London-based CityStasher is building what it calls an ‘Airbnb for luggage’, a network of brick and mortar businesses across Europe that will store your luggage for a few hours after you have checked out or are waiting to check into your travel accommodation. Read More
We just could not stay away! In December, TechCrunch held Disrupt at the Berlin Arena. We were wowed by the Berlin startup scene and just couldn’t get enough. In fact, Germany’s own Blik became the 2017 runner-up of Startup Battlefield Berlin. Well now we are back, and we want to meet more of your startups. TechCrunch is holding an informal Startup Battlefield meet and greet… Read More
Wonderschool, a network of in-home daycare and preschools, plans to open 150 programs in New York City after raising $2.1 million in new funding. The capital comes from non-profit investment firm Omidyar Network, Be Curious Partners, Rethink Education, Edelweiss Partners and Learn Capital and brings the startup’s total raised so far to more than $4 million, including a seed round… Read More
Attic Labs, the creator of Noms, an open-source decentralized database, announced today that is being acquired by Salesforce. Terms of the deal, Salesforce’s first acquisition of 2018, were undisclosed. Last year, the company only bought digital creative agency Sequence, according to Crunchbase, taking a break from an acquisition spree in 2016 when it snapped up a dozen companies. Read More
Money transfer company TransferWise has begun a private launch of its “Borderless account” for consumers. It marks the first time the European unicorn has offered a debit card, a move that is bound to draw further comparisons with newer fintech upstarts such as Revolut. Read More
If you’ve gotten three apps and a Fitbit so you can get skinnier this year, don’t worry so much about summer beach season or holiday weight gain. Instead, worry about Thursday. Researchers at University of South Carolina found that self-reporting of food was integral to weight loss but that self-reporters often fell off, seemingly around the holidays. “A key question we wanted… Read More
I love the idea of A User Manual To Working With Me. A number of the CEOs we work with have written them and Seth sends out a letter to all new founders about working with us.
While I occasionally think about writing an @bfeld User Manual, I never manage to get around to it. On our Q4 vacation, Amy and I talked a lot about dinners out, especially my own struggle with dinners with large groups of people, which caused me to reflect on how I approach dinners out in general.
Business dinners have become increasingly challenging for me for a number of reasons. Iâm an introvert, so when the dinner is more than four people, itâs extremely draining for me. I no longer drink, so every dinner lasts at least 33% too long. Iâm a vegetarian and am now eating very lightly at dinner, so the experience of dinner is much less important to me. Iâve been to all the restaurants in Boulder many times, so thereâs no novelty in the experience. Iâve got a 30-minute drive home from downtown Boulder to my house, so getting home is dinner_end_time + 30 minutes.
I go to bed early (usually before 10 pm) so dinners often are the only thing I do in the evening before going to bed. I love to lay on the couch with Amy and read in the evening before I go to sleep, so this decompression from the day is almost always lost when I have a business dinner. I also love evenings at home with just Amy, business dinners out take time away from this for us.
That said, business dinners are part of my work. Iâve been to at least 1,351 board dinners in the last 25 years. I typically have business dinners three or four times each week, every week. I almost always have at least four major dinner-related events (with greater than 25 people) each month. Simply deciding not to do business dinners isnât an option as long as I do the work Iâm doing.
To solve for this, and make business dinners more enjoyable and productive from my frame of reference, following is the best way to have a business dinner with me.
The maximum number of people at dinner should be eight.Dinner should start early (I love 6 pm start times).Iâm indifferent to the restaurant â you choose.Iâm going to be fully engaged during dinner, but as the group gets larger, my focus becomes on the people seated immediately next to me.Donât worry about what I do, or donât, eat. And donât be surprised if I donât eat anything.I donât mind if you (and the other people) stay later than 8 pm, but Iâd like to leave then.Iâm sure Iâll end up at some dinners, and events, that donât fit this profile. By default, Iâm no longer going to board dinners, although Iâll make exceptions when necessary. Amy occasionally likes to go to galas and big public events, so Iâll tag along for those. And, of course, I can comfortably do these periodically. But, if you want to get the most out of me, and have me enjoy the experience, the bullet points above are a good guideline.
Also published on Medium.
Ring, the connected home security gadget startup, has acquired Mr. Beams, a maker of LED lighting with wireless connectivity and motion-sensing capabilities. The Mr. Beams acquisition is intended to help Ring bolster its existing portfolio of connected doorbells, video cameras and combination floodlight/cameras with affordable, modular lighting that can integrated with Ring’s software… Read More
Canva, the Australian provider of graphic design software as a service, has become the world’s latest unicorn with a new investment led by Sequoia China. A $40 million dollar round gives the company its eye-popping new valuation, following a year of tremendous growth in 2017. Read More
A team of former Tinder employees, led by Tinder’s original CTO Ryan Ogle, are today launching a new app aimed at professional networking. The app, called Ripple, aims to be a sort of mobile-first alternative to LinkedIn that addresses some of the problems common to the aging, now Microsoft-owned business networking platform.LinkedIn today has a heavy focus on job searching and head… Read More
Expanding and upgrading wireless networks requires an astounding amount of investment, both in terms of time and resources. As we head into the era of 5G connectivity, that investment only increases. But Starry Internet, founded by Chet Kanojia, is looking to lower the cost for the entire industry through a new partnership with Marvell. Partnering with Marvell, the maker of the 802.11ac and… Read More
Citiesocial, a Taipei-based startup that helps emerging brands break into Asia’s e-commerce market, has raised $2.75 million led by Alibaba Taiwan Entrepreneurs Fund, a non-profit backed by Alibaba Group to support local startups. CDIB Capital and returning investor Cherubic Ventures also participated. The capital will be used to expand citiesocial into China, South Korea and Japan this… Read More
Relative autonomous driving industry newcomer Aurora has been revealing a lot of early traction lately, and now we know that it’s also working with GPU-maker Nvidia. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang revealed that his company will be supplying Aurora with the tech underlying their compute platform.Aurora is building self-driving systems for both Volkswagen and Hyundai, the startup revealed last week. Read More
French company Netatmo is adding one more way to control your smart objects around your house. You can now talk and control with all your connected devices using a chatbot in Messenger. The feature is now live in English, with more languages coming later this year. Search for the Netatmo Smart Home Bot in Messenger to start using it. Netatmo has always tried to embrace as many ways as possible… Read More
Wait, what? Yeah, this week a company called SuperMeat announced that it raised $3 million to create chicken in a lab. It requires real chicken cells, Petrie dishes probably and some patience. The benefits for fake (fake real?) chicken are numerous, not the least of which it’s better for the environment. But we wonder how it will taste. Like chicken? Like fake chicken? In the lead-up to… Read More
In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording here:
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Sramana Mitra: At what point did you find a monetization model that was meaningful and that could carry the business? Mike Morris: 2004 was when we found the monetization model. Sramana Mitra: What...
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Letâs start with an awesome dog taking himself sledding.
Now, letâs move on to Bill Gates opening essay in this weekâs Time Magazine (heâs their first ever guest editor) titled Some good news, for once. Itâs short and powerful.
He starts out with context.
âReading the news today does not exactly leave you feeling optimistic. Hurricanes in the Americas. Horrific mass shootings. Global tensions over nuclear arms, crisis in Myanmar, bloody civil wars in Syria and Yemen. Your heart breaks for every person who is touched by these tragedies. Even for those of us lucky enough not to be directly affected, it may feel like the world is falling apart.â
And then perspective.
âBut these eventsâas awful as they areâhave happened in the context of a bigger, positive trend. On the whole, the world is getting better. This is not some naively optimistic view; itâs backed by data. Look at the number of children who die before their fifth birthday. Since 1990, that figure has been cut in half. That means 122 million children have been saved in a quarter-century, and countless families have been spared the heartbreak of losing a child.â
He creates more perspective but quickly gets to the punchline.
âSo why does it feel like the world is in decline? I think it is partly the nature of news coverage. Bad news arrives as drama, while good news is incrementalâand not usually deemed newsworthy. A video of a building on fire generates lots of views, but not many people would click on the headline âFewer buildings burned down this year.â Itâs human nature to zero in on threats: evolution wired us to worry about the animals that want to eat us.â
But this line nailed it for me.
âThereâs also a growing gap between the bad things that still happen and our tolerance of those things. Over the centuries, violence has declined dramatically, as has our willingness to accept it. But because the improvements donât keep pace with our expectations, it can seem like things are getting worse.â
For the past week, Amy and I have been watching the Ken Burns documentary The Vietnam War. We finished Episode 8: The History of the World last night, and as the credits rolled and CSNYâs song Ohio played, I said to Amy, âThe US and the world was unbelievably fucked up in 1970. I was five and I donât remember anything. Itâs helpful perspective on today.â
I was born optimistic and always have been. Iâm going to stay optimistic about our country, our society, and our world. And Iâm going to keep working hard on the things I think matter.
And yes, Iâm going to read Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House tomorrow.
Also published on Medium.
Entrepreneurs working on e-commerce startups face unique challenges today. You can learn more about the trends investors specializing in e-commerce startup financing are seeing by listening to the...
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Sramana Mitra: LinkedIn was a perfect channel to scale that company. Amir Banifatemi: LinkedIn was a perfect channel. It had Initial property and strong momentum and growth into a much, much larger...
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