Pact Coffee, the U.K. subscription service that delivers freshly roasted “specialty coffee” to your door, has seen a change of leadership as the company plans to focus more on the B2B side of its business. After 5 years running Pact, TechCrunch understands that founder Stephen Rapoport has stepped down from his role as CEO and instead will act as Chairman going forward.… Read More
The social networking platform splashed onto the tech scene promoting itself as an ad-free rival to Facebook. Soon millions of people (including yours truly) signed on just to see what all the fuss was about. The platform quickly ballooned to nearly 3 million community members in a short few months. The problem was no one knew what the hell this thing was. The logo was just a black dot with a… Read More
374th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Jon Staenberg, Staenberg Venture Partners - Sramana Mitra
Jon Staenberg, Managing Partner at Staenberg Venture Partners, has been a Seed Investor in over 300 ventures over the last 30 years. Jon draws from his long background and discusses some of what...
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Entrepreneurs are invited to the 377th FREE online 1Mby1M mentoring roundtable on Thursday, December 7, 2017, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/9:30 p.m. India IST. If you are a serious entrepreneur,...
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November 18, 2017
The NYSE recently published a book â The Entrepreneurâs Roadmap â From Concept to IPO that Iâve been involved in. I wrote a chapter and made a number of introductions to the team working on the book that resulted in a number of other chapters.
The book covers a variety of stages of company development, including:
The Seed Stage: Starting a CompanyThe Growth Stage: Scaling the BusinessLate Stage: Preparing for the next chapterThe Exit: Strategies and OptionsCorporate Governance and Other ConsiderationsItâs free to download in PDF, EPUB, or Kindle.
Also published on Medium.
Mark Cuban had a great line a few weeks ago at the interview I did with him and Charlie Ergen at Denver Startup Week. He said:
âI like to invest in people who reduce stress and avoid people who increase stress.â
As I was dealing with something yesterday, this reappeared in my brain but slightly modified.
âI like to be the person who reduces stress and avoid people who increase stress.â
My world is filled with people who increase stress. Itâs particularly true around negotiations, but it is also prevalent in board level interactions, relationships with founders, dynamics with leaders, and everything else that has to do with companies. And this is just in my business world. When you wander into other areas, like politics, news, and even social situations, the level of stress (which often masquerades as drama) is remarkable.
One of my meditation routines from Headspace that I like is on Anxiety. Another favorite is on Stress. In both cases, the goal is not to eliminate anxiety or stress but to acknowledge it and be more effective in interacting with it.
The word Iâve anchored on in the past few years around this is equanimity. Itâs at the essence of my own personal approach to things. Given the work and larger world context I live in, Iâve accepted that I canât eliminate stress. I also canât avoid it. And, while I can avoid people who increase stress, they will still appear and I will need to interact with them.
So, by turning an element of this around 180 degrees, Iâve been able to change my relationship with stress. I accept that stress is everywhere. I donât try to eliminate it. However, through my behavior, I try to be the person who reduces it. I do this through my approach to all things, carrying the notion of equanimity as a core principle.
This doesnât mean Iâm perfect. I know I generate stress for others in some situations. I know I can always get better at this. Whenever I realize Iâve created stress for someone else, I try to learn from it and improve.
Also published on Medium.
The science fiction of the last 30 years is rapidly becoming reality as technologies such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence are becoming more real and present with each passing day. While my jetpack still seems ponderously far away and cars are becoming self-driving instead of flying, we are making progress.
In medicine, progress is methodical and incremental. As lives are literally at stake, itâs imperative to move forward in a logical and data-driven manner. The resulting regulatory requirement of clinical trials may sometimes be seen as an innovation-stifling burden, but lengthy clinical trials protect patients by ensuring safety and efficacy of therapies. The result? As real advancements are being made in biotechnology, such as engineered cells to fight cancer or using stem cells to regenerate the spine, news and hype eventually quiets during decade long timeline for these technologies to clear trials. There is a bright horizon of therapies that many of us are unaware of.
While Iâm not a biotech investor, I ran into a company in Techstars Class 92 (Seattle 2017) called Silene Biotech that fascinated me. The founder, Alex Jiao, has been focused on regenerative medicine for the past decade, an area of research that still feels strongly like science fiction. The idea is to use our cells outside the body to regenerate or regrow lost tissues and organs. A buzzword in this space is âstem cellsâ and nowadays most people are familiar with the general concept. Stem cells can self-renew and turn into other cells, so their potential is incredible for regenerative medicine.
Currently, there is a lot of mythology and misinformation surrounding stem cells. Unlike newts which can regenerate their limbs, our bodies have limited repair mechanisms and our stem cells can only do so much. However, there are businesses purporting that a simple injection of unmanipulated stem cells can work miracles. The FDA disagrees, and without any compelling data from a clinical trial, most scientists would disagree as well.
I learned from Alex that not all stem cells are the same. Different stem cells have varying abilities to regenerate and turn into other tissues. Furthermore, we are also realizing that it takes guidance and manipulation to coax a stem cell into the correct cell or tissue for regeneration. And new technologies allow us to reprogram adult cells into more âpotentâ stem cells. These factors have now led to stem cell-based clinical trials to treat diseases such as macular degeneration and heart disease, with some early promising results.
There are still limitations to stem cell technology. One major limitation is that we are realizing age and environment can have a profound effect on stem cell function and even safety. Essentially, the older we are, the older all of our cells (including stem cells) become, and as a result, our bodiesâ natural repair mechanisms deteriorate or stop.
Given these factors, I was excited about Alexâs notion that âbacking upâ our cells and stem cells could be a valuable tool for improving and extending our health in the near future. We can stop the biological aging of our stem cells by putting them in a deep freeze at an earlier age, when they have fewer mutations and damage. Banking our stem cells will then allow us to eventually generate and bank other tissues for self-use, like a population of heart cells for cardiac repair or a population of liver cells to diagnose drug toxicity. As technology moves towards a future where itâs technologically possible to engineer tissues and organs from our own stem cells, backing stem cells up today can give us the best opportunity to use them when we need them.
I love the idea of backing up my stem cells. Alex and his team are coming to Boulder to do this for me on 11/29. If you are interested in backing up your stem cells, Alex has offered to do it for a few others in Boulder when he is here. If you are interested,
Also published on Medium.
Deliveroo founder Will Shu talked to Business Insider about the workers' rights case that threatened the gig economy model of his massive food delivery startup. He also talked about whether he might take Deliveroo public in an IPO. The company is handing out helmet cams to deter the brutal attacks on his riders. And, he tells us, he once worked for Just Eat as a delivery guy in order to see what his company was up against.Â
On Sundays in London, former Morgan Stanley banker William Shu gets on his bicycle and delivers pizzas, a job that pays about £10 an hour.
Shu is the CEO of Deliveroo. Shu says that he has only ever been recognised by a customer once, when he delivered to a colleague he used to work with at an investment fund. "I hadn't talked to him in like three years," Shu told Business Insider recently. "He didn't understand that I started the company. He just thought I was a delivery guy ... He was just like, hey, what are you doing? I didn't have time to talk to him. I said hey, I gotta go."
The man then started contacting mutual friends, asking, "I'm pretty sure Will delivered a pizza to me a few weeks ago, and there's no explanation."
There is no parallel among other tech unicorns, either. Having your pizza delivered by the CEO of Deliveroo â his company is now worth $2 billion (£1.5 billion) â is the British equivalent of having your books hand-delivered to your house by Amazon's Jeff Bezos.
Shu is hardcore about getting food delivered right. He got the idea for the company when he was working at Morgan Stanley in London. If he needed lunch or dinner at his desk, the "system" for ordering food consisted of a giant, messy bundle of takeout menus from local restaurants. There was no way to know what was good or bad, or which places were known for delivering promptly or not. How has this simple problem not been solved yet, he thought.Â
Now, Deliveroo is approaching a huge turning point, whether Shu likes it or not.Â
Shu and his board are hinting heavily that they might be preparing for an IPO. At the same time, the company is warily watching litigation work its way through the British courts that could upend its "gig economy" business model.
Like Uber, the people who deliver services for the company aren't classed as actual employees. They're freelancers, paid by the job. In November, a UK employment tribunal handed down an appeal ruling saying that Uber's drivers should be treated as employees â a decision that could guarantee them minimum wage and paid time off for sickness and holidays, among a host of other old-economy benefits. Deliveroo won a similar case, brought by 45 of its riders, but who knows what an appeal â or a change of law from government â might bring.Â
In the meantime, things couldn't look better for Britain's biggest unicorn: It has taken a staggering $865 million (£659 million) in investment funding, suggesting that its official valuation of $2 billion severely underestimates its true value (technology venture capital investors prefer returns on their money that are five or 10 times the cash they put in). He has 1,000 employees in 150 cities globally.
And Shu is nowhere near done â Deliveroo has yet to launch in the US, even though America is perhaps the biggest, most lucrative, and most friendly country for food delivery ideas. It is the place that will likely fuel Deliveroo's future growth.
Shu built all that in just five years.Â
Business Insider sat down with Shu in Lisbon at Web Summit, the giant tech conference. He told us what he's doing to protect Deliveroo riders from London's fearsome moped gangs, who target his riders with knives and acid in order to steal their vehicles.
We talked about his preferred solution to the employment lawsuit, and how he'd like to work with the government to offer gig economy workers pension plans that can accrue the same way their wages do. Finally, we discussed the early days of Deliveroo, when he was germinating the idea for the company: he worked undercover at Just Eat, the publicly traded company that is his greatest rival, delivering Chinese food in London's Pimlico neighbourhood for two weeks in order to see what he was up against. Â
On the problem of Deliveroo drivers being attacked by moped thieves...
JE: What is Deliveroo doing about the problem of attacks on its drivers?
WS:Â It's a problem for sure. In the last - I don't know the stats - but it's of the utmost concern for us.
We've done a few things. We've given a lot of helmet cams to riders that they can just attach on their bike helmet or on their scooter helmet. So this way at least they have a record of what's going on, and also, hopefully, that can deter people from trying to steal their scooters.
JE: Do helmet cams deter criminals?
WS: Don't know for sure. This is something we've launched two months ago, it's a relatively new thing. It's anecdotal feedback it's not statistical. I think the other thing that we've done is in the app itself, in the rider app, there's a button they can press if there is an emergency.Â
REUTERS/Charles Platiau
JE: Does that go to the police?
WS: That actually goes internally, and then we can liaise with the police. Of course, the first thing is if something is happening that's dramatic they should, of course, call the police first. But they can let us know with the press of a button what's going on.
We're taking feedback from the riders, we have drop-in sessions, and these two things were really a result of them coming to us and also having a discussion with them and thinking what's a good solution. Of course, it's a problem, I do Deliveroos myself. I do it on a bicycle now, not on a scooter, because I do it more for fitness. But I did it for a year on a scooter.
JE: Have you ever been attacked?
WS: No. Never. Nothing like what I've seen. There's aggressive drivers and things like that, but nothing on that line.
JE: Can riders refuse to go to an address or neighbourhood if they are worried about crime?
WS: They [riders] have the right reject anyone that comes to them, it's a button on the app. So if they don't feel safe they don't have to do any order ... For us the safety is of the utmost importance.
On doing deliveries himself...
JE: You famously do deliveries yourself. You used to do them about once a week. Do you still do that?
WS: Maybe not once a week but every once every few weeks. I'll do it on a Sunday, that's when we're busiest usually in central London so I'll do it near my house or near the office.Â
JE: Do customers ever recognise you?
WS: Um, no. Definitely not customers. The customers don't care. They want their food right, they're not looking at what this delivery guy looks like. Sometimes the other riders do. And I chat to them.Â
One time I would say I was in Pho in Wardour Street [in London] and ... I had done this conference with Wagamama [the trendy Mexican restaurant chain].
REUTERS/Neil Hall
Wagamama have this general manager conference, all the store managers, they had this big thing in Manchester, like 400 people. So they said, hey can you speak? I said sure, I talked about how I do deliveries ... a week later I'm in Pho on Wardour Street and I'm taking the food out and these two women stop me and they're like, hey are you Will and I'm like, yes how can I help you? And they're like, oh we work at Wagamama, we were at that conference a week ago, we heard you talking about doing deliveries and we just figured you were just telling stories. But here you are actually doing it! They thought it was kinda cool. That was about the only time.
The only other time I would say was at the very beginning, when I delivered to my ex-colleague. I hadn't talked to him in like three years ... He didn't understand that I started the company he just thought I was a delivery guy ... He was just like, hey what are you doing? I didn't have time to talk to him I said hey, I gotta go. And this was like a big story for a while because he then contacted other people. "I'm pretty sure Will delivered a pizza to me a few weeks ago, and there's no explanation."Â
I saw him later ... He worked at an [investment] fund with me. He was a really nice guy. It was just really funny because I'm not close to him, and so he didn't really expect to see that.
JE: Tell us about the "dark kitchens," where Deliveroo sets up temporary huts or food trucks that can serve food from local restaurants.
WS: It's a really, really cool concept. We are now live in a number of British cities, so we're in London, Reading, Brighton, Nottingham ... And we're expanding to more, including multiple sites in different cities, and then internationally we're in Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Milan.
We call them Deliveroo Editions. By the end of 2018 we'll have 450 operators probably ... They're employees of the restaurants so the way it works is that the restaurant takes up occupancy in the space, they bring their ingredients, they bring the staff. And it's just an outpost of the restaurant.
On the potential for an IPO...
JE: Have you rejected many acquisition offers?
WS: There's always strategic discussions, inbounds and outbounds, but we want to build one of the biggest companies in the world, that's what we're focused on so that stuff is not of super-interest. Especially after raising a lot of money as well.
JE: Are you going to IPO?
WS: We're thinking about all kinds of possibilities. IÂ think an IPO is somewhat logical given the lead investors in this last round, which are public market investors, T. Rowe Price and Fidelity.
What I am focused on is running the company and winning and really building a product which means best restaurants for consumers, getting them food to them quickly, whether that's in the private space or public space is there's definitely differences but ultimately ... There's pros and cons to both, right? But I think that for me that's my focus and whether that be in the public arena or private arena that's just fine.
JE: When are you going to launch in the US?
WS: US is a market that I think if we want to go in we have to go into a lot of cities simultaneously, it's such a big market. I think it's one of the best markets in the world (the US), it's just that we're focused on what we're doing right now in our 12 countries.
Deliveroo
On workers' rights litigation ...
JE: What happens to Deliveroo if you ultimately lose this litigation or the law changes and drivers have to be classed as employees?
WS: First of all the whole on-demand space is just relatively new, talking about five years, six years. So there's just a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding amongst, I'd say, politicians as well as journalists.
What I care about, what's really important to me, is actually the riders themselves, right. And so there are surveys, everything we talk about to them overwhelmingly what they care about is, No.1, flexibility. And what flexibility actually means is log in, log out. Work around your life. The average Deliveroo rider in the UK works about 12 hours a week, something like that. So generally it's not a full-time thing. It's different than say, I don't know if you take Uber cars, a lot of these guys it's kind of their full-time thing. So this is different. We have a lot of students, we have a lot of people who are taking care of elderly, we have actors, so that the sort of population is very broad in terms of the people who want to do it. So flexibility is the most important thing to them.Â
REUTERS/Charles Platiau
No.2 is wages, earning a higher wage. And so right now in the UK approximately our average rate of pay per hour is about £10 per hour, which is still substantially higher than the minimum wage which I believe is now £7.50 nationally. So I think those two things are really important. That's pretty obvious.
JE: Is it possible to earn below minimum wage on Deliveroo?
WS: They're independent contractors, and it's not so much an hourly concept. The way our system works is you get assigned deliveries and most people get paid on a per-delivery basis. So when I say an hour, I'm referring to the number of deliveries people do in a particular hour, multiplied by the rate of pay on a per-order basis. So it can vary ... which is on our app.
We know that a lot of riders also work for Uber Eats, Amazon, Just Eat. So it's actually a very tough thing for us to know. Because let's say Jim is working for four apps at once and you do one delivery on Deliveroo but you did two on Just Eat, and you did three on Uber Eats, in that one hour. I only know what you made with us, I won't know what you made with the others. And if you talk to riders in London especially, because that's kind of the biggest - and in Paris and a lot of these other cities - they'll almost all tell you that, yep, they've got three, four apps open at the same time.Â
JE: If the law requires you to class them as employees they can't do this anymore?
WS: That's right. That's not what they want, though.
JE: They want to arbitrage you, based on demand, by playing you off against Uber Eats or Just Eat.
WS: It's the market. And I think if you provide them the best earnings and the most amount of jobs per hour, they'll naturally gravitate towards you. And to me, that feels pretty fair.
JE: Does it screw with your business model if you have to class them as employees?
WS: It's not a cost thing. The issue is flexibility, right? Riders want the job because it's flexible, and if we make that job inflexible less people are going to want to do the job even if you pay them the same. I am 100% sure of that.Â
JE: That would make life extremely difficult for the functioning of Deliveroo.Â
WS: I don't know about extremely difficult, it would put us in a different position. We would have to figure out a way to do it but the whole point is flexibility is what people sign up for and if you take that away from them, yeah I think less people will want to do that job. Is there any doubt about it? I mean likewise, talk to any Uber car driver, ask them if they want to work on an hourly shift.
JE: I know they don't. I talk to them all the time. They love the fact that they can just take the day off.
Deliveroo
On offering pensions to Deliveroo riders...
WS: The reality is more and people are going to want this kind of work. So my third point, we talked about flexibility, we talked about earnings, is actually benefits.
We actually want to offer benefits but in a flexible working model. So for example, we want to work with the government to flesh all this stuff out, but picture a scenario where you are accruing pension on a per-delivery basis ... If you're able to do that on a flexible basis then that means our interests are aligned with yours, and then you can also work in that flexible manner. For us, that's something that's really important. But we understand why that hasn't happened yet, this is a really new thing, and so it's going to take time for governments and policymakers to think through all this stuff. But the reality is this is what people want to do. There's no doubt.
JE: The gig economy is getting a bad name over time. Low wage jobs, low productivity. Uber and Deliveroo come up together because you guys are the biggest gig economy platforms. Do you worry about that? Do you worry that Deliveroo might become a totemic example of the dysfunctions of the gig economy?Â
WS: I don't sit around worrying about the media all day honestly. I care about our riders, I care about customers, I care about restaurants. And not that I don't care about you, but it's just not the No.1 thing I think about every day to be honest. And again, I think a lot of the criticism that's directed towards the gig economy is a result of it being a new thing that grew very very very quickly.
Five years ago you could not log in and out of a job. that's just the reality so for a lot of people it is very very unknown and scary. but for the people that are actually doing the jobs I think those are the people you should actually talk to.
And of course you can always find the odd person who's unhappy, journalists are very good at that, but if you look at our survey data, and we can share that with you at some point, it's clear that overwhelmingly people want flexible work. And I hope the government can recognise that and work with us to not just offer flexible and high-earning work, but also benefits as well. And look, you talk about low wages, well on average it's £10 an hour, approximately £10 an hour, which you know at the end of the year is a lot higher than £7.50 ... It's literally 33% better than McDonald's. So I think that's how we think about it. So we want to pay much higher.
Deliveroo
On working undercover at Just Eat...
JE: You come to Web Summit to check out new startup ideas. Have you seen any good ones? Any terrible ones?
WS:Â A lot of people told me Deliveroo was a really terrible idea. I guess it still remains to be seen. But five years in, we have traction at least.
JE: Why did they tell you Deliveroo was a terrible idea?
WS: Because Just Eat was around.
JE: So what do you do better than Just Eat?
WS: They don't deliver the food, they have the restaurants deliver the food. And so as a consequence the restaurant quality â it's like all kebab shops, right? And then, No.2, you don't know when you're going to get your food, because there's not a company doing it, it's just a guy in a restaurant.Â
JE: So if I am a restaurant owner it's easier for me to deal with Deliveroo because I don't have to hire delivery guys.
WS: That's right. I worked in some of these Just Eat restaurants before I started Deliveroo just to kind of understand how the system worked. At Deliveroo we have a right to work check, we have background checks, you get an invoice, it's all very clear what your taxes should be, and all that stuff. At Just Eat you know you get paid, like £6 in cash, these guys sleep above the restaurants. It's very different type of thing.
JE: How long did you spend doing that?
WS: Two weeks. I worked at a place called [redacted] in Pimlico, it was a Chinese restaurant run by an Afghan guy. And he was super funny. He's like 'I'm going to tell you how to run a Chinese restaurant.' He was just a funny guy.
JE: He had no idea you were from Morgan Stanley and had a lot of funding.
WS:Â I didn't start up the company yet, I was just trying to learn, I was on my scooter delivering Chinese food for him. So I've seen a lot of those restaurants, the takeaway shops, you know.
Good morning! Here's the technology news you need to know this Wednesday.
1. The US government has issued an alert about possible North Korean hacking activity. The attacks are targeting the aerospace, telecommunications, and finance industries.
2. It looks like Russia used both Facebook and Twitter to interfere with the UK's Brexit referendum. Facebook hinted at the possibility but did not give outright confirmation, while researchers found 400 fake Twitter accounts run from Russia.
3. High-profile Uber investor Shervin Pishevar has finally been named as the VC who was arrested in London earlier this year for alleged sexual assault. The claims were dropped, but Pishevar has now launched his own lawsuit against a PR firm, which he claims smeared him in the press.
4. A Vietnamese researcher used a custom mask to unlock Face ID on Apple's iPhone X. Similarly, a family posted a video of a child being about to unlock his mother's iPhone X with his own face.
5. US regulators have approved the first digital pill, which connects to your smartphone and can be tracked inside your stomach. The pill, Abilify MyCite, can treat schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, and depression.
5. UK food delivery startup Deliveroo has won a key legal victory which rules its delivery riders are self-employed, not workers entitled to certain rights. The victory comes after Uber lost a similar case last week.
6. The UK government is investing an additional £21 million into Tech City UK, the semi-public organisation which promotes the tech industry. The body will rebrand to "Tech Nation" and include clusters outside London such as Newcastle and Edinburgh.
7. Mozilla has launched a new version of its Firefox browser called Firefox Quantum, which is double the speed and uses 30% less memory than Google Chrome. It's the biggest overhaul in 13 years, the company said.
8. Pump and dump scams have hit cryptocurrencies, with traders artificially inflating the price of smaller currencies like Chilli Coin, then quickly selling for a profit. The scams are not illegal since cryptocurrencies are so lightly regulated.
9. Taxify, an Estonian rival to Uber, has demoted its UK boss and plans to raise new funding as it tries to re-establish itself in London. Taxify halted its services in London just three days after launch over issues with its operator's licence.
10. Reddit's chief executive said the company is considering an IPO, though he didn't say when. He said an offering would be the "only responsible choice" for the firm.
New startup London Block Exchange is launching a prepaid card linked to an app that will let people spend and hold cryptocurrencies. The startup has raised £2 million from private investors and is headed by an 18-year Credit Suisse veteran.
A London-startup headed by a Credit Suisse veteran is launching a new debit card that it claims will allow people to spend cryptocurrencies across the UK.
The London Block Exchange (LBX) launched on Tuesday. It plans to launch a sterling-to-cryptocurrency exchange and a Visa debit card, dubbed "Dragoncard," that will allow people to spend bitcoin, ethereum, ripple, litecoin and monero across the UK. The startup plans to add more cryptocurrencies in future.
The Visa card, which will be issued by Gibraltar-based pre-paid card provider Wavecrest, will be linked to an app that allows users to buy and hold cryptocurrencies through the LBX exchange. Customers will also be able to withdraw money using the card. Cryptocurrencies will be converted to sterling at the time of withdrawal.
LBX CEO and founder Ben Dives said in a statement: "Despite being the financial capital of the world, London is a difficult place for investors to enter and trade in the cryptocurrency market.
"Weâll bring it into the mainstream by removing the barriers to access, and by helping people understand and have confidence in what we believe is the future of money."
LBX has so far raised £2 million from a consortium of private investors who the company declined to name. Prior to setting up LBX earlier this year, Dives founded brainstorming tool Ideaflip.
Ex-Credit Suisse and UBS banker Adam Bryant serves as LBX's executive chairman. Bryant spent 18 years at Credit Suisse and almost two years at UBS before joining LBX, running the macro hedge fund teams at both banks.
Bryant said in a statement: "Weâre offering a grown up and robust experience for those who wish to safely and easily understand and invest in digital currencies. Weâre confident weâll transform this market in the UK and will become the leading cryptocurrency and blockchain consultancy for institutional investors and consumers alike."
Customers will be charged a 0.5% for buying and selling cryptocurrencies on its platform and the Dragoncard has an up-front fee of £20. LBX says card provider Wavecrest will also charge a small fee for ATM withdrawals.
LBX's launch coincides with an explosion of interest in cryptocurrency in 2017. Bitcoin has rocketed over 500% so far this year and the total cryptocurrency market has ballooned to close to $200 billion thanks to the popularity of "initial coin offerings," where startups issue digital coins as a way of raising money.
While LBX is one of the first companies to offer a cryptocurrency card in the UK, it is likely to soon face competition. Revolut, the well-funded foreign exchange startup, is developing cryptocurrency trading capacities within its app and may well let consumers spend the currencies on its prepaid card.
Amazon's CEO and founder Jeff Bezos joined his younger brother Mark Bezos at Summit 2017 in Los Angeles in early November to discuss life as kid and dish out advice to the entrepreneurial set. Bezos revealed some surprising anecdotes: he spent his childhood summers working on a ranch with his grandfather and he never checks his phone at the dinner table.
Earlier this month, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos sat down with his younger brother, Mark, for a revealing conversation at Los Angeles' Summit 2017, a conference that gathers prominent thinkers focussed on entrepreneurship. The two brothers reflected on their family, the years they spent as children in Texas, and their grandfather, who figured as a source of inspiration for both. The elder Bezos brother, who founded the online retail giant now valued at $550 billion, dished out advice for entrepreneurs and recounted several amusing anecdotes from his childhood.Â
Want to learn how to be resourceful? Spend your summers working on a ranch.
As a kid, Bezos spent his summers working on his grandfather's ranch in South Texas. Bezos describes his grandfather as an introspective man who was infinitely resourceful and self-reliant, two qualities which Bezos believes have vastly contributed to Amazon's success as a company.
"The whole point of moving things forward is that you run into problems and failures," Bezos said. "Things don't work, you have to back up and try again. Each time you back up and try again, you're using your resourcefulness, you're using self reliance. You're trying to invent your way out of a box."
Inventing your way out of box, says Bezos, is largely a matter of trial and error. Bezos described how the addition of third party selling business on Amazon called Amazon Auction was unsuccessful in its early years, but through a year-and-half-long experimentation process, it eventually evolved into Amazon marketplace. "At Amazon, we have a practice of failing," he said.
When it comes to setting realistic goals, think long term.
Bezos had some words of wisdom for ambitious entrepreneurs: think long term. "Long term thinking is the lever that lets you do things that you could not do or even conceive of doing if you were thinking short term," he said. Bezos said that many of Amazon's competitors fail because they're fixated on accomplishing their company goals in two to three years, rather than aiming for more realistic results in five or six years down the road.
"If everything has to work in two to three years, then that limits what you can do. If you give yourself the breathing room to take say, seven years, all of sudden you have more opportunities," he said.
Don't check your phone at the dinner table.Â
Bezos' younger brother also made a point to dispel one pervasive myth about his tech mogul sibling. Contrary to what you might believe, Bezos isn't really on his phone all that much. As it turns out, the founder of Amazon is exceptionally laser-focused. As a kid in Montessori school, Bezos describes how teachers would have to physically move his chair from one task station to the next in order to get him to focus on the next assignment. Those qualities still define Bezos as an adult: He's not a fan of checking his phone at the dinner table and he's not big on multi-tasking either, even when it comes to checking his email: "[Multitasking] bothers me," Bezos said, "If I'm reading my email, I want to be really reading my email."
Watch the full interview below:Â
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Turkey says it has finalized a deal to buy Russia's advanced S-400 missile-defense system. Ankara also says it wants to work with NATO countries on defense projects. NATO leaders appear to be sending warnings to Turkey over the purchase and potential deployment of the weapon system.
Throughout the summer and fall, Turkey moved ahead with plans to buy Russia's advanced S-400 anti-missile defense system.
The purchase concerned NATO members and underscored the contentious relationship between Ankara and the West, but Turkey said this week that it had been completed.
"It is finished. The S-400 missiles have been bought. The rest is just details now," Turkish Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli said this weekend.
As a NATO member, Turkey would typically buy weapons interoperable with the defense alliance's weapons systems, but Ankara sought out new options after several NATO countries declined to renew their deployments of Patriot missile-defense systems in Turkey, leaving only a handful there.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he pursued the S-400 because the West denied him a comparable system. He has also expressed frustration with the EU over its response to the attempted coup against him in summer 2016 and accused the bloc of "messing us about" on issues like visas and Syria migrants.
Ankara's plans to buy the missile system were "a clear sign that Turkey is disappointed in the US and Europe," an analyst at a Moscow-based think tank said this summer. In September, a Turkish state-media agency published a graphic appearing to tout the S-400's ability to shoot down US aircraft.
NATO officials, for their part, have warned Turkey about the consequences of purchasing the S-400. US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has said numerous times that the system would not be interoperable with NATO weapons systems.
But Canikli also said this weekend that Turkey was making arrangements with Eurosam, a French-Italian consortium developing anti-aircraft defense systems.
"We are also making preliminary agreements with the EUROSAM consortium to have this technology to develop, produce and use our own sources for air-defense systems," Canikli said. He signed a letter of intent to work with Eurosam on defense projects several days before.
Ahmet Berat Conkar, the head of Turkey's delegation to NATO's parliamentary assembly, said the day after Canikli's comments that the S-400 purchase was not a political message but a decision based on technical and financial concerns that wouldn't hinder cooperation with NATO partners. He also pointed to the Eurosam agreement as a sign of Turkey's continued intention to work with NATO allies.
NATO officials, however, appear to still be wary of the deal and the looming introduction of a Russian weapons system into the military of one of their partner forces.
At the end of October, Czech Gen. Petr Pavel, who heads NATO's Military Committee, indicated Turkey could be on its own to face restrictions on participation in NATO air defenses if it went ahead with the S-400.
"But the same way that nations are sovereign in making their decision, they are also sovereign in facing the consequences of that decision," Pavel said.
Putting the S-400 on Turkish territory would create "challenges for allied assets potentially deployed onto the territory of that country," Pavel continued without elaborating, though he may have been referring to the F-35 stealth fighter.
Mattis reiterated on Monday that the Turkish S-400 system would not work with NATO weapons and that Ankara would responsible for that.
"Clearly, it will not be interoperable with NATO," he told reporters. "So they're going to have to consider that if they go forward."
When asked about Turkish claims there was no alternative to the S-400 offered by the West, Mattis said only, "That's a sovereign decision for Turkey."
The way it's been covered, you might think that Russia's alleged attempt to manipulate last year's US presidential election was the only time such an online propaganda campaign has ever been waged. But you'd be wrong. It turns out the use of fake news and other disinformation is fairly widespread.
Online manipulation and propaganda played an important role in elections not only in the US, but in 17 other countries around the globe in the year ending May 31, according to the lastest Freedom of the Net report from Freedom House, a nonprofit organization that promotes democracy and civil liberties. Outside of election periods, similar disinformation efforts took place in even more countries.
The online propaganda campaign in the US was largely perpetrated by actors outside its borders. But the disinformation efforts in other countries were largely homegrown, according to the report. As we can see in this chart from Statista, much of the propaganda in affected countries was propagated by progovernment groups.Â
Regardless of their source or where they took place, the misinformation campaigns played an important role in Freedom House's assessment that internet freedom worldwide declined for the seventh year in a row.
Ad Astra School was created in 2014 by Elon Musk. There are very few details about the school and no public website. Elon Musk hasn't spoken publicly about the school since 2015.
Elon Musk pulled his five kids out their prestigious school for gifted children school in 2014, and launched the secretive Ad Astra School.
Details about Ad Astra â which means "to the stars" in Latin â are sparse. Musk gave an interview to Beijing Television in 2015 and spoke about the school.
"There aren't any grades," Musk said, explaining that instead of treating school like an assembly line "it makes more sense to cater the education to match their aptitudes and abilities."
Since that 2015 interview, Musk hasn't spoken publicly about Ad Astra, and families at the school have remained similarly tight-lipped. The school has no public website, phone number, or reference of the administrators and teachers who work at the school.
But Peter Diamandis, chairman of the X Prize Foundation, recently toured Ad Astra, and shared the ethos of the school. Diamandis' unique access to Ad Astra is likely due to the fact that Musk sits on the board of trustees of X Prize.
"One element that is persistent in that small school of 31 kids is the conversation about ethics and morals, a conversation manifested by debating real-world scenarios that our kids may one day face,"Â Diamandis, wrote for the Huffington Post.
He went on to give an example of a question that teachers posed to students:
"Here's an example of the sort of gameplay/roleplay that I heard about at Ad Astra, that might be implemented in a module on morals and ethics. Imagine a small town on a lake, in which the majority of the town is employed by a single factory. But that factory has been polluting the lake and killing all the life. What do you do? It's posed that shutting down the factory would mean that everyone loses their jobs. On the other hand, keeping the factory open means the lake is destroyed and the lake dies. This kind of regular and routine conversation/gameplay allows the children to see the world in a critically important fashion."
This type of moral and ethical reckoning isn't uncommon for Musk, who talks about the need to think about the ethical ramifications of advancing technology. It seems Ad Astra has these same types of discussions with its students.
If you are a parent of a student at Ad Astra or know more details about the school and would like to share, email
Russia uses its official government Twitter accounts to rebuke its critics and troll Western leaders.On Tuesday, Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweeted a satirical response to UK Prime Minister Theresa May's criticism of Moscow's interference in elections.Kremlin trolling on Twitter dates back years.
During the 2016 election, Russian-linked bots and trolls on social media attempted to inflame relations among Americans by spreading fake news and highlighting vulnerable racial and political divisions. They bought ads on Twitter and shared posts on Facebook, concealing their identities while pretending to be real Americans.
But the Kremlin has another, more conspicuous way of spreading propaganda and trolling the West that doesn't normally get as much attention.
In the last few years, Russia has used official government Twitter accounts to undermine the West and hit back against criticism, often with tantalizing and meme-filled rhetoric. The Twitter accounts of Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and its Embassy in the UK, both of which tweet in English, have been particularly active.
On Tuesday for example, after UK Prime Minister Theresa May slammed Russia for planting fake stories and photo-shopping images on social media "in an attempt to sow discord in the West," Russia's MFA tweeted a satirical response.
This was just the latest in a string of official Russian government tweets aimed at sparking controversy among Moscow's adversaries.
In a report published Tuesday, the watchdog group Freedom House noted that in few places is "the hypocritical link between state propaganda and legal restrictions on the media stronger than in Russia." This gives Russia monopoly over the flow of information within its borders. Increasingly, the report says, Russia has used similar information manipulation tactics abroad.
Here are 9 other times Russia has used its official Twitter accounts to troll Western leaders and the media:
DoorDash
This month, food delivery service DoorDash added former Twitter VP of engineering, Jeremy Rishel, and former VP of product at Groupon, Rajat Shroff, to its team. Rishel and Shroff will be joining the company in its efforts to expand into more cities and deliver products other than food.Â
Food delivery service DoorDash has added two new execs to its senior management team: Twitter's former VP of engineering, Jeremy Rishel, and Rajat Shroff who previously worked as VP of product at Groupon. Both Rishel and Shroff will help DoorDash fine tune its delivery time predictions and build the company's ever-growing stable of restaurants and food brands.Â
Rishel will oversee DoorDash's engineering department, reporting to CEO Tony Xu. Having joined Twitter in 2013 through the acquisition of Bluefin Labs, Rishel most recently focused on video engineering efforts and machine learning. Machine learning is particularly important to DoorDash, as it competes in a tough market against other startups like Postmates and giants such as Amazon and Uber.Â
DoorDash has delivered tens of millions of orders since its launch four years ago, creating a trove of data that Rishel intends to tap into in order to hone DoorDash's travel and meal prep time predictions. Rishel plans on mining the company's vast datasets that detail different geographies, restaurants, order patterns, and product experiences in attempt to further customize each user experience.
Rishel, who plans to double the size of DoorDash's engineering team. says he sees similarities between the Twitter and DoorDash: "Both companies have to work across a very broad set of technologies at very large scale," said Rishel. "For DoorDash, the challenge is at an earlier stage."
Shroff, too, has big plans for DoorDash's future. He'll oversee the four-year-old company's product, design and growth teams, and will also report to CEO Xu.Â
At the top of his priority list is helping DoorDash expand into more cities â DoorDash is currently in the US and Canada, and under Shroff the goal is to continue to expand domestically and internationally. He'll also figure out how to utilize more types of delivery vehicles and to support new use-cases for delivery beyond food. Â
The company behind Cards Against Humanity, the self-described "party game for horrible people," has purchased a plot of land on the US-Mexico border. The company's goal is to "make it as time-consuming and expensive as possible for [President Trump's border wall] to get built." It's part of the latest of the company's annual holiday season marketing stunts.
The company behind Cards Against Humanity, the self-described "party game for horrible people," has purchased a vacant plot of land on the US-Mexico border, just to get in the way of President Trump's planned wall.Â
Cards Against Humanity harbors no illusions that it'll be able to stop the construction of the wall entirely. But the company has hired a law firm specializing in eminent domain, just "to make it as time-consuming and expensive as possible for the wall to get built," it said on a new website dubbed "Cards Against Humanity Saves America."
"Donald Trump is a preposterous golem who is afraid of Mexicans" the company said on the site. "He is so afraid that he wants to build a $20 billion wall that everyone knows will accomplish nothing."
The land purchase and the new website are actually part of the kickoff to the company's annual holiday season marketing stunt. This year, for $15, the company will send customers "six America-saving surprises right to your doorstep." The first of those surprises will include a map of the vacant plot on the border, some new cards for the game, and other goodies.Â
"It will be fun, it will be weird, and if you voted for Trump, you might want to sit this one out," the company said on the new site.
Cards Against Humanity co-creator Max Temkin tells Business Insider that the land purchase designed to be a serious play to stop the border wall, which he describes as a "boondoggle" â for that, "we would need to win elections and hold political power," he says. "But we do think it's a funny protest, and possibly a delaying tactic."
In the hours since "Cards Against Humanity Saves America" went live, he says that there hasn't been too much pushback from the Trump supporters among the game's sizable audience: "Playing our game requires literacy and a sense of humor so there's not a lot of hardcore Trump fans in our fanbase," says Temkin.
Cards Against Humanity has a history of staging hilarious stunts during the holiday season. Last year, for example, it raised more than $100,000 in donations to finance the digging of a massive hole in the middle of nowhere, for no reason.
And this isn't the first time that Cards Against Humanity has turned to real estate for the sake of its holiday jokes. Three years ago, the company bought a private island off the coast of Maine, dubbed it Hawaii 2, and gave 250,000 customers a license to visit. Nowadays, Hawaii 2 is open to the general public for hiking or fishing.Â
And this isn't the first time the company has gotten political. This summer, it launched "Cards Against Humanity: For Her," a version of the game that was the same as the original but came in a pink box and cost $5 more. Profits from sales of that joke product went to Emily's List, a political action committee dedicated to getting more women elected to public office.
On its new Cards Against Humanity Saves America site, the company refuted the notion "it's politically correct now."
"Weâre just being regular correct,"Â the company said.
The government is investing an extra £21 million into Tech City UK over four years. It's also increasing the Tier 1 (Exceptional Talent) visa cap to 2,000, up from 1,000. The prime minister will host a roundtable at Downing Street on Wednesday for people in tech.
The UK Government announced on Tuesday that it's investing an extra £21 million into technology organisation Tech City UK and doubling the number of visas available for a scheme often used by people working in technology.
Tech City UK is a semi-public organisation that works to help growing technology companies in the UK. The announcement from Number 10 said that the new money would go towards the expansion of its "Tech Nation" scheme intended to encourage tech outside of East London's technology cluster.
So that means that Tech City UK will rebrand to Tech Nation and will aim to launch similar projects to its local Tech North initiative across the country.
A spokesperson for the prime minister told Business Insider that the extra £21 million in funding will be invested over four years. That's on top of Tech City UK's current government budget of around £2 million per year.
Tech City UK said in a statement that it will use the extra money to fund more tech clusters in the UK. Here are the current tech clusters it identified as being part of Tech Nation:
North East: Newcastle Midlands: Birmingham Scotland: Edinburgh and Glasgow Northern Ireland: Belfast Wales: Cardiff Greater London: LondonMore clusters will be announced in the Budget on November 22, Tech City UK said.
Number 10 also announced that it would double the maximum amount of Tier 1 (Exceptional Talent) visas available from 1,000 to 2,000. However, the number of visas earmarked for people in tech isn't necessarily doubling. A Home Office spokesperson told Business Insider that the additional visas wouldn't be allocated to any specific sector but instead would be "allocated according to need."
Prime Minister Theresa May released this statement about the news:
"Our digital tech sector is one of the UK's fastest-growing industries, and is supporting talent, boosting productivity, and creating hundreds of thousands of good, high-skilled jobs up and down the country. It is absolutely right that this dynamic sector, which makes such an immense contribution to our economic life and to our society, has the full backing of Government.
Helping our world-class entrepreneurs and innovators to succeed is how we lay the foundations for our prosperity and build an economy fit for the future. Technology is at the heart of our modern Industrial Strategy, and we will continue to invest in the best new innovations and ideas, in the brightest and best talent, and in revolutionary digital infrastructure. And as we prepare to leave the European Union, I am clear that Britain will remain open for business. That means Government doing all it can to secure a strong future for our thriving tech sector and ensure people in all corners of our nation share in the benefits of its success."
The prime minister will hold a roundtable discussion at Downing Street on Wednesday with several prominent technology entrepreneurs and figures. Here's the list of people attending:
Eileen Burbidge, chair of Tech City UK Sherry Coutu CBE, chair of Founders4Schools and the Scaleup Institute Herman Narula, cofounder of Improbable Brent Hoberman, cofounder and chairman of Founders Forum Ali Parsa, CEO and founder of Babylon Dr Sue Black OBE of Techmums Nick Sturge, CEO of Engine Shed Conrad Simpson, director of Cyphra Aldo Monteforte, CEO of The Floow Tabitha Goldstaub, CEO of CognitionX Matt Moulding, CEO of The Hut Group Tamara Rajah, cofounder of Live Better With Tom Walkinshaw, founder and CEO of Alba OrbitalAmazon's Prime Wardrobe service launched in beta in June 2017. The service has matured, and the rules for it have changed a bit. It now limits each box to 10 items, and the discounts are now flat instead of a percentage.
Amazon's Prime Wardrobe service is growing up, and with that come some changes.
The service â which allows customers to try on clothing for seven days before purchasing it â is free for Prime members. Customers must be Prime members to use it.
Prime Wardrobe still allows customers to choose the items they want to put in their box, but the limit now stands at 10 items â down from the original limit of 15, according to Recode.
Amazon previously offered discounts as an incentive for customers to purchase more of the items in their box. The discount was 10% to 20%, depending on how many items were kept.
Now, the discount stands at $20 off if you keep at least $200 worth of merchandise, and $50 off if you keep $400 worth of merchandise.
You can still order a box as often as you wish, and there are still no additional fees to use it.
Not all clothing sold on Amazon will be eligible for Prime Wardrobe, but items that do apply are marked with a logo for the service. There are more than one million available items, according to the promo video.
It's worth noting that the service was in beta at the time it was announced, and it still hasn't officially launched, according to its page on Amazon.com. This is likely not the last change to be made before it exits its beta-testing phase.
Reality Shares and Nasdaq announced the launch of an index to track companies in the booming blockchain industry. Blockchain, the technology underlying cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ethereum, has become a popular buzzword on Wall Street as the prices of digital coins and tokens continue to climb. The Reality Shares Nasdaq Blockchain Economy Index includes a wide-range of companies across sectors.Â
Exchange operator Nasdaq and Reality Shares, an investment marketplace, unveiled a new index on Monday designed to capture the growth of blockchain technology.
The smart-beta index called the Reality Shares Nasdaq Blockchain Economy Index, is planned to provide the basis for an exchange-traded fund by Reality Shares, according to a press release about the new index. The ETF has already been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by Reality Shares. Â
Blockchain is best known for being the technology underlying cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, but it could have applications outside of cryptocurrencies.
Jonathan Johnson, the head of Medici Ventures, a VC subsidiary of Overstock, a company in the index, told Business Insider blockchain could potentially have the same kind of impact as the internet.Â
"We see blockchain doing for the transfer of value what the internet did for the transfer of info and we want to be at the front of that wave of innovation and change," Johnson said.Â
As a decentralized ledger, blockchain can facilitate exchanges of assets without the need of a middle-man. As such, it has gripped the attention of Wall Street with companies such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley all participating in at least one blockchain consortium.Â
But the new index includes a wide-range of companies, according to Reality Shares. Following are five companies featured on the index's site.Â