500 Startups is in somewhat of a weird spot, given that Dave McClure resigned as a GP from 500 Startups in July this year after admitting to “multiple” advances toward women and being a “creep.” Since then, there’s been a specter over the firm’s program, especially as it begins its demo day and starts to roll into the following class. That seemed truer… Read More
A Michelin Star is one of the greatest honors a restaurant can receive.Skye Gould/Business Insider
The San Francisco Bay Area is the new fine-dining capital of America in the eyes of Michelin.
The region, which includes San Francisco and wine country, received 55 Michelin stars in the newly-revealed 2018 guide to spots in the Bay Area. The seven three-starred restaurants (the highest accolade) puts the Bay Area ahead of New York's six three-starred establishments and Chicago's three.
The Michelin Guide is a restaurant rating system that makes or breaks fine-dining spots around the world. Three stars, in Michelin jargon, means "exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey." San Francisco has no shortage.
The honor may only be temporary. Michelin drops its 2018 guide for New York on Monday.
Until then, the Bay Area reigns supreme. Here are the restaurants that earned the illustrious three-star designation from Michelin. Click here to see the complete list.
Coi is the Bay Area's newest three Michelin-starred restaurant. Chef David Patterson passed the baton to chef Matthew Kirkley in 2016, who shifted the focus to classic French influences. The seafood-centric spot is one of about 100 restaurants worldwide to receive three stars.
Chef Thomas Keller's iconic restaurant is located in a stone cottage. Diners can chose between two prix-fixe menus, which change daily and don't repeat a single ingredient through the meal.
Located on the outskirts of Silicon Valley, Manresa offers extravagant farm-to-table tasting menus. Guests don't know what chef David Kinch has in store until they arrive at the table.
Quince leapt from one star to three in 2013. Husband-and-wife team Michael and Lindsay Tusk have been on a roll since, serving up Californian contemporary cuisine in this fine-dining spot.
Chef Christopher Kostow is the third youngest chef to ever receive three Michelin stars. The Restaurant at Meadowood delights guests with local, sustainable Californian cuisine.
In 2015, Eater SF recognized Saison as the most expensive restaurant in California. The French-American tasting menu and beverage pairing will set you back about $700 a head.
Acquerello, San Francisco
Atelier Crenn, San Francisco
Baumé, Palo Alto
*Californios, San Francisco
Commis, Oakland
Lazy Bear, San Francisco
*Single Thread, Sonoma County
Â
Adega, San Jose
Al's Place, San Francisco
Aster, San Francisco
Auberge du Soleil, Rutherford
Aziza, San Francisco
Bouchon, Yountville
Campton Place, San Francisco
Chez TJ, Mountain View
Commonwealth, San Francisco
Farmhouse Inn & Restaurant, Forestville
Gary Danko, San Francisco
Hashiri, San Francisco
*In Situ, San Francisco
Ju-ni, San Francisco
Keiko à  Nob Hill, San Francisco
*Kenzo, Napa
Kin Khao, San Francisco
La Toque, Napa
Lord Stanley, San Francisco
Luce, San Francisco
Madera, Menlo Park
Madrona Manor, Healdsburg
Michael Mina, San Francisco
Mister Jiu's, San Francisco
Mourad, San Francisco
Octavia, San Francisco
Omakse, San Francisco
Plumed Horse, Saratoga
The Progress, San Francisco
Rasa, Burlingame
*Rich Table, San Francisco
Sons & Daughters, San Francisco
SPQR, San Francisco
Spruce, San Francisco
State Bird Provisions, San Francisco
Sushi Yoshizumi, San Mateo
Terra, St. Helena
Terrapin Creek, Bodega Bay
The Village Pub, Woodside
Wako, San Francisco
Wakuriya, San Mateo
Anticipation is building ahead of the Phone X's November 3 launch. With its base price of $999, the iPhone X is the most expensive phone Apple has ever released, and one of the most expensive phones on the mainstream market.
Unfortunately for cash-strapped consumers, Apple is at the forefront of a trend when it comes to pricing. According to data from market research firm Gfk, smartphone makers are likely to focus more on premium (read expensive) products. As we can see in this chart from Statista, Gfk estimates that the global average sales price of smartphones will increase more year-over-year in 2017 than it has in past years.
Premium features such as water and dust protection, biometric sensors and bigger screens are all driving prices up, says Gkf analyst Arndt Polifke. Consumers may have to pay more, but they'll be getting more too.Â
Mike Nudelman/Business Insider
Get the latest Google stock price here.
This PC setup is a far-off dream for me, a lowly MacBook user.YouTube/TechSourceI love playing video games, but as a Mac owner, I often have a case of PC envy.Â
Almost all the best games debut on PCs and only show up on Macs years later â if at all. With recent PC-exclusive games including "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" getting really popular, and "Destiny 2" â the sequel to one of my favorite video games â launching this month, I recently started considering buying a gaming PC for the very first time.
Fortunately, I found an even better and much cheaper solution, one that turned my 2013 MacBook Pro into a legitimate game machine: Nvidia's GeForce Now app.Â
I first learned about GeForce Now earlier this week in a random video I found from a YouTuber named Karl Conrad. After doing some quick research about people trying and failing to use their Macs as game machines, I discovered his video, where he mentioned the software as a potential solution.
A free download in the US and Canada, the GeForce Now app lets you play on your Mac the kind of high-end games that typically require a Windows PC computer with a dedicated graphics processor. GeForce Now is only in beta, but Nvidia is a trusted company when it comes to gaming, and the app works like a charm.
Take a look at GeForce Now:
What if a dating app was focused on enabling real dates, rather than chatting? Whim founder Eve Peters said the idea appealed to users, but Whim also asked you to identify the days you’d be available. So Peters and her team have launched a new iOS app called Tonight. As soon as two people show interest in each other, the app tries to set them up on a date, no messaging required. Read More
Current announced today it has raised $5 million in Series A funding for its debit card aimed at kids that parents can control with an app. The company first introduced its Visa debit to the market in May. Kids can use the card to shop in stores or online using funds from their own bank account linked to the card, after receiving a digital allowance from mom or dad. The new round was led by… Read More
“Peak startup” is a phrase that no doubt strikes terror in the hearts of entrepreneurs and startup investors alike. But saying “peak startup” is not the same as saying that the market is at the very height of a bubble. Peak startup merely means that the market is running out of steam for this cycle. And that’s what we’re going to examine here. Read More
DoorDash CFO Mike Dinsdale has left the company less than a year after he joined, TechCrunch has learned. The food ordering and delivery startup is actively looking for a replacement. He is now gearing up to join Gusto, formerly known as ZenPayroll, according to a source familiar with Dinsdale’s situation. Read More
Coding schools and bootcamps were booming a few years ago. But many of them only offered entry-level education, and quite a few of them are now shutting down. From the beginning, Holberton always aimed to stay above this fray by branding itself less as a bootcamp and more as an alternative to a four-year college degree. Read More
As Slack moves more and more into trying to become a go-to tool for workplace collaboration — especially in the face of competition from Atlassian and other incumbents — it has to first make sure it has the table stakes down. Today, the company is looking to take another step in that direction as it starts rolling out an updated screen sharing feature that allows users to mark… Read More
There’s little question that former Facebook executive and venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya thoroughly enjoys challenging the way that startups are funded. Because he has the hot hand, so to speak, he’s able to get away with it, too. Read More
WeWork and Techstars are buddying up, the organizations announced today. Techstars, the global accelerator program responsible for companies like ClassPass, Sphero and Digital Ocean, will be bringing its program into the WeWork community by running its curriculum at WeWork locations in Toronto, Boston, Kansas City, and New York City. As a part of the deal, Techstars alumni will now get a… Read More
Hopper, a top-ranked travel app that helps you figure out the best time to fly to save money, is today expanding its price prediction service to hotels. The company claims its price tracking technology is able to save users $34 per night, on average, when booking a hotel room through its service, or up to $90 per night in the best cases. The Hopper application is already one of the better… Read More
A few weeks ago I was in Atlanta for Techstars Atlanta Demo Day and the Venture Atlanta Conference. I had a great time and itâs fun to see the vibrancy of the Atlanta startup community. My brother Daniel came with me and we had dinner with our cousin Kenny, who lives in Atlanta, so we got some nice, quiet, emotionally intimate family time.
My favorite keynote at Venture Atlanta was from Scott Dorsey. While our paths have intersected for more than a decade and I knew him from a distance, Iâve gotten to know Scott pretty well over the past year. I put him in the awesome category.
If you donât know Scott, he was the co-founder and CEO of ExactTarget (2000) â one of the original SaaS companies. ExactTarget went public in 2012 and was acquired by Salesforce.com in 2013 for $2.5 billion and became the core of the current Salesforce Marketing Cloud. He was on the Salesforce.com leadership team until he left to start High Alpha in 2015.
If you are doing something SaaS related and you donât know or follow what Scott says, you should.
At Venture Atlanta, part of his keynote was a riff on the Attributes of Great SaaS Leaders. While the web is peppered with SaaS metrics and the state of SaaS, thereâs a dearth of CEO-centric qualitative information. While Scottâs attributes could be for any leader, they are particularly relevant to SaaS CEOs given the dynamic of how high-growth SaaS companies â and great leadership teams â need to work to scale.
His five attributes, which he went deeper on individually in the keynote, reflect his personality and leadership style.
1. Start with the end in mind
2. Are always learning
3. Value team and culture above everything
4. Are both optimistic and never satisfied
5. Give back!
For those of you that are Simon Sinek fans, starting with the end in mind is analogous to starting with your Why. Are always learning is the essence of being a leader in a super high growth rapidly changing world which most SaaS companies operate in. Valuing team and culture above everything is easy to say, but extremely hard to do, especially when your VCs are pressuring you to perform at a certain financial level for rational, or irrational, reasons. Are both optimistic and never satisfied is interestingly similar to Andy Groveâs âonly the paranoid surviveâ while at the same time having a completely different tone.
If you know me, it wonât surprise you that I almost jumped out of my seat at the event and did a happy dance when Scott started talking about Give back! I know I need to train him to say âGive Firstâ, but itâs the same concept. Scott was a leader here, with the creation of the ExactTarget Foundation (now Nextech) in 2011. Nextech works to elevate technical, critical-thinking and problem-solving skills of K-12 students, inspiring and enabling young people from all backgrounds to pursue careers in technology, so heâs been ahead of the curve on the importance of computer science and technical skills in K-12, something which is a big part of addressing many of the social and educational gaps in our country.
Indianapolisâ startup community, like Atlantaâs, is thriving. Thereâs no question in my mind that Scottâs leadership has contributed to this in a meaningful way.
All of this comes back to the idea that as a leader you should play a very long game. Scott does this brilliantly and itâs been hugely educational and inspiring to me to get to know him.
Also published on Medium.
Sramana Mitra: What are you doing with your legacy courses? Are you chopping them up? Victoria Zambito: Yes. Vector Solutions has over 6,000 courses. Actually going in and hand-chopping them up would...
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Entrepreneurs are invited to the 373rd FREE online 1Mby1M mentoring roundtable on Thursday, October 26, 2017, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/8:30 p.m. India IST. If you are a serious entrepreneur,...
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October 24, 2017
My partner Lindel just put a post up on the Foundry Group website about our investment in K9 Ventures. We are proud to be an LP in Manu Kumarâs third fund.
Iâve been friends with Manu since 2009 and an investor (personally) in his first two funds. I vividly remember the first time we met â we were both sitting on the floor in the back corner at the fbFund Demo Day at the Facebook office in downtown Palo Alto. A number of interesting companies were presented.
I adore Manu. I love his style, his energy, and his intellect. Weâve had many conversations over the years where heâs reached out to me with a specific question about something and itâs clear that Iâm one of several people he was calling to collect data on something that would inform his decision. Itâs a classic engineer / rational problem-solving approach that appeals to me. While Manu went to CMU, his style is similar to many of my MIT friends.
Not surprisingly, Manu still had our first email exchange. I love the minor âgrapewineâ typo in the first sentence.
From: Manu Kumar <
Date: Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 10:58 PM
Subject: TechStars Demo Day in Mountain View, CA
To:
Brad,
Your posting below was forwarded to me over the grapewine. Iâm actively investing in startups in the Bay Area and have been aware of some of the companies that have emerged from TechStars. Would love to attend and hear the pitches at your Demo Day in Mountain View.
You can see my full background on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/sneaker. It looks like we know several other folks in common too⦠look forward to meeting you.
Best regards,
-Manu
While we must not have met there, Iâm glad we were both in the back of the room the following summer. Our next meeting was lunch at a Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto called Mandarin Gourmet. It was during that meal that Manu told me about the fund he was raising. I made a commitment to invest at the end of lunch and weâve been working together ever since.
Also published on Medium.
In December 2015, legitimate Billion Dollar Unicorn and collaboration software maker Atlassian (NASDAQ: TEAM) had a successful IPO that valued it at $5.8 billion, and today its stock is trading in...
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Jason Kassin: The ability to record all your distribution agreements in film and television was the genesis of FilmTrack. That has changed dramatically since even the mid 90’s. There was not any such...
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When Google was founded in 1998, its goal was to organize the world’s information. And for the most part, mission accomplished — but in 19 years the goal post has moved forward and indexing and usefully presenting information isn’t enough. As machine learning matures, it’s becoming feasible for the first time to actually summarize and contextualize the world’s… Read More
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