March 14, 2018

“Technologies that have revolutionized so many sectors of the economy have the potential to transform the way we do conservation. We’re at the front end of a new ‘nature-tech’ revolution and nature stands to win big from it.”

As many of you know, Techstars and The Nature Conservancy have teamed up to build a tech accelerator for the planet – Techstars Sustainability. The accelerator kicks off this July in Denver and companies from across the globe are applying now through April 8th. Considering how much Amy and I love both of these organizations, we’re excited to be supporting this effort to build stronger startup ecosystem at the intersection of sustainability, nature and technology.

From the state of coral reefs to deforestation, I’ll admit that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and the work ahead is certainly not something to take lightly. But, I’m also choosing to pursue a personal path that is rooted in urgency and action. I’m inspired by entrepreneurs like Grant Canary and his team at DroneSeed (a Techstars Seattle 2016 alumni). Grant is working to innovate the future of forestry through planting trees with swarms of drones. And then there is Liané Thompson, CEO of Aquaii, who is also utilizing drone technology to build robotic fish that gather underwater data in a way that was previously unachievable.

And that’s just drones and big data. Imagine all of the enabling technologies that can be applied to build powerful solutions in soil health, aquaculture, fisheries, water markets, climate resilience, and more. I think my friend Brian is right, we are on the forefront of a nature-tech revolution – and I want to be a part of it.

If you are interested in continuing this conversation with Brian and I, join us for a live online discussion and AMA on Monday, March 26th at 4:30pm MST. We’ll be talking about the origins of this partnership, the intersection of nature and technology and the upcoming accelerator. You can grab your seat by signing up here.

For more on how The Nature Conservancy is thinking about this, enjoy this short video.

Also published on Medium.

BI Intelligence This is a preview of a research report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about Business Insider Intelligence, click here.

Over the past five years, the world has seen a seemingly unending series of high-profile data breaches, defined as incidents in which unauthorized parties access and retrieve sensitive, secure, or private data.

Major incidents, like the 2013 Yahoo breach, which impacted all 3 million of the tech giant's customers, and the more recent Equifax breach, which exposed the information of at least 143 million US adults, has kept this risk, and these threats, at the forefront for both businesses and consumers. And businesses have good reason to be concerned — of organizations breached, 22% lost customers, 29% lost revenue, and 23% lost business opportunities.

This threat isn't going anywhere. Each of the past five years has seen, on average, 1,704 security incidents, impacting nearly 2 billion records. And hackers could be getting more efficient, using new technological tools to extract more data in fewer breach attempts. That's making the security threat an industry-agnostic for any business holding sensitive data — at this point, virtually all companies — and therefore a necessity for firms to address proactively and prepare to react to.

The majority of breaches come from the outside, when a malicious actor is usually seeking access to records for financial gain, and tend to leverage malware or other software and hardware-related tools to access records. But they can come internally, as well as from accidents perpetrated by employees, like lost or stolen records or devices.

That means that firms need to have a broad-ranging plan in place, focusing on preventing breaches, detecting them quickly, and resolving and responding to them in the best possible way. That involves understanding protectable assets, ensuring compliance, and training employees, but also protecting data, investing in software to understand what normal and abnormal performance looks like, training employees, and building a response plan to mitigate as much damage as possible when the inevitable does occur.

Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has put together a detailed report on the data breach threat, who and what companies need to protect themselves from, and how they can most effectively do so from a technological and organizational perspective.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

In full, the report:

Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it:

AP

President Trump's potential plan to target Chinese electronics and other imports with as much as $60 billion in tariffs has investors worried, including those who focus on the tech sector.

But those fears are overblown, at least where they concern the biggest tech names, said Daniel Ives, a financial analyst who focuses on the sector for GBH Insights, in a research note Wednesday. Any tariffs should have "minimal" effect on Apple, the world's largest tech company, and the so-called FANGs — Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google— even if it sparks a retaliation from China, Ives said.

"It's scary headlines," Ives told Business Insider. But when you scrutinize the potential effects on the companies, "the financial ramifications are a lot more de minimis than the scary worries."

The president, prompted by concerns about Chinese companies stealing US intellectual property, is reportedly pushing for a plan to slap tariffs on a range of electronics and telecommunications products made in China. Such a move, on the heels of steel and aluminum tariffs imposed by the President earlier this month, has stoked fears of a larger, cross-Pacific trade war with American tech companies caught in the crossfire.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 249 points on Wednesday, as concerns of of a looming trade war roiled the markets.

Apple in particular would seem to be especially vulnerable. Not only are the iPhone, iPad, and its other major products manufactured in China, but China — together with Hong Kong and Taiwan — has become its third largest regional market around the world.

Of the big tech companies, Apple is indeed the most at risk in a trade war with China, Ives said. The internet-focused FANGs generally do little business in China, in part because Google pulled out of the market years ago and Facebook's service is blocked by the government. But even Apple is unlikely to suffer much as a result of Trump's potential tariffs or any corresponding moves by China, Ives said.

The tariffs would be a rounding error for Apple

The tariffs the administration is considering would likely add about $50 million in costs to what Apple pays to manufacture goods in China each year, Ives estimated. Even if those tariff-related costs doubled, the total effect on Apple would be basically insignificant, he said. Just by comparison, in the holiday quarter alone, Apple spent $54 billion manufacturing, shipping, and distributing its products.

Apple CEO Tim Cook waves as he attends a talk in Beijing in 2014. Thomson Reuters "If you look at it in the scheme of things, [$50 million] is a rounding error," Ives said.

The bigger concern for Apple is not the tariffs the Trump administration may impose, but how China may respond. The country could potentially make it difficult or much more costly for Apple to do business. That could be problematic for Apple, considering that the Greater China region accounted for 20% of its total sales and 28% of its operating income last year.

But Ives thinks China will be careful to not harm Apple, even if it does retaliate in a trade war. Under CEO Tim Cook, Apple has gone to great lengths to be on good terms with the Chinese government and has invested billions of dollars into the country, including through its investment in Didi, China's counterpart to Uber. China will likely be loath to destabilize those investments or its relationship with Apple, Ives said.

"When all is said and done, I think the bark's worse than the bite there," he said.

Amazon can absorb any tariff pain

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos with one of the company's Fire tablets. Mark Lennihan/AP Of the FANGs, the one that could see the most effect is Amazon, Ives said. Many of the electronics products it sells through its store are made in China. That includes its Echo smart speakers, which are part of the company's big push into selling its own hardware.

But Amazon's Echo sales are still a relatively small part of its overall business, Ives noted. And at most, the tariffs will likely increase what Amazon pays for the electronics goods it sells by 1% to 2%, he said.

"That's something they could easily pass on or absorb. It's pretty insignificant," Ives said.

He continued: "For now, I view this as more noise than actually having an impact to the bottom line."

A screenshot of "Stephen Hawking's Favorite Places," an Emmy Award-winning series.CuriosityStream

Stephen Hawking, who died today at age 76, was known for his work on the science of time travel and black holes.

The British physicist penned several bestselling books and even worked on an Emmy Award-winning documentary trilogy, called "Stephen Hawking's Favorite Places."

In the show, which is one of the last Hawking ever worked on, he flies around in a spaceship called the "S.S. Hawking" and explores deep scientific mysteries.

The show was created by CuriosityStream, and its description reads: "Mixing recollections from his childhood and family life that inspired his work as a scientist, he goes in search of the ultimate mystery: the theory of everything. Along the way, time travel and a precarious free fall to Venus, plus questions about aliens, God, and truth, offer unprecedented insight into this genius mind."

The fictional "S.S. Hawking" spaceship.CuriosityStreamCuriosityStream planned to release the third and final episode, which in part dives into Hawking's fears about artificial intelligence, in mid-April.

But a representative for the company told Business Insider that, following the death of Hawking, its creators decided to release the last episode today.

Through March 23, Anyone can also watch the series for free for a limited time. It's normally packaged in a streaming subscription that costs between $2.99 and $11.99 per month.

You can find all of the "Stephen Hawking's Favorite Places" episodes at curiositystream.com/hawking.

A monitor shows various cryptocurrencies' exchange rates against Japanese Yen including NEM coin (middle in the top) at 'nem bar', where customers can pay with NEM coins, in Tokyo Thomson Reuters

Trading Technologies, which creates trading software used across Wall Street, has launched a cryptocurrency trading platform aimed at retail investors.

The new product is a spin-off of its professional trading platform TT, which provides users access to futures and options, and recently added crypto capabilities. People familiar with the matter told Business Insider the retail product is in the soft-launch phase with just a few customers using it.

The point of the new product is to deliver a Wall Street trading experience to the every-day crypto trader, the people said. It's the first product by TT to target a retail clientele. It is currently being teased on TT's website:

"GDAX access for crypto-only traders will be available through TT later in 2018. You will receive details via email when they become available."

The platform provides users with the same automated trading features that can be found on its professional platform, which costs clients $400 a month. The crypto platform will be free for a certain amount of time to kick things off.

A number of non-crypto companies have jumped into the cryptocurrency market to capitalize on its breakneck growth.

Cboe Global Markets and CME Group launched bitcoin futures in December, which allow for the most part institutional investors to bet on the future price of the digital currency, and ICE, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, launched a crypto index for trading firms and hedge funds.

As for TT, this isn't the company's first move in crypto. The company recently announced it was teaming up with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase to enable spot and bitcoin futures trading on its professional trading platform, Business Insider previously reported.

This image for Spotify driving mode is separate from the new voice search feature inside the Android app’s APK file

Going public pits Spotify’s suggestions against everyone

DVIDS

The Air Force recently released two new videos of A-10 Warthogs taking out Taliban narcotics production facilities in Afghanistan, as the Trump administration continues to quietly ramp up the US' nearly 17-year war in the country.

The videos are rather shocking. One shows several missile strikes that turned the black and white video nearly all-white for a few seconds before flames can be seen rolling up.

"The Taliban have nowhere to hide," Gen. John Nicholson, commander of Resolute Support in Afghanistan, said in February, after the Air Force dropped a record number of smart bombs from a B-52 on Taliban training facilities.

"There will be no safe haven for any terrorist group ... We continue to strike them wherever we find them. We continue to hunt them across the country."

But a BBC study published in late January showed that the Taliban operates in about 70% of Afghanistan, and fully controls about 4% of the country.

The Taliban's numbers have also reportedly grown three-fold in the last few years. In 2014, the Taliban's forces were estimated to be about 20,000. Currently, they're estimated to be at least 60,000-strong.

The US announced in November 2017 that it would begin targeting the Taliban's revenue sources, much of which is opium and heroin, with airstrikes.

"October and November were two of the deadliest months for civilians," according to the latest SIGAR report. "Press reports stated several civilians were killed during the November bombings."

These casualties "could erode support for the Afghan government and potentially increase support for the insurgency," the SIGAR report said.

Around the same time that Nicholson announced that the US would hit the Taliban "where it hurts, in their narcotics financing," Afghan farmers told Reuters that drug labs only take about three to four days to rebuild.

Analysts speaking to Reuters characterized the US' strategy in Afghanistan as a pointless game of "whack-a-mole."

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary James Mattis said that the US is seeing signs that the Taliban are interested in returning to the negotiating table with Kabul.

"Mattis offered few details about the Taliban outreach and it was unclear whether the latest reconciliation prospects would prove any more fruitful than previous, frustrated attempts to move toward a negotiated end to America's longest war," Reuters reported.

Johannes Simon / Stringer / Getty Images

Playboy enthusiasts will soon have a new option when paying for pornography: cryptocurrencies.

Playboy Enterprises, the company behind the experimental media empire, announced Wednesday that it will launch a crypto payment wallet across its digital content and online games.

The wallet will enable users to pay in bitcoin, ethereum, and alt-coins like the Vice Industry Token. Playboy expects to release it by the end of 2018.

It's easy to be skeptical of Playboy's announcement. Bitcoin and blockchain pivots are having a moment with companies leaning into the craze as a means of marketing otherwise-unrelated businesses.

Who could forget the company formerly known as Long Island Ice Tea, which got a second wind on the NASDAQ when it rebranded as Long Blockchain, or Kodak, which similarly saw its shares surge following the announcement of a Kodak coin.

Playboy has also never been shy when it comes to experimenting with the latest tech — the company already has both augmented and virtual reality content. But there is a case to be made that cryptocurrencies could truly impact how the company does business.

Playboy struggles to monetize content, but the brand is strong

Though Playboy launched as a print magazine in 1953, today the majority of its profits come from the trademark and licensing agreements that have made Playboy Vodka and Playboy Bunny recreational wear a thing.

Playboy Enterprises is considering folding its print magazine. Playboy Playboy doesn't share its financial information, but in 2015, the company made $38 million from its magazine and digital publishing efforts, and $55 million from licensing, according to The Wall Street Journal.

In January, The Journal reported that Playboy is considering folding its print magazine, which reportedly looses as much as $7 million annually, to focus on Playboy as a brand.

One of the issues for larger companies in the adult film industry is that so-called "tube sites," like RedTube and PornHub, often host pirated content — at least until the copyright infringing videos get flagged and removed, but it's often a game of whack-a-mole as others are uploaded. This means advertising dollars are spread thin, and not always making it into the pockets of the companies creating the content.

It is 2018, after all. Porn is free, and print is dead. But maybe, just maybe, crypto could help monetize the struggling industry.

One idea: gamify the porn watching experience with crypto

Playboy's decision to accept payments in bitcoin and ethereum doesn't do much beside put its brand in the cryptocurrency conversation, and make life a little bit easier for users that prefer to pay with digital currencies. Bitcoin itself can be remarkably expensive and inefficient for small payments, and usually a credit card will do just as well.

Duncan said he has no intention of listing VIT on a cryptocurrency exchange, but noted that the tokens could accrue value the way Magic: The Gathering cards do.Wikimedia

Alt coins, though, could provide new ways to think about monetization in an industry that relies heavily on clicks and advertisements.

One of the coins Playboy plans to accept is the Vice Industry Token, or VIT, a cryptocurrency designed specifically to monetize adult content by incentivizing high user engagement.

VIT was started in 2017 by Stuart Duncan, a Canadian entrepreneur and CEO of an adult cable network called Ten Broadcasting. The project has raised nearly $15 million in an initial coin offering fundraiser, which ends next week. Duncan said the blockchain network should be fully operational by summer.

The idea behind VIT is that users get coins for being highly engaged content consumers across the porn industry. Users will earn these coins across various adult film producers and brands as long as those brands have the blockchain running on its website. Users can then use those coins to buy premium content from companies like Playboy.

Duncan said adult film companies were already exploring cryptocurrency for anonymous payments. But he thought he could build a better model.

If VIT keeps users engaged, Playboy could get more ad revenue

The result, if all goes as planned, is a blockchain network that anonymously gathers data about pornography viewing habits from users around the ecosystem and encourages porn viewers to spend more time on websites.

Producers like Playboy get higher engagement, which could mean more money from advertisers.

It's basically just a loyalty card, Duncan said, which could make a big different in a market as saturated with free content as the porn industry.

As it stands, if a company like Playboy accepts VIT from a customer, it cannot use those coins outside of the VIT eco-system. So these companies won't make money directly when they accept VIT as payment.

Duncan said he has no intention of listing VIT on cryptocurrency exchanges himself, and emphasized that VIT is not a security, and not subject to regulation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

But he did compare VIT to another collectible in his life: Magic: The Gathering cards.

"I was going to Magic card shops and trading Magic cards. I could be paying $50 bucks. But I would be able to sell those cards to other people," Duncan said. "That's the future that we're bringing. We're not making it a tradable coin, but I'm gonna have a utility token that trades across our huge network."

Jay Janner/Associated Press

South By Southwest has long been a sacred annual pilgrimage for brands, tech companies and ad agencies alike, offering a heady mix of technology and creativity under the Texan sun.

But amid the sprawling chaos of downtown Austin, navigating through thousands of sessions, events, people and parties can easily feel like making your way through a dizzying maze.

So we asked two marketing executives to plot out what a typical day in their lives looks like during SXSW. And while we were at it, we also decided to have some fun — by pitting an executive from a classic ad agency and an executive from a consultancy (gasp!) against each other to see how similar or different their days were.

Los Angeles-based Chrissie Hanson is a communications planning lead on the ad agency side at OMD, helping brands such as Sony chart out their media strategies. She is at the festival documenting her observations for the agency.

Jeriad Zoghby, on the other hand, helps Accenture Interactive clients like Carnival design bespoke and personalized marketing experiences for customers. The Austin native is a panelist at SXSW this year.

Both Hanson and Zoghby mapped out how they spend their time at SXSW on Sunday, March 11. Despite the two coming from distinct parts of the industry, it turns out that their days aren't quite as different from each other as you'd expect. The excerpts have been lightly edited:

Chrissie Hanson,Global Communications Planning Leader, OMD chrissie hanson The Ad Agency POV: Hanson's Diary

7:00 a.m.: Alarm goes off. The clocks went forward so it's a little disorientating. I fire up the laptop and finish writing my article from Day 1. The most pertinent lessons for me came from Daniel Pink's session "Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing," who said that our daily patterns profoundly affect our mood, and that focused analytical thinking should be done in the morning, while creative endeavors and workouts should be saved for the second peak later in the day. I'm going to re-jig my schedule today to make that happen.

9:45 a.m.: I shower, have breakfast, get myself sorted, and head to the Convention Center. The streets are so quiet that I think I left too early.

10:20 a.m.: No, I did not leave too early. I arrive at Ballroom D to find the longest queue snaking around the building. Thankfully, the SXSW app shows that the session is still green, which means we'll get in. Nice.

11:00 a.m.: Amy Webb, Founder of Future Today Institute comes on stage and tells us that her entire "2018 Emerging Tech Trends Report" is available open source. The audience loves her immediately! Webb reminds us that "knowing individual trends is not enough, it's the connections between them that is critical." Her report contains 255 trends across 20 industries. This will be excellent fodder for our strategists.

12:15 p.m.: I hot foot it over to the Pinterest House to catch Doug Rozen, OMD's Chief Digital & Innovation Officer sharing his thoughts on "Building a 21st Century Entertainment Brand." He predicts that future of entertainment content will include more elaborate and immersive voice-led productions and that we must fill our organization with curious people who are different from ourselves if we want to be successful at digital transformation. Hurrah for podcasts and media misfits!

1:30 p.m.: It's a blustery day and I need to get out of this biting wind. I nip back to my hotel to change into something warmer, make a couple of calls, and then head over to the W Hotel for MediaLink's private-event "Innovation Conversations." A group of conference-goers whizz past me on Showtime-sponsored bikes — why didn't I think of that?

3:10 p.m.: Next up is "Making Impressions Count - Not Just Counting Them," where the panelists discuss the importance of holding onto creativity to ensure that it doesn't get lost in the complexity of tech and data. Beth Brady, CMO Principal Financial Group, says that they rely on their agencies to "remember the human… to provide meaningful insights around what humans care about most."

4:30 p.m.: I head over to the Fairmont Hotel and line up for "Westworld: Establishing a Transmedia Franchise." It's filled with adult fans hanging onto every word as the HBO team shares how they systematically split up and delivered the series' storylines over multiple channels in order to create super-fans and broader viewers. It's an impressive case study and the room erupts in applause at the end.

6:15 p.m.: I meet up with a colleague from London and we head over to El Naranjo for dinner. It's a moment of calm set against the exuberance of the outside activity that runs along Rainey Street. We swap notes from our sessions and agree that SXSW is inspiring and exhausting in equal measure.

8:00 p.m.: I walk home past the food stalls on Red River. The smell of tacos and pulled pork is glorious. I stop by the DC Comics Pop Culture Experience where there are Batmobiles from each film, a statue of Super-Man and artists standing in glowing balls waving light sabers. It's a quick burst of fun before heading back in my hotel room to write my article for Day 2.

9:30 p.m.: I head down to the gym and log my 51st ride on my Peloton app.

10:15 p.m.: Back in my room to finish my article. As I reflect upon the day, a sentence sticks in head; 'In order to see the future of one thing, you must see the future of many things.' It's an excellent reminder that to be a better strategist, you need to look beyond your own industry and see the connections with the world around you and consider perspectives different from your own. I'm looking forward to learning more on Day 3.

Jeriad Zoghby, Global Lead for Personalization, Accenture Interactive Jeriad Zoghby Zoghby's Diary:

8:05 a.m.: I'm a night owl and last night wasn't any different, as I was getting ready for my talk today. Sadly, I didn't call it a night until 2 a.m., which felt like 3 a.m., thanks to daylight savings. I had a great night though, including a surreal stop over at the Governor's mansion before getting home and hanging out with the kids.

8:30 a.m.: I'm about to head out the door, but not before grabbing some allergy meds as Austin's allergy season is in full swing. Austin is a lot greener than people realize, and I love the trees here… But they don't always love me back.

9:45 a.m.: It's time for the most important stop of the day. I had a long night and have a big day ahead, so I treat myself to some breakfast on the way in to the Fjord Austin studio. And no, I'm not having breakfast tacos. It's just a myth that we eat them daily. Plus, you don't come to Kerbey Lane Cafe for breakfast and not get pancakes.

10:30 a.m.: The studio is wonderfully empty, which is a rarity — it is the weekend after all. But it's perfect, as I put some finishing touches on the materials for my talk this afternoon. I head over to our Accenture Interactive Experience Cantina, which is already buzzing with the day's festivities.

11:30 a.m.: I'm getting some last-minute photos of one of our artificial intelligence demos for part of my talk. That's what I get for launching a demo for the first time ever, about 24 hours ago. But that's SXSW for you — if you're not willing to be innovative and take some risks, then this is probably not the place for you.

12:15 p.m.: I get a text from the head of the product innovation lab to meet one of my clients to meet at the Cantina. It's a good meeting. Quick, but fun nonetheless.

1:00 p.m.: I race back to the studio to add the final creative elements for my talk. Lunch? No time for that. A bag of pretzels and a Topo Chico will have to do today.

3:00 p.m.: I search for my French colleagues, who are joining me on stage for a live-demo of a personalized catalog. It's a really cool concept where you see yourself instead of a model in various clothes. Unfortunately, they went to the wrong hotel for the talk, but we were able to figure it out pretty quickly. Problem solved.

3:15 p.m.: Team shows up and quickly finds a willing crowd volunteer to be a part of our live shopping catalog demo stage. They take her into another room for her photo to be featured in the personalized catalog demo. Thanks Suzanne!

3:25 p.m.: We are sound-tested and ready to go. I am really excited about the talk - but a little nervous to get going.

3:30 p.m.: Off we go. My talk is about how customers don't want brands to predict or define their journeys, but to design experiences that help them create their own. It's the only way to truly scale personalized experiences. The best part is being able to show off some real work where this is happening.

4:30 p.m.:…And that's over! I'm exhausted, but what a blast it was.

5:00 p.m.: I head back to the Experience Cantina for chips and salsa with a few of my clients, who are CPG executives, plus a celebratory margarita …or two.

7:00 p.m.: It's happy hour time with one of our local clients, the iconic Whole Foods Market 365.

10:30 p.m.: Finally, I'm on my way home. I catch up with my wife after a long, but very fun day.

11:00 p.m.: I'm wiped out and it's definitely time to call it a night. I just need to finish packing for my overseas trip to London tomorrow so I can get some rest.

BI Intelligence

This is a preview of a research report from BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about BI Intelligence, click here.

The voice app ecosystem is booming. In the US, the number of Alexa skills alone surpassed 25,000 in January 2018, up from just 7,000 the previous January, in categories ranging from music streaming services, to games, to connected home tools.

As voice platforms continue to gain footing in homes via smart speakers — connected devices powered primarily by artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled voice assistants — the opportunity for voice apps is becoming more profound. However, as observed with the rise of mobile apps in the late 2000s, any new digital ecosystem will face significant growing pains, and voice apps are no exception. Thanks to the visual-free format of voice apps, discoverability, monetization, and retention are proving particularly problematic in this nascent space. This is creating a problem in the voice assistant market that could hinder greater uptake if not addressed.

In this report, Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, explores the two major viable voice app stores. It identifies the three big issues voice apps are facing — discoverability, monetization, and retention — and presents possible short-term solutions ahead of industry-wide fixes.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

In full, the report:

Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it:

Lester Holt. AP

NBC News doesn't think very highly of Facebook, and it isn't holding back.

The news division's Group Chairman Andy Lack and its SVP of Digital, Nick Ascheim were highly critical of Facebook's relationship with the media industry at an event on Wednesday, questioning whether the social network has any real interest in the news business or dealing with the myriad problems it faces related to fake news.

The two executives expressed a growing frustration regarding working with Facebook over the years, casting doubts over whether the tech giant will ever help media companies make money. Lack said that NBC executives have even taken to calling Facebook "Fakebook."

Ascheim said as of now, Facebook is "just a marketing vehicle. We don't put our content there because we don't think they value premium content the way some of our other partners do."

"They don't have any value to publishers," Lack added. "That's the dirty secret ... they take all the value out [of content]."

NBC isn't just mad about Facebook's algorithm. It's everything.

Ascheim noted this NBC News's position isn't a reaction to Facebook recent algorithm changes, which have hit media companies hard.

"We've taken this position with Facebook for a long time," added Ascheim. He said that NBC News' officials have had numerous conversations with Facebook behind the scenes regarding these issues well before the algorithm tweak. "We weren't' seeing any progress. We're certainly not alone in that."

Facebook has been under fire from many corners over its role in the 2016 Election and its inability to police fake news on its platform. And of course, the company dropped the hammer on the media world by tweaking its news feed to favor content from friends and family over news.

After living in fear of losing Facebook's digital distribution power for years, media executives have taken to speaking out more regularly against the platform, including leaders at Vox Media, BuzzFeed, and even mogul Rupert Murdoch.

Ascheim said Wednesday that when evaluating digital distribution partners, NBC looked at three things: You need traffic, revenue or brand value.

"They were checking no boxes," he said.

NBC News is in love with Snap

NBC said that increasingly, platforms like YouTube and Apple News are checking more of those boxes. And while Lack and Ascheim were tough on Facebook, the two executives heaped praise on Snapchat for being a strong media partner. NBC's daily Snapchat series "Stay Tuned" now has 5 million subscribers since launching last July, the pair said.

The show is shot specifically for Snapchat, and features two hosts with little previous TV experience. "It's off to an unbelievable start," said Ascheim.

Already, in March, the show's on pace to "destroy those numbers," Ascheim said. That's in spite of some publisher complaints about the impact of Snap's recent redesign.

Of course, it should be noted that NBCUniversal is an investor in Snap. So the company may get some preferential treatment.

Lack said that the quick, mobile-centric formats that have clicked for "Stay Tuned" could prove to be game changers in news. "I've been chasing millennials for a better part of a quarter century. Most of them aren't millennials anymore. They are the most elusive [demographic for news organizations to reach]."

Yet the majority of NBC News' Snap audience is under 25.

Moreover, Lack raved about how collaborative Snap's team has been in both developing the show and creating an equitable business relationship - particularly compared to Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, addresses a gathering during the Internet.org Summit in New Delhi October 9, 2014. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi "What's frustrating to me about Facebook is you can't have a relationship with them," Lack said. "You can't have a partnership with them. They don't really have any interest in content in the way that we do. They are distributors. I don't think they are good actors in the game for us as news providers or anyone quite frankly who's providing quality content. That's a problem across the board."

Facebook has yet to respond to a request for comment on this story.

Facebook needs to take more responsibility, says NBC News

Ironically Facebook is suddenly looking to court news organizations to produce content for Facebook Watch. NBC executives said they'd listen to such a pitch but had doubts.

"We're hopeful," said Lack. "But decreasingly hopeful," added Ascheim.

Meanwhile, Lack wants Facebook to take more responsibility. Yet there are only two things that the company seems to respond to, he said: pressure from advertisers and fear of intervention from the government. He stopped short of calling for Facebook to be regulated, but implied the company is held to a different standard.

He recalled top NBC News officials being called before Congress in 2001 following the previous year's presidential election, when each of the broadcast networks had to backtrack from too-early calls on the extremely tight race between George Bush and Al Gore, which was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, Facebook has sent some of its technology executives to address the US government. "I haven't seen Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandberg sit in any of those chairs," Lack said.

Google just banned ICO and cryptocurrency-related advertising. For the official policy, see Financial Services: New restricted financial products policy (June 2018).

Oh – and happy Pi Day. And MIT Admission Notification Day. And Einstein’s birthday. And Amy’s half birthday. And the day that Stephen Hawking transitioned to the next quantum energy level.

I never understood why ICO advertising has been allowed. I’ve heard the phrase “wild west” applied to ICOs for the past few years and it’s clear the regulatory regimes are finally hustling to catch up with the phenomenon. Up to this point, the phrase “consumer protection” hasn’t really been in my head around ICOs, but it is today.

When I was in college and my early 20s, I read Forbes Magazine religiously. Dave Jilk turned me on to it when I was a freshman (he was a senior) and from 1983 to 1995 I read almost every issue cover to cover. The pink sheet and penny stock phenomenon crested in the 1980s with intricate pump and dump schemes, boiler rooms, and an entire layer of the investment banking industry that promoted worthless public companies. Forbes covered this extensively and by the time firms collapsed and people went to jail I had a healthy skepticism about broad-based advertising and promotion scheme around any financial instrument.

When I first heard the phrase “ICO” three or four years ago, my immediate thought was something like “that’s just an invitation to the SEC to regulate that. Why do a play off the acronym IPO – call them something innocuous like “Papayas” instead. Knowing the SEC would move very slowly, I didn’t pay much attention. Last year, the SEC finally started putting out some vague statements that are now starting to get crisper and more precise.

From where I sit, it seems like similar rules to selling private equity should apply to ICOs. In addition, there are some rules associated with selling public equity that should apply. In both cases, the idea of advertising an ICO is ludicrous to me.

When a company we are investors in is raising a new round of financing, I’m not allowed to even write a blog post about the financing, let alone run an advertisement about it. Tweeting isn’t allowed. Neither is giving a speech in a public forum. Promoting it on Youtube would bring down the wrath of Jason Mendelson on my head.

Now that we are a “registered investment advisor” (since we also invest in other venture funds), we have an entire compliance infrastructure that I have to go through to even get blog posts approved (like the one about Glowforge yesterday) when I simply mention a company of ours on the web. While I can argue that the regulations around what I can write and/or promote are over-reaching, they are the rules that I, and our companies, have to live with.

The idea that a company can do an ICO, raise money, and ignore this set of rules makes no sense to me. I can imagine a category (currently being called “utility tokens”) that look more like frequent flyer miles or tokens at a video arcade than equity, but the boundaries around this are very blurry to me right now.

Anyone that is paying attention to cryptocurrencies and ICOs knows that there is a huge amount of fraud going on. A Google search on ICO Pump and Dump turns up a bunch of current stuff that is fascinating to read. Telegram, which is home to a huge ICO that is ongoing, is a popular platform for organizing ICO pump and dump schemes. If you think this kind of action is healthy long term, just go watch The Big Short.

I learned the phrase “buyer beware” in my early 20s while reading all those Forbes Magazines. Today, we have John Oliver to help us out.

 

Also published on Medium.

Regardless of those childhood aspirations of Batcaves and Tony Stark’s high tech compounds, not every VC has an office (or a company portfolio) full of lasers. But I’m one of the lucky ones.

A little history: Foundy made our first investment in Glowforge, the Seattle-based 3D laser printer, back in June of 2015 after seeing the incredible product the team was building. A few months later, they launched with the biggest 30-day crowdfunding campaign in history, during which I spent more time than I’d like to admit refreshing their homepage and watching the numbers climb in astonishment. And before I knew it, we were leading a second investment round to help the team deliver to tens of thousands of customers.

As with many early stage hardware companies, Glowforge faced their fair share of setbacks during beta and pre-production, but the team’s obsession with delivering the product they promised has paid off. The product is completely magical. Finally, customers have it. And you can make incredible things with it, like a drone.

They’ve been shipping out thousands of units, and as of today, all US customers who’ve ordered a Pro have been notified theirs is ready. Since domestic units can’t be shipped overseas, and Basic units are still backordered, that means they have Pro units available for sale today, for delivery in 10 days!

Do you need new keys for your laptop?

One of the things I’ve always loved about Glowforge is that they are constantly trying to figure out how they can work with their customers, instead of just selling to their customers. It’s one of the reasons their forum is so active and such a terrific resource, and why their customers love the product so much. So I wasn’t surprised when they came to me and told me that they were going to launch Pro sales exclusively to their customers, with a really amazing offer. I get to share it with you since I’m a customer!

Click here to get a Glowforge Pro for $1,500 off the current listed price.

Finally, a Glowforge Pro without the wait! It’ll be on your doorstep within 10 days. (As a customer, I get $500 cash or $600 in materials if you buy – and yes, I’ll be taking the materials …)

One more thing. When I show people stuff I made on my Glowforge, I get one question: What made this? Glowforge is encouraging owners to share their own prints with #whatmadethis. Notice the Foundry and the Glowforge logos on my new wallet.

Proofgrade leather, stamped with engraved acrylic – made on a Glowforge. Get your own 3D Laser Printer at Glowforge, delivered in 10 days, for $1,500 off! #whatmadethis

You won’t believe what people are making. Check it out for yourself!

#whatmadethis on Facebook

#whatmadethis on Instagram

#whatmadethis on Twitter

Also published on Medium.