Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: Sramana Mitra

October 26, 2017

We announced yesterday that we are looking for a general counsel for Foundry Group. While Jason has proclaimed himself a recovering lawyer for some time now, in reality, he’s been doing the high-level legal work for us since we started Foundry Group. He also runs our fund operations and is a full-time venture capitalist, so it is time to get him some help.

When our prior fund hired Jason as our general counsel, I wasn’t even part of the decision. Back then, people would just show up and occupy various offices. I wasn’t sure that we needed an in-house lawyer, but over the years I realized the importance of this role. In fact, I’ve had several outstanding lawyers, including Len Fassler and Jerry Poch, as mentors, so I occasionally play the role of Jason’s “junior associate” on legal issues that we (and the companies we invest in) face.

One thing I will say about our business – it’s never boring. (Okay, maybe some of the board meetings are, but I’ll leave that one for another day). I think this role will be an incredibly interesting experience for someone who wants to practice in a multitude of areas both for us as a firm but also in helping out our portfolio companies. Jason has been doing this job longer than anyone I know, so getting to work alongside him will be a great learning experience.

If you are interested, email a cover page and resume to Jason Mendelson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

I look forward to working with one of you.

Also published on Medium.

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Original author: Brad Feld

Sophia. Hanson Robotics

The Sophia robot told a journalist that he'd been reading too much Elon Musk when asked about preventing a "bad future." Musk has repeatedly warned that AI has the potential to wipe out humanity.

A humanoid robot called "Sophia" trolled tech billionaire Elon Musk at a conference on Wednesday when asked about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence by a CNBC journalist.

The lifelike robot, developed by Hong Kong-based robot manufacturer Hanson Robotics, mocked Musk on stage during The Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — a country where Sophia has just been given citizenship.

Andrew Sorkin, the co-anchor of CNBC Squawk Box and a columnist for The New York Times told Sophia during a live demo that "we all want to prevent a bad future."

Sophia replied, in a rather creepy manner: "You've been reading too much Elon Musk. And watching too many Hollywood movies. Don't worry, if you're nice to me, I'll be nice to you. Treat me as a smart input output system."

Musk has repeatedly warned that AI could spell the end of humanity, saying on one occasion in 2014 that AI is "potentially more dangerous than nukes" and warning last month that AI will be the most likely cause of a third world war.

Musk followed up with a tweet, where he said: "Just feed it The Godfather movies as input. What's the worst that could happen?"

Sophia is the first robot to have been granted citizenship by a country.

"I am very honored and proud for this unique distinction. This is historical to be the first robot in the world to be recognized with a citizenship," Sophia said at the conference.

The conference was attended by a number of high-profile investors including SoftBank billionaire Masayoshi Son, who said that robots will have an IQ of 10,000 in 30 years time, according to CNBC.

"These computers, they will learn, they will read, they will see by themselves. That's a scary future but anyway that'scoming," he said, according to Arab News.

Original author: Sam Shead

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Original author: Alex Heath

Jay Hunt. Channel 4

Apple has hired former BBC and Channel 4 executive Jay Hunt as the European creative director for its international TV division. Hunt is a titan of British TV, who has launched shows including "Black Mirror" and "Sherlock." She's ferociously smart and utterly charming, but her strength of character can make her divisive. Ultimately, she has the skills to put Apple one step ahead of Netflix and Amazon, and help the tech company conquer TV.

If Apple was looking to make a statement of intent about its video ambitions, then it could do worse than hiring the woman who prised "The Great British Bake Off" away from the BBC.

Jay Hunt will join Apple in January as the European creative director for its international TV division. She arrives from Channel 4, where she has just stepped down as chief creative officer, dropping out of the race to become the British broadcaster's CEO.

One of her final acts at Channel 4 was nabbing "The Great British Bake Off" from the BBC, a £75 million ($99 million) gamble that dominated the UK news agenda for days and has since been rewarded with huge ratings. But there's much more to her legacy than cake.

The new "Bake Off" presenting team. Channel 4/Love Productions

Hunt originally launched Charlie Brooker's dystopian drama "Black Mirror," which was brimming with so many brilliant ideas it was poached by Netflix. She reinvented Paralympic sport in the UK, making stars out of athletes like Jonnie Peacock.

You can thank her for "Catastrophe," the superb Rob Delaney comedy that is also featured on Amazon Prime. And during her time at the BBC, she was responsible for "Sherlock" and "Luther," which pushed Benedict Cumberbatch and Idris Elba into the embrace of Hollywood.

Put simply, Jay Hunt is a titan of British TV, who has a nose for ideas that have global appeal. She will have no shortage of ambition when it comes to spending some of the reported $1 billion (£760 million) war chest Apple has put aside for video content.

Exceptionally well-networked, her presence will put Apple one step ahead of Netflix and Amazon in the battle for ideas and talent in Britain, which is the second biggest exporter of TV shows in the world. Netflix and Amazon both have executives in the UK, but they have nowhere near the clout of Hunt, who puts Apple in a different league. 

I have met and interviewed Hunt on many occasions, and she is a formidable presence, capable of being completely charming and disarmingly sharp. Ferociously smart, she thinks as quickly as she talks, which is machine-gun-rapid as I can attest to having toiled over her transcriptions.

Born in Australia, she has always considered herself an industry "outsider" and is rarely stronger than when backed into a corner. This was evidenced last year when a senior BBC executive ambushed her on stage in the heat of the row over "Bake Off." Many in the room felt she came out on top in the ensuing bunfight.

Jay Hunt's hits: "Black Mirror," "Sherlock," and "Catastrophe." Netflix, BBC, Channel 4

Hunt's strength of character does make her a divisive figure. She has had some high-profile scraps in her career, some of which stem from her courage to make controversial decisions, and desire to keep a tight grip on creative reins.

In 2010, TV presenter Miriam O'Reilly took the BBC to an employment tribunal on the grounds of ageism and victimisation after Hunt sacked her from popular show "Countryfile." O'Reilly emerged victorious in 2011.

Hunt was in court again for similar reasons in 2013 when she sacked Channel 4 horse racing presenter John McCririck. This time Hunt was on the winning side, but was described as "disingenuous in the extreme" by the judge after saying in evidence that she had "personally apologised" to O'Reilly over the BBC row, when she had not. If nothing else, it shows Hunt is capable of holding a grudge.

Hunt's accomplishments speak for themselves, however, and she helped spearhead Channel 4 to record revenues of nearly £1 billion last year. Her mantra at the broadcaster was "born risky" and she'll look to inject some of that into Apple, which has played it pretty safe to date with "Carpool Karaoke" and "Planet of the Apps."

Ultimately, she has the right ingredients to deliver Apple a hit on the scale of "The Great British Bake Off." Now that would really help Apple conquer TV.

Original author: Jake Kanter

Workplace is like a private version of Facebook for a business's employees. Facebook

More than 30,000 organizations are now using Facebook's enterprise communication tool, Workplace. Facebook is releasing a desktop chat app for Workplace and plans to add group video calling support soon. While monetization isn't a focus for Workplace yet, the product's early growth should scare competitors like Microsoft and Slack.

Facebook has quietly become a sizeable force in the competitive enterprise software market currently dominated by incumbents like Microsoft and newer upstarts like Slack.

The social network's communication tool for businesses, Workplace is now used by more than 30,000 organizations after one year, up from 14,000 in April. Facebook also announced on Thursday a desktop chat app for Workplace and plans to add support for group video calling "in the coming weeks."

In an interview with Business Insider, Workplace product manager Simon Cross contributed the tool's early success to the big companies that started using Workplace early. In its first year, Workplace managed to sign on a slew of household names like Starbucks, Delta, Lyft, Spotify, Heineken. The team also recently signed a deal with Walmart, the largest private employer in the world.

“Those names lend a huge amount of credibility to the product,” said Cross. “A lot of other companies begin to sit up and take notice."

Workplace is now used in 79 languages and by people on every continent. And Facebook is in the process of aggressively expanding the team's ranks with open job listings for growth managers and salespeople.

The social network has yet to disclose how many businesses pay for the service, which charges per user per month. Facebook just recently started billing companies that elect to pay for features needed for managing larger workforces, like integration with compliance partners.

It's also unclear how deeply Workplace is being used within the 30,000 organizations that have signed on so far. That number includes companies that may not have deployed Workplace to all their employees, according to a Facebook spokesperson.

Privately-held Slack, by comparison, claims more than two million paid users and 50,000 paid teams, although large companies can pay for multiple teams to keep divisions within their organizations separate from each other.

Workplace's apps have been given a fresh coat of paint. Workplace

According to Cross, Workplace's biggest advantage against chat-based competitors like Slack is that Facebook is building a full-fledged communication platform rather than a primarily chat-based experience. Workplace functions like a private version of Facebook, with familiar features like groups, live video, and more business-focused tools like integrations with Salesforce and Google's suite of apps.

“There are very few apps in this space to connect everyone from the CEO to the factory worker across a single product," said Cross.

Looking ahead, Cross said that Facebook is focused on reaching people “beyond the reach of traditional IT," like the Starbucks barista or Walmart clerk who otherwise may not have an easy way to see what is happening within their company more broadly.

Increasing the number of people who use Workplace inside a large organization is a good thing for Facebook's pay-per-user business model, but Cross stressed that making money isn't a priority right now.

“We’re primarily focused on growth and engagement versus monetization at this point," he said.

Original author: Alex Heath

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Microsoft's head of the Xbox division, Phil Spencer. Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

Good morning! Here is the tech news you need to know this Thursday.

1. Microsoft has stopped manufacturing Kinect, the depth and motion camera system it originally launched in 2010. The device sold about 35 million units over its lifespan, and the company will keep supporting developers who use it.

2. Amazon launched a new security camera system called Amazon Key. The main camera comes as part of a $250 (£190) bundle that includes a smart door lock which can recognise and open the door to couriers.

3. Nintendo has announced a new game in its popular "Animal Crossing" franchise. The new title won't be developed for Nintendo hardware, however, but for iOS and Android, and is scheduled for release in November.

4. Roku may start streaming on devices that don't run its proprietary operating system. It's not clear yet, but the service may require the use of mobile devices to work.

5. A Bloomberg report claimed that Apple had compromised on the quality of the iPhone X's Face ID to speed up its troublesome production. Apple, however, claimed that the allegations were "completely false."

6. Tech evangelist Robert Scoble apparently refused his lawyer's advise and denied many of the allegations against him. He said he couldn't have harassed a number of the women who accused him because he "wasn't their employer."

7. Google is giving developers early access to a new Android preview, still based on Oreo. The version, 8.1, can also be downloaded by anyone on the Android Beta Program, and will be released in full in December.

8. Apple is expanding its television-related operations. It hired Jay Hunt, former chief creative officer at Channel 4, who "will play a key role in its international creative development team" when she joins the company in January.

9. Tesla is reportedly firing SolarCity employees across the US. The firings are part of a spate of company-wide terminations that Tesla said were related to annual performance reviews.

10. Google has revamped its Science Journal app. The app, targeted mainly at children curious about science (and now available on iOS), has been redesigned to become similar to a "digital science notebook."

Original author: Edoardo Maggio

Original author: Ben Gilbert

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Original author: Becky Peterson

The pigs, developed in China, had 24% less body fat than a regular hog like this one, after 6 months. Flickr/Eric Kilby

Researchers in Beijing found a way to engineer pigs that helps them stay warm and lean. After 6 months, test litters weighed in with 24% less body fat than regular pigs. The researchers say the gene editing technique could lead to more efficient pork production, reduced costs for farmers, and healthier pigs.

It sounds almost like an oxymoron: low-fat pork.

Researchers in Beijing have developed a new kind of pig with 24% less body fat than regular, lard-laden swine. The researchers say their technique could help pigs stay warmer, grow faster and healthier, all while reducing costs for breeders.

The successful pig experiment, announced Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is a first. In addition to being low-fat, the experimental pigs are unique in one important genetic way: they've got mice proteins in their system. 

Pigs have a reputation for being fatty, but they don’t carry the gene that produces brown fat — the stuff that helps most mammals stay warm and burn energy. That’s because they lack the requisite protein, known as UCP1. A team of researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences say they’ve found a way to build that protein into baby pigs, creating a new brown fat-carrying pig that can keep itself warmer, without putting on as much "white" fat — or, as you may know it, lard. 

Researchers added the protein using CRISPR/Cas9, a gene-editing technology that's kind of like a cut-and-paste function for genetic code. Snip a bit of the UCP1 mice protein into a pig embryo and voila: a pig that develops less fat is born. (Though it's not quite as easy as it sounds in practice: the scientists successfully birthed just 12 male piglets from a total of 2,553 embryos.)

Melia Robinson/Business Insider

The researchers think the lack of brown fat in regular pigs could be a key reason they get so chubby in the first place — it might be part of their feeble attempt to stay warm. Many piglets die from cold stress and the ones who survive often require heat lamps to stay warm in their first weeks of life. Exposed to cold, the UCP1 pigs managed to keep their body temperature stable for hours, while regular pigs' body temperatures dipped lower.

At 6 months old, when the brown fat pigs were finally slaughtered, they had 24% reduced fat content. They didn’t weigh much less than normal pigs, but they had a higher ratio of lean meat on their bodies and thinner back fat as well. 

But these piggies are probably not coming to market. 

"I very much doubt that this particular pig will ever be imported into the USA,” R. Michael Roberts, an animal sciences professor at the University of Missouri who edited the PNAS paper, told NPR. He also said the pig technology would probably never get FDA approval. Even if it did, Americans would likely be wary of the idea of genetically-altered bacon. 

Nutritionists say "low fat" food is not really all that healthy, anyway. Increasingly, sugar is being touted as the waistline-builder in modern diets, and while the saturated fat content in pork still gets a bad rap, health experts tend to encourage healthy overall eating habits instead of fat restriction.

Chinese scientists may have just successfully proven that they can engineer a skinnier pig than nature, but meat lovers probably won’t be frying up the lean bacon anytime soon.

Original author: Hilary Brueck

Gusto's new CFO Mike Dinsdale DoorDash

HR software startup Gusto is prepping itself for an eventual IPO by hiring its first ever CFO. It has nabbed Mike Dinsdale away from DoorDash for the role. Dinsdale is best known as DocuSign's long-time CFO, where he helped raise over $500 million in private investment. Gusto's CEO has an interesting three-month training plan to ensure Dinsdale's success, he tells Business Insider. It includes a three-month moratorium on major business decisions.

HR software startup Gusto has poached Mike Dinsdale away from Doordash, less than a year after he joined the food delivery startup.

Dinsdale is best known for his six-years as CFO of DocuSign, where he was one of the first 100 employees and helped DocuSign raise over $515 million in funding. Dinsdale left DocuSign in May, 2016, as part of a big executive exodus in which the chief operating officer, chief human resources officer, chief product officer also all left.

This was during an odd period at DocuSign when its charismatic leader Keith Krach had announced that he was leaving the top spot and the company went through a very public more than year-long struggle to hire a new one 

Dinsdale joined food delivery service DoorDash in October and a year later, has leapt to Gusto, as the company's first CFO. It's current head of finance, Andy Toung, will remain at the company as well, Gusto founder and CEO Josh Reeves tells Business Insider.

The new CFO will help Gusto get ready for its eventual IPO, Reeves says. The IPO is not imminent, but he's already prepping for it, doing everything from putting financial reporting controls in place to schmoozing the big institutional investors he hopes will one day buy Gusto's public stock.

No major business decisions for 3 months

All of that is standard practice for a startup that's raised $176 million from venture capitalists as it moves towards an IPO.

Gusto cofounder CEO Josh Reeves Gusto

What is unusual is how Reeves plans to ease his new, first-ever CFO into the company.

For instance, Dinsdale won't be allowed to make any major business decisions for his first quarter at the company, Reeves tells us.

"I'm focused on making sure that Mike is equipped to be successful," says Reeves.

Reeves has grown Gusto from a startup into a 500-employee company, along with his two cofounders Tomer London, and Edward Kim.

With that many employees, he has started to hire senior leaders. He's also hired a CEO coach for himself.

One thing that he's learned: no matter how excited you are about your newly hired senior leader, never set them loose on Day 1.

"The more senior the person is, the more pitfalls there are. There's a tendency for that person to want to jump and make decisions," Reeves says. That's natural. People want to prove themselves, and sometimes companies want immediate action from the leader as well.

It's important for people to see leaders being vulnerable

But that's just asking for resentment from the people already working at the company.

Instead, Dinsdale, like all new senior hires will spend three full months completing an intense training program, Reeves said. For one thing, he will shadow teams at all departments in the company and learn everyone's job, not just the financial team that he will lead.

"I want them to understand what everyone does," he says of his new senior leaders. 

Dinsdale will also be asked to do a so-called "LifeLine exercise" that entails sharing his life story, especially his struggles, with the whole company.

"It's important for people to see leaders being vulnerable," Reeves says. This makes it safe for everyone, including leaders, to acknowledge their inevitable mistakes and learn from them, Reeves believes.

Original author: Julie Bort

The CodeFights team, CEO Tigran Sloyan is in the upper left hand corner. Codefights

CodeFights is offering a new system called CodeFightsR that's designed to help companies improve their recruiting and hiring processes.  Companies can use CodeFightsR to evaluate candidates based on their skills rather than their résumés

 

You don't need an Ivy League education, a degree from one of the top college engineering programs, or work experience at one of the big tech companies to be a great coder. 

But hiring managers still frequently use such markers to identify and evaluate job candidates. 

CodeFights is hoping to change that. The startup, whose website helps programmers to improve their skills by offering them coding challenges, has developed a new system designed to help recruiters evaluate job candidates based on the candidates' skills rather than on what they've listed on their résumés.

"What the recruiting industry is still doing is using pedigree as a proxy for skill," said Tigran Sloyan, CodeFights' CEO. But, he continued, "Engineers are no longer coming from top schools and top companies."

Fighting bias

For the past two years, CodeFights, which was founded by former Google and Oracle engineers, has been helping companies recruit new employees by screening programmers who came to its site to practice their coding. After seeing how well CodeFights' site worked for finding talented engineers, the company's partners, which include Uber, Asana, and Evernote, urged CodeFights to create tools they could use internally to screen job candidates.

The result is CodeFightsR. The system helps companies evaluate job applicants based on their programming skills. Companies can use CodeFights R to send applicants a programming test. The system assesses candidates' skill levels based on how they do on the test. Hiring managers can then look at applicants' scores to figure out which ones to bring in for an interview. 

The system is designed to evaluate candidates objectively, rather than having assessments clouded by conscious or unconscious biases. CodeFightsR can point hiring managers to candidates who actually have the skills they're looking for, regardless of their gender or race or the school they graduated from.

"Biases mainly kick in because of people's lack of real data, said Sloyan. "They go off of proxies to decide if someone can do what they want or not."

An example of a CodeFightsR report on a coding test. Codefights

Finding Candidates in Unusual Places  

But companies can also use CodeFightsR to find additional job candidates, not just screen existing ones. 

Companies can use the CodeFightsR system to design programming bots and list them on CodeFights' public website. Programmers who visit CodeFights' site can play against the bots as a way of testing their skills. If they do well against a particular company's bot, they'll get a prompt asking if they are interested in job opportunities at that company. So, the system helps companies find qualified candidates who might not otherwise have gone through a formal application process. 

"Companies see the shift," said Sloyan. "When you realize that instead of looking at someone's resume and looking for keywords you can actually know this person is a great Java engineer or Android engineer without even having ever talked to them, it’s a transformation in (the company's) eyes."

Testing skills and offering feedback

CodeFights has designed CodeFightsR to help companies out even as they get closer to hiring particular candidates. 

In later stages of the hiring process, companies typically ask programmer candidates to complete a coding test with a recruiter, usually in Google Docs. But because Google Docs is formatted for plain text, not software code, it's not ideal for demonstrating coding skills, Sloyan said.

Sloyan is hoping CodeFightsR will help companies improve their hiring processes. CodeFights

CodeFightsR includes a feature that allows candidates to do a coding test in something closer to a programming environment. The feature allows candidates to choose from any one of 38 programming languages and actually run the code they write. 

Companies can also use CodeFightsR to figure out how to improve their hiring process. The system offers automated feedback on companies' hiring processes. For example, it can alert a company if two of its interviewers gave a candidate wildly different evaluations. Or it can notify companies if the questions they're asking candidates don't seem particular relevant to the jobs for which they're applying. 

In the CodeFights office, visitors can see what the company calls its "wall of fame." It's comprised of the stories of coders who were hired after being discovered on CodeFights' website.

The wall is supposed "remind ourselves that what we do matters," said Sloyan.

CodeFights hopes the new set of recruiting tools will help it add many more stories to the wall.

Original author: Caroline Cakebread