It's not only the media that makes us obsessed about private startup valuations - sometimes the founders and VCs play a role in it too. We take a look at valuations, how to speak with your VC about them and the Israel angle - privately owned unicorns and the Israeli charging ponies, startups who are well on their way to unicorn status.
Is Venture capital a people business or an antiquated model that is ripe for disruption? I share arguments for and against from two interesting posts I read this week.
The financial side of technology entrepreneurship means that almost from inception, an entrepreneur has to think about and plan his or her sources of financing. Wether you like it or not, startups can merely get a break between rounds of fundraising. It’s hard to know where to start sometimes, so this list should hopefully serve as a friendly primer for London startups.
Purpose used to be a “nice to have” for corporates and startups, that was usually tucked away in the CSR department. I know its not a fair generalisation as many companies have put significant efforts into giving back to society, but general business wisdom has put purpose, or any kind of “social mission”, at odds with the core goals of a corporation: to maximise shareholder value.
In this post I round up various AI predictions, not so much the ‘eye rolling’ apocalyptic ones, but the more practical view on how will AI progress next year.
No need to mention that forecasting is not easy, and you have to take these with a big pinch of salt, but it’s still interesting to extend an imaginary line from an existing trend and see where it leads.
In my last post, I covered 5 tech trends that shaped 2017 including the proliferation of AI, Blockchain and crypto currencies the growing dominance of GAFAM, etc. Below, I cover the trends that dominated the headlines in 2017 including fake news, the tech code of conduct, IPOs, corporate VC, Softbank and more. What would you add?
As we approach the last stretch of 2017, I wanted to take stock of the tech trends that shaped our year. In the next post, I’ll cover additional tech trends of 2017 and my predictions for 2018.
This guest post by Chris Rowen of Cognite Ventures answers the question "Where are all the Israeli deep learning startups?”
Several large clusters are particularly noticeable:
* Chat-bots for engaging with customers more continuously and adaptively and coaching sales people
* All kinds of e-commerce optimization - enhanced bidding, ad campaign optimization, pricing and incentives
* Fraud protection in ecommerce including ad fraud
* Predictive maintenance in manufacturing and operations
* IT infrastructure management especially for cyber security
* All sorts of brand management and promotion
Read the full post for the list and other insights from Chris.
In a recent blog post, partners of Ycombinator distill the top advice for founders. In this short post I summarise the top nuggets with a simple common thread - focus on the things that will move your business forward and help you build a product that people want.
Trying to sum up the ride will have to wait for another post. Instead, I’d love to share some of the thoughts that riders shared after the ride (I kept them anonymous for privacy). One can meet people for ‘industry events’ over drinks 10 times and struggle to make a connection. But cycle with them for 3 days, and you would have made friends for life. Hope to see you in one of our future rides.
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