with Adam McKay and Adam Davidson for it
  - Learning, listen and come away with some understanding, a host to connect with and is there a narrative
- Mystery Show, Reply All, Startup and Surprisingly Awesome are all the biggest shows
- Favorite book: Great Plains by Ian Frasier, didn’t have an emulator
- Challenging aspect of creating it: scaling editorial where you create a system to grow and teach editorial material
- Most excited about the next shows – this case, a podcast about podcasts called Sampler
- Best advice: Be nice.
Abhinav Asthana, Founder of Postman (Wharton XM)
- Talking about why he loved building more than what he had done previously
- Community for that

Fostering a Community (Notes from Aug 26 – Sep 1, 2019) September 23, 2019

Posted by Anthony in Blockchain, Digital, experience, finance, Founders, global, Hiring, Leadership, questions, social, Strategy, training, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
Tags: #business, community, content, experiences, finance, freedom, humanity, ideas, Jobs, life, marketing, Money, questions, research, social, Time, training
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What a crazy couple of weeks! And it’s not likely to slow – I’ll give some more information behind that very shortly. Exciting new things on the horizon, though – and ones I’ll be proud to announce when I can. August provided a lot of clarity in direction – good because it wasn’t exactly restful.

I mentioned it in last week’s post, as well, but I’ve been hyper-aware of the people around me interacting, enjoying and laughing over commonalities. It’s at every level, though I peruse coffee shops far more often than other places. Interesting stories are almost expected. If you refer to my reading list, you’ll notice a new one, Dignity. As part of a book club, I was hesitant and unsure when it took the lead because of the topic – primarily drugs/poverty/downtrodden/unlucky collection as reported, but halfway through I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how much perspective Chris provides. I can’t help but draw that fixture of everyone has their own experiences that provide the lens through which we draw conclusions on everything else. Endless and it’s very tough to remove ourselves or step back – especially with things we’re unfamiliar with.

Ultimately, though, everyone wants to share their experiences with others – whether it’s some depth of despair, depression or building a community, religion, or hiring employees to work with or spending time for fun and adventure. We’re human. We spend time with other humans. There’s a reason we’ve survived this long in groups and why the solo artists end up in peril – this is completely generalized but in MY experience, I’d say I see a truth in this.

Kate Shillo, Director at Galvanize, mentioned her journey for Martha Stewart’s media company to Galvanize where they help businesses grow with their people. Morgan Dunbar, at Bendigo Partners, discussed his involvement in AIR – summit and conference for sharing ideas/businesses for financial services to hopefully rise all boats, as they say. Mike Vernal, at Sequoia Capital, went through how Facebook’s earlier years helped him with approaching problems and the finality of decisions – what they’ve fostered for the boards he is now a member of. He tries to understand the start-up and the founders view of the problem after a quick determination of if they know the idea enough. Others, which I only caught pieces of, had similar views.

I hope your community, whatever that may be, is productive and positive – helping you gain what you’d prefer from it.

Kate Shillo (@kshillo), Director at Galvanize Ventures (20min VC 1/13/16)
- Investing in hardware and future of IoT
- Got an interview with Martha Stewart’s Omni Media and she was temping for her – living in NYC 2007
  - Would have an idea in her company – create, build & continue w/ mini incubators
  - She wishes Marthapedia was made – hasn’t done it yet
- Wasn’t quite stimulated enough in 2007, she quit and bought a surfboard – 6 months later she was back in NYC
  - Had met Kenny Lerer (around in interviews) – met before Martha with an internet newspaper (Huff Post)
  - Took a huge pay cut to do some research on other startups as Kenny was on the chair for Huffington Post (~30 employees)
    - He was chair at Betaworks at that time, too
  - She was the human tester for Betaworks (only other one to test)
  - Helped launch Ken Lerer Ventures (Lerer Hippeau Ventures) as formalizing process for his angel investing
- Help of having Huffington Post (sold in 2011) as starting propelled them into NYC market – unheard of at the time
  - Market down, nobody investing in seed – writing small checks at Lerer “Go by Betaworks and Lerer Ventures is there”
  - First content investment was Food 52
  - Consumer tech pics – paperless post, Warby Parker, Bottle Bar, BarkBox
- Galvanize (continuous learning – helping businesses and their business grow – new archetype in higher ed)
  - Galvanize Ventures with 3 partners – all of elements to provide their startups
  - Early stage – small, idea from pre-seed to series A (seed process), reserving for follow-ons
  - Small markets like ATX, PHX, SLC to get in – coaching co’s along the way
- 48 investments in 2 years
  - Consumer mobile-heavy so far, her excitement in hardware – starting in 2014 was IoT hotbed
- Crowdfunding as a bit of advertising, validating customer interaction and capital as gravy – her opinion
  - Shipping product is usually a hurdle – many people don’t want to invest without seeing this
  - Reflecting on Lerer investments – seeing market share of her old portfolio companies
- Size of fund is $10.2 mln, $100k checks for pre-seed, seed and series A – get priced out for series A
- Favorite book: God of Small Things, misconception for VC: that it’s easy (no control for company sometimes but exciting when it works)
  - Sourcing vs existing portfolio co’s helping
- Favorite apps: Moment app, Twodots (betaworks), Slash, Sunrise calendar, Pant, Wildcard and Venmo at the time
- Recent investment: msg.ai empowering brands for messaging platforms ecommerce
Morgan Dunbar, partner at Bendigo Partners (FYI 8/5/19)
- Capital Market Space within FinTech as principal investors
- Was mostly on sell-side for analytics on portfolio construction – with Citi Group in Tokyo in 2009 running Japanese equities
- Bendigo – early stage fintech companies with bias on capital markets, retail, middle and back office
  - Advisor practice with institutional, private equity, large enterprise in capital marketers
  - Transaction advisory, operational consulting and strategy around fintech ecosystem
- Bill Stevenson partner on AIR Summit – 2013 creation for invitation-only for senior buy/sell-side pros to discuss high-level themes
  - Alpha Innovation Required (AIR) – invite ~20 emerging fintech cos to speak to a use case for front office (alpha generative)
- Traditional VCs have a fundamental lack of operational understanding in capital markets
  - Secondly, long sales cycle in businesses – thousands at enterprise level vs millions in consumer
  - Regulatory that can be scary without expertise
- Artificial Intelligence as just replicating a process (as opposed to intelligent)
  - AIR focusing on people, organization, talent and cultural alpha
  - Tradition, trust, not new – center for innovation and trying to do something, be empowered for innovation and development
- Google pushing into asset management other than cloud, data and analytics
  - Asset managers may start looking at Google like Bloomberg – help build portfolios, vendors to tap for alpha
- If buy-side problem, then sell-side has a problem, fee compression (growth of passive) – active vs passive (value for performance)
  - Robos (whether or not they’re worth valuations) validated demographics looking for low-cost access with simple UI and intuitive
Mike Vernal (@mvernal), Partner at Sequoia Capital (20min VC 8/26/19)
- Citizen, rideOS, Rockset, Threads & Houseparty board
- Spent 8 years at Facebook as VP of Product
- Sequoia – Brian, led A to join board for his roommate’s company and his former PM at Microsoft started a co in 2009 and Brian joined
  - Joined Scouts program early on
  - Had first child a week prior to 8 years at Facebook, took paternity leave to reflect
- Really enjoyed Facebook first few years – tremendous energy and optimism to create something from nothing
  - Early stage founders in a garage for idealism and irrational energy, switched to Sequoia (been there 3 years)
- Entrepreneurs that can explain entirety of business in 3-5 min, rest of meeting is the details of the pitch
  - Feedback cycle for great and enduring company – decision-making is a short or longer memo and reading through them
  - For his mistakes, thinking and writing and playing out future – each case was instinctually being interested but not trusting instincts
    - Try to be rational and analysis-driven
  - More importantly, internal conviction on a company, founding team and working on
  - If not at Sequoia, would he go work for that company?
- Terminal and non-terminal decisions – once you’ve made it, you can’t make it again
  - Do something, if wrong, do it again – try to hire, realize mistake, hire again
    - Pick one, roll out to some, figure if it’s working or not, and iterating
  - Venture – most important is decisions – if you pass a round, you’re done maybe until next round
  - In operations, tempo and learning for decision-making
- Bundling vs Unbundling – past 10 years will be unbundling of SaaS and best in breed
  - SaaS that are more niche – features as something larger, $1 or $2 / ee / mo
  - Thinks there will be a consolidation of the apps, incumbents that will integrate and put them all-in-one (Notion)
  - Meta-SaaS apps that will put them together as the market matures
  - SaaS as software, business software (maybe banks that are on-premise)
- Book: 100 years of Solitude, almost every startup underprices their product
- Time management is the challenge – constant battle, reading quickly and get the ones he finds most interesting
- Verkada as most recent investment – can build a great experience
Kash Mathur (@kashmathur), COO of Chewse (Wharton XM)
- Tracy and cofounders starting it in LA originally, in 2011 before bringing it to SF for 500 Startups
- Attracting Kash in 2016 as they were figuring out SF before relaunching LA
- Corporate culture, enterprise dealing and owning the customer service – blended marketplace
  - Starting each executive, strategy board with a “One thing most people don’t know about me is…”
  - Connecting between people
- Why they have connected Hosts for each enterprise – owning the location, service and whole process
  - Important value and differentiator from other catering companies
Linda Crawford, CEO of Helpshift (Wharton XM)
- Being named top 50 SaaS CEO of 2018, joining HelpShift after Salesforce
- CCO (customer) at Optimizely, as well as Board Member at Demandwise
Rob Farmer, Independent Advisor Study and assets at Schwab (Wharton XM)
- Talking about participants and customers

Your Experience is Your Own, Only (Notes from Aug 19 to Aug 25, 2019) September 10, 2019

Posted by Anthony in Automation, Blockchain, Digital, experience, finance, Founders, global, gym, Hiring, Leadership, marketing, NLP, social, Strategy, training, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
Tags: #business, community, content, experiences, finance, ideas, Jobs, life, marketing, Money, questions, reading, research, shopping, social, Time, training
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I’ve been considering more and more about how my experiences are only mine. Especially when I feel like I don’t share them often. Working so much but not always discussing it with people outside of work (re: almost never). I was reminded of this while I met with a family member who I see roughly once a month or so. When she asks how work is or I mention I’m busy on days when she wants to meet, it often came with a “busy with a meeting at X but can do Y”. Never more. And almost always, I ask how her work is, and she divulges. So when we sat down for dinner and she point blank asked “I have 2 things: 1. Can you help me with something on my new phone? and 2. What is it actually that you do?” I chuckled because generally I don’t care to share that information – I really enjoy valuing start-ups and learning about the space / tech / finance / education changes, but other than high level stuff, rarely does anyone want to hear me talk extensively a la a podcast episode deep-dive or something. They don’t see the relevance, other than it being exciting for me. Same with when I was advising, same since launching the fund and all while working on project deployment in data science for others.

I strongly suggest reading through Colson Whitehead’s essay here about his version of New York City. How it’s interpreted. essay here

Another thing I read through today was Farnam Street’s blog post on asking seemingly simple questions that may be defined or determined by our experiences with those concepts. An example he uses: “What is a horse?” Try to think how we may answer this.
Power questions

AI in the Past, Present and Future (BDB 7/16/19)
- Rod Bodkin, Tech Director at CTOs office in Google
  - Was with BigDataAnalytics, bought by Teradata and grew it from there
- Grew Google after seeing the field advancing quickly, state of the art as evolving
- First people to put Hadoop into production – Yahoo was too scared, single algorithm took weeks at the time
- OpenAI put out state of art compute paper – 4 year paper, 300k X computation (double every 3.5 months)
- For Google, evolution of cloud in the enterprise is a big deal – consumer side of Google as leading the way
  - Can just put data into BigQuery because of capacity and accessibility of data – increased production 4x on data science team
- Big investments into Anthos – open source tech to enable cloud-native services in different clouds, GKE (Kubernetes)
  - Edge TPUs as 100x faster to compute a model vs traditional mobile CPU – TPU as accelerator chip for DL
  - CPU is completely general so less efficient
  - GPU has a boost over CPU but behind TPU accelerators (starting GPU chips, Tensor unit)
- Kaggle Days and Google IO for cloud Pixel modeling and AutoML performing very well
- Herrari’s book – 21 Problems for 21st Century
Tricia Han, CEO of Daily Burn (Wharton XM)
- Community of like-minded fitness fanatics
- Live 365 – 30min shows on working out, regulars
- In survey, millenials said fitness #1 and health/wellness at #5
- Fitness had about happiness equal to making $25k more

State and Future of Robotics, ML and Digital Celebs (Venture Stories, 8/8/19)
- Michael Dempsey (@mhdempsey) – partner at Compound
- Read, Listen, Write, Talk – Cunningham’s Law – share something with a strong opinion is likely to get responses
  - More value when shared publicly
- Robotics, ML as cascading forward – robots broadly, initially – types, how to make them intelligent (2013)
  - Drones, hardware platform (DJI as leader), space and now as unsupervised or self-supervised learning
  - Deep dive on innovation for what he’s spent the last year or two – investments, as well
- Women’s health as growing market for fertility and experience layer in healthcare system
  - Higher-end service around egg freezing (but was shattered by Tia founders), IVF or embryo screening
  - 2 investments for him already in the space, maybe more after
- Strategic robot acquisition for Amazon, why now? Major companies in the space – he’s punted in that space, more investors.
  - Didn’t see meaningful differentiation in the space – didn’t see a company that had that from an investing side
  - Food was where he saw robotics as consistent – grew up in the industry
  - Really easy to get pilots but not for revenue – wants full-stack robotics company
  - Robots taking over entire industry – automated X / Y / Z (rebar, construction robotics)
  - Front of house and back of house retail (analytics, stocking)
- Weird robot applications (in-home, manicures, old person help)
- If company is built on algorithm being best, company probably won’t survive
  - Must talk to people doing operating – not just reading
  - Self-driving cars – spent time with Daniel Gruber, discussing local maximum and rules to write
    - If you can drive in NY, you can drive in SF, LA, etc…. 2007 DARPA challenge Waymo / Tesla / Cruise as result – path-planning
    - Intelligence approach – what are incentives / agents to accomplish in a car for end-to-end approach to scale
  - 1 model to move them all – enough compute that model can solve it (DL is direct function of this, for Google)
- Investment in data labeling space – more people moving into production requires more people getting good data and filtering data
  - Larger data builds where it may cause $50-200mln per year to label but 50% is useless
  - Environmental impact and thinking about it – consolidating data but into better (CartaAI and SkillAI)
- DeepGram end-to-end audio inscription – 80-85% can be good, but if you mess up some key words in certain industries, it’s more expensive
  - Voice side, horizontal players are pretty good – if x% of users will have same questions, simple workflow or algorithms
- GANs and new generation of faces – Disney and animation nerd for a while – power of IP on agencies, CAA for example and Marvel
  - Stories through animated content, Robot Chicken, others – Robert Dillon – bringing in GANs
  - Watching live action is watching someone else’s story whereas an animated one brings you into the story
- Trusting the people that have been given permissions – Reddit or being anonymous
John Roese, Global CTO of Dell EMC (Mastering Innovation, Wharton XM)
- Talking about the 20 year vision to be autonomous but incremental parts until then
  - Driving assist, improved AI in driving, maybe geofenced before autonomous
  - Autonomous vehicles as source of innovation – sensors / LiDar very useful for other industries but too expensive
    - Had talked to studios about virtual studios or conferences – expense should come down with auto
  - Vast problems with uncontrolled or unconstrained problems – already have fully autonomous warehouses or geofenced areas
- Interested in bio feedback as input to AI or MI systems
  - Used example of video conferences with sensing stress levels – clearer audio, accent correction, more people = more stress
  - Cars already using bio feedback
  - People already wearing sensors via devices – can use that as more input
- Attacking low hanging fruit because of data ethics or biased data inputs – easier to solve problems that are valuable in neatly constrained
Amri Kibbler, Katya Libin, Hey Mama co-founders (Wharton XM)
- Collaborate and share and support their work for mothers as executives
13 Minutes to the Moon
- Ep. 06 – “Saving 1968”
  - Apollo II’s first landing – without Apollo VIII, Pathfinder and 250k mi to the moon, maybe gutsiest flight until then
  - Flying VIII before end of year – “We were not ready”
  - 2 deaths of MLK and Kennedy – April had hundreds of cities taking part in riots, thousands arrested
    - 1968 Apollo program was in shock and Saturn V rocket was malfunctioning – troubled test flights
    - Almost busted in all 3 phases the last time it had flown, and the lunar module had slowed down, as well
  - Taking lunar module away from Apollo VIII – former test pilot Jim Lovell said it as Lewis & Clark expedition
    - So many firsts, risks that were enormous on a 100x scale – reason Jim was there in the first place
    - Crews normally had 6 months but VIII only had 4 – mathematicians were responsible for all of the angles and engine durations
  - 1 chance in 3 for mission successful, 1 in 3 for non-crash but unsuccessful and 1 in 3 for not coming back – wife accepted this
  - Media as delivering “death pills” for dying painlessly – respondents would say oxygen would run out and it’d be fairly painless
  - Trans-Lunar Injection – don’t shoot at the duck, shoot out front – wanted to go to 60 mi ahead of where the moon would be
    - Spacecraft needed to get to the right moment, speed, angle and altitude for the moon
    - Human computer – Katherine Johnson – was responsible for the trajectory for launch time (Hidden Figures)
    - Took 3 days from launch to get to target – Lunar Orbit Insertion
  - Astronauts were late on radio contact from dark side of moon
    - Came back to light and could hide behind his thumb – 5 billion people and everything he ever knew
    - Finishing Apollo VIII with scripture and then Good Night, Good Luck and Merry Christmas
Bill Clerico, co-founder and CEO of WePay (DealMakers 8/13/19)
- Leading provider of integrated payments for software platforms, raised $75mil from SV Angel, Highland Capital, Ignition Partners, August Cap
  - Founders of YouTube and PayPal also in
- Grew up in NJ, spent time in NY and father worked in Air Force and construction – taught himself computers in 80s
  - Received a scholarship to go to BC, met his co-founder for WePay waiting for the flight for the interview 6 years prior
  - Went to do IB at Jeffray’s – advising tech and software companies with clients, passionate and building for a year to quit
- Installed a suit rack in his car because he wasn’t going home – long hours, brutal fundraising
- Group payments that they saw repeatedly at the age of 22 – big market for payments, testing it out
  - Wouldn’t have less responsibilities than at that time – Rich deferred law school and Bill had worked on it full time
  - Tried to pitch Boston investors and failed – less receptive to early stage investing, applied to YC instead
    - Came out to the valley for an interview
- Spent 1.5 year to invest and took money and sold furniture and drove to the west, taking turns
  - Product was conceptual, pitch deck was opinion and it was hard to prove a market need to investors – conceptual idea
  - In YC, built product by talking to fraternity treasurers at SJSU, ski club coordinators – got them using the product
    - Went to talk to investors by showing them the traction
  - Why would a treasurer to accept payments with different product? Host bbq and invite them over. Go to dorm room and watch product usage.
    - Responsive to requests – take feedback and be better than existing solutions. Gain knowledge in start by doing things not scaling.
- Group payments were a big problem and needed a solution – weren’t willing to pay, or pay transaction fees
  - Venmo had raised money and had a bunch of momentum by giving away services for free
  - Competitors were taking advantage, 2 years after YC – pivoted but weren’t growing as fast
    - Built an events tool, donation, invoicing tool and an API for customer use – other companies were just doing those
  - Realized they could build an API making payments experience easy and simple and let competitors do whatever
    - Saw huge traction/benefit where they could be brought in via the API (since they had raised $30mln)
    - Needed the business to be grown but expectations were higher
- 600 lb block of ice for marketing $500 in front of PayPal Dev Conf at Moscone Center – still highest market day
  - Since PayPal had a knack for freezing people’s accounts randomly
- Pivoted to shut off 70% revenue stream from consumer product, gaining growth on API from other customers
  - GoFundMe used them as a payments processor from when they were 2 person company
- Prior to acquisition by JPMC – 200 employees at that time, now fintech / bank
  - Asset purchase agreement day – tired – was negotiating final points of deal in person, had some drinks to celebrate
  - Bought a cabin in Mendocino County – deal was valued at $400mln
- Part-time partner at YC now – helping companies in general – relevant to the next entrepreneurs and the scale
- Angel investing on the side – much longer and harder and scarier than he ever would’ve imagined
  - Reinforces this to his younger self – startup doesn’t fail unless you give up
Evolving Narratives in the Crypto Space with Andreas M. Antonopoulos (FYI 3/12/19)
- With Arjun Balaji, as well — and similar for me as host, his intro to Crypto space video YT
- Conflict of Crypto Visions article by Arjun and host
  - Identified closely with unconstrained vision and doing talks on not playing zero-sum mentality
  - Ethereum as different than Bitcoin – evolving directed by design choices
- Engineering consists of design tradeoffs – choices of optimizing and de-optimizing parts of systems
- If you want to make something that is Bitcoin-ish, you run into problems for all the strengths that are already inherent to Bitcoin network
  - Differentiate enough to be a new thing from Bitcoin – can’t mingle or occupy that niche
  - Is privacy a big enough differentiator to separate from Bitcoin network?
    - Strong privacy in base layer – can end up with inflation bugs that can damage sound money policy of Bitcoin for the privacy
  - Sound money vs private money – not clear yet.
- Hard money displaces other forms of money in long term but only if they’re maximalists and logical
- Friction levels determining switching back and forth on a wallet between utility or store of value tokens / coins in the future
  - Automated backend where they are optimized
- Interest in Ethereum – tradeoff worth making for smart contracts and applications that aren’t just money outside of Bitcoin
  - How the technology of VM blockchains work
  - Scaling is harder in Ethereum – proof of stake has different security model than proof of work
  - Sharding, beacon chain, polka dot – not sure if it will work or what the security constraints are – could have applicability to BTC
- Bitcoin critics – make the case for it but then explain value proposition or store of value
  - He has an opinion, others have opinions – none will determine how the market develops
  - Arguing is a waste of time. If you understand the tool that’s best for a job, you’re a better user of tools.
    - Which is the correct tool and how to use it properly – perception is limiting in general
Sam Yagan, CEO of ShopRunner (Wharton XM)
- Founding dating OkCupid and then going to Match and scaling to IPO
  - Going from running a team of 30 to 1000 in a month
- Ecommerce ShopRunner as retailers combatting Amazon and Walmart – providing scale and guarantees with 2-day shipping for many retailers
  - Joining after Michael Rubin had founded it on premise of “Amazon for all others”
- Making sure they have AMEX partnership to make it easy for customers
Travis Katz, VP of Product at Skyscanner (Wharton XM)
- Had been cofounder of Trip.com and at Myspace prior
- Social media giants Facebook and Myspace – selling to NewsCorp and getting revenue compared to funded Facebook acquiring users

Transformation of Innovation (Notes from Aug 12 to Aug 18, 2019) September 4, 2019

Posted by Anthony in Blockchain, Digital, education, experience, finance, Founders, global, Hiring, Leadership, marketing, NLP, Politics, questions, Real estate, social, Uncategorized.
Tags: #business, books, community, content, experiences, finance, humanity, ideas, investing, life, marketing, Money, Politics, questions, research, shopping, social, sports, Strategy, Time, video
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Hello! Hope Labor Day treated everyone properly, whether you snuck in some time-and-a-half pay for work, avoided it altogether or vacationed. I am going to keep the brief at the start short today because there’s a common theme. And I have been considering longer form writing without the notes on other topics maybe once or twice a week.

From last week – I still am working on the 13 Minutes to the Moon podcast – excellent. And it’s engaging as they went through the building and prep work that went in to getting there before decade-end.

The new segment that a16z has produced with the 16 minutes on the news has been fun, especially if you like an audio version of what’s been popular in tech/news. Sonal has done a great job leading most of them. I found the two that I listened it related to the title – transforming innovation. Software as eating the world (any company/product/service that can be digital will force the company to become software company), along with digitizing many of the slowest movers because the pressure has become high enough (re: Fed with ACH Now). At some point, in order to command more control or to make sure you aren’t disrupted out of the market, companies have to compete and give the customers or users what they want – faster, easier transactions in Fed Now’s initiative.

There were also some fantastic investors / founders that are included. How they developed and framed their careers to step from one thing to the next. If you noticed, many of the 20min VC episodes I listen to are in order from 2015 to now 2016. Fascinating to hear the comments made at that time to update to 2019 (as many of the same bullish comments are made with caveats that have yet to come to fruition – and valuations increased accordingly).

Hope you enjoy the listens!

13 Minutes to the Moon
- Ep 05 – “The fourth astronaut”
  - Intertial navigation – if you have your speed and know where you are, can control where you’re going
  - Self-guiding ballistic missiles that couldn’t get thrown off course via radio or otherwise – knew where it was
    - GPS, primitive computer received navigations and could adjust course if necessary
    - Charles Stark Draper who founded MIT’s guidance instrumentation lab
  - Had been a grad of Stanford and went to MIT and became leading expert in aircraft instrumentation / guidance
    - Dedicated to the astronaut program, so much so that he applied – was turned down
      - Practical application with such sensors to be useful was his expertise – size / practicality in flight control systems
  - Had to convince everyone that the computers would work and be trusted
  - Apollo bought 60% of the chips that were out and being manufactured – huge boost for computer industry
    - Good hardware required good software (an afterthought)
  - Called on programmers for building the software Margaret Ate Hamilton (started as programmer, then was in charge as program manager)
    - Developed a system to write software so that it would be reliable and she sought out the bugs/errors – no way to do it otherwise
      - Right times vs wrong time, wrong data, wrong priorities (interface errors) – we take for granted everything we have now
    - No rules or field at the time (akin to “Do you know these English words?” – yes, you’re qualified)
    - Don Isles – math graduate looking for something to do next who joined in 1966, software had been written initially – app code to fly was starting
      - Lunar landing phase commanding – in retrospect, huge – but it was a job at the time
  - Apollo Guidance Computer – 70 lbs in 1 cu ft, 55 W with 76kb, 16-bit words, 4 kb were RAM R/W memory, rest was hardwired
    - Got to the moon on punch cards – 100 people working on it at the end – submit in one run overnight and run simulations
    - 2 women that worked to keypunch before working as full-time – printed lines of code to turn into punch codes
  - Noun-verb inputs for flying – lunar landing, for instance
    - Built the computer interface with idea of “Go to moon” and “Take me home” but it instead had 500 buttons and was much more interactive
      - First system where people’s lives were at stake with it – fly by wire system. Astronauts didn’t control it, they controlled the joystick, etc…
- Ep 06 – “Saving 1968”
  - Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin
Fed reaction (a16z, 16min on the News, 8/12/19)
- FedNow – 24/7 open service for access to checks faster to launch in a few years
  - Half the population lives paycheck to paycheck and should care for the $30 overdraft fees that a ton of people do
  - Massive amount of losses to banks here in the US
- ACH batches all payments in a day or maybe twice vs instant
  - Realtime payment network – 26 banks but need all banks to be a part of this network
- Against Fed would say to just run the regulatory part vs the operational side
  - Obligate banks to join ACH, etc…
  - Infrastructure for checks has not updated to the tech advantages that we’ve gotten to now
  - Catching up to rest of world, which is 10 years ahead
- Death of retail – Barney’s filing for bankruptcy, closing 15 of 22 stores
  - Been around since Great Depression
  - Ecommerce coming and direct to consumer is going toward market share
  - Highly leveraged fixed costs, inventory but can go sales to hemorrhaging money and become unviable
- Grocery is largest single category of US retail, more than apparel and personal – completely immune to digitization historically
  - Inventory is better served close to consumer, physical grocery as distributed warehouse
Philipp Moehring, Head of Angelist EU (20min VC 1/6/16)
- First European hire for Angelist since Jan 14, venture partner at 500 Partners and Principal at SeedCamp
- Angelist Syndicate for his
- Worked for a bunch of startups during his studies, but realized he didn’t want to work for a large company or consultancy like when he started
  - Worked for a professor that was doing research on VC – did his thesis on same topic, asked for data
  - Fulltime job came from a guy who went off on his own to start firm and he was asked to join
- MBA in Tech Management and Tech Entrepreneurship, where management is very different there
  - Analyst and associate work can be a great job but it’s not a quick way to partner or anything
  - Seeing founders doing a second business after 7-8 years, even after do great and get raises
    - People don’t usually stay at their first job for 8 years but starting at VC, people will jump to a startup second
- EU vs US scene – SV where VC started and is much more advanced, simply due to a lack of epicenter
  - Angelist looking to get into Series A (not necessarily leading, though) – movement
- Certainly London for VC – number one ecosystem in Europe, as the largest metro area, tech and VC and money
  - Hard to copy for other places – culture, politics and what makes the city to be interesting
  - Berlin has the momentum as the number two, as well as Stockholm or in Finland, maybe Paris (inward), Lisbon and distribution of eastern Europe
- $400mln funding for Angelist from CSC Upshot into syndicates – GPs investing directly
  - Does his 500 Partners role on the side – usually someone with investing on the side and has more firepower
  - Wants the deal flow or coverage in the areas they won’t have
  - Knows an entrepreneur and can get in the chance on seed or small amounts to invest in
- Known the partners at 500 Startups for a bunch of years and could invest similarly to his Angelist style
  - Could be flexible and born out of the way the fund is positioned and investing
- Most exciting for him is having people that he’s invested in hitting their stride and succeeding
- William Gibson as a writer who influences his thinking, Snowcrash as a book that depicts the future
  - Looks more at science fiction for tech advances now
- Most read blog – too many to count, Brad Feld – has a tool called SelfControl against social media
Phil Libin (@plibin), co-founder and CEO All-Turtles (Mastering Innovation, 8/8/19)
- Discussing real problems with AI

Andrew Chung, Founder and CEO Innovo Property Group (Marketing Matters, 8/7/19)
- Partner at The Carlyle Group, US real estate
- Started IPG in 2015
Stefan Thomke, professor at HBS (Wharton Knows, 8/13/19)
- Discussing his paper on magic stick of customers
- Online experiments – running them quickly and decisively

Ivan Mazour, (@ivanmazour) founder and CEO of Ometria (20min VC FF 029)
- Serial entrepreneur, author, investor – Ometria: predictive/marketing analytics platform
- Born in Moscow, parents PhDs – mom brought him to UK to study math @ Cambridge
- Started his first thing in property since that was biggest, public industry to get involved
  - Around 26, didn’t utilize any of his studies and data-focused nature, so he leveraged proceeds with his cofounder to make angel investments
- Wanted to become relevant and learn about tech industry – made 30 investments in 4 years, stopped prop dev, did a Masters in App Prob
  - Refreshed knowledge to build a data company
  - Founding after investing – wrote a blog post as his approach to investment and his dream
    - Build a truly world-leading tech company but accepts lack of experience
- Thought about how much capital to allocate to invest and how much to invest to be taken seriously – needs to be able to learn from it
  - Angel investor as $20-30k pounds
  - Received a second seed or extension round with Ometria – significantly bigger than seed, but reality is not enough for Series A
    - Hire more engineers, increase team from 20-30. But Series A would be to set up internationally and expand S&M
- One-sided barbell – huge amount of funding on early, early stage investing
  - Anyone can work to get funding at early, small stage – lots of companies are vying for more eyeballs from bigger ones they need
  - At late stage, if you have the metrics, you’ll have the funding – growing 300%, hit $1m ARR and no question you’d get round, SaaS-wise
- Launched as an ecommerce analytics company, wanted massive market for data – $3tn ecommerce and retail
  - Launching 2013, analytics was hottest thing (KPMG raised $100mln fund for this only) – by 2015 for big round Ometria, analytics wasn’t relevant/interesting
  - Fascinating to experience – marketing was far more important – actions engaging revenue and data, leveraged
- First ones to come in were validating – people who he worked/invested with previously
  - Angels that were amazing, AngelLab’s Rachel that was meeting best founders and seeing best companies
  - Had tried to sell Phil as a customer on Ometria and he ended up investing – Alex is on board as 2nd largest institutional investor
- Pitching angels vs other investors
  - With angels, he had engagement metrics, not revenues – introduced team and had beta user metrics (logging in 7x a day and loving it)
  - Four founders and engagement of platform that allowed closing of round
  - For VCs, chart of MRR that was up and right – increasing growth
- Several funds liked the company and wanted to consider investing – said he should’ve held off, probably – got excited and continued conversation
  - Waste of time for both sides – hadn’t moved far enough on VC metrics to get a big enough investing for what you’re raising
- Offline retail – stores won’t go away – thinks there will be an entire platform that will be an ecommerce platform that is based on personalization
  - Product recs, change website and order them – complicated and difficult – best platforms aren’t designed to do that – $1bn company
- His highlight: sitting in his boardroom after increasing it, Elizabeth Ying (PayPal, head of D/S), Mike Baxter, Allie Mitchel (Huddle founder)
  Looking around that they were talking about his company and making a few investments that he was CEO of and they had 10-20 years experience
- Favorite productivity tools: ToDoIst, Google Keep for managing main reports, HangOuts
- Favorite books: Rich Dad, Poor Dad as formulating a way of thinking, and Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People
David Tisch (@davetisch), MP at BoxGroup, Inc (20min VC 1/11/16)
- Also, cofounded Spring – brands to consumers via mobile with his brother, Allen
- Coded as a kid, kept using the internet, entryway into internet and software – didn’t think of it as investor
  - Went to college and law school, became a lawyer and joined real estate finance in m&a but he did that for a year and wasn’t into it
  - Started a company, experimented and sucked – sold to a larger company and was there for 2 years at KGB
  - Went to TechStars – launched and run the NY program after he had made 3-4 investments
- Cementing of the NY scene would be a magnet company like Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Google – huge magnet for talent
- The Box in NY as a cool club that he hadn’t been to and his first investment was in a company called Boxy
- A 20th employee is exponentially more valuable than a seed stage investor – tries to be an valuable investor, though
- Magical utility or happiness for user or incredibly polished path to where you’re going – different from early days of mobile
  - Should happen soon – hasn’t happened since Snapchat/Tinder as consumer
- Spring for him – exact opposite of sitting above the clouds as VC and strategy – incredible other side with his brother
  - Mall on your phone – 1200 brands directly (Etsy as maker’s story) – single mobile experience to make it better
  - Free shipping and free returns in 2015 for marketplace and working with their partners
  - VIP, customer service, making a single experience
  - Apparent that the opportunity was sitting there – he had told his brother “Don’t start a company”
- Doesn’t read much – watches a lot of tv and consumes that as a way to learn
- Finding his partner Adam at Techstars is probably the highlight
- Reads online a lot – design blogs/architecture/city – Fred Wilson as successful VC in NY
- Invested in SmartThings – sold to Samsung a couple years prior and built into products
  - Deep affinity for space, so he invested into Nucleus – video intercom in houses but it allows outbound, also
  - Uncomplicates the phone – primary thing on cell (voice, messenger and text bringing into house)
John Wirtz, CPO at Hudl (Wharton XM)
- Coaching and products innovation – getting cameras at 50 yd line or in arenas
  - Not so much looking at point-to-point tracking or high speed for baseball, softball
- More on tracking all high school players and colleges – uploading of highlights and working with coaches
- 95% coverage now
Software has eaten the world (a16z 8/18/19)
- Marc and Jorge Condo discussing computer science and its eating healthcare
- Term from his essay in 2011 after starting firm, tech industry is 70+ years old after WWII, packing $500 that used to be $10-15mln
  - Pessimism after recession – Marc held opposite opinion as just starting (platform built)
  - 3 claims: any product/service that can be software product will be software (boomboxes, cameras, newspapers, etc…)
    every company in the world in those products will become a software co
    as a consequence of 1 and 2, long run the best software company will win
- Incumbents in auto industry – cars are very dangerous, very hard and software companies think otherwise – value of car is in software (500 in 50 mi radius)
  - Surprising innovation fields: legal, insurance, real estate, education, health care
- Never imagined investing in new car companies – new industry in 1890, 1920s Henry Ford
  - One new major car company attempt by Preston Tucker (Automotive – Tucker movie, catastrophe)
  - Went from hundreds in 1910s to 3 in 1920s and after
- Profound technological revolutions as ML/DL/AI as incredibly innovative and cryptocurrency
  - Software founders for how to use and those that haven’t – can be quite transformative
- Fundamental transformation with internet was music industry – triple whammy – people loved music (? Often dogs eat dog food? – not case in music)
  - Isn’t it great customers love music so much? They want the thing – showing consumption. Music executives said no. Suppliers refusing the demand increase.
  - Pricing issue – want 1 song vs 12 songs on label. Price-fixing collusion by the 4-5 labels. Could overcharge by factor of 10.
  - Consumers were breaking law but the correct reasons. Was immoral, illegal by price collusion.
  - Went from Napster, Kazaa, Limewire, Frostwire, BitTorrent (all investor catastrophes as too early since they couldn’t get pricing from labels)
    - Spotify as 15 years later where investors were scarred but time had come
- When layer commoditizes, the next layer can become massively valuable – focus is on commoditized layer (contraction for recorded music purchases)
  - US market for live concerts grew 4x in aggregate demand – unlimited access to music, so fun is concert and experiences
- Marc as serving on board of hospital – mission in terms of health care and medical research and school – nonprofit with highly motivated people
  - Design and build a new hospital – finally opening in 2019 (2005 green light)
  - Well-functioning boards that he sees as 7 people vs 25 or so in hospital
  - Quality problems in auto industry in 1950s / 1960s initially, unsafe at any speed – 70s/80s/90s was TQM – debug quality manufacturing
  - Medical compliance issues – 1/3 not filling prescriptions, 1/3 just take cocktails of them
    - Organ transplants are only 60% compliance
    - Assembly line requirements to motion – decode for running properly, maybe do that for hospitals and doctors – Purell, even
  - EMR at Stanford – $400mil one bid, $100mil to Epic and $300mil for implementation system Perot Systems
    - Interoperability and open source, building on everyone’s creativity (except Epic) and APIs
- Eroom’s Law – price of bringing new device or drug to market doubles every 10 years – VCs in both decided the economic cycles were too different
  - Names now for VC are ones that aren’t the same big firms
  - Founders are different, as well – PhD in bio but programming since 10 or hybrid tech to pitch
  - Missing middle as converging of scientific domains and getting a16z’s new partner, former Stanford professor in the middle who helped spin it up
- Digital therapeutics, cloud biology, IT applied to Healthcare
- Defend market or advance innovate market but SV is starting from scratch – experiments in tech, or business (famous train wrecks)
  - Portfolio approach to experiments – 10 experiments in 10 different parts of biotech / industry – look at successes and asymmetric returns
  - If there are big companies that can do obvious things, they’ll be good at increment – industry does different ones
- Need evangelical marketer or sales – Jobs’ saying how to envision the picture because consumers have no ability to project this
  - Elon’s Model S – no superchargers or charging at home – had to paint a picture to demonstrate it, get enough sales to build the chargers
Dan Granger, CEO founder of Oxford Road (Wharton XM)
- Advertising in LA helping acquire new customers and branding

Big Goals: Being the First (Notes from Aug 5 – Aug 11, 2019) August 27, 2019

Posted by Anthony in Blockchain, Digital, experience, finance, Founders, global, NLP, questions, social, Strategy, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
Tags: #business, books, content, experiences, finance, freedom, humanity, ideas, life, marketing, Money, questions, reading, research, shopping, social, Time
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A friend recommended the 13 Minutes to the Moon podcast. I wish I could shout out that friend, but I currently have no recollection for who it was. Sorry! I’ve been recommending it to anyone that wants an intriguing documentation and story for the decade sprint to putting a human on the moon – and everyone that contributed to that goal. If you need more convincing, Hans Zimmer did the music production, as well. So, it has to be epic, right?

So, that’s what I would strongly suggest everyone listen to. The rest were incredibly interesting, as well.

The co-founders of Original Grain discussed watch making, selling out of backpacks and getting the approval of their military brothers before finally catching on and building the business. Setting out their approach and moving back to the PNW. Co-founders of Lovevery talked about mixing the product, box subscription service with educational, proven research and why Jessica chose this model and building their own over the licensing / branding other toys/puzzles.

Nick Maggiuli, of Ritholtz and Of Dollars and Data discussed why he’ll follow / listen to others that he may disagree with in case something clicks that makes him update his information to change his mind. Then, discussing that the market isn’t zero-share after Ken Fisher mentioned that his firm ($30bn plus) could be wiped from the face of the planet and nobody would ultimately notice when the market handles $50tn overall. 30bps – can aim high and ultimately it comes down to your execution, rarely others.

Then, Morten Lund talked of the EU investing scene, his success early, bankruptcy soon thereafter and deciding what he wanted to see and do. Sometimes you have to toil in decisions before landing what you seek.

Hope everyone enjoys the notes and checks the episodes out!

13 Minutes to the Moon (BBC Worldservice)
- First episode – ‘We choose to go’
  - Lousy communication as they dropped thrusters to 10%
  - Something happening in computer that caused issues – Armstrong was nervous (rarely)
  - Worry when Sputnik was placed up and a dog in the next month before putting a person there (BBC / Moscow reported)
  - Not having hopeless odds – could do a crash program to get men on moon by 1967, 68
    - German (vonBrown) who set up the rec for the course to get on the moon – recognized Russians needed 10x improvement
  - V2 rocket program – never having wide support but post-demonstration, went to mass production
    - Nordhausen – very aware of concentration camp workers, mistreatment and threat of sabotage
    - Surrendered and Americans were all-too-happy to accept them for rocket program (and space)
- Second episode – ‘Kids in Control’
  - Steve Bales as the 26 yr old kid who could shut off the mission
    - Guidance officer in mission control team – lunar modules onboard computer by MIT design – controlled flight to moon’s surface
  - Junior technical in backrooms to Gemini flight controller for Apollo by age 23
  - Rapid recruitment style in technical and sciences – just threw them in for trainings and went from there
    - Hiring on rapid basis – bring on board, operations, engineering, training
  - John Aram – math and physics in North Texas to mission control – recalled so many acronyms (never been to a big city)
    - Moved to murder capital of the world, 6 weeks later and told his wife – maybe we need to load up and go back
      - We ain’t going back, she said.
    - Looked over electrical systems and the spacecraft’s electronics.
  - Average age of operators was probably 27 years old, grads of 1964 or so (older didn’t work out as well)
  - Simulations would run 20 different scenarios to demand engaging reminiscent of a fighter squadron
    - Had to trust each other well, kids and wives knew each other – risky things
    - Apollo I that killed the crew in 1967
  - Not enough time at home – many divorces from not being at home and holidays missing
  - In the trench – Gene Crantz: room bathed in blue light by the screens, smell of the room, people in for long time
    - Stale sandwiches, old pizza, full wastebaskets, coffee burnt into the hotplate, but you get feeling something will happen
    - System needed Gene’s toughness, former Marine, constant chain-smoking and needed that guidance from the flight director
  - Calling program error 1210 – never seen it in simulation and Steve had called abort – in actual mission, they got 1202 from Buzz
    - Setting a set of rules for program alarms – Steve got help from a 23 year old in the back – Jack Garmin
    - No call to abort if everything else is good – took 15seconds to push
- Episode 3 – ‘Long Island Eagle’
  - Slowing descent was the plan, but they ended up going faster
    - Surface wasn’t what they had anticipated
  - Why is the lunar module the way that it is – way it looks? Form follows function.
    - Landing and flying in space – very different than aerodynamics for earth atmosphere
    - LTA1 – cleaner than a surgical room, higher pressure (dust and contamination avoidance)
    - Puncture a hole in skin with a pen – needed lightness and fuel efficiency
    - All engines in lunar modules had to be without electrical failure, so they were just latches with combustible gases
  - Lunar module designed by aeronautical engineers – aerodynamic and smooth, glass but had to evolve
    - Glass was too heavy and crew survival was supercritical
  - December 1968 was supposed to be lunar module flight but they flew around the moon instead
    - Would make it, but it would be close to the decade
- Episode 4 – ‘Fire to the Phoenix’
  - Fire in the spacecraft – BBC report of Apollo I explosion, January 27 1967
    - Lost 3 heroes – Roger Jaffe, Ed White (first to walk in space in Gemini program), Gus Grissom (piloted Gemini flights)
    - Mercury and Gemini – everyone working there, 350-400 working on Apollo but at the height, it was 400k
    - Management challenge to build the program
  - Here to find out about Mr. Johnson for Block 2 design (Houston didn’t know who was in charge by 1964)
  - First space module in August 1966 delivered for flight testing, behind schedule
    - Jan 26, 1967 with service module perched on top of an Apollo rocket
    - Sitting in pure oxygen for the flight vs testing scenarios (t-shirts, atmosphere at sea level)
    - 30th of January, killed in the first / explosion of the Apollo I rocket
  - Accident had been an awful wake-up call but no national clamor for stopping the program
  - Hatch needed to be redesigned, reduce oxygen while on launchpad, new fire resistant found, electrical circuitry adjusted
    - Heat shields and modules to be tested, Apollo II to be canceled, 21 months to Apollo VII
      - Backup crew for Apollo I was the crew for VII – phoenix patches and honor the first
    - Spent 11 days in space and go around the moon – testing all systems that it could, from engine to navigation
Matt Britton, CEO of MRY, Suzy (Wharton XM)
- Media entrepreneur and consumer trends expert
- Suzy is ‘Siri for brands’
Ryan and Andrew Beltran, co-founders of Original Grain (Wharton XM)
- Watch category, growing up in the PacNW and serving in the military (Marines)
- Trying to find a product that he wanted to start a brand of
- Going to China to see manufacturing and get ideas
- Selling the first out of his backpack, initially, to military guys
  - Got buy-in on quality that they stood up but not a ton of traction
LovEvery – Love Every – Jessica and Rod, founding partners (Wharton XM)
- Jessica worrying about giving her babies the best nutrition, and curious about what the brains craved
- Approaching research and deciding on toys

BERT (Bidirectional Encoding Reps from Transformers) (Data Skeptic 7/29/19)
- Neural network with input arbitrary length of text – minimal form and characters
  - Output is a fixed length vector, numeric rep of the text – can do automated feature engineering for ML
  - Translation step for encoding for the machine using masking
- Chatbot for question answering – wouldn’t do specialized tools for observe
- BERT develops a general option (vs ML where there isn’t enough training data)
  - Trained on general knowledge, wikipedia corpus or reddit, etc… and apply transfer learning
Nick Maggiuli, Of Dollars and Data (Standard Dev 5/30/19)
- Head of Data Analytics at Ritholz Wealth – data and interesting
- Behavioral investor line test – being the 8th person in line and hearing others in Ash experiment
  - People purposefully tell you the wrong matched line and 76% of time, switches idea – changes vision in this case
  - Connecting to fake news in the realm of bias – pie chart that showed top 5 S&P 500 on right side, bottom 282 on left
    - Data just tells you the biggest 5 companies – may be just the 5 largest that represent a total share (consistent)
  - Crowd makes the narrative, often and then people agree and it becomes an echo chamber
- Following crypto people despite not believing in it because they may know something that he hasn’t seen or know
  - Change minds based on some information. Trend following, for instance (price signal, 200ma – will stop working at times – Corey Hoffstein)
  - Doesn’t believe in technical analysis but has to be convinced by some information to make the jump
- Blog post: Most Important Asset (host ran the survey) – bet that none of you offered every $ of Buffett wouldn’t want to be him
  - 5%, so maybe 3% are trolls. But he wants to live his life. Human capital and time is the optionality.
- Best book he’d read about retirement “Retire Happy, Wild and Free” and doesn’t discuss money
  - Financial crisis isn’t the priority – it’s existential – what’s your time that you want to worry about
  - Some people could go to the beach every day and not care, others do differently
- Trading his time for tasks and outsourcing things – working otherwise and doing it via his hourly wage
  - Anything you’d regret on your deathbed for missing things that you’d want to do – ends meeting, one thing but otherwise, go for it
- Ken Fisher at Investment Conference (EBI with Barry and Ken talking)
  - “We have no market share” – 30bps as money to be managed out of $50tn when they’re $30bn
    - Could disappear and nobody would notice (except their clients)
  - Enough pie overall where they’re not competing against each other
  - Not interested in the discipline, so any general discussion is improved and bringing people in
    - Rise of politics and twitter probably keeps some viewers away but looking at competition and peers for learning
    - Brian Portnoy writing at the same time, sharing information and going back and forth with same publisher
- Funniest fintwit: Ramp and Josh Brown, smartest Jim O’Shaunnessey and Jesse Livermore, MMT – “Trusts Cullen Roche”
- Book that he read early in his career when he was bored – What It Takes by Ellis – best firms in handful of industries
  - If they ‘reject us, we made the wrong choice on the person so it’s good anyway’ – Korbath in legal
Morten Lund, seed investor in Skype (20min VC, 1/4/16)
- Investor, co-founder including Airhelp, 100 other startups
- Visiting university before getting kicked out – used computer to get premade direct marketing which wasn’t possible prior
  - Turned it into a digital ad agency and made it the largest in Scandinavia and sold to Leo Burnett (ad agency) as digital acquisition
  - Could build company by then
- Made a small incubator by then with the money he had
- Called for investments in Kazaa initially – wasn’t comfortable with that because biz model was for iTunes but no power to negotiate with labels
  - Was helping business development at the time
- Guys had idea of doing Skypr – wifi sharing network – shut down by 10-15 investors who didn’t want to go further
  - Calls couldn’t be afforded so why not do a digital phone with the sound cards – helped fundraise and paid founders’ apartments
    - 300-400k users after 20 days launch – roughly $50k brought back $50mln
    - When it took off and worked, it was exciting – Estonia guys being crucial and understanding p2p from Kazaa, as well
  - Very involved in the brand – ICQ (impossible to understand)
- Bankruptcy 7+ years prior had to refocus him and figure out what he wanted to do – nothing wasn’t working
  - Co-founding, starting and investing all kinds of 70-80 startups
- Learning that things will take 3-4x longer and 3-4x costly
  - Founder in mind for admiring – David Hilge (Unity), Reid Hoffman, demonstrating stamina
- Spending time at TradeShift – empty on cash and barely surviving holding onto his house – internet as media business that was fairly large
  - Every bank has a budget of $1bn in tech spend – immense amount of people running around doing nothing
  - Partners came to him to do digital invoicing structure for English structure and wanted to do consulting (agreed on cloud-based platform infrastructure)
  - Every company has different file formats and being consistent (Christian becoming a rock star) – ability to close huge clients
- EU fintech community – browser era in 94-95 and nobody knowing how to handle it – legislation is getting easier to deal with
  - Web bank is a media but can do all kinds of interesting things with accounting – unwind IBM and legacy providers from cloud
  - If you want to sell big, have to go to US but if you want to do early or continue building, can be in the EU
  - Becomes obsession for $1bn level – consequence shouldn’t be this, though – not justified without revenue
- Favorite book: Shantaram, fun with Richard Branson (knowledge exchange), The Economist as blog, Hippocorn – placeholder or executor affiliate

Fun Founder Stories (Notes from July 29 – Aug 4, 2019) August 21, 2019

Posted by Anthony in Automation, Digital, education, experience, finance, Founders, global, Hiring, Leadership, marketing, medicine, questions, social, Strategy, TV, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
Tags: #business, books, community, content, experiences, finance, humanity, ideas, Jobs, life, marketing, medicine, questions, research, shopping, social, sports, Strategy, Time, TV, video
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Starting with a discussion of Neuralink (Musk’s… brain-child of a company for neural lace) and how it reminds the a16z crew of invasive compared to non-invasive surgeries / medical tech. How did TikTok vary itself in the social space and explode in popularity? Harry Stebbings of 20min VC had been going on and on about HiringScreen and finally had the founder on which was fun to hear. Richard’s origination story for the company and his path that he took was fascinating.

Then I happened to listen to a few different shoe companies with founders on serendipitous and creative stories. One traveling to a new and different country and absorbing the culture to his story. The others, seeing a problem that seemed to arise and noticing there should / could be a solution. Then catching breaks for each of the 2 companies – including the bootstrapping and doing it on their own as something that was fun enough helping people solve those problems / be happy with their footwear. I strongly suggest looking at Sabah shoes for men’s drivers-ish and Birdies for women who go to parties where they may need slippers or comfortable everyday ones.

E-sports and digital discussion for a16z was fun in how society is adapting to digital experiences or how they meld entertainment. For those that don’t think esports may be viable, it’s easy to argue in the cases where they watch reality tv or even game shows (which have been around since tv). It’s just changed how we consume and perceive it as interactive live games vs recordings. Also, malls that are less successful or in areas have been able to take advantage of the space available.

Vivino’s CEO joined and talked about how he is trying to socialize and give people options in the wine space – which, let’s be honest, is always a good thing. Goldie Chan discussed filling the gap in an employment by consulting, by accident, nearly. She turned it into a full pivot consulting and has taken advantage of her great skills at marketing. Hope there’s something for everyone!

Neuralink & Brain Interface (a16z 7/21/19, 16min on the News)
- With Vijay, Connie Chan, JPM
- Announcement of neural lace – culture sci-fi by Ian Banks – processor & sewing machine
- Non-invasive vs invasive (femoral artery all the way up to the brain)
  - LASIK as invasive / dangerous (still even, but now much better, accepted)
- Announcing in rats and in monkeys now (surprising his president)
- TikTok as 3rd most dl app behind WhatsApp and FB Messenger, 1.2bln MAUs – having huge influence at VidCon
  - Sponsored by YouTube but TikTok had a large presence, the ban in India
  - Short, 15sec videos – 1 hit piece can trigger enough people
- How would they make money? – ecommerce, restaurants, retail – short videos for ads/commercials
- FaceApp – probably nothing to worry about – unless high profiled public official, NatSec Space, leverage
  - Someone getting negative information or leakage – accusations of the country in general is silly
  - Countries consider privacy differently – in the US, convenience / UX will trump privacy for 15min of joy
    - Europeans, Germans, Italians for instance are more private
- iHeartRadio announcing direct listing – before, emerging from bankruptcy or spinning off
  - Repurposed after Spotify / Pandora
Mobile malware and Bipartisan drug pricing (a16z 7/28/19, 16min on the News)
- With Martin Casado, Jorge Conde, Jay Rughani
- Monacle as mobile malware – March 2016 Android-based application
  - In security, netsec and endpoints – protecting desktops, for instance
  - Attacks phone with 2FA, even, and less secure
  - Can take calendar event, account info and app messages, reset PINs
- Drug pricing – Medicare Modernization Act – why can’t Medicare use its purchasing power to negotiate medicine prices?
  - Part D – Medicare covering prescription prices, prevents HFS from negotiating any part of the value chain
  - Price of insulin where they get price hikes – new therapy gets $2mln for cures (R&D) differences, conflation
  - Price of successful drugs have to make money for drug and all of the failures
    - Counterargument – US subsidizes R&D for the world
    - Complex industry structure: manufacturers, distributors paid to move drugs through channel
      - Pharmacy benefit manager – who is eligible, who’s not – what are drugs for conditions and prescriptions
        
        Helps insurers who gets the drugs – takes an economics layer
      - Insurers reduction drug spends, for $1 spent, manufacturer gets a small %
  - Dropping from $8k to $3100 out of pocket
    - Cap by tying to inflation (for growth) or annual price increases
    - May start higher prices because you can’t increase it much
- Chain is not transparent, but also complex – tech can have an impact but needs help from policy to drive out some inefficiencies
  - Free market works if there’s transparency – what is a medicine and can you make it fair enough for everyone
  - Current system is not set up for the new medicines (extending life from 10 years to a cure)
Richard Hanson, CEO & cofounder of HiringScreen (20min VC FF028)
- Founded in Hong Kong in 2015
- Studied law in Cambridge, did 11 years recruitment consultancy in London before moving to Hong Kong
  - Then created his own recruitment firm – had his own looking at 196 cv’s for an EA for someone
  - Score, sort and select candidates
- Tech advances in recruiting industry – job boards and sourcing is at all-time highs
  - Barrier to application is all-time low but have too many to look for (especially manually)
  - Psychometric and phone facility stuff to find relevant candidates – get on with themselves
    - Go through rest of funnel to invest in the process in more efficient manner
- Had always wanted to live in Asia – pretty exciting, bullish for Asia in general
  - Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan as hubs
- If you have an idea, try to find someone or go ahead and do a view of what it may be executed on
  - He had the idea, went to his cofounder Luke (better at project management side)
  - Prototyping mockups and getting through the first steps efficiently – may hit a dead-end a few weeks in
    - Validating idea as soon as possible – customer or problems for people (heads of recruitment firms for his problem)
- Making an effort to code or understand a bit of the UX (in his case, CSS and HTML to understand a bit)
  - Compared to languages in a foreign country
  - When his CTO introduces people, he wants to be confident about what the developer has been doing and understanding their past
  - His responsibility to show an effort/commitment in the job role
- Looking to raise a round – HiringScreen did it in 8 weeks
  - Competitive slides, why you want to raise, how to convey mission statement, skill and productivity gaps
  - Understanding his potential investors, as well
- Accelerators – choosing the right ones? He’s with the Blueprint Accelerator by Swire properties
  - B2B focus, no equity in startups – working space and Swire network of companies (conglomerate of different co’s in verticals)
  - Sponsored him and tried to help advance the company by talking to other HR talks
  - Mentions Brinc as hardware accelerator near the top
- Idea of equity early on would depend on your assessment of what the startup needs?
  - Super low cost – accelerator with working space?
  - Product but proven use case – Blueprint to trial product and test it
  - Balance the need with the equity they’re taking
- The Alliance book by Reid Hoffman for looking at employee and employer workplace, tour of duty principle
- Brad Feld and Jason Calacanis’s blogs, Reid Hoffman as the most admirable founder – better people to take LinkedIn on
Jennifer Golbeck, College of Information Studies and Affiliate Professor at UMD
- Talking about social media research, truth and justice
Carl Ericson, CEO & cofounder of Atomic Object (Wharton XM, Mind Your Business)
- Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor software product development company and why he chose there
- Sails at Grand Rapids Yacht Club
Bianca Gates, Marisa Sharkey, Birdies co-founders (Wharton XM)
- Discussing how they started them and Feb 14 – when she landed an article with a SF Chronicle fashion correspondent at a dinner party
- Driving up to the other in order to get all 2000 orders packaged and sent out

Mickey Ashmore, founder of Sabah Shoes (Wharton XM)
- Doing a 6 month project after Seattle in Turkey – turned into 2 years as the only non-Turk
  - Grew an affinity for the people, culture, food and trends – girlfriend’s grandma at the time gifted him a pair of handmade shoes
- Returned to NY and beat the crap out of the shoes – wanted another
  - Reached out to the maker (current partner) and bought another pair
  - Ended up getting 5-6 in different colors, customized without the flip – people said they were awesome
  - Ordered 300 – could get 150+ and did a party to showcase them with cocktails, enjoyed hosting
    - Got 30-40 orders on the first night, decided to do it for the rest of the summer “Sabah Saturday/Sundays”
- Realized it could be a business after in the summer he was making more from shoe sales than his NY P/E job
- Expanding from 3-4 employees to 40 and expanding from a home to a warehouse – border of Syria/Turkey
  - Has a few key employees that are Syrian refugees – part of the brand and they showcase it on the site
    - Not branding directly, but definitely part of the story
Goldie Chan (@goldiechan), digital marketing expert of LinkedIn and actor (Wharton XM)
- Discussing quitting her job and making a fake company while unemployed
  - Turned into a marketing consulting gig – had a few clients, had to create a company
- Now doing talks and discussions
Kurt Seidensticker, CEO of Vital Protein (Wharton XM)
- Collagen and explaining to people how it was – getting some in to Whole Foods through them asking
- Didn’t hit him until he was in Italy and 2 random women at a café pulled their Vital out
- Did about 10 companies, 2 succeeded enough to pay for kids college and allow him the freedom
  - Was doing Vital during another company until it surpassed the other
Fortnite, esports, Gaming (a16z, 16min on the News)
- 2 million concurrent livestreaming – not as big as GoT, for instance
- With Andrew Chen, Darcy Cooligan (investing team on consumer)
- Bigger prize pool for Dota 2, $3mil for Bugha’s win was larger than Tiger’s Masters victory
- 10 years for Riot and League – still grossing billion, WoW / Runescape
- Billions of video consumption between Twitch, YT (and now Microsoft Mixer)
- iPad can play Fortnite pretty well, for instance – massive multiplayer opportunities
  - Instagram and this generation for coming together as people – Minecraft/Fortnite
  - Gaming and cultural zeitgeist to hang out with friends
- Sonal did a fight with editorial desk and had seen it for a profiling in 2013 – argued it was similar to sports
  - Big business and much of the same thing – management company, played 2+ years for 6-8 hours, sponsors, fans
  - Performance entertainment and personality-based
    - Comparative for game shows – other people answering trivia, reality tv
- Strong incentives to keep games going – user-generated content
  - Established player leading way to user-generated thereafter
  - For Fortnite, building levels (similar to mods and mod community in Minecraft and Roblox)
- Games stadia for esports and digital dualism (in real life compared to virtual – game is the bridge)
  - Malls building areas for this part
Chris Tsakalakis, CEO of Vivino (Bay Area Ventures, Wharton XM)
- Having users and getting customers – at least 1 employee in each region where they sell
- Mostly in US, Europe – hq in Dublin
- Bunch of users in Asia / South America (Brazil, specifically), but don’t sell there yet
- Not taking VC until more recently

Idea Conversion to Algorithms (Notes from July 22 – 28, 2019) August 14, 2019

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There is quite a bit in this week’s notes to unpack. Most of the stories and experiences provided by the guests, though, premised around testing a hypothesis or quickly trying to solve a problem in a manner that, once validated, could become much more efficient. When trying to make the solution more efficient, whether data or AI-driven, then further questions have to be asked to ensure a proper, scaleable and ethical solution. Lauren deLisaColeman discussed the ML application ethics and what guides them. Karim Galil observed that patient history was stodgy and doctors weren’t in to new things that could save them time because of the catchup time. So he had to produce a solution that could be effective immediately and worth giving back doctors time – he chose oncology to do it in.

Alyssa Dineen discussed profiles as well, but of the dating variety. There were more ways to screw up than attracting attention. At first, she could do it manually before realizing she could improve the work she did and make it better for both business and clients. Khartoon at Spotify talked about how they started at Spotify with freemium model and the streaming aspect before connecting that with all of the data to their corporate and enterprise partners. In turn, the two-way data sharing enabled them to pivot nicely to provide more value and eventually into a paid model that helped the business. Lastly, Max Bruner talked about his hell of a journey where he eventually landed at Metromile, but not before building Mavrx in the best form of dirty solutions – cameras from planes. Then realizing what could be attached and automated to be a full provider to farmers in much of farmland US and improving it. Quite the product path.

Curious about this concept for much of college / graduates.
Idea possibly worth pursuing – saw post on similar idea. Fake VC – take seed or series A opportunities, combine with data plan (via other post). Have various students make their opinions on what to seek, whether funding was good. How to think of next steps? Make action plan, but templated and maybe try to get an argument. Podcast/videos presenting either side. Try to talk to startup that received. Good sourcing examples, data (limited) problems, industry seeking.

Hope you enjoy the week’s notes and check everyone out!

Lauren deLisa Coleman (@ultra_Lauren), Digi-cultural Trend Analyst (Wharton XM)
- Forbes contributor, discussing AI and ethics of ML applications
- Who makes the rules – is the data guided?
Karim Galil, Founder of Mendel.ai (Wharton XM)
- Working in Egypt initially, wasn’t in Cairo but started in Sinai – beach and did surf/kitesurfing lessons deal
  - Talent was not as abundant, but did a project with Pfizer, Dubai government and others
  - Egypt had free healthcare but hospitals couldn’t pay for procedures that may have been experimental – trials would allow it
    - Wouldn’t hear about trials until it was too late in his oncology rotation
- Observed that you could have a dating record online and perfect match, but not catch up on papers in context in industry
  - Had to start somewhere – landed on oncology – wasn’t a junior vs senior thing – few doctors had the time
- Losing patients to cancer and messy medical records – trying to improve the healthcare industry
- Can get a bunch of oncologists to drop everything and work as data scientists
  - Cheaper in Egypt and feasible – fair salaries to do this
  - In the US, very unlikely to happen as oncologists are far above data scientist salary
- Medical matching service – AI-powered to do trials for language content
- Paying ~30 employees, where 15 of them are oncologists
Alyssa Dineen, Style my Profile founder (Wharton XM)
- Personal stylists online and in NYC
- Wanting to expand – mentioned Forbes article and expanded 3x
  - Mostly from out of the NYC area
  - Would love to open LA, SF, Chicago, most urban areas
Daniel Korschun, assoc prof of Marketing at LeBow Drexel (Wharton XM)
- Marketing and branding for Kaepernick’s Betsy Ross argument
  - Nike blew opportunity to turn the flag into a very big positive – “Unity” or 13 civil rights activists
- Owning the branding, making sure to keep it different
- Making statements or seeing both sides can attribute your opinion without actually doing so
  - Being “informed” by museum after making case for both sides
Chandra Devam, CEO of Aris MD (Wharton XM)
- Discussion of iTech NASA competition with Star Trek-surgery
- A/R and V/R applications – board with the tech
Rachel Glaser, CFO of Etsy (Mastering Innovation)
- Search algorithms to increase sales
- Etsy as vintage space – defined as 20 years, or handmade materials or put together
- Have to stay ahead of counterfeit and trends

Sitar Teli (@sitar), MP at Connect Ventures (20min VC 12/30/15)
- Doughty Hanson Tech Ventures, series A round in SoundCloud
- Dual degree in MechE and Econ from Duke
- Taught English in South Korea for a year, 3 years in IB in US – Broadview (M&A, tech focused)
  - Enjoyed working with the companies but not the banking side – best part was to hear how companies started and early days
  - Hadn’t considered London in 2005 when headhunter had reached out
- Gaming, fintech, music & content, adtech where Europe is producing big, growing companies now (2015)
  - More cross-pollination of entrepreneurs going back and forth or partnering with others
  - IB moving into VC – different perspectives for her 2 other partners
- Starting a new fund – “one of worst startups you can think of” – competitive against established funds
  - Build brand, reputation, product and designing it (not just money but experience) – how to work with the founders
  - First year – founders aren’t necessarily eager – want a seriousness that came with business cards
  - Allocating $100 – she’d do $90 to the portfolio and investments, $10 to rejections and focus
    - For No’s, make it quick and even in the meeting or cut short
- Looking for companies
  - Founders that really understand the market they’re building for – how passionate, how much time to understand, experience
    - CityMapper founder – public transport and how they move through the city and how it can help
    - Stockholm-based Oxy – music creation app (prior at SoundCloud) – digital music tech, digital to greater number of people
  - Founders on a mission (other than $)
  - UX-focused and at the center of what they do
  - As an aside, whole lot of $ (maybe at seed) but it’s not the only bucket – ecommerce, adtech, depending on what founders are
    - Thesis: investors can dictate the entrepreneurs and align them
- Crowdfunding alongside VC – many biz don’t need venture capital but do need capital
- Amazing Adventures of Kavalier as book
Khartoon Weiss, Global Head of Verticals at Spotify (Wharton XM)
- Starting with the streaming service as free and eventually getting into freemium / subscribers
  - Providing value to users and charging for it
- Analyzing usage data from subscribers and free users to personalize the experience for listeners and serving brand partners
- Core value of giving creative artists the opportunity to live off their art
- Advertisers will see data in events that drive music playing
  - For example, an eclipse occurring will produce more song plays with eclipse themes – can drive user advertising for it, connect brands
Max Bruner (@maximusbruner), VP CorpDev at Metromile (Wharton XM)
- Talked about Mavrx, geospatial and agtech company
  - Flying drones and then planes over farmland to assess and improve efficiency
  - Didn’t have the initial equipment when they went to South Africa (needed data during US’s winter)
    - Had pilots take their cameras, IR and others
- Most of clients were in the midwest – eventually sold to various parts of the vertical
- Attended UW-Madison in econ and Arabic – did a year abroad between Egypt and Qatar (at the time, nice and hadn’t been through revolutions yet)
  - Felt like something was missing so returned to DC where he worked in the DoE under Reinvestment and Recovery Act

Universal Laws: Parkinson’s Law (Notes from July 15 – 21, 2019) August 6, 2019

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I included in my thrice-weekly newsletter the blog post by Morgan Housel espousing some of the most common universal laws of our world today. Once you know of them, it’s tough to not consider them in your everyday life. I’ll be honest and say that I hadn’t heard / didn’t know the name or origination of a few, including Parkinson’s. However, I wanted to comment on it because of its commonplace position on my timeline (and in the way I generally price much of my consulting work).

Parkinson’s Law: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

ML and apps – attention. Phones and apps have stolen hours of attention over the last 3-4 years (Wharton XM blog) — 3 hours to 4+ hours for the average, now

How do they squeeze in more DAILY? Work efficiency, likely. Most probably don’t have 8 hours of real work – ask anyone. What do we think the % is? I understand there are roles that probably see a full day a few times a week or in certain weeks (looking at you, auditors/accountants/finance/strategy/consultants) where projects line up or during busy times. Even retail / seasonal / cyclical has busy seasons – boosts that require full focus. But generally, not.

Work time vs value – if you can finish a project in 24 hours, charge more because the allowable time outside of that is higher or do you take the full time or project out for time in case of a problem / feedback / there? See: consultants working with a client, maybe a new client? Value = price but want to keep them. Can’t do too low. Can’t go outside of the range. Sweet spot of pricing and expand the time. Expensing to look like the time is filling. I can’t knock any firms taking advantage of this, especially when most have derived the business model from value creation, but it does seem that as time goes on, keeping that price premium and time valued becomes less of an advantage used for good and merely an indicator of what they should bring.

Time will tell for those that hang on the longest. Hope you enjoy the notes.

Cynthia Muller, Dir. of Mission Investment at WK Kellogg Fdn (Wharton XM, Dollars & Change)
- Discussing consulting and the people or culture parts (@cynmull)
  - Merger where everything, paper and number-wise, looked like a perfect match
  - Failed miserably – many of the top producers were unhappy and the merger allowed them to leave easily
- Satya Nadella at Microsoft reimagining the purpose – got to everyone PC-front but had to overhaul
- Measuring people – upper quintile in survey of 500k employees (~500 companies) – middle management ratings of purpose
  - 7% YoY performance over others – not lower or upper – middle management was determining factor
Scott Kupor (@skupor), MP at Andreesen Horowitz (Wharton XM)
- Discussion of becoming full-shop, including investments and RIA
- Value add other than capital is very important to him
- Tries to make decisions and No comes with why?
  - Sometimes they are wrong, see founders again and some have come back with addressing the reasons “no”
- IPO extensions to 10+ years vs 6-8 – private and liquidity-driven
  - Discussed employee needs as a big reason for why it will stay 10-12 and not increase
  - Can’t compete with Google or others if you aren’t liquid
  - Early on, private companies aren’t worried about that with the people that can take the risks
- Secrets of Sand Hill Road book, going through that
Brian Kelly, co-founder of The Points Guy (Wharton XM)
- Selling to Red Ventures – taken private recently, also
- Partnering with hotels and airlines to build an app in Austin – connect accounts, personalized, direct to airlines/hotels
  - Make it easier and hopefully change it for the better consumer experience
  - Turning it into a tech company moreso than a media one
- Blogging initially, leaving Morgan Stanley – consumer-focused and not driven by partnerships
- Only takes credit card partnerships instead of airlines or others
Benito Cachinero, Senior Advisor at Egon Zehnder (Wharton XM)
- Former CHRO at DuPont, ADP and leading succession processes
  - VP of HR for JnJ Medical, Corporate HR VP for MA Divestitures at Lucent Tech
- Born in Spain, knew he wanted out at an early age
Eric Hippeau (@erichippeau), MP at Lerer Hippeau Ventures (20min VC 12/21/15)
- Chairman of RebelMouse, co-founder of NowThis Media
- CEO in 90s of Ziff Davis initially as media company, the publisher of PC mags as well as conferences
  - Being in tech business moreso than media – sold to p/e firm before they sold to SoftBank
  - Before selling, they were about to be 2nd institutional investor in Yahoo but SoftBank made bid for 1/3 of Yahoo before IPO
  - He went to Yahoo Japan which allowed them to get a lot of source just due to the company
- Sold business in late 90s, joined SoftBank as investor and opened firm in NY with them before his own
- Backing company or business requires some business experience and growth/hiring and strategizing are all important
  - All partners at LHV have operating background – biggest difference is probably the time horizon (need really long view as VC)
  - Had just closed 5th fund, very satisfied with the work life instead of operating – running as a startup
  - $8.5 mln initially – no full-time employees initially, until the 2nd fund
- First investments are at seed level, have always kept money in reserve for follow-on
  - 70% of co’s are in NY
- Value add for LHV, generally – 2 levels of support
  - Product that is a technology platform that they plug everyone into
    - Recruiting and marketing database, best practices, current series A/B investors and what they’re seeking, Comms layer
  - Each company assigned to one partner and associate – bespoke plan and a to/do list for each company
    - Intros, branding, pricing, organizational structure and growth
- Biggest problems for portfolio co’s – dependent on sector
  - Ex: SaaS: correctly size marketing opportunity for going after the right, big companies – largest/most important get a premium on the valuation
- First check is typically $750k – $1mln – characterize this as collaboration between other funds
  - As long as terms are acceptable, let others lead or whatever is best when the companies are the best
- Best pitch: what they’re looking for is the Big Idea – original, large market, tech-enabled, timing
- Drone Racing League as public, recent investment: fantastic idea as drones are becoming more popular, variety of them, popularity of video games
Sumeet Shah (@PE_Feeds), Investor at Brand Foundry Ventures (20min VC 12/23/15)
- Investments include Warby Parker, Birchbox, Contently
- Grad from Columbia in 2008, biomedical and went to p/e through Gotham Consulting Partners (engineers at firm, diff industries)
  - P/E as two party system – deal team of firm and the client portfolio company
  - Lots of outside the box thinking, project work for 2 and B/D for 3 years
  - Met Andrew Mitchell who is the boss at Brand Foundry
- July 2013 moved into start-up with friends with Gist Digital – help with bizdev
  - 6 months in, help with capital – Andrew reconnected – was offered a full-time job into vc
  - March 2014 was when he went full-time and after the first year is active – seed rounds, pre-seed occasionally
- Paul and Sarah Lacey – series A crunch with tech/software/app-focused
  - Invested into Cotopaxi for $3mln seed round
  - Working alongside Indiegogo and Kickstarter and have invested in crowdfunding
- Marketer, operator and technician and his due diligence takes between 2-4 weeks, typically
  - Take on doubles/triples compared to unicorn returns that are worth it – Eilene’s opinion to do unicorns
- Believes over time that building reputation with doubles and triples, will stumble on a unicorn – those are the ones that can make the fund
- Most value from investors – sign of weakness is not reaching out to investors
- Different mindsets of East vs West coast
  - NY looks at building sustainable businesses, SV/SF is a $1 to a dream mentality (need this, still)
    - Want to look at revenue streams, traction, etc… but loonshots are ‘safer’ in SV
  - Founders as female-led – 7 of 13 of their investments have female founders and 3 of them are 2 co-founders female-led
- No general people in the startups that may catastrophically fail in SV, so it’s okay for the funding to be gone
  - Bullish on TechStars Boulder, looking at ventures or accelerators that are growing in that region
- Things A Little Bird Told Me as favorite book and most recent investment with LOLA – women’s biodegradable tampons
Carolyn Witte (@carolynwitte), co-founder & CEO of Tia Clinic (Wharton XM)
- Going from a tech AI program / chat – making women be comfortable with talking to a message
- Before doctor appointments to after, and then having them bring her in with the doctors
- How to interact – realized that they needed to complete the offering with their own clinic

Jessica Bennett, gender editor at NYT, “In Her Words” (Wharton XM)
- Sympathetic attitudes and gender
Boris Wertz (@bwertz), founding partner of Version One (20min VC 12/28/15)
- Top early-stage tech investor, board partner at Andreesen Horowitz, COO of Abebooks.com that sold to Amazon in ’08
- 2005 named Pacific EY Entrepreneur of the Year
- Internet 1.0 in 1999 – wanted to be apart of it – started JustBooks with some friends
  - Built it to Europe’s market leader and then sold to competitor AbeBooks before Amazon
- Took proceeds and put into 35 internet and mobile companies – early wins, early exits and decided to do it professionally
  - First fund was $18mln
- Power of bringing together customers across the world and finding the book – buyers/sellers in small marketplace with hard-to-find
  - Years and years of book fairs or local inventories that they were limited to
  - Passionate customer stories and being part of the company – personal way to see how marketplaces are important
- Transportation vertical with Uber as unlocked in marketplaces
  - Mobile first, others – and their investments
  - “A Guide to Marketplaces” book by VersionOne
    - Precision for a thought that may have been in your head when you write – clarity
    - As supportive as possible to the startup ecosystem and how to impact entrepreneurs in portfolio or outside
    - What does VersionOne get excited about and how do they contribute or help?
    - 50 page guide put together for a framework and concise – depth but not overly so
- Attractiveness of marketplaces
  - Fragmentation of supply/demand – more people on either side of marketplace, buyers/sellers
    - Buyers/suppliers sometimes want a monogamous relationship – doctors, cleaning personnel – don’t want to get someone new
    - Cab driver / uber – doesn’t matter who drives A to B as long as it’s safe
    - Transactional relationships vs monogamous
  - Size of underlying market, ebay grew from collectibles to all sort of products
  - Specific niche market – what is the kind of market you can address – specially-crafted goods
    - When he looks – lens of VC that needs a return, so needs to see a return on capital in 5-7 years
    - Operators can be great in this case because it can be very profitable, bootstrapped or friends/family money to get and grow
- Demand or supply first? Any marketplace chicken and egg.
  - Depends on marketplace but once you have network effects, it takes off
  - Uber paying drivers to be idle just to have people in the area and have the supply
  - Addressing supply – how much to have? Hotspots.
    - Which transactions work really well?
    - Price point? Vertical? Certain buyer/supplier? AirBnb doubled down in NYC higher value rentals. Just needed that initially.
- Trust and safety becomes more important after some attention – supply side with hobby sellers with a little bit of their inventory
  - Power starters are the ones that are stronger. Professional sellers.
- Mobile first marketplaces and on-demand marketplaces excite VersionOne the most.
  - Services / products as on-demand (Fueling of cars, for instance)
  - Fascinated by decentralized marketplaces built by blockchain – will they ever make money but can’t generate money on own?
- Measuring as VC: how happy are entrepreneurs, were ones that they met with taking away stuff, serving/help them and get feedback
- Favorite book: Hard Things, Blog/newsletter – Fred Wilson’s
- Overhyped: on-demand, Uber for X thing – underlying drivers for Uber’s success, for instance
- Underhyped: quicker hype cycles – blockchain, VR/AR, drones and anything new is all over it in few months
- Marketplace Key Metrics: gross merchandise sales and take rate (revenues compared to the gross sales)
- Recent investment: HeadOut mobile first marketplace for travel experiences (NY, LA, Chi, SF, LA, Vegas)
  - Upcoming experiences in next 24 hours in that city

Refresh the Old and Tired (Notes from July 8 to 14, 2019) July 30, 2019

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For the abundant discussion on big tech, rise of tech and the valley’s obsession with all of it, there are quite a few industries that have had much longer staying power. They’ve proved their worth, decades and decades in. There are still railways. There are still cars. Manufacturing persists. CPG and everything that that entails last. Walmart, as much as people love (or don’t) Amazon, it’s still a lion’s share of commerce. Tech has improved and allowed them to have this staying power. Additionally, enabling improved efficiencies can allow new players in the industries to fundamentally change how they’re viewed.

Industries include tv – nonpartisan and bipartisan news with Carrie Sheffield. a16z gets into online from offline forms of services, restaurants to tech-enabled deliveries, as well as the rise of CAA and the agency fights. Then we have traffic and building with a consultant in that space. The next industry was making the legal space a little more transparent – provide a marketplace where information becomes symmetrical. I believe these are ways that simple pain points that can be improved through a technological lens give access to a value that wasn’t there before.

Hope you enjoy the shorter posting and the notes as more detailed. Check each of the wonderful people out!

Carrie Sheffield (@carriesheffield), co-founder of Bold TV (Wharton XM)
- Discussing bipartisan vs nonpartisan
- Growing up in very conservative areas and then going to the coast – seeing both sides, especially media
  - How it was to be in media
- Fake news as non-fact-checked as well as actually fake – ~70%+ considering bias
- Intellectual diversity along with everything else – thinking differently vs looking diverse
  - Used example of Google AI conference canceling on a colleague who was a conservative, black woman
Chia Chin Lee, CEO of BigBox VR (Wharton XM)
Initially trying VR and finding it sickening – didn’t work (Oculus)
- Tried HTC Vive and fell in love – had a room set up and felt enthralled
- Hardware and platform may get cheaper with tech
  - Opportunity lies in the software side – connecting to others and industries

Entrepreneurs, Then and Now (a16z 6/29/19)
- With Marc, Ben, Stewart Butterfield (@stewart)
- 10 year anniversary for a16z in late June – how has the environment changed?
- Class of 2009 entrepreneurs were some of the most special: Todd McKinnon, Martin, Brian Czesky
  - To get to that point, needed to earn your stripes
- O2O – online to offline (AirBNB, Uber, DoorDash, Postmates, etc….)
  - Founders that may be more operationally-focused since those require that
    - Maybe more similar to semiconductor founders from the 1970s, start of 80s
- Dual discipline people as they got more involved in healthcare or bio-related
  - 10 years ago, Bio PhD wouldn’t know much on computers but now, dual PhD’s
- Economics + CS – discussion of field of economics with empirical / quantitative economics compared to physics or formulas
  - New inventions by economists with machine learning and data
- New ideas – thought venture firms had lost way, founders/operators that built businesses who would help out on boards
  - GPs started to get more abstract ideas, professionalized
  - Institution and ecosystem, network and fundamental staffing model – pay at a16z is different than other VC’s
- If priority was to find best founders at the best opportunities, shouldn’t matter which stage they’re at – miss things, maybe
  - Skype deal early, multiple entry points – working with entrepreneur and being stage-agnostic
  - Tech bubble bursting – “can’t possibly start fund” – 2009 was Khosla and them
    - Mentioned ‘crusty’ or ‘grouchy’ VC’s
- Much of the tech was at an inflection point – Salesforce as only SaaS, iPhone not quite there yet, Uber, Airbnb
  - Maybe the main response should be “No, this thing is stupid” as more accurate
  - Never thought it was a bubble – prices of companies are always incorrect (future performance, which nobody knows)
  - East coast vs West coast – not obvious, find what each argue about
- How high is up? Online pet delivery, all actually happening
  - What are the exploratory bets? Are markets ready? Are people ready? Regulators?
    - Sometimes it’s the pioneer, sometimes it’s the last – time and effort for founders, personality, other
- No individual company gets 25 years to prove something – maybe 5 years for a hypothesis
  - Morale issue losing faith or architecture issue – prior architecture (ex: mobile dev in 2002, system on archaic and aging-in-place)
  - VC’s will do the same thing – kid doesn’t know about failed experiments – VC freeze themselves out (ones who don’t know will often invest)
    - Can you learn lessons from failure – maybe you should learn nothing – “That doesn’t work.”
    - Edison as trying 3000 combinations before the filament, Wright brothers trying many
- Copying the model from CAA – Michael Lovitz and describing the whole thing – not a collection of individuals
  - Operating platform, system and infrastructure with professionals across the network
  - Compounding advantage year over year – but why can’t they copy? They were paying themselves all the money
    - Nobody wanted to take pay cuts – 80% to hire everyone at such a scale
- Top end venture investment – need something working (product-market fit, product)
  - Do they know what they’re doing? Can they do their job scaling?
  - Second-time or later founders – can do what they want and figure stuff out?
    - Problem may be with the good idea – investments on that idea or otherwise (fragmented idea with nothing)
  - Idea maze to find out what the ideas are – haven’t gone through that
- VCs can’t invest more than 20% of funds that aren’t primary equity investments – crypto, for instance (vs RIA)
- Deadwood as creation of city or state – horrifying obstacles
  - Why History is Always Wrong? (Taleb’s narrative fallacy, for instance – often more complex)
    - Don’t even know body, climate still (too complex) – can converge on science to Newton’s laws, others
  - Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins
Scott Kuznicki, Pres and Managing Engineer at Modern Traffic Consultants (Wharton XM)
- Traffic control tech – California high speed rail vs autobahn style
  - Autonomous lanes?
- Designated autonomous – level V vs others, depends on density and adoption
- Thinks parking structures with flat tops could be converted or pay for cost
  - Multipurpose, solar, green or plants etc…
Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting Co (FF 027, 20min VC)
- Daniel van Binsbergen, CEO and co-founder of Lexoo
  - Online marketplace connecting businesses and lawyers
- Founded it in 2014, got an investment for $1.7mil
- Friends always asking for referrals – kept a short list of them
  - Seemed great, “quoted $X – is that good?” – perception of complexities
  - Could put make a marketplace together for transparency
- Kept 100% of his income boosts – got used to his training salary so it wasn’t as big a risk
  - No kids meant it may have been easier – really disappointed if you didn’t give it a go – decision already made
- Legal space’s lack of progression in tech – incentives in wrong place
  - Hourly model still for law – if you spend less time on work, you would make less money
  - Risk-spotting for lawyers
  - Senior partners have heaviest voice – not exactly lining up for retirement in the near term vs long term
- Highest goal may not be senior partner – fixed fee, sharing risk, more open to innovating with own practice
- Lexoo initially – didn’t have tech skills for it, had a vision in his head but didn’t know best way
  - Didn’t build full-scale solution, did a forum for $15 website, form to fill in
  - Arrived in his email – he would then contact lawyers and fill in Word template – get their responses and quotes
  - Attached the lawyers’ quote and response to a doc and pdf and send back to clients
  - Automated only when he couldn’t handle the workload – hit limit on evenings and quit
    - Lawyers paid 10% commission on the quotes
- Focus on business ideas – tech isn’t the big solution – market innovation (access to litigators)
- Investors at Forward Investors – introduced through a friend who knew them through squash partner
  - Difference between FOMO on being convinced vs other investors who have a sense of opportunity
- Fav book: The Mob Test – how to ask questions to get useful feedback, asking questions to customers in the wrong way
  - Would you use the product if it does X, Y, Z – most definitely? Instead of asking what the customer problems are.
- A lot of work in Trello, for goals, and Sunrise app – Microsoft’s indispensable for calendar meetings
Facebook Bargaining Bots Invented a Language (Data Skeptic 6/21/19)
- Auction theory and econometrics – equilibrium strategy
- Neither agent is incentivized to change strategy if the other stays the same
- Plateau of events in real life – baby, marriage, life changes, job, lease ends in time
- Discount is a single floating-point decimal, ex 0.99 ^ t
  - Everything known – can calculate based on common knowledge and discounts
- Gaussian distribution, mean 100k, 10k – ignore tail in negative and renormalize
  - Rubenstein one-sided incomplete
- Game: don’t know private value now, but can have probability distribution
  - Update with Bayesian with behavior
  - Classic ML: corpus of examples of negotiation, mark up conveniently, objective function to maximize reward (post-agree)
  - Opportunity for RL – patterns for language utterances, insult or compliment or neither – recognizing strategy
    - Character level or nothing to ask it
    - Conversations for language you don’t understand and the reward – can you do this optimally?
- RL + Roll-out with 8.3 to agent and 4.3 to other algorithms (94.4% agreement)
  - Roll-out was 7.3 and then RL – 7.1 and last place was 5.4 for likelihood model
- Training data was in English, negotiating over 3 items – shortcut its job, RL wants the short path to reward
  - His example – loses points if you went to pits but to reward – chance at falling
  - Wasn’t worth it to move, so he had to do a penalty for not moving
  - Penalty for Facebook example was agents continued to communicate in English
  - Put a time constraint, maybe
Transfer Learning with Sebastian Ruder (@seb_ruder), D/S at DeepMind (Data Skeptic 7/8/19)
- Generally, TL is leveraging knowledge from different tasks or domains to do better on another task
- Not a lot of training data, may want to pretrain – models to train on imagenet, for instance
  - Language modeling to train on large corpora and use that on a bunch of other tasks
  - Source vs target data: task stays the same but can adapt between source and target, say sentiment of reviews
- Classic benchmarking, may have ImageNet moments over last year – features of pretrained models applied on more powerful NLP
- Google XLNet’s most current, BERT and ELMo as others – pace of improvement has been great
- Difficulty of target tasks – can be good for 100 samples in target source on binary tasks, maybe, 50 even?
  - 200 examples per label, question-answering or reasoning, examples must be increased
  - If we can express target task as a conditional language modeling, can do fewer or even inference
- Pretraining is costly due to large clusters on your own, but now can be public pretraining where you can finetune quickly
- Area of common sense reasoning – infer what a question means or expressed depends on what may not be said
  - Grass is green, entity facts (son of a son), inquiries for language model – incorporate to modeling

Connecting the Generations (Notes from July 1 to 6, 2019) July 23, 2019

Posted by Anthony in Digital, experience, finance, Founders, marketing, questions, social, Strategy, Uncategorized.
Tags: #business, books, content, experiences, finance, humanity, ideas, life, marketing, Money, questions, reading, research, social, sports, video
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So, we’re going to connect one of the authors’ titles of the books they wrote for our theme today. Connecting the Generations from Marc Freedman’s “How to Live Forever”. Granted, he was discussing the generational split between boomers, millennials, Gen Z and the workplace surrounding them. How do mentorships work in reality, if at all? How to find a bidirectional, productive mentorship? These are questions Freedman discusses in that book.

Another section that I want to focus on is the boom in gaming, specifically esports. Computers and games arose in in the late 1950s but became more of a thing to get probably by the 70s. As consoles came about, they became even more prevalent for those growing up in the 1980s as something we were used to seeing. My father, for instance, bought a Nintendo 64 on the opening weekend, and we would play together a few nights a week before bed – Mario Kart or Goldeneye. Though there were multiplayer games, these were mostly co-op and local, outside of tournament style, 1 on 1 games such as Mortal Kombat or MVC. Surely there were Super Smash tournaments among others but it took until the first decade of the 2000s to take off, if I were to guess. Now, gaming’s turned into a whole other animal – the ease with which you can get a console / pc that can run the top performing games and connect with friends makes the whole thing a new experience, and one nearly everyone can get on board with. YouTube / Twitch came about after streaming platforms like justin.tv and others came about, and many people like background noise or enjoy the commentary/gameplay aspect of watching compared to playing. I saw the other day that the top 5 individual gamers are above $1mil in prize money for playing – without any sponsorships included (that brings Ninja to above $5mil).
Kyle Bautista, COO of Complexity Gaming, discusses how they brand and seek opportunities for the competitors that are on the team, and where he sees the industry going. By comparing it to other sports, he tries to see value in working with younger players but because it doesn’t necessarily require the same separation of skills that athletes do, it’s a challenge to find out what age group or what type of player may be of most value or have the most potential to help get to a professional status. It’s a different world than the 90s, and I find the gaming one fascinating growth-wise.

Then we had a pair of Forward Partners discuss the ideology behind their firm. Focusing on very early startups – sometimes even the founders and building out the product or idea. Dharmesh Raithatha, product partner at FP, talked about the process for how they build the idea with a discussion of many people in the space, prospective customers, different markets on their frustrations or problems, if they have any solutions and where they go for help. Do the founders have the ability to inspire people with them as well as the customers who may be along for the ride?
Matthew Bradley discussed value that Forward brings outside of the checks, which tend to be a bit larger for the first money of those they have chosen to invest with. What does the 1 year timeline look like? Who are the first 100 or 1000 customers? And are there questions that should be asked that haven’t been covered? For the next thing, he was suggesting healthcare or something in medtech field instead of fintech or consumer, which could be more saturated.

As the next generation of branding and marketing, post-internet and more mobile-first, Peter Adams, of Marketing Dive, discussed the options for established brands to make plays that come off genuine and impressionable. For instance, the Taco Bell hotel. There are brand advocates who will love it, according to him. I’m a fan of Taco Bell, but I’m not sure that would be me. Definitely a creative way to drive some awareness, and if the opportunity is pulled off, it can work! Interestingly enough, he discussed the partnership of Nike / AirJordan and Fortnite – where players and sneakerheads don’t get physical shoes or items, but actually just the digital versions as skins. With the player base of a game such as Fortnite, it was a huge opportunity to get more people aware of the brand of Nike and hoping to allow a connection between the game and physical world that may drive sales. Brands have to be careful with how they approach this, though, in order to attract the right market as well as execute it in a way that is plausible.

I hope you enjoy the other notes I included here. If you have questions, you can reach me on Twitter or leave a comment. Have a great week!

Kyle Bautista (@coL_beef), COO GM Complexity Gaming (Wharton XM)
- Discussing esports and the partnering brands
- Meeting with Jerry Jones, who’d purchased a team
- Sees all types of similarity between esports and other athletes
  - 10,000 hours + rule
- Talent evaluation at an early age – working on that and trying to improve
Dharmesh Raithatha (@dhrmshr), Product Partner at Forward Partners (20min VC 096)
- Idea stage investments – great products in AI, former employee at Mind Candy, BBC
  - Founded 2 startups, sold one
- Background working in startups as software developer and then product management before leaving
  - Met Nick Brisborn, MP, said to meet for and work for 6 months
    - Strategy and multiple companies – said yes to all firms with product people
- Want synergies in sector expertise – early stage funds can be helped by these people, CEO may be process-based
- Difference between Nick – who has done it extensively and him – learning
- Open hours monthly – spend 15 min to pitch or getting advice – sees certain commonalities / niches
  - Ones that seem exciting pop out because they’re different or unique, and they understand that
- Investment themes for what they’ve invested in or problems that you haven’t found
  - Brainstorm lots of ideas, talk to people, observe & understand the problem
  - Tend to take people who are solo founders that are non-technical – not sure how to build the idea, maybe
    - Hard to evaluate or understand who is good – but he’s anti-outsourcing
    - If you can, cultivate relationships
- Founders that do well – very good understanding of their uses & seeking the right people
  - Ability to inspire, big vision wrapped up – 10x better aim
- New founders come in – can see the problem. Have the investment.
  - First month will be to talk to people – speak to 40+ to seek customer segments and market.
    - What problems? What solutions do they have? How do they feel? Where do they go?
    - Watch people solve the problem themselves, immerse themselves in the problem?
  - Ex of Lex – Founder’s Friday legal market – launched w/ forum/landing page
    - Tried to match lawyers with the clients. Understood the software he needed to build and the product.
- SV Product by Marty Cagan
- Massive interest in health tech – MindSpace, GP fixes, access to data earlier
- Most recent investment: The Gifting Company
Marc Freedman (@marc_freedman), author of How to Live Forever (Wharton XM)
- Discussion of the split generationally in the workplace
- More people living at home longer – even after the crash, still increasing
- People are used to being with others, but sometimes the mentorship game doesn’t work bidirectionally

Peter Adams (@patchadams), Reporter at Marketing Dive (Wharton XM, Marketing Matters)
- Target, Amazon, Walmart jumping into content space
- Discussion of Nike and Foot Locker branding – popups that are genuine
  - Digital footprint for awareness – Air Jordan with Fortnite
    - Did they need revenue split?
    - Taco Bell as a leader in the experiential branding space – launching hotel soon
    - Had a few popups – “Cantina” in Vegas – wedding venues, renting out restaurants
Matthew Bradley (@mattyjam), Investor at Forward Partners (20min VC 097)
- Super-early stage London VC and Betting Big on Consumer Fintech
- Father had done investment banking, so he went there first – ‘legit’ career in 2006
  - Structuring a derivative for midmarket pension fund in UK – packed up immediately after
    - Did an MBA, few start-ups that failed and invested in others
      (1 doing Series B)
  - Finance stuff, investing in small businesses and looked at venture capital – took unpaid internship at Forward and is there now
- Idea stage funding because they have a team of product people, full stack developers, designers, recruiters to give success
  - Offering $250k at this stage which is significantly larger than others
  - Path Forward as operator framework for proven need for prototype/product for first 100 or 1000 customers
- As an ecommerce fund, can test cheaply/quickly – why they look for the early adopters
- More $ in series A than ever before – round sizes are getting larger, so more startups are staying in seed earlier
  - Late vs early, crowdfunding and angel rounds
- Google Ventures took on LostMyName, a portfolio company, and wanted a TransAtlantic investor
- Asking questions to entrepreneurs 3 or 4 times, varies for team – teasing out assumptions and questions
  - Go-to market size, 1 year timeline, initial target customer
    - He’s a big fan of open-ended questions: Is there anything that he hasn’t asked that he should ask?
- With new YC’s announced, he says there are a repeat of clones that show up in the UK – not necessarily a bad thing
  - Startups have to often think of different problems, say payer difference in healthcare
  - Consumer credit bigger in the US than UK, probably
- Accelerator route – gold standard for incubator can almost always been great choice – but launching and consider market
- 50 next unicorns report: overweight in consumer tech and on-demand services and underweight in healthcare
  - Believes in consumer financial services and healthcare
- The Master and Margarita as favorite book
- Funding landscape in London: yes, more chickens – more eggs – more $
- Most read blog / newsletter (he said he reads 1.5 – 2 hours a day): Mattermark Daily, Term Sheet, Nick’s (boss), Tunguz, Mahesh
  - First round review weekly is a great one for early stage startup
  - Thiel as investor – lean methodology being bashed, crowdfunding not necessarily as replacing VC
- LiveBetterWith – aggregator for nonmedical products that help people live with chronic diseases – super early stage
Jose Benitez Cong, co-founder and CEO of Plause (Wharton XM)
- Growing up both Mexican and Chinese – couldn’t speak English, couldn’t speak Chinese
  - Was dropped off as a kid to his grandparents’, who spoke Chinese – school started Monday and he needed to figure out English
- Hustling to do window washing and scaling it while he couldn’t drive (saved money – until he started spending it on girls later)
  - Scaling of window washing broke after doing orders and calendars because money wasn’t as easily split for not equal shifts
Bill Glaser, Bacon Chips – co-founder of JUST (Wharton XM)
- Bacon chips – PIG OUT brand, all vegetarian
  - Formulated by David Anderson, former chef at Beyond Meat
  - Mushrooms that are flavored to taste like bacon with a tech patent-pending
- Mushrooms as umami and making sure the consistency worked to be crunchy
- Getting investment capital – some $1.5 million
Catapult Ventures Darren & Rouz Jazayeri (Wharton XM)
- Technologists, looking for solutions
- How they came to the name

Sharing, Building and Community (Notes from June 24 – 30, 2019) July 16, 2019

Posted by Anthony in Digital, experience, finance, Founders, global, Leadership, medicine, questions, Real estate, social, Strategy, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
Tags: #business, books, community, content, experiences, finance, freedom, Google, humanity, ideas, investing, life, marketing, medicine, Money, questions, reading, social, sports
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If you hadn’t noticed or read from the start, you should know that I’ve gone in order from the start on the Twenty Minute VC episodes. Many of the conversations are from 2015 and 2016 so they end up as a bit of a history lesson and window into the mindset surrounding capital / founding at that time. Bubble discussions or higher capital raises are comical when we now know what today looks like – higher, still. Although I’d say geographically, expansion has exponentially grown as it’s become easier and more common for firms to seek out what they really believe is an edge for them. Interestingly enough, people also don’t stay where they were, especially over a few years. As I look them up to refresh and review for these posts, it can be very enlightening to see where they are currently – did they start a new project? Open a new fund? Move on to different industry?

David Teten was one of those switchers, as he was with ff V/C at the time, and now over at HOF Capital. Similar role but perhaps more focused on what he’d like to see. Also, many of the firm founders and partners aren’t heralded for having more than a few roles – some probably for different reasons, but I look at that for myself as a way to stay extremely excited about continuing to learn every day, every week. To believe in yourself to be capable of doing great work, helping to create as much value as possible in the most efficient manner, hopefully. Weird that many people receive flack for multiple positions when many of us strive to follow a few particular, but potentially different, things. For this, I admire David in keeping up with his roles, while keeping us all in the loop of his thoughts, generally, as well.

Next, there were two involved in real estate, housing and construction that were pretty much aligned. What do I mean? Both believed the rising housing (and estate, generally) costs have come as construction costs have increased significantly. This is creating unduly pressure, and making it more difficult for projects to get done. Maggie Coleman went through real estate differences for certain types, while John Rahaim of SF mentioned precautions that are being taken for the coastline and bay.

Then, we had Ryan Hoover, who runs ProductHunt, and is one of my favorite follows. He built what he and his friends wanted – a place to share ideas and products to try. And 5 years later, here he is. I won’t spoil some of the nuggets that he shared, including a few of his favorite books and monetizing once he knew it was real. Not to be outdone, a discussion with Phil Southerland covered how he has built a strong community of athletes born or having diabetes. To demonstrate how they can grow, he helped form a team of all diabetics and professionally rides to bring awareness and improve the lives and conversations surrounding them.

There is important work being done by many people, including ourselves. If we can better someone’s life, it’s likely worth doing it if you’re enjoying it. We can help by just being who we are and doing what we would like to do. I’d love to hear some of your ideas or thoughts regarding the people covered in this week’s notes.

David Teten@dteten, Partner at ff Venture Capital, founder and Chairman of HBS (20min VC 095)
- Alumni Angels of Greater NY, largest angel group in NY
- How to Disrupt the Investing Business
- Grew up in Marin Co, played with computers – consulted and taught Excel as a kid – bah mitzvah on knowledge test
  - Fired when he was 16 from financial services company because they figured out password was pw for admin
- In college, worked briefly in strategy consulting before investment banking in tech – business school where he started multiple ventures in Israel and US
- Joined ff VC in 2011 when it was 3 – now 27+ people, as largest headcount seed VC in Canada, Amsterdam, Israel, UK, US
- Company ff should be generalists – broadest possible but don’t invest in life sciences due to no expertise there yet
  - Can’t predict in advance, so they want companies that are interesting with high growth potential
  - Admires outbound of TA or Summit, but something like SignalFire to look at data for high growth
    - Resources to help founders to reduce write-offs (1 in 6 fail for them) which attracts inbound (2000+ a year)
      - Filters down to ~12 a year to invest
- Google Ventures / SignalFire and others as algorithmic approaches to source – increasing importance but not validated thesis
- Loves their model as efficient – frustrations at other vc’s (80% of time with people / co you can’t invest in – partying and not meeting anyone)
  - Nobody at ff has a job as origination, Angelist as disrupting the generalist VCs (those that don’t have added value)
- Top 3 Important Ways to Support Companies: capital raising, finance acceleration team – CFO acting, recruiting
- How to determine value add as entrepreneur
  - Reference check
  - Do the math on portfolio: for ff, 60 portfolio co’s (active in 2/3), 24+ ee’s
    - How many people in the team? How many portfolio co’s? How many checks?
      - Use that to determine person-hours you can expect
    - What sort of technology platform to support the company?
  - A16z as huge operational side – finance, marketing, etc…
    - Short list for companies doing this – very capital intensive
  - Believes that there will be some shrinkage in the model in a downturn if it’s not fully thought out
- Very illiquid asset class (mentioning to LPs) – 12 different academic studies for 18-54% median returns
  - 10+ years for cash returns, lot of institutions aren’t okay with that time range
  - David Swenson (head of Yale endowment) has argued long-lasting liquidity premium for illiquid asset classes
    - Even the most liquid asset classes aren’t liquid when you want them to be (2008, for instance)
- Indiegogo as seed – crowdfunding space, competitors aren’t invested in – watch Angelist very closely, though
  - Services from Angelist as they look around at different parts of deal flow
  - Encourages member space to get involved in angel investing for next generation of companies – exposure to ecosystem
    - Promote economic growth
- Research study: Disrupt investing – security, for instance
  - Secure (ID verification), Distill Networks (blocks bots), IONIQ (from Atl, secure cloud usage)
  - New processes and make them efficient: Addapar (Excel/PDF), Earnest Research (nontrad datasets eg: cc info, email receipt mining)
- VC usage of social media: much more aggressive, judicious but no breakfast tweeting – sell
- Edward Tufte – Yale prof, must read
- PandoDaily as top blog – not afraid to make enemies, discuss what they do
- SkyCatch as most recent – drone tech, set of tools for collecting data via drones – construction use case (Kamatsu client)
  - Monitor exact status of project, imperative they know where everything is
Maggie Coleman, MD and Head of Intl Capital at JLL RE (Wharton XM)
- Looking at different real estate measures – single family homes, for instance
- Do different assets in real estate require a different measure to draw attention from foreign investors?
  - Didn’t seem so – would depend on where the capital was coming from (their own environmental basis)
- Construction costs as outpacing many other costs – affecting many markets

John Rahaim, Director at SF Planning Dept (Wharton XM)
- Having to adjust for the changing seaboard – will regulatory measures be taken?
  - No mechanical or living people in commercial buildings on the first floor, for instance
- Says there are already precautions being taken on the bay – 5-8 feet, for instance
- Construction costing so much already that it’s been very difficult to get building done post-land acquisition
  - Estimates of $600-800k for this due to inflationary and costs passed from the building companies
  - Said he had some 36? Projects that are being held up
Ryan Hoover (@rrhoover), Founder @ ProductHunt (20min VC FF026)
- Best community builder, Twitter engagement, winner of TC Best New Startup of 2014
- Just wanted to build a consumer-focused thing to discuss with his friends about app ideas or companies
- Put it on Quibb and Twitter – manual things initially, set up an email subscription, personal email connecting with people
  - Keep building communities otherwise it peters out
- First iteration was RoR built over 5 day Thanksgiving holiday – core is the same, people using and community growth
  - Having people tell them and comment on ideas (used it as their new home page)
- How to plan to go from early adopters to mass market?
  - Eager enough to participate, engage and not necessarily representative of the common users
- Categorizing Podcasts and putting them on the home page – barrier before, now based on episodes
  - This Week in Startups, Startup Show (by Gimlet founders), Jake Gyllenhaal ep of Mystery Show (Gimlet media) – is he 6′ tall?
- Worked on Hooked with Nir Eyal, using some in ProductHunt
  - Email digest is the trigger – action is to open / click on something to find inspiration or interesting
    - Built email variability – some consistency, surface different titles and content
  - Follow collection, clicking follow, reward is updates on the collections – permission for emailing to reinforce and come back
- Ryan’s favorite collections: featured ones, Russ has game collections (browser ones), Julie created bakednight
- Betaworks kept popping up on their engagement charts – Twitter very active, products (Without, where would he be?)
  - Always tagging the authors and being genuine, personable, funny or light-hearted
- Monetizing PH – at its core, download/use/purchase products with the right intent
  - Over time, will explore more of this
  - Fundraising: first time for Ryan, different as a side project and growing
- Quibb as newsfeed other than Twitter and also Crunchies where they announced Shipt but said “Actually, it’s PH”
- Sunrise as calendar app, Pomodoro – no longer. Favorite book: Art of Game Design by Arty Shell
  - User psychology and game mechanics, how it applies to tech products as well. Game design not always thought about.
Brian Solis (@briansolis), author of Lifescale (Wharton XM)
Survey on how social media has changed / warped views for girls
- Hadn’t fully released yet

Phil Southerland (@philsoutherland), CEO of Team Novo Nordisk (Wharton XM)
- Living with T1 diabetes and bringing awareness
- T1 and T2 can be helped, dealt with and he’s trying that
- Cycling team focused on it
  - Full team is athletes with diabetes
    - triathletes, runners and cyclists

Blast to the Past – Past Drives Future Growth (Notes from June 17 to June 23, 2019) July 9, 2019

Posted by Anthony in Uncategorized.
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I’ve included a few repeat guests but from different podcasts. Fun to see how different the discussion can be with a different host. So, if you’ve been following along, hope to hear that you recognize Eric Topol and Joseph Jaffe’s names.

I was quite intrigued by Archit Bhargava’s work at Niantic in marketing their games further, along with the creative process behind how they started. Niantic did Pokemon Go – and what went in that from starting with the maps and what game may have worked (some… ~10 years later). The Crew communication app also had a fascinating introduction story to get to where they were – from sitting in a tequila bar coming up with the name to finally developing an enterprise communications app.

Then, there was a number of data science-centered episodes (of course). A16z had a discussion in ML and AI for medicine – how we see it, where it stands, where it’s weak and should improve. Back to the future was also a method for the Endangered Language Project where 2 contributors were on Data Skeptic discussing their research while at USC going through NLP on languages that are losing speakers/writers/people to pass it on.

One of the most exciting and energetic guests were the co-founders of Bulletin Space, though. Two women who eventually decided to make their brand a woman-centric platform focused on products by females for females, and providing them space to do great work.

Hope everyone enjoys!

Archit Bhargava, Head of Global P/Ming at Niantic Inc (Work of Tomorrow)
- Discussion of Harry Potter game after Pokemon Go
  - Social aspect of exploration
  - Partnering with cities and maps points of interests
- Revenue model – in-app purchases vs sponsored placement of gems / pokemon
  - In Japan, partnered with McDonald’s
  - US – Starbucks and gyms
Joseph Jaffe (@jaffejuice), author of Built to Suck (Wharton XM)
AI and Your Doctor, Today and Future (a16z 6/13/19)
- With Eric Topol (@erictopol) (author of Deep Medicine) – cardiologist and chair of innovative med at Scripps Research, Vijay Pande (@vijaypande)
- Didn’t expect AI and medicine to be such back to the future – outsourcing so many things that could get us back to the 70s and before
  - Doctors spent more time with humans, patients due to big business, EHR, admin wants more “efficiency”
  - On Twitter – kid drew a drawing of going to doctor – it was a doctor with his back turned typing on his computer
- More tech is less computer – fundamental problem, not even drawing eye contact
  - NLP can already liberate time, some UK emergency rooms, as well – eliminate the distraction and data clerking
  - Encouraging to have the speed/accuracy for transcriptions, ontology and organized data
- Google AI on improving the voice processing
- Min discussion / comm b/w doctors for treatment/diagnoses
  - In his book, he went through his knee replacement surgery – orthopedist wasn’t in touch with his congenital condition
    - Logistics and coordination for computers – for thyroid cancer, maybe would need endocrinologist with oncologist
  - How do computers know things that we don’t know now? Complementary – big data has appetite for it (humans – contextual)
- Radiologists have a false negative rate of 32% – ground truths for x-rays / scans that it won’t miss – basis for litigation (missing some)
  - Best use of time for doctors would be understanding and discussion with patients
- Diagnosis in general – once trained, doctors are wedged into their diagnostic performance for their career
  - Kahneman’s System 1 + System 2: if doctor doesn’t think of the diagnosis in first 5 minutes, they have an error rate of 70%+
  - ML is reflecting system 2 since it’s trained off of doctors doing system 2 – but with an aggregation of 1000s
- Up to 12mil errors in medicine a year – can improve upon this, easily
- Negative components potentially:
  - Can’t trust unilaterally, need oversight
  - If FDA approved, have to watch for cohorts – deep liabilities, ethics, privacy issues – have to be tradeoffs and considered
- Rolling out AI – NHS is the leader in genomics (ER rooms without keyboards), China with scale and advantages – data on each person
  - Limitation of data in the US and otherwise, no strategy here as well – other countries have a lot of resources spent / proposed
  - Education and training has a full wing for AI in the NHS
- Professional organizations have not been forward thinking – maintaining the reimbursement for their members
  - Worst outlier, outcomes and mortality – worst, especially due to spending ($11k per capita)
  - Naivete of diet and having the same diet – not just glucose responses, but triglyceride tracking – non-normative responses to same thing
- Wiseman Institute in Israel cracked code on promoting health – glucose, lipids in blood – eventually see outcomes / prevention by diet
  - Numbers of level and data for each individual – specific bacteria and the sequences, physical activity, sensors for stress, sleep
  - Need hundreds of Ks of people to learn more and on a broader spectrum
  - Can give retina picture to Intl retina expert and it’s 50-50, but an algorithm is 97%
    - Polips in colonoscopy, K level in blood thru smart watch w/o blood
- Why did people go into the medical profession in the first place?
  - Care, helping people and seeing people – but now have highest suicide, burn out and everything
    - More depressed which leads to more errors and cycles
- Could do remote monitoring, for instance, for all of non-ICU patients
  - Hospitals won’t allow it, they’d be gutted. Hospitals are problematic – 1 in 4 get injured or sick.
  - Only quick adoptions are enhancement of revenue (think: robotic surgery rooms)
  - Comfort of own home – can sleep, see loved ones, clearly cheaper (average is $5k / night)
- Cardiologists thought you’d have to look at the QT interval – only 1 part
  - Flunked with the algorithm – Mayo Clinic wanted all data and use the full cardiogram
  - AI / ML already have a great driver detector
- Easier for machines to do new things with no regulation – rare cell detections, genomes
  - Imagination is our limit / machine limit (unsupervised learning limited by annotation, for instance)
  - Prediction has not done as well as classification, clustering (uses his stepdad as an example, who was resurrected)
- Not there yet for multimodal algorithms – doctor doesn’t have to do typing – AI figures out diagnosis
  - When you go to see a doctor, you want to be touched – the ‘experience’
  - He doesn’t use a stethoscope anymore, he uses a smartphone ultrasound for EKG – shows the patient in real-time
    - Tools of the exam may change, but interaction will be intimate still – have to get back to this
The Death of a Language, Endangered Language Project (Data Skeptic 6/1/19)
- USC students research Zane and Leena, CS / App Math and CS / Cog Sci
- Using unsupervised learning to assist classifying pho (basic unit of sound in speech) names of endangered languages with PyTorch
- Last living speaker of a language dies – globalization has rid the world of a number of languages (Latin, inc)
- Helping linguists and a sociological effort to carry on the language – Zane’s father speaks a dying Italian dialect (Venetian, so not living)
  - Very similar to Italian just from listening to audio but has different conjugation / words for some
- 3.5 hours of audio from 4 speakers collected by their professor in an area near the Northern Italy
  - Most valuable for research – more speakers to improve dataset
  - Output as recommended start and stop times, unsupervised labels for the times – rec time for pho name
- Slicing audio file into many small segments, labeling them and then combining the adjacent segments
- Built classifier with an NN – series of vectors (condensed, auto-encoding of audio data)
  - 7000 spoken languages but estimated that half will go extinct by the end of the century
  - Manual transcription is tedious, so hoping it will assist linguists in proscription
Three-Legged Stool, Chuck Akre – Akre Capital founder (Invest Like the Best, 6/18/19)
- Managing $10bn after forming firm in 1989
  Being in “one-stop town” quality of life, not being disturbed by outside events or people
  - Distracted or curious by friends, their thoughts – he spends a lot of time reading vs screens
  - Thing that disappointed his son, a tenured professor without luxury of being highly select
    - best students (those that got A’s) wanted to only know what would get them an A, rather than have curiosity
- 3-legged stool as more stable than 4 legged – can deal with uneven surfaces
  - Rates of return in common stocks were higher than any other asset class in unlevered case
  - “Once a guy sticks his hand in your pocket, he’ll do it again” – human behavior happens to be antithetical sometimes
  - Legs: quality of business enterprise, quality and integrity of people running it, what is their record for reinvestment and opportunity for it
- Own exceptional businesses, don’t sell them
- Bandag – “tire business” but looked at returns on capital and they were 3-4x everyone else
  - Wanted to figure out what business it was in – Marty Carver (founded by his father) was a different feel
    - Retreading bus and truck tires, early 70s had tanked oil + petroleum so dealer’s had skyrocketed costs
  - Bandag passed on savings to their dealers in the evidence that they had to reinvest the money in their stores – new ones, franchises
  - Created huge dealer loyalty – trucks/buses’ tires are constructed so that they retread 2-3 times
- Weren’t smart or quick enough to get into FANGs or otherwise – couldn’t figure out the value creation in quick span
- Mastercard March 2010 – during Dodd-Frank, Congress act, Durbin amendment – Mastercard/VISA selling at 10-11x
  - Discovered operating margin on returns over capital “not enough words that were superlative enough” – still above average after cutting 50% twice
  - Everybody wants some of that – jamming every expense into the income statement to reduce how good margin is
    - What’s causing that? How do they have it?
- Wall Street – wants transactions in general (his biz model – compound capital) – create false expectations on earnings estimates
  - “Miss by a penny, beat by a penny” – gives them opportunities since markets behave irrationally
  - Dollar Tree as 3 major players and that was it
- How do you measure whether you’ve been a success at running this business? Or we hit our earnings target or board goals, etc.
  - Impact of compounding economic value per share. Not trained to do that.
  - O’Reilly as duopoly and buying and deleveraging – capital allocation change / International Speedway
- Growth of antennae – American Tower Corp (buying in Africa recently) – 5G won’t be here soon, but they’re acting as gatekeeper
  - Microsoft as the OS toll
- Collecting datapoints and making judgments on them in general, whether you’re an English major, pre-med, investment management
  - Reading business biography learning behaviors
- Land conservation plan / donations
- What is the source of pricing power for each company?
Named Entity Recognition (Data Skeptic, 6/8/19)
- Entities as core features of a sentence, idea
- Text file analyzing or software doing a good job of named entity
  - If you give labelings, some are from computer vs English majors (Turing test)
    - Using SpaCy for NER – hard problem, different expectations but not great – just good
- Chatbots seeking NER – flight example, for instance – pull out things that are mentioned
  - City is destination, airline mentioned
- BERT can do NER pretty well – Google Assistance and chat interfaces have been improving
  - Semantic web projects can pull entities out of documents and connect them in knowledge graphs
  - Transfer learning – pretrained model on generic model and use that as jumping off point
Carmax: Way Data-Science-powered Car Buying Should Be (BD Beard, 5/28/19)
- Tod Dube, Chief Architect for Data Science at Carmax
- Adding 1 store per month, no. 3 wholesaler (to Barrett Jackson, eg), $18bn in rev, #1 used car
- Determining pricing is through ML, but now omnichannel – looking/exploring cars interactions
  - Customer service buying exposure
- Changing how data scientists go about their job – laptops with minimal compute power, governance issues trying to fit onto laptop
  - Analytical leadership to push tech to do things better – how to make availability
    - Security, data losing, privacy, model
  - Shift data and move data around but if data moved in 3 weeks – how can you iterate easily
- Architectural changes from laptop / personal side to service and data warehouse pulls / data centers
  - Azure service response – pick use case, can’t swallow the elephant (replatform rec that were done today – handwritten code)
  - 2 week sprints for changes before – different cars, reasons, prices and availability
    - What tools could help? SaaS, subscription to bridge the gap – Had python (Jupyter, Spyder, Anaconda) / R
  - Started a data lake because of use case
    - Had to pivot and find data scientists (Type A – analytical, business; Type B – data engineer, why model is necessary for data)
- Consulting partners as unsung heroes to figure out how to build out a team or look at problems
- Spark as a Service, Spark as data lake, DataBricks (Delta Lake), Azure customer
  - Will auto finance almost any cars, call centers – better enabling customers in financial choice
- Walk-on song for conference: I’m Not Afraid by Eminem
- Spends money on tech, iPad Pro new now, MacPowerUsers (how their workflow is)
  - AI, weather on sprinklers for rain predictions
Ali Kriegsman, Alana Branston, co-founders of Bulletin (Wharton XM)
- Switching from platform with competitors like Etsy, Bazaar to drive sales, initially
  - Had creative, original content and hooked brands up with some unused channels/media
  - Asked brands/customers after > 100 brands – ‘peak’ initially
  - They talked about how valuable, but expensive, physical space was – pop-ups individually, Brooklyn Flea, etc
- Decided to do pop-ups in big parking lots – ineffective, felt the heat – literally (12k sq ft in parking lot outside)
  - Shrunk it and rented out a front space from a bar – charged $300 * 30 brands for pop-up for a weekend
    - Worked for both brands and them – realized they could do that ~10 months
  - Grinding for the year, made money equivalent to month of prior sales, but 7 days / wk wasn’t scalable
- Finetuned branding for pop-ups to female founders, female products (had men originally)
  - Best products at time were stamped necklaces, ready-to-wear clothing increasing
Sucharita Kodali (@smulpuru), Retail Analyst – Forrester (Marketing Matters)
Danny Leffel, CEO, cofounder of Crew (Wharton XM)
- Communications app for everyone on professional page
Bryan Murphy (@bryanpmurphy), CEO of Breather (Wharton XM)
- Talking about the optionality to get working space

Dan Widmaier, CEO cofounder at Bolt Threads Biotech (Wharton XM)
- Using spider silk and attempting to synthesize stronger proteins for apparel, clothing
- Tie was the first – needed a quick demonstration
- Have gone on to other materials, solving environmental waste of apparel

Different Ways to Create (Notes from June 10 – June 16, 2019) July 3, 2019

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3 fantastic sounding women to start. One in VC and finance, discussing the difference between NYC and SF for her. The second compared in-house marketing strategy and outside influence. What’s that look like? How much control is there? Last, but certainly not least, was an author who discusses something that I’ve seen with family and my sister – the challenge of raising a child while balancing some semblance of normalcy in work. What’s expected from yourself? What should be reasonably expected from work? What’s a balance?

Those women: Erin Glenn, Julie Scelzo and Lauren Smith Brody.

A few sportsmen discussed data and capital. Sixers Innovation Lab and former exec for And1 mentioned how they think about growth in Philadelphia and the brand, who can they support in the community that can also help with the team. John Urschel, former Baltimore Raven, is a published mathematician now who discussed the influx of data collection and analysis among all sports and teams. What they can do makes a great athlete experience, fan experience and overall performance improves.

A plethora of rising stars followed, from Kanyi of Collaborative Fund to Sofia Colucci of Coors and the co-founders for SHINE text. Hope you enjoy my notes and you check out the podcast episodes!

Erin Glenn (@leeeringlenn), CEO of Quire (20min VC FF025)
- Entrepreneur as kid – day business for summer camps, then management consulting, IB and took a company public (econ consulting firm)
- Got bug to start own thing in 2010 – joined KIXEYE in SF for 4 years, video game company
- Wanted to go to NYC (as kid in OK) – went to meet w Betaworks, fell in love with Quire
  - Mutual conv to join Quire – loved it – equity crowdfund co
  - Venture-back co’s enabling portion to raise for community & mission
    - Min. investment is $2500 – supporting larger investments as well, up to $250k
- Likelihood for investors to get taken advantage of – Title III discussion (investors with <$100k income/net worth can invest up to $2k or 5% of income)
- Mattermark study on investor bases that exist and why people do invest
  - Investor and diversity – minority, gender, big differences in those that follow Mattermark or others
- Crowd won’t provide scaling / grow money (the $50mil+ rounds), but community can help participation at a lower level
- Motivation to invest, other than financial incentive – supporting company’s mission + founders, spurring economic growth + innovation
  - Real commitment to realize dreams, grow economy
- Benefits with crowd investing for company – moral and psychological
  - Supporters of the company can invest, which is reinforcing for doing it – customers that are owners of the business spend more, loyal, etc
- SF vs NY startup ecosystems and CEO role
  - Had joined Quire with 2 suitcases, dog and air mattress after 2 days there
  - CEO role – really fun and exhilarating with challenges daily, gained confidence at eliciting feedback from ideas
    - Coming up with better solutions and getting them to help because we don’t have all answers
  - Intensity and vibrancy, competitive spirit in NY even though it’s smaller-feeling
    - Want to take on SV and not give up the competitiveness
    - More female founders in NY – fashion, finance, media in senior executives trying new things
- Favorite book: Magic Mountain ahead of WWII in Europe, Switzerland
- Favorite blog: Fred Wilson’s and Tim Cook as favorite innovator
- Gimlet Media (first investment), Kano, Duel as others
Julie Scelzo, executive creative director at McGarryBowen (Wharton XM)
- Talking about marketing difference between in house and outside
  - Going from Creative MD for Pandora to take on MGB AMEX
- Moving from agency to internal at Facebook – not even a salary bump, but just felt right
  - Worked helping clients was rewarding but she missed creating
Lauren Smith Brody, author of The Fifth Trimester (Wharton XM)
- Discussion of parental leave in the workplace – if uneven with your partner, mixing it up or staggering
- First 6 months as crucial for development – how to best alleviate this
  - Every person is different and has different attitudes
  - Nobody can generally be told how something may feel for them
- Having the partner available in the first 6-9 months provides evidence that they’re capable, and can understand some of processes
- First day of work being scary – moreso as a parent – train whole life to be in workplace
  - Can be comforting back at work, not so much for first days as a parent
Dilip Goswami, Molekule Air Filters (Wharton XM)
- Being his father’s son, a typical engineer
- Developing and deciding what part of product to have in house vs outside
  - Hybrid model
- Having customer support and knowing it worked – shipping and using that as validation
Seth Berger, founder and CEO of And1, Sixers Innovation Lab (Wharton XM)
- Discussing how coaching basketball to young adults was so helpful
- Marrying And1 with his passion for basketball and teaching and being around it
- Sixers Innovation Lab – knew Josh from the 90s working on a failed internet co originally
  - Helping with capital up to $1mn and seeing 10x returns so far
John Urschel (@johnCurschel), Former lineman with Ravens, MIT mathematician (Wharton XM)
- Talking about the lifelong balance of math / football from his memoir
- Thinking about where analytics may be super exciting in sports – real-time strategy if they’re allowed the computers / data on-field/court
  - Tracking data is so strong, it’d be interesting to see what coaches may do to get there
Nathan Furr, Curtis Lefrandt, Innovation Capital author (Wharton XM)
- Author discussing how innovation costs resources
- Talking with Marc Benioff and others for the most innovative leaders

Sofia Colucci, VP Innovation of Miller Coors (Measured Thoughts, Wharton)
- Introducing a new brand, Cape Line, into the world
  - Usually a 1.5 – 2 year process for a corp this size
  - Cut it down and released in 2019, dropped the other project (Project Sprint)
- Had already done market research, wanted a more healthy, alternative to beer for women – cocktails in a can
  - Packaging and what that would look like after tasting
Jennifer Pryce (@jennpryce), President CEO of Calvert Impact Capital (Wharton XM)
- Impact capital and how they grade different companies on the degrees for investment
- Infrastructure, seeing them surpass $1bn
Marah Lidey (@marahml), Naomi Hirabayashi, co-founders of SHINE app (Wharton XM)
- SHINE as a wellness app for meditation
  - Gaining ground with their superusers – seeking feedback
- Self-care platform, weren’t sure how they attracted so many men – but it’s definitely catered to their experiecne
  - Reached out to one of the first superusers that was male to get his input and to have influencers help
- Product-market fit and development was always based on how they wanted the app to be- what they were searching for
Kanyi Maqubela (@km), Partner @ Collaborative Fund (20min VC 094)
- From South Africa originally, investments into CodeAcademy, Reddit, AngelList, AltSchool, TaskRabbit
- Founding employee of Doostang, attended Stanford Uni & worked on Obama campaign in 2008, as well
  - Dropped out of Stanford, compelled by interest to see other part of world – did a startup, $20mil of VC funding for a couple startups
    - Being young, decision to leave was easy but once he’d left, it was tough
    - Making friendships and lasting connections easily in college – some communities outside, in pro world, was rough
  - Met his partner, Craig, while finishing school and doing work in design – convinced him to help him with CF
- Investors are those that believe in collaborative economy – nodes, peer-to-peer and nodes for networking
  - Every consumer/employee/companies have obligation to align interests and value sets
  - Looking at companies to focus on impact and values – aspirational culture as outcome of collaboration
- For the fund – stage specialization or theme?
  - Theme may be time-efficient-oriented. Reminder that many of most successful people have skipped on massive wins multiple times over.
    - Altman mentioned about having a point of view and heuristic to drive decisions (whether it’s stage or theme)
- Being a partner at 30 – GPs with skin in the game
  - As young, have to have been very successful early or came from money to get into the fund
  - Needs to prove himself but as younger, may have been very risk adverse in the sense he wasn’t free-swinging
    - Facebook went public 7 years (quick for industry, but not necessarily quick for a fund) – feedback loop timeframes
  - Million ways to market as investor, drive value as portfolio, data, theme or stage specific
    - Blog as high leverage marketing for himself, writing is how he clarifies his ideas to himself and the public
- Limits and is very prescriptive for the networking aspect of VC, conferences – wife in medical school so when she’s free, he makes himself free
- Accelerator / demo days as good for investing – he likes being first institutional round, but thinks demo day to discover is not their best way
  - Sometimes the due diligence for demo days of seeing what’s out there
  - He uses them to talk to other VCs, see source and deal flow – coopetition – high leverage, high marketing channel
  - His best way in is likely the portfolio companies under them – he looks for connections for new places and vouch for them
- Naming Fidelity markdown of a bunch of companies – saying that private companies are being treated like they’re public companies
  - Realtime prospects that are valued – can go up or down, financing or not
  - Private crowdfunding to create liquidity, getting to cash flows and thinking about dividends, debt, crowdfunding – IPO bar is so painful
- Fav book: Brothers Karamazov – Dostoevsky as “fiction bible”
- Union Square Ventures as the one he looks up to – Benchmark, also (Read ebooks)
- Concept of Founder-friendly – agency from founders holding them responsible, but becomes messy / complicated
- Most recent investment at that time: CircleUp was series C, crowdfunding platform for CPG – other forms of financing for orgs will be transformed

Innovative Investing (Notes from June 3 – June 9, 2019) June 25, 2019

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The primary theme of the week seemed to be how data can get pooled together to determine a signal and how to learn to seek the best way we, as individuals or teams, can discern valuable content to motivate actions on that information. Data is plenty – it’s a matter of gathering, curation, analysis and testing before putting it into action. This is done by any number and types of companies nowadays – this is a source of advantage seeking that forward-thinking ones make, in my opinion.

Since my notes were more detailed, I’ll try to keep this brief. The wonder people below hailed from banks (First Republic Bank), funds like Emerson Collective and Womens VCFund, marketing company like BEN or LikeFolio and then David Epstein’s Range, Sinead O’Sullivan’s work on space or the data Rohan Kumar collects with Azure Data.

Create a hypothesis. Test the hypothesis. Put into action, or iterate. Rinse, repeat. Good luck!

Samir Kaji, (@samirkaji) MD @ First Republic Bank (20min VC 093)
- Leading private bank and wealth management, before at SVB
- 1999 – “anyone with a pulse could get a job” but he was working selling vacuum cleaners at dept store
  - Was told by family to get a real job – applied to first business SVB, got resume in and interview immediately before starting
  - First couple years were tough – learned a lot, but was 2004 until companies had scaled and were getting bigger
- First 10 years were tech companies, series A and B and venture debt – post 2009 Lehman / Bear, went to venture group at SVB for 4 years
  - Made the move with a few others from SVB to First Republic, now leading team in micro-VC and early-stage tech co’s
- Says the micro-VC is more entrepreneurial & collegial compared to extended stage VC’s
  - First fund is that you can get traction for a second or third one, fees as pressure – most likely why many people come from some wealth
    - Writing large checks as GP, as well
  - 2-2.5% management fees initially vs 1 / 25 or 1/30 model
  - 1999 – 2002 distribution was 0.9x and you’d get 10x return (whoops) – very difficult for funds to get 2-3x for LPs
- Barriers to entry much smaller for $20-25million as compared to $500mln – institutional, etc — he can go to family friends and high net worth
- Seed over next 5 years: contraction in space (wrong), but said there isn’t enough returns for funds to max it
  - 1100 in the 2000 year and burst
  - Continued prominence of Angelist platforms, maybe an integral part of the ecosystem
  - Starting to see use of data (Mattermark, CBInsights, SignalFire) to more efficiently identify and action at this level
- Favorite book is Phil Jackson’s – behavioral psychology, Give and Take is another one
- Really respects the pioneers of the industry and first-time fund-raisers
  - Mike Maples, Michael Deering, Steve Anderson, Jeff Clavier when it wasn’t a thought
- Habit – reading book or blog post for 20min in the morning before email
  - Disconnect from audio / video devices and reflect for an hour
  - 2 hours a day for family/friends and disconnecting, as well
- Thomas Redpoint, Mark Suster, Brad Feld, Strictly VC, Ezra at Chicago Ventures
- Knows awesome fundraisers but terrible at returning capital – didn’t mention any
Collectively Driving Change, Laurene Powell Jobs and Ben Horowitz (a16z 5/27/2019)
- LPJ – founder, president of Emerson Collective
- Grew up in NJ – father passed away in a plane accident when she was 3 – 3 children.
  - Mom remarried so there were 6 of them. Wooded area of NJ.
  - Core values and dedication to education to get out of the area.
  - She went to Upenn – first student from her high school that went to Ivy League – ~20% went on to more schools
- Addressing East Palo Alto school as a volunteer to help – 1st talk, 0 had taken SATs
  - What happens when you’re first to graduate high school? What’s it mean to the information from family?
  - What happens to be first to want to go to college, thrive&complete it?
    - To have the aspiration, can be a leader in the family – translator, get sucked into all problems
  - Started with 25 freshmen – would have to come with friends for responsibility mechanisms – for College Track
    - 3000 high school students, 1000 college, 550 grads
- Collective of leaders, innovators – education inequities, access and need for enhanced/robust curriculum
- 10 year time horizons – getting them together is scheduled with Monday all-staff meetings (3×3 matrix of videos)
  - 5 cities, sometimes philanthropic speakers or reports
  - Discussion of reading as you fall behind through third grade before switching to reading to learn – already behind
- XQ as SuperSchool dream – 17 of 19 will open in August
- Caring about impact and solving problems, not wealth increasing – wants access to policy or money and not taxes
  - Judged Giving Pledge for not wanting to be more philanthropic
  - Environmental, edtech portfolio, cancer / oncology investments, immigration incubator, new thinking to old problems
- How do you know when you’re succeeding? Collecting data on everything they do.
  - Example: XQ – schools and districts, state of RI as switching to statewide competition
  - Chicago has good data for fatal/nonfatal deaths (I disagree)
- Imperiled or important institutions like journalism and media need to be sustained, how many join?
  - Concentrating and following where IQ is migrating (hahaha – what a joke)
Data Infrastructure in the Cloud, Rohan Kumar at BUILD conference (Data Skeptic, 5/18/19)
- Corp VP of Eng of Azure Data Team at Microsoft – SQL and data services, open source, analytics, etc
- Trends in data engineering in the cloud, serverless and hyperscale
  - ML and AI and enabling applications – shifting to edge vs cloud – analysts predict 70% will be on edge devices
  - Solutions and private edges – training in the cloud and deploy them on the edge applications
    - Data platform needs to be the right foundation
- Highlight for him from conference: work they’ve done on relational databases in the cloud – as volumes grow, scalability challenges
  - Hyperscale for Azure and PostgreSQL, as well as MS SQL soon enough – system scales with needs (they’ve tested <= 100TB)
- Acquired Citus Data, support scaling out the compute layer – strong team, great product, matches in Azure and open-source
- Releasing serverless option for Azure database – costs designed to stay low and optimized
- Analytics side: customers wanted to do real-time operational analytics – didn’t want to move them outside of their core product
  - How is data distributed and having compute be co-located with the data to gain Spark efficiency being nearest to node
  - Support Jupyter notebooks across all APIs to modernize to do more predictive analytics
  - Attempting to build out pipelines requires too much scripts, instead have Data Flows in Azure Data Factory – no-code and UI
  - Wrangling data visually and seeing if something can be recognized or learned to repeat across other columns/tables
- Latency won’t be ideal if compute nodes occur nonlocal to the data changes – can’t do 50,000 nodes all at once
- Excited for the future: Horizon 1 (next 8-12 months), Horizon 2 (~3 years), Horizon 3 (moonshots)
  - H2: Hardware trends, what do customers want? Pushing boundaries of AI and ML, healthcare, gaming, financial services, retail
Wide or Deep? David Epstein, author of Range (Invest like the Best, 5/28/19, ep. 133)
- First book’s research lead him to get into specialization and finding kernel for next
  - Some countries: turning around national sports teams – why don’t we try other sports? Contrary to 10,000 hour rule.
  - SSAC – debating Gladwell – athletes have a sampling period instead of first gene – delay specialization
    - Used Tiger vs Roger – Roger had tried a ton of sports vs Tiger who was born and was playing golf
- He was not good at predicting what people/public would attach themselves on to – 10,000 hour rule – race/gender as most talked (but weren’t)
  - 10,000 hour rule were based on 30 violinists in world famous music academy (restriction of range)
  - Height in American population vs points scored in NBA (positive correlation) but if you restrict height to NBA players, negative
- Finnish cross country skier who has genetic mutation similar to Lance’s boosted
  - Sensitivity to pain and modification to your environment – also sudden cardiac arrest in athletes (what pushed his interests)
  - Book as opposition to Outliers and Talent Code – interpreted a lack of evidence as evidence of absence (genetics matter)
    - First year he read 10 journal articles a day and not writing – they were making conclusions they could not make based on their data
  - Differential responses to training – best talent were missed because we don’t know about training responses
- Collection and exploration phase – competitive advantage for expansive search function to connect sources or topics
  - Has a statistician on retainer, essentially, to check models or surveys
  - Wanted to know what he was missing – “how come I broke the 800m women’s world record after 2 years of practice? – genetic difference”
    - Racing whippets – 40% had a genetic defect that gave them more muscle and oxygen
- All of sports as a limited analogy (problem after Sports Gene; now, more tempered)
  - Robin Hogarth addressed “When do people get better with experience?” Don’t know rules, can try to deduce them but can’t know for sure.
  - Kind learning environment: feedback immediate, steps clear, information, goal ahead
  - Wicked learning environment: can’t see all information, don’t wait for others, feedback delayed/inaccurate
- Study at Air Force on “Impact of Teacher Quality on Cadets”
  - Have to take 3 maths – calc I, II, III (20 kids randomized) – professors best at causing kids to do well (overperforming) systematically undermined their performance thereafter
    - 6th in performance and 7th in student evaluations was dead last in deep learning
    - Narrow curricula were better at the test that they had at the end would be negatively correlated with going forward in performance
  - Teachers that ignored what was on the test taught a broader curriculum (making connections vs procedures)
- Learning hacks: Testing (wonderful – primed to test ahead of learning), Spacing (deliberate not-practicing, Spanish ex spread 4 hour twice, 8 hours), Mixed practice
  - Ease is bad – known time horizon for when you have forgotten again – interleaving and spacing mixed
- Passion vs Grit (“Trouble with Too Much Grit” – Angela Duckworth’s research)
  - Duckworth did a study at West Point for East Barracks cadets – candidates score (test + leadership + athletic) was not good prediction of doing this (overall it was good)
    - Grit was a better predictor for making it through East Barracks – she questioned whether it had an independent aspect
    - Variance for grit was probably 1-6%, especially after “flattening” groups – looking at people that had a narrowly defined goal for short periods (cadets or spellers)
  - Cadets were scoring lower on grit at late 20s vs earlier – tried some things, learned others about what they want – grit is poorly constructed
    - Look holistically – if, then signatures (giant rave – introvert, small team – extroverts) right fit looks like grit – developmental trajectory as explosion matching spot
- Choosing a match for a future them who they don’t know in a world they can’t comprehend – people that find good fits (in practice, not theory)
  - Paul Graham’s “Commencement Speech” that he wrote “Most will tell you to predict what you want in 20 years and march toward it.” (premature optimization)
    - Everything you know is constrained by our previous experiences – limited as a teenager – just expanding and learning as you go forward
- Gameboy example – with so much specialized information that can be disseminated easier – can take from all types of domains and recombine them
  - System of parallel trenches – can be broader much easier now – hired people for Japanese and German translations
  - Japanese man profiled in his book – technology was changing faster than sun melts ice – didn’t get Tokyo interviews
    - When he got to Kyoto company making playing cards, he was a tinkerer who was maintaining machines – started to mess with them (arms)
    - Turned them into a toy, and it was Nintendo – cartoon-branded noodles (failed), and had toy development
      - Lateral thinking with withered technology – stuff that’s cheap, easily available – takes into other areas
        
        Remote control, more features – wanted to democratize this and strips it down – LeftyRX only left-turns
    - Sees calculator from Sharp and Casio and thinks he can do a screen and handheld game – small games
      - Had issues with Newton’s rings so he found other small tech (credit cards embossed) to fix small pieces
  - What it lacked in color, graphics and durability (could dry it out, batteries would be fine, split it up, “app” developers because it was super easy to understand)
  - In areas that next steps were clear, specialists were much better – less clear, generalists were more impactful – depends on the specificity of the problem
    - 3M had a lot of areas for this, “Periodic Table of Technology” – post-it note came from reusable adhesive that had no use for
    - Only Chinese national woman to win Nobel – “Three No’s” (No post-grad, foreign research, membership in academy)
      - Interest in science, history – Chinese medicine for treatments of malaria – world’s most effective treatment from ancient text
Greg Isaacs, BEN (Branded Entertainment Network) (Wharton XM, Marketing)
- Discussion of getting data from Netflix / Amazon / Hulu / tv to better match brands and advertising
  - Dirty data via a wharton grad who set up a survey style
  - Cohorts and demographics, along with psychographics
- After getting data, attempting to approach Youtubers / social media influencers, tv spots and channels or shows to get their brands in front of the right people
  - More pointed, depending on what interests are for their cohorts
  - Creative storytelling as the change of cultural mind shift has increased
Understanding the Space Economy, Sinead O’Sullivan (@sineados1), entrepreneur fellow at HBS (HBR IdeaCast #684, 5/28/19)
- Facebook, Amazon (3000), SpaceX (12,000) and other funding like Blue Origin / SpaceX / asteroid mining or travel
- Global space economy as $1tn by 20 years – currently $325bn so it would need to 3x
  - Breaking apart space resources and otherwise – earth-focused (delivering or existing in space that helps earth)
    - Exploration or creating interplanetary existence
- Running out of space in space for satellites – comparing to airplane docking / loading
  - $2500 per kg now to launch, used to be $50k / kg
- Reliance had been on unilateral agreement for space policy – one tech startup launched a satellite that didn’t have permission (but no fall-out)
  - Food / grocery stores, wifi, phone, insurance pricing due to satellite data – reliance on services are increasing as the market increases
  - Thinks that we’re close to seeing the cheapest cost of launching – cites SpaceX, but won’t allow everyone to participate
- Ultrahigh accuracy will require higher powered satellites – GPS, nonmilitary grade is ~0.5 m – thinks it will prevent autonomous vehicles solution
- Ton of money going into asteroid mining but thinks it’s better for testing missions to Mars and figuring out the problems for future
  - Looking at Uber at start and say “people won’t get into a stranger’s car” or other cases as how we see the future – going to Mars, etc
- Earth-focused space technology – 100+ launched satellite start-ups, micronano satellites, relay companies, downstream analytics
  - More touchpoints for everything in this manner
  - SpaceX will increase public and government intervention and within 50 years, maybe see a human launched there
Investing w Twitter Sentiment, Andy Swan (@andyswan), LikeFolio (Standard Deviations, 4/25/19)
- 1700+ tweets examined per minute in LikeFolio – discovering consumer behavior shifts before news
  - Direct partnership with Twitter to create massive database and how they’re talked about to look for mentions
  - Purchase intent, sentiment mentions – trends across product categories or brands
- Example – Delta (as host is a loyalist) – making adjustments
  - Expectations are the relative part – comparison to the baselines (metrics compared to itself as baseline)
- Put out a comprehensive report on Apple day after keynote event – September 14, 2018
  - Consumers were unimpressed with iPhone lineup – more price sensitive than maybe they’d considered
  - Apple Watch was the silver lining – stock / sales may struggle over 3-9 months (upgrade cycles)
- WTW version of keynotes – NYE resolutions – subscribing early to drive revenues the rest of the way
  - Purchasing mentions were only up 30-40% compared to 5 or 7x weekly mentions (big difference)
- Shelf-life and how to consider the sentiment data – lead time may be binary corp event (same store sales or year)
  - Couple months with Apple, for instance, but with Crocs – resurgence that persisted to current time
- Set up keyword structure and brand database – “I’m eating an apple” as opposed to an Apple mention – human eyes to ‘label’
  - “Closed my 3 rings” – apple watch but sarcasm / spam that wasn’t caught (estimates at 2-3% of data)
  - If spam / sarcasm are consistent portions of the data, doesn’t really have an effect
- Twitter Mood Predicts Stock Market – Bollen, Mao, Zeng (88% and 5-6% predictions) – fund closed up shortly
- Advantage being better than analysts or pricing and codifying sentiment behavior compared to past quarters, data
  - Some consumer trends analyzed as true tipping point or actual movements
  - Public prediction before productizing their modeling – made 40 and were 38-2 (confidence as highest)
  - Investing as very specific, concentrated and holding ammo compared to trading with option spreads and has risk profile built
- https://arxiv.org/pdf/1010.3003.pdf
- Diversification as 20-25 stocks, doing it over time and with conviction can be done
- Starting in Louisville for his fintech company, host in Alabama, for instance
  - Talent can be more difficult to seek out but the world is globally flattening via the internet
  - 70% lower overhead cost than being in SF, for instance – developers would anyhow be in Slack channels / not a big deal
  - Reduction in cost maintains greater control of company since they don’t have to take reduction of equity to gather more
- Network effects don’t matter if you don’t have a great product or product-market-fit
- Free association game
  - grapenuts: best cereal (Co’s been around for 100+ years, branding and $ spent and they can’t figure it out)
  - Fintech Future: individualization and customization
  - Victory: most important thing in life, achieved what you set out to do – setting goals and achieving these
  - Bourbon: pappie von winkle – collecting for dust on shelf 10 years ago and now going for $3000
Jonathan Abrams, co-founder Nuzzel news (Launch Pad)
- Landing hedgehog as the mascot – animal as cute, 99designs and surveying 50 friends – 25 men/women
- Discussing how VC’s don’t have great advice, especially when general – too hard to be an expert in such a wide range
  - Finds it easier to be very context-driven and providing solutions or action-oriented questions to founders
  - Investing now easier with YC and Angelist, etc…
- Timing and other mistakes he made – out of control, losing equity part early (but depends on where you are / what you need)
Etan Green, professor at Wharton (Wharton Moneyball)
- Discussion on paper of how sharp money comes in at horse racing tracks
  - Difference between sites – fairground action compared to tracks, and specific to region (New Orleans, Minnesota, for instance)
  - Big sharp money comes in very late, pushing the underdog prices to higher values
    - More expensive to bet while at the track than the APIs enabling higher volume bets
    - Books at the track are incentivized to bring in as much $ as possible, so $0.20 on $1 vs $0.15 rebate on $0.20 for volume
- Value and differences in how people will bet
Edith Dorsen, Women’s VCFund founder, MD (Wharton XM)
- Talking about their focus on first fund, approach
- Opportunity for finding diverse founders, 25% of their fund had a woman founder
- Starting a second fund
- Had consumer tech, enterprise and not so much b2b, but trying to increase
  - Hard to say or give advice if one of their partners don’t have expertise in the domain
Sophie Lanfear, Silverback Films producer on Netflix “Our Planet” (Wharton XM)
- Species that are dying, going extinct
- What we can do about it
Aliza Sherman, Ellementa co-founder, CEO (Wharton XM)
- Discussion of client talks when she made them aware of her cannabis endeavors
- How friendly the community is
  - Then knocked the idea that ~30% was female to start before diving off a cliff
- CBD to mask opioids – does it really do anything from a pain/treatment perspective, though?
  - Anti-chemo because of CBD – really?
- Sounded too rehearsed – made it sound fake, not genuine
  - Passion/motivation/mission and kept repeating as the best advice she could give – painful

Matching Environment to People (Notes from May 27 – June 2, 2019) June 20, 2019

Posted by Anthony in Automation, Blockchain, Digital, experience, finance, Founders, global, Hiring, Leadership, questions, social, Strategy, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
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In this particularly busy week, I found the theme of the week to be particularly amusing, but coincidentally or not, the dominoes fell that way. Normally, a theme arises like that because everyone is in finance or the same segment or conference is aligning. I just happened to catch a week where the insight that I drew from each person reflected similarly.

Meredith Golden, a dating consultant of sorts, discussed how she assesses all levels of dating profiles for her clients. She goes through a process that she’s dialed in to obtain her optimum level of clients as well as the right approaches to proceed. Asking herself what she wanted was key in determining how she’s grown her business, especially as an entrepreneur and CEO.

Chief Instigator Matt Charney. Now that’s a fun title. And I won’t ruin it. He goes through his past with Disney and Warner Bros and why/how he moved into the HR tech doing marketing – what he saw and how it’s different now. Fascinating and fun segment.

Part of the fun of being an entrepreneur is deciding who you want to do business with. But when it’s difficult, especially at the start, you’re most excited to get ANYONE to work with (unless you luck into that massive customer to start – rare rare rare). This is Kyle Jones of iCRYO found out. Then he gained traction, quickly, and realized he needed to be a bit more diligent in who he wanted to work with – what was ideal for the business, as well as the brand moving forward.

David Epstein likes throwing wrenches, I imagine. He authored the book Range, testing the generalist vs specialist question. As a generalist masquerading currently as a specialist, I appreciated what he was talking about the strength of generalists. But I do understand the place that specialists have in our society, especially deep tech, research and other exceptional areas.

Deb DeHaas grew up under the tutelage of her mother who fought the idea of being an accountant growing up to learn and adapt to the idea of being told what she could/couldn’t do wasn’t ACTUALLY an assessment of her ability to do those things. Such a simple, fascinating concept. She could totally be an accountant, engineer, as she pleased. Took a lot of perseverance but she had a manager at Andersen (before folding) who was a woman and told her to always chase what she wanted – now she’s leading the Inclusion and Diversity team with Deloitte’s Corp Governance Arm. Quite the story of growing up and what she learned.

Not to be outdone, Kim Wilford, who acted as General Counsel for GoFundMe, discussed how she came into her role in charge of the nonprofit arm, and what they’ve done in growing the company and its donations. How to connect marketing, wearing multiple hats and helping people help others. Inspirational while metric-driven, not just dream-built.

I hope you enjoy the notes – a few I didn’t write extra here but had fascinating insights into Happiness Hacking, investing in founders and how they grew companies such as Vroom and GoodEggs. Let me know what you think!

Meredith Golden (@mergoldenSMS), CEO of Spoon Meets Spoon (Wharton XM)
- Talking about having 6-7 clients
- Ghostwriting messages
- Client work depends – assessing / diagnosing the problem
  - Not matching (pictures), profile, messaging, getting them to meet, etc…
- Metrics based on what the initial diagnosis was
Matt Charney, Executive Editor – Chief instigator at RecruitingDaily (Wharton XM)
- Talking about workplace and conspiracies

Kyle Jones, iCRYO Franchises (Wharton XM)
- Franchising initially – would’ve been a bit pickier when starting but too excited to land first deals
- Out of 100 franchises, they’ll go with ~5 or so
- 10 franchises, working on doing a big deal to launch 100+

David Epstein (@davidepstein), author of Range (Wharton XM)
- Discussed how Nobel laureates and creative types are often generalists that spend a lot of time learning / making
  - Stumble on new ideas or concepts in their work
- Generalists aren’t bad – allow to see a different perspective and combine ideas
  - Think “The Quants” – relationship between corn prices compared to research on _

Deb DeHaas (@deborahdehaas), Chief Inclusion Officer, C4Corp Gov Deloitte (Women at Work)
- Discussed her mother, who had passed away at the age of 90 recently, who was told she couldn’t be an accountant
  - Wasn’t her role – she pursued it anyhow and ended up being an engineer before quitting and being a community leader
- Worked in Gulf Oil’s accounting dept and helped her husband through med school
  - First councilwoman in her town, elder at the church
- Deb started at Andersen until it folded, worked for only one woman but she was taught there were no barriers
Bentley Hall (@bhallca), CEO of Good Eggs (Wharton xm)
Mitch Berg, CTO of Vroom (Wharton XM)
Alex Salkever (@alexsalkever), Vivek Wadhwa, authors “Your Happiness… Hacked” (Wharton XM)
- With Stew Friedman, finding the middle ground of tech with children / teenagers and the happy medium
- How is it that we find some things appealing but others are a burden
- Facebook being a publishing agency – aren’t they responsible for what the product? “Newsfeed” example.
- Google Maps or Waze as a hindrance at the local level – dangerous, maybe?
  - Extremely valuable, still, in new places / out of the country, especially
    - Different, maybe, for walking if alternative is talking and communicating with others
- Problem with Facebook / Whatsapp – Whatsapp unmoderated group chats and only requiring a phone number
  - Encrypted, but what cost? Facebook – for Vivek, just limits to 1-way action
- Social media as killing people – think India’s problems
Ed Sim (@edsim), FP @ Boldstart Ventures (20min VC 092)
- LivePerson, GoToMeeting are 2 of his biggest investments as lead, exited / public
- Started a fund in 1998, DonTreader Ventures – left in 2010
  - Idea was to bring SV style to NY – VCs would look at financials / models, but they looked at people and product – focus on markets
  - Most investors were corporate but cratered after 2008
- Started a new seed fund for sticking with what he knew as well as recognizing a shift in 2007 for open source and cloud – consumer-based
- SaaSify vertical markets with GoToMeeting founders who wanted to do new things – $1mln, $1.5mln
  - Enterprise people were looking to get a market for small ~$1mln investments
- Hated starting a fund – “Fundraising sucks.” – Could find a great enterprise and tech entrepreneurs at seed stage – got $1mln and made 10 inv
  - First 5-6 investments were less than $5million pre-$, sold 4 by 2012 – had option values for series A or being sold to strategic companies
    - Entrepreneurs wanted to sell in those cases, but with cloud, definitely found that it was reasonable and cheaper to do SaaS
- First / second generation founders or single vs others – “No single founders”
  - As the first institutional round, they’re first big money in. Last few investments were second or more founders – little bigger rounds
  - If first-gen founders, funding rounds are smaller – deep expertise in their field (and have to be engineers building product)
- “Enterprise can be fucking hard” – have to know the industry – he has 20 years, partner has 10 and new partner as building 5 companies
  - Why he went this route? Started at JP Morgan as building quant trading models as liaison Business QA between engineers and portfolio managers
    - Derivatives models to real-time pricing models – feeds from Reuters or others, risk metrics and crank out the other side
  - Enterprise was exciting to him
- Could take enterprise founders and redo or build a new company by changing the pain point – customers can be repeat because new pain point
  - Harder to do that in consumer
- Leads come from founders – roughly 75% as recommendations from portfolio companies (wants to be first thought or call)
  - Helps founders get their pick and decide where to go – if you have an analyst report, may not be a great market opportunity initially
- Environment of seed funding: Jeff Clovier of SoftTech as one of few microVC’s and now it’s 400+
  - Just want to be hyper-focused and being nimble – main value add as understanding the cadence (2 founders coding together to selling)
  - Stratification of VC – best ones have gotten so large that they can’t write small checks efficiently
    - Entrepreneurs don’t want $5-10mil immediately out of the gate – mismatch, looking for less for less dilution
  - Deal flow of crowdfunding: says sometimes they will leave $250k after leading for AngelList or building new relationships
- Jason Calcanis blog Launch Ticker, trend as rise of the developer (multiple people in company using same thing – buying licensing)
  - Messaging as another interesting trend in the enterprise space – his most used app – Slack (SlackLine – private, external channels)
- Most recent investment – stealth investment in a repeat founder (founded and sold before) – security focused on developer
Kim Wilford, General Counsel at GoFundMe (Wharton XM)
- Talking about joining, hadn’t considered nonprofit space
  - For profit arm and the nonprofit
- Mentioning pushing marketing and following metrics for raising vs donations
- Can influence news stations and push for higher engagement
- Done almost $5bn in funding across 50 million donations

How to Humanize Data for Enhancement (Notes from May 20 – 26, 2019) June 12, 2019

Posted by Anthony in Automation, Blockchain, Digital, experience, finance, Founders, global, Hiring, Leadership, NFL, questions, social, Strategy, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
Tags: #business, books, college, community, experiences, finance, Google, humanity, ideas, investing, Jobs, life, Money, NFL, questions, reading, research, social, sports, Time, training, video
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I’m going to keep this brief this week, as I’m trying out an added format of posting. I believe I’m going to test Nuzzel news to connect and share the links of articles I’ve read through the week (maybe once or twice – weekend one out on Monday, and another for the week through Thursday?). This post, concentrating on my week’s podcast or segment listens, will still go out. That’s my goal, though.

The week I listened to these, I was actually on my way to Monterrey with my family, though, so I had a solid 90 minutes each way to go through some longer episodes – thankfully, I found Doug’s take on culture and leading a community with Eat Club very insightful, as well as a blockchain discussion by the a16z squad particularly fun.

With the news and media focused on AI, Bias, Diversity and Ethics of ML and scariness of algorithms, it’s good to hear opinions that are focused, but thoughtful on the premise of what is being proposed. In a vacuum, yes, these can be dangerous. However, that’s not often the case when models are being deployed into production. Some are unintentional or started with a simple question of relationships (think Cambridge Analytica and how it started via Likes research on music at Facebook). That’s not necessarily justification for something that clearly had a large impact, but we’d like to know that teams are improving and have that awareness now more than ever before. That’s a positive.

I believe that these episodes, though, take a bit more of a nuanced approach of mathematics and numbers and attributes a human eye that has acquired the necessary expertise to design better models or come up with a better framework for action. We hear that with Dan Waterhouse of Balderton Capital (of a delightful Applied Math degree), who had to learn to apply more of an operational and human/market behavior investor since he had the metrics focus while learning. Then, a fascinating segment with Laura Edell, a sports fan, who struggled to believe that the metrics that were widely accepted as ‘most accurate’ (re: not necessarily max accuracy) included all components of what could be measurable – made some assumptions to test based on twitter/media analysis and coupled it with the data that was widely acceptable to come up with an excellent Final 4 Model.

To continue the theme, not to be outdone, Geoffrey Batt and Nikos Moraitakis each spoke of differing aspects of metrics that they honed in on and ignored the common threads of why those weren’t valid, despite what they saw as opportunities. Geoffrey as it pertained to Iraq investing and Nikos in the form of starting and building a company in Greece, not exactly the traditional hotbed. However, each persisted and are successful today – so there’s a lesson in doing the things that we want to do.

Remember, ultimately, numbers and averages usually take the aggregate, collection of those that may not have had the timing, willingness or ability to push but with enough persistence and support, some will certainly persevere.

Hope you enjoy!

Doug Leeds (@leedsdoug), CEO at Eat Club (Dot Complicated, Wharton XM)
- Talking about going from Ask.com to Eat Club – other companies, as well
- Quiz leading in was on different likes/dislikes
  - Harry Potter-themed eating pop-ups
  - Anti-spoiler pin (digital, season and episode to avoid conflict)
    - Anything was good that brings community together
    - Said that there were employees at work that took off Monday after GoT finale since they hadn’t watched
- Delivery people are employees, not contractors – become regulars at corporate events and a part of the culture
  - Help build the culture of the locations – food and how they match
  - Building culture of Eat Club with improv – ability to improve skills there, as well
- Eat Club numbers – 1000+ companies served, about 25k lunches provided
  - Regional difference of Indian focus in NorCal, Mexican focus in SoCal
    - Acquired an Indian food provider for new techniques – Intero?
    - Acquired another, as well
Five Open Problems Toward Building Blockchain Computer (a16z 5/16/19)
- Ali Yahya (@ali01), Frank Chen and looking at crypto
- New paradigm has to improve upon one or two particular ways for new applications, but likely sucks in most others
  - Mobile phone as enabling behaviors for instagram/uber and such with camera and gps in the phones
  - Have to trust the company currently to do what they claim to be doing – trust Google with so much to have the interactions
  - Now, have a computational fabric that separates the control of human power, self-policing and security bottom-up
- Difference in communication cost – bounded on the end by speed of light
- Trying to make networking efficient – miners propogating to other miners – blockchain distribution network
  - 1 MB vs 2 MB blocks but can kill some small miners
  - Agreeing on blocks or updates are final
- Non-probabilistic vs fast – need to be faster than 60 minutes, for instance
  - Improvements on networking layer with Ethereum 2.0, Cosmo and cost or Proof of Stake (vs Of Work)
    - Who gets to participate? PoW requires everyone to compute an expensive proof of work.
    - PoS – intrinsic token that you have to own in order to buy participation, 2% ownership says 2% of the say to say yay or nay
    - Cost of participating is less expensive because it’s intrinsic
  - Practical for everyday use, small interactions between people and machines or people
  - Trust as the bottleneck to scale
- 3 Pillars of Computation/Scalability: Throughput, latency, cost per instruction
Daniel Waterhouse (@wanderingvc), GP at Balderton Capital (20min VC 091)
- Sits on boards of Top10, ROLI, Lovecrafts, TrademarkNow etc
- Was 5 year partner at Wellington Partners and invested in EyeEm, Hailo, Yplan, Bookatable, SumAll, Readmill (sold to DropBox), Qype (sold to Yelp)
- Break in 1999 by getting to work at Yahoo for about 10 years before getting to venture in 2009
- Applied Math background, tend to understand complexity and appreciate solutions in technology – different experience for entrepreneurs
  - Learned to be less metric-driven – less obsessed on numbers and data, more human and market dynamics
- Operators vs career VCs – successful firms take different skills at different times
  - Exit, raising money, portfolio management, scaling, growing
  - Important to watch how a business is grown, whether it’s yourself or by being a long-term investor or close in other ways
- Entrepreneurship as a career path and as a global one, investors in similar mindset and ambition – can take it anywhere
- More seed capital and smaller checks than later in Europe at this time – maybe more competition higher stages
- Thinks that consumerizing SMB software has a lot of room to grow, as well as enterprise software – easier UI-driven tools
  - Developments in AI – mentioned real-time trademark analysis (TradeMarkNow, for instance)
  - How to give great recommendations after gathering consumer tastes and insights
- Book: The Brain That Teaches Itself – neuroplasticity of the brain
- The first $10mln you invest, you’ll lose – advice
- Overhyped sector: food delivery; Neglected: apply behavioral science to tech problems
- Favorite blog/sector: longs for better content – thought TC was great when it was started, but now it’s Medium individual articles
- Most recent investment Curious.ai – made it in 40 minutes & ambition was compelling
Geoffrey Batt (@geoffreysbatt), Nature of Transformational Returns (Invest Like the Best, 4/9/19)
- Iraqi equities – history of asset classes
  - Time and patience is a big factor for how you look for results
  - Japan, for instance, 1950 – 1989 100,000% return but now is still below the peak from 1980
- May have a decade of not working out return-wise
  - Nothing to show for investments, incredibly challenging, especially now – hedge funds or LPs
    - Reporting weekly or daily basis, long-term investment could be 6 months or 1 year – pulling money after first issue
  - Hard to ride out periods of long-term returns (think: re-rating countries)
- LPs as agreeing to the time horizon – maybe investment committees that are making decisions on career-risk for institutions
  - Iraq to one of those – not likely to get paid off if it works, but if it doesn’t, get demoted or fired
  - Had to approach HNW and family funds – adjacency risk for people next to seed investors (if one is weighted on fund)
- As student, he majored in psychology – said there was a guy in the seminar class that was a unique thinker
  - Daniel Cloud had co-founded a fund that invested in post-Soviet Russia before doing his PhD
  - Asked Geoffrey to come work for him and learn investment markets
- Wanted to find next big thing – first, find a place that everyone thinks is awful (in 2007, this was Iraq)
  - Does perception meet reality? How many people dying in the war every month?
  - Country portrayed as “failed state” but oil production was increasing, CPI was 75% yoy but now 5-10%
    - Currency appreciating against the dollar, now civilian casualties in a month were down to 200 from thousands
  - Normal visit to Baghdad – mundane here, out-of-place was that 2 guys in middle of afternoon were playing tennis, kicking soccer
    - Visit companies, stock exchange, meet executives, go to a restaurant, how easy is it to hail a cab, get around
    - Critical process of infrastructure – are people paying in dollars (bad sign), local currency?
- News media is just not set up to convey complexity to the audience – alienate, progressivism as a service, readers change
  - Experts don’t have skin in the game so they don’t face career risk – betrayal if you suggest otherwise, likely (even if true)
- On his first trip, mentions Berkshire – early 1990s where they first invest in Wells Fargo
  - Managerial skill in banking is paramount if levered 20:1 (make 5% mistake and you’re done)
    - Don’t want average banks at great prices – want great banks at slightly unreasonable prices (thought about this in Iraq)
  - CEO of first Iraqi bank – unsecured loans to taxi drivers – less likely to take out the loan “between you and I, I’m a cowboy”
  - Entrepreneurs in these areas have to be better than others because of the instability vs the stable environments
- Stock and capital guys – stock may trade at 3x earnings or 4-5x FCF, top and bottom lines growing at 20% per year
  - Usually just put there as knowing someone powerful but they can be bigger as allocators
  - 2008-09: Size at the time of the stock market – traded 3 days a week, 10am – 12pm on a white board
    - 60-70 companies, maybe 20 suspended from trading because 0 annual report – $1.8bn, smaller than Palestinian market
  - High growth company that is super opaque – can’t meet or won’t meet with CEO, maybe some others that state-owned enterprises that just want to keep paying salaries; maybe 5-10 companies that are investable
    - Equally weighted these companies initially and was still learning – now, he developed relationships and is on the board for companies
  - Does he want to put more $ and concentrate on the companies that he trusts and follows the guide
- Largest holding for them – Baghdad Soft Drinks (Pepsi bottling and distribution for Iraq) – mixed-owned enterprise in the 90s
  - Local businessman (Pepsi is the dominating market share – ~70-80% vs elsewhere where it’s split) saw it was mismanaged
  - By 2008-09, were going to default on the loan they were floated – businessman bought the loan, fired management & 2000 ee’s, switched equity
    - Within a year, it was fully certified, tripled production, profitable business
- Now, 5 days a week but still 2 days a week – had foreign investor interest, $5-6bn, couple IPOs successful
  - One telecom has about $1bn market cap, 14.5% dividend yield, 33%+ FCF yield
  - Foreign money came in 2013 but ISIS scared them off – coming back and interest from banks – arranging trips and momentum
  - Key problem – no 3rd party custodians (compared to Jamaica or even in Africa, HSBC or anything) – working on getting one
    - Makes it difficult to bring in foreign money – exchange is the custodian (which is actually safe)
    - No margins, cash-based market and settlements of t+0, no short selling (can’t sell unless have stock)
  - Oil collapse depressed prices and ISIS issue but has been up over last 2-3+ years, cheaper today than when he invested 11 years ago
- Multiple expansion is the question for returns – 1x to 25x or 4x to 15x – depends on what they are as compounding
- Kobe Bryant complimented him after a junior year game in high school – already looked at as a superstar – saw Geoffrey was dejected
Nikos Moraitakis (@moraitakis), Founder, CEO Workable (20min VC FF024)
- VP of BD at Upstream, enterprise sales in 40 countries in 4 continents
- Wanted to start a company with type of what they wanted – centered around product, engineering company, starting in Greece
- SMB over Fortune 500 because of product-focused and not corporation or enterprise-based
- Applicant-tracking systems (ATS) – keep track of arcane process, don’t want to touch things – collaborative processes
  - Simple interface to solve problem of recruiting model (which is still 50+ years old)
- Problems aren’t location-based – they’re conceptual – designing product, PMF
  - Opening with $500k or 50-200k if needing to get started, not necessarily $5-10mln like other markets or tech hubs, industry
  - Hiring engineers that are good in Greece isn’t so much a problem if you have a good company and network to attract talent
  - Moved to US not for VCs (doing good business, VCs pay attention) but they had 50% of customers without having anyone in US
    - Wanted to start customer support infrastructure, services and otherwise
    - Talked about marketing or accounting businesses on tech that taught companies that it may be worth it to update
- Metrics that he pays attention to: month-to-month above $2mln annual revenue, ratio of new biz and lost biz
  - Not celebrating fundraising – few drinks but says it’s like having new shoes at the start of a marathon
  - Talking about investors and the relationships built to work together
Jaz Banga (@jsbanga), cofounder, CEO of Airspace Systems (Wharton XM)
- Meeting Earl, cofounder and maker, at Burning Man – drone being annoying above him while he did tai-chi
- Prototyping the interceptor drones after seeing military request proposals – had an issue with drone over nuclear subs
- Can place thermal scans and other security or rescue methods
The Transformer (Data Skeptic 5/3/19)
- Encoder/decoder architecture of vector embeddings word2vec into a more contextual use case
- Keyword lookup may not work (using ex of bank – river bank vs financial)
  - Humans at 95%+ accuracy, computer maybe around 50%
  - Encoding as correct interpretations and weights for context – emulating process
Laura Edell (@laura_e_edell) from MS Build 2019, NCAA predictions on Spark (Data Skeptic 5/9/19)
- Been at Microsoft for 3 years, supporting Azure for all their customers – quantum physics and statistics background from school
- ML in cloud for customers – don’t know why they want it, just think it will be useful
  - Ex: image recognition (on techs with bodycams), HVAC documentation and augmentation or signal processing in anomalies of wave patterns
    - holoLENS use case
  - Played 2 sounds for Build presentation – her son blowing on her arm vs HVAC system custom sound – training sets and transfer learning
- Can take a few real image and do a bunch for training: rotating, zoom, Gaussian blur, cut out background
  - Sound – same: take out environment, pauses and silence
  - Can turn 10 images / sounds into 30-50 per class
- Active learning: model over time that can train itself and then retrain itself
- Business domain expertise – her Final 4 model
  - #1 feature was wins, 2nd SoS, 3rd home court advantage / location – let machine validate the expertise
  - Validation of revenue drivers from machine – more importantly, if the opposite occurs – revenue doesn’t agree with data features
    - Used statistics to train data from the start in football, sports data – ncaa – teams, tourneys, prior history
      - Brought in her assumption of player-social index where they scraped sentiment and video analysis for team effects
    - Chose to use Azure Databricks (Spark background), store it in Blob and only retraining on Just-in-time in a Docker image
  - ML Flow, set of score for model – training set and .py and score.py or source data gets grouped together in Azure
    - Docker pulls them together easily and image is built, Azure DevOps can do VC

Thinking Through Data (Notes from May 13 – 19, 2019) June 5, 2019

Posted by Anthony in Automation, Blockchain, Digital, education, experience, Founders, global, Hiring, Leadership, medicine, questions, social, Strategy, Uncategorized.
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This week we had a hefty dose of medicine, biotech and data discussions. However, it isn’t just focused on the technology and innovation for these incredible people, but rather the frameworks of the thought process that goes in to their decision-making. We can ask “Where did we go wrong?” or “What assumption do we make that should/would be challenged?”

Annie Duke is excellent in assessing this on the spot, but she sheds light on the steps she takes to get to that level. Much of what we believe / view tends to be outcome-based, which is fine because that’s easiest to see. However, it’s rarely consistent in the path to get to that success point once we change the problem. That’s what we should focus on – consistent thought processes to make strategic decisions. Outcomes are one metric of measuring the decisions, but not an end-all, be-all.

AI mixes with a few of our guests, including Mir Imran and Eric Topol. How does it play a part in how we will progress? What may AI teach us about our historical research? Are there more optimal methods of delivery?

Emily Oster and Hanne Tidnam discussed societal effects of technology and decision-making. With technology becoming more and more ingrained as a part of everyday life, is there a point-of-no-return or is it okay generally? Or, is there a limit? Time will certainly tell – studies / surveys don’t have the information available to give us any insight since the time-scale is so recently biased. Technology has outpaced the level at which we can make data-driven decisions in this manner.

Bruno Goncalves discussed text mapping and language processing for how different dialects of the same language can indicate demographic patterns in various locations (focused initially in Brazil). He mentioned it was interesting to track words / phrases and how they changed throughout history for English, primarily – harder to track Spanish. If there’s more data available (say, mobile text / audio or email?), may be easier to break down by parts of towns/cities, but currently, it was limited to general, larger blocks based on Twitter text (which is sparse, generally, anyway).

Suranga of Balderton Capital discussed his movement from London to San Francisco and what he’d observed as a tech employee, then executive and founder and the difference between the environments. His excitement for the future comes from the societal change that infrastructure of technology may enable. Then there was a darker side when we heard the author of Ghost Work – Mary Gray – as she said there is a larger split of work designed for specificity as we improve the AI / ML models that have been deployed. What is needed work-wise or what can be automated? Are those good? Biased? We’ll see.

I hope you enjoy my notes and hopefully you’ll check out a few that sound interesting! Thanks again to the people that continue to keep me up to date with what I love to learn.

Eric Topol (@EricTopol), author of Deep Medicine, cardiologist (Wharton XM)
Deep AI and medicine – asking how to properly apply deep learning or AI to medicine
Yet to have a drug made by AI
Bayesian principles failing in medicine community
- 12% of women get breast cancer, yet we ask them to do 1-2 years mammograms
  - 10 year span, 60% will get a false positive (yikes!)
- Adopters of Apple Watch and its cardiogram / heart information are treated unilaterally
  - Young, healthy and curious people may not have any arrythmia so any abnormality (totally normal) may be misdiagnosed
    - Signal from heart rhythm from one person may be different from another
- Says it’s a sign of being behind (3rd industrial vs 4th for the rest) when Stethoscope (invented 200+ years ago) is still sign of industry
  - Analog, no option of recording and is still very subjective to the doctor listening
  - This, despite advances in imaging and scans otherwise
Mir Imran, Chairman & CEO of Rani Therapeutics (Bay Area Ventures)
- Talked about the big equity stake his fund took in the company, wanting it to be a big hit
- Drug development, say, an insulin pill compared to injections (spent 150+ years on solving this)
  - Stomach / pill form in past is only 0.5% or < 1 % efficacy – can’t intake that many pills or cost-effective
- Designing pill that is pH-shell-dependent to identify intestine pain receptors are limited (can inject no problem)
  - Pill recognizes pH change by dissolving outer shell (to pass thru stomach), then sugar-needle injects
  - 1000s of animal trials and just passing pills
  - Started trials ~18 months ago in Australia for pill traveling (using x-rays every 30 min to track)
    - Then progressed into drug for giantism, along with looking at other biologic diseases / solutions
- Don’t want to limit biologics to a single buyer (Novartis, Genentech, etc…) – keep it open
  - Investments from Novartis and Google initially ~$150mln worth now
Mapping Dialects with Twitter Data (Data Skeptic 4/26/2019)
- With Bruno Goncalves about work studying language – now @ Morgan Stanley
- Started with research in CS and Physics, moved eventually to Apache weblogs, email, big router logs, Twitter conversations to study human behavior
  - Turned into looking at Twitter check-ins with the log using longitude and latitude
  - Language used: order maps, areas dominated by specific language (drawing boundary between French and Belgian in Belgium, for instance)
    - Intermingling cities that attract many languages
- Spanish changing from one areas to another – everyday words, phrases
  - Can use the location data to determine the area of dialects – splitting Brazil, for instance (South, North and then central American)
  - Dividing grid cells into km x km – maybe not determinate of gradients of English vs Spanish since they were testing dialects of Spanish
- Each row corresponds to each cell and words, but the matrix essentially loses the meaning
  - Ran PCA analysis and K-means on the clustering
- He’s gathered 10 tb of data from Twitter, corpora and looking at millions of tweets – too few data to look over time
  - Measuring language changes over time was difficult for Spanish, but easier with English
  - Used Google books, for each language and counting bi-grams in how many books – popularity of words
    - Corpus of books published in UK vs US for Google books (1800 – 2010) for reliable data, but further back was less popular
    - Could normalize for words on how American vs British words were (and the mixture)
- Recently, looking at demographic splits of language now with more digital / online presence
- Training spellcheck based on dialect or demographic splits
- Doing this stuff part-time now – how to train a model to detect use of language in this sense
  - Using word embeddings to detect automatic meanings of slang to determine the different meanings
Matt Turck with Plaid co-founder, Podcast
- http://mattturck.com/plaid/
CSR in Gaming Industry, (Wharton XM)
- Discussing how it can be weird to gain competitive advantage and share
- CSR as large subjective to the person looking in
- Gaming companies chip in to gambling addiction hotlines / help / etc
- Particularly in Las Vegas / NV, CSR survey determined that direct opportunities in water conservation, energy and green energy
  - How can they more efficiently run such large operations
- Survey had about 80% of the gaming industry represented, from servicers to manufacturers to casinos themselves
Suranga Chandratillake, GP at Balderton Capital (20min VC 090)
- Founded blinkx, intelligent search engine for video/audio content in Cambridge in 2004
  - Lead company for 8 years as CEO through journey to SF, building a profitable biz and going public in London
- Early ee at Autonomy Corp, engineer in R&D and then CTO when he went to SF
- Belief in technical person shouldn’t be CEO – idea has been replaced in US (probably split)
  - Jack Dorsey, Zuckerberg (went into Dorsey and the idea 2 companies that aren’t really overlapping)
- Been impressed by both Gates and Zuckerberg
  - Knowing the code and going through to understand everything
  - Zuckerberg’s acquisition of Instagram (ridiculed for $12bn and how right he was – surpassed Twitter’s users)
- 2 Things for Tech going forward – changing infrastructure
  - VR and including drones or autonomous vehicles – hardware progression and mobile phones for what CAN be done
  - Societal difference – how we change to gig economy or how we work and spend time each day
- Changing investments – just announced investment in Curious.ai
  - Shorter term where society is changing (eg: Nutmeg for planning pension plans, cheaper and available)
- Structure for Balderton as equal partner VC – not sure it’s the most efficient model, but thinks it’s the best
  - Equal partnership where the partners have all the same number of votes, compensation and identical split
    - Removes the politics and impacts the partners and the stakeholders (founders that may be affected)
  - No single group that can carry the vote – hiring becomes very difficult because you need an equal
- Knowing when to stick and when to switch
  - Deciding when to say “We don’t do that” and pivoting and being right
- Exciting company for investment that he’s done recently – Cloud9
  - All development being done in the cloud now
Nick Leschly, CEO Bluebird Bio (Wharton XM)
- Purpose Built, 5/14/19

A Guide to Making Decisions (a16z 5/12/19)
- Emily Oster, Hanne Tidnam discussion
- Health and personal spaces – “right” thing isn’t a difference for some
  - Cocoa crispies, eggs and the preference for why you eat them, not just health-related
- Impact of breast feeding vs not and looking against obesity
  - Less likely to be obese if breast feeding
  - Random trial for this is from Belarus in the 1990s where they requested parents to some breast fed
  - Siblings in choice to breast feed – almost no correlation if they did or did not
- Constrained optimization – money or time
  - As parent, making choices based on preferences but have constraints
  - Recency bias for current literature – only data will be problematic and that it can only support a relation
- Regression discontinuity as drawing a line and then seeing interventions and how they may change or affect outcomes
- Screen time as having evidence that’s just very poor
  - Not easy to run randomized trial on – iPad or lifestyle would have to change for trial
  - Apps in short term doesn’t have the info available for results / outcomes
  - Studies currently don’t have any conclusions on phones/tablets – little
  - Bayesian updating on uncertainty – if 2 year old spends 50% of waking hours, that’s bad. Where’s the limit?
- Last time went to doctor – very concretely made a recommendation of “2 hours max in a day”
  - How does the information get to that level of the system?
  - Conversations occur with doctors where they essentially make the lines that stick, pass on
- Recommendations go out as arbitrary but now are made as truth – terrible without the decision
  - People that take the recommendations are likely more different or health-conscious
    - Added another layer (vitamin E, for instance) – those that adopted did many other things
- Just be wrong with confidence – can be right, lots of good options
Innovating in Bets (a16z 5/8/19)
- Annie Duke (@AnnieDuke), Pmarca, smc90
- Every organization and individual makes countless decisions every day, under conditions of uncertainty.
- Thought experiment: posing Seahawks run the ball and are stopped vs passing and throwing pick
  - Once there’s a result, it’s very difficult to work backwards to assess the decision quality was.
    - Outcome was so bad – it was in the skill bucket. Or – oh, there was uncertainty.
  - Very slow in NFL, for instance, to adopt analytics according to the numbers
  - 4th and 1 – should unanimously go for it since numbers say the other team will get 3, expected
- As a decision maker, we likely choose the route that keeps us from getting yelled at
  - We allow uncertainty to bubble to surface – conflicted interest – long run vs short term
  - 2×2 matrix of consensus vs nonconsensus and right vs wrong
    - CR fine, NC-R genius, CW – fine (all agreed), NC – W really bad
    - Outcomes are right and wrong – hard to swipe the outcomes away
  - Thinking or allowing uncertainty in human driving and killing a human vs autonomous vehicle
    - Black box not understanding autonomous vs THINKING understanding another human (“Didn’t MEAN to do it”)
- Anybody in business – process, process, process
  - R/E business – everybody in room after appraisal is 10% lower vs 10% higher (similar analysis)
  - Outcomes come from good process – try to align that an individual’s risk matches with corporation’s
    - Rightest risk – model could be correct (tail result) or risk decision (and deploying resources)
- Most companies don’t have SITG – how to drive accountability in a process-driven environment so results matter?
  - How do you create balance so outcome caring about is the quality of forecast?
    - State the model of the world, places and what you think. How close are you to the forecast?
  - When you have a bad outcome and you’re in the room?
    - How many times do people say “Should we have lost more? Should we have lost less?”
  - Learning loss – negative direction on how to figure out? Poker example of betting X, X-C or X+C
    - Bet X and get a quick call. Should’ve done X+C (learn, regardless of opposite getting a card)
- How much can you move an individual to train thinking? Naturally, thinking in forecasts more. Will have reaction and lessons quicker.
  - Getting through facts quickly and having the negative feedback – not robots
  - Improved 2% which is amazing – what are YOU doing to not make it worse?
  - “Results-oriented” as one of worst for intellectual work – need a process.
- Story of “something is happening” is not a good story. Hard to read journalism now for him because they’re both “non-consensus”.
  - She’s optimistic that people can be equipped to parse narrative to be more rational. Pessimistic of framing and storytelling currently.
  - “Not making a decision” is making a decision but we don’t think of it that way.
    - Really unhappy in a position. Did the time frame thing “Will you be annoyed in 1 year?” – Yes. Nondecision didn’t feel like decision.
  - Mentions not having kids – time, energy, heart and decisions associated with indecision.
- On individual decision, you have: clear misses, near-misses, clear hits
  - Bias toward missing – don’t want to stick neck out. Have to see it in aggregate. Forecasts.
    - Anti-portfolio / shadow book is really about when you include clear misses vs near-misses.
    - Fear is that the ones that hit are less volatile or less risky will be returning less than shadow portfolio.
  - Says it’s difficult to do with 99:1 turndown vs investments. Sampling.
    - Time traveling with portfolio – bounce out and see if “if this is 1 of 20 in portfolio” vs “invest vs not”
- Conveying confidence vs certainty
  - I’ve done my analysis. This is my forecast. Is there some piece of information I can find out that would change my forecast?
    - Bake it into the decision. Not modulating the forecast – 60% to 57%. Costs and time differences.
  - Putting confidence interval on earliest dates and another probability, inclusive, on latest day
    - “I can have it to you on Friday 67% of time and by Monday 95% of time.”
    - Terrible to ask “Am I sure?” or others “Are you sure” compared to “How sure are you?”
- Pre-mortems in decision analysis
  - Positive fantasizing vs negative fantasizing (30% closer to success by thinking of hurdles in front of you)
  - What happens if you ask out crush and they say yes? What happens if you ask out crush and they say no? – No’s more likely.
  - Teams get seen as naysayers – individually write a narrative on pre-mortem – good team-player is how do you fail?
  - After outcome, we overweight regret – don’t need to improve this much. Look out a year and see if it affects you.
Mary Gray, author of Ghost Work: How to Stop SV from Building a New Global Underclass (Wharton XM)
- Research with coauthor at Microsoft Institute
- Discussion of the b2b services that run in the background – used Uber’s partner as example for driver verification ID
  - Beard vs no beard on default, for instance – need close to 100% accuracy and algorithms/vision can’t pick that up just yet
- Humans that run mechanical turk or various tasks on classifications
- Technology used to be cat vs dog and now it’s species of dog – likely tech will enable more specific classifications but not remove intervention
  - Running with surveys, captioning, translations, transcription, verifying location, beta testing are all tasks
- Used another example for “chick flick” meaning or 2012 debate with Romney’s “binder full of women” comment
  - Needed humans to assign relevance and to provide or connect proper context (Twitter, for instance)
- Facebook and its content moderators, most social media companies do this
Trends in Blockchain Computing, (A16z, 5/18/19)
- Get paid for AI data or encrypted data – can still train a model on it but nobody would know exactly what the data is
  - Long term accrual – depends, also, on if it’s on AWS vs open-source
- Gold farming and ex-protocol websites in WoW, for instance – virtual worlds

Leadership: Data and Strategy (Notes from Week of May 6 – 12, 2019) May 30, 2019

Posted by Anthony in Automation, Digital, experience, finance, global, Leadership, questions, social, Strategy, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
Tags: #business, books, content, Data, experiences, finance, freedom, humanity, ideas, life, marketing, Money, questions, reading, research, Sentiment, shopping, video
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This was a very fun week for listening. I caught a ton of material and insights from very creative leaders on how they’ve looked at strategy and building great teams, align companies and progress in a successful manner. Their methodologies or frameworks didn’t always align, which was also refreshing to hear. We often get stuck on the same methods if we hear them repeatedly – I’m under the impression that this becomes dangerous if held as a truism when others may question this way or go away from it – there isn’t a one-size-fits-all to building businesses! Especially when information is plentiful, and people / ideas are a few clicks away.

Zeke Zelker is a super-creator who has pushed the envelope of creating and producing engaging videos, whether it’s marketing material or tv or films. Definitely worth checking out, especially as media content in video / audio has increasingly been the mode of consumption.
Benito Cachinero of the Egon Zehnder Leadership program talked about 4 things he looks for and teaches in leadership. Also, he covered the importance of how to strategically allocate resources when looking for growth or expansion, both in economic and human capital.
A CES overview of consumer tech trends by the a16z squad was intriguing! Alarms, smart home and other products that caught their eye as options to drive the future of homes and how we’ll interact on an everyday basis.

Caryn Seidman-Becker discussed privacy of data and personal biometrics as the CEO of CLEAR – trying to improve the ease of security while fighting the image that people think of when hearing what it is they do to enable this. Brett Hurt was fascinating – building multiple companies early in life and calling up his friends to start a new one. Deciding the name? Hilarious. All of this before getting into Clarabridge’s sentiment analysis with Ellen Loeshelle. She realized how much different types and ways to look at data / text could help in analyzing a plurality of business cases, across many industries – not just customer data for their clients. Last but certainly not least, Stephanie Cohen needs no introduction – but she discussed how she perceives data for company progress and leading the groups needed to achieve her goals.

I hope you all enjoy!

Zeke Zelker, Creative Transmedia Branding (Wharton XM)
- Talks about his films being cine-experiences, and as a DIY videographer how he can control all aspects
  - Considers business along with creative direction – makes sure to align them
- 4 phases of content: ignite, sharing short form content, main event, reward
- iDreamMachine – his prod co. & producing Billboard about 4 people living on a billboard
- Has 7th most viewed drama on Hulu (InSearchOf) – engaging audiences to become a part of the story
- Encourages people in the environment to create content, whether it’s a blog or short snippets – become part of the overall story
Chris Carosa, author of From Cradle to Retirement: Child IRA (Wharton XM)
Making money as child, pre-teen and then teen
- Child: golf balls selling – golf course, lemonade stands, etc
- Preteen: babysitting, lawn mowing, card collecting
- Teen: W2 eventually, card collecting, babysitting and other types – photography, writing
- Parents can save $ for child by investing in child IRA ~$1k or up to gift amounts of $6k now as long as W2 income

Benito Cachinero, Egon Zehnder Leadership Solutions (Wharton XM)
- Previous President HR at DuPont HR
- Discussing potential ~4 factors for leadership (direct contradiction to measurements in being accurate)
- Aligning resources for growth strategy in new markets – China vs Midwest, for instance
Pulse Check on Consumer Tech Trends (a16z 1/17/2019)
- With Benedict Evans, Steven Sinofsky
- Trends at CES – no consumer product themselves, just a lot of all parts of supply chains / manufacturing
  - Batteries in 10k – 100k, so know what you want
- TVs were not curved (nobody bought curved) – had 3 ft bar and tv came out above it in 10-15sec
  - Or edgeless Samsung blocks “The Wall” where you could make them as large as you wanted – LCD in any shape/size
  - Sizes could be anything now, amortized supply chain and manufacturing plants vs idling
- Media content providers and apps
  - Pausing / syncing and Samsung apps with Apple video – clunky or AirPlay hardware
  - NorCal vs SoCal or California vs other states (think Apple phone vs the rest)
- Easiest product to get alarm from 12+ companies for an hour to plug stuff in and it’s done
  - Proprietary electrical wires until they got low energy Bluetooth and now it’s everywhere
  - Lock or other nuts and bolts having SKU proliferation or new homes
    - Have to know gen contractors, Home Depot, developers and fragmented
- FirstAlert smoke alarms – mesh wifi since they’re hardwired or battery
  - Put wifi in the alarm (to go to phone, etc…) – lots to do it with insurance or risks
- Alexa chip supplier to connect everything
  - Apple tried to do Home Kit but eliminated everyone because almost nothing was implemented – wasn’t easy
  - Amazon has leverage for hardware but it has to benefit them for Alexa and being useful
  - If all makers saw HomeKit, could join war for Alexa vs Assistant (now that everything has their discovery appliances / connect)
  - Compare electric toaster to holding bread in front of fire and similar progressions
- Show about running experiments is CES vs show about finding business value
- Cultural part of CES – Japanese hand clapper
  - The founder of Ukrainian and employee and others that were hustling
Caryn Seidman-Becker, CEO of Clear (Wharton XM)
- Biometrics and buying Clear
- Talking about the reactions for people getting to skip lines – make it more efficient
- Allow TSA agents to work on what is actually important
- Trying to describe to change customer behavior in the privacy aspect of what they keep
- Biometric data but encrypted and secure

Brett Hurt (@databrett), co-founder and CEO of data.world (Wharton XM)
- Discussion of Edgecase (Compare Metrics), BazaarVoice (running backend for a lot of ads)
- How they stumbled onto the data.world site – calling his co-founders of next big idea
Rod Hochman, MD and President, CEO of Providence St Joseph Health Leadership (Leadership in Action, WhartonXM)
- Talking about being a junior member of the board of physicians when he started out
- Leadership and how he went into the administration side as a young physician
- Administration for many physicians is beyond the time / scope of many – hard to think of it without doing MBA or taking time
  - Important to combine the two for the expertise and management
- With this business, how much is going on between clinics or hospitals and the network
Sentiment Analysis, Ellen Loeshelle, Dir. of Prod Management at Clarabridge (Data Skeptic 4/20/19)
- How positive or negative a customer may be expressing a review or otherwise, polarity
- Academically, may have entire text as positive vs negative
- Clarabridge – helping their clients understand their own customers
  - With hotel experience: could be multiple levels – service, cleanliness, check-in, overall
  - Using a clause, individual tokens, lemmas, parts of speech and how they’re related
- Dealing with 21 languages natively, and having computational linguists on staff to understand the grammatical syntax or individual contractors
  - Vocabulary can change, but not necessarily syntax (think: sick)
- Sentiment is rules-based engine as BI tool for her end users – full control / transparency for analysis
  - ML in place with w2vec for tuning rules in the engine since those change based on context/industry
- Flipping sentiment or negating and modifiers as using the extreme ends of sentiment analysis (-5 to 5 scale)
  - Structured stays similar, but lexicon changes contextually and sarcasm / transcriptions as more difficult unless obvious or explicit
- Sentiment goes along with their emotion or effort analysis for customers
  - Enterprise tool and APIs for engine on enriching internal systems
  - Considering sentiment analysis as table stakes now – different than when they first started when they were ahead
- Client in small kitchen appliances used Clarabridge to treat sentiment on competitors, specifically for pressure cookers
  - Eventually saw that the sentiment split for pressure cookers and that pushed them into doing Instapot
Stephanie Cohen, Evolution of M&A and Corporate Strategy (a16z 5/7/2019)
- Stephanie – CSO for Goldman, member of management committee, Was in M&A and investment banking for Goldman
- M&A is experience-based business, M&A with same people – rarely would be one-and-done – just a method of executing strategy
- Bad examples of M&A – likely hard to keep up with growth or expectation of growth but tries to buy the growth
- Her worst example: Fiat Chrysler with government owing, Canada + US and pension
- Trends: velocity of M&A is greater (cited $1tn of M&A last quarter), amount of private equity has about $1.5tn for buyers (divest vs sell)
  - When she started, needed a strategic buyer – now, just need to provide an answer to how the business is a good alone activity
  - China / Asia as higher volume in general
- “Anti-trends”: still very analog as M&A, person-to-person; continued evolution may come with digital capabilities
- Preparing or thinking of selling:
  - Don’t wait too long to sell (assets no longer strategic, more the business will atrophy) – be proactive of business portfolio
  - Build relationships early on with financial or strategic buyers
- Best M&A banker he’s seen: Tim Ingrassia (analyst originally) – corporations, legal, bankers
  - Friendly, relationships and doing business without ‘playbook’
- Figuring out strategy, which companies you want to buy and the alternatives (top targets, organic version, next a, b, c plan)
  - What to pay, rumors of what others would pay – what’s it cost to you?
  - Thinking creatively about deal? How to design the right compensation packages? What’s the integration strategy?
  - Clients are thinking of deal with integration people and how to get synergies to work the best
  - “Charm offensive” – ultimately, most sellers make decision on valuation – if you’ve developed best relationships, you get other information
  - Walk-away price
- Top down vs bottom up strategy – mentions $CAT as shifting toward RR vs sales, and not unique to just financial services
  - Not one instead of the other (fee-based vs recurring) – good deposits bring in other clients
    - Creating and building business with the right economy within various parts of the business
  - Going forward, people running businesses everyday have the best idea of how to exploit markets
    - If client-focused and outwardly-focused, should come up with great ideas together and to push forward
  - Exploration is hard or unnatural – high-energy, client-driven and solving in a creative way
    - Creative and quiet thoughts – leaders need time away, but people have to be exploratory to consider new plans
    - Example for tech and how to have the right conversations based on seeing what other companies are doing
    - She says that with how fast tech is growing, they need to work together and partner
- Accelerate as trying to push new ideas
  - Committal vs part-time – allowed them to fund and go with their idea, or keep them head of board
- Belief in fintech for a huge opportunity – have tended to build things on their own, but have pivoted to not do everything
  - What should we buy? What should we build? Want fintech to come and partner with Goldman.
  - Most of life is on phone and it’s almost seamless – but not financial life for mobile
Ruth Zukerman, Co-founder of FlyWheel Sports and SoulCycle (Wharton XM)
- Creative director

Dissecting the B2B and B2C Models(Notes from April 29 to May 5) May 23, 2019

Posted by Anthony in Automation, Digital, education, experience, finance, Founders, Hiring, questions, social, Strategy, training, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
Tags: #business, Apple, books, community, content, experiences, ideas, Jobs, life, marketing, Money, questions, research, social, training
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Here we see a few longer episodes to discuss investing into different biz models. I listened to a collection of founders that started funds, did a bunch of investing, bet on themselves, worked hard and ultimately caught a few breaks in spaces that were extremely unconventional and some that weren’t.

Keith Rabois – if you don’t know who he is, I’d strongly suggest looking up some of his work – went over the differences he sees as an operator compared to being an investor. What do you want to focus on in each position and what competitors to focus on.
David Frankel is another current MP who started by building and exiting his own companies. His discussion focused on how he tries to align founders and investors at the early stages of start-ups – how he frames this to be most productive. His secret though: following the founders, themselves, and trusting they have ideas that can carry ideas.
Another MP at Founder Collective is Eric Paley – though he came from the biotech space before joining.

Amy Frederickson was a fantastic listen on the Business Radio channel. Taking second hand, vintage items and giving access to others who see beauty in them. She connects contractors in upholstery and sourcing furniture that may not be seen for what it could be and connects them with those that may have great use. I’ve heard similar stories to this being done in the second-hand space like boutiques or even goodwill – connecting foot-traffic-primary stores to the internet and allowing everyone a chance at these creative, hand-picked items.

Angela Bassa was on DataFramed talking about her managerial experience in the exploding data science field (and before). How she’s had to adapt, how she treats peers and effectively communicates – all very useful in discussion of solving the right problems in an organization.
This was a great segue for me into another a16z episode on decision-making. How to ask the right questions and ensure you get a sufficient answer. Mining the proper data for it and turn those into insights.

To finish up and not make the intro super long – I kept notes on a few other investment managers and the differences in strategies for different clients, investors and the framework for posing performance in the right light.

I hope you enjoy the notes and please check out everyone’s episodes!

Keith Rabois (@rabois), Inv Partner at Khosla Ventures – If You Can’t Sell Them, Compete With Them (Invest Like The Best – 12/18/18)
- Investor, entrepreneur at Paypal, Square – investments in AirBnB & Palantir, Opendoor
- Paul Graham’s “Clients too stuck in their ways, compete with them” – when a person doesn’t want to take advantage of tech
  - Creating money, vertically-integrated business – build the platform (adoption risk, sales cycles, economic issues for being reliable on others)
    - Provide end product to customers
  - Quintessential example as Apple – control component to create user experience – derivative product doesn’t control own fate
- 7 Powers – book for strategic leverage
- Irrational for the 2 guys in the garage – has to be unexpected reaction to market, team, etc — but can’t take over from scratch by following ‘playbook’
  - He’s in the business for investing in a top 100 company
  - Strategic leverage should be that the accumulated advantage should be easier – skill / talent ability normally degrades
  - Anomalies give you insight into a paradigm shift (can’t get 10x growth from UI, etc…) – end of why questions should be incrementalism
- Secret is a belief system about the world that others don’t appreciate it – time determines if it’s true or false
- Home as primary home as more a commodity than an art – touch/feel. Not works of art.
  - Focuses on digital health, where data is abundant. Network effect there.
  - References – take Opendoor – could make an offer for house that’s fair but you’d be uncertain with money or closing on time
    - Knowing people will make the credibility factor easier – trust matters by vertical/industry
- Paypal had a $100k guarantee for the $ – partnered with Traveler’s Insurance as trusted brand, and used FDIC for insurance up to $100k
- Healthcare costs ex-LASIK seem to be going up – mediated through payers (ins co’s)
  - Can improve UX, reduce cost and improve quality at same time with technology enabled – Guardant Health with liquid biopsy
    - Made it significantly cheaper to get biopsy results
- Giving founders feedback on what they’re doing – how are they liking what they’re doing
  - As an operator, needs to make a 70% conviction and decision (as an investor, he needs to be in the 10-50% suggestions)
  - Assessment of talent is similar and understanding tradeoffs may be both of operator/investor
  - Risk profiles are different – understanding as operator where the strategy changes over time for the company (investor may be 0x to 10x)
  - Investor gets paid to learn new things, try new things – much more like baseball
    - Operator, conversely, may be like football where you should try things but need buy-in from others with your team
- Lean start-up as stupid idea – cohesive strong strategy that can be done with less capital
  - Product-market fit isn’t required for validating fixing an idea / postulation (fat start-up – $10mil to fix real estate, for instance)
- Steve Jobs mentioning saying No to good ideas (10% ideas) vs the 10x ideas – need experiment to get to that capability
  - Bad ideas in venture: lots of failures – 30% in baseball is good
  - Why does nobody emulate Apple or other successful companies do? Avoid the failure mentality.
    - Obsession about design and practical thinking – not empirical thinking. Book: Creative Selection
- Interview question:
  - If you are a product, how would you describe your value proposition? – initially had product instincts – wasn’t world class, but knew business
- Founders want to affect the real world – computer was escapist initially, but now it’s a controller for the real world
  - New capabilities / opportunities, lots of people leverage that for positive behavior, so now he says there are more ‘hard science’ innovation
    - Healthcare, biotech, autonomous, etc…
  - Early stage, pricing matters less because you just need to be correct directionally for the company, not so much off
    - How much, though, is risked by industries or risk/reward – what’s on table?
    - Later stage matters more for balancing portfolio.
- Learning through osmosis with someone that’s very smart
  - Calling people to get feedback on certain ventures based on other talented people’s responses
- Is there high-growth startup ex that hit escape velocity that a large competitor has beat?
  - Being paranoid is smart, but focused and talented team will out-execute a large entity
- Narrative violations – common being fake news – average American is more informed than any other American in history
  - Average American is more informed than any other person in history, by orders of magnitude
  - Interesting question: given the resources, is the person smarter or dumber than what they used to be? Voter more/less informed?
    - Accessibility to products is so abundant now – anyone can Google or find other information
      - Definitely true in the US, maybe harder for other areas in world
  - Platforms are now more democratic versions of printing presses
- Different components to acquiring and learning skills (athletes as needing to do, guitar probably playing songs, surgeon both reading/dexterity)
- Most investors forget the lessons of strategy, he thinks – differentiation is your friend (mentions YC as having different mentality, economics)
  - Not much pioneering at VC level – Horowitz (and his autobio) initially, but not much innovation since – Khosla, Lux as vertical integration, maybe
  - Midlevel manager of engineering can be efficient from recruiting standpoint – what level you’re at, where you can pick from 350 companies (to 10)
- Upside of Stress – book that’s very important, he believes — more stress and tolerating it is how you can be more successful
- Things that stick with him – how they remember how others impacted him or vice versa, little things
  - Cascading of good/inspiration & how it changed trajectory – rewarding
David Frankel (@dafrankel), MP at Founder Collective (20min VC 088)
- Founder, CEO of Internet Solutions (ISP provider in Africa) then became a super angel
- Founded FC with his partners for seed stage investing
- Graduated 1992 in Elec Eng undergrad – IS acquired eventually for $3bn in mid-90s
  - Was doing ventures with FCF, made many huge mistakes, he said and remained on Board for acquiring co
  - Went to HBS – hated first 3 months but then graduated in 1993 – b2banking, b2consulting (jokingly) – but met a ton of great people
  - With capital, could back almost all of his classmates starting (first or entire checks) – had 27 companies after graduating
- Challenge for FC was to ask how to institutionalize seed stage investing?
  - Not a lifecycle fund, just seed stage – may follow in Series A (not as lead), but hadn’t through the first stage
  - Wanted to create most aligned fund with founders – not net buyer when company is net seller
  - Believe they can make the most difference up front but not as they go forward
    - Who can be first hires? Management team gelling?
    - 2 years in, he says, they become much less useful – happy to be on board or pull off
- Working with Chris (over at a16z) – says it’s a waste of time to look at incremental
  - Chris pitched 2 ideas before Site Advisor
- For people not in the network – David loves hanging out with people and is very curious
  - People default to what we love doing – have to enjoy hanging out with them
- Invested in Uber but he didn’t know in a million years how that would have been predicted on what they did
  - In the moment – Groupon just completed $5bn round and they were invested
    - Was excited about a competitor in Korea as he liked the founder, even though he believed it was “house of cards” industry
- Comparing engineering student to business school – eng 1 in 1000 idea is Facebook, but volatility very high – business school lower volatility
- Term Sheet as read blog, uses Twitter / TweetDeck to curate lists
- Typically anti-sector because he follows founders moreso than industry specifically
- East Coast vs West Coast (center of universe) – output of talent from Boston and east coast is different
  - Depends on types of company (consumer / mobile is Bay Area-centric) – Boston good for tech/biotech
- One of favorite portfolio companies-PillPack in disrupting pharmacy & something simple
Amy Frederickson, Founder of Revitaliste (Wharton XM)
- Vintage furniture in interior design space – making it very simple to reupholster or otherwise refinish furniture
- Discussion of her partners on the furniture side – volume doesn’t necessarily make it better if they can’t do more work / spend more hours
  - Limitations that she’s had to be careful – try to change mindset and buoy them
Eric Paley (@epaley), MP at Founder Collective (20min VC 089)
- CEO, co-founder at Brontes Tech before acquisition by 3M for $95mil
- Started a web developer company with brother and cousin in 1990s, had a bunch of startup clients and others that weren’t
  - Abstract Edge – still run by brother/cousin, but when the dotcom bust happened, sees overconfidence
  - Bad times – may learn better – he wanted to go to biz school & learned a ton
  - Looked at 3D imagery while in business school thru MIT partnership – interesting and looked at the space – had to ask “What to do with it?”
    - Facial recognition, industrial inspection, endoscopy, video games, etc…
    - Late in game, struggled with money raising and decided to look at dentistry (mass customization – every orthodontic device as singular/unique manufacturing, dental impression but if you could change this, you could have a lot)
- First investor was David Frankel (from before – $500k into Brontes)
  - David calling and say “Thought the founder liked me but would you mind doing reference call with them?”
  - “Can you sit down with the entrepreneur and let me know what you think? – I’m out of town for 2 months in South Africa, so I trust you.”
  - Started to look for deal flow for David while he was out – with the other guys
- As he was looking at leaving 3M, he was talking to venture companies and saw that top quartile VC’s didn’t feel like they were doing as well as they had
  - Came together with the 4 partners and should start a fund – underlying premise with better alignment at seed stage
  - Pro rata doesn’t align founder to venture – founders don’t get the option if they’re not doing well
    - Dollar average up cost-basis vs down. $8, 10, 15 million valuation vs $30, 50 or 100 million – but it’s more along the average dollar
      - Weighted later with pro rata investing
- Believes there are plenty of seed funds that are doing well, but he’s surprised by the limited amount of funds that stick to seed stage
  - Conventional wisdom / FOMO for lifecycle / follow-ons
  - They have 3 unicorns at that time as well as a lot of good returns outside of that
- Fooled By Randomness – NNT book as his favorite applicable to VC, frameworks for tilting the probability
- Founder role model for him – said he was lucky to have Kelsey Worth, founder of Invisalign ($1bn company in 5 years)
  - She was on the board, would come out a day a month and help him out – dive deep and give an opinion without being dogmatic
- Mentioned a recent investment as Cuvee – attempting to increase wine storage / pourability to 30 days
Angela Bassa, Director of D/S at iRobot (DataFramed #48 11/12/2018)
- Managing D/S Teams and how to organize development of algorithms and the processes
- Corporate business organization of data science teams vs packaging and product building or open source work – known for more of that
- Undergrad in Math, went to Wall Street after – got a lot of data analysis in the market, wasn’t a match for her ~15 years ago
  - Then went to strategy consulting – focused on pharmaceutical strategy, testing and experiment analysis
  - Went to marketing services industry – finally saw big data – (no longer any single machine work)
- Talked about excelling as an individual contributor and moving to management as a different discipline in itself
  - First person she managed: quit the first day, had been a PhD graduate and assumed he was working with her, not for? (What a prick?)
- Worked with teams in ops, finance, IT, engineering, R&D, etc…
  - Re-orgs for data science portion – always changing branches
  - If data science isn’t the product, within legacy/corporation, the team needs time to figure out the objective of the organization
    - Get past exploration and become experts
    - Her take on managers would be that they create space (o-line) for individual contributors to do their work as quarterbacks
- As teams grow in size over time (using her experience as Manager and Director from ground up), potential vs low-hanging fruit
  - High visibility and high sophistication to give a leg up on what could be possible for the organization – low-hanging fruit is easy
  - Starting data science team have generalists but very good to mature into a better team, specialization
- Humility for data scientists – avoiding the correlation factors that you build from gathering and going through data initially
  - What kind of questions should be answered?
- Parts of data science that you can’t teach – how vs wanting to answer questions
  - Certain bootcamps are worthy of what they teach, organize – mentioned universities as not having programs until recently
    - Mentioned a team member trained initially as marine biologist – traveled and researched pods of dolphins
      - Modeling expertise for a fleet of robots as operating independently and together
- Harder for C-suite to not be able to talk data in the strategy sessions for decision making
  - Common pitfalls of manager:
    - Data team doesn’t know how the data is gathered or where all it’s coming from
      - Have a data party or something to organize the data creation, designed, labeled, and stored
    - Not overpromising or underpromising
      - Lend credibility to actual outcome – being honest, transparent with other disciplines to interrogate situations
- Her paper for HBR – Managing Data Science for AI
The Future of Decision-Making (a16z May 1, 2019)
- Frank Chen and Jad Naous (via YT initially) of Enterprise Investing team
- Digital transformation where industries are shifting to this design
  - Changing from manual to automated, digital processes and more agile
  - People’s roles will start to shift around – demand for new tools and dynamics for who wins in spaces
- Product management – features or bugs would have been surveys manually or collecting data to figure out problem and sort them all
  - Now, the tools automate these from the product itself, often – now they can look at the dashboard of numbers
- Marketing side: Growth hacking and market engineering – low cost to increase growth in certain parts of customer segments
  - Decision-making and creative work is the human part that can’t get automated
  - More people in the middle of the enterprise are becoming analysts – BI tools aren’t going to be enough
- Types of tools should be operational tools that give answers to questions that they need immediately
  - Where is the bottleneck in the funnel? How to eliminate?
  - Competitor is having a flash sale – how much revenue is impacted or what segment should I target?
  - Generally, analysts would have to spend time and $ to get an answer (“$10mil to get a report that you didn’t need in the first place.”)
  - A/B test has to be continually monitored
- Jad worked at AppDynamics – one of easiest things to sell is Performance Monitoring Tools – prevent systems from going down
  - Harder to prove ROI to other orgs – sales, marketing if they need continual results / ongoing
  - Want to have self-service tools vs full-service from someone else
  - Not analysts but instead the functional operational people – marketer, growth hacker, product manager, business people
- AirBnB already open sourced SuperSet – ad-hoc access to data for results, used by 100s co’s – presentation layer product toward technical
  - Imply (one of his investments) for analytics and processing layer – store streaming data into database and do the analytics / presentations
  - DataBricks – processing layer
  - ETL layer is the one that has not gotten traction – domain specificity (healthcare vs ride-sharing or finance)
    - Currently too much integration issues and organizing
- 3 categories – operational intelligence – sell tools for incumbents to enable intelligence
  - Target csm or sales or product manager (crowded currently, hardest to win)
  - Segment-focused vendors – sensors and analytics to oil & gas companies, for instance
    - Vertical solutions for industry
  - Vertically-integrated, operational intelligent company that competes against incumbents – Lyft / Uber, AirBnb, etc…
    - Biggest value but hardest
- Non-IT buyers: Grocery, Construction, Oil & Gas – operationally efficient and commoditized as long-standing business
  - Minimal change in efficiency can be a huge value (Costco at $12.5bn ’17 on 11% margin)
  - Capital deploy for Exxon Mobile ($230bn capital invested, ROIC 9.5%)
- Particularly excited by SuperSet, Imply – infrastructure tools – people seeing analytics and tools as necessary for business
  - Software vendors into large, existing industries – hardest would be economic profiles will be very different
  - Selling into stagnant markets (minimal margin) and not used to new tech – cycles will be long
    - Huge businesses to get in
  - Need to educate/prep investors – really bright light at end of tunnel
  - Need to become experts and trusted advisors in the domain
  - Help with software and services in the industries
Josh Wolfe (@joshwolfe), founder/MP at Lux Capital – Tech Imperative (Invest Like Best, 4/23/2019)
- Tackling massive scale problems – China as infrastructure power vs the states
  - State or story-sponsored role becomes more powerful with internet-enabling
- Checklist of 5 main things (Xander of GoPro, now SurveyMonkey)
  1. Nail down the strategy of company – what are you going to do?
  2. Deliver capital to pursue strategy – clear, cohesive and sell
  3. Brilliant team to execute, drop others to start mission.
  4. Communicate the hell out of it – partners, competitors, media, press – keep consistent answer.
  5. Hold people accountable – if people aren’t and the goals aren’t clear, not effective organization.
- Story – memorable, easy to repeat, conveys meaning in a clever way
  - Want to elicit an emotional reaction – putting meaning in a story for an individual
  - Portable ideas as superpowers – leaders being able to harness this, or the audience (maybe of the shared values)
    - How to aggregate the ideas
- Abundance of liquidity to illiquidity or leverage (eg $200mln check in growth-equity round at $1bn (from $100mln) but if down-round, then the check has a big stake in it as creditors)
  - LPs and endowments are overextended – he’s telling people to look at secondaries, not venture
  - Sequoia was appealing to greed – sop it up and have to write bigger and bigger checks (get a big fund and put to work)
    - SoftBank as big problem pricing up rounds – either visionaries or producing paper assets as collateral against debt
    - Tesla as horrible balance sheet and illiquidity
- Zoom doesn’t need to need a big business, but Uber/Lyft depends on strangers and investors to buy in to future
- TurboChef (fast like a microwave but toasty like toaster) – Subway vs Quizno for $4k ovens
  - Sell to Subway – 20k places for purchase orders – but they got Coca Cola to buy the contracts for Subway in exchange for them to be in the stores
  - LatchAccess (one of his co’s) – remote by cloud from phone to consumer
    - New build and buildings (now 1 in 10) – did contract with WalMart / Jet
- Some firms get lucky and parlay it into success – maybe wrong in process
  - What was process? Where did you get lucky? Where were you smart? How did you structure deal?
    - Benefit you, founders, investors
  - Price vs intrinsic value – public doesn’t do this, but path-dependent in portfolio (repeat entrepreneurs)
    - Team vs sole GPs – total equal partnerships and all mixes
    - Portfolio mix, super early stage, low probability of high financing risk
    - Others who are good at metrics / business, growth metrics
    - Subsector – fintech, crypto, etc… as experts
- Tribes with a mantra
  - “Life sucks” – gangs, people homeless
  - “My life sucks” – 9-5 and get home and just crack a beer and grow for that
  - Like what they do – “I’m great, you’re not” – silo information, zero-sum and leave as free agents
  - Lux as “We’re great, they’re not” – robbers cave – how to get people to bond vs competitor / enemy
    - Sometimes it’s an entity – exogenous threat, devil – big oil, martians
  - Ultimate “Life is great” – mission driven, maybe Google / Facebook initially – cause/effect of money
    - Still climbing mountain, goal to reach – complacency maybe
- Judgment: should we be disciplined about price?
  - Andreesen said only 10 good companies but you want to be in each one – but there are 1000s of decisions to be made
    - Pay any price for the ‘best’ or be discriminated – lead to FOMO and price action
    - Mentioned Cruz and setting up GM deal ($20mil at $60post vs $20mil at $80post, but GM came in and paid 11x)
  - In private markets, if you rejected them, you don’t get another chance.
- Values: observable around morality (tech around morality and morality around tech)
  - Existence of an option is a good thing – military as a hot topic, tech as both sides affected
    - Had invested in Palantir offshoot for virtual wall for Homeland – has lots of immigrants who were deeply affected
  - Drone options or even autonomous driving (say, those who die as organ donors for the donor list)
  - Compares China’s pipeline from government to technology – decisive advantage will let them be ascendant
    - Moral discussions slow this down – barriers to experimentation
  - Real value of CRISPR isn’t the feature, but what it leads to in the platforms (ex: X-Men / Cerebro – Variant for rare populations)
    - 23andMe and Ancestry as targeting the ‘boring populations’ vs what they’re doing
      - 1000 individuals for rare conditions that have a metabolic rate that raises in the evening – what if this was monogenic / targetable?
- Sci-fi vs Sci-fact as narrowing — ‘it will rot your brain’ as doing the next $10bn+ industry
  - Mentions engineers and Fred Moul (founder of Intuitive Surgical) starting Orace – just betting on him to recruit the right people
    - $8mn at $20mln valuation – for 5 years $90mln forecast and $450mln – then got a bunch of investment)
      - Exit for 63x for $6bn to J&J – completely flawed process on an order of magnitude
- Directional arrows of progress if spotted increases probability of success on subsector
  - Lighting: burning flame -> bulb -> led; memory, energy density
  - Talked about Calliopa – he wanted to focus on gut-brain access – taste / sugar receptors (Charles as Chilean professor at Columbia)
    - Half-life of tech: 50 years ago, 25 years ago personal computer, 12.5 years ago laptop, 6.25 years phone, 3.5 iwatch, 1.5 airpods
      - More intimate over half-life and improved
    - Had to meet “Rearden” – “I can get rid of that” – Bill Gates’ right hand guy, polymath, PhD neuroscience after undergrad as Classics/Latin
      - Put on wrist strap that could detect 15k neurons that innervate the 15 muscles in your hand – perfectly model this
        
        Can control it just by thinking of turning on whatever you’re speaking of
      - We don’t have input problem – we have output problem — too linear
        
        Series A and Google/Amazon invested $30mln – want to sell after maximum value
  - Do you find companies that touch near the directional arrows?
    - Don’t need to implant in brain, can read the neurons – 5 years ago you didn’t have everything that was required – power, IoT
- Moral imperative to invent technology, instruments to invent genius – encounter the technology that eventually inspires others
  - Losing touch with humanity – where is the song after sung? Find way to reduce human suffering.
- Are there enough entrepreneurs in real technology frontiers? Is vs ought (jokes about competition)?
- If you can spot “What sucks?” – can you discover something “Wait, what?”
  - 100mln mice – can’t you put sensors/automation for this?
  - Document storage (Mushroom vs atomic storage, not REIT for storing docs) – banker data, scan them – IronMountain can’t do it
  - Entropy information – he gets more optionality by giving information, but death of privacy is coming with convenience
    - Mentioned graphic novelist “Why the Last Man?”, side one called “The Private Eye” about everyone being surveilled – wearing masks
    - Socially and personal privacy is a losing battle but industrial side makes sense
    - Mentions blockchain for voracity – Banksy for private store (analog), authenticity
- Special operations spending time for 2 weeks – Asia: Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan
  - Coalitions forces, training, sniper, subsea, Seals, cutting edge tech – able to look at things for laser targeting
    - He was there for “What sucks?” – humbled by voracity, proud by the intelligence and what he could do and who he was with
  - Optical signals for those that get through program are the opposite of the big guys – stunning, talented, quietness “stoic intensity”
Ayan Mitra, Founder, CEO at CODE Investing (formerly Crowdbnk) (20min VC 089)
- Enterprise architect and tech mgr, worked with M&S, Orange, and First Direct
- Software eng by trade, started in mid 1990s and built internet framing for Bank Offers Direct
- Was in NY when Kickstarter kicked off in 2010, and saw the regulation was ready for this type of investing
  - Made the concept popular, regulated funding, or Kiva-type – early stage investing is a lot more popular in Europe/UK
  - JOBS Act as regulation freedom for positive step for alternative financing
- Wave of changes where technology is being brought on the systems and the benefit goes to the investors and markets
  - Quick and transparent – believes it would’ve happened regardless
- Crowdbnk – reactively do due diligence, price and valuations – invest alongside with investors on their platform
  - Look to raise growth capital for equity and debt – not a pure platform/marketplace
  - Minimum / maximum – equity looking for $500k – 2mln pounds, debt – secured/asset-backed $1ml – $5mil
    - Investors – $10k pounds a year to be diversified and properly investing
- Valuation class by Ashwin (NYC) – intrinsic valuation (creating, discounted by time and risk) or momentum valuations (price willing to pay)
  - VC could benefit from diversifying investment base – early round by Index recently
- In crowdfunding, consumer brands may have an easier time going down crowdfunding pick
  - Harder for others to understand some of other sectors / SaaS, for instance
- Debt funding is #168bn and growing, but small compared to financial services
- Drawing attention as a focus over time, consumer behavior changes
  - By being more efficient, they can return value to investors and people on the platform
- Book mentioned: Intelligent Investor – Ben Graham
  - Seth Godin’s blog
- War chest vs planned capital injections – not a binary answer (eg: compete against Uber – good luck without war chest; tech-enabled services)
- Funded a company called Breezy – simplifies user interface for older generation, potentially – team/value and invested by US VC’s
Andrew Hohns, President, CEO of Mariner Infrastructure Investment Management (Wharton XM)
- Conceptualized and founded IIFC Strategy as part of his dissertation at Penn
  - Funding gap in project finance to address world’s infrastructure needs
    - Talked about growing projects in Africa, India and others
- Started a fund as he finished school – raised $500mln for capital projects
  - Including a $1bn transaction with African Development Bank completed with multilateral bank and private investors
    - Provided approx $650mln in additional lending capacity
  - Credit Agricole in 2017 that was “biggest impact investing deal yet” by Financial Times to allow an extra $2bn of funding toward green projects
- Managing the originations networks for funds with relationships with many global financial institutions

Marketing and Investing Large (Notes from April 22 – 28, 2019) May 14, 2019

Posted by Anthony in Digital, experience, finance, Founders, global, Hiring, questions, social, Strategy, Uncategorized, WomenInWork.
Tags: #business, books, community, content, experiences, finance, ideas, life, marketing, Money, social, sports, training, TV, video
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As a fintech-focused external analyst on pre-seed startups, I see and track as many as I can in the space. It’s allowed me to follow along, at a distance, some of the very interesting companies that are growing in finance and financial services industries. The glut of capital available has produced some successes and many failures for those looking to disrupt the industry – especially one that’s so large. And many are finding out that there are plenty of reasons why it tends to move particularly slowly and, at times, frustratingly inefficiently. You need a ton of users / customers (and the right ones) to make sure the business is sustainable at the level of efficiency you’re requiring to offer up a ‘better’ (re: cheaper) product. But then you must still maintain those levels at a much larger scale. And that’s where companies see you have to pay extra to acquire customers by marketing or offering other avenues in, thus decreasing that margin that was supposed to streamline the business and disrupt that portion of the industry. Cat-and-mouse or dog chasing its tail, often.

What tacks on to that difficulty? Well, the big fish in the pond aren’t just wallowing in comfort, waiting for disruption. Nope. Quite the opposite now. They’re flush with cash or the economics to develop solutions in-house. Or, when they see they’re scheduled to be beat, they come knocking on the door of the ones interested in an exit – purchase, M&A. Banks and the big institutions acquire the necessary innovation to diversify and improve their product offerings. Disruption – not so fast.

Ultimately, I’m not asking for these innovative start-ups to stop. Quite certainly the opposite. Their improvements and new ideas catch the attention and hasten the pace at which the incumbents must move. And it all makes for an exciting follow!

For my notes, I listened to an Ally Invest CFO discuss why he sees getting into mortgages is good for a rising banking company (one of our fintech follows). Then, a Senior VP of Marketing at Coca-Cola talked about how they align creative direction with their brand, despite not pounding red or drinks all over advertisements or songs. What have they learned to be so successful (for SO long)?

Then, one of my favorites in a while was a segment with the authors of Nine Lies About Work. I’ve followed Marcus Buckingham’s YouTube channel for a bit now where he spells out some misconceptions about the typical ‘culture’-speak of workplaces. One of my favorites: Culture is a myth. Simply, workplaces typically have an aura and vision around them, but once you’re there, this may dissipate or be something that depends on the person you’re speaking with (how do THEY view the workplace). In smaller, start-up teams, they’ll likely agree with each other – culture is the similarity of the workers. However, especially as the company grows – this will often change drastically, and by levels.

Last but not least, we had a few fantastic women on episodes exploring The Muse and Tough Mudder. The Muse co-founder, Kathryn, discussed wanting to be a very different company from what she’d experienced before. And how to give people insight into various places. Then Rabia talked about the trajectory for the Tough Mudder races and what may be on deck to bring in more of the family.

Hope you enjoy!

Tom Desmond, CFO Ally Invest (Wharton XM)
- Went to school at Kellogg, talked about how they were trying to make it easier for investing
- Ally getting into mortgages and seeing why – thought market remains attractive
  - Mortgages as being on 10-yr timeline, quite different than other offerings
Geoff Cottrill, Senior VP Strategic Marketing at Coca-Cola (Marketing Matters)
- Talking music and the tie-in between marketing and brands
- Artists controlling a lot more of their own brand – becoming easier as agencies aren’t as prevalent as in the past
  - Can start and produce on their own, without agencies
- Talked about a commercial with Pharell, who was incredulous at not having to mention the company – gave him creative freedom
  - Coca Cola ran a song and gave it away first (via their site)
  - Different types of connections, brands
- Have to be authentic in brand, customers and consumers can sniff out if it’s not intentional, on-brand or paid without authenticity
Ashley Goodall and Marcus Buckingham, Nine Lies About Work authors (Wharton XM)
- Talked about how the company doesn’t particularly matter, it’s what you’re doing there – even though people say that
  - If culture is so monolithic for a company, why would your experience be different than another person? It doesn’t.
  - We care about the companies we join, not the companies once we stay.
- Lie #2: best plan wins – more details and variables for the nitty gritty, but the plan becomes irrelevant as you spend time on it
  - Rendered moot because the real world doesn’t wait – plans scope the problem but not present the solution
  - Wanting to know what action to take – plans are rearview
- Lie #4: Best people are well-rounded – theory of excellence is wrong (excellence can be defined in advance – which it can’t)
  - In order to grow, defined definition of excellence and we can tell you how to get to Warren Buffett success (we don’t say that)
  - Excellence isn’t homogenous
- Lie #5: People need feedback – based on 3 false beliefs
  - 1: I am the source of truth about you – have to tell you that you lack empathy or charm, or otherwise.
    - Only thing a manager can do is be a reactor – “I am confused, bored, etc..” – a rater of myself.
  - 2: Learning is filling empty space. Insight and patterns recognized within – more revealing what is vs not there.
  - 3: Excellence can be defined in advance. Defined above. Used Rick Barry as example (granny-style vs ‘normal’)
  - Can be an audience to others, and help grow and excel, but in a different manner.
- Lie #6: People can reliably rate other people. Mediated or seen through this lie through work.
  - Can see the ineffectiveness on rating systems (pattern / tool is an idiosyncratic rating – mirror, not window).
  - Not biased – it’s a natural pattern of ratings based on who you are, not who you’re rating (variation is ~60%+).
- Lie #7: People have potential. (Performance and potential grid)
  - Person has substance – potential and we buy into the ‘bucket’ or exponential growth for people
    - There is no measurable data on these people. Can’t do it. Immoral.
- Lie #8: Work/Life Balance Matters – who has ever found this?
  - Balance as a recipe for stagnation – how to replace this with an aspiration
- Lie #9: Leadership is a Thing. (US has $15bn industry for this)
  - Defined in advance and in isolation from the person doing leading.
  - Only thing that is common amongst leaders is that they have followers – followers into the uncertainty of the future.
  - Create the sense of confidence that trumps the future – the way, though, is very different by leader.
Rabia Qari, Senior VP of Marketing & Sales Tough Mudder (Marketing Matters)
- Settling on Tough Mudder 5k and the full, instead of the half – had brand ambassadors that understood the growth opportunity
- Now have Little Mudder and Rough Mudder (dogs), family affair
- Had tried a half marathon before the 5k but community and team decided it wasn’t going to work – removed some of the spirit.

Kathryn Minshew (@kmin), CEO of The Muse (Wharton XM)
- Talked about how the companies always looked the same
Steve O’Hear (@sohear), Techcrunch writer (20min VC FF021)
Joined TC in Nov 2009, but had taken a break in June 2011 to found Beepl
- Landed funding and in Nov ’12, was acquired by Brand Embassy
- Enterprise over consumer from out of Europe – network effect is stronger in the US as English / general language
  - Spotify, gaming companies as the exceptions, possibly
- Liked the fundraising meetings – thought it was fun but scary
  - Absolute conflict of interest where you want to tell the VC whatever to get the funding, but as soon as you’re signed, you’ll be partners
- PR and coverage as a distraction – but he doesn’t think that TC makes / breaks a start-up
  - If you make a bad product, you’ll be found out by users/customers immediately
  - If you are making a good product, you’ll be found out still – didn’t matter for TC coverage or not (though probably brought in more eyes)
- TC does more meet ups and conferences, less moderation of comments and conversation via Twitter or in community
- As a writer/reporter, they don’t have to pay attention or worry about stuff
  - Editorial freedom but can write what they feel or passionate about – unique to TC / type of journalism
  - As publications grow, they usually lose the freedom, but in this case – they’re one of the best places to write
- Best interview was Wozniak, as a fan of those that brought the pc to public
- Inspiration from politics for journalism
- Harry as saying that Eileen was the only one who had ever said “No!” and he was a bit annoyed, though enjoyed.
Josh Levin, CSO OpenInvest

Data Science in Your Business (Notes from Week of April 15 – 21, 2019) May 8, 2019

Posted by Anthony in Automation, experience, finance, Founders, Hiring, questions, Stacks, Strategy, training, Uncategorized.
Tags: #business, books, community, content, experiences, Google, ideas, Jobs, life, marketing, questions, reading, research, social, Time, training
1 comment so far

It feels appropriate to have the week of Google I/O’s conference to be the one that aligned with my notes where data was the primary focus, especially when Google was pushing ease of technology (centered around giving them access to more data). There were some excellent memes/pictures around for the differences of Facebook asking (hah) for data compared to Google (where they have a ton of it already but they mention the stuff coming).

Kaggle, a research data competition site, held a conference centered around hiring and careers in data with guest speakers from some of the most interesting companies working with data, including Google. Listening to career-based or hiring podcasts related to the field gives insights to how corporations or orgs focus on the spectrum of people vs skills. The other side of this would be a discussion on how data science teams can impact the business at value. What can be done with the data? Is it helpful? Which metrics are measurable and important?

A few episodes went into the business and general application of research in the data. Research on how personality and music are interrelated or satellite imagery from NASA to provide various live solutions – and to what extent they can be designed to be used. A few non-data science-specific podcasts dealt with FinTech, HealthTech and marketplace tuning. How do startups fight against incumbents in various marketplaces? Are their offerings sustainable or do they break the model of what we have seen?

Hopefully my notes provide some incentive to go back and listen to one or each of the podcasts. Or connect via Twitter to talk more!

Validating D/S with QuantHub, Matt Cowell CEO (BDB 4/2/19)
- Also with Nathan Black, Chief Data Scientist at QuantHub
- Talking data science – math with business and IT skillsets
- Companies are manually doing tech assessments with candidates / roles – programmer-based primarily
  - QuantHub looks at a comprehensive, scientific approach to assessment of the stack of what may be necessary
- NLP of resume, and then Bayes’ updating for input and results from that
  - Assessment platform at the core and using it for hiring (natural use-case) but then benchmarking organizational skills
  - Aggregators of content and matchmaking (say, data analyst up to data engineer – wrangling, SQL improvement)
- Assessments done and individuals won’t be charged – overall value in helping talent
  - Building the training side in the next quarter
- How do companies engage QuantHub? 5min to get running – align the incentives for using it / relationship.
  - What are the challenges? What are the skillsets? What do you mean that you want them to do?
  - Requirements changing by different statistical methods (along with computing power, designing algorithms vs latest research)
  - Knowing/vetting data scientists as having to do the role / job – can you mirror the actual job requirements? (try vs buy, potentially)
- Cloud computing or hardware innovation as ‘cool’ in a world of software – highly critical, depending on certain organizations
  - Some orgs NEED the data improvement there (Kubernetes, Docker, Cloud, Spark vs Power Excel user)
- Matt as a product strategy guy – book “Monetizing Innovation”
  - How do you determine what the market and customers want
- Nathan’s book – “Make It Stick” on how you can improve learning methods
James Martin (Staffing Lead, D/S at Google) – Getting Noticed in D/S (Kaggle CareerCon 4/17/2019)
- Looking at field – ML Engineer to Quant/Statistician to Product Analyst to Data Analyst
- Research tips: Open source projects (understanding current trends, gain experience, make connections)
  - Job descriptions (take time to research the differences, tailor approach)
  - Market research (professional networking, connect dots between companies you’d consider)
- Resume tips: Concise (focus on telling a story on the experiences to highlight outcomes)
  - Factual (if listing skills or strengths, use examples to support them)
  - Related experience (highlight specific projects related to area you’re applying)
- Networking tips: Professional profile (be detailed but concise about the skills you use and experiences)
  - Targeted outreach (connect after a conference, target approach for conversation)
  - Conferences (meet/greet if possible, follow up via email, LinkedIn, twitter)
Gidi (Gideon) Nave (@gidin), Assistant Professor of Marketing (Marketing Matters)
- Cambridge Analytica before Cambridge – music research and how it relates to certain traits
  - Extroversion and openness were 2 big ones that they could pull from 5 traits (MUSIC)
  - MUSIC: Unpretentious, Sophistication were 2 of them
- Could pull personality cues from 20 second, unreleased clips based on scores of 1 to 7, also
  - More agreeable people had higher scores in general
- Personality on 5 (OCEAN – Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroverted, Agreeable, Neuroticism)
  - Questioned whether they could use music to test for the personality (as opposed to the other direction)
  - Personality is established at a young age, so can music likes on Facebook give you a personality side – as mentioned, it did ~2 better than others
Fintech for Startups and Incumbents (a16z 4/7/2019)
- With GP Alex Rampell (@arampell) of CEO/cofounder of TrialPay and partner Frank Chen
- Assembling a risk pool (good and okay drivers subsidizing the bad drivers, or healthcare – same)
  - No economic model for skipping a segment – psychology for half price insurance (say, going to gym)
  - Half the number of customers – taking the ‘good’ ones, profitable ones
  - Insurance has mandatory loss ratios for different industries
- HealthIQ – mechanism for exploitation on ‘health’ – in FinTech, it was SoFi on HENRYs
  - Positive vs adverse selection – debt settlement company ads, for instance – negotiate on your behalf to settle
  - Healthier people as living longer than non-healthy people – left them more profitable for proving being better
    - Gives them good customers (adverse selection for ‘quick, no blood test, 1 min’)
- SoFi as stealing customers from the normal distribution – better marketing message “you’re getting ripped off, come to us”
- Branch as investment – collect as much data as possible and look for correlations – small, mini-loans
  - Induction as pattern is a willingness to pay (credit is remembered) – went and got data from your phone
  - How many apps did you have? Did you look like you went to work? Are you gambling?
    - Counterintuitive potentially: battery goes dead leaned default, gambling app meant more likely to pay, etc…
- Earnin – phone in pocket for 8 hours, last paycheck and RTS data confirming – will give money that you have earned but don’t have yet
  - Can tip interest or not – can you encourage people for positive community and people driving safely
  - Nurture better behavior – helping to turn customers into correctly priced customer (vs bank that doesn’t want them)
- Vouch as company that failed but your social network had to vouch for you – Person X is okay, so you can even put up $
- Tiffany & Co for a long time was owned by Avon lady – but its brand was massive and one of most renown jewelers
  - Could make sense for acquiring more customers, though
- Killing Geico – take 20% of customers but only take the good ones
  - Selling negative gross widgets, for instance – probabilistic ones (and the bad ones aren’t needed)
- Turndown traffic strategy – Chase turns down a lot of people for problems (can’t profitably do $400 loan, for instance)
  - Here’s a friend after they rejected them (but see traffic) – Chase will tell you to go to a startup for better underwriting
  - Amazon got right – HP book, for instance – had ad for B&N right next to Amazon (bought) – would make $1 on the ad click at 100% profit
    - Used this to reduce the price on their site and wasn’t sharing it
- Rapid fire: “Always invest super early” – 9 weeks to decision vs 1 day – can’t get good deals at length
  - Best things aren’t cheap – they’re often expensive – better strategy can be plowing in late (“Can’t believe we’re putting this much $”)
  - Gating item for entrance into a space or into different models – cost of capital and distribution as often the unique thing
    - Geico could easily add additional traffic to start-ups
  - M&A strategy early? Encouraged and used Facebook – buy existential threat (surrender 1% of market cap to buy Instagram)
    - Facebook spent 7% of market cap for WhatsApp, Oculus, etc…
    - Buy the guys that failed trying – courage to build something new -> take them and put him in charge for person that was successful (at big co)
      - Trying to build this thing for ~10 years vs start-up that built something in 1 year (put this one in charge)
      - Ex: AmTrak buys Tesla – worse thing “You work for us” but you want products to push distribution and talent for understanding
    - Only difference was distribution and the possibility to do that
Jennifer Dulski, author of Purposeful, Head of Groups & Community at Facebook (Wharton XM)
- Talked about their group initiatives at Facebook – communities policing themselves as well as methods to flag content
- Mentioned example of having an employee that came up to her and asked if she had done a good job, she just wanted a bonus or something $
  - Taught her about incentives and why people do what they do / good to know the motivators
  - What drives people?
Anth Georgiades, CEO of Zumper (Bay Area Ventures, Wharton XM)
- Purchase / hire of Padmapper in 2016 that added quite a bit of Canada business (size of California, real estate-wise)
- How to match both sides for a marketplace – suppliers vs customers
  - Chicken and egg – focus on one, improve other and repeat
Word2vec (Data Skeptic 2/1/2019)
- Produces word embeddings – autoencoders as NN for something like compression to retrieve output successfully
  - m down to n via mathematical representation (m < n)
  - Language compression for vector rep
- Running the algorithm training on Google’s full internet, Facebook’s news article, Wikipedia, etc… to achieve similar words/spaces
  - Not super adaptive – nonsense place for words it hasn’t seen
- Real world application – king for word2vec and subtract male – then add in female and you get queen
  - 300 dimensional space, semantics of that example
  - Bad example: training on entirety of internet results in something like doctor – male + female = nurse (gender neutral data)
- Feature engineering for bag of words, good example for transfer learning, also (train model on text and then use parts of it on smaller area)
  - Very large corpora for NLP but can use pre-trained models of word2vec and use it in other models
Sean Law (@seanmylaw), D/S Research and Dev at TD Ameritrade (DataFramed #59 4/1/2019)
- Colleagues thinking he tends to ask lots of interesting, hard ?s – hopefully with answers
- If he’s a hard worker, then he’ll do great – being in industry for 3 months time – has to juggle effective time spend
- Molecular dynamics is short time scale and lots of computing power – parallel computing before and now the growth / usage of GPUs within days
- Hypothetical example for alternative data solutions – driving to work and listening to NPR where NASA had a new dataset that was sat imagery
  - Pollution ORA dataset for air quality – area of high commodity necessity with pollution joining
- If building ML as a binary classifier – but don’t know where the data is (do we have to collect? 3rd party API? Internal?)
  - How much effort to get it usable in the pipeline? Then, what’s the reasonable accuracy level – better than 50-50?
  - Some signal in the noise
- Exploring chat/voice – query account balance, stock price, news articles via Alexa/Echo
  - Headless / device-agnostic option – audio to parsing of text, understanding what customer wants (NLP) and then what it means
  - Following PoC and into production
  - PoCs can miss: scalability (unless claim is to get scalability), model accuracy (not best model immediately), real-world applications (use case in mind)
- Interpretability standpoint – regularization, L1 and linear – constraining coefficient can be very useful (background noise from video, for instance)
  - Time-series pattern-matching as non-traditional
- Calls to action – data failures of things that didn’t work or negative results

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