Mar
23

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Nandini Mansinghka of Mumbai Angels Network (Part 5) - Sramana Mitra

As someone who covers Africa’s tech scene, I’m frequently asked about Andela . That’s not surprising, given the venture gets more global press (arguably) than any startup in Africa.

I’ve found many Silicon Valley investors have heard of Andela but aren’t exactly sure what it does.

In a bite, Andela is Series D stage startup―backed by $180 million in VC―that trains and connects African software developers to global companies for a fee.

The revenue-focused venture is often misread as a charity. In 2017, Andela CEO Jeremy Johnson described the organization as “a mission-driven for-profit company” ― a model for the concept “that you can actually build businesses that create real impact.”

I asked Johnson recently to clarify the objective behind Andela’s drive. “It’s the exact same mission as when we started, based around our founding principle… that brilliance and talent are distributed equally around the world, but opportunity is not,” he said.

“We’re about breaking down the walls that prevent brilliance and opportunity from connecting to each other.”

A major barrier for Africa’s software engineers, according to Johnson, is simply the fact that the continent has been totally off the network that companies look to for developer talent.

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Mar
17

Providing Frontline Support to Boulder County Caregivers

Business Insider Intelligence Voice is making waves across industries, but the transformative power of the technology is now at a tipping point in healthcare. The opportunity for voice in healthcare is pegged to mount as the global health virtual assistant market is expected to reach $3.5 billion in 2025.

US healthcare providers' interest in voice tech is being catalyzed by recent technological breakthroughs growing the tech's potential to transform legacy operations.

Voice tech boasts five distinct advantages that heighten its disruption potential in healthcare and the tech is being optimized for the healthcare sphere, which is increasing the visibility of voice in health and opening the door for voice assistants to perform more sensitive and complex healthcare actions. There are also several pain points within healthcare that up the pressure on providers to tap into the voice opportunity.

In this report, Business Insider Intelligence outlines the voice opportunity in healthcare and explores the drivers propelling voice adoption in the healthcare realm. We then examine three of the highest-value voice use cases in healthcare — clinical documentation, remote care, and clinical support — and provide examples of early moving health systems and health tech companies implementing voice in each application.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

Health systems that deploy voice tech to facilitate clinical documentation can reduce physicians' administrative burden, increase patient volume and billable revenue, and eliminate transcription costs. By leveraging voice to increase touchpoints with patients outside the clinic, healthcare organizations can open the opportunity to shrink costs associated with poor medication adherence and slash value-based care (VBC) penalties stemming from preventable readmissions. Healthcare providers can reform diagnostics and better position themselves to deliver preventative medicine by deploying voice technology that can pinpoint diseases based on patients' speech characteristics.

In full, the report:

Explores why and how voice is disrupting healthcare. Details the three key applications where US health systems can apply voice technology. Offers evidence on how voice assistants provide value in each of the selected voice use cases.

Want to learn more about the fast-moving world of digital health? Here's how to get access:

Purchase & download the full report from our research store. >> Purchase & Download Now Sign up for Digital Health Pro , Business Insider Intelligence's expert product suite keeping you up-to-date on the people, technologies, trends, and companies shaping the future of healthcare, delivered to your inbox 6x a week. >> Get Started Subscribe to a Premium pass to Business Insider Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and more than 250 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >> Learn More Now Current subscribers can read the report here.
Original author: Rayna Hollander

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Aug
29

Elon Musk is already dreaming of a monster 'next-generation' Starship. If built, the rocket's body would be wider than an NBA basketball court.

A day after SpaceX's final flight of Starhopper, a stubby prototype of an enormous planned launch system called Starship, company founder Elon Musk dropped a clue about his supersize plans for the future.

Musk tweeted on Wednesday that he'd present SpaceX's latest thinking about the Starship system on September 28. The date marks the 11th anniversary of the company reaching orbit for the first time with its Falcon 1 rocket.

Starhopper — SpaceX's first Mars Starship prototype — hovers over its launchpad during a test flight in Boca Chica, Texas, on August 27, 2019.Trevor Mahlmann/ReutersUntil then, most of what we know about Starship comes from Musk's latest presentation from September 2018. At that time, the vehicle was still called the "Big Falcon Rocket" and was supposed to be made out of carbon-fiber composites. SpaceX is now using stainless steel but appears to be keeping similar dimensions, based on several renderings posted by Musk (including one of a Starship spaceship on the moon's surface).

Read more: Elon Musk says SpaceX could land on the moon in 2 years. A NASA executive says 'we'll partner with them, and we'll get there faster' if the company can pull it off.

Those dimensions suggest the first operational version of Starship would be a vehicle about 30 feet (9 meters) wide and 387 feet (118 meters) tall. Yet Musk is already dreaming up an even bigger version of the system.

He revealed part of his grand plan on Wednesday when a Twitter user asked about a 39-foot-wide (12 meters) version of Starship. Musk replied that a "next-gen" version of Starship would probably be double that diameter: a width of 18 meters, or nearly 60 feet.

That's wider than an NBA basketball court. The footprint of such a rocket would also be 30% greater than the square footage of an average US home.

The following graphic shows about how big the first Starship system would be compared with its prototypes, such as Starhopper and Starship Mark 1. The Apollo-era Saturn V rocket and NASA's upcoming Space Launch System moon rocket are also included for scale.

A comparison of SpaceX and NASA rocket systems. Yutong Yuan/Samantha Lee/Business Insider

However, doing some basic math helps reveal the scale of what Musk is proposing to do with SpaceX in the far-flung future.

An illustration of SpaceX's Starship vehicle on the surface of Mars, with greenhouses and a nascent space colony in the distance.Elon Musk/SpaceX via Twitter

Simplifying the dimensions of the first-generation Starship into a cylinder (and ignoring its aerodynamic nose cone) gives a finished volume of about 7.5 million liters. The same calculation on the next-generation Starship — assuming its height also doubles, to about 775 feet (236 meters) — gives an approximate volume of 60 million liters.

So in effect, doubling the width and height leads to a launch vehicle about eight times as voluminous. Even if the next-generation Starship was just as tall as the first one, its increased girth would make it about four times bigger.

Boosting Starship' volume so much says little about how much payload or how many people a next-generation Starship could haul into orbit, or how deep into space such a gigantic spacecraft could go. But it's hard not to imagine the answers are "more, bigger, faster, and farther" since it could carry that much more fuel and make room for many more Raptor rocket engines.

Read more: SpaceX test-fired a giant rocket engine with 'insane power' for moon and Mars missions. The future of Elon Musk's company may ride on its unrivaled performance.

Certainly, a nose cone with basketball-court-width diameter is larger than that of any planned rocket's.

Such a size could accommodate space telescopes that astronomers may only dream of right now. For example, NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will fold up into a 15-foot-wide (4.57 meter) fairing of an Ariane 5 rocket around 2021. If a next-gen Starship is ever realized, it might fit six or more of the $10 billion space observatories inside its fairing.

However, Musk envisions building a city on Mars that will be self-sustaining by the 2050s (and eventually has pizza joints). If he hopes to see that mission accomplished before his time on Earth is done, though, SpaceX may need the biggest rocket its leader can dream up.

Original author: Dave Mosher

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Jul
03

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Shripati Acharya of Prime Venture Partners (Part 5) - Sramana Mitra

As part of SAP's leadership, Adaire Fox-Martin is in charge of the German business-software behemoth's global operations, covering more than 430,000 customers in 71 countries.

And in that role, she said, she's seen up close the fallout from the rising global market uncertainty, which has grown even murkier with the escalation of the US-China trade war.

"I will definitely tell you that, in some markets, particularly in China, the customers are in a wait-and-see mode," she told Business Insider. "I have been working with some customers there who are all literally unpacking their supply chain."

Unpacking a supply chain essentially means reorganizing the way the business procures materials it needs for its goods and services, including making sure they arrive in time. With the threat of tariffs looming, companies are reassessing their supply chains — even Google is said to be moving production of its Pixel phones from China to Vietnam, even as promised tariffs come closer to coming into effect.

The uncertainty is Fox-Martin's top worry these days. She plays a particularly key role at SAP, the top seller of software used by businesses to manage their operations. Fox-Martin has extensive international experience, having spent nearly two decades selling enterprise software in Asia.

Trade war is forcing businesses to move supply chains.

This was underscored recently on SAP's earnings call in July, when CEO Bill McDermott pointed to "minor headwinds in Asia due to trade uncertainties which did postpone some deals."

"We didn't get everything we wanted in Asia," he told analysts. "What you're seeing in this environment is there are a lot of companies that were manufacturing things in China that are actually moving supply chains and manufacturing facilities to alternative locations."

McDermott then turned to Fox-Martin for a broader view of the situation.

"The supply-chain impact was significant on our China business," she told analysts. "But we've got to remember we've been in Asia-Pacific Japan for 30 years now."

It's a history she's familiar with. Fox-Martin was a top enterprise-software executive in that part of the world for nearly two decades with two of the biggest players in that space: SAP and the German tech giant's archrival, Oracle.

Fox-Martin was a schoolteacher who stumbled upon a tech career.

Fox-Martin had embarked on a tech career by accident. Born and raised in a working class family in Ireland, Fox-Martin studied arts, English, and history at Trinity College in Dublin. Ireland was going through tough economic times when she graduated. "There were no jobs," she said.

She moved to England, where she found work as a schoolteacher. She was set to pursue that career when a friend told her that Oracle was looking to hire English teachers who could be retrained as training consultants for a new programming language.

She got the job and worked for Oracle for 18 years, mainly in the Asia-Pacific region. In 2008, she joined SAP, where she rose to become chief operating officer and then president of the company's Asia-Pacific operation. In 2017, she was named to the company's executive board. Fox-Martin is one of two women in SAP's top leadership.

"I've worked in almost every line of business in a software company, which has given me a huge depth of understanding of how all the pieces come together," she said.

She joined SAP's leadership at a time when the enterprise-software industry has been undergoing a major shift. SAP still dominates the enterprise-resource-planning software market, with 28.2% of the $28.6 billion market, according to IDC's 2018 data. Oracle was second with 19.3%.

SAP pivots to the cloud

But the rise of cloud computing has led to a dramatic change. Instead of paying license and maintenance fees for software installed in private data centers, businesses are accessing applications as web-based service. The trend has dramatically cut IT costs, allowing businesses, in many cases, to abandon on-premise data centers.

This has been a disruptive change for traditional software vendors, like SAP and Oracle, which now find themselves competing with software-as-a-service rivals, such as Salesforce and Workday.

"For sure, SAP is a company that is transforming," Fox-Martin said. "I think we're at the tail end of that process in terms of the transformation of our business to the cloud."

She said SAP is looking to triple its cloud revenue to $15 billion a year by 2023.

In the short term, her focus is on an increasingly precarious global economy.

US-China trade tensions escalated recently with a new round of tariffs, although President Trump on Thursday that the two nations were scheduled to hold discussions.

"We're living in a time of tremendous change and uncertainty," she said. "The macroeconomic environment right now is very unpredictable. From one day to the next, we're not really quite sure what's going to happen, what's going to change. You have to be able to pivot with your customers in order to address these changes."

Got a tip about SAP or another tech company? Contact this reporter via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., message him on Twitter@benpimentel. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

Original author: Benjamin Pimentel

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Aug
29

'I am far from perfect': Alphabet's chief legal officer responds to report that he had a child with a Google employee and emotionally abused her, but says there are 'two sides' to the story (GOOG, GOOGL)

Alphabet's chief legal officer David Drummond said he is "far from perfect," in a personal statement first reported by BuzzFeed News on Thursday, but declined to apologize for an extramarital relationship he had with a subordinate at Google.

Drummond, one of the highest paid executives at Google's parent company, acknowledged what he described as a "difficult break-up" ten years ago but said that he had a "very different view" of some of the claims made public on Wednesday by Jennifer Blakely — a former paralegal on Drummond's team.

In a remarkable blog post on Wednesday, Blakely said that Alphabet's chief legal exec fathered a son with her while he was married, abandoned her and abused her emotionally.

"The abuse of power didn't stop with being pushed out," she wrote, referring to leaving her job at Google. "Afterwards I was pushed down, lest I got in the way of the behavior that had become even more oppressive and entitled."

Google has refused to comment on the matter, which involves allegations about one of the highest paid and most powerful executives at the company. "We don't have a statement on this to share," a Google spokesperson said in an email to Business Insider. "We've seen that Mr. Drummond has issued a personal statement, see here," Google said.

The company, which has been rocked by allegations that it protects "elite men" who have engaged in sexual misconduct, in some cases giving them huge payouts, declined to make Drummond available for an interview.

In November, roughly 20,000 Google employees staged a walkout to protest the company's treatment of executives accused of misconduct and the lack of accountability at a company in which cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin control a majority of the voting power.

Drummond's statement on Thursday, which was tweeted out in-full by BuzzFeed News reporter Ryan Mac, calls into questions some of the claims raised by Blakely's recent account of their relationship.

"Her account raises many claims about us and other people, including our son and my former wife," Drummond said in the statement. "As you would expect, there are two sides to all of the conversations and details Jennifer recounts, and I take a very different view about what happened. I have discussed these claims directly with Jennifer, and I addressed the details of our relationship with our employer at the time."

According to Blakely's account from Wednesday, Drummond had multiple relationships with other colleagues at Google, including his "personal assistant" who Blakely claims moved into one of his homes.

Drummond took issue with the claim, insisting that besides Blakely, he has never "started" a relationship with anyone else at Google or Alphabet. "Any suggestion otherwise is simply untrue," he said.

Still, the specific phrasing that Drummond — a lawyer by training — used in stating that he never "started" a relationship with other Google staffers is likely to raise questions about his forthrightness on the matter.

"I know Jennifer feels wronged and understand that she wants to speak out about it," Drummond said, "but I won't be getting in a public back and forther about these personal matters."

Drummond joined Google in 2002 as head of corporate development, two years before the company's IPO. Over the following years he assumed increasing responsibility, overseeing the legal department and government relations, as Google grew into one of the world's most valuable companies and restructured into Alphabet.

Here is Drummond's full statement, as given to Buzzfeed:

It's not a secret that Jennifer and I had a difficult break-up 10 years ago. I am far from perfect and I regret my part in that.

Her account raises many claims about us and other people, including our son and my former wife. As you would expect there are two sides to all of the conversations and details Jennifer recounts, and I take a very different view about what happened. I have discussed these claims directly with Jennifer, and I addressed the details of our relationship with our employer at the time.

But I don want to address one claim that touches on professional matters. Other than Jennifer, I never started a relationship with anyone else who was working at Google or Alphabet. Any suggestion otherwise is simply untrue.

I know Jennifer feels wronged and understand that she wants to speak out about it. But I won't be getting in a public back and forther about these personal matters.

David Drummond

Original author: Nick Bastone

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May
24

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Brian Jacobs of Emergence Capital (Part 4) - Sramana Mitra

The Sony X900F series is a 65-inch smart TV with excellent picture quality. Right now, it's on sale at Best Buy for $300 off its original price.

According to reviews, the X900F delivers bright, accurate colors and deep blacks. It has decent image processing and motion resolution as well, meaning your games and action scenes will be free of blur.

The set is powered by Google's Android TV, which is one of the best smart-TV systems out there. You can access just about any streaming app you need, including Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Sling, and Google Play.

The X900F also supports Google Cast functionality, which is similar to Chromecast; you'll be able to "cast" videos and audio from your phone directly to your TV. Google Assistant is built into the remote, and you can link the TV to Alexa as well. With Alexa or the Google Assistant set up, you can control the TV with voice commands.

As a bonus, this TV even has a headphone jack on the back. If you're counting, that's one more headphone jack than Samsung's Galaxy Note 10.

If you're looking for a high-end TV at a discount, check out this deal ASAP. Best Buy is also running a Labor Day sale on a bunch of other tech products, and we've rounded up the 20 best deals here.

Get the Sony XBR-X900F for $1,299.99 at Best Buy (originally $1,599) [You save $300]

Original author: Monica Chin

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Aug
29

How to turn off a Fitbit Charge 2, or restart it to fix issues with the device

A fitness tracker like the Fitbit Charge 2 doesn't do you any good unless it's powered on and strapped to your wrist. To help with this, Fitbit saw fit to ensure the Charge 2 is always powered on, by making it essentially impossible to turn the device off.

There's no way to completely turn off a Fitbit Charge 2 except for letting its battery drain, a process which can take more than a week.

But if your Fitbit Charge 2 isn't working properly, maybe because it doesn't respond as you swipe or tap, won't record your data, or won't connect to your phone or computer, a restart can help solve most issues.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

Fitbit Charge 2 (From $129.95 at Best Buy)

How to restart a Fitbit Charge 2

1. Connect the Fitbit Charge 2 to a power source using its charging cradle and a USB port.

2. Once the tracker vibrates, indicating it's connected, hold the button on the device's side for four seconds.

Press and hold the single button on the side of the Fitbit. Fitbit

3. When the Fitbit logo appears and the tracker vibrates, it has been successfully restarted, and should now work properly again.

If you let your Fitbit Charge 2's battery drain entirely, connect the tracker to its charger for at least two hours before you use it again, to ensure a completely charged up battery.

Original author: Steven John

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Aug
29

20 of the best tech deals from Best Buy's Labor Day sale — including TVs, laptops, and headphones

Labor Day is on its way, and a number of retailers have already announced some pretty stellar deals for the event.

Notably, Best Buy is running a massive sale for Labor Day that spans a huge range of products — so if you're in the market for a new tech product, it's worth checking out the deals below.

We've picked out our favorite deals from Best Buy's Labor Day sale, but if you're interested, you can check out the full sale right on the Best Buy website. Alternatively, check out our top picks below.

Samsung

Best Buy Labor Day TV deals

There are a ton of TV deals as part of Best Buy's Labor Day sale — spanning from the inexpensive and smaller TVs to the much higher-end OLED TVs. Here are the best TV deals as part of Best Buy's Labor Day sale.

LG UK6090PUA 55-inch LED TV, $349.99 (originally $449.99) [You save $100]Vizio M-Series 65-inch LED TV, $699.99 (originally $999.99) [You save $300]Vizio P-Series 65-inch LED TV, $999.99 (originally $1,399.99) [You save $400]LG B9 55-inch OLED TV, $1,399.99 (originally $1,599.99) [You save $200]Samsung Q90 65-inch LED TV, $2,799.99 (originally $3,299.99) [You save $500]

Best Buy Labor Day laptop deals

In the market for a new laptop? There are some pretty great deals on computers too, so it's worth checking out the deals below. Here are the best laptop deals from Best Buy's Labor Day 2019 sale.

Best Buy Labor Day headphone deals

A great pair of headphones can make listening to music a whole lot more exciting. Best Buy has some great deals on headphones going — and here are the best of those deals.

Best Buy Labor Day smart home deals

Building up a smart home? There are plenty of deals on smart home devices and products too, so now is a great time to buy switches, cameras, and so on. Here are the best smart home deals from Best Buy's Labor Day sale.

Original author: Christian de Looper

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Mar
17

Thursday, March 19 – 477th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs - Sramana Mitra

Following is a transcript of the video.

Google used Burning Man to find a CEO because they were interested in finding a CEO who's familiar with group flow.

So one of the things that happens at Burning Man — and there's recent research out of Oxford that sort of backs this up — is that Burning Man alters consciousness in a very particular way and it drops people into a state of group flow.

So, flow is a peak-performance state. It's an individual performing at their peak. Group flow is simply a team performing at their peak, and everybody has some familiarity with this. If you've ever taken part in a great brainstorming session, where ideas are kind of bouncing everywhere — you're really reaching ripe, smart conclusions.

If you've seen a fourth-quarter comeback in football. If you saw what the Patriots did in the Super Bowl. That's group flow in action.

Google has relied very heavily since their inception on creating group-flow states. And when they were looking for a new CEO, they needed a way to screen for this, and it doesn't show up on most resumes.

They had a long history with Burning Man. From the very beginning, Larry and Sergey have been kind of rabid attendees. The center atrium at Google for years was decorated with pictures of Googlers at Burning Man, spinning fire, doing various things.

They had blown through and alienated like 50 different CEOs in the valley they tried to interview, and they found out that Eric Schmidt had actually been to Burning Man. So they bumped him to the top of their list, they took him to Burning Man to see how he would do. They wanted to know was he going to be able to let go of his ego, merge with the team, or was he going to stand in its way? And it turns out he passed the test, and the result is one of the most pivotal CEO hires in the modern era.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This video was originally published on April 21, 2017.

Original author: Joe Avella and Kevin Reilly

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Mar
17

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Osayi Igharo ot Ripple Venture Capital (Part 2) - Sramana Mitra

Scott Sanborn Contributor
Scott Sanborn is CEO of LendingClub.

2019 has already been an active year for U.S. tech IPOs. Some highly anticipated unicorns, such as Uber and Lyft, have disappointed investors with their IPO debuts and their first results as public companies. Others, such as Fiverr, Zoom and CrowdStrike, have soared. And food-tech brand Beyond Meat (two words you normally don’t see together) hit a high of $239 from their $25 IPO price.

The first of these 2019 tech IPO companies will soon face a new challenge as the early investor and employee lockups expire — often 180 days after the IPO — allowing them to sell and increasing the number of shares available to trade. Lyft will remain at the front of the 2019 pack when the lockups expire, bringing more of the company’s stock into play on the public market. Regardless of what happens next, it’s amazing to see the trajectory of companies that have built such impressive businesses in such a remarkably short period of time.

I was recently at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to ring the opening bell and celebrate our three- millionth borrower on the platform. It brought back great memories from when our company, LendingClub, entered the public fray in 2014. LendingClub was the largest U.S. tech IPO that year, and is still one of the biggest U.S. tech IPOs of all time. We listed at a $5.4 billion valuation, and our shares surged 67% on the first day of trading. We were thrilled to celebrate the validation of our hard work and excited about the next stage of our growth. However, by the time our lockups expired, we had fallen back to around our IPO valuation of $15 a share.

Since then, despite being the market leader in the fastest-growing sector of consumer credit in the country with double-digit annual growth, the company today is worth less than a fifth of what it was in 2014. Our story is thankfully unique, and I’ll spare you the details here, but suffice to say… we had a rough period. We are back on track now, delivering growth and margin expansion while executing against our vision.

However bespoke our story, there are some observations I’ll share that might be useful for others as they think about life post-IPO. I’m not going to cover the issues around short-termism and the tyranny of quarterly targets (which have been well-documented elsewhere), but rather a few of the implications that sure would have been useful for me to know going in…

Things will be different — really

I’d compare the period leading up to the IPO to the period when you are expecting a baby. Intellectually, you know things will be different when you bring home a newborn. But knowing it and living it are two different things. Going public is a transformational event that permanently changes your company and how the CEO, CFO and board spend their time (with obvious trickle-down effects). From the moment we rang the NYSE bell on December 11, 2014, everything changed.

Making money matters

Investors buying your stock are essentially valuing your future cash flow. At some point, you have to have your “show them the money” moment and become profitable. Amazon famously lost a total of $2.8 billion over 17 straight quarters after their IPO and was the subject of a lot of skepticism and criticism throughout. The company maintained their strategy, delivering top-line growth and investing in their future and, suffice to say, investor patience paid off!

At LendingClub, we have invested millions of dollars to develop products that delight our 3 million+ customers (and, at 78, our NPS is at its highest level in the history of the company) and expand our competitive moat. We are now driving toward adjusted net income profitability.

Like it or not, there is a scoreboard

Once you go public, some people stop thinking of you as a business, and start thinking about you as a stock price. And that stock price is always broadcasting. It broadcasts to your equity investors, your employees, your partners, your board — to everyone who is listening.

You can’t preserve your culture, but you can and must maintain the values your company holds dear.

When the stock is up, everyone feels great. But, in a volatile market or a downturn, there are a lot of people who will be needing to hear your view on what’s happening. Communication to your stakeholders is not in the way of you doing your job, it is a critical part of your job that just got A LOT bigger. You need to stay ahead of it and deliberately carve out the time to make it a priority.

There are others sharing the microphone

When you are starting out, the world is divided into two types of people: those who love you, and those who don’t know/care. When you are a public company, a lot of voices join the conversation. You’ll add a different beat of reporters focused on your financials. You have analysts who are paid to research and think about your company, your strategy, your prospects and your value. These analysts may have never covered a company quite like yours (after all, you are breaking new ground) and you’ll need to spend time together to understand what matters.

You also can attract a whole new kind of investor, a “short” who has a vested interest in your stock going down. All of these voices are speaking to your stakeholders and you need to understand what they are saying and how it should affect your own communications.

Be careful, the microphone is on

Remember those days when everyone attended the “all hands” and you could share the details of your product road map, your corporate strategy, what’s working and what isn’t? Yeah, those are over. The risk of material nonpublic information leaking means you need to find a new balance in transparency with your employees (and your friends and partners for that matter).

It’s a change to behavior and to culture that doesn’t come naturally (at least it didn’t to me). It’s a change that can be frustrating to employees as the necessary opacity can erode trust as people feel out of the loop. At LendingClub, we still regularly communicate as much as we can and trust our employees, but there are places where you have to draw the line.

Your competitors are listening

Ironically enough, while your ability to share key details with employees is limited, you are sharing a lot with your competition. Shareholders and money managers want to know your battle plans and expect a detailed update at your earnings call every quarter. You can expect that your competitors are taking notice and taking notes.

Your scarcest resource

As the above would indicate, being public means that you are inevitably going to be spending less time running the business, and more time focused externally. Not a bad thing, but something you need to plan for so that you have the resources in place underneath you to maintain business momentum. If your management team isn’t materially different as you head to the market than it was a few years ago, I’d be surprised if you have what you need.

Your culture will change, focus on your values

I once asked a senior Google executive advice on how to preserve culture when going through massive periods of transition. She told me that you can’t preserve your culture, but you can and must maintain the values your company holds dear. Her advice, which I have followed and am passing on to you, is to make sure you write them down, hire against them and assess performance against them.

We started this practice years ago and it is remarkable how consistent our values have remained even as the company has evolved and matured. We codified six core values that put the customer at the center of everything we do. We are guided by our No. 1 value — Do What’s Right. You know a LendingClubber when you meet them, and it is part of what makes us great.

Being a public company is not for the faint-hearted, but being public is part of growing up. Being public legitimizes the company, unlocks liquidity to fuel growth and enables you to attract the next generation of talent. We always said that going public would allow us to deliver more value to a greater number of consumers and would lend legitimacy to our growing industry. We have facilitated more than $50 billion in loans and are still at a small percentage of our immediately addressable market. Although challenging at times, we’re seeing our dream to truly help everyday Americans come to life.

We’ve worked hard since our IPO to change the face people associate with finance. We’ve built a diverse team, established strong core values and nurtured a culture that has resulted in the kind of company we want to represent fintech and the tech industry as a whole — both inside and outside Silicon Valley.

So, to the new joiners in the public sphere — life in the spotlight is a wild ride. Congratulations on this step in your journey, and on to the next!

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Aug
23

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Gary Little of Canvas Ventures (Part 4) - Sramana Mitra

Salesforce chairman, co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff took a lot of big chances when he launched the company 20 years ago. For starters, his was one of the earliest enterprise SaaS companies, but he wasn’t just developing a company on top of a new platform, he was building one from scratch with social responsibility built-in.

Fast-forward 20 years and that company is wildly successful. In its most recent earnings report, it announced a $4 billion quarter, putting it on a $16 billion run rate, and making it by far the most successful SaaS company ever.

But at the heart of the company’s DNA is a charitable streak, and it’s not something they bolted on after getting successful. Even before the company had a working product, in the earliest planning documents, Salesforce wanted to be a different kind of company. Early on, it designed the 1-1-1 philanthropic model that set aside 1% of Salesforce’s equity, and 1% of its product and 1% of its employees’ time to the community. As the company has grown, that model has serious financial teeth now, and other startups over the years have also adopted the same approach using Salesforce as a model.

In our coverage of Dreamforce, the company’s enormous annual customer conference, in 2016, Benioff outlined his personal philosophy around giving back:

You are at work, and you have great leadership skills. You can isolate yourselves and say I’m going to put those skills to use in a box at work, or you can say I’m going to have an integrated life. The way I look at the world, I’m going to put those skills to work to make the world a better place.

This year Benioff is coming to TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco to discuss with TechCrunch editors how to build a highly successful business, while giving back to the community and the society your business is part of. In fact, he has a book coming out in mid-October called Trailblazer: The Power of Business as the Greatest Platform for Change, in which he writes about how businesses can be a positive social force.

Benioff has received numerous awards over the years for his entrepreneurial and charitable spirit, including Innovator of the Decade from Forbes, one of the World’s 25 Greatest Leaders from Fortune, one of the 10 Best-Performing CEOs from Harvard Business Review, GLAAD, the Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative for his work on equality and the Variety Magazine EmPOWerment Award.

It’s worth noting that in 2018, a group of 618 Salesforce employees presented Benioff with a petition protesting the company’s contract with the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). Benioff in public comments stated that the tools were being used in recruitment and management, and not helping to separate families at the border. While Salesforce did not cancel the contract, at the time, co-CEO Keith Block stated that the company would donate $1 million to organizations helping separated families, as well as match any internal employee contributions through its charitable arm, Salesforce.org.

Disrupt SF runs October 2 to October 4 at the Moscone Center in the heart of San Francisco. Tickets are available here.

Did you know Extra Crunch annual members get 20% off all TechCrunch event tickets? Head over here to get your annual pass, and then email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to get your 20% discount. Please note that it can take up to 24 hours to issue the discount code.

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Nov
27

For a small fee, entrepreneurs can now manage their own fleet of Bird e-scooters

Mo Gawdat, the former Google and Google X executive, is probably best known for his book Solve for Happy: Engineer Your Path to Joy. He left Google X last year. Quite a bit has been written about the events that led to him leaving Google, including the tragic death of his son. While happiness is still very much at the forefront of what he’s doing, he’s also now thinking about his next startup: T0day.

To talk about T0day, I sat down with the Egypt-born Gawdat at the Digital Frontrunners event in Copenhagen, where he gave one of the keynote presentations. Gawdat is currently based in London. He has adopted a minimalist lifestyle, with no more than a suitcase and a carry-on full of things. Unlike many of the Silicon Valley elite that have recently adopted a kind of performative aestheticism, Gawdat’s commitment to minimalism feels genuine — and it also informs his new startup.

“In my current business, I’m building a startup that is all about reinventing consumerism,” he told me. “The problem with retail and consumerism is it’s never been disrupted. E-commerce, even though we think is a massive revolution, it’s just an evolution and it’s still tiny as a fraction of all we buy. It was built for the Silicon Valley mentality of disruption, if you want, while actually, what you need is cooperation. There are so many successful players out there, so many efficient supply chains. We want the traditional retailers to be successful and continue to make money — even make more money.”

What T0day wants to be is a platform that integrates all of the players in the retail ecosystem. That kind of platform, Gawdat argues, never existed before, “because there was never a platform player.”

That sounds like an efficient marketplace for moving goods, but in Gawdat’s imagination, it is also a way to do good for the planet. Most of the fuel burned today isn’t for moving people, he argues, but goods. A lot of the food we buy goes to waste (together with all of the resources it took to grow and ship it) and single-use plastic remains a scourge.

How does T0day fix that? Gawdat argues that today’s e-commerce is nothing but a digital rendering of the same window shopping people have done for ages. “You have to reimagine what it’s like to consume,” he said.

The reimagined way to consume is essentially just-in-time shipping for food and other consumer goods, based on efficient supply chains that outsmart today’s hub and spoke distribution centers and can deliver anything to you in half an hour. If everything you need to cook a meal arrives 15 minutes before you want to start cooking, you only need to order the items you need at that given time and instead of a plastic container, it could come a paper bag. “If I have the right robotics and the right autonomous movements — not just self-driving cars, because self-driving cars are a bit far away — but the right autonomous movements within the enterprise space of the warehouse, I could literally give it to you with the predictability of five minutes within half an hour,” he explained. “If you get everything you need within half an hour, why would you need to buy seven apples? You would buy three.”

Some companies, including the likes of Uber, are obviously building some of the logistics networks that will enable this kind of immediate drop shipping, but Gawdat doesn’t think Uber is the right company for this. “This is going to sound a little spiritual. There is what you do and there is the intention behind why you do it,” he said. “You can do the exact same thing with a different intention and get a very different result.”

That’s an ambitious project, but Gawdat argues that it can be done without using massive amounts of resources. Indeed, he argues that one of the problems with Google X, and especially big moonshot projects like Loon and self-driving cars, was that they weren’t really resource-constrained. “Some things took longer than they should have,” he said. “But I don’t criticize what they did at all. Take the example of Loon and Facebook. Loon took longer than it should have. In my view, it was basically because of an abundance of resources and sometimes innovation requires a shoestring. That’s my only criticism.”

T0day, which Gawdat hasn’t really talked about publicly in the past, is currently self-funded. A lot of people are advising him to raise money for it. “We’re getting a lot of advice that we shouldn’t self-fund,” he said, but he also believes that the company will need some strategic powerhouses on its side, maybe retailers or companies that have already invested in other components of the overall platform.

T0day’s ambitions are massive, but Gawdat thinks that his team can get the basic elements right, be that the fulfillment center design or the routing algorithms and the optimization engines that power it all. He isn’t ready to talk about those, though. What he does think is that T0day won’t be the interface for these services. It’ll be the back end and allow others to build on top. And because his previous jobs have allowed him to live a comfortable life, he isn’t all that worried about margins either, and would actually be happy if others adopted his idea, thereby reducing waste.

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Sep
18

Ostrichpillow Hood, the latest product from Studio Banana, is no joke

We dedicate this post to all the busy, overworked startuppers — the last-minute mamas, procrastinating papas and everyone in between. We empathize and gently offer this swift boot in the booty. You have only 48 hours left to save a bundle on your pass to Disrupt San Francisco 2019.

Beat the deadline — 11:59 p.m. (PST) on August 30 — and you can save up to $1,300. Get moving and buy your tickets right here, right now.

Don’t miss out on our flagship Disrupt, which takes place October 2-4. It’s the quintessential tech conference for anyone focused on early-stage startups. Join more than 10,000 attendees — including over 1,200 exhibiting startups — for three jam-packed days of programming. We’re talking four different stages with interactive workshops, Q&A sessions and interviews with some of the industry’s top tech titans, founders, investors, movers and shakers. Check out our list of speakers and the Disrupt agenda.

Disrupt is a breeding ground of opportunity, networking and collaboration. It’s a place where ideas are born, and partnerships are made. Don’t take our (admittedly very biased) word for it. Your peers happen to agree. Here’s what Sage Wohns, co-founder of Agolo, an artificial intelligence startup, had to say about his Disrupt experience:

Disrupt helps you connect more with the startup community in very tangible ways. You can meet investors and bigger players in your industry to see if there’s an opportunity to work together. Disrupt is unique in how it brings everyone — all the industry touch points — together under one roof. It’s incredibly valuable.

We haven’t even mentioned the Startup Battlefield pitch competition, the TC Top Picks who will set up camp in Startup Alley or the TC Hackathon!

So much to see, hear and do at Disrupt San Francisco 2019. And yet, so little time left — 48 tiny little hours — to save money on your pass. What are you waiting for? Get your early-bird tickets now before the clock strikes 11:59 p.m. (PST) on August 30.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt San Francisco 2019? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

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Aug
23

Simple Feast raises $12M from Balderton and 14W to expand its weekly meat-free meal-box deliveries

The future is female and all you fierce female founders have one last shot at receiving 30 minutes of face time with some of the industry’s leading female funders. Say what now? We’re talking the All Raise “ask me anything” (AMA) sessions at Disrupt SF 2019 — and applications close tomorrow, August 30.

All Raise, a startup nonprofit focused on accelerating female founder success, will host a day-long AMA event on October 3 at Disrupt SF 2019. It’s a match-up of early-stage startup founders and top VCs — and more than 100 female founders will take part in at least 30 sessions scheduled throughout the day.

Each session lasts 30 minutes, and three founders will use that time to ask a their female funder well, anything. What business issues keep you up at night? How do you prep for your next round of funding? What do you need to consider when making key hires? This is not a pitching event — it’s a rare networking opportunity to connect with and learn from the very best.

You might be paired with one of these leading VCs:

Dayna Grayson, NEASusan Lyne, BBGShauntel Garvey, Reach CapitalEurie Kim, ForerunnerJess Lee, SequoiaKara Nortman, UpfrontSarah Guo, Greylock,Anarghya Vardhana, MaveronEva Ho, Fika VenturesSarah Smith, Bain Capital VenturesJess Lin, Work-Bench

Apply for an All Raise AMA session if you meet the following criteria:

You’re a U.S.-based woman founderYou’ve raised at least $250,000 in a seed, A or B round.

Note: All Raise gives special consideration to founders from underrepresented groups (e.g. Black, Latinx or LGBTQIA women).

All Raise will review the applications and notify the founders. Acceptance is based on availability for session spots, investor fit with industry sector and company stage, as well as demand for certain categories.

Bonus: After All Raise chooses the participants, we’ll randomly select 30 founders to receive a free Expo Only pass.

If you’re selected, you’ll need to buy any pass to Disrupt SF (unless you win one of the Expo Only passes). You’ll receive an email from All Raise with your session time.

Female funders helping female founders. Don’t squander this chance to learn from the women who know funding best. Apply for an All Raise AMA session by tomorrow, August 30, and get ready to move your business forward.

If you are interested in sponsoring this event or exhibiting at Disrupt San Francisco 2019, fill out this form to get in contact with our sales team.

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Jun
18

Mediflash is a freelancer marketplace for health professionals

As cities in emerging markets grapple with increasingly traffic-clogged and dangerous streets, Urbvan, a startup providing private, high-end transportation shuttles in Mexico, has raised $9 million in a new round of financing.

Co-founded by Joao Matos Albino and Renato Picard, Urbvan is taking the reins from startups like the now-defunct Chariot and tailoring the business for the needs of emerging-market ecosystems.

Hailing from Portugal, Albino arrived in Mexico City as a hire for the Rocket Internet startup Linio. Although Linio didn’t last, Albino stayed in Mexico, eventually landing a job working for the startup Mercadoni, which is where he met Picard.

The two men saw the initial success of Chariot as it launched from Y Combinator, but were also tracking companies like the Indian startup Shuttl.

“We wanted to make shared mobility more accessible and a little bit more efficient,” says Albino. “We studied the economics and we studied the market and we knew there was a huge urgency in the congested cities of  Latin America.”

Unlike the U.S. — and especially major cities like San Francisco and New York — where public transportation is viewed as relatively safe and efficient, the urban environment of Mexico City is seen as not safe by the white-collar workers that comprise Urbvan’s principal clientele.

The company started operating back in 2016. At the time it had five vans that it leased and retrofitted to include amenities like Wi-Fi and plenty of space for a limited number of passengers. The company has expanded significantly since those early days. It now claims more than 15,000 monthly users and a fleet of 180 vans.

Urbvan optimized for safety as well as comfort, according to Albino. The company has deals with WeWork, Walmart and other retailers in Mexico City, so that all the stops on a route are protected and safe. The company also vets its drivers and provides them with additional training because of the expanded capacity of the vans.

Each van is also equipped with a panic button and cameras inside and out for additional monitoring.

Customers either pay $3 per ticket or sign up for a monthly pass that ranges from $100 to $130.

Financing for the company came from Kaszek Ventures and Angel Ventures, with previous investor Mountain Nazca also participating.

For Albino, who went to India to observe Shuttl’s operations, the global market for these kinds of services is so large that there will be many winners in each geography.

“Each city is different and you need to adapt. The technology needs to be adaptable to the city’s concerns, and where it can, add more value,” says Albino. “The Indian market is super different from Latin America… It’s a huge market with a lot of congestion… But the value proposition is a bit more basic [for Shuttl].”

Urbvan is currently operating in Mexico City and Monterrey, but has plans to expand into Guadalajara later this year.

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Aug
29

‘The Operators’: Finance in startups with Duda CFO Stephanie Hsiung and Zeus Living’s Head of Finance Mark Kang

Tim Hsia & Neil Devani Contributor
Tim Hsia is the CEO of Media Mobilize and a Venture Partner at Digital Garage. Neil Devani is an angel investor and venture capitalist focused on companies solving hard problems.

Welcome to this transcribed edition of The Operators. The Operators features insiders from companies like Airbnb, Brex, Calm, Facebook, Google, Lyft, Slack, Uber, WeWork, and Zeus Living sharing their stories and tips on how to break into fields like marketing and product management. They also share best practices for entrepreneurs on how to hire and manage experts from domains outside their own.

This week’s edition features two finance experts with experience from Calm, AdRoll, Morgan Stanley, Change.org, Zeus Living, and Duda. Listen in as they unpack how to build a career in finance at a tech startup and how founders should be thinking about hiring and managing this function.

Stephanie Hsiung is the CFO of Duda, a new and exciting enterprise website builder. Prior to taking the CFO role at Duda, Stephanie served as the VP of Finance at Calm, the leading meditation and mental wellness app and recent unicorn. She was also previously the VP of Finance at Change.org, and was at AdRoll before that.

Mark Kang is the Head of Finance at Zeus Living, which is one of the fastest-growing providers of furnished housing for business travelers. He brings experience from venture capital, banking at Morgan Stanley, where he managed IPOs, and also spent time at Barclays.

Mark Kang, Neil Devanie, Stephanie Hsiung. Image via The Operators

Neil Devani and Tim Hsia created The Operators after seeing and hearing too many heady, philosophical podcasts about the future of tech, and not enough attention on the practical day-to-day work that makes it all happen.

Tim is the CEO & Founder of Media Mobilize, a media company and ad network, and a Venture Partner at Digital Garage. Tim is an early-stage investor in Workflow (acquired by Apple), Lime, FabFitFun, Oh My Green, Morning Brew, Girls Night In, The Hustle, Bright Cellars, and others.

Neil is an early-stage investor based in San Francisco with a focus on companies building stuff people need, solutions to very hard problems. Companies he’s invested in include Andela, Clearbit, Kudi, Recursion Pharmaceuticals, Solugen, and Vicarious Surgical.

If you’re interested in starting or accelerating your marketing career, or how to hire and manage this function, you can’t miss this episode!

The show:

The Operators features insiders from companies like Airbnb, Brex, Calm, Facebook, Google, Lyft, Slack, Uber, WeWork, and Zeus Living sharing their stories and tips on how to break into fields like marketing and product management. They also share best practices for entrepreneurs on how to hire and manage experts from domains outside their own.

In this episode:

In Episode 6, we’re talking about finance. Neil interviews Stephanie Hsiung, the CFO of Duda, a new and exciting enterprise website builder, and Mark Kang, the Head of Finance at Zeus Living, one of the fastest-growing providers of furnished housing for business travelers.

Neil Devani: Hello and welcome to the Operators, where we talk to entrepreneurs and executives from leading technology companies like Google, Facebook, Airbnb, and Calm about how to break into a new field, how to build a successful career, and how to hire and manage talent beyond your own expertise.

We skip over the lofty prognostications from venture capitalists and storytime with founders to dig into the nuts and bolts of how it all works. Hear from the people doing the real day to day work, the people who make it all happen, the people who know what it really takes… The Operators.

Today we’re talking to two finance experts with experience in investment banking and billion-dollar tech startups. I’m your host, Neil Devani and we’re coming to you from Digital Garage here in downtown San Francisco.

Joining me today is Stephanie Hsiung, CFO of Duda, an enterprise website builder, and formerly the VP of finance at Calm, the leading meditation and mental wellness app. She was also the VP of Finance at Change.org and AdRoll before that.

Also joining us is Mark Kang, Head of Finance at Zeus Living, a rising provider of furnished housing for business travels. They have 1400 homes under management in four major metro areas. Mark has experience as a venture capitalist as well and was previously a banker at Morgan Stanley and Barclays. Stephanie and Mark, thank you for joining us.

Stephanie Hsiung: Thank you for having us.

Mark Kang: Yes, thanks for having us.

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Aug
29

Sell More Faster

When we started Techstars in 2006 we had one core goal in mind – helping entrepreneurs succeed. While it started as an experiment with one accelerator in Boulder, we now have about 50 accelerators annually around the world funding 500 startups a year. We also run Startup Weekends and Startup Weeks in over 150 cities globally, have a venture capital fund that invests in companies after they go through the accelerator program, and have a set of corporate innovation and ecosystem development programs that help bridge the gap between large enterprises, cities, and startups. 

A key part of the ethos of Techstars is to always look for more ways to help entrepreneurs succeed whether or not they are part of the Techstars network.

Recently, we decided to start publishing the best content we have in the Techstars network. David Cohen and I came out with the 2nd Edition of Do More Faster: Techstars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup. Jason Mendelson and I are releasing the 4th Edition of Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist next week.

A new book in the Techstars Series is Sell More Faster: The Ultimate Sales Playbook for Startups written by Amos Schwartzfarb, the Managing Director of Techstars Austin. 

Amos has been the Managing Director of Techstars Austin for four years and was one of the top mentors in Austin for the three years prior to him taking over MD role from Jason Seats (who is now Techstars’ Chief Investment Officer.) Prior to Techstars, Amos spent almost 20 years working at or founding startups including HotJobs.com, Work.com, Business.com, and Blacklocus where his job was always to figure out product-market fit and then build and scale the sales and client service organizations. These companies grew collectively to well over $200 million in revenue and had nearly $1 billion in exit value combined.

When Amos started his work mentoring at Techstars, he became a high demand mentor because virtually every company going through the Techstars Austin program sought him out for advice on figuring out sales. When he took over the role of MD for Techstars Austin, he quickly became one of the go-to resources for other MD at Techstars for sales related advice.

Amos decided to write Sell More Faster because he realized building early-stage sales organizations had become intuitive to him based on a simple but effective process he created back at Business.com called W3. This process stood for WHO is your customer, WHAT are they buying, and WHY do they buy it. However, he realized that of all the thousands of founders he speaks with each year, almost no one has a grasp on what it means to do “sales” in a startup. While they might understand sales in a mature company, it’s very different in a startup. In addition, as he looked around for books on sales for the founders going through Techstars Austin, while he found plenty of sales in general, he couldn’t find a great one addressing the tactical and operational side of building your sales strategy and process from day zero.

So he wrote it.

Sell More Faster: The Ultimate Sales Playbook for Startups is an awesome and straightforward playbook that takes you step by step through what you need to do from before you even start developing product all the way through to where you have found repeatability in your sales organization and are scaling the business. It’s a recipe that you’ll be able to refer back to throughout the life of your company and is the only sales book I’ve encountered for startups that address the “how-to of selling” from an operational perspective.

If you are a founder or responsible for sales in an early-stage company, do yourself a favor and grab a copy of Sell More Faster: The Ultimate Sales Playbook for Startups right now. It officially hits the stores on September 4th and you can pre-order yours now on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. 

Finally, Amos will be doing a 20 city book tour this fall including a workshop on selling that accompanies the book. Watch the Sell More Faster website to see the dates when Amos comes to a city near you.

Enjoy – and don’t forgot to Sell More Faster!

Original author: Brad Feld

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Aug
29

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alain le Loux of Cottonwood Technology Fund (Part 4) - Sramana Mitra

Sramana Mitra: Give me some examples of the kind of medical companies that you have invested in. Alain le Loux: I’ve invested in two companies. They are doing great, but it takes a lot of time. For...

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Original author: Sramana Mitra

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Aug
14

Peer-to-peer boat rental marketplace Boatsetter raises $10M as it looks to grow globally

Today’s 454th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, August 29 at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/5 p.m. CEST/8:30 p.m. India IST. Click here to join. All are...

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Original author: Maureen Kelly

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  30 Hits
Aug
12

Polarity raises $8.1M for its AI software that constantly analyzes employee screens and highlights key info

Today’s 454th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting in 30 minutes, on Thursday, August 29, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/5 p.m. CEST/8:30 p.m. India IST. Click here to join....

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Original author: Maureen Kelly

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