The founders of PayPal and its employees have produced many highly successful companies over the years. Often referred to as the “PayPal Mafia” because they’ve had such an impact on the startup ecosystem, this serial entrepreneur success story is reminiscent of a similar phenomenon taking place in Latin America. The story starts with another U.S. company, Groupon. Read More
Holy hell, it’s been a year for Amazon. Jeff Bezos’ former-online-bookstore dumped $13.7 billion to buy a bunch of grocery stores, that speaker you talk to in your living room that Amazon makes is really popular and a bunch of server farms Amazon runs generate more than $10 billion in revenue annually. Read More
TrendKite is closing out 2017 with the announcement that it’s raised an additional $11 million in funding. The Austin-based startup says it’s currently analyzing 4.2 million articles every day, and using that analysis to help both brands and agencies to measure the impact of their PR efforts. Read More
Mitch Goldstone loves photo scanning. His business, ScanMyPhotos, does what it says on the tin: you send photos to the company and, using high speed scanners and special software, his team digitizes your photos, sticks them onto a USB key or online, and sends them back.He is proud of his business. Thanks to his scanners he’s helped users save their photos from tornadoes, floods, and theft. Read More
We saw Darkest Hour this week. The year is 1940. Belgium and Holland have fallen to Hitler’s Germany. France is within days of defeat. England within days of attack. With 300,000 troops stuck in...
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In this week’s episode of Technotopia I spoke to author and historian Leslie Berlin, writer of Troublemakers: Silicon Valleys’ Coming Of Age. Berlin is the Project Historian for the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford University and one of the few people who can see the entire rise of SV tech culture from a researcher’s perspective.Berlin’s book is quirky, fun, and… Read More
John Frankel, Partner at ff Venture Capital, discusses the firm’s investment thesis as well as key trends in the industry.
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Today was a momentous day in Uber history. After much debate, rumors and strife over the past few weeks, it looks like the company and its shareholders have come to an agreement over a tender offer that will see SoftBank own nearly 15 percent of the company, while also injecting around $1 billion in fresh capital. That deal is expected to close in the new year. Read More
For entrepreneurs interested to meet and chat with Sramana Mitra in person, please join us for our weekly informal group meetup. If you are living in the San Francisco Bay Area or are just in town...
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Mohit Gulati, Founder and CIO of Altius Ventures, which recently changed their name to ITI Growth Ventures, discusses the Indian startup eco-system.
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We saw recently on Netflix Ken Burns’ documentary, The West. Between the Spanish conquistadors and the Jeffersonian Americans, with some contribution from the British and the French, the American...
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Alastair Mitchell, Partner at EQT Ventures, talks about the European Startup Funding trends.
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HQ Trivia is letting Android users pre-register for the live-streamed trivia game built by the makers of Vine, Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll. Pre-registering means you’ll get notified the moment HQ Trivia is available for download. HQ, which opened up pre-registration on December 24, had previously marketed its Android app as being available “this Christmas.” Read More
December 26, 2017
Iâm on day 8 of a cold, which in retrospect has been possibly the harshest cold Iâve ever had. I felt worse when I had salmonella poisoning in Adelaide in 2016Â and I remember a childhood flu over the holidays that had me throwing up for days. But, on Friday, when I had some existential dread, I realized I was really sick and crawled back in bed for the rest of the day.
I woke up this morning still sick but feeling on the mend. Iâve been at home for a week and havenât been doing much other than sleeping, reading, responding to email, eating mac and cheese, and sleeping some more. Iâve been a sub-optimal companion for Amy, but Brooks and Cooper have filled in pretty well for me.
Iâm glad the world is taking a break for the holidays. 2017 was an intense year in many dimensions. Our society changed in ways that feel extremely uncomfortable to me, but Iâve tried to process it with a long view. Long-simmering conflicts that were just under the surface explosively broke through and forced us to confront them and our collective behavior, and reactions, to them. Iâve continued to do what felt important and right to me while listening and learning. I worked hard to eliminate the noise and concentrate on the signal. To do this, I withdrew on several dimensions, especially via social media and online channels, which diminished my experience, but allowed me time and space to think.
Iâve been metabolizing my emotions at a new level. Iâve always been able to handle a huge amount of stress and anxiety, and part of my role has been to absorb the stress in the system, stay calm, and help the people around me work through whatever we are confronting. Iâve learned that when this gets to a certain level in me, it can trigger a depressive episode, so Iâve been working on understanding my limits better and how to address them more effectively. The broader cultural challenges of 2017 have just piled onto this, so I had to learn a new set of skills around this. If anyone is curious, the magic gateways for me have been meditation and therapy.
This cold forced some downtime on me. As Iâm recovering, Iâm going to savor the rest of the week and prepare for 2018. It feels like a cold reboot is in order.
Also published on Medium.
In case you missed it, you can listen here:
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Eva Ho, General Partner at Fika Ventures, discusses their investment thesis.
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Wish you all a very happy Christmas. Christmas is the time for lots of music, dance, food, travel, and shopping. This Gift Guide from Washington Post provides great gift ideas for home décor, food...
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he trip began just before the end of school. From the wood-shaving smell of third grade out into the clean winter air, sprung free by my mother who appeared at the little window in the classroom door like a treat. You were the one who got out early. You were the one walking down an empty hall toward the big triple doors of the school. We were leaving school to drive to my… Read More
All eyes may have been on Nvidia this year as its stock exploded higher thanks to an enormous amount of demand across all fronts: gaming, an increased interest in data centers, and its major potential applications in AI.But while Nvidia’s stock price and that chart may have been one of the more eye-popping parts of 2017, a year when AI continued its march toward being omnipresent in… Read More
Entrepreneurs are invited to the 380th FREE online 1Mby1M mentoring roundtable on Thursday, January 4, 2018, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/9:30 p.m. India IST. If you are a serious entrepreneur, register...
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