As Rafiki once said, “It is time.” Tinder Gold, the dating app’s new premium subscription tier (which includes a feature that lets you see who’s already liked you without any swiping) is finally rolling out to the U.S. Tinder Gold and Likes You were originally tested in Argentina, Australia, Canada and Mexico at the end of June. Today, however, the the feature rolls out… Read More
We get a lot of weed-related pitches at TechCrunch, but most of them don’t come with the pedigree of Herb‘s investors. Herb is announcing today that it has raised $4.1 million in seed funding led by Lerer Hippeau Ventures, with participation from Slow Ventures, Buddy Media co-founder Michael Lazerow, Bullpen Capital, Shiva Rajarama, Liquid 2 Ventures (the firm led by football… Read More
Entrepreneurs are invited to the 365th FREE online 1Mby1M mentoring roundtable on Thursday, August 31, 2017, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/8:30 p.m. India IST. If you are a serious entrepreneur, register...
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According to a study by Global Industry Analysts, the global private tutoring market is projected to surpass $102.8 billion by 2018. The Indian private coaching industry was estimated to be worth $45...
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Gigster is shifting from letting anyone outsource full-stack app development to building next-gen tech projects for big companies. If an enterprise needs machine learning and vision, data visualization, blockchain, React or Swift work done and doesn’t want to hire full-time employees, Gigster assembles a squad of freelancers and guarantees the work at a fixed price. Read More
Sramana Mitra: What was your next move after you came out of school? It sounds like you came back to Denver? Patrick Quinlan: I did. I’d been planning on joining the Peace Corps and was accepted, but...
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BunkerEx is a newly-funded startup out of London that is building an online marketplace to change the way shipping companies buy fuel, or ‘bunkers,’ to use the correct industry term. Read More
Bunch, a newly-launched startup operating out of Berlin, is aiming to be something akin to a “Google Analytics for company culture”. It offers a SaaS to let companies and company teams quantify internal company culture, and then use this data as the basis to screen job candidates to help ensure that they will also be a good fit. Read More
Western Digital has today announced that it purchased Upthere for an undisclosed amount. Upthere had previously raised $77 million from an impressive list of investors, with KPCB and Western Digital Ventures leading the round. Upthere wants you to think of its service as the canonical location where your data lives. It’s available for OS X/MacOS, Windows, Android and iOS. Read More
Fraud detection is a huge problem for retailers and the banking industry. But as companies fortify their defenses against fraudsters, the criminal element finds new weaknesses to exploit. The latest tactic has been phone spoofing, and fraud at the call center itself. Helping to ward off the latest wave of fake accounts is Next Caller, a Y Combinator-backed startup based in New York. Read More
Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan have welcomed their second daughter into the world, and her name is August. Before you ask, it’s unclear if she was named August because she was born in August. (But I highly doubt it.) In usual Zuck fashion, the Facebook CEO and founder posted the announcement to Facebook along with a letter from him and his wife to the new baby girl. Here’s… Read More
Although Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has yet to officially accept the chief executive officer position at Uber, Expedia Chairman Barry Diller believes “it is his intention to accept,” according to an SEC filing. Just yesterday, it came out that Uber offered the CEO job to Khosrowshahi. In an email to Expedia employees, Diller wrote: As you probably know by now, Dara Khosrowshahi… Read More
Leela Kids is a very straightforward app that nonetheless might prevent some parents from going insane. It curates podcasts by subject matter for age ranges from three to 15 years old and packages them in a kid-friendly interface. Leela Kids gives caretakers peace of mind that whatever their charges are listening to is age-appropriate and reasonably edifying. In fact, it recently hit the top… Read More
August 28, 2017
Adam Grant has a superb essay in the New York Times this weekend titled Networking is Overrated.
I enjoy Adamâs writing immensely (his book Give and Take is a huge inspiration for my upcoming book #GiveFirst). Early in the essay, he has a strong lead in.
âItâs true that networking can help you accomplish great things. But this obscures the opposite truth: Accomplishing great things helps you develop a network.â
He finishes the essay with a great punch line.
âIf you make great connections, they might advance your career. If you do great work, those connections will be easier to make. Let your insights and your outputs â not your business cards â do the talking.â
Now, great connections can result in special things. Iâve always believed in being open to random connections and for years I would do a random day once or twice a month, where Iâd meet with anyone for 15 minutes. Some magnificent things have come out of this, including Techstars and my relationship with NCWIT. As Iâve gotten older, and more visible, itâs been harder to maintain any rhythm around random day, but it shifted to something else thatâs congruent with what Adam is saying.
While I still try to respond to all of my emails, I now have very little available face time or phone time. So I allocate whatever is free to people who are doing interesting things. Instead of having random days, I have âreact and spend time with people doing interesting thingsâ days.
Remember, Iâm an introvert. In Adamâs sequel to his NYT article titled To Build a Great Network, You Donât Have to be a Great Networker (enjoyably / ironically on LinkedIn), he says:
âItâs possible to develop a network by becoming the kind of person who never eats alone, who wins friends and influences people. But introverts rejoice: thereâs another way. You can become the kind of person who invests time in doing excellent work and sharing your knowledge with others.â
Get to work. Seriously â just go do some stuff. Youâll be amazed at what happens as a result.
Also published on Medium.
Ike has bootstrapped Ephesoft and turned a relatively small $3.2 million investment into $12 million in 2016 revenue. Excellent execution. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your...
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Skidos, an edtech startup based in Copenhagen after relocating its HQ from New Delhi, offers an SDK to help games developers turn casual games into “learning apps”. Read More
Watch this 41 second cartoon video. A Business Model is how you monetize your value proposition. Exit Strategy is how investors (including founders) monetize their shares. To build a business,...
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Athelas is launching a low-cost, blood diagnostics device today made for testing certain diseases like the flu, bacterial infections and cancer in the comfort of your home.Tanay Tandon founded the startup in 2014 at the tender age of 17 to develop a smartphone device that could detect malaria through blood samples. That idea proved difficult but the idea of ease and mobility stuck with… Read More
According to a ResearchandMarkets report published earlier this year, the global online food delivery and takeaway market is estimated to grow 15.25% annually over the five-year period through 2021....
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You learn from successes. You learn a lot more from mistakes and failures. Patrick freely discusses various missteps in his journey and how he managed to pivot out of various corners. Excellent...
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