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3 episodes with Aileen Lee
2 episodes with Aileen Lee
2 episodes with Aileen Lee
2 episodes with Aileen Lee
2 episodes with Aileen Lee
2 episodes with Aileen Lee
2 episodes with Aileen Lee
2 episodes with Aileen Lee
2 episodes with Aileen Lee
Rihanna, Aileen Lee, Mikaila Ulmer and Anjali Sud: these rebels followed their dreams to become successful leaders in business. They come from different backgrounds and end up in very different places, but a tough rebel spirit connects them all. This podcast is a production of Rebel Girls. It's based on the book series Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls. This story was produced by Camille Stennis with sound design and mixing by Bianca Salinas. It was written by Abby Sher. Fact-checking by Joe Rhatigan. Narration by Julia Boorstin. Original theme music was composed and performed by Elettra Bargiacchi. Thank you to the whole Rebel Girls team who make this podcast possible. Stay rebel!
En Cuentos Corporativos hemos conversado con muchos emprendedores… quizás más de 120… y parece que el emprender es algo que se ha vuelto una moda. Todo mundo (o al menos mucha gente) quiere crear su “startup”… pero la realidad es que poca gente sabe todo lo que implica y los riesgos asociados. Para comenzar, es importante aclarar la definición: Una startup no es un negocio cualquiera, se trata de un emprendimiento que incluye innovación, muchas veces tecnología, es escalable y repetible.Tener una “startup” ha sido la tentación de muchos, pero debemos de entender que pocos de los emprendimientos son los que logran crecer y desarrollarse… llegando así a llamarse UNICORNIOS, que por cierto ¿sabes de donde viene este término? …. Fue popularizado por Aileen Lee, fundadora de un Venture Capital, quien lo uso en un artículo publicado en 2013. Se refiere a las startups privadas que alcanzan una valoración de mil millones de dólares o más… y si, desde entonces, todos soñamos con tener uno…Se identifican en México varios unicornios… desde luego, Kavak y Stori cuyos fundadores ya han estado en Cuentos Corporativos, pero hay otros ya nombrados, como Clip, Clara o Nowports y otros muchos en ese camino…. Y bueno, hoy nos acompaña una experta en el tema, así que iniciemos nuestra plática … Y para hacerlo diremos como siempre nuestras palabras mágicas:Había una vez, una niña que creció en Monterrey, Nuevo León, en el norte de México… desde pequeña, soñaba en cazas unicornios…. Soñaba en dedicarse a los medios de comunicación y escribir todas esas aventuras. Estudió Ciencias de la Comunicación en la Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León. Inicia su carrera profesional en diversas agencias de Comunicación, donde adquiere experiencia en la creación y producción de contenido, así como frente a las cámaras, lo cual le permite identificar que las Relaciones Públicas son totalmente lo suyo.Desde hace cerca de 4 años, nuestra invitada, Paola Villarreal Carvajal, inicia su propio emprendimiento, como “Entrepreneur Agent”, donde potencia la visibilidad de emprendedores y líderes de negocio a través de las relaciones públicas y generación de contenido. Transformando así la forma en como nuestros emprendedores, startups, inversionistas y creadores de contenido de negocios se relacionan con el mundo.Recientemente, ha sumado a su lista de logros la publicación de su primer libro, "Creando unicornios. El futuro del emprendimiento está en México", una obra enfocada a dar a conocer la esencia del ecosistema emprendedor. Con más de 60 entrevistas con fundadores de startups, Creando Unicornios da a conocer las historias detrás de estas personalidades que buscan transformar su entorno a través de sus negocios.A continuación los 3 puntos más importantes de la conversación con Paola:* Desmitificación del "Unicornio": Paola explica cómo el término "unicornio" ha evolucionado, y aunque se considera un símbolo de éxito en el ecosistema emprendedor, también se ha convertido en un término algo superficial que atrae la atención de los medios. Sin embargo, enfatiza que estos casos son vitales para visibilizar el emprendimiento en México, posicionando al país en el mapa global del emprendimiento.* El propósito de su libro "Creando Unicornios": El libro no solo cuenta la historia de unicornios mexicanos, sino que también aborda el contexto más amplio del ecosistema emprendedor en el país, incluyendo tanto éxitos como dificultades. Paola quiere inspirar a través de estas historias y demostrar que los grandes logros empresariales no están exentos de errores y sacrificios.* Inspiración para futuros emprendedores: Paola reflexiona sobre cómo el contexto económico y social de México ha impulsado a muchos a emprender, destacando la importancia de aprender de la experiencia de otros y de visualizar los errores como una parte integral del éxito.Te invitamos a estar pendientes de nuestros canales y a suscribirte para que no te pierdes ningún episodio:* Blog / Newsletter: www.cuentoscorporativos.substack.com* Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Cuentoscorporativos* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cuentos_corporativos/* X (Twitter): https://x.com/CuentosCorpEmail: adolfo@cuentoscorporativos.com#Emprendimiento #StartupsMexicanas #UnicorniosMexicanos #HistoriasDeÉxito #CuentosCorporativos #CulturaEmprendedora #MéxicoEmprende #InnovaciónLatina #CreandoUnicornios #EcosistemaStartup #InspiraciónEmpresarial #PodcastDeNegocios #Liderazgo #SuperaciónDeFracasos #HistoriasQueInspiran #CrecimientoEmpresarial #LeccionesDeNegocios #LatamStartups #LibrosDeEmprendimiento This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cuentoscorporativos.substack.com
Skippy and Doogles sit down with the one and only Aileen Lee. Aileen is the founder of the venture firm Cowboy Ventures, and created the term "unicorn" for companies worth at least $1 billion and less than 10 years old. Awesome convo.Join the Skippy and Doogles fan club. You can also get more details about the show at skippydoogles.com, show notes on our Substack, and send comments or questions to skippydoogles@gmail.com.
Watch Carol and Tim LIVE every day on YouTube: http://bit.ly/3vTiACF. Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder of LinkedIn and Partner at Greylock, discusses going all-in on AI. Bloomberg Businessweek Editor Brad Stone shares the sights and sounds of the Bloomberg Tech Summit. Aileen Lee, Founder & Managing Partner at Cowboy Ventures, talks about the pulse of venture capital investing. Monique Woodward, Founding Partner at Cake Ventures, looks at work shifting in the age of AI. Anthony Aguirre, Executive Director of the Future of Life Institute, addresses the AI risks that businesses are facing. Hosts: Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec. Producer: Paul Brennan. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This week, Adrian and Tyler discuss some crazy rumors - is it really possible that a cloud security startup valued at over $8 billion in November 2021 just got bought for $200 million??? Some healthy funding for Cyera and Cohesity ($300m and $150m, respectively) Onum, Alethea, Sprinto, Andesite AI, StrikeReady, YL-Backed Miggo, Nymiz, Salvador Technologies, and Simbian all raise smaller seed, A, or B rounds. Akamai picks up API security startup, Noname Security, Zscaler picks up Airgap networks, and it's rumored that Armis will acquire Silk Security for $150M. LimaCharlie seems to be doing some vertical growth, adding its own response and automation capabilities (what they call "bi-directional" capabilities). CISA releases a malware analysis system to the general public. Boostsecurity.io releases "poutine", an open source CI/CD pipeline vulnerability scanner. Some great essays this week, with Phil Venables' Letter from the Future, Ben Hawkes' Robots Dream of Root Shells, and Aileen Lee's 10 year Unicorn anniversary piece. We briefly discuss the 3rd party breach that affected Cisco Duo customers, and the financial impact of Change Healthcare's highly disruptive ransomware incident. Finally, we talk about the latest research on the security of LLMs and the apps using them. It's not looking great. For more details, check out the show notes here: https://www.scmagazine.com/podcast-episode/3188-enterprise-security-weekly-358 Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-358
This week, Adrian and Tyler discuss some crazy rumors - is it really possible that a cloud security startup valued at over $8 billion in November 2021 just got bought for $200 million??? Some healthy funding for Cyera and Cohesity ($300m and $150m, respectively) Onum, Alethea, Sprinto, Andesite AI, StrikeReady, YL-Backed Miggo, Nymiz, Salvador Technologies, and Simbian all raise smaller seed, A, or B rounds. Akamai picks up API security startup, Noname Security, Zscaler picks up Airgap networks, and it's rumored that Armis will acquire Silk Security for $150M. LimaCharlie seems to be doing some vertical growth, adding its own response and automation capabilities (what they call "bi-directional" capabilities). CISA releases a malware analysis system to the general public. Boostsecurity.io releases "poutine", an open source CI/CD pipeline vulnerability scanner. Some great essays this week, with Phil Venables' Letter from the Future, Ben Hawkes' Robots Dream of Root Shells, and Aileen Lee's 10 year Unicorn anniversary piece. We briefly discuss the 3rd party breach that affected Cisco Duo customers, and the financial impact of Change Healthcare's highly disruptive ransomware incident. Finally, we talk about the latest research on the security of LLMs and the apps using them. It's not looking great. For more details, check out the show notes here: https://www.scmagazine.com/podcast-episode/3188-enterprise-security-weekly-358 Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-358
Protecting a normal enterprise environment is already difficult. What must it be like protecting a sports team? From the stadium to merch sales to protecting team strategies and even the players - securing an professional sports team and its brand is a cybersecurity challenge on a whole different level. In this interview, we'll talk to Joe McMann about how Binary Defense helps to protect the Cleveland Browns and other professional sports teams. This week, Adrian and Tyler discuss some crazy rumors - is it really possible that a cloud security startup valued at over $8 billion in November 2021 just got bought for $200 million??? Some healthy funding for Cyera and Cohesity ($300m and $150m, respectively) Onum, Alethea, Sprinto, Andesite AI, StrikeReady, YL-Backed Miggo, Nymiz, Salvador Technologies, and Simbian all raise smaller seed, A, or B rounds. Akamai picks up API security startup, Noname Security, Zscaler picks up Airgap networks, and it's rumored that Armis will acquire Silk Security for $150M. LimaCharlie seems to be doing some vertical growth, adding its own response and automation capabilities (what they call "bi-directional" capabilities). CISA releases a malware analysis system to the general public. Boostsecurity.io releases "poutine", an open source CI/CD pipeline vulnerability scanner. Some great essays this week, with Phil Venables' Letter from the Future, Ben Hawkes' Robots Dream of Root Shells, and Aileen Lee's 10 year Unicorn anniversary piece. We briefly discuss the 3rd party breach that affected Cisco Duo customers, and the financial impact of Change Healthcare's highly disruptive ransomware incident. Finally, we talk about the latest research on the security of LLMs and the apps using them. It's not looking great. For more details, check out the show notes here: https://www.scmagazine.com/podcast-episode/3188-enterprise-security-weekly-358 Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-358
Protecting a normal enterprise environment is already difficult. What must it be like protecting a sports team? From the stadium to merch sales to protecting team strategies and even the players - securing an professional sports team and its brand is a cybersecurity challenge on a whole different level. In this interview, we'll talk to Joe McMann about how Binary Defense helps to protect the Cleveland Browns and other professional sports teams. This week, Adrian and Tyler discuss some crazy rumors - is it really possible that a cloud security startup valued at over $8 billion in November 2021 just got bought for $200 million??? Some healthy funding for Cyera and Cohesity ($300m and $150m, respectively) Onum, Alethea, Sprinto, Andesite AI, StrikeReady, YL-Backed Miggo, Nymiz, Salvador Technologies, and Simbian all raise smaller seed, A, or B rounds. Akamai picks up API security startup, Noname Security, Zscaler picks up Airgap networks, and it's rumored that Armis will acquire Silk Security for $150M. LimaCharlie seems to be doing some vertical growth, adding its own response and automation capabilities (what they call "bi-directional" capabilities). CISA releases a malware analysis system to the general public. Boostsecurity.io releases "poutine", an open source CI/CD pipeline vulnerability scanner. Some great essays this week, with Phil Venables' Letter from the Future, Ben Hawkes' Robots Dream of Root Shells, and Aileen Lee's 10 year Unicorn anniversary piece. We briefly discuss the 3rd party breach that affected Cisco Duo customers, and the financial impact of Change Healthcare's highly disruptive ransomware incident. Finally, we talk about the latest research on the security of LLMs and the apps using them. It's not looking great. For more details, check out the show notes here: https://www.scmagazine.com/podcast-episode/3188-enterprise-security-weekly-358 Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-358
As startups e os unicórnios, (empresas que atingem uma valorização de mil milhões de dólares) estão a ter dificuldades em financiarem-se. Segundo o estudo “Portuguese Startup Scene Report 2023”, nas startups portuguesas o investimento feito em rondas com divulgação pública caiu 76% em 2023, para os 205 milhões de euros. Comparando com os dados de 2021, o melhor ano de sempre em termos de capital angariado, a descida foi de 86%. Em 2023, não foi anunciada nenhuma ronda acima dos 100 milhões de eurosSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This week, Tyler and Adrian discuss Cyera's $300M Series C, which lands them a $1.4B valuation! But is that still a unicorn? Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures, who coined the term back in 2013, recently wrote a piece celebrating the 10th anniversary of the term, and revisiting what it means. We HIGHLY recommend checking it out: https://www.cowboy.vc/news/welcome-back-to-the-unicorn-club-10-years-later They discuss a few other companies that have raised funding or just come out of stealth, including Scrut Automation, Allure Security, TrojAI, Knostic, Prompt Armor. They discuss Eclipsium's binary analysis tooling, and what the future of fully automated security analysis could look like. Wiz acquired Gem, and Veracode acquired Longbow. Adrian LOVES Longbow's website, BTW. They discuss a number of essays, some of which are a must read: Daniel Miessler's Efficient Security Principle Subsalt's series on data privacy challenges Lucky vs Repeatable, a must-read from Morgan Housel AI has Flown the Coop, the latest from our absent co-host, Katie Teitler-Santullo Customer love by Ross Haleliuk and Rami McCarthy We briefly cover some other fun - reverse typosquatting, AI models with built-in RCE, and Microsoft having YET ANOTHER breach. We wrap up discussing Air Canada's short-lived AI-powered support chatbot. Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-357
This week, Tyler and Adrian discuss Cyera's $300M Series C, which lands them a $1.4B valuation! But is that still a unicorn? Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures, who coined the term back in 2013, recently wrote a piece celebrating the 10th anniversary of the term, and revisiting what it means. We HIGHLY recommend checking it out: https://www.cowboy.vc/news/welcome-back-to-the-unicorn-club-10-years-later They discuss a few other companies that have raised funding or just come out of stealth, including Scrut Automation, Allure Security, TrojAI, Knostic, Prompt Armor. They discuss Eclipsium's binary analysis tooling, and what the future of fully automated security analysis could look like. Wiz acquired Gem, and Veracode acquired Longbow. Adrian LOVES Longbow's website, BTW. They discuss a number of essays, some of which are a must read: Daniel Miessler's Efficient Security Principle Subsalt's series on data privacy challenges Lucky vs Repeatable, a must-read from Morgan Housel AI has Flown the Coop, the latest from our absent co-host, Katie Teitler-Santullo Customer love by Ross Haleliuk and Rami McCarthy We briefly cover some other fun - reverse typosquatting, AI models with built-in RCE, and Microsoft having YET ANOTHER breach. We wrap up discussing Air Canada's short-lived AI-powered support chatbot. Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-357
In the days when Mirai emerged and took down DynDNS, along with what seemed like half the Internet, DDoS was as active a topic in the headlines as it was behind the scenes (check out Andy Greenberg's amazing story on Mirai on Wired). We don't hear about DDoS attacks as much anymore. What happened? Well, they didn't go away. DDoS attacks are a more common and varied tool of cybercriminals than ever. Today, Michael Smith is going to catch us up on the state of DDoS attacks in 2024, and we'll focus particularly on one cybercrime actor, KillNet. Segment Resources: Understanding DDoS Attacks: What is a DDoS Attack and How Does it Work? - I know the title makes this blog post sound rather basic, but it will get you up to speed on all the latest DDoS types, actors, and terminology pretty quickly! What is An Application-Layer DDoS Attack, and How Do I Defend Against Them? 2023 DDoS Statistics and Trends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killnet This week, Tyler and Adrian discuss Cyera's $300M Series C, which lands them a $1.4B valuation! But is that still a unicorn? Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures, who coined the term back in 2013, recently wrote a piece celebrating the 10th anniversary of the term, and revisiting what it means. We HIGHLY recommend checking it out: https://www.cowboy.vc/news/welcome-back-to-the-unicorn-club-10-years-later They discuss a few other companies that have raised funding or just come out of stealth, including Scrut Automation, Allure Security, TrojAI, Knostic, Prompt Armor. They discuss Eclipsium's binary analysis tooling, and what the future of fully automated security analysis could look like. Wiz acquired Gem, and Veracode acquired Longbow. Adrian LOVES Longbow's website, BTW. They discuss a number of essays, some of which are a must read: Daniel Miessler's Efficient Security Principle Subsalt's series on data privacy challenges Lucky vs Repeatable, a must-read from Morgan Housel AI has Flown the Coop, the latest from our absent co-host, Katie Teitler-Santullo Customer love by Ross Haleliuk and Rami McCarthy We briefly cover some other fun - reverse typosquatting, AI models with built-in RCE, and Microsoft having YET ANOTHER breach. We wrap up discussing Air Canada's short-lived AI-powered support chatbot. Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-357
In the days when Mirai emerged and took down DynDNS, along with what seemed like half the Internet, DDoS was as active a topic in the headlines as it was behind the scenes (check out Andy Greenberg's amazing story on Mirai on Wired). We don't hear about DDoS attacks as much anymore. What happened? Well, they didn't go away. DDoS attacks are a more common and varied tool of cybercriminals than ever. Today, Michael Smith is going to catch us up on the state of DDoS attacks in 2024, and we'll focus particularly on one cybercrime actor, KillNet. Segment Resources: Understanding DDoS Attacks: What is a DDoS Attack and How Does it Work? - I know the title makes this blog post sound rather basic, but it will get you up to speed on all the latest DDoS types, actors, and terminology pretty quickly! What is An Application-Layer DDoS Attack, and How Do I Defend Against Them? 2023 DDoS Statistics and Trends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killnet This week, Tyler and Adrian discuss Cyera's $300M Series C, which lands them a $1.4B valuation! But is that still a unicorn? Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures, who coined the term back in 2013, recently wrote a piece celebrating the 10th anniversary of the term, and revisiting what it means. We HIGHLY recommend checking it out: https://www.cowboy.vc/news/welcome-back-to-the-unicorn-club-10-years-later They discuss a few other companies that have raised funding or just come out of stealth, including Scrut Automation, Allure Security, TrojAI, Knostic, Prompt Armor. They discuss Eclipsium's binary analysis tooling, and what the future of fully automated security analysis could look like. Wiz acquired Gem, and Veracode acquired Longbow. Adrian LOVES Longbow's website, BTW. They discuss a number of essays, some of which are a must read: Daniel Miessler's Efficient Security Principle Subsalt's series on data privacy challenges Lucky vs Repeatable, a must-read from Morgan Housel AI has Flown the Coop, the latest from our absent co-host, Katie Teitler-Santullo Customer love by Ross Haleliuk and Rami McCarthy We briefly cover some other fun - reverse typosquatting, AI models with built-in RCE, and Microsoft having YET ANOTHER breach. We wrap up discussing Air Canada's short-lived AI-powered support chatbot. Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-357
Aileen Lee, Founder and Managing Partner at Cowboy Ventures recently wrote an article entitled "Welcome Back to the Unicorn Club, 10 Years Later" (1/18/24) which was a follow up to an article she wrote in November, 2013 entitled "Welcome to the Unicorn Club: Learning from Billion-Dollar Startups".Our SaaS Talk™ with the Metrics Brothers co-hosts, Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike do a deep dive into how private and public company valuations are calculate, explore the difference between Market Capitalization and Enterprise Value, and uncover a few of the "inside baseball" secrets to how $1B Unicorn may be worth much less.Topics discussed include:Market CapitalizationEnterprise ValueParticipating vs Non-Participating Preferences1x, 2x and 3x Liquidation PreferenceCommon vs Preferred Stock in a Private CompanyStock Option Re-pricing - beware the last post money Unicorn valuationOnceacorn, Decacorn, Supercorn, ZIRPicorns, Papercorn, Zombiecorn, UnicorpseThe number of unicorns has grown from 39 in 2013 to 532 in 2023 per Cowboy Ventures (1,000 according to Battery Ventures). Unfortunately ~ 40% are trading for a much lower price on secondary markets than the last post-money valuations.If you love the idea of creating or being part of a VC backed company worth more than $1B, or are just interested in the material reduction in the creation of new unicorns, this episode is full of detail, insights and a little humor!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Hats Off To This Week's Contributors: @RyanMorrisonJer, @geneteare, @mgsiegler, @spyglass_feed, @saulausterlitz, @ClareMalone, @benedictevans, @mikeloukides, @ErikNaso, @kateclarktweets, @finkd, @mattbirchler, @imillhiser, @jaygoldberg, @ron_miller, @btaylor, @sierraplatform, @eladgilContents* Editorial: * Essays of the Week* AI Leads New Unicorn Creation As Ranks Of $1B Startups Swells * Behold: The Sports Streaming Bundle* 40 Years Ago, This Ad Changed the Super Bowl Forever* Is the Media Prepared for an Extinction-Level Event?* Video of the Week* AI and Everything Else - Benedict Evans from Slush* AI of the Week* The OpenAI Endgame* OpenAI Sora– The most realistic AI-generated video to date* I Was Wrong. We Haven't Reached Peak AI Frenzy.* News Of the Week* I tried Vision Pro. Here's my take* The Quest 3 is better than you might expect* The Supreme Court will decide if the government can seize control of YouTube and Twitter* Arm Results Set The World On Fire* Startup of the Week* Bret Taylor's new AI company aims to help customers get answers and complete tasks automatically* X of the Week* Elad Gil on AIEditorial: And The Oscar Goes to SoraOpenAI teased its new video creation model - Sora - this week.In doing so it released a technical report and several examples of prompts and outputs.Cautious to not over-state the end game the company said:We explore large-scale training of generative models on video data. Specifically, we train text-conditional diffusion models jointly on videos and images of variable durations, resolutions and aspect ratios. We leverage a transformer architecture that operates on spacetime patches of video and image latent codes. Our largest model, Sora, is capable of generating a minute of high fidelity video. Our results suggest that scaling video generation models is a promising path towards building general purpose simulators of the physical world.All of the videos are incredible, albeit only a minute or less each. My favorite is the Dogs in Snow video:Although the ‘Closeup Man in Glasses' is also wonderful.I mention this because the speed at which AI is addressing new fields is - in my opinion - mind-boggling. Skills that take humans decades to perfect are being learned in months and are capable of scaling to infinite outputs using words, code, images, video, and sound.It will take the advancement of robotics to tie these capabilities to physical work, but that seems assured to happen.When engineering, farming, transport, or production meets AI then human needs can be addressed directly.Sora winning an Oscar for Cinematography or in producing from a script or a book seems far-fetched. But it wasn't so long ago that a tech company doing so would have been laughable, and now we have Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Apple TV Plus regularly being nominated or winning awards.Production will increasingly be able to leverage AI.Some will say this is undermining human skills, but I think the opposite. It will release human skills. Take the prompt that produced the Dogs in Snow video:Prompt:A litter of golden retriever puppies playing in the snow. Their heads pop out of the snow, covered in.I can imagine that idea and write it down. But my skills would not allow me to produce it. Sora opens my imagination and enables me to act on it. I guess that many humans have creative ideas that they are unable to execute….up to now. Sora, DallE, and ChatGPT all focus on releasing human potential.Google released its Gemini 1.5 model this week (less than a month after releasing Gemini Ultra 1.0). Tom's Guide has a summary and analysis by Ryan MorrisonGemini Pro 1.5 has a staggering 10 million token context length. That is the amount of content it can store in its memory for a single chat or response. This is enough for hours of video or multiple books within a single conversation, and Google says it can find any piece of information within that window with a high level of accuracy.Jeff Dean, Google DeepMind Chief Scientist wrote on X that the model also comes with advanced multimodal capabilities across code, text, image, audio and video.He wrote that this means you can “interact in sophisticated ways with entire books, very long document collections, codebases of hundreds of thousands of lines across hundreds of files, full movies, entire podcast series, and more."In “needle-in-a-haystack” testing where they look for the needle in the vast amount of data stored in the context window, they were able to find specific pieces of information with 99.7% accuracy even with 10 million tokens of data.All of this makes it easy to understand why Kate Clark at The Information penned a piece with the title: I Was Wrong. We Haven't Reached Peak AI FrenzyI will leave this week's editorial with Ryan Morrison's observation at the end of his article:What we are seeing with these advanced multimodal models is the interaction of the digital and the real, where AI is gaining a deeper understanding of humanity and how WE see the world.Essays of the WeekAI Leads New Unicorn Creation As Ranks Of $1B Startups Swells February 13, 2024Gené Teare @geneteareFewer startups became unicorns in 2023, but The Crunchbase Unicorn Board also became more crowded, as exits became even scarcer.That means that 10 years after the term “unicorn” was coined to denote those private startups valued at $1 billion or more, there are over 1,500 current unicorn companies globally, collectively valued at more than $5 trillion based on their most recent valuations from funding deals.All told, fewer than 100 companies joined the Unicorn Board in 2023, the lowest count in more than five years, an analysis of Crunchbase data shows.Of the 95 companies that joined the board in 2023, AI was the leading sector, adding 20 new unicorns alone. Other leading unicorn sectors in 2023 included fintech (with 14 companies), cleantech and energy (12 each), and semiconductors (nine).Based on an analysis of Crunchbase data, 41 companies joined the Unicorn Board from the U.S. and 24 from China in 2023. Other countries were in the single digits for new unicorns: Germany had four new companies, while India and the U.K. each had three.New records nonethelessDespite the slower pace of new unicorns, the Crunchbase board of current private unicorns has reached new milestones as fewer companies exited the board in 2023.The total number of global unicorns on our board reached 1,500 at the start of 2024, which takes into account the exclusion of those that have exited via an M&A or IPO transaction. Altogether, these private unicorn companies have raised north of $900 billion from investors.This year also marks a decade since investor Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures coined the term unicorn for private companies valued at a billion dollars or more.In a new report looking at the unicorn landscape 10 years later, Lee said she believes the unicorn phenomenon is not going away, despite a sharp downturn in venture funding in recent years. She expects more than 1,000 new companies in the U.S. alone will join the ranks in the next decade.Unicorn exitsIn 2023, 10 unicorn companies exited the board via an IPO, far fewer than in recent years. That contrasts with 20 companies in 2022 and 113 in 2021.However, M&A was more active in 2023. Sixteen unicorn companies were acquired in 2023 — up from 2022 when 11 companies were acquired and slightly down from 2021 with 21 companies exiting via an acquisition.December numbersEight new companies joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in December 2023. The highest monthly count last year for new unicorns was 10 and the lowest was two.Of the new unicorns, three are artificial intelligence companies. Other sectors that minted unicorns in December include fintech, cybersecurity, food and beverage, and health care.The new unicorn companies minted in December 2023 were:..MoreBehold: The Sports Streaming BundleIt just makes sense. Sports was the last thing holding together the cable TV bundle. Now it will be the start of the streaming bundle.That's my 5-minute reaction to the truly huge news that Disney, Warner, and Fox are launching a new sports streaming service, combining their various sports rights into one package. Well, presumably. The details are still quite thin at this point. Clearly, several entities were racing to this story, with both WSJ and Bloomberg claiming "scoops" by publishing paragraph-long stories with only the high level facts. I'm linking to Varietyabove, which at least has a few more details, including (canned) quotes from Bob Iger, Lachlan Murdoch, and David Zaslav.Fox Corp., Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney are set to launch a new streaming joint venture that will make all of their sports programming available under a single broadband roof, a move that will put content from ESPN, TNT and Fox Sports on a new standalone app and, in the process, likely shake up the world of TV sports.The three media giants are slated to launch the new service in the fall. Subscribers would get access to linear sports networks including ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SECN, ACCN, ESPNEWS, ABC, Fox, FS1, FS2, BTN, TNT, TBS, truTV and ESPN+, as well as hundreds of hours from the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL and many top college divisions. Pricing will be announced at a later date.Each company would own one third of the new outlet and license their sports content to it on a non-exclusive basis. The service would have a new brand and an independent management teamYes, this is essentially running the Hulu playbook of old, but only for sports content. No, that ultimately didn't end well, but Hulu had a decent enough run before egos got involved.1 Here, the egos are once again being (at least temporarily) set aside to do something obvious: make money. Sports is the one bit of content that most people watch in one form or another, live no less (hence why it was keeping the cable bundle together). And increasingly, with the rise of streaming, it was becoming impossible to figure out what game was on, where. You could get access to most games online now, but it might require buying four or five different services. And again, then finding which one the game you wanted was actually on...More40 Years Ago, This Ad Changed the Super Bowl ForeverAn oral history of Apple's groundbreaking “1984” spot, which helped to establish the Super Bowl as TV's biggest commercial showcase.By Saul AusterlitzPublished Feb. 9, 2024Updated Feb. 10, 2024Four decades ago, the Super Bowl became the Super Bowl.It wasn't because of anything that happened in the game itself: On Jan. 22, 1984, the Los Angeles Raiders defeated Washington 38-9 in Super Bowl XVIII, a contest that was mostly over before halftime. But during the broadcast on CBS, a 60-second commercial loosely inspired by a famous George Orwell novel shook up the advertising and the technology sectors without ever showing the product it promoted. Conceived by the Chiat/Day ad agency and directed by Ridley Scott, then fresh off making the seminal science-fiction noir “Blade Runner,” the Apple commercial “1984,” which was intended to introduce the new Macintosh computer, would become one of the most acclaimed commercials ever made. It also helped to kick off — pun partially intended — the Super Bowl tradition of the big game serving as an annual showcase for gilt-edged ads from Fortune 500 companies. It all began with the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs's desire to take the battle with the company's rivals to a splashy television broadcast he knew nothing about.In recent interviews, several of the people involved in creating the “1984” spot — Scott; John Sculley, then chief executive of Apple; Steve Hayden, a writer of the ad for Chiat/Day; Fred Goldberg, the Apple account manager for Chiat/Day; and Anya Rajah, the actor who famously threw the sledgehammer — looked back on how the commercial came together, its inspiration and the internal objections that almost kept it from airing. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.JOHN SCULLEY On Oct. 19, 1983, we're all sitting around in Steve [Jobs's] building, the Mac building, and the cover of Businessweek says, “The Winner is … IBM.” We were pretty deflated because this was the introduction of the IBM PCjr, and we hadn't even introduced the Macintosh yet.STEVE HAYDEN Jobs said, “I want something that will stop the world in its tracks.” Our media director, Hank Antosz, said, “Well, there's only one place that can do that — the Super Bowl.” And Steve Jobs said, “What's the Super Bowl?” [Antosz] said, “Well, it's a huge football game that attracts one of the largest audiences of the year.” And [Jobs] said, “I've never seen a Super Bowl. I don't think I know anybody who's seen a Super Bowl.”FRED GOLDBERG The original idea was actually done in 1982. We presented an ad [with] a headline, which was “Why 1984 Won't Be Like ‘1984,'” to Steve Jobs, and he didn't think the Apple III was worthy of that claim...MoreIs the Media Prepared for an Extinction-Level Event?Ads are scarce, search and social traffic is dying, and readers are burned out. The future will require fundamentally rethinking the press's relationship to its audience.Clare MaloneFebruary 10, 2024My first job in media was as an assistant at The American Prospect, a small political magazine in Washington, D.C., that offered a promising foothold in journalism. I helped with the print order, mailed checks to writers—after receiving lots of e-mails asking, politely, Where is my money?—and ran the intern program. This last responsibility allowed me a small joy: every couple of weeks, a respected journalist would come into the office for a brown-bag lunch in our conference room, giving our most recent group of twentysomethings a chance to ask for practical advice about “making it.” One man told us to embrace a kind of youthful workaholism, before we became encumbered by kids and families. An investigative reporter implored us to file our taxes and to keep our personal lives in order—never give the rich and powerful a way to undercut your journalism. But perhaps the most memorable piece of advice was from a late-career writer who didn't mince words. You want to make it in journalism, he said? Marry rich. We laughed. He didn't.I've thought a lot about that advice in the past year. A report that tracked layoffs in the industry in 2023 recorded twenty-six hundred and eighty-one in broadcast, print, and digital news media. NBC News, Vox Media, Vice News, Business Insider, Spotify, theSkimm, FiveThirtyEight, The Athletic, and Condé Nast—the publisher of The New Yorker—all made significant layoffs. BuzzFeed News closed, as did Gawker. The Washington Post, which lost about a hundred million dollars last year, offered buyouts to two hundred and forty employees. In just the first month of 2024, Condé Nast laid off a significant number of Pitchfork's staff and folded the outlet into GQ; the Los Angeles Times laid off at least a hundred and fifteen workers (their union called it “the big one”); Time cut fifteen per cent of its union-represented editorial staff; the Wall Street Journal slashed positions at its D.C. bureau; and Sports Illustrated, which had been weathering a scandal for publishing A.I.-generated stories, laid off much of its staff as well. One journalist recently cancelled a networking phone call with me, writing, “I've decided to officially take my career in a different direction.” There wasn't much I could say to counter that conclusion; it was perfectly logical.“Publishers, brace yourselves—it's going to be a wild ride,” Matthew Goldstein, a media consultant, wrote in a January newsletter. “I see a potential extinction-level event in the future.” Some of the forces cited by Goldstein were already well known: consumers are burned out by the news, and social-media sites have moved away from promoting news articles. But Goldstein also pointed to Google's rollout of A.I.-integrated search, which answers user queries within the Google interface, rather than referring them to outside Web sites, as a major factor in this coming extinction. According to a recent Wall Street Journalanalysis, Google generates close to forty per cent of traffic across digital media. Brands with strong home-page traffic will likely be less affected, Goldstein wrote—places like Yahoo, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Daily Mail, CNN, the Washington Post, and Fox News. But Web sites that aren't as frequently typed into browsers need to “contemplate drastic measures, possibly halving their brand portfolios.”What will emerge in the wake of mass extinction, Brian Morrissey, another media analyst, recently wrote in his newsletter, “The Rebooting,” is “a different industry, leaner and diminished, often serving as a front operation to other businesses,” such as events, e-commerce, and sponsored content. In fact, he told me, what we are witnessing is nothing less than the end of the mass-media era. “This is a delayed reaction to the commercial Internet itself,” he said. “I don't know if anything could have been done differently.”..Much MoreVideo of the WeekAI and Everything Else - Benedict Evans from SlushAI of the WeekThe OpenAI EndgameThoughts about the outcome of the NYT versus OpenAI copyright lawsuitBy Mike LoukidesFebruary 13, 2024Since the New York Times sued OpenAI for infringing its copyrights by using Times content for training, everyone involved with AI has been wondering about the consequences. How will this lawsuit play out? And, more importantly, how will the outcome affect the way we train and use large language models?There are two components to this suit. First, it was possible to get ChatGPT to reproduce some Times articles very close to verbatim. That's fairly clearly copyright infringement, though there are still important questions that could influence the outcome of the case. Reproducing the New York Times clearly isn't the intent of ChatGPT, and OpenAI appears to have modified ChatGPT's guardrails to make generating infringing content more difficult, though probably not impossible. Is this enough to limit any damages? It's not clear that anybody has used ChatGPT to avoid paying for a NYT subscription. Second, the examples in a case like this are always cherry-picked. While the Times can clearly show that OpenAI can reproduce some articles, can it reproduce any article from the Times' archive? Could I get ChatGPT to produce an article from page 37 of the September 18, 1947 issue? Or, for that matter, an article from the Chicago Tribune or the Boston Globe? Is the entire corpus available (I doubt it), or just certain random articles? I don't know, and given that OpenAI has modified GPT to reduce the possibility of infringement, it's almost certainly too late to do that experiment. The courts will have to decide whether inadvertent, inconsequential, or unpredictable reproduction meets the legal definition of copyright infringement.The more important claim is that training a model on copyrighted content is infringement, whether or not the model is capable of reproducing that training data in its output. An inept and clumsy version of this claim was made by Sarah Silverman and others in a suit that was dismissed. The Authors' Guild has its own version of this lawsuit, and it is working on a licensing model that would allow its members to opt in to a single licensing agreement. The outcome of this case could have many side-effects, since it essentially would allow publishers to charge not just for the texts they produce, but for how those texts are used.It is difficult to predict what the outcome will be, though easy enough guess. Here's mine. OpenAI will settle with the New York Times out of court, and we won't get a ruling. This settlement will have important consequences: it will set a de-facto price on training data. And that price will no doubt be high. Perhaps not as high as the Times would like (there are rumors that OpenAI has offered something in the range of $1 million to $5 million), but sufficiently high enough to deter OpenAI's competitors.$1M is not, in and of itself, a terribly high price, and the Times reportedly thinks that it's way too low; but realize that OpenAI will have to pay a similar amount to almost every major newspaper publisher worldwide in addition to organizations like the Authors Guild, technical journal publishers, magazine publishers, and many other content owners. The total bill is likely to be close to $1 billion, if not more, and as models need to be updated, at least some of it will be a recurring cost. I suspect that OpenAI would have difficulty going higher, even given Microsoft's investments—and, whatever else you may think of this strategy—OpenAI has to think about the total cost. I doubt that they are close to profitable; they appear to be running on an Uber-like business plan, in which they spend heavily to buy the market without regard for running a sustainable business. But even with that business model, billion-dollar expenses have to raise the eyebrows of partners like Microsoft.The Times, on the other hand, appears to be making a common mistake: overvaluing its data. Yes, it has a large archive—but what is the value of old news? Furthermore, in almost any application but especially in AI, the value of data isn't the data itself; it's the correlations between different datasets. The Times doesn't own those correlations any more than I own the correlations between my browsing data and Tim O'Reilly's. But those correlations are precisely what's valuable to OpenAI and others building data-driven products...MoreOpenAI Sora– The most realistic AI-generated video to dateERIK NASOOpenAI Sora is an AI text-to-video model that has achieved incredibly realistic video that is hard to tell it is AI. It's very life-like but not real. I think we have just hit the beginning of some truly powerful AI-generated video that could change the game for stock footage and more. Below are two examples of the most realistic AI prompt-generated videos I have seen.Prompt: A stylish woman walks down a Tokyo street filled with warm glowing neon and animated city signage. She wears a black leather jacket, a long red dress, and black boots, and carries a black purse. She wears sunglasses and red lipstick. She walks confidently and casually. The street is damp and reflective, creating a mirror effect of the colorful lights. Many pedestrians walk about.Prompt: Drone view of waves crashing against the rugged cliffs along Big Sur's garay point beach. The crashing blue waters create white-tipped waves, while the golden light of the setting sun illuminates the rocky shore. A small island with a lighthouse sits in the distance, and green shrubbery covers the cliff's edge. The steep drop from the road down to the beach is a dramatic feat, with the cliff's edges jutting out over the sea. This is a view that captures the raw beauty of the coast and the rugged landscape of the Pacific Coast Highway.Prompt: Animated scene features a close-up of a short fluffy monster kneeling beside a melting red candle. The art style is 3D and realistic, with a focus on lighting and texture. The mood of the painting is one of wonder and curiosity, as the monster gazes at the flame with wide eyes and open mouth. Its pose and expression convey a sense of innocence and playfulness, as if it is exploring the world around it for the first time. The use of warm colors and dramatic lighting further enhances the cozy atmosphere of the image.Sora can generate videos up to a minute long while maintaining visual quality and adherence to the user's prompt. OpenAI SOra states they are teaching AI to understand and simulate the physical world in motion, with the goal of training models that help people solve problems that require real-world interaction...MoreI Was Wrong. We Haven't Reached Peak AI Frenzy.By Kate ClarkFeb 15, 2024, 4:16pm PSTAfter Sam Altman's sudden firing last year, I argued the chaos that followed his short-lived ouster would inject a healthy dose of caution into venture investments in artificial intelligence companies. I figured we'd finally reached the peak of the AI venture capital frenzy when a threatened employee exodus from OpenAI risked sending the value of the $86 billion AI juggernaut almost to zero. There was plenty of other proof that the hype for generative AI was fading. Investors were openly saying they planned to be a lot tougher on valuation negotiations and would ask startups harder questions about governance. Some companies had begun to consider selling themselves due to the high costs of developing AI software. And an early darling of the AI boom, AI-powered writing tool Jasper, had become the butt of jokes when it slashed internal revenue projections and cut its internal valuation after having won a $1.5 billion valuation in 2022. I forgot that everyone in Silicon Valley suffers from short-term memory loss. After a week sipping boxed water with venture capitalists from South Park to Sand Hill Road, I'm convinced I called the end of the AI frenzy far too soon. In fact, I expect this year will deliver more cash into the hands of U.S. AI startups than last year, when those companies raised a total of $63 billion, according to PitchBook data. Altman's fundraising ambitions will surely boost the total. A recent report from The Wall Street Journal said Altman plans to raise trillions of dollars to develop the AI chips needed to create artificial general intelligence, software that can reason the way humans do. Even if that number is actually much smaller, talk of such goals lifts the ceiling for other startup founders, who are likely to think even bigger and to be more aggressive in their fundraising. Investor appetite for AI companies is still growing, too. These investors claimed last fall that they were done with the FOMO-inspired deals, but they're pushing checks on the top AI companies now harder than ever...MoreNews Of the WeekI tried Vision Pro. Here's my takeThe Quest 3 is better than you might expectPosted by Matt Birchler13 Feb 2024Alex Heath for The Verge: Zuckerberg says Quest 3 is “the better product” vs. Apple's Vision ProHe says the Quest has a better “immersive” content library than Apple, which is technically true for now, though he admits that the Vision Pro is a better entertainment device. And then there's the fact that the Quest 3 is, as Zuck says, “like seven times less expensive.”I currently own both headsets and while I'm very excited about the potential in the Vision Pro, I actually find it hard to fully disagree with Zuck on this one. I think a lot of people have only used the Vision Pro would be surprised how well the Quest 3 does some things in comparison.For example, the pass-through mode is definitely not quite as good as the Vision Pro's, but it's closer than you might expect. And while people are rightly impressed with how well the Vision Pro has windows locked in 3D space, honestly the Quest 3 is just as good at this in my experience. When it comes to comfort, I do think the Vision Pro is easier to wear for longer periods, but I find it more finicky to get in just the right spot in front of my eyes, while the Quest 3 seems to have a larger sweet spot. And let's not even talk about the field of view, which is way wider on the Quest to the point of being unnoticeable basically all the time. I kinda think field of view will be similar to phone bezels in that you get used to what you have and anything more seems huge — you can get used to the Vision Pro's narrower field of view, but once you're used to wider, it's hard to not notice when going back.The Vision Pro has some hardware features that help it rise above (the massively higher resolution screen jumps to mind), but I'm just saying that if you're looking for everything to be 7x better to match the price difference, I don't think that's there.Beyond this, the products are quite different, though. As Zuckerberg says, the Quest 3 is more focused on fully immersive VR experiences, and while the Vision Pro has a little of that right now, it's not really doing the same things. And when it comes to gaming it's not even close. The Quest 3 has a large library of games available and that expands to almost every VR game ever made with Steam Link.On the other hand, the Vision Pro is much for a “computer” than the Quest ever was. If you can do it on a Mac or an iPad, you can probably already do it on the Vision Pro. And I'm not talking about finding some weird alternate version of your task manager or web browser that doesn't sync with anything else in your life, I'm talking about the apps you already know and love. This is huge and it's Apple leveraging its ecosystem to make sure you can seamlessly move from Mac to iPhone to iPad to Vision Pro. And if you can't install something from the App Store, the web browser is just as capable as Safari on the iPad. If all else fails, you can always just bring your full Mac into your space as well. I will say the Quest 3 can do this and has the advantage of working with Windows as well, but if you have a Mac, it's much, much better.This is more words than I expected to write about a CEO saying his product is better than the competition's (shocker), but I do think that Zuck's statement is less insane than some may think it to be...MoreThe Supreme Court will decide if the government can seize control of YouTube and TwitterWe're about to find out if the Supreme Court still believes in capitalism.By Ian Millhiser Feb 15, 2024, 7:00am ESTIan Millhiser is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. He received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court.In mid-2021, about a year before he began his longstanding feud with the biggest employer in his state, Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation attempting to seize control of content moderation at major social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter (now called X by Elon Musk). A few months later, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, also a Republican, signed similar legislation in his state.Both laws are almost comically unconstitutional — the First Amendment does not permit the government to order media companies to publish content they do not wish to publish — and neither law is currently in effect. A federal appeals court halted the key provisions of Florida's law in 2022, and the Supreme Court temporarily blocked Texas's law shortly thereafter (though the justices, somewhat ominously, split 5-4 in this later case).Nevertheless, the justices have not yet weighed in on whether these two unconstitutional laws must be permanently blocked, and that question is now before the Court in a pair of cases known as Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton.The stakes in both cases are quite high, and the Supreme Court's decision is likely to reveal where each one of the Republican justices falls on the GOP's internal conflict between old-school free market capitalists and a newer generation that is eager to pick cultural fights with business...MoreArm Results Set The World On FireFebruary 13, 2024 · by D/D Advisors · in Analyst Decoder Ring. ·Arm reported its second set of earnings as a (once again) public company last week. These numbers were particularly strong, well above consensus for both the current and guided quarters. Arm stock rallied strongly on the results up ~30% for the week. These numbers were important as they go a long way to establishing the company's credibility with the Street in a way their prior results did not.That being said, we saw things we both liked and disliked in their numbers. Here are our highlights of those:Positive: Growing Value Capture. One of our chief concerns with the company since IPO has been the low value they capture per licensed chip shipped – roughly $0.11 per chip at the IPO. That figure continued to inch higher in the latest results, but critically they pointed out that their royalty rate doubles with the latest version of their IP (v9). This does not mean that all of their royalty rates are going to double any time soon, but it does point very much in the right direction. Critically, they noted this rate increase applies to architectural licenses as well.Negative: The Model is Complex. Judging from the number of questions management fielded on the call about this rate increase no one really knows how to model Arm. The company has a lot of moving parts in its revenue mix, and they have limits to their ability to communicate some very important parts of their model. We think that at some point the company would be well served by providing some clearer guide posts on how to build these models or they risk the Street always playing catch up with a wide swing of expectations each quarter.Positive: Premium Plan Conversion. The company said three companies converted from their AFA plan to the ATA model. We will not get into the details of those here, but these can best be thought of in software terms with customers on low priced subscription plans converting to Premium subscription plans. This is a good trend, and management expressed a high degree of confidence that they expect to see it continue. They have spent a few years putting these programs in place and seem to have thought them through. This matters particularly because these programs are well suited for smaller, earlier-stage companies. The old Arm struggled to attract new customers in large part because of the high upfront costs of Arm licenses. Programs like AFA and ATA could go a long way to redressing those past wrongs.Negative: China remains a black box. Arm China is of course a constant source of speculation. In the latest quarter it looks like a large portion of growth came from China which does not exactly square with other data coming from China right now. It is still unclear to us how much of Arm's revenues from China's handset companies gets booked through Arm China as a related party transaction and how much is direct. Investors are confused too. There is no easy solution to this problem, digging too hard into Arm China's numbers is unlikely to make anyone happy with the answers, but hopefully over time it all settles down.Positive: Growing Complexity of Compute. Management repeatedly mentioned this factor, noting that this leads to more chips and more Arm cores shipping in the marketplace. Some of this is tied to AI, but we think the story is broader than that. It is going to be tempting to see much of Arm's growth as riding the AI wave, but this does not fully capture the situation. The AI story is largely about GPUs, which are not particularly heavy with Arm cores. But those GPUs still need some CPU attach, and AI accelerators can sometimes be good Arm targets.Negative: Diversification. Arm remains heavily dependent on smartphones, and we suspect the return to inventory stocking by handset makers is playing a big role in their guidance. When asked about segmentation of their results the company declined to update the model provided during the IPO. We hope to see some diversification here when they do update their figures later in the year.Overall, the company did a good job in the quarter. They still have some kinks to work out with their communication to the Street, but this was a good second step as a public company...MoreStartup of the WeekBret Taylor's new AI company aims to help customers get answers and complete tasks automaticallyRon Miller @ron_miller / 6:36 AM PST•February 13, 2024Image Credits: mi-vector / Getty ImagesWe've been hearing about former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor's latest gig since he announced he was leaving the CRM giant in November 2022. Last February we heard he was launching an AI startup built with former Google employee Clay Bavor. Today, the two emerged with a new conversational AI company called Sierra with some bold claims about what it can do.At its heart, the new company is a customer service bot. That's not actually all that Earth-shattering, but the company claims that it's much more than that, with its software going beyond being an extension of a FAQ page and actually taking actions on behalf of the customer.“Sierra agents can do so much more than just answer questions. They take action using your systems, from upgrading a subscription in your customer database to managing the complexities of a furniture delivery in your order management system. Agents can reason, problem solve and make decisions,” the company claimed in a blog post.Having worked with large enterprise customers at Salesforce, Taylor certainly understands that issues like hallucinations, where a large language model sometimes makes up an answer when it lacks the information to answer accurately, is a serious problem. That's especially true for large companies, whose brand reputation is at stake. The company claims that it is solving hallucination issues.Image Credits: SierraAt the same time, it's connecting to other enterprise systems to undertake tasks on behalf of the customer without humans being involved. These are both big audacious claims and will be challenging to pull off...MoreX of the Week This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thatwastheweek.substack.com/subscribe
10 years ago Silicon Valley venture capitalist Aileen Lee coined the term "unicorn" to describe a young company valued at over $1 billion. Back in 2013, there were just 39 unicorns in the US, and Lee's team researched what they did and who ran them. This list informed much of how we thought of successful tech start-ups. The updated unicorn list has just come out and the differences are startling. There are now 523 companies on the unicorn list (a 14x increase!). Listen to this episode to learn: What most unicorn companies do today and who runs them Why there are more non-technical founders running unicorns than ever before What this change means for the tech ecosystem How to make the most of it for founders, investors and the professionals services firms who work with them Resources mentioned in this episode: Cowboy Ventures: Welcome Back to the Unicorn Club, 10 Years Later Tech for Non-Techies podcast: 142. From dentist to tech founder Take the course: Tech for Non-Technical Founders Listen here on Apple Listen here on Spotify --- We love hearing from our readers and listeners. So if you have questions about the content or working with us, just get in touch on info@techfornontechies.co Say hi to Sophia on Twitter and follow her on LinkedIn. Following us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok will make you smarter.
Venture Unlocked: The playbook for venture capital managers.
Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.This is our second episode of Venture Unlocked Shorts where we highlight a specific point of view of our guest. These points of view may come through a tweet, an article, or an offline conversation, and our goal is to unpack these interesting views in a short conversation. In this week's Venture Unlocked Shorts, we're joined by Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures. Aileen wrote a now famous article in 2013 where she coined the term Unicorn to describe technology companies that reach a billion-dollar valuation within 10 years of founding.Recently she and her team published a successor article looking at the last 10 years of these Unicorns, and what they believe will happen in the future.It was fun to unpack the articles through this discussion, and I think you'll enjoy hearing her findings and thoughts on what we may see in the future. About Aileen Lee:Aileen is the Founder and Managing Partner of Cowboy Ventures, a firm that invests in early-stage enterprise and consumer startups. With over two decades of experience in venture capital, she has a history of involvement from seed stage to beyond, including her time at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.Before her venture capital career, Aileen held roles at Gap Inc. and started at Morgan Stanley. She holds degrees from MIT and HBS. Additionally, she co-founded All Raise and sits on the board of Castilleja School.Aileen is known for introducing the term “unicorn” in the context of business. She has been recognized in Time 100's most influential people and has appeared on the Forbes Midas List.In this episode, we discuss:(02:30) Marking a decade of the term Unicorn and how many Unicorns have been created in the last ten years(05:46) The impact of macroeconomic factors like zero interest rate policies on the venture capital industry(06:37) Aileen describes the situation as a 'perfect storm' of factors leading to a surge of capital in the industry(08:18) The future of unicorns in the venture capital landscape(15:46) What happened in 2021?(17:13) The importance of founders understanding the business model of the funds they are engaging with (19:00): Aileen predicts a mix of outcomes for startups and whats aheadI'd love to know what you took away from this conversation with Aileen. Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you'd like to be considered as a guest or have someone you'd like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on Twitter.Podcast Production support provided by Agent Bee This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ventureunlocked.substack.com
(0:00) Intro.(1:36) About this podcast's sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel.(2:23) Start of interview.(3:33) On the collapse of SVB and its impact to Silicon Valley and the VC industry.(9:05) On the state of private markets. *Reference to Aileen Lee's post on Unicorn update (2013-2024).(14:35) How VCs are approaching tough conversations on shutdowns, downrounds and/or recaps in this down market cycle. *Reference to Scott's book Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It (2019).(19:10) On the evolution of secondary markets (including founders taking secondaries) and the idea of staying private for longer ("SPL").(24:15) On startup compensation practices (stock option vesting schedules, RSUs).(26:21) On a16z's expansion to NYC (~80 employees) and internationally to London. (28:52) On geopolitics challenges, including China. (31:06) On the crypto industry (Web3) and its regulatory challenges. (34:37) On AI as an investment thesis.(35:30) On some of the novel corporate governance structures used by some leading AI companies (PBCs, LTBTs, etc). On the OpenAI board crisis.(38:37) Fraud in private markets.(41:44) On ESG and DEI in the venture-backed startup market. *Reference to a16z Cultural Leadership Fund and Talent x Opportunity (TXO). How LPs think about this, both in the US and abroad.(44:45) On California as a tech hub and some of its "exodus".(46:35) Corporate governance matters for late stage companies, independent directors and "overboarding" in the VC context.Scott Kupor is an investing partner focused on growth-stage companies building in the bio and healthcare industries, manages the firm's investor relations team, and is responsible for the firm's growth initiatives. You can follow Scott on social media at:Twitter (X): @skuporLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottkupor/ You can follow Evan on social media at:Twitter: @evanepsteinLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/__You can join as a Patron of the Boardroom Governance Podcast at:Patreon: patreon.com/BoardroomGovernancePod__Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
This Week in Startups is brought to you by… Ketone-IQ is a clean energy boost without sugar or caffeine. Get 30% off your first subscription order of Ketone-IQ at http://www.hvmn.com/TWIST The Paintbrush Loan is the earliest startup financing on the internet. No pitch deck, no business plan, no minimum time in business, and no warm intros. Plus, you get to keep your equity. Visit http://www.getpaintbrush.com to see if you qualify for a $50K startup loan in less than 2 minutes. Coda is the all-in-one doc for teams. And they introduced an AI-powered assistant to take the BUSY out of the WORK! Get started for free at https://www.coda.io/twist * Today's show: Aileen Lee join Jason to talk about her origins and overcoming challenges as a woman in a male-dominated tech space (2:12), the Unicorn Club and the effects of the ZIRP era (11:51), predictions on which startups will maintain their unicorn status (33:09), and more! * Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp * LINKS: Check out Cowboy Ventures: https://www.cowboy.vc/ Read Aileen's 2024 article here: https://www.cowboy.vc/news/welcome-back-to-the-unicorn-club-10-years-later Read Aileen's original Unicorn article here: https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/02/welcome-to-the-unicorn-club/ Check out All Raise: https://www.allraise.org/ * Thanks to our partners: (10:26) Ketone-IQ - Get 30% off your first subscription order of Ketone-IQ at http://www.hvmn.com/TWIST (20:39) Paintbrush - Visit http://www.getpaintbrush.com to see if you qualify for a $50K startup loan in less than 2 minutes (31:38) Coda - Get started for free at https://www.coda.io/twist * Follow Eileen X: https://twitter.com/aileenlee LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aileenwlee * Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/jason Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis * Great 2023 interviews: Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland * Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis * Follow TWiST: Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups * Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.founder.university/podcast
A reminder for new readers. That Was The Week collects the best writing on critical issues in tech, startups, and venture capital. I selected the articles because they are of interest. The selections often include things I entirely disagree with. But they express common opinions, or they provoke me to think. The articles are only snippets. Click on the headline to go to the original. I express my point of view in the editorial and the weekly video below.Thanks To This Week's Contributors: @TEDchris, @LilyWhitsitt, @RocketToLulu, @saeedtaji, @geneteare, @EricNewcomer, @jeffbeckervc, @jasonlk, @elonmusk, @benshapiro, @StevenLevy, @apple, @bheater, @bmw, @Growcoot, @illscience, @venturetwins, @omooretweets, @conniechanContents* Editorial: Civility and Civilization* Essays of the Week* US Seed Investment Actually Held Up Pretty Well For The Past 2 Years. Here's What That Means For 2024* Lower Valuations, Higher Bar: What It's Like To Raise A Seed Round In 2024 * Unicorns & Inevitabilities* Sequoia, Founders Fund, USV, Elad Gil & Benchmark Top Venture Manager Survey* Why 2024 May Be Tougher on Venture Capital Than 2023* Video of the Week* The Mac at 40* AI of the Week* BMW will deploy Figure's humanoid robot at South Carolina plant* Google's New AI Video Generator Looks Incredible* OpenAI's Sam Altman seeks funds for AI chip factories as demands surge* The Future of Prosumer: The Rise of “AI Native” Workflows* Andreessen Horowitz's Connie Chan to Leave as Consumer Focus Shifts to AI* OpenAI Is a (Relative) Steal* News Of the Week* Ted fellows resign from organisation after Bill Ackman named as speaker* Tesla's Slowdown Disqualifies It From ‘Magnificent Seven' Group* TikTok's Testing 30 Minute Uploads as It Looks To Expand Its Content Options* Instagram to scan under-18s' messages to protect against ‘inappropriate images'* Tiger Global Investor Relations Staff Depart After Fundraising Challenges* Worldcoin hints at new Orb for a friendlier iris-scanning experience* Startup of the Week* Loyalty Startup Bilt Rewards Hits $3.1B Valuation After $200M Round* X of the Week* Elon Musk visits Auschwitz with Ben ShapiroEditorialThere is a lot to digest in this week's newsletter. Gené Teare's two essays on Seed investing head up the Essays of the Week, along with Jeff Becker talking about unicorns and inevitabilities, Eric Newcomer on who are the top investors and Jason Lemkin on the reasons 2024 might be harder for Venture Capital than 2023.But my attention was distracted from venture capital by a Guardian article announcing (triumphantly, I might add) that several TED fellows had resigned from the organization due to an invite to Bill Ackman to speak at this year's TED event in Vancouver.“Lucianne Walkowicz and Saeed Taji Farouky accuse Ted of taking anti-Palestinian stand over controversial billionaire's inclusion”It seems Ackman is not alone. They also object to Bari Weiss being invited. The leavers are also not alone; up to 30 others have signed a “solidarity” letter.The accusations echo much of the discussion around the medieval assassination of Jews on 7 October and Israel's efforts to defeat Hamas in the aftermath. Because these speakers are against anti-Semitism and so supportive of Israel's war against Hamas, they are accused of the ridiculous claim of supporting “Genocide” against Palestinians.“We refuse for our work and identities to be exploited to promote the Ted brand while the organisation and its speakers generate income and advance their careers through dehumanising Palestinians and justifying their genocide,” the pair said.It probably will not surprise readers of this newsletter that I applaud TED curators Chris Anderson and Lily James Olds for not backing down on the invitations. Whatever one believes about the current conflict in Israel, it is clear that banning opponents of anti-Semitism because of their stance is not a solution to anything. I believe the cause of fighting anti-Semitism should be close to the heart of any progressive person. It is not anti-Palestinian to support Jews against being slaughtered in the street, to oppose anti-Semitism, or to condemn Hamas as anti-Jewish murderers. Supporting Jews against slaughter by Hamas is not incompatible with supporting Palestinians. The Guardian reported that Ackman responded to the resignations with a statement:“I stand unapologetically with Israel and against antisemitism and terrorism, while strongly supporting the Palestinian people. Attempts to cancel speech and eliminate the free and respectful exchange of ideas among people with differing views are driving much of the divisiveness that plagues our nation. Truth, wisdom and ultimately peace are the result of the free exchange of ideas and debate, precisely what Ted is all about. It is sad that this is not more widely understood,”Unsurprisingly, one of the resigners, Farouky, told the Guardian he did not regard the issue as freedom of speech. It clearly IS about freedom of speech. Speech only needs protecting when opinions are wide apart and strongly held.For example, here are my views on the actual issues:These are trying times. Over 25,000 deaths in Gaza are hard to comprehend. And I certainly cannot. But I can understand that Jews have to defend themselves. And I can understand that progressive thinkers MUST stand up to anti-Semitism, whatever form it takes.In case there is doubt about my support for Muslim victims of racism, my book Under Seige is about the attacks on Muslims in the UK between 1961 and 1981. It starts with recognizing that racism targets differences and that Jews and Muslims are both targets. Indeed, the very ghettoes that Pakistani and Bengali immigrants were being attacked in had earlier, in the 1930s, been inhabited by Jewish settlers fleeing pogroms. I am not Jewish, and I am not Muslim. But I will always be on both of their sides when they are attacked for their ethnic and racial origin.In Israel, Jews were killed for being Jews. Palestinians are being killed because Hamas is hiding in their cities and buildings. I do not consider Israel's response to be racist against Palestinians. I consider it reasonable in the context of 7 October. I consider that Hamas has done this to Palestinians and probably wanted that outcome. I am sad that Hamas has done this for the Palestinian victims. But I do not doubt that Hamas is to blame.My views may anger you. But do you want me banned or silenced?My title this week is Civility and Civilization. The TED events bring both to the fore. Like those I write here, opinions are there to be disagreed with, debated, and interrogated. Civilized behavior requires dialogue and civility within the dialogue. I certainly understand opinions I disagree with, and far from banning them or walking away so that I do not have to hear them, I want to hear them. We all should.This is a different editorial than usual. I hope the humanity of refusing to forget 7 October and the determination to preserve the view that fighting anti-Semitism is a non-negotiable minimum requirement of civilization are grasped. By the same token, Islamaphobia must be fought. But in Israel, there is no Islamophobia at work. Jews are simply reacting to an atrocity. They are right to blame Hamas.Essays of the WeekUS Seed Investment Actually Held Up Pretty Well For The Past 2 Years. Here's What That Means For 2024Gené Teare, January 24, 2024, @geneteareEditor's note: This is the first in a two-part series on the state of seed startup investing at the start of 2024. Check back tomorrow for Part 2.Despite a broad pullback in global startup investment over the past two years, investors say the U.S. seed funding environment was the most vibrant compared to other funding stages during the downturn.In fact, U.S. seed funding in 2022 grew by close to 10% in terms of dollars invested, in contrast to a downturn at all other funding stages. In 2023, U.S. seed funding fell 31% — a significant proportion — but still less than other funding stages year over year, an analysis of Crunchbase data shows. (It's also worth noting that those other stages had already experienced year-over-year declines in 2022.)In the current startup funding market, “we're seeing a lot more great talent excited about starting things,” said Renata Quintini, co-founder of Renegade Partners, a Bay Area-based investment firm that focuses on Series A companies and is therefore close to the seed ecosystem.Other investors share that enthusiasm. “Valuations are coming down, more talent is available in the market,” said Michael Cardamone of New York-based seed investor Forum Ventures. “A lot of these companies at seed and Series A are going to scale into what will likely be the next bull market.”Seed trends over the decadeSeed as an asset class, not surprisingly, has grown in the U.S. over the past decade. In 2014 less than $5 billion was invested at seed. At the market peak in 2022, seed investment was more than $16 billion, although it fell to $11.5 billion in 2023.Despite the downturn, seed funding in 2023 was still $2 billion to $3 billion higher in the U.S. than in the pre-pandemic years of 2019 and 2020.Higher bar, pricier rounds, better valuedBut in a tougher market, seed investors are being more selective about which companies they fund.“We're being far more disciplined and patient knowing how hard it is for these companies to get to Series A and beyond,” said Jenny Lefcourt, a general partner at Bay Area-based seed investor Freestyle Capital. “Our bar for conviction is higher than it had been in the heyday where everything was getting funded.”In the slower funding environment, the firm has been investing later at the seed stage, “gravitating toward ‘seed plus' or ‘A minus' — pick your favorite term for it — because I feel like I get to see more risk mitigated. I get to see more data,” she said.Freestyle seeks to have ownership of around 12% to 15% in the companies it backs. “The reason is because of our model,” Lefcourt said. “We are low-volume, high-conviction investors.”And because the firm invests in companies that are pre-Series A, “our reality has been that our valuations have actually been higher in this market, which is not what we would have predicted.“But the data we've seen is, we're not alone in that,” she said.…MoreLower Valuations, Higher Bar: What It's Like To Raise A Seed Round In 2024 Gené Teare, January 25, 2024, @geneteareEditor's note: This is the second in a two-part series on the state of seed startup investing at the start of 2024. Read Part 1, which looked at seed funding trends over the past decade and the median time period between seed and Series A funding, here.Seed funding to startups has grown into its own asset class over the past decade, with round sizes trending larger, and a bigger pool of investors backing these nascent startups. But in the aftermath of 2021's venture funding heyday and subsequent pullback, investors say that while seed funding has held up better than other startup investment stages, these very young startups will see lower valuations and must now clear a much higher bar to get backing.More companies raised seed funding above $1 million in 2021. Those companies — which raised during a record-smashing year for venture funding — are saddled with valuations that could be too high for this current market — even at seed. Many of those startups have been forced to cut costs to extend their runways, and face a tougher sales environment.“You could then be sacrificing growth, which is one of the main levers that Series A investors are looking for,” said Michael Cardamone of New York-based seed investor Forum Ventures.2021 after effectsIn 2021 it was “grow, grow, grow, grow,” said Jenny Lefcourt, a general partner at Bay Area-based seed investor Freestyle Capital. “It's embarrassing to look back on, but that was the game being played.”Investors got sloppy during the boom times, she said. “I think a lot of VCs were thrilled to back you, and then say, ‘we'll figure it out.' ”“The reality is that almost anything that was done then — call it 2021 — was the wrong price,” she said.This led to down rounds, even at seed, though those are generally not viewed negatively like they were in the past, she said.In fact, “when our companies get their down rounds done, it's a sign of it's a good business. It just had the wrong price on it,” she said.While the bar is higher to raise funding these days, “I think it's so much better for a company who gets to start in this environment,” Lefcourt said.Down rounds can actually be a sign of conviction, she said. “None of us would do all the heavy lifting to not only give the company more capital, but recap it, which takes a lot. It's a heavy lift — none of us would do that if we weren't super jazzed about the company. The lazier approach, the easier approach, is to just put it on the note, keep it flat, and be done,” she said.Renata Quintini, co-founder of Renegade Partners, a Bay Area-based investment firm that focuses on Series A companies, is hearing of “more ‘pay-to-play' these days and it's starting to get ugly.” This happens when new investors wipe out the prior investors, and anyone seeking equity needs to pony up into the new funding round.Median and averages climbNonetheless, “seed round valuations haven't dropped a ton from even the peak,” according to Forum Ventures' Cardamone. But, “the bar to raise a seed [round] is a lot higher.”“Most first-time founders especially, and the vast majority of founders generally — they have to get significant traction to be able to raise that same round they used to be able to raise. And a lot fewer of those rounds are happening,” he said.“A priced seed round of $3 million at $15 million [pre-money] is still happening, but you might have to be at $500,000 ARR, to raise that round now. Whereas in 2021, it was the norm to raise that round pre-revenue,” he said.Series A fundings have gotten harder as “companies are going out and raising three seed rounds,” said Cardamone.Based on an analysis of Crunchbase data, median and average seed round sizes in the U.S. have climbed through the past decade.In 2023, median and average raises are not far from the peak of 2022, Crunchbase data shows, and were well above pre-pandemic levels. (However, this will shift downward somewhat as the long tail of seed fundings are retroactively added to the Crunchbase database.)Seed rounds got larger“If I have conviction, we may need them to have more money, cause we know it's going to take them longer to reach the milestones that are now higher,” said Lefcourt.Per an analysis of Crunchbase data, larger seed rounds — those $1 million and above — have increased through the decade.The amount of funding to seed-stage companies below $1 million hasn't budged much, and is a fraction of what it was earlier in the decade.Seed below $1 million in 2014 represented around 25% of all seed funding.That has come down as a proportion every year since then.And as of 2021 that proportion has dipped below 10% for the first time, ranging from 5% to 7% of all seed dollars invested in the U.S. since then.Earlier in the past decade, the number of seed deals in rounds below $1 million outpaced those rounds at $1 million and above significantly.But 2021 was once again a pivotal year. That's when $1 million and above seed rounds outpaced smaller seed for the first time.In 2023, they are neck and neck in count. (That might shift as the long tail of seed rounds are added to the Crunchbase database long after they close.)What this all shows is that seed has become an increasingly significant and elongated phase in a company's early life cycle, where companies are raising multiple million-dollar seed rounds. And as of late, more companies than ever before are wading in the seed pool.What does this mean for the seed funding market in 2024?…MoreUnicorns & InevitabilitiesUp and to the right, or not so much?JEFF BECKER, JAN 22, 2024TLDR: Go read Aileen Lee's update to the Unicorn Club… and a few inevitabilities.Did anyone catch Aileen Lee & Allegra Simon's Welcome Back to the Unicorn Club, 10 Years Later?If not, go read it. That's your MMM.If you did read it, you can't help but wonder if the tech sector isn't going to resemble the public markets over time. Ups and downs, but consistently up and to the right over a long enough period.After all, we are creating leverage in ways we've never seen before.And for unicorns, that meant 14X growth over a 10-year period.Could you imagine another 14 or even 10X from here? That would be stratospheric, from ~500 to ~5,000 unicorns? What if the exit sizes did too? $5B, $10B, $50B?Crazy to think, but hardly impossible. After all, we've already seen near-centicorns like Uber's IPO at $75B in 2019.The interesting part about that thought exercise though is not the crazy zero interest rate IPO's, but the fact that entry valuations didn't and don't move nearly as fast as top end outcomes because of the time horizon to realizing them.For example, Airbnb raised $20K from Y Combinator for 6%, then they took another $600K for 20% in their seed.That was 2009. The idea of an IPO for $47B just 11 years later in 2020 probably wasn't even a consideration. Paul Graham and the YC team would've had to believe Airbnb's IPO could compete with AT&T, General Motors, and Visa.Insane.Fast forward, that $333,333 valuation at YC has moved to $1.78m (125K for 7%), and they'll stack another 2.6% ownership on average from their $375K MFN with the average YC company raising seed at a $14.4m cap instead of Airbnb's $3m.That's a ~5X increase in valuation at pre-seed & seed for a 47X increase in IPO size if you were modeling $1B outcomes into your VC fund model in 2009.I'm not saying that will continue. There are counterforces of course.* Margins are way too high. The fact that software margins have persisted at 80% or more is just craziness. Companies will start to use price more aggressively to compete for market share as cheap AI tools enter the market and try to unseat them. This compression will change the value of discounted cash flow models.* Pricing models need to change. One way to reduce sticker price and maintain some semblance of healthy long-term margins is to pay a smaller implementation fee, but incur ongoing services & upgrade costs. This is a more traditional pricing model, and creative economics that leverage this kind of thinking run rampant in the titans of tech. It's a game of deeper roots, higher switching costs, and long-term contracts. With API calls and data usage more prevalent, we'll also see more pay-per-use models, the same way we buy copiers. We'll also see more pay-for-performance models with attributable ROI, akin to Amazon's ACoS model or Rakuten's affiliate marketing model. Customers will prefer it too, placing a higher emphasis customer value. This will also drive margins to condense.* AI, AI, AI. AI will cut OpEx costs dramatically. SDR teams, gone. Copywriters at agencies, you don't need as many. Data scientists? Just run a query against your data lakes. The list goes on. Costs of running these companies is going to get shellacked. Good for margins for sure, but also a compelling opportunity for newcomers to undercut and unseat incumbents too.* More hardware. With software margins condensing, hardware margins will start to feel more attractive too, the maintenance and upgrade fees will resemble what we see in SaaS, and the software that powers these machines will be incredible. Skynet for autonomous off-road vehicles, absolutely.* Less dilution, earlier exits, and stratification. We already see it in the S&P 500 with the top end accounting for an outsized share of total value. With that kind of cash on balance sheets, bigger companies will just buy the smaller ones. Think about how Broadcom rolls up companies. If you've built the business more efficiently, you've also raised less, incurred less dilution, and that $100m exit when you still own 50% is looking pretty prett-ty good compared to the same outcome 5-10 grueling years later to own 5% of $1B.* Massive founder salaries, less emphasis on growth. If you've built a company that's profitable from day one, and you have complete control of your board, what's your incentive to keep the pedal down on growth, or stay on the VC treadmill? World domination? Why not pay yourself 10X, stop fundraising, and continue to tighten the core business until someone acquires you? It's better for the founding team and employees for sure, and it's probably better for customers in most instances too.These are just some of things I think we'll see over the next five years until we approach ZIRPy-dirpy times again and massive growth becomes irresistible.But there are also a whole slew of things I think are inevitabilities that will benefit from these dynamics because we will not only have new technologies, with more attractive pricing, but we will be tackling new opportunities that were created by the prior evolutions across adjacent industries.For example…* Cost of energy is going to zero with nuclear fusion* Longevity is starting to work; check out Loyal for Dogs* Batteries & cameras continue to improve; medical devices, for one, will be more personal & affordable* Disintermediation of big ad networks with new global distribution channels; check out Benjamin* Massive cost reductions driven by AI* Software will be built by software* An aging population is retiring (10,000 per day); wealth transfer & SMB's with no exit paths* Climate change* …and so on and so on and so onThe list is long. Much longer than this. If you want the rest, just reply or comment so that I know, and I'll go deeper next week.Net of all of it, I think we're going to see a tale of two cities. Stronger, more profitable businesses, with smaller, but better founder founder exits in the near term, and a continued growth both in number of total unicorns, and what that top-end outcomes look like in the longer-term.And like I said, go read Aileen's post.Sequoia, Founders Fund, USV, Elad Gil & Benchmark Top Venture Manager SurveyI got my hands on a VC scorecard circulating among top founders & VCsERIC NEWCOMERJAN 25, 2024Before we get started, I want to be clear — this isn't the end-all, be-all list of the top venture capital firms or the most promising startups.But I got my hands on a survey of 91 people at 69 different venture capital firms conducted by a well-respected investor in venture capital firms.The survey results are spreading hand-to-hand in Silicon Valley. The results of the survey rank the most desirable venture capital firms and companies, according to VCs themselves. When I was out in San Francisco last week for The Information's 10th anniversary gala, sources kept bringing it up.My sources tell me that the survey was conducted by Ed Hutchinson, managing partner at Golden Bell Partners. Hutchinson is ignoring my emails.Which firms and companies would top VCs themselves put their money into? It's a question everyone wants to know the answer to.I've got my hands on their list of favorites:Firms* (1) Sequoia* (2) Founders Fund* (3) Union Square* (4) Elad Gil* (5) Benchmark…Much More (but only for subscribers)Why 2024 May Be Tougher on Venture Capital Than 2023by Jason Lemkin | Blog Posts, Fundraising, ScaleSo I thought the toughest times for venture would be behind us now. In 2022, we were in free fall, with public market caps falling like a knife, and the IPO markets frozen. And 2023 was the year of the Work Out in venture. Bridge rounds slowed down, and VCs acknowledged a lot of portfolio companies just weren't going to make it. It got real in 2023, and that realness got normalized. The drama mostly was behind us. And public SaaS stocks in many cases did really, really well in 2023. So shouldn't 2024 at least be better for venture?So I thought.But the reality is I'm a bit more worried the venture drama in 2024 will be bigger than 2023. Why? Four core reasons:#1: Now We Have to Deal With the Reality of the Stumbling Unicorns.The ones that are doing $100m+ ARR, still growing, but there just isn't going to be any more money coming. This is going to burn up a ton of energy in VC funds. Even tougher, the reality is while many VC funds marked down their unicorns to lower valuations in 2023, they often didn't mark them down enough.#2. The Chase for AI Unicorns and Decacorns is All-consuming. It's Still 2021 There.The one place where paper money seems easy to come by is Hot AI Startups. And that's probably not you. It's just consuming all the oxygen in venture, trying to get into the next Imaging AI startup worth $1B in 10 months. In AI, 2021 never went away. In AI, it's still 2021.#3. A Lot of Seasoned VCs are Discouraged. This Doesn't Help Founders.A lot of VCs who have been around for a while are quietly discouraged. They just don't see a great path to making a ton of money in venture these days. We're in Year 3 of a venture downturn, and that weighs of most of us. At a practical level, for founders, it makes it harder to lean it.#4. More Valuation Markdowns Are Still to ComeRelated to the first point, but more markdowns are like mutliple rounds of layoffs. They're just tough. LPs lose confidence. Coworkers lose confidence. We should have gotten through a lot of this in 2023, but we didn't. Personally, I've got several investments for example that I marked down. 70%-80% or more — that my co-investors didn't mark down at all.#5. VCs Have Run out of ReservesVCs used what extra “reserve” capital they had for bridge rounds in 2022 and 2023. Now it's gone. That's adds to the stress as companies struggle. You don't have a play anymore.The bottom line is there likely is at least another full year of working through the excesses of 2021. That will weigh across venture. No matter what some AI headlines suggest.Video of the WeekThe Mac at 40Apple Shares the Secret of Why the 40-Year-Old Mac Still RulesThe pioneering PC revolutionized how people interact with computers. As the Mac enters its fifth decade, Apple says it will continue to evolve.STEVEN LEVY, Jan 19, 2024 10:00 AMON JANUARY 24, Apple's Macintosh computer turns 40. Normally that number is an inexorable milestone of middle age. Indeed, in the last reported sales year, Macintosh sales dipped below $30 billion, more than a 25 percent drop from the previous year's $40 billion. But unlike an aging person, Macs now are slimmer, faster, and last much longer before having to recharge.My own relationship with the computer dates back to its beginnings, when I got a prelaunch peek some weeks before its January 1984 launch. I even wrote a book about the Mac—Insanely Great—in which I described it as “the computer that changed everything.” Unlike every other nonfiction subtitle, the hyperbole was justified. The Mac introduced the way all computers would one day work, and the break from controlling a machine with typed commands ushered us into an era that extends to our mobile interactions. It also heralded a focus on design that transformed our devices.That legacy has been long-lasting. For the first half of its existence, the Mac occupied only a slice of the market, even as it inspired so many rivals; now it's a substantial chunk of PC sales. Even within the Apple juggernaut, $30 billion isn't chicken feed! What's more, when people think of PCs these days, many will envision a Macintosh. More often than not, the open laptops populating coffee shops and tech company workstations beam out glowing Apples from their covers. Apple claims that its Macbook Air is the world's best-selling computer model. One 2019 survey reported that more than two-thirds of all college students prefer a Mac. And Apple has relentlessly improved the product, whether with the increasingly slim profile of the iMac or the 22-hour battery life of the Macbook Pro. Moreover, the Mac is still a thing. Chromebooks and Surface PCs come and go, but Apple's creation remains the pinnacle of PC-dom. “It's not a story of nostalgia, or history passing us by,” says Greg “Joz” Joswiak, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, in a rare on-the-record interview with five Apple executives involved in its Macintosh operation. “The fact we did this for 40 years is unbelievable.”…Much MoreAI of the WeekBMW will deploy Figure's humanoid robot at South Carolina plantBrian Heater @bheater / 3:00 AM PST•January 18, 2024Image Credits: FigureFigure today announced a “commercial agreement” that will bring its first humanoid robot to a BMW manufacturing facility in South Carolina. The Spartanburg plant is BMW's only in the United States. As of 2019, the 8 million-square-foot campus boasted the highest yield among the German manufacturer's factories anywhere in the world.BMW has not disclosed how many Figure 01 models it will deploy initially. Nor do we know precisely what jobs the robot will be tasked with when it starts work. Figure did, however, confirm with TechCrunch that it is beginning with an initial five tasks, which will be rolled out one at a time.While folks in the space have been cavalierly tossing out the term “general purpose” to describe these sorts of systems, it's important to temper expectations and point out that they will all arrive as single- or multi-purpose systems, growing their skillset over time. Figure CEO Brett Adcock likens the approach to an app store — something that Boston Dynamics currently offers with its Spot robot via SDK.Likely initial applications include standard manufacturing tasks such as box moving, pick and place and pallet unloading and loading — basically the sort of repetitive tasks for which factory owners claim to have difficulty retaining human workers. Adcock says that Figure expects to ship its first commercial robot within a year, an ambitious timeline even for a company that prides itself on quick turnaround times.The initial batch of applications will be largely determined by Figure's early partners like BMW. The system will, for instance, likely be working with sheet metal to start. Adcock adds that the company has signed up additional clients, but declined to disclose their names. It seems likely Figure will instead opt to announce each individually to keep the news cycle spinning in the intervening 12 months.Unlike some other humanoid designers (including Agility), Figure is focused on creating a dexterous, human like hand for manipulation. The thinking behind such an end effector is the same that's driving many toward the humanoid form factor in the first place: Namely, we've designed our workspaces with us in mind. Adcock alludes to Figure 01 being tasked with an initial set of jobs that require high dexterity.As for the importance of legs, the executive suggests that their importance for maneuvering during certain tasks is as — or more — important than things like walking up stairs and over uneven terrain, which tend to get most of the love during these conversations.…MoreGoogle's New AI Video Generator Looks IncredibleJAN 25, 2024MATT GROWCOOTGoogle has announced Lumiere: an AI video generator that looks to be one of the most advanced text-to-video models yet.The name Lumiere is seemingly a nod to the Lumiere brothers who are credited with putting on the first ever cinema showing in 1895. Just as motion picture was cutting-edge technology at the end of the 19th century, the Lumiere name is once more being associated with something new and original.The demo of Lumiere that Google put out focuses firmly on animals. The model can generate a scene using just text; much the same way AI image generators work, the user can dream up any scenario they would like to see a short video clip of.However, the user can also use an image as a prompt. Google provided multiple examples: including some that are real photos such as Joe Rosenthal's iconic Raising the Flag photo; “Soldiers raising the united states flag on a windy day” saw one of the 20th-centuries most recognizable photos suddently come to life as the soliders struggle with the flag that's being affected by gusts.Also in Lumiere is a “Video Stylization” setting which allows users to upload a source video and then ask the generative AI model for various element changes. For example, a person running may be suddenly turned into a toy made of colorful bricks.Another feature Google showed off is “Cinemagraphs”, where just a section of an image is animated while the rest stays still. “Video Inpainting” is included too which involves masking part of the image so that section can be changed to the user's desire.Space-Time Diffusion ModelLumiere is powered by “Space-Time U-Net architecture that generates the entire temporal duration of the video at once, through a single pass in the model.”This difficult-to-understand concept is apparently in contrast to existing video models which “synthesize distant keyframes followed by temporal super-resolution — an approach that inherently makes global temporal consistency difficult to achieve.”…Much MoreOpenAI's Sam Altman seeks funds for AI chip factories as demands surgeOpenAI CEO Sam Altman has opened discussions with global investors over the possibility of funding a network of artificial intelligence (AI) chip factories to keep pace with soaring demand.Altman is seeking around $8 billion to $10 billion worth of funds to set up several AI chip fabrication plants around the globe, an endeavor that will require synergy between leading chip manufacturers backed by investment giants.Altman is reportedly in talks with Japanese-based financial giant SoftBank Group (NASDAQ: SFTBF) and Abu Dhabi's G42 over funding plans, but details remain sparse. The discussions with G42 have been underway since 2023, with Altman describing a potential chip partnership as laying the foundation “for equitable advancements in generative AI across the globe.”Aside from SoftBank and G42, insiders say that Altman is still pursuing collaborations with other industry players to set up a network of chip fabrication plants. Although exact entities were not namechecked, industry experts are noting Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC), Samsung Electronics, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (NASDAQ: TSM) as potential partners.Altman's approach to raising funds hinges on concerns that the chip supply will not be able to meet global demands for AI offerings by 2030. The OpenAI's CEO argues that the ideal solution will be a collaborative effort to set up chip manufacturing plants rather than build in silos.OpenAI has had its fair share of chip scarcity, rolling back a number of its offerings over a steady chip supply. To meet the rising demand, the company is reportedly mulling several options, including the prospect of building its chips from scratch and joining ranks with Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) to explore an in-house solution.Given the costs associated with an in-house approach, OpenAI may pursue the acquisition of a chip manufacturer as a short-term solution or expand its collaboration with existing partners. However, a potential acquisition opens its own can of worms, including an inquiry by antitrust regulators.Governments are also involvedIn 2023, Altman urged the South Korean government to double their investments in AI chip manufacturing as a veritable strategy to play a leading role in the nascent ecosystem. Currently, South Korea ranks behind the U.S., China, and Japan in chip manufacturing, but a concerted government involvement could see the country climb up the charts.The OpenAI boss disclosed during his visit to South Korea that his firm will back local entities building chips for AI and other emerging technologies, with Samsung rumored to be in top position.“We are exploring how to increase our investment in Korean startups,” said Altman. “We are excited to meet as many as we can here today. I think this type of collaboration is essential to our work.”..MoreThe Future of Prosumer: The Rise of “AI Native” WorkflowsAnish Acharya, Justine Moore, and Olivia MoorePosted January 25, 2024Few people love the software they use to get things done. And it's no surprise why. Whether it's a slide deck builder, a video editor, or a photo enhancer, today's work tools were conceived decades ago — and it shows! Even best-in-class products often feel either too inflexible and unsophisticated to do real work, or have steep, inaccessible learning curves (we're looking at you, Adobe InDesign). Generative AI offers founders an opportunity to completely reinvent workflows — and will spawn a new cohort of companies that are not just AI-augmented, but fully AI-native. These companies will start from scratch with the technology we have now, and build new products around the generation, editing, and composition capabilities that are uniquely possible due to AI. On the most surface level, we believe AI will help users do their existing work more efficiently. AI-native platforms will “up level” user interactions with software, allowing them to delegate lower skill tasks to an AI assistant and spend their time on higher-level thinking. This applies not only to traditional office workers, but to small business owners, freelancers, creators, and artists — who arguably have even more complex demands on their time. But AI will also help users unlock completely new skill sets, on both a technical and an aesthetic level. We've already seen this with products like Midjourney and ChatGPT's Code Interpreter. Everyone can now be a programmer, a producer, a designer, or a musician, shrinking the gap between creativity and craft. With access to professional-grade yet consumer-friendly products with AI-powered workflows, everyone can be a part of a new generation of “prosumers.”In this piece, we aim to highlight the features of today's — and tomorrow's — most successful Gen AI-native workflows, as well as hypothesize about how we see these products evolving.What Will GenAI Native Prosumer Products Look Like?All products with Gen AI-native workflows will share one crucial trait: translating cutting-edge models into an accessible, effective UI.Users of workflow tools typically don't care what infrastructure is behind a product; they care about how it helps them! While the technological leaps we've made with Generative AI are amazing, successful products will importantly still start from a deep understanding of the user and their pain points. What can be abstracted away with AI? Where are the key “decision points” that need approval, if any? And where are the highest points of leverage? There are a few key features we believe products in this category will have: * Generation tools that kill the “blank page” problem. The earliest and most obvious consumer AI use cases have come from translating a natural language prompt into a media output — e.g., image, video, and text generators. The same will be true in prosumer. These tools might help transform true “blank pages” (e.g., a text prompt to slide deck), or take incremental assets (e.g., a sketch or an outline) and turn them into a more fleshed-out product.Some companies will do this via a proprietary model, while others may mix or stitch together multiple models (open source, proprietary, or via API) behind the scenes. One example here is Vizcom's rendering tool. Users can input a text prompt, sketch, or 3D model, and instantly get a photorealistic rendering to further iterate on.Another example is Durable's website builder product, which the company says has been used to generate more than 6 million sites so far. Users input their company name, segment, and location, and Durable will spit out a site for them to customize. As LLMs get more powerful, we expect to see products like Durable pull real information about your business from elsewhere on the internet and social media — the history, team, reviews, logos, etc. — and generate an even more sophisticated output from just one generation. * Multimodal (and multimedia!) combinations. Many creative projects require more than one type of content. For example, you may want to combine an image with text, music with video, or an animation with a voiceover. As of now, there isn't one model that can generate all of these asset types. This creates an opportunity for workflow products which allow users to generate, refine, and stitch different content types in one place.…MoreAndreessen Horowitz's Connie Chan to Leave as Consumer Focus Shifts to AIBy Kate Clark, Erin Woo and Cory WeinbergJan 23, 2024, 7:22am PSTFor years, partners at Andreessen Horowitz proclaimed they would scour the startup world for the next big consumer marketplace like Airbnb or the next hit consumer app out of China, areas in which the firm had unique expertise. Now, it's shifting toward an area more en vogue across venture capital: consumer apps powered by artificial intelligence.Those changes are happening amid an overhaul of its consumer team. Connie Chan, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz who formerly led a team of consumer investors and was known for spotting internet trends coming from China, said she is leaving the firm. She may raise her own fund, a person familiar with the matter said. Anish Acharya, a general partner at the firm who invested in enterprise-focused and financial technology businesses, now leads the consumer team, said people familiar with the change.Chan's move also follows a distancing by U.S. VC firms from investments in China tech, once a hotbed for U.S. investors. In recent months, Chan has privately said it's becoming more difficult for her to work at Andreessen Horowitz because the partners have been increasingly disinterested in anything China related, another person said.The Takeaway• Fintech-focused GP Anish Acharya leading consumer deals• Consumer GP Connie Chan is leaving the firm• Consumer partner Anne Lee Skates left to start own fundThe changes are part of a broader personnel shakeup, including the decision by senior consumer investor and Airbnb board member Jeff Jordan to step back from making new investments last year. Of the four general partners that led the firm through a consumer deal blitz, none remain on the consumer team.Meanwhile, Anne Lee Skates, a consumer partner who worked on the firm's investment in live shopping app WhatNot, left in the fall to raise her own fund, according to two people familiar with the matter. Axios first reported that Chan was leaving the firm.The Andreessen Horowitz changes are emblematic of a broader VC industry gravitation toward AI and away from once-hot sectors like consumer marketplaces and financial technology, as a spike in interest rates undercut the growth aspirations of startups trying to elbow out incumbent social platforms and banking institutions.“We've gotten into this cycle now where, generally speaking, investors are less interested in consumer,” said Ben Lerer, managing partner at Lerer Hippeau. Known for its consumer investments in Warby Parker and Allbirds, the firm has invested 70% of its latest fund in enterprise companies, he said. “And AI feels like this very hopeful, very exciting, fresh thing.”Founders of some consumer startups have noticed the shift at Andreessen Horowitz. One founder of a consumer startup in the firm's portfolio said they had heard little from investment partners over the last year, a contrast to a steady drumbeat of emails the founder got in prior years from Andreessen staff who support portfolio companies with marketing and operations advice.Andreessen Horowitz's consumer investing team has been perhaps most well known for its focus on backing digital marketplaces, from peer-to-peer self-storage to real estate investment marketplaces, that could turn into the next Airbnb. Every year, it releases a ranking of top marketplace startups. “We are obsessed with marketplaces and have been since our inception,” Chan, who led investments in social fashion startup Cider for the firm in 2021.But some of those startups backed by the firm, such as self-storage startup Neighbor, have struggled to take off in recent years. And like other venture firms, Andreessen Horowitz has also stepped back from investing in Chinese startups, an area of focus for Chan. She had championed the idea that the next wave of breakout U.S. consumer startups will model themselves after China's internet success stories, like all-in-one app WeChat.With $53 billion in assets under management, Andreessen Horowitz is one of the largest of traditional Silicon Valley firms and closely watched among other VC firms as a trend setter. And its track record of sniffing out hitmakers primed its partners to find the next trendy consumer app.The number of consumer deals Andreessen Horowitz has led dropped to 13 last year from 30 in 2021, a record for the firm, according to PitchBook data. It's possible the firm completed more consumer deals and that those investments haven't been announced. Its investments in AI companies have jumped to 23 from nine over the same years, including leading a $415 million investment in Mistral, the French developer of an open-source large language model.The firm has beefed up this team of investors primarily focused on enterprise, software infrastructure and AI startups. Led by Martin Casado, a close confidante to the firm's founders Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, it is raising its first standalone fund and has brought on two new general partners, Anjney Midha and Zane Lackey, since 2022, as well as a number of junior partners.As the infrastructure team gained power, the consumer team's profile shrank. The firm in 2023 combined its consumer and fintech teams and created a new group, called apps, led by general partner Alex Rampell, who previously co-founded installment lender Affirm, The Information reported last year. Under Rampell's leadership, the newly formed apps team will also soon launch a dedicated apps fund, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. The consolidated team has been encouraged to pursue AI deals.Within Rampell's apps group, Acharya now leads the consumer sub-group. His portfolio of companies includes payroll company Deel and Silo, a provider of supply chain automation software. He's also an investor in Titan, a consumer investment application.Fueling the firm's shift away from consumer apps are likely disappointing returns. The startups that captivated consumers during the pandemic shutdowns have failed to retain their attention. Growth at companies the consumer team bet on, like Clubhouse, which Andreessen Horowitz backed three times in one year, and photo-sharing app BeReal, which it backed in 2021, has stalled.…MoreOpenAI Is a (Relative) StealBy Stephanie PalazzoloJan 22, 2024, 7:35am PSTOver the past year, we've seen billions in funding thrown at AI startups at eye-popping valuations. More important than the absolute valuation figures, though, is how they stack up to those startups' revenue numbers.In the chart above, we've tracked the valuations of eight AI startups that have recently raised funding, calculated against their projected revenue. On average, these companies raised money at a price that is 83 times their projected sales for the next twelve months. That's a big multiple by any measure, reflecting the rocket ship nature of these startups. But what makes the comparison noteworthy is that OpenAI has one of the lowest multiples, even though its business has the most traction.Venture capitalists tend to value early-stage startups at a premium based on their growth rates. OpenAI's business is far bigger and more mature—if we can use that word for a company growing as fast as OpenAI—than other generative AI companies. So, as fast as its revenue pace is growing—more than 20% in just two months most recently—newer firms are growing even faster.For instance, AI-powered search engine Perplexity AI doubled its annual recurring revenue from $3 million to $6 million from October to January. VCs were likely taking that expected growth into account at the time of investment, as the company would have garnered a much lower 75-times forward revenue multiple if it had raised at the same price just a few months later. Similarly, even though OpenAI rival Anthropic was likely generating around $200 million in annualized revenue at the end of last year (according to its October estimates), its projection that it would reach $850 million in annualized revenue by the end of this year surely made its mind-boggling valuation more palatable to investors.When you see the details of these AI startup funding rounds, it can sometimes feel like investors are throwing darts at nine-figure numbers on a wall. The chart suggests there's a method to the madness. Typically, startups selling to companies are valued based on the sector in which they operate. The lowest valuation multiples are accorded to startups offering industry-specific applications, while those offering more generalized applications draw a premium. The most highly valued firms are often infrastructure startups, which create the tools that developers use to build these apps. This order stems from how big the target market of these startups are, ranging from a specific industry (like healthcare or education) to all developers. We can see that general order reflected in burgeoning AI startups. For instance, Harvey, which sells an AI application for lawyers, has one of the lower multiples, while broader-reaching companies like Glean and VAST Data land higher multiples.It seems like investors aren't quite sure yet where model developers like OpenAI and Anthropic fall on this spectrum. Their costs are very different from a typical software startup due to how much computing power they need, and many investors are still worried that closed-source model developers may be overtaken by their cheaper, open-source counterparts.…MoreNews Of the WeekTed fellows resign from organisation after Bill Ackman named as speakerLucianne Walkowicz and Saeed Taji Farouky accuse Ted of taking anti-Palestinian stand over controversial billionaire's inclusionChris McGrealThe Ted organisation has been hit with resignations and criticisms after naming the controversial activist billionaire Bill Ackman, who was instrumental in forcing out Harvard's president over antisemitism allegations, among its main speakers at this year's conference.Four Ted fellows, led by the astronomer Lucianne Walkowicz and the filmmaker Saeed Taji Farouky, resigned from the group on Wednesday, accusing it of taking an anti-Palestinian stand and aligning itself “with enablers and supporters of genocide” in Gaza.“2024 main stage speaker Bill Ackman has defended Israel's genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and has cynically weaponised antisemitism in his programme to purge American universities of Pro-Palestinian freedom of speech,” the pair wrote to Chris Anderson, who leads Ted, and Lily James Olds, director of the fellows programme.“We've become increasingly concerned about the fundamental values and moral compass of the organisation over the years, but with this year's speaker selection, it is clear Ted has crossed a red line.”The conference will be held in Vancouver, Canada, in April, under the banner The Brave and the Brilliant”. The theme of Ackman's talk has not been revealed but his selection was announced last week after he was accused of using his money and influence to help force Claudine Gay's resignation as Harvard's president following her disastrous appearance before Congress in December when she was questioned about on-campus antisemitism during the Israel-Gaza war.Ackman has taken stridently pro-Israel positions, including justifying the scale of the attacks on Gaza in which more than 25,000 Palestinians have been killed, mostly civilians, and the forced removal of about 2 million Palestinians from their homes. He has described criticism of Israel as antisemitism and called for the blacklisting from employment of American students who signed petitions denouncing the offensive in Gaza in the wake of the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel.Farouky and Walkowicz's resignation letter noted that other speakers announced by Ted include the journalist Bari Weiss, who they describe as having “a long, sordid, and well-documented history of anti-Palestinian speech”, but that there are no Palestinians in the line-up.“We refuse for our work and identities to be exploited to promote the Ted brand while the organisation and its speakers generate income and advance their careers through dehumanising Palestinians and justifying their genocide,” the pair said.After the resignation letter was published, two other fellows – the entrepreneur Ayah Bdeir and cosmologist Renée Hlozek – also quit. Nearly 30 others added their names “in solidarity” without leaving Ted.…MoreTesla's Slowdown Disqualifies It From ‘Magnificent Seven' GroupBy Martin Peers, Jan 24, 2024, 5:00pm PSTStock market pundits may want to come up with a new name for the big tech stocks driving the overall market. The “magnificent seven” descriptor—referring to Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Nvidia and Tesla—no longer seems to make much sense. I'd like to suggest that's because none of the company CEOs look like cowboy gunslingers from the 1960 movie that made the phrase famous. It's hard to imagine Steve McQueen playing Tim Cook or Andy Jassy, for instance (although Yul Brynner admittedly could have filled the role of horseback-riding Jeff Bezos).The real reason the moniker no longer works, however, is that at least one member of the group, Tesla, has had anything but a magnificent 2024 so far, and its fourth-quarter earnings report, released Wednesday, only made things worse. Before Tesla reported earnings tonight, its stock had fallen 16% so far this year, and it tumbled another 3% after hours to around $200 a share. This isn't a reaction to CEO Elon Musk's antics, which include asking for a bunch more stock, although that surely doesn't help. The stock decline reflects the slowdown in sales suffered by Tesla, which observers attribute to increased competition and a loss of government incentives. Automotive revenues, which make up the bulk of Tesla's top line, grew just 1% in the fourth quarter—down from 18% in the first quarter.In its outlook for this year issued today, the company said its growth in the volume of car sales would be lower than in 2023, and noted that its team is working on its “next-generation vehicle.” Meantime, expenses have been skyrocketing, eroding its profit margin. But our less-than-rigorous takedown of the magnificent seven branding isn't just about Tesla. If you look at the year-to-date performance of big tech stocks, or even their 2023 performance, you can see that just two tech stocks have roared this year. One is Nvidia, which is in a class of its own: up 27% since Jan. 1, thanks to its stranglehold on the specialized chips used in artificial intelligence. The other is Meta Platforms, which is up nearly 13%, reflecting confidence in its ad business. In comparison, Microsoft and Alphabet are each up around 8%, likely thanks to expectations that AI will lift their businesses, while Apple and Amazon lag behind with year-to-date stock price rises of less than 5% each. Instead of the magnificent seven, it might be more appropriate to refer to the group as Nvidia, Meta and the humble five.… MoreTikTok's Testing 30 Minute Uploads as It Looks To Expand Its Content OptionsBy Andrew Hutchinson Content and Social Media ManagerThe next stage of TikTok is coming, with some users now seeing the option to upload 30 minute long videos in the app.As you can see in this example, shared by social media expert Matt Navarra, TikTok's currently testing the new 30 minute upload option in the beta version of the app.Which, if you've been paying attention, is not really any big surprise.TikTok has been steadily increasing its maximum post limit for years, with the platform originally starting at 15 seconds per clip, which was then extended to 60 seconds, then 3 minutes, then 5 minutes, before rising to 10 minutes in 2022.Last October, TikTok began experimenting with 15 minute uploads, so the trend towards longer clips isn't new.Though 30 minutes is likely the upper limit, based on the Chinese version of the app. Douyin, which is TikTok in China, expanded its upload limit to 30 minutes per clip in 2022, and it hasn't gone any further as yet.And presumably, Douyin has also seen good response to this longer time limit, which is why TikTok is now looking to implement the same, though it does seem like a long time to be watching a TikTok clip in-stream.Will users really warm to TV show length clips in the app?…MoreInstagram to scan under-18s' messages to protect against ‘inappropriate images'Feature will work even on encrypted messages, suggesting platform plans to implement client-side scanningAlex Hern and Dan MilmoInstagram will begin scanning messages sent to and from under-18s to protect them from “inappropriate images”, Meta has announced.The feature, being kept under wraps until later this year, would work even on encrypted messages, a spokesperson said, suggesting the company intends to implement a so-called client-side scanning service for the first time.But the update will not meet controversial demands for inappropriate messages to be reported back to Instagram servers.Instead, only a user's personal device will ever know whether or not a message has been filtered out, leading to criticism of the promise as another example of the company “grading its own homework”.“We're planning to launch a new feature designed to help protect teens from seeing unwanted and potentially inappropriate images in their messages from people they're already connected to,” the company said in a blogpost, “and to discourage them from sending these types of images themselves. We'll have more to share on this feature, which will also work in encrypted chats, later this year.”…Much MoreTiger Global Investor Relations Staff Depart After Fundraising ChallengesBy Francesca Friday and Maria HeeterJan 24, 2024, 4:46pm PSTSeveral Tiger Global Management employees focused on raising capital for the New York firm's venture funds have taken buyout offers, according to a person familiar with the matter. The departures of the staff, who worked with prospective investors, come as the firm has struggled to raise money for its latest venture capital fund after a collapse in startup valuations soured its paper returns for earlier funds.As of the second quarter of 2023, a $12.7 billion fund that Tiger started making investments from in October 2021 had a paper loss of 18%, calculated as an annualized return net of management fees, according to internal data distributed to investors in the fund. That's a slight improvement from six months earlier, when the 2021 fund showed a loss of 20%. The fund's performance is in the bottom quartile of funds started that year, the document said, and has also lagged the S&P 500's annualized net return in the same period.The Takeaway• Tiger employee buyouts are the latest example of VC cost-cutting• Tiger's $12.7 billion had lost 18% on paper as of June* Tiger could soon show a $350 million gain from OpenAI stakeAs of June 30, 2023, the $12.7 billion fund hadn't returned any cash to investors, which isn't unusual for such a young fund. But the paper losses are closely guarded secrets that reflect the kind of write-downs other venture firms have been making over the past two years as tech valuations have fallen.It isn't clear how big Tiger's investor relations team is, but the departures are the latest example of belt-tightening across the venture industry. Firms are raising smaller funds and striking fewer deals, reducing the need for sprawling support staff—including those who help firms raise money from pension funds and endowments...MoreWorldcoin hints at new Orb for a friendlier iris-scanning experienceby Vivian NguyenThe next-gen device will feature various colors and shapes to enhance its visual appeal.Worldcoin, an iris biometric crypto project, is set to launch a new Orb that aims to offer a more user-friendly iris-scanning experience, said Alex Blania, CEO and co-founder of Tools for Humanity, the developer behind the project, in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch today.“The next Orb will roll out in the first half of this year and will feature alternative colors and form factors in an effort to look ‘much more friendly,'” Blania explained. “Overall, it is going to look way more tuned down and similar to an Apple product.”Blania acknowledges that the initial design of the Orb predated his time at the company. “The new orb is coming and the next iterations will look quite different,” he remarked during a fireside chat at a recent StrictlyVC event, signaling a departure from the current, more controversial design.The goal of Worldcoin, as described by Blania, is to reach billions of users as fast as possible.“The thesis is very simple. We race toward billions of users as fast as we possibly can,” said Blania.Founded by Blania, Sam Altman, and Max Novendstern, Tools for Humanity has raised around $250 million from prominent investors like a16z and Bain Capital Crypto, among others. The project is famous for its unique Orb device designed to scan people's irises and assign them a “World ID,” granting access to Worldcoin's application and a digital passport. Worldcoin's vision is to authenticate individual identities and prevent the creation of multiple accounts.The current design of the Orb has been a topic of much debate due to its intimidating look, similar to a prop from a sci-fi movie, according to Blania. The company has also faced criticism for its beta testing approaches in developing economies and concerns over privacy and data security.Despite some skepticism, the Orb has seen practical use. At the StrictlyVC event in downtown San Francisco, a Tools for Humanity employee reported that a “couple dozen” attendees scanned their iris to receive a World ID. There has also been “field testing” of the new Orb design.…MoreStartup of the WeekLoyalty Startup Bilt Rewards Hits $3.1B Valuation After $200M RoundChris MetinkoJanuary 24, 2024Bilt Rewards, a loyalty rewards startup, raised a $200 million round led by General Catalyst at a $3.1 billion valuation — more than double the number after its last fundraising in 2022.The round also included participation from Eldridge Industries, Left Lane Capital, Camber Creek and Prosus Ventures.The New York-based startup allows consumers to earn rewards on the rent they pay. Bilt plans to use some of the proceeds to expand its network to include local dining, grocery stores, ridesharing and other retail purchases.“We're not just building a loyalty program; we're creating a community-centric ecosystem that benefits everyone from renters to local businesses,” said founder and CEO Ankur Jain.The company also appointed some big names to roles in the company. Bilt named Ken Chenault, former chairman and CEO of American Express, as its chairman, and Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL, as an independent director.Big moneyThe company reported its annualized member spend is nearing $20 billion. It also became profitable on an earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization basis last year.Those metrics must have impressed investors, as Bilt has seen its valuation shoot up after raising a $150 million Series B at a pre-money valuation of $1.4 billion in October 2022. Founded in 2021, the company has raised a total of $413 million, per Crunchbase.Last year was a slow go for loyalty startups. Such companies raised only $74 million, per Crunchbase data. However in 2022, loyalty startups raised more than a half-billion dollars thanks to big raises that included Bilt's Series B and Madison, Wisconsin-based Fetch's $240 million Series E.With this fundraise, things are looking up for loyalty startups again.X of the Week This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thatwastheweek.substack.com/subscribe
Kara and Scott discuss Ron DeSantis' departure from the 2024 race and the Biden/Trump rematch that everyone is dreading. Then, with the good news about the economy and the stock market, what's the best move for investors? Plus, Nelson Peltz continues his Disney proxy fight, and a new report sheds light on the anti-DEI movement. Our Friend of Pivot is Aileen Lee, the founder and managing partner of the VC fund, Cowboy Ventures. She also happens to be the person who coined the term "unicorn" for billion dollar start-ups and shares her latest analysis on those companies. Follow Aileen at @aileenlee Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
This week, Mary Ann Azevedo and Alex Wilhelm took to the mics to chew through funding rounds and trends galore. Enjoy, and don't forget that our interview with Aileen Lee is here.Pomelo: $40 million more dollars for Latin American fintech? It's the perfect Mary Ann story. Even better, we got growth data from the company to noodle on. It turns out you can raise up rounds in 2024!Tandem: Alex chose the Tandem Seed round for his deal of the week, even if he doesn't want to use it. In short, couples of all types have different money management needs, making Tandem a potential hit.Briq: Mary Ann has been covering this company for some time, making its recent extension round well worth our time.AI and the enterprise: AI is going to change everything, AI is going to make your job irrelevant, AI is going to eat your lunch. So we hear. The enterprise, however, is singing a slightly different tune.Valuations, and their potential recovery: Sadly it doesn't seem too likely that we are about to see a massive rebound in startup valuations this year. The good news? It doesn't seem too likely that we are about to see massive price erosion, either.For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity's Simplecast website.Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more! Credits: Equity is hosted by Editor in Chief of TechCrunch+ Alex Wilhelm and TechCrunch Senior Reporter Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our interview show, where we sit down with interesting, knowledgeable folks and dive deep into their favorite topics. This time around, we invited Cowboy Ventures' Aileen Lee to chat through her massive new article concerning the unicorn world. If you didn't know, it was Lee who initially coined the term “unicorn” in a TechCrunch article back in 2013.Lee talked us through the data and taught us all sorts of new terms. You can sort of understand what one means when they say “unicorpse” or “zombiecorn,” but apparently there are even more exotic unicorn forms out there. We even wound up comparing venture capital returns to peaches in a bucket of piss (her words, not ours!).We also talked about where unicorns are based today (19% in New York, for example), and why seed rounds are getting bigger. But really, you should read her post while you listen so you can have all the context while we chew through the numbers!And for those of you who are here for the answer to our question, “How are Fortune 500 companies ranked?”, well, the answer is revenue and not market cap.For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity's Simplecast website.Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more! Credits: Equity is hosted by Editor in Chief of TechCrunch+ Alex Wilhelm and TechCrunch Senior Reporter Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Stocks closed near session highs and powered higher throughout the final hours of trading; RBC Head of US Equity Strategy Lori Calvasina on if the early-year mini-swoon is over. Humana's worst day since June 2023 after warning its costs would be higher-than-expected; Mizuho's Jared Holz on what it means and how to play the sector. Nuveen CIO Saira Malik, who oversees $100B+ in AUM, talks her 2024 playbook. Cowboy Ventures' Aileen Lee coined the term “unicorn” for private companies in 2013; now she's back on what the next decade will look like. Plus, former Fed Vice Chair Alan Blinder on the Fed's next moves and Citi's Drew Pettit on playing fintech names.
The term unicorn to describe a private technology company with a valuation of more than $1 billion has become a common currency since it was first coined by Aileen Lee, founder of Cowboy Ventures. Unicorns have even become a symbol of national achievement with politicians [Rishi Sunak] vowing to transform the UK from a United Kingdom to a Unicorn Kingdom in 2023. There has been a surge in the number of unicorns over the past decade with valuations pumped by more than a decade of cheap money. But recent geopolitical crises and rising inflation and interest rates have exposed the rampant overvaluation of some unicorns. The collective noun for unicorns is a blessing: now many investors might consider them a curse. Frontier IP Chief Executive Officer Neil Crabb outlines the perils to investors of ignoring fundamental valuation metrics and explains the company's approach to building companies, the factors needed to achieve outstanding success and what narwhals can teach us that unicorns can't.
Generated by Tailor.Get your own personalized daily podcast! Sign up for freeIn this episode of the Daily Tech News Roundup, we cover a range of topics including WeWork's bankruptcy, the role of AI in workforce efficiency, Snap Inc's user base in India, the turnaround of the fintech industry, Chinese VC firms investing in US AI startups, the success of Seattle's startup-saving firm, the Cambridge-based Bison Ventures investing in deep tech startups, the phenomenon of unicorn valuations, and the thriving NYC startup scene with over $933M in investment. Tune in for the latest in tech news and trends. Music: Mosaic [Electro] by Hardcore Scm. Licensed under: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/News articles cited in this episode:- Explained: Why WeWork failed, and what is next https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/explained-why-wework-failed-and-what-is-next/articleshow/105048694.cms- Former investors from Bill Gates' investment office launch $135M Seattle-based ‘deep tech' fund https://www.geekwire.com/2023/former-investors-from-bill-gates-investment-office-launch-135m-seattle-based-deep-tech-fund/- It's been a long time since we've seen such positive signals in fintech https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/08/its-been-a-long-time-since-weve-seen-such-positive-signals-in-fintech/- WeWork seeks permission to begin canceling leases in bankruptcy https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/wework-seeks-permission-to-begin-canceling-leases-in-bankruptcy/articleshow/105075917.cms- The AlleyWatch October 2023 New York Venture Capital Funding Report https://www.alleywatch.com/2023/11/new-york-venture-capital-october-2023/- 10 years on, Aileen Lee explains why focusing on unicorn valuations makes sense https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/08/aileen-lee-unicorns-interview/- In India, 200 million users is a relatively small number; we have room to grow: Snap cofounder Evan Spiegel https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/in-india-200-million-users-is-a-relatively-small-number-we-have-room-to-grow-snap-cofounder-evan-spiegel/articleshow/105047868.cms
In 2013, venture capitalist Aileen Lee coined the term "unicorn" for startups. What makes a startup a unicorn? How rare are they? And how do investors assign value to a company that might not actually do anything? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
When markets are volatile and times are turbulent, being a VC can be a nerve-wracking experience. How should a seasoned board member handle themselves when anxieties are high? In this podcast conversation, Jerry sits down with Aileen Lee from Cowboy Ventures and Brad Feld from Foundry Group to discuss how to be an effective board member in stormy times. This conversation offers much to think about if you're a board member, new VC, or CEO. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! Follow our step by step guides: - How To: Leave a Review on Your Computer: - How To: Leave a Review on Your iPhone: Never miss an episode! Sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date on all our episode releases.
Ten to fifteen years ago, a startup company with a value of over one billion dollars seemed like something almost impossible or mythical. That's why venture capitalist Aileen Lee, came up with the term “unicorn” in 2013 to describe such unique and rare startup companies. However, as of June 2022, CB Insights identified over 1100 unicorns worldwide. So we were wondering... What principles have allowed these companies to achieve such a high level of growth? And how do we best maintain that level of growth? To help us with this incredible topic today, we have Pablo Dominguez and Matthew May, authors of the book, What a Unicorn Knows: How Leading Entrepreneurs Use Lean Principles to Drive Sustainable Growth. Pablo and Matthew also work for Insight Partners, where they have seen over 90 unicorns.
The number of global venture capital (VC) investments dipped in 2022, thanks to ongoing geopolitical tensions, turbulence in global capital markets, supply chain issues, and increasing interest rates. This has caused VC investors to be increasingly wary. With no end in sight to the economic uncertainty, VC investment could remain soft, with downward pressure on valuations resulting in decreasing levels of investment. Founder and Managing Partner at Cowboy Ventures, Aileen Lee, discusses the state of the VC market in 2022 with Founder and CEO of SaaStr Jason Lemkin—the change in VC activities and seed deals, the importance of the board in the success of a startup, profitability and much more. Full video: https://youtu.be/R3G6P19qHY4 Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the
Sergio Oliveira, o Arquiteto de Unicórnios, mais propriamente da @FARFETCH Sérgio é arquiteto de software e especializado em soluções de alta disponibilidade, experiência que foi adquirindo ao longo dos tempos, passando pela Codevision, Ascendi e por fim a Farfetch onde já leva 10 anos de carreira. A Farfetch, para quem não sabe, foi o primeiro unicórnio português, ou seja, a primeira startup portuguesa com uma avaliação de mercado no valor de mais de mil milhões de dólares americanos. O termo foi criado em 2013 por Aileen Lee. E como chega uma startup portuguesa ao estatuto de unicórnio? Pois é exatamente esta e outras questões que temos para o Sérgio, apesar de estar mais ligado ao desenvolvimento de software o Sérgio presenciou todas as dores de crescimento da empresa ao longo dos últimos 10 anos, conhecendo-a desde que tinha apenas 12 developers para os atuais +2k. Selecionada como uma das melhores empresas para trabalhar em Portugal, o que faz desta plataforma de venda de moda de luxo tão especial? Que cultura empresarial é implementada para que se consiga criar equipas e estruturas para crescer ao ponto de registar um resultado líquido de +729 milhões de dólares no primeiro trimestre de 2022? Se estas dentro do mundo das startups e dos unicórnios, este é o episódio certo para ti. ;) Uma produção GAFFVisuals https://gaffvisuals.com/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/bitalk/message
In this video, we take a look at India's journey to 100 unicorns, from it's first ever startup unicorn in 2011, in the form of inMobi, to neobanking startup Open becoming 100th unicorn in 2022. The term 'unicorn' was created by American VC and entrepreneur Aileen Lee in 2013, she took all of the U.S.-based software companies that were started in or before 2003 and had achieved a valuation of $1 billion through public or private market investors, and put them in a club: the Unicorn Club. In India's case, it's unicorn journey started in 2011, when InMobi, a company that was founded in 2007, became a unicorn. Following this, Flipkart became a unicorn in 2012, Mu Sigma in 2014 and then Ola in 2014. Snapdeal also became a unicorn in 2014, but they have since exited from this club due to their valuation falling below $1 Billion. Companies like Quikr, Hike and Shopclues also fall in this category. Then we have companies who have been since acquired and also bags the question that should they be counted as unicorn today? Flipkart is an example here, which was acquired by Walmart. Then you have startups like Billdesk, which was bought by PayU, PhonePe getting acquired by Flipkart and BigBasket, which became a unicorn in 2019 and were acquired by Tata Digital in 2021. All this while, India's unicorn growth was pretty slow but steady till 2017, when Jio launched its 4G services, and this brought a mobile internet revolution in the country. From 1 unicorn in 2017, India saw 10 unicorns in 2018: B2C unicorns included Swiggy, OYO, BYJU'S, Policybazaar, Paytm Mall, and Phonepe, and B2B unicorns included Rivigo, Freshworks, Billdesk, and Udaan, which was the fastest company to become a unicorn at the time - it took them just 26 months. Then, in 2019, things slowed down a bit, with just 7 unicorns that year: in the B2C category were Ola Electric, Lenskart, Dream11, Delhivery, and BigBasket, and in the B2B category were Incertis and Druva. In 2020, COVID increased people's reliance upon the internet, and host of Indian e-commerce startups like Firstcry, Cars24, and Nykaa became unicorns. Facilitating these online payments resulted in fintech companies like Razorpay and Pine Labs also achieving unicorn status. B2C startups like Verse Innovation (Dailyhunt), ed-tech startup Unacademy, fintech startup Zerodha, and SaaS startup like Zenoti and Postman also became unicorn in the same year. 2020, was followed by an even bigger year in terms of unicorns in 2021, when 44 Indian companies became unicorns. This year saw 11 E-commerce startups (Spinny, OfBusiness, Moglix, Mensa, Meesho, Mamaearth, Licious, Infra.Market, Good Glam Group, GlobalBees, Droom), 11 Fintech startups (Zeta, Slice, Mobikwik, Groww, Digit, CRED, Coinswitch Kuber, CoinDCX, Chargebee, BharatPe and Acko) becoming unicorns. Then we have 5 enterprisetech and SaaS startups (Mindtickle, MapmyIndia, Gupshup, BrowserStack, Apna), 4 health startups (Cure.fit, Innovaccer, Pharmeasy, Pristyn Care), 4 consumer service startups (Blinkit, CarDekho, Rebel Foods, Urban Company), and 3 edtech startups (Eruditus, Vedantu and Upgrad) also becoming unicorns. Other 2021 unicorn categories include Media and Entertainment startups MPL and sharechat, Logistics startup Blackbuck, Traveltech startup Easemytrip , Real Estate startup Nobroker, and Manufacturing startup Zetwork. Talking about where where these startups coming from, they were all from tier 1 cities. Bangalore is leading this list with 39 unicorns, NCR region with 32 unicorns, mumbai with 16, Pune with 6, Chennai with 5 and Hyderabad with 2. Now we are halfway in 2022 and we have already produced and now it seems that by 2025, India will have upwards of 250 unicorns. So that will be exciting to watch and we will continue to track all of this in our upcoming episodes.
About a week ago, an Indian startup founder quipped on Twitter that the definition of a ‘Unicorn' as used in the venture capital industry should now change to $1 billion of funding raised. The term currently refers to a startup that reaches a valuation of $1 billion. He was commenting on the flurry of unicorns that have been created globally. The term was originally coined by US venture capitalist Aileen Lee in 2013 when there were just 39 startups globally that fit the definition, which has not changed since then. Achieving the milestone was once considered elusive. But India's example shows the term unicorn no longer holds the same weight as before. In a blockbuster year for startup funding, India saw creation of 42 unicorns, a three times jump from 11 new unicorns in 2020 and nine in the previous year. Starting with Digit Insurance on January 15 to Pristyn Care on December 8, the unicorns came from a range of sectors. The 42 companies are collectively valued at more than $90 billion. The year also saw the fastest and the slowest unicorns. Mensa Brands, which acquires Direct-to-Consumer fashion, home and personal care labels, became a unicorn in just six months. While in March, Chennai-based NBFC Five Star Business Finance achieved the status after 37 years in existence. Fintech was arguably the biggest contributor to the unicorn universe this year. CRED, Groww, Zeta, BharatPe, Mobikwik, Upstox, Slice were the seven fintech additions. While edtech industry leader Byju's became a decacorn this year with $18 billion valuation, three of its rivals joined the unicorn club this year -- Eruditus, upGrad and Vedantu. Indian edtech startups have gained greater investor confidence after China mandated all online education companies to register as non-profits. Despite regulatory uncertainty, India also saw two crypto unicorns in CoinDCX and CoinSwitch Kuber. The B2B commerce space too saw a fundraising frenzy with Infra. Market, Moglix, ofBusiness and Zetwerk turning unicorns. The funding activity this year was led by Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global, SoftBank Group and Accel. As it rained unicorns, it has also been the year of startup IPOs. The listing of Zomato, Nykaa, PolicyBazaar and Paytm were a big boost to the startup ecosystem as it showed that India can give an exit path to investors. China's crackdown on tech companies has helped India bolster its attractiveness as an emerging market alternative. Early-stage venture capital fund 3one4 Capital predicts that India will be home to more than 150 unicorns by 2025. The unprecedented funding boom is expected to spill over to the next year as well, helped by India's rapid adoption of technology and innovative offerings from startups. With another nine days left in the year, it is likely that we may see a few more surprise announcements. Watch video
Unicorn is a term used in the venture capital industry to describe a privately held startup company with a value of over $1 billion. The term was first popularized by venture capitalist Aileen Lee, founder of Cowboy Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital fund based in Palo Alto, California.Unicorns can also refer to a recruitment phenomenon within the human resources (HR) sector. HR managers may have high expectations to fill a position, leading them to look for candidates with qualifications that are higher than required for a specific job. In essence, these managers are looking for a unicorn, which leads to a disconnect between their ideal candidate versus who they can hire from the pool of people available.
From being a mythical creature to a regular feature in business and financial discussions, unicorns certainly have come a long way. Do you know even the likes of McDonald's and Ford Motors began as startups? In its latest outlook on the ‘State of the Economy', the Reserve Bank said that the year 2021 could turn out to be India's year of IPOs, with the domestic unicorns setting "domestic stock markets on fire and global investors in a frenzy" through their public issues. RBI on unicorn boom: "A new era has clearly begun. Unicorns do not rely on inherited wealth or depend on bank loans or extra-business connections, but on talent and innovative ideas. These are the children of liberalisation, not of the wealthy" It is something great to hear, isn't it? But do you know what it means to be a unicorn? Well, in venture capital, the word refers to any startup that had reached the valuation of $1 billion.? Aileen Lee, founder, Cowboy ventures It was Aileen Lee, founder of Cowboy ventures who for the very first time used this word in 2013 to emphasise the rarity of such startups. Since then, business leaders and publications have use this term quite liberally to write on or discuss startups. To be a unicorn, however, is no cakewalk. The term is associated with some companies that have changed the rules of the game with their innovative solutions and concepts and, of course, business models. To name a few, just think of Uber, which changed the way people travelled. Or Paytm, which made the life of a common man easier with bill payments and bookings on their fingertips. Airbnb changed the way people planned their stay while travelling. So, the key features of a unicorn is their novelty in the proposal and the potential to disrupt the market, besides their being high on tech. The common question that people ask is - can only a startup be a unicorn? Yes. The term is for startups that have a valuation of over 1 billion dollars. And startups that exceed the valuation of $10 billion are called decacorns. The entities with over $100 billion valuation are hectocorns. So, currently how many unicorns does India have? The RBI in its August 2021 bulletin said “it is estimated that India has 100 unicorns, with 10 new ones created in 2019 and 13 in 2020, in spite of the pandemic, and 3 per month in 2021 so far". According to US-based analytics platform CB Insights' database, however, out of a total of 642 unicorns around the world, India had 29 as of April 2021. The variation in number may be on account of how a start-up is counted as a unicorn and at what point it is phased out of the list. Now, is being a unicorn an achievement? It is surely a marker for a company in its growth story, but one can argue whether it's a major achievement or not. The reason is that there's nothing real about a start-up valuation. It's a notional value, depending on the cash flow availability, ambition and assessment of the key investors funding and backing a startup. Since this valuation has nothing to do with revenues, profits or any other benchmarks used in any traditional business, it's something of a sentiment-driven play by investors. So, it is not necessary that every unicorn will end up being a super-successful startup. Watch Video
Marianna Tessel (CTO @ Intuit) & Aileen Lee (Founder/Managing Partner @ Cowboy Ventures) cover how to navigate the build vs. buy decision! They share the frameworks they use to make a “buy” decision, how they assess engineering talent during acquisitions, how they decide between vendor software vs. open-source vs. building yourself. Plus the leadership skills that help Marianna lead a 5,000+ person team! MARIANNA TESSEL, CTO @ INTUIT Marianna oversees Intuit's technology strategy and leads all of Intuit's product engineering, data science, information technology and information security teams worldwide. Marianna's been at the forefront of significant tech transformations, including virtualization, cloud, and dev ops. Marianna previously served as Executive VP of Strategic Development at Docker, held leadership roles at VMware, Ariba, and General Magic working on the forefront of significant tech transformations, including virtualization, cloud, and dev ops. the forefront of significant tech transformations, including virtualization, cloud, and dev ops. AILEEN LEE, FOUNDER & MANAGING PARTNER @ COWBOY VENTURES Aileen is founding Partner at Cowboy Ventures, a team that backs seed-stage technology companies re-imagining work and life through technology, what they call “life 2.0”. Cowboy Ventures works with startups like Guild Education, Lightstep, Dollar Shave Club, and Tally. Aileen periodically writes about technology insights and is known for coining the business term “unicorn” for public and private companies valued over $1bn. She has been named to the Forbes Midas List of best investors and Forbes Most Powerful Women, as well as to Time Magazine's 100 most influential people. Prior to Cowboy, Aileen was a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, was founding CEO of RMG Networks, and worked at Gap Inc in operating roles. She has degrees from MIT and HBS, is mom of 3, wife to a startup founder, an Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow and co-founder of the non-profit All Raise - aiming to accelerate success for women in the technology ecosystem. SHOW NOTES About Marianna's role at Intuit (2:33) How many acquisitions / build vs. buy decisions have you had to make? (4:35) Marianna's evaluation framework for buying companies (6:26) Assessing engineering talent in acqui-hires (9:37) How do you decide to buy vendor software or build yourself? (15:41) How do you define what's core to the business vs. context? (19:11) Where are you looking to buy instead of build right now? (21:40) Hard & soft skills that helped Marianna advance her career and run a 5000+ person team (23:48) Were you always good at the "developing talent" and "managing" part of being a CTO? (26:50) BROUGHT TO YOU BY... Jellyfish - Jellyfish helps you align engineering work with business priorities and enables you to make better strategic decisions. Learn more at Jellyfish.co/elc Listen to our Bonus Episode w/ Guillermo Fisher, Director of Engineering, Infrastructure @ Handshake on internal mobility, mission-driven decisions, & self-service infrastructure! Listen HERE: https://spoti.fi/3zdNnXn Special thanks to our exclusive accessibility partner Mesmer! Mesmer's AI-bots automate mobile app accessibility testing to ensure your app is always accessible to everybody. To jump-start, your accessibility and inclusion initiative, visit mesmerhq.com/ELC --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/engineeringleadership/message
Welcome to More Equity. Today, we're bringing you a special Moms in VC episode featuring Aileen Lee, Founder & Managing Partner, Cowboy Ventures, Anarghya Vardhana, Partner, Maveron, and Deena Shakir, Partner, Lux Capital. Harlem Capital Principal, Kelly Goldstein leads the conversation with these power house VCs to learn from their experiences, perspective, and advice on VC and motherhood. Listen in to discover what it's like to be a mom in vc and how the broader investing and entrepreneurial ecosystem can foster a supportive and empowering workplace culture.
What is a unicorn? Thanks for asking!A unicorn is a privately-owned start up company valued at over $1bn when launched on the stock market. That’s right, we’re not talking about mythical animals, but economy and finance! The term was popularised in 2013 by venture capitalist Aileen Lee, with the choice of word reflecting the rarity of such success stories. Even more rare are decacorns and hectacorns, which have a value of over $10bn and $100bn respectively. Business analytics platform CB Insights reported that there were 450 unicorns in the world as of October 2020. That number has quadrupled since 2014. Some of the largest are well known, like Byte Dance, Snapchat or AirBNB for example, but most are unknown. Around a half of unicorns are American, and over a third are from Asia. Meanwhile, 16% are from Europe. According to GP Bullhound, the UK is Europe’s leading country by number of unicorns, with 30 in total and a combined value of $87bn. Five new UK companies have achieved that status since last year: Snyk, Checkout.com, Rapyd, HealthTech Babylon and MagicLab.Are you saying all I need is a good idea to turn into my very own unicorn? Well you need a strategy too and most importantly investors. Raising capital is where unicorns are particularly strong and to do that they go through external funding rounds. When a project appeals to investors, they take a chance on the future success of that startup. There’s no expectation of an immediate result, but in the long term investors will get back a return on their investment when the company is sold or launches on the stock market.Well if a company gets to be worth over $1bn, its investors must become super rich! In under 3 minutes, we answer your questions!To listen the last episodes, you can click here: What is Tourette's Syndrome? What is Cluster 5?What are microplastics? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Aileen Lee would be near the top of any short list of the most influential women, and people, in VC. After 13 years at Kleiner Perkins, Aileen struck out on her own, founding seed stage firm Cowboy Ventures, which has invested in many eventual unicorns, a term Aileen actually coined in her famous NYT article. Her conversation with Next Play Founder Ryan Nece explores many of the ways she has felt like an outsider in VC. Her gender is the most obvious, but she also confesses to sometimes feeling like a "guppy swimming with sharks." She's found her swim lane enough to now feel more like a dolphin, not less than, just different. Aileen also shares some insight on where Cowboy is investing these days, and why they increasingly love "un-sexy" businesses, especially those that build software for businesses that rely on archaic systems and infrastructure. Aileen is full of actionable pearls of wisdom that apply to many walks of life. This great friend of Next Play does it all with a humility that almost makes it hard to appreciate just how accomplished she really is.
In this episode of DNA of a MAKER, we asked Aileen Lee, one of the biggest names in tech and founder of Cowboy Ventures, one of the first venture capital firms launched by a woman, to name the traits that have propelled her toward success. Aileen also discusses how she managed the blindspots that may have hindered her personal and professional growth and reveals why this new generation of female leaders impresses and inspires her.Plus, an insightful round of rapid fire questions that will shed light on the characteristics that makes each woman unique and interesting. This series is funded by 23andMe. All content is editorially independent, with no influence or input from the brand.
Jennifer received her BA from Harvard University cum laude and MBA from Harvard Business School and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughters Aurora and Selene.She co-founded Rent the Runway in 2009 with Jennifer Fleiss, and has since raised over $525 million in capital, growing the business to over 11 million members and a valuation of $1 billion. In her role, she sets the strategic priorities of the business and leads the company in growing all areas of the business, including marketing, technology, product and analytics. Under Hyman’s leadership, Rent the Runway’s offerings have expanded to over 600 labels, including Proenza Schouler , Marni and Victoria Beckham . Brands work with Rent the Runway via wholesale relationships, revenue share arrangements on the Rent the Runway platform, as well as co-manufacturing of designer collections exclusive to the Rent the Runway ecosystem.Hyman has been honoured with recognitions like the “TIME 100” most influential people in the world, Forbes “12 Most Disruptive Names in Business”, Fortune’s “Most Powerful Female Entrepreneurs”, “Trailblazers”, “40 under 40”, Fast Company’s “Most Creative People in Business” and the Tribeca Film Festival’s “Disruptive Innovation” award. Under her leadership, Rent the Runway has been named to CNBC’s “Disruptor 50” and Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies list multiple times. Serving as Rent the Runway’s spokesperson, Jennifer is a frequent guest on television and a regular lecturer at universities and business schools nationwide.Hyman serves on the Board of Directors of The Estée Lauder Companies, on the Women.nyc Advisory Board and is a Founding Member of the NYSE Board Advisory Council which champions increased board diversity.(Interviewed by Aileen Lee).
Aileen Lee is a U.S. seed investor. A venture capital investor, she is the founder of Cowboy Ventures. Lee coined the often-used Silicon Valley term unicorn in a TechCrunch article "Welcome To The Unicorn Club: Learning from Billion-Dollar Startups." In this episode of the SaaStr podcast, Aileen and SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin take a deep dive on how Aileen finds deals, her tips for a winning pitch, and the state of VC in 2020.
“Cuando uno soluciona un problema y lo hace mejor de lo que existía antes es un avance de la humanidad. Todos tenemos el poder pero a veces tenemos que despertarlo.” – Matias Woloski Matias Woloski es el cofundador y CTO de Auth0. Auth0 es el quinto unicornio en Argentina después de OLX, Despegar, MercadoLibre, y Globant. Auth0 fue fundada en 2013 al lado de Eugenio Pace, la firma ya cuenta con más de 500 empleados en más de 30 países, dado que casi el 60% de ellos trabaja de manera remota. Cuando se habla de unicornios y personas que hacen lo imposible me acuerdo de uno de los mejores consejos que escuché en una entrevista de Austin Kleon. Menciona que la mayoría de las personas (incluido yo) tienen una fascinación obscena con un Elon Musk, un Steve Jobs y la gente detrás de un unicornio. En este momento hay 474 unicornios (una compañía con una valoración de mil millones de dólares, frase de Aileen Lee) en el mundo. Una startup tiene una probabilidad de menos del %1 de convertirse en un unicornio. Las probabilidades están en contra porque no se puede producir suerte voluntariamente. Lo que se puede producir voluntariamente es disciplina (Matias Woloski tiene más de 20 años desarrollando, hablando, y escribiendo sobre tecnología) y modelos mentales. Comprender los modelos mentales y la dedicación de las personas detrás de estos unicornios le permite ver el mundo a través de sus ojos y, por un breve momento, ponerse en el lugar de los gigantes. Menciono esto porque en este podcast apenas discutimos los detalles de Auth0. Por lo tanto, quiero compartir una pequeña pieza de una entrevista con Matias Woloski para brindate algo de contexto. “Empezamos hace siete años y fue en el momento justo porque a partir de ciertos eventos la ciberseguridad empezaba ser un tema. Entonces decidimos enfocarnos en un área en particular: la de la autenticación, ya que uno de los problemas más comunes era, y sigue siendo, que un hacker logre extraer una lista de usuarios y passwords de sitios que no tuvieron el recaudo de protegerlos de forma correcta”. - Link “Entre 2008-2009 estaba cambiando el mundo, apareció la nube, entre otras cosas, y las empresas empezaron a tener problemas que nosotros empezamos a analizar. Pensamos en cómo proteger a los usuarios y al mismo tiempo en cómo hacer para que accedan a las cosas que necesitaban. En 2010 escribimos un libro sobre esta problemática. Y después llegó Auth0. Hay mucho por hacer en el ámbito de la ciberseguridad y nosotros vemos esto día a día”. - Link En este podcast hablamos de Steve Jobs, el poder de la simplicidad, el diseño, el trabajo en Japón, viviendo en un mal motel en Seattle, Microsoft, decir no a millones de dólares y mucho más. ***Si te gusta el podcast, ¿podrías considerar dejar una breve reseña en Apple Podcasts | iTunes? Es rápido, no duele y hace una gran diferencia para convencer a los futuros invitados y promocionar el podcast.Enlaces importantes:The Frye Show.com con más información, libros, artículos y más...Boletín creativo - 747The Corvus Show - CorvusThe Frye Show LIVE - LIVEThe Frye Show - MembresíaLinkedIn - robbiejfryeTwitter - robbiejfryeInstagram - robbiejfryeFacebook - robbiejfrye ★ Support this podcast ★
RC013 Crafting a Unique and Bespoke Educational Experience with Aileen Lee & Dr. Spencer Fowler Mrs. Aileen Lee is Chief Strategy Officer at The Affiliated High School of Peking University's education group which supports twelve campuses across China. Aileen previously served as the Deputy Head of School at The Affiliated High School of Peking University's Dalton Academy, in addition to Director of College Counselling, Head of Admissions and Development. Dr. Spencer Fowler is a former professional athlete, firefighter and an educational leader who presently serves as CEO and Superintendent of The Affiliated High School of Peking University's Dalton Academy. Spencer has spent the last fifteen years working in international education as a K-12 teacher. He has been an administrator in Chile, Egypt, Germany, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, Vietnam, and China while earning his Masters and Doctorate of Educational Leadership. Aileen Lee & Dr. Spencer Fowler join us this week to discuss the unique and bespoke educational experience they have crafted at The Affiliated High School of Peking University's Dalton Academy “The school is setup and functions as a playground that allows the faculty to continue to contribute in their area of expertise." - Dr. Spencer Fowler "For us, going into education and being able to change lives, it's 100% the reason why we do the things we do." - Aileen Lee This week on the Roll Call Podcast: The origin and vision of The Affiliated High School of Peking University's Dalton Academy The traditional Chinese education system and a new paradigm When students don't yet know what they want to do Measuring the success of students The evolution of The Affiliated High School of Peking University's Dalton Academy Overcoming challenges The benefits of offering boarding for students Open minded students and parents Are others trying to do the same? The Access Scholarship - A refugees success story Resources Mentioned: https://www.pkudalton.com This episode is sponsored by REACH Boarding This episode is sponsored by REACH Boarding, an award-winning, feature-rich boarding school management tool used by over 400 schools in five continents to manage risk, increase efficiency, and improve communication in boarding school management. To learn more about REACH Boarding, its features and integrations, visit www.reachboarding.com Empowering the Future of Independent Education & Boarding School Management Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of Roll Call with Brian Murray and Josh Simons, the show helping education professionals stay at the forefront of global education trends. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts and leave your honest review. Don’t forget to share your favorite episodes with your colleagues on social media to help us spread the word and help more education professionals stay at the forefront of independent education and boarding school management techniques to empower the future of the education environment.
Introduction Welcome to Distilling Venture Capital. I am your host, Bill Griesinger Distilling VC is a visionary podcast that provides an insightful and informed view of the key trends affecting the VC and tech startup world. My mission is to cut through and go beyond the hype and Silicon Valley pop-jargon that tends to dominate the tech landscape. I seek to provide transparency and Opening Observations: Given that this is my inaugural episode under the Distilling VC label, I thought it would be appropriate and useful to provide you with some brief background regarding the podcast and the type of content you can expect in the future and a little about me… First, the podcast; The vast majority of episodes I will bring will take you inside the insights, challenges, successes and the journeys revealed and shared directly through the words and experiences of tech company entrepreneurs, sometimes from the VCs who back them and others in the tech and VC community…So, I’ll usually have very interesting guests. Some brief background on me, your host: I have spent a large part of my professional life (last 20 years) working in the Venture Finance business assisting VC-backed tech companies in procuring the capital they need to grow Over the years, I have had the opportunity and good fortune to meet and work with incredible, visionary management teams, many savvy investors and have had the privilege of underwriting and financing ground-breaking technology companies, many of which continue to have an impact on the technology landscape today (like Google; a $10M deal in 2001, for example). With that as backdrop, today I want to focus on a topic that I believe signals something has gone awry in tech startup and VC land over the last 4-5 years. And it concerns me greatly. Have you noticed, Everyone seems to be fascinated with “unicorns?” Venture capitalists, tech company founders and management teams, the tech press and the financial press and many others, So, today’s episode will delve into and distill down, “Unicorn-mania” so we can make sense of what’s really going on. Let me state for the record, It Is a big distraction from what’s really important in evaluating and valuing venture-backed tech companies. Furthermore, it really touches upon the issues of transparency and accuracy, and ultimately the credibility of the industry itself, in my view The longer this mania continues, I believe it presents dangerous consequences for multiple players inside and outside the VC industry. So, what am I talking about? Let’s unpack this… First, some definitional context: What is a Unicorn company that we hear so much hype about today? In tech and VC parlance, it is a private startup tech company that is valued at $1B or more, in theory, referred to as its “Post-money Valuation.” Great, what does that mean? Not what you may think it does, as I will explain… And for historical context, The term unicorn, in VC, originated…in late 2013 when Cowboy Ventures Partner, Aileen Lee, coined the term for what she described as a tech company with a $1B valuation – and noted it was a pretty rare thing, as she pointed out then – which was correct. There were 39 companies identified then in the ‘Unicorn Club.’ 27 of those were in the Bay Area! So, it really was just a Silicon Valley phenomenon in the beginning… Lee admitted the term probably wasn’t the best or most well-thought-out description but went with it nonetheless. “Yes we know the term “unicorn” is not perfect – unicorns apparently don’t exist, and these companies do – but we like the term because to us, it means something extremely rare, and magical” Aileen Lee, Cowboy Ventures, Nov. 2013 The term was reinforced further in a 2015 interview with Crunchbase, and it has unfortunately, been with us ever since, to the detriment of the industry, in my view. The Cowboy Ventures’ website, even contains, to this day, a link to what it calls its “Unicorn Handling Guide” or protocol insisting that anyone using the term give proper attribution to the firm. No one actually adheres to this “guideline” today, of course – but there it is. This is not to malign or denigrate Cowboy Ventures as a reputable VC firm in any way. It is, by most measures, a successful venture firm boasting a number of impressive investments and it has had a substantial number of notable exits, which you can find on their website. So, I’m sure their LPs and their portfolio companies alike are pleased… The real issue is not about Cowboy Ventures at all…but rather a group-think mentality that has gripped and permeated venture capital…with no discernable benefit… How Many Unicorns Are There? It depends on who you ask & upon whose data you rely: (Q2 2019), there were around 450 companies globally designated as ‘Unicorns’ Fast fwd to Feb. 2020 and it’s alleged to be 580! Valued at ~ $2T (From Recent Crunchbase Unicorn Leaderboard) Q4 2019 CB Insights states there are about 390 (CB Insights) Roughly 48% to 50% are in the US About 24%-25% are in China UK and India come in 3rd and 4th with roughly 5% each Here’s the central problem – The $1B+ valuations ascribed to so-called unicorn companies are not true market valuations at all. They all utilize a metric called “post-money valuation” that inflates their value. In fact, based on a Stanford Univ. Study, which I will dig into in a moment, 100% of all unicorns are actually over-valued to some degree when applying proper market valuation metrics based upon the terms and conditions found in the Preferred Stock rounds. There is both Good News and Bad News to report with respect to this phenomenon: The Good News: There is a solution, a remedy, if you will, for this self-inflicted malady of unicorn-mania. It is The Stanford Graduate School of Business Study - And it has been readily available for several years. Stanford GSB (By Prof. Ilya Strebulaev and his colleague, Will Gornall) – which I’ll dig into in a moment Now, The Bad News: Few are paying attention, and some are deliberately ignoring the solution that’s been made available. Why? The Study: Squaring Venture Capital Valuations with Reality Downloadable pdf found here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2955455 So, let’s dig into the study. The results are astounding and vitally important to EVERYONE connected to Venture Capital, tech startups, capital markets and even consumers – I’ll explain. Released in April 2017 by the Stanford Univ. Graduate School of Business The Authors: Prof. Ilya Strebulaev, Prof. of Private Equity & Prof. of Finance, Graduate School of Bus., Stanford University Will Gornall, Sauder School of Bus., University of British Columbia, (Gornall earned his PhD from the Stanford Graduate School of Bus.) Summary of Findings – From the Study Abstract: We develop a valuation model for venture capital--backed companies and apply it to 135 US unicorns, that is, private companies with reported valuations above $1 billion. We value unicorns using financial terms from legal filings and find that reported unicorn post--money valuations average 48% above fair value, with 14 being more than 100% above. Reported valuations assume that all shares are as valuable as the most recently issued preferred shares. We calculate values for each share class, which yields lower valuations because most unicorns gave recent investors major protections such as initial public offering (IPO) return guarantees (15%), vetoes over down-IPOs (24%), or seniority to all other investors (30%). Common shares lack all such protections and are 56% overvalued. After adjusting for these valuation-inflating terms, almost one-half (65 out of 135) of unicorns lose their unicorn status. Important takeaway regarding the findings of the Stanford Study: The results and findings are not predicated upon some intricate mathematical or econometric model requiring reliance on multiple assumptions and conditions to arrive at its conclusions. On the contrary, the Stanford Study valuations are derived directly from the legal, contractual terms and conditions negotiated between the venture investors and the companies. Therefore, the study utilizes the actual economic terms of each Preferred round as it was negotiated – No assumptions or conjecture about the values in the Study are necessary. This is a critical point. It’s a Consumer Protection Issue: A number of the largest US mutual fund companies (Fidelity, JH, T. Rowe Price and Vanguard) have invested directly in private co. unicorns In 2015, Fidelity > $1.3B into unicorns! That’s more than any US-based VC fund invested that year. Including $235M in WeWork, $129M in Zenefits – A company that hired too many people, grew too fast, and the company culture spiraled out of control, and $118M in Blue Apron, the food delivery startup that IPOd in June 2017 and is now looking for a buyer… What is the common thread on all these investments by major mutual fund companies? They all used the meaningless post-money valuation to value these private tech company assets in their portfolios. Let that sink in for a moment. It’s Mind-boggling Incredibly, they have accepted and used these meaningless valuations to mark their holdings of these private tech companies w/o further analysis – a completely irresponsible methodology. It surely doesn’t inspire confidence in their ability to perform proper valuation analytics Where’s the adherence to the fiduciary responsibility of these investment firms to their clients? There are real financial implications for any retail investor in a mutual fund (401k or directly) related to this high-risk category. How about institutions? Univ. endowments, public pension funds, etc.? Are mutual fund companies fully disclosing real risk of this asset class to their retail investors? Accurately? How so, if at all? (e.g. – Fidelity had to recently write down its WeWork holdings to reflect the difficulties the company has “reported” after the cancelation of its IPO.) In addition, 3rd party equity market platforms, such as EquityZen, are providing average retail investors exposure to this class of priv. company unicorns…never before available. Where are the Real Journalists? On the Media side - There exists an almost a schizophrenic-like behavior exhibited by the technology press in its years-long coverage of unicorns; To be sure, at the beginning there were some real attempts by a handful of outlets to highlight the findings of the Stanford Study, which were astounding; On the one hand, tech & financial media and the data analytics groups (CB Insights, Pitchbook) seem to recognize the lack of rigor and reality associated with over-valued unicorn companies. They openly refer to it at times in their reporting e.g. - CB Insights CEO, Anand Sanwal, recently opined in an August 2019 piece that it (unicorn status) is often used as a scheme to attract top talent in a very tight hiring market for key tech talent… At the same time, however, they ALL seem to vacillate between this recognition that something isn’t quite right about the valuations, yet still breathlessly, gleefully and even feeling duty-bound to report on the next stable, class, pack, leaderboard or club of unicorn companies, which have allegedly “achieved” unicorn status as a result of their last preferred stock financing round; Some of which are even “born,” as has been reported! Who knew? Just a matter of being born into the unicorn aristocracy, I guess. From my experience, a $1B tech company isn’t ‘born.’ They are built, nurtured and grown with talent, hard work and execution with a value proposition geared to solving real, identifiable needs and wants of customers. Did you ever notice that the PE industry doesn’t have an equivalent designation (Unicorns) for its $1B+ value companies, even those that are in the tech category? Let’s Summarize Where We Are: So, The widely touted tech unicorn is a myth…So, why are so many tech and business news outlets breathlessly reporting about it as if there is some meaningful significance behind these widely hyped values? We surely know that unicorns are mythical and not real – just like the post-money valuations touted and hyped by Silicon Valley and many others… How do we know that? The Stanford Study proves it! Again, we’ve had the empirical evidence showing exactly that since the Study was first published in 2017. Keep in mind, that I don’t care or decry that Pref. equity investors desire, negotiate and receive such terms. It’s a matter of proper disclosure…not economics. The market will make its own determination of value associated with such economics. However, the economics must be disclosed…before an IPO or other exit. Every claim that a tech firm has allegedly achieved what is fondly referred to in the Silicon Valley bubble of “Unicorn” status, a valuation of $1B+, should be required to apply an asterisk * next to that proclamation. A footnote detailing and clearly explaining that “post-money valuation” is not market value nor market capitalization and explain how it’s derived. However, there is no such reporting requirement for these private companies. Should there be? You know, in the interest of transparency and accuracy; In other words, some real “truth-in-advertising” I believe it says a lot about the state of reality in tech-land today; A loss of focus on business fundamentals, a willingness to kid ourselves, our LPs and the public about true value… In the long run, history will reflect upon this episode in tech history, as nothing more than a silly aberration…and hopefully a forgotten footnote Conclusion: It’s been fun and, and I will admit, even entertaining at times, but we need to put a stop to this game before it all gets out of hand…and someone gets hurt. The WeWork debacle, among other examples, indicates some have already been harmed…And major mutual funds are in on the game and failing to uphold their fiduciary responsibility to retail investors. Caveat: While unicorns are definitely mythical characters, there is an identifiable, measurable valuation of priv. tech companies – it just isn’t what has been used to arrive at the purported $1B+ valuations promulgated today that are masquerading as unicorns… What I am really hoping we can do is just move on, refocus on the important and relevant metrics in building and growing successful companies, and dismiss the unicorn-mania phase as nothing more than an idyllic aberration and distraction, to be forgotten, for good…because it has served no useful purpose in understanding VC and technology. NONE! [Also See: Silicon Valley has a Media Problem and it’s Getting Worse – Yahoo Finance] [Note: It’s not a media problem. It is a credibility and transparency problem, which is creating negative coverage, that SV finds uncomfortable.]
With the DNA of a MAKER podcast, we wanted to push the conversation forward to the next level — a deep dive into the traits of our MAKERS — and ask, “What are the traits that make MAKERS leaders? What traits give them the courage to fight for diversity and inclusion, and in turn, the courage to effect change?”On DNA of a MAKER, we’re bringing together all different kinds of changemakers -- unified in their commitment to do better and be better -- to see what we can learn from their journey.Apple Podcasts / Google Podcasts / RadioPublic / SimplecastDNA of a MAKER is a Verizon Media production and supported by 23andMe. This podcast is executive produced by Dyllan McGee and Elizabeth Bohnel. This series is produced by Stacy Jackman, Carisse Moy, Kelly Matousek, Jevon Bruh and Jeffrey Pattit, and is edited by Elena Perez, Roy Hamm and Meg Metzger. This series is funded by 23andMe. All content is editorially independent, with no influence or input from the brand.
Apenas han pasado siete años desde que la inversora neoyorquina Aileen Lee, fundadora del fondo de capital riesgo Cowboy Ventures, emplease el término en su artículo “Bienvenido al Club del Unicornio: aprendiendo sobre las nuevas empresas de los 1.000 millones de dólares”. Desde entonces, ese selecto club de startups cuya valoración en el mercado privado alcanza esa cifra se ha multiplicado por más de diez. En esta moneda al aire hablamos con Juan de Antonio (CEO y fundador de Cabify), sobre el periplo hasta lograr ser un unicornio y sobre los planes a futuro de la empresa de movilidad madrileña; con Francisco Canós (socio inversor de Cyber C), analizamos qué tipo de ecosistemas favorecen la aparición de 'unicornios' y por qué hay tan pocos en España; con Luis Martín Cabiedes (profesor de Iniciativa Emprendedora del IESE) y con el periodista Jesús Martínez, compañero de La Información y experto en tecnología, analizamos las dificultades que afectan hoy día a este tipo de startups y cómo puede afectarles el frenazo económico.
In 2013, Aileen Lee coined the term "unicorn" to refer to the growing field of startups with $1 billion valuations. At the time, she was a year into her role as a founder and managing partner of Cowboy Ventures, and her team was preparing a now-influential internal report examining how (and how often) companies with these massive valuations tend to emerge. Her summary of the report, published by TechCrunch, uncovered many insightful datapoints, but also revealed that only 2 of the 39 unicorns they studied had female co-founders, a finding that catalyzed her advocacy for increased diversity in technology startups. She more recently became a founding member of All Raise, a nonprofit organization devoted to increasing the representation of women in the venture-backed tech ecosystem. She describes her circuitous path to a job in venture capital, surfaces some of the central strategies of seed-stage investing, and encourages people from diverse backgrounds to help transform the venture capital business.
In 2013, Aileen Lee coined the term “unicorn” to refer to the growing field of startups with $1 billion valuations. At the time, she was a year into her role as a founder and managing partner of Cowboy Ventures, and her team was preparing a now-influential internal report examining how (and how often) companies with these massive valuations tend to emerge. Her summary of the report, published by TechCrunch, uncovered many insightful datapoints, but also revealed that only 2 of the 39 unicorns they studied had female co-founders, a finding that catalyzed her advocacy for increased diversity in technology startups. She more recently became a founding member of All Raise, a nonprofit organization devoted to increasing the representation of women in the venture-backed tech ecosystem. She describes her circuitous path to a job in venture capital, surfaces some of the central strategies of seed-stage investing, and encourages people from diverse backgrounds to help transform the venture capital business.
In 2013, Aileen Lee coined the term “unicorn” to refer to the growing field of startups with $1 billion valuations. At the time, she was a year into her role as a founder and managing partner of Cowboy Ventures, and her team was preparing a now-influential internal report examining how (and how often) companies with these massive valuations tend to emerge. Her summary of the report, published by TechCrunch, uncovered many insightful datapoints, but also revealed that only 2 of the 39 unicorns they studied had female co-founders, a finding that catalyzed her advocacy for increased diversity in technology startups. She more recently became a founding member of All Raise, a nonprofit organization devoted to increasing the representation of women in the venture-backed tech ecosystem. She describes her circuitous path to a job in venture capital, surfaces some of the central strategies of seed-stage investing, and encourages people from diverse backgrounds to help transform the venture capital business.
The post E988: Aileen Lee, Founder & Managing Partner of Cowboy Ventures, pioneered actionable change to diversify tech & VC, shares early days innovating in e-commerce, insights on current funding landscape, dangers of prioritized growth over sustainability, & lessons learned from backing winners like Dollar Shave Club from LAUNCH Scale 2019 appeared first on This Week In Startups.
The post E988: Aileen Lee, Founder & Managing Partner of Cowboy Ventures, pioneered actionable change to diversify tech & VC, shares early days innovating in e-commerce, insights on current funding landscape, dangers of prioritized growth over sustainability, & lessons learned from backing winners like Dollar Shave Club from LAUNCH Scale 2019 appeared first on This Week In Startups.
A new season of the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders starts on October 9th! Guests this season include Arlan Hamilton, founder and managing partner of Backstage Capital; Barbara Liskov, Institute Professor at MIT’s Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab; Srin Madipalli, accessibility and product manager at Airbnb; Sarah Nahm, co-founder and CEO of Lever; and Aileen Lee, founder of Cowboy Ventures and All Raise. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get new episodes delivered straight to you every Wednesday!
Groupon co-founder Eric Lefkofsky just raised another $200 million for his newest company, Tempus Tempus has built a platform to collect, structure and analyze the clinical data that’s often unorganized in electronic medical record systems. The company also generates genomic data by sequencing patient DNA and other information in its lab. When serial entrepreneur Eric Lefkofsky grows a company, he puts the pedal to the metal. When in 2011 his last company, the Chicago-based coupons site Groupon, raised $950 million from investors, it was the largest amount raised by a startup ever. It was just over three years old at the time, and it went public later that same year. Lefkofsky seems to be stealing a page from the same playbook for his newest company, Tempus. The Chicago-based genomic testing and data analysis company was founded a little more than three years ago, yet it has already hired nearly 700 employees and raised more than $500 million — including a new $200 million round that values the company at $3.1 billion. Password manager maker Dashlane has raised $110 million in its latest round of funding, the company. The company said Sequoia Capital led the Series D round, with partner Jim Goetz joining the board. Dashlane also said Lyft executive Joy Howard was appointed as its new chief marketing officer and will start in August. Dashlane said it will invest its latest funds back into its core product and will focus on addressing the needs of its consumer and business customers. Enterprise cybersecurity startup BlueVoyant raises $82.5M at a $430M+ valuation BlueVoyant — which provides managed security, professional services and, most recently, threat intelligence — has picked up $82.5 million in a Series B round of funding at a valuation in excess of $430 million. the company focuses on three areas of service for its customers: threat intelligence, managed security and professional services (with the latter focused specifically on those related to security implementations and operations). Healthcare data integration startup Abacus Insights lands $12.7M Series A Abacus Insights, an early-stage startup that wants to help coordinate healthcare information across systems, announced a $12.7 million Series A investment today led by CRV. Existing investors 406 Ventures and Echo Health Ventures also participated in the round. The company is trying to make it easier for health insurance companies to share data with various parties in the healthcare system, with the ultimate goal of lowering costs and helping participants across the system, from doctors to pharmacists and other healthcare practitioners, have a better understanding of the overall patient record. Diving into acquisitions, we have Foursquare that bought Placed from Snap Inc. on the heels of $150M in new funding Foursquare just made its first acquisition. The location tech company has acquired Placed from Snap Inc. on the heels of a fresh $150 million investment led by The Raine Group. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Placed founder and CEO David Shim will become president of Foursquare. Placed is the biggest competitor to Foursquare’s Attribution product, which allows brands to track the physical impact (foot traffic to store) of a digital campaign or ad. Up until now, Placed and Attribution by Foursquare combined have measured more than $3 billion in ad-to-store visits. FireEye snags security effectiveness testing startup Verodin for $250M The startup had raised over $33 million since it opened its doors five years ago, according to Crunchbase data, and would appear to have given investors a decent return. With Verodin, FireEye gets a security validation vendor; that is, a company that can run a review against the existing security setup and find gaps in coverage. What else caught our eyes last week? Just a quick shout out to all the companies that are joining the unicorn bandwagon. You know what? 2019 has already coined 42 new unicorns, like Glossier, Calm and Hims, a number that grows each and every week. For context, a total of 19 companies joined the unicorn club in 2013 when Aileen Lee, an established investor, coined the term. Today, there are some 450 companies around the globe that qualify as unicorns, representing a cumulative valuation of $1.6 trillion. However, with $100 million-plus rounds becoming the norm and billion-dollar-plus funds are standard, Unicorns aren’t rare anymore; and a lot of people are talking about rethinking the unicorn framework. Let’s see where that goes. We’ll definitely keep you updated.
In 2018, Emily Chang's Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley made national headlines, further opening up the conversation around discrimination, sexual harassment and toxic work environments taking place across industries and in Silicon Valley. One year later, join Chang and moderator Aileen Lee, partner at Cowboy VC and founder of All Raise, the new nonprofit dedicated to strategically engaging more women and minorities in the founding and funding of technology-driven companies. In this powerful expose, Chang reveals how Silicon Valley got so sexist despite its utopian ideals. Drawing on her deep network of tech insiders, Chang sheds light on how hard it is for women to crack the Silicon ceiling and offers insight on what companies and employees need to do to bring down the “brotopia” culture once and for all. This program was generously supported by Ernst & Young. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Bloomberg's Emily Chang sits down Maha Ibrahim, General Partner, Canaan Kirsten Green, Founding Partner Forerunner Ventures and Aileen Lee, Founder & Partner, Cowboy Ventures to discuss the need for more women in venture capital, trade tariffs impacting VC spending, Facebook's future leadership and regulation in tech.
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Ted Wang is a Partner @ Cowboy Ventures, one of Silicon Valley's leading early-stage funds with the likes of Philz Coffee, Dollar Shave Club, Brandless, DocSend, Accompany and Brit + Co all in their portfolio. As for Ted, prior to VC, Ted spent X years as a leading Silicon Valley lawyer with Fenwick & West where he worked with some of the most notable companies of our times including Facebook, Dropbox, Twitter, Square and Spotify just to name a few. Ted also created the Series Seed Documents - a set of open-sourced financing documents posted on Github used by thousands around the world today. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Ted made his way from one of the most renowned lawyers in the valley with Fenwick & West to partner @ Cowboy alongside Aileen Lee? 2.) How does Ted fundamentally approach risk today? Given this mindset, how does this impact Ted's thinking on optimizing portfolio construction? On the flip side, how has Ted seen many founders wrongly approach the theme of risk? What is the question they need to be asking? What is Ted's story about risk related to his time working with Jet? 3.) What is it that makes Ted believe that "advice is often oversimplified"? If so, how can VCs provide tangible advice to their portfolio companies today? How can founders determine what is the right advice to accept and integrate vs listen and disregard? How does this lead Ted's thinking on the 2 core value adds a VC can provide? What advice did Dropbox Founder, Drew Houston give Ted on when to accept advice? 4.) What does Ted mean when he says "there are 4 parts to venture"? How does Ted think about the theme of learning and self-improvement when assessing founders? How does he look to do this pre-investment? What questions reveal the most? Applying it to himself, where will Ted place his biggest efforts on learning within the realm of venture over the next 12 months? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Ted’s Fave Book: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Ted’s Most Recent Investment: Fullcast As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Ted on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Much like how Carta changed how private companies manage their cap tables and 409A valuations, Carta are now doing the same for fund administration. With Carta’s new, modern fund administration software and services, you get a real-time dashboard of your general ledger, can securely share info with your LPs, and issue capital calls–from the same platform, you accept securities and request cap table access. So essentially, Carta simplifies how startups and investors manage equity, fund administration, and valuations. Go to carta.com/20VC to get 10% off.
新知日历 | 喜马拉雅平台首档自制知识资讯类音频节目从专业人士演讲、权威学术期刊、社会热点文章，行业大数据平台，分析报告等各类来源提取新认知、新观点和新趋势，为用户提供每日高品质知识资讯。新名词 | 小马和独角兽喜马拉雅的朋友，你好，欢迎收听新知日历。独角兽这个词儿，相信大家并不陌生。在西方神话传说中，独角兽是一种虚构的生物，常以白马的形象出现，额前有一个螺旋角，有的还长着翅膀。如果和中国神话类比的话，大概就相当于齐天大圣当弼马温时养的天马，只不过头上多了一根独角。在传统西方神话体系中，独角兽是稀有而强大的圣兽，代表着高贵、高傲和纯洁。在现代的游戏和文学作品中，独角兽也经常作为代表光明的神兽出现，陪着圣洁的王子或公主一起拯救世界。不过，我们今天要介绍的并不是神话里的独角兽，而是现实中的，也就是最近网络上经常说的独角兽企业。独角兽企业这个概念，最早是2013年由美国知名投资人艾莉李（Aileen Lee）提出的，指的是那些具有发展速度快、同类企业稀少、投资价值高等属性的创业企业。具体来说，能够被称之为独角兽企业的，要符合三个标准：第一，成立时间不超过10年；第二，市场估值超过10亿美元；第三，公司还没有上市。大家注意啊，只有同时符合这三个标准的，才能叫做独角兽企业，如果只符合其中两个或者一个是不行的。比如说拼多多，成立没超过10年，市场估值也达到了150亿美元，但是因为它已经上市了，所以就不能算做独角兽企业了。也就是说，独角兽企业这个名号并不是一成不变的，而是企业发展到特定阶段的称号，就像人会随着年龄的变化被称为婴儿、幼儿、儿童、少年、青年、中年和老年一样。但跟人不一样的是，独角兽企业的变化过程是可逆的，很有可能一家企业去年不是独角兽，今年是，明年又不是了。那么，是不是独角兽到底谁说了算呢？答案是谁说了都不算，或者说，是市场说了算。独家兽企业并不是哪个机构认定的，而是根据我们上面介绍的标准，由一些机构筛选出来的。目前，国外发布独角兽企业榜单的机构主要有财富杂志，就是每年发布全球500强企业名单的那个，国际著名的创投调研机构CB Insights，以及世界四大会计事务所之一的德勤等，国内主要有科技部下属的单位火炬中心和国内知名的战略管理咨询公司长城战略研究所。不过，由于各家机构所掌握的信息不同，所以各家机构发布的名单也不是完全相同的。我们在这选取其中认可度较高的CB Insights发布的榜单来给大家介绍。根据CB Insights的统计，截至2018年8月，全球共有260家独角兽企业，其中来自美国的有122家，包括我们熟知的优步（Uber）、爱彼迎（Airbnb）等；来自中国的有76家，包括滴滴、今日头条、知乎等知名企业都榜上有名，二者合计占总数的八成。从估值看，这些独角兽企业总估值超过了8000亿美元，其中来自美国的企业估值总量最高，中国位居其后，但中国企业平均估值要远高于美国。如果从行业分布看，独角兽企业分布的行业领域多达32种，但60%的企业主要集中在电子商务、软件服务、金融科技和大健康四大领域。如果按类型划分的话，这些独角兽企业大致可以分为两类。一种是平台生态型，另一种是技术驱动型。平台生态型的企业是独角兽企业中的多数，主要特点是基于互联网来搭建平台，不直接接触实体经营，而是通过平台来实现资源的共享和服务的对接，类似中介为实体企业和消费者搭构链接桥梁。滴滴、摩拜、美团大众点评等企业都是平台生态型企业的代表。这种企业往往能够改变以往的商业模式，带来业态上的创新。就像滴滴改变了传统的打车出行方式，美团改变了传统的点餐方式。技术驱动型企业则是以高科技为主要推动力，例如大数据、云计算、人工智能、区块链技术等。与平台生态型企业不同的是，这种类型的独角兽企业带来的不是商业模式上的改变，而是技术和产业方面的突破。这些企业通常都专注于某项前沿领域的技术研发，通过推出新技术改变人类生活。比如蚂蚁金服通过推出支付宝等新的金融技术，改变了整个支付方式。当然，这两种类型只是从形态角度进行划分的。如果从领域划分，还可以分为知识分享、金融科技、新媒体、人工智能等等，在这我们就不给大家一一介绍了。不过还有一点想跟大家说明的是，对于企业发展阶段的特定称呼，其实远不只独角兽企业一种。《财富》杂志基于独角兽企业的标准，将初创企业发展划分为了5个阶段：第一阶段叫小马企业，也就是估值1亿美元以上的企业；第二阶段叫半人马企业，也就是估值5亿美元以上的企业；第三阶段就是独角兽企业，估值10亿美元以上的；第四个阶段叫十角兽企业，或者叫做超级独角兽企业，是指那些估值搭100亿美元以上，相当于10个独角兽的企业，比如估值390亿美元的阿里云、估值300亿美元的美团点评、估值200亿美元的今日头条等；最后一个阶段的名字比较好玩，叫做超超级独角兽企业，或者叫跟优步一样大的企业，指的是那些估值超过500亿美元的企业，目前我国有蚂蚁金服和滴滴可以达到这个标准。这五个阶段啊，也就是我们标题里讲的，从小马、半人马到独角兽，再到超级独角兽、超超级独角兽，一条属于初创企业的进化之路。好了，说完这点，我们今天介绍的内容也就结束了。希望听完今天内容，能够帮各位朋友加深下对于独角兽企业的了解。感谢各位朋友的收听，我们明天再见。Source:1.泽平宏观公众号：中国独角兽报告2.新华网，创新驱动，中国独角兽企业发展群像扫描3.每日财经网，独角兽是什么意思？中国独角兽名单一览4.科技部火炬中心，2017中国独角兽企业发展报告撰稿 | 任闯主持人 | 张煜霖，原海南电视台、杭州电视台主持人、记者。主编 | 韩悦思节目运营 | 柳婷婷专辑图视觉创意 | 贺归昀主视觉 | 李芳舟
YC Partner Geoff Ralston talks to Cowboy Ventures Founder Aileen Lee.TranscriptVideo Link
Recode’s Kara Swisher talks with three tech leaders about actual solutions for advancing diversity in the industry. Cowboy Ventures partner Aileen Lee, theBoardlist founder Sukhinder Singh Cassidy and former U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith talk about the factors that have historically held back women, people of color and other under-represented groups in tech, and what comes next after the reckoning of the #MeToo movement. The group debates how men can best help their female peers succeed and how companies can avoid falling into the trap of thinking that the solution is just to keep men and women apart. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
My guest for Episode 86 of The Startup Playbook Podcast is Founder, Author, Podcaster and Angel Investor - Jason Calacanis. Jason is best known for his highly successful Podcast, This Week in Startups and for his experience as one of the most successful angel investors in the world, having been an early investor in companies such as Uber, Thumbtack, Wealthfront and Robin Hood just to name a few! Outside of this, Jason is also the author of Angel, where he shares his tips and experience on angel investing, detailing his process of turning $100,000 into $100M, he is the Founder of Founder University and the Founder and Director of the LAUNCH Festival which is coming to Sydney on the 19th and 20th of June. As you can imagine, there were so many topics that we covered in this interview, including Why founders need to think in decades What Jason looks for when angel investing How angel investors should approach Bankroll management The importance of reputation Building your investment funnel How the best products build virality WATCH ON YOUTUBE PLAYBOOK MEDIA – Growth through Data-Driven Storytelling THE E-COMMERCE PLAYBOOK ACCELEPRISE AUSTRALIA STARTUP PLAYBOOK HUSTLE APPLICATION Show notes: - Silicon Alley Reporter - Angel - How to invest in technology startups - timeless advice from an Angel Investor who turned $100,000 into $100,000,000 - Podcast: This Week in Startups - Podcast: Angel - Incubator : Launch - Incubator: Founder University - LAUNCH festival - Esquire Magazine - Masayoshi Son - Weblogs inc - Brian Alvey - Mark Cuban - NPR - Startup Stories - Kevin Pollak's Chat Show - Travis Kalanick - Robinhood - Wealthfront - DataStax - Aileen Lee - Mashable - Recode - Techcrunch - Net Promoter Score - LAUNCH Festival (Sydney) - Republic (equity crowd funding) - Launch festival - Twitter @Launch - Twitter @Jason - Mark Pesce - This Week In Startups Australia (podcast) Feedback/ connect/ say hello: Rohit@startupplaybook.co @playbookstartup (Twitter) @rohitbhargava7 (Twitter – Rohit) Rohit Bhargava (LinkedIn) Credits: Intro music credit to Bensound Other channels: Watch the video on Youtube here. Don't have iTunes? The podcast is also available on Stitcher & Soundcloud The post Ep086 – Jason Calacanis (Founder, Angel Investor, Author) on long-term thinking appeared first on Startup Playbook.
Aileen Lee is the founder of Cowboy Ventures.Kirsty Nathoo is CFO and a Partner at Y Combinator.
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Melody McCloskey is the Founder & CEO @ StyleSeat, the largest and fastest growing marketplace in the $78b beauty and wellness industry. They have raised over $40m in challenging funding conditions from some of the true greats of the business including Alfred Lin @ Sequoia, Chris Sacca, Jeff Clavier, Aileen Lee, Lightspeed, the list goes on. As for Melody, as well as running StyleSeat she is also a mentor for the Thiel Fellowship working with some of the brightest and best next generation entrepreneurs. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) What was the origin story of StyleSeat for Melody and how did Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp come to be angel investors? 2.) Melody has previously stated that 'CEOs do not have all the answers'. What did Melody find most challenging that she struggled to answer? How has her approach to decision making and delegation changed over the last few years? 3.) Melody has been CEO for 6 years, a rarity in tech today, so what has been the core to her success long term as the leader of StyleSeat? 4.) With $40m in funding over 3 rounds, how did Melody find the fundraising experience? How did she feel the rounds differed? What does Melody believe she did well and what would she improve for further rounds? 5.) How does Melody approach transparency internally with fundraising? Should founders tell the team about fundraise opportunities? When is the right and wrong time to do so? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Melody’s Fave Book: Hard Thing About Hard Things As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Melody on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Foundersuite makes the leading CRM for raising startup capital. Since March of 2016, Foundersuite customers have raised over $130M in seed and venture capital. Foundersuite’s CRM sits on a database of over 50,000 investors, which will help you quickly populate your fundraising funnel including a beautiful and easy-to-use investor update tool, and the recently launched a new portal that helps investors and accelerators track their portfolio companies on a single dashboard. For a whopping 40% off a Monthly or Annual subscription use the code “20MinuteVC” at checkout. Greenhouse Software designs tools that help companies hire great people and ultimately build better businesses. Greenhouse works with over 1,500 of the world’s most innovative companies such as Airbnb, Slack, Snap Inc. and Lyft. A wrong hire is not only costly for a company but can also turn an employee into an unhappy one. With Greenhouse’s Applicant Tracking System, companies can make well-informed decisions and hire qualified candidates who are empowered to do the best work of their careers. Anybody who has a company that’s scaling quickly but has trouble hiring and retaining the right people. Visit www.greenhouse.io today to discover how your company can grow.
Cowboy Ventures founder and managing partner Aileen Lee, previously a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about being one of the few female venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. After leaving Kleiner Perkins in 2012, Lee set out to amass data about the small percentage of startups that become breakout success stories, and she coined the term "unicorn" to describe the small fraction that would be valued at more than $1 billion. She says entrepreneurs today have to be tougher now that investors' fervor has cooled off, and says those investors will have to change, too, by becoming more diverse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” - Oscar Wilde VC’s Bryce Roberts of OATV and Indie.vc, and Chris Marks of Blue Note Ventures both found the standard issue of the VC world was not a fit for them. They both sought out to set a new path, one that aligned with who they are and what they value. In a conversation with Jerry, and each other, they explore the challenges on their journey, and the potential opportunities they have to better connect with entrepreneurs through those challenges. This conversation may leave you asking yourself: In my own work, what are my values? What are my priorities? What am I wearing today? Links Bryce Roberts on Twitter - https://twitter.com/bryce Chris Marks on Twitter - https://twitter.com/bluenotevc Indie.vc - http://indie.vc Blue Note Ventures - http://bluenotevc.com O’Reilly Alphatech Ventures - http://oatv.com Bryce’s blog post - The Peace Dividend of the Seed Surge - http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/02/welcome-to-the-unicorn-club/ Aileen Lee’s article on on Unicorn startups - http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/02/welcome-to-the-unicorn-club/http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/02/welcome-to-the-unicorn-club/
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Sumeet Shah is an investor @ Brand Foundry Ventures, who have investments in the likes of Warby Parker, Birchbox and Contently. Sumeet himself is pivotal in sourcing and managing new opportunities at Brand Foundry with over 6 years of experience across the startup and private equity industries, formerly running new business strategies at Gist Digital and handling business development and project work at Gotham Consulting Partners. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Sumeet made his way into the wonderful world of VC? 2.) What stage is Brand Foundry active in? Does Sarah Lacy’s analysis of a ‘Series A Crunch’ concern Sumeet? Has he seen a widening in the gap between the amount that raise seed to then go onto raise Series A? 3.) What does Sumeet believe are the key pieces to run a successful business? In the first 100 days, what are the most important elements to focus on? 4.) Sumeet recently tweeted ‘To All Startups, the most helpful investor is not always the largest’. How can startups determine who is the most helpful? What should startups expect from their investors? What does Sumeet believe makes the best investor? 5.) What would Sumeet say is his biggest strength as an investor and what would he most like to improve upon? As a seed investor, how does Sumeet respond to Aileen Lee’s suggestion that in investing you can only make really money when invested in unicorns? 6.) Is Sumeet bullish on the future of NYC tech? What are the strengths of NY? Where is it booming? Are there any elements of SF, Sumeet would like NY to have? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Sumeet's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Term Sheet by Dan Primack, Strictly VC Sumeet's Fave Book: Things A Little Birdy Told Me by Biz Stone Sumeet's Most Recent Investment: Lola: A Better Month Awaits You As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Sumeet on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! Free Ebook: How to boost your Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) by over 100% Have you ever wanted to know who someone is simply from an email address?With Loyalty Bay's Super Users product now you can. Simply input an email address and it will go off and find publicly available profile information i.e. Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter etc for that email address. This is incredibly powerful in building a richer data profile on your users for marketers and business development people alike. Free 30 day Trial. Check out www.loyaltybay.co.uk
Today’s guest is Todd Embley, program director at Chinaccelerator, China’s first mentorship-driven seed stage accelerator program. The Shanghai-based, 90-day accelerator program is driven by the mission of helping entrepreneurs who are innovating at the cutting-edge of information technology to create successful start-ups. It also claims to be China's only pure & authentic accelerator program. Today, we’re here to discuss the tech accelerator and tech start-ups scene in China.P.S. Chinaccelerator is accepting applications to Batch 6 of their program (deadline Friday July 18th, 2014 midnight). To apply, visit http://www.chinaccelerator.com/apply Episode Content:Understand the environment for technology accelerators in China and their role in shaping the Chinese start-up ecosystemLearn about some exciting start-ups that are innovating at the cutting-edge of technologyEpisode Mentions:SOS Ventures – venture capital firm backing ChinacceleratorCyril Ebersweiler - venture partner at SOSventures and founder of Chinaccelerator. He also founded HAXLR8R, an accelerator for hardware-related startups based in Shenzhen, China.Yixun.com – eCommerce shop similar to JD.com or AmazonArticle by Aileen Lee from Cowboy Ventures – Welcome To The Unicorn Club: Learning from Billion-Dollar Startups Order With Me – Chinaccelerator graduate and winner of Tech Crunch Beijing 2011Piktochart – infographic platformNeoNan – Men’s digital publicationDaily Themes – personalized English writing improvement for Chinese usersOther mentioned Chinaccelerator companies: eProf (online education platform), Splitforce (mobile A/B testing and optimization), AYLIEN, Launchpilots, Seeder, Shoe LoversStart-Up Chile – seed accelerator created by the Chilean Government based in Santiago, ChileFollow up:Chinaccelerator.com中国加速 on weibo@chinaccelerator on Twitter Download and SubscribeDownload this episode: right click on this link and choose "save as"Subscribe to China Business Cast on iTunesOr check out the full list on subscription options
What do venture capitalists actually do all day? And what is the path that leads to a career investing in startups? Hummer Winblad's Ann Winblad, Cowboy Ventures' Aileen Lee, Aspect Ventures' Theresia Gouw, Intel Capital veteran and UPWARD founder Lisa Lambert, and Andreessen Horowitz's Margit Wennmachers discuss VC trends, the importance of technical chops, and how to build the next generation of entrepreneurs and investors. And finally, in front of an appreciative crowd attending the UPWARD event at a16z, Ann Winblad reveals the secret to truly kicking ass.
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