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Founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz (known as "a16z") is a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, California, that backs bold entrepreneurs building the future through technology. We are stage agnostic: We invest in seed to late-stage technology companies, across the consumer, enterprise, bio/healthcare, crypto, and fintech spaces. a16z has $19.2B in assets under management across multiple funds, including the $1.4B Bio funds, the $3.1B Crypto funds, and the Cultural Leadership Fund.

a16z is defined by respect for the entrepreneur and the entrepreneurial company building process; we know what it’s like to be in the founder’s shoes. The firm is led by general partners, many of whom are former founders/operators, CEOs, or CTOs of successful technology companies, and who have domain expertise ranging from biology to crypto to distributed systems to security to marketplaces to financial services.

We aim to connect entrepreneurs, investors, executives, engineers, academics, industry experts, and others in the technology ecosystem. We have built a network of experts including technical and executive talent; top media and marketing resources; Fortune 500/Global 2000 companies; as well as other technology decision makers, influencers, and key opinion leaders. a16z uses this network as part of our commitment to help our portfolio companies grow their business, so our operating teams provide entrepreneurs with access to expertise and insights across the entire spectrum of company building.

https://a16z.com/portfolio/  
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Andreessen Horowitz

andreessen-horowitz

For years, partners at Andreessen Horowitz proclaimed they would scour the startup world for the next big consumer marketplace like Airbnb or the next hit consumer app out of China, areas in which the firm had unique expertise. Now, it’s shifting toward an area more en vogue across venture ...

Andreessen Horowitz’s Connie Chan to Leave as Consumer Focus Shifts to AI

Chan's based in the Bay Area, but is best known for her deep knowledge of China's consumer tech market.

Connie Chan is leaving Andreessen Horowitz after 12 years

Doppel is building a next-generation approach for detecting and removing fraudulent accounts and phishing attacks across various channels.

Investing in Doppel | Andreessen Horowitz

There comes a point after 12 years where you either double down or figure something else out. I’m still a loyal a16zer but will embark on something new.

A Personal Update | Andreessen Horowitz

We are very excited to announce that we have raised a new round of funding led by (a16z) with participation from and existing investors. Andreessen Horowitz Y Combinator Continuity This fundraise comes at the back of our impressive growth, as we are now sending for some of the most sophisticated engineering teams at companies both large (Fortune 500) and small (startups). billions of webhooks a year Companies like , , , , and , all use Svix to power their webhooks. Brex Lob Benchling Bizzabo LTSE Equity We have gotten to know the a16z and YC Continuity teams well over the last few months, and we are excited to be working with them for years to come, as well as continuing working with our amazing existing investors: , , Andrew Miklas, Yuri Sagalov ( ), Kevin Mahaffey ( ), Christopher Golda ( ), Jason Warner, Ian Storm Taylor, Kurt Mackey, Hana Mohan, Holly Dunlap, and Michael Orland. Aleph Y Combinator Wayfinder SNR Rogue Capital Today is an important milestone towards our mission of making server-to-server communication easy, secure, and reliable. So I want to take this opportunity to thank the team for getting us to where we are today. I love waking up every day and being surrounded by such smart and passionate individuals, serving amazing customers, and working with the best investors out there! What is Svix? To talk about Svix, we first need to talk about webhooks. Webhooks are how services communicate; you can think of them as sort of a reverse API, or as the API equivalent of push notifications. They power most of the products that we all use on a daily basis. For example: when you make a payment online, a webhook is sent from the payment provider to the merchant; when you push a commit to Github, a webhook is sent to the CI providers to trigger a build; and when you use a workflow automation tool like Zapier, the workflows are almost always triggered by webhooks. Webhooks have also become an increasingly common customer demand, both by API providers and more importantly API consumers. We see this trend across all industries, where customers expect webhooks in order to be able to take action on events without having to poll for updates. It makes sense, as webhooks enable building workflows on top of products, turning them from useful into critical infrastructure, increasing both stickiness and usefulness. The problem, however, is that building a reliable webhook service requires a lot more engineering time, resources, and ongoing maintenance than you first expect. Which is especially painful, as it diverts valuable resources from improving the product, to reinventing infrastructure. We believe webhooks will follow a similar development pattern to other internet infrastructure—like email, web servers, and CMS—which only a few teams build on their own. That's where Svix comes in. With Svix, companies can build a secure, reliable, and scalable webhooks solution in minutes. Saving them a lot of time, effort, and money, while focusing on their business and increasing team happiness. Looking back Milestones are always a great time to reflect on the past. Looking back, I'm really proud of the product we have built, and how we've been supporting our customers. It never gets old to hear "wow, that was really fast" when we release a new feature shortly after discussing it with a customer. We deserve some credit for that (and we work hard to earn it), but a lot of the credit also belongs to our customers. We are very lucky to have such engaged customers, and doubly lucky to have them be developers. We often get very detailed feedback, specced out feature requests, and of course pull requests for both the code and the docs. I think this has also been the secret to why our customers love the product so much. It's because they helped us build it every step of the way, and they still do to this day. The same way it never gets old to hear about how fast we move with product development, it also never gets old to hear about how people use the product and how much they love it. This is by far one of the best products I've ever worked with. It does one thing but it does it
so well that I can't imagine ever doing my own webhooks solution. - Senior Engineering Manager at Bizzabo One super important but often underappreciated aspect of what we do, is the relentless focus on stability and scalability. We spend a lot of time and work really hard to ensure that we provide our customers with a robust service at the scale they need. Whether it's the quality of the code, the test suite, the infrastructure, or our SDLC, we always hold ourselves to the highest standards. It's one of those things that no one notices when you do your job well, but are essential for any infrastructure service. At the end of the day, however, it's not about what we have built, but rather how we are affecting the lives of our customers. Thanks to Svix our customers can offer a state of the art webhooks solution to their customers at a fraction of the time and cost it would take to build it themselves, with no ongoing maintenance, while getting constant improvements and automatic scaling. All of this while freeing their engineering teams to work on their core business. For more on that, you can see what . Lob had to say about their experience switching to Svix Looking forward We have identified an important (and growing) problem, built a great product to solve it, and started a whole new vertical along the way (webhooks as a service). This is why our customers, our investors, and the Svix team are so excited about webhooks and what we are building. We have an opportunity to become an industry defining company, which is why we have decided to raise this round of funding, and partner with some of the best investors out there. We are going to use the money and the support of our new investors, to further expand the team and improve the product to keep up with the demand and our ever evolving customer needs.  We have a lot of exciting stuff lined up, and we can't wait to share them! If you are passionate about developer tools, webhooks, and server-to-server communication and you think you may be a good fit, please check out our . careers page If your company is looking to start sending webhooks, or upgrade their existing legacy solution, or . try us out check out our docs Also published here.

How My Startup Got New Funding from Andreessen Horowitz

Cómo mi startup obtuvo nuevos fondos de Andreessen Horowitz

Comment ma startup a obtenu un nouveau financement d'Andreessen Horowitz

कैसे मेरे स्टार्टअप को आंद्रेसेन होरोविट्ज़ से नई फंडिंग मिली

私のスタートアップがアンドリーセン・ホロウィッツから新しい資金を調達した方法

Como minha startup conseguiu novos financiamentos da Andreessen Horowitz

Làm thế nào Startup của tôi có được nguồn vốn mới từ Andreessen Horowitz

我的初创公司如何从 Andreessen Horowitz 获得新资金

Investment and Technology Giants Join NYM, a privacy-based blockchain as validators Dokia Capital, an a16z-backed Figment, Chorus One, and Telcom behemoth Swisscom joined Nym as a validator. The validators keep the mixnet privacy system running by providing consensus on the mix node network architecture at any given moment and public history of all token transactions, certificate generation, and double-spending prevention. This general-purpose Web-Assembly smart contract blockchain provides low-cost, lightning-fast transactions and smart contract execution speed up to 10,000 transactions per second (TPS). The outcome is a comprehensive, general-purpose smart contract blockchain that combines  privacy features and a Web Assembly-based smart contract environment. Earlier, Nym Technologies hired Chelsea Manning, a former US Army intelligence analyst and whistleblower who used the anonymity program Tor to disclose thousands of sensitive papers in 2011. Nym is gearing up to expedite the emergence of the private web powered by blockchain with a new $13 million capital investment, valuing the three-year-old Neuchâtel, Switzerland-based firm at roughly $270 million. To maintain track of the status of the network, Nym is employing a blockchain rather than a semi-centralized directory authority. They used the Tendermint blockchain and the Cosmos libraries to establish their network as validators. The blockchain is an open-source, decentralized, permissionless, and incentivized system that enables full-stack privacy, enabling developers to create apps that give users strong assurances against metadata snooping at both the network and authentication and payment levels. The company's staff comprises world-class researchers and developers from institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, KU Leuven, and University College London. The Need for Privacy in Layer-2 Blockchain Solution Layer 2 scaling solutions are aimed to increase throughput by off-chain processing transactions. Its goal is to increase the speed of transactions on the blockchain and lower transaction costs while retaining decentralization. Layer 2 offers a lot of promise for scalability and broad adoption of blockchain applications. Transaction custody consolidates all transactions over a certain period of time and issues a cryptographic commitment (commitment) on the updated transaction balances. The commitment and proofs will be submitted concurrently to the underlying blockchain, and the data will be computed using zero-knowledge proofs. Certain crucial elements must be considered to construct a blockchain with more security, decentralization, and scalability. Layer 2 does not alter the design scheme or consensus algorithm of the underlying Layer 1 blockchain since it continues to rely on the security and consensus mechanisms provided by it. Layer 2 often processes a substantial quantity of data and computations off-chain and only verifies on-chain (e.g. the Lightning Network). Layer 2 scaling solutions use a similar method, but their off-chain data and computations are generally validated online using smart contracts. All Layer 2 solutions announced by major tech teams now use trustless transaction custody (Operator) off-chain to enable transaction packaging and batch computation. On-chain smart contracts are often incorporated with zero-knowledge proof techniques and trusted computing technologies to guarantee fraud-proof off-chain computations.

Dokia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz backed Figment and Swisscom Join NYM as Validators

Thank you for riding shotgun with me here in the #vanlife of podcast writing. This week we’ll park at Sandhill Rd and unroll the shade. The passion economy and the creator stack Venture capital behemoth Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z) is a devilishly astute observer of human behavior. Recently they noticed that creative people believe deeply in their potential for success, influence, and fame, and they will make decisions—both small and large—to unlock it. They call the trend of people trying to build fame and fortune on their talents the and claim it’s the future of work. As part of a new media investment strategy, they are investing millions in businesses that accelerate the transition of people from working for larger media companies to being totally independent. Together, these businesses comprise the “creator stack.” passion economy This from former A16Z partner Li Jin lays out their vision of many independent creators working for themselves in clear-eyed detail. tweet thread And if you really want to go deep, here’s of the A16Z podcast on this topic with Jin and Patreon Cofounder Sam Yam. It’s full of optimism for creator potential and lacking any serious analysis of what happens to the passion economy at scale. an entire episode The companies of the “creator stack” are taking the media world by storm. They hardly need to market themselves as word-of-mouth and traditional press are doing the job for them. This week the New York Times ran what amounts to given that it starts with eye-popping figures like half million dollar contracts for indie writers, and we left the tab to start a Substack before finishing the article. a full page ad for Substack And why wouldn’t we? What other options are there? The vanishingly small set of opportunities available from traditional media companies to be paid vanishingly small amounts are forcing creators’ hands. So with nowhere else to turn, sexy new software starts to look pretty good. You’re reading this damn newsletter on Substack. I love well-crafted software, and I admit to not always looking to see who the investors are before jumping in with a new tool. Take Descript for example. Wait, Descript? What’s wrong with Descript? For one, they are sitting on a fat . On top of that, Andrew Mason founded Groupon which was the around the world for a few years, so he knows from experience how not to turn a blind eye to customer pain and how to grow a company . A16Z investment their founder bane of many small businesses faster than can be done while retaining a healthy culture As of right now, Mason’s Descript is staying in its lane as a valuable creative tool and not a monetization platform. But broadly, they’re obviously part of the “creator stack.” And as part of A16Z’s portfolio, Descript certainly adds leverage to the overall “platforming” of media that A16Z is trying to accomplish. By “platforming” I mean moving all media creation to independent creators, and removing all the “expensive baggage” that oversight, editorial vision, and institutions create. In place of that baggage is slick software with modest platform fees. In the case of Substack, it’s a mere 10% of your total revenue as an independent writer. Of course the platform owner (A16Z) makes vastly more money than platform participants by miles, but let’s focus on the opportunities for creators, right? You get to keep 90% of your success and 100% of your failure! That’s platforming. It shouldn’t be surprising that venture capitalists platforming because it’s a page right out of their own playbook. The way venture capital is that it expects a huge percentage of the companies it invests in to fail but a tiny handful to succeed so big that the failures are washed away by the riches of the one or two successes. And VCs understand that despite the nearly certain failure, entrepreneurs abound. love works We already have a full generation of America’s best and brightest (including me!) that jumped at the opportunity to be tech entrepreneurs despite the high likelihood of failure for a fraction of the salary and benefits earned by our big company working counterparts from earlier generations. Now it’s creators’ turn. If only 1% of Substack’s writers end up being successful, that’s fine for the platform owners as long as they are wildly successful. Everyone else has a gig waiting for them driving groceries for Instacart (another A16Z company). The other nice thing about platforming from A16Z’s perspective is that churn is money. Did you fail at being a Substack writer? That’s ok, they still got 10% of whatever you made while you gave it your best. (Quick side note about how I’ve kept the focus on A16Z as the owners and not the founders in the “creator stack.” A16Z would prefer we keep the focus on the entrepreneurs. They want to remain in the background with significant ownership, influence, and upside but out of the line of sight of accountability.) What can we do about A16Z’s corralling of all the sexy new media companies? I honestly don’t know if there’s much we can do. With Substack, we can certainly point out, loudly, that removing editorial oversight, economies of scale, and built-in audiences isn’t going to make a bunch of well-paid writers any more than removing regulatory oversight and wage-based employment made a bunch of well-paid Lyft (an A16Z company) drivers. With Clubhouse we can point out, loudly, that it’s not going to stay free forever, so then when they do “monetize”, what will the product be? (Hint: it’s listener data and creators’ content.) And finally with Descript, we can approach with caution. I’m not going to tell you they haven’t made some really good software. Their tools and tutorials are head-turning. But let’s wait and see what other companies pop up that are ready to compete with them that have a better source of capital. Also, whenever we recommend them, maybe we can mention their investors (A16Z) and wrinkle our noses like there’s a fart in the air. If you’re as motivated as me, you can look at your own toolset. I’m going to look into moving this newsletter over to because they have the same business model as Timber: make great software, sell that software for money with a . make great software with investor money and then collect rents off of users’ content. Platforms may say they’re charging for distribution and monetization, but those aren’t hard problems on the internet. Certainly not worth a percentage of your top line revenue. Ghost classic SaaS business model NOT But those signing bonuses! I think we could be on our way to a classic “how it started/how it’s going” meme in new media. The future of media with Andreessen Horowitz at the helm I’d love to be wrong and for people to resist the pull of the “creator stack.” I’d love it if we pushed up our collective nerd glasses and said, “Oh hell yeah, when it comes to technology, open protocols create more opportunity than closed systems even if they might be less efficient!” I’d love for us all to knowingly say, “Totally, and podcasting became great because of RSS, and the web became great because of HTTP!” In the meantime, even if new media goes deeper into the pit of platforming and thousands of hopeful people don’t emerge famous and well-paid, it’s a big world. Enough people will , understand how value works, and make good choices about what software they use and where they put their content. We will make a little self-sustaining group and make livings telling stories without lining Marc and Ben’s pockets. get it —Jon Christensen Previously published at Timber.fm

Andreessen Horowitz is Betting on the Passion Economy

Joseph Woodbury of Neighbor.com shares three pieces of advice on how to raise capital — from integrating yourself into the local ecosystem to being able to change your plans on a moment’s notice. Joseph Woodbury isn’t afraid of risks. It’s quite the contrary, in fact. Taking well-thought-out chances is exactly how he and his two co-founders — Preston Alder and Colton Gardner — launched and raised money for their startup, , an online marketplace people can use to store their items. Neighbor Before college graduation, all three had secured full-time jobs. But, plot twist: They ended up turning down their offers, choosing to dive full force into making Neighbor into something big. The idea for Neighbor came from Preston, who became frustrated when his only storage option was 30 minutes away, in a sketchy industrial park, and way out of his budget. Instead, he chose to keep his stuff in a friend’s garage. This option gave him peace of mind and saved him a ton of money, and he wondered why others weren’t doing it. Since Neighbor entered the world in 2017, they’ve raised several thousand dollars from business competitions, . $2.7 million in a seed round, and $10 million in a Series A And they certainly didn’t get to that point without more risk-taking. What if their competition pitch turned off possible investors? What if focusing on product over marketing yielded little to no user acquisition? But each decision they made was very strategic. They didn’t let uncertainty hold them back. In , Joseph shares how each of their risks paid off and helped them raise almost $13 million. an episode of How I Raised It 1. Start small and stay local At the beginning, Joseph and his co-founders entered Neighbor into a bunch of business competitions in their area. They lost some but won others, bringing in $10,000 here and there. All in all, they compiled around $35,000. This experience galvanized them. But, of course, money goes quickly, especially when you’re trying to scale a business. “You can only do door knocking and growth hacking tactics for so long,” Joseph says. These competitions ended up being the catalyst for Neighbor’s seed round. Because, as it turns out, a lot of local VC investors were in attendance. Several reached out to Neighbor afterward — they were impressed by both the idea and the team’s execution of it. Eventually, these conversations led to Neighbor securing $2.7 million for their seed round, which was led by Utah’s largest VC firm, , and biggest seed fund, . Pelion Ventures Album VC “It was great to bring on two different partners that could guide us,” Joseph says. “We were all very young founders, and they were very, very helpful in the early days.” Leverage local business competitions. They’ll provide you with great pitching experience, and you could gain invaluable exposure to investors. 2. Prove your product, then invest in marketing Neighbor spent their seed funding carefully, choosing to build a robust engineering organization rather than pay for various marketing campaigns. For the first several years of the business, they had a one-person marketing team and relied on organic growth. “We focused on the product and we iterated, iterated, iterated,” Joseph says. “We listened to customer feedback and made sure we’d solved all these nuanced problems and created a best-in-class product.” Putting all your money into marketing doesn’t make sense if your product sucks. When Neighbor started getting net promoter scores over 70, the co-founders knew they had a very solid product. So, they built the foundation for strong marketing and growth teams and started expanding into different markets through both organic and paid channels. Once they had a good playbook for establishing themselves in a new market, they decided it was time to pursue a Series A to help skyrocket their growth. Figure out how to use your capital efficiently before you start asking for more. At the end of the day, investors want to feel confident you’ll use their money wisely. 3. Identify your quintessential investors — and be willing to bend over backward to get them on board While raising their Series A, Joseph flew out to the Bay Area two to three times a week for investor meetings. He received multiple rejections but also some yeses, which were “always key to get the momentum moving,” he says. Then, mammoth firm got involved after one of Neighbor’s seed round partners spearheaded an introduction. Joseph flew to their offices and met with two investors, one being , who used to run eBay, PayPal, and OpenTable and had invested early in marketplaces like Airbnb and Instacart. Essentially, Jeff was Neighbor’s pie-in-the-sky partner. Andreessen Horowitz Jeff Jordan “He’s arguably the best marketplace investor in the world,” Joseph says. And that’s exactly what they were looking for — someone who had scaled marketplaces several times before. This is a great reminder to resist taking money from just anyone. Clearly define your ideal partner profile and go after that. As Joseph was boarding his flight back to Utah, his phone pinged. It was a message from Andreessen. They wanted to move forward, but they couldn’t unless three of their partners agreed. Remember: Joseph’s meeting was only with two. Andreessen also wanted to move fast because Neighbor already had a term sheet from another firm. When you’re raising funds, you need to be able to make decisions quickly, especially if your dream investors are on the line. So, Joseph left the airport and went back to the office to meet with Marc Andreessen, Jeff Jordan, and Andrew Chen. A few agonizing hours later, they told Joseph the good news: Neighbor had gotten the three yeses they needed. Neighbor closed their Series A at $10 million, which was the top end of their goal. WATCH a variation of this story with Jeff Jordan and Joseph Woodbury at Silicon Slopes: Nathan Beckord is the CEO of Foundersuite.com which makes software for raising capital. Foundersuite has helped entrepreneurs raise over $2 billion in seed and venture capital since 2016. This article is based on an episode of Foundersuite’s How I Raised It podcast , a behind-the-scenes look at how startup founders raise money.

That Moment When You're Boarding a Flight Home, and Andreessen Horowitz Calls...

Holodeck Heroes: Building AI Companions for the Final Frontier

Using the Ethereum blockchain has become really expensive recently, with fees for sending Ethereum from one wallet to another reaching up to $2 and fees for swapping tokens within the network surging to over $50 when the network is congested. The problems of surging gas fees and scalability were solved in two ways: By developing Layer-2 solutions for the Ethereum network By launching projects that would offer the same functionality but without the most hurting problems. Now, there are over , and over 35 such solutions are in development. The Dencun upgrade allowed for a reduction in the Ethereum fees and resolved the issue of network congestion by allowing L2 solutions to keep some transactions off-chain and bundle transactions before sending them to the Ethereum mainnet. And only the most important transactions would be processed on the Ethereum blockchain. Ephemeral data blobs are also introduced, which are the storage units where intermediate results during transaction processing are stored. 45 L solutions for the Ethereum blockchain With these solutions, the problems of scalability and high fees will be resolved. Let’s see whether it really worked. Soon after the upgrade, the fees on the layer-2 solutions dropped drastically. Here, you can have a look at the changes in fees for the main L2 networks. The first part, the one with fees, has worked out. It is still not completely clear whether the second part has developed as expected, but we will learn about it soon. So, with it, it is expected that these developments will allow Layer2 solutions and the main network to benefit in the long term. However, some experts warn that the introduction of blobs may have impacted the fees positively for a short time. In the long term, when Layer2 networks start competing for blobs, fees may rise again. Only the time will show how correct these forecasts are. But what about the so-called Ethereum killers? How will this upgrade impact them? Ethereum Killers: How Do They Work and How the Dencun Upgrade Will Impact Them Ethereum killers - this is the name for projects that compete with Ethereum. While offering the same or similar functionality as Ethereum, all those projects use different technologies that allow them to overcome Ethereum’s shortcomings. Let’s start with some history. Earlier, Ethereum killers bragged about using a more environmentally friendly proof-of-stake consensus mechanism and its variations. But after on September 15, 2022, the Ethereum network moved to the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, which reduced energy consumption by more than 99%. the Merge upgrade Many people expected that this would end with at least some of the “Ethereum killers” - at least with those who couldn’t offer anything but their environmentally-friendly approach. However, reducing energy consumption didn’t solve the issues of scalability and high gas fees. On the contrary, gas fees surged. Thus, eventually, none of the so-called Ethereum killers was impacted seriously. Now, let’s return to the recent upgrade. The Dencun upgrade solved two main problems that the Ethereum network used to face: high gas fees and scalability issues. This means that those Ethereum killers who relied only on faster transaction processing speed and low gas fees could indeed be impacted heavily. I doubt that projects running on such Ethereum killer blockchains will switch to the Ethereum network, but in the future, developers will prefer an established network, which Ethereum is, rather than networks that used to be competitors but lost their competitive advantage. However, some networks offer something completely different along with Ethereum’s set. Here they are, and this is why they will survive. Polkadot Polkadot is focused on something that is very important for Web3 - interoperability. It allows for the connecting of several blockchains and interchanging data between them without compromising security. Interoperability is essential for the future of Web3, and thus, the demand for Polkadot will be growing. Solana It is cheap, fast, and backed by some major financial players such as JPMorgan and a venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz. The first two benefits of the Dencun upgrade have been added, and the last ones are raising concerns about the network’s centralization. Even though thanks to the financial support and already high adoption level, Solana may stay around for a while, I believe its importance will decline over time. Cardano It is a nice project with a lot of developer activity. However, its competitive benefits, such as eco-friendliness, low fees, and fast transactions, are not there anymore. Although many people love it, and thus it may survive just because many developers pick it based on personal preferences. Bottom Line The Dencun upgrade is an important milestone not only for the Ethereum network but also for the entire world of crypto and blockchain. Its impact is still to be assessed, but for sure, many changes are coming.

Ethereum Killers, Layer2 Solutions, and Ethereum Dencun Upgrade: Who Will Benefit?

The World Wide Web, thank you Sir Tim, was conceived as a technology designed to be “ ” It has devolved from that into a (cyber)space of moated castles, Disneylandish . a powerful source for social change and individual creativity. cathedrals, not bazaars While very entertaining and very useful in many ways the hegemonic Web platforms present as artificial rather than organic, hierarchical rather than egalitarian. The Big Platforms are owned and managed by a handful of dominant, supervalued, companies. Prominent are Alphabet (Google’s parent) and Meta (Facebook’s parent). Low cost and high profit, they are great at informing and entertaining us. Meanwhile, however, in consequential ways they are beggaring those who provide the content and the users who consume that content. The top platforms are richly paid to channel advertising. To us. The Web has evolved into a massive, and massively profitable, advertising engine. As such, the Web now might be (and is becoming) seen as a form of de facto feudalism, digital imperialism, and digerati aristocracy. The attention of us billions of serfs is the product sold to advertisers. No coercion there. More like… seduction. Note, this critique does not imply a call for legislation or government regulation. Both tend to be blunt instruments that land much harder on startups than on the hegemons of the digital megaverse. It calls for transformation. Which will come, as always, , as Microsoft dethroned IBM, Google (partially) dethroned Microsoft, Facebook (partially) dethroned Google, Apple (partially) dethroned Facebook, and so forth. from more innovation How did we get here? Can we, and if so how can we, once again unleash the imprisoned lighting ( ) of the colonized Web to create a new golden age of innovation and equitable prosperity? h/t Emma Lazarus Enter the blockchain. First, though, who am I to judge? I am one of the few surviving Original Gangsters of the Supply Side/Reaganomics revolution. We, relentlessly mocked by the right (“voodoo economics”) and the left (“trickle-down economics”), got policies enacted that, over time , pushed the Dow from 814 (on that day in November 1979 that Reagan officially declared his candidacy for the presidency) to its current flirtation with 40,000. Our voodoo doubled real per capita GDP (from $30,000 to $60,000). It raised nominal American and world GDP by a factor of ten. Pretty good voodoo. That said, what’s the next act? The juice from the original equitable prosperity policy formula -- of stabilizing the dollar (slaying the inflation dragon for two generations and cutting the top marginal income tax rate from 70% to, initially, 28%) -- got wrung out around the time Bill Clinton left the building. I was and am enthusiastic about reducing counterproductively high marginal tax rates across-the-board. Yet much of what ensued in the name of supply-side during the 21st century is a cargo-cult version of supply-side’s successes of the ‘80s and ‘90s. The post-Reagan/Clinton grotesque caricature of authentic supply-side economics has left the economy limping for a generation. Cumulatively, over 20+ years, sub-par growth rates are crippling. They leave us with an economy, both national and personal, far lower than what consistent 3+% supply-side growth rates would have delivered over time. As , compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world.  A one or two percent differential compounded over 20 years makes a huge difference. Einstein probably never said Is there a new, plausible, way to re-ignite vibrant, widely shared, rising living standards? As Nobel Prize winner Paul Romer has pointed out, the secret sauce is innovation. Tech. Enter A16z’s , “a General Partner and has been at Andreessen Horowitz since 2012. He founded and leads a16z crypto, which invests in web3 technologies through four dedicated funds with more than $7 billion under management.” Chris Dixon Dixon has delivered a splendid new book . It lays out in clear, practical terms how the wild wild Web was lost. And how to set it right in such a way that everyone, including us serfs, can prosper. Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet As , prosperity is too important to be left to the economists. Enter Dixon. war is too important to be left to the generals How to restore sizzling, equitable, prosperity? The blockchain. The blockchain is a revolutionary form of software which, when more fully developed, portends to allow most of the value created by the community and by its cultural creatives to be enjoyed by the full community and its cultural creatives. Not (as now) exclusively, or at least primarily, by the corporate royalty and tech aristocracy. At long last, Dixon gives us a presentation of the blockchain and its properties imbued with an enthusiasm leavened with shrewd practical insight devoid of hype. Dixon is one of the Masters of the Digital Universe (as coder, entrepreneur, and investor). He knows whereof he writes and has written the first really great, comprehensive, book on the blockchain, . Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet Eureka! Dixon provides an overview in his introduction. He there provides us a World-Wide-Webb-telescopic-eye view of the three eras of the internet, of a new movement, of seeing the truth and determining the internet’s future. Part One, “Read Write”—treats the early internet, which was effectively read only, and Web2, allowing us surfers to write and post through websites, blogs, podcasts, social media and so forth. He explains why networks matter and lays out a trenchant taxonomy of the two dominant incumbent networks (protocol, like the internet and email, and corporate, such as Google and Facebook) and their properties. In Part Two, “Own,” Dixon then goes on to explain what blockchains are, what “tokens” are, and what the – radically great – properties of blockchain networks are… or could and can be. “Own” is a short word with huge implications. Ownership is what has been lost, and which can be restored via a (better) blockchain. In Part Three, “A New Era,” Dixon explains and explores the fundamentals of the business model, community-created software, and take rates (meaning the vigorish that the corporate network proprietors extract from their communities, a process he aptly calls “attract and extract”). He lays out how building networks with token incentives can dramatically change the way the world works for the better, making it more prosperous, cultured, and equitable. He presents vividly the attendant “tokenomics” … and how to restore popular, rather than corporate-autocratic, governance. In Part Four, “Here and Now”, he contrasts the culture of the computer (blockchain as compute platform) with the casino (cryptocurrency), concluding with “What’s Next” … showing how mobile computing, starting with the iPhone, changed everything. He then lays out “some promising applications.” Dixon concludes with a pragmatic vision of the reinvention of the internet… and what grounds his cause for optimism. Until Dixon, in many years of my searching, like Diogenes with his lantern, I had encountered not one single really good, comprehensive, book on the blockchain. (I may have missed one, admittedly, for instance, not yet having gotten to Alex Tapscott’s critically acclaimed .) Web3 There I rested, baffled. So much sizzle. So little steak. So, together with a brilliant acquaintance, I helped write one: . That said, it mainly was focused on the potential finance applications of the blockchain, not the Big Picture. Redefining the Future of the Economy: Governance Blocks and Economic Architecture I thereafter co-authored a second book on this subject, , a compilation of ten superior policies designed to let the sector thrive while protecting the public. Blockchain With American Character It took a long odyssey to arrive at Dixon. I wandered around for years asking people vastly smarter than me what the blockchain was good for and seeking examples of killer applications (“use cases” in the prevailing jargon). In response, I got oodles of hype. And almost no satisfying answers … with one exception, though a largely unpublished one. noteworthy Cometh now Chris Dixon. I am not the only one impressed. Sam Altman, the godfather of ChatGPT, blurbs Read Write Own: “Read this book to understand a compelling vision of where the Internet should go and how to get there.” Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban: “Chris Dixon succeeds at explaining how crypto technology is vital to our technological future and how we all can benefit much as we have from the internet.” And many more captains of industry, tech titans, and nouveau billionaires discovered Dixon’s writings before I did. My own modest credentials? I have been working within and with the Blockchain ecosystem for, well, eons. One of my LinkedIn verticals is aggregating some of the most interesting stories about NFTs. Ralph Benko’s Cryptozoic Eon Geology nerds will recognize the original to be the pre-Cambrian era … before the trilobites and dinosaurs... comprising 80% of Earth’s geo-history. Are we trembling at the verge of the blockchain’s equivalent of the ? Cryptozoic Eon Cambrian explosion Dixon thinks so. So do I. Call me yet my odyssey through the blockchain ecosystem has brought me into contact with creatures and cultures as exotically beautiful and, sometimes, as weird as those encountered by Odysseus during his long return to Ithaka. Nobody My own pilgrimage: Senior advisor to the fabulous Perianne Boring’s Chamber of Digital Commerce, one of the sector’s earliest and most distinguished cheerleaders. Long-time active member of the Federal Blockchain Working Group. Privileged to present more than once at the conferences of the , the preeminent association of officials and international career civil servants. Government Blockchain Association Serving, for two years, as the senior counselor to the American Blockchain PAC, with its advisory board chaired by who generously contributed the introduction to . The breakthrough nature of Stornetta and Haber’s discovery is decisively evidenced by the fact that three of Satoshi’s eight footnotes referenced his and Stuart Haber’s . blockchain-co-inventor Dr. W. Scott Stornetta Blockchain With American Character seminal paper The high privilege of working with one of Satoshi’s earliest Bitcoin core devs (and major contributor to the Android OS) in establishing a DC think tank devoted to smart energy policy, . Jeff Garzik Washington Power and Light Voted Contributor of the Year in 2022 at for my blockchain writings in six categories: politics, economics, science, art, philosophy, and (with Greg Meredith) scaling. HackerNoon My blockchain-related efforts have migrated primarily to the , rather than policy, side. enterprise My primary focus is on the use of rho calculus (a refinement of Robin Milner’s Turing Award-winning pi-calculus) to deploy a blockchain that, unlike the dominant platforms, scales. Bitcoin does a mere 7 transactions per second, Ethereum, 70 transactions per second. Inadequate for practical utility. And expensive to operate. And storable. (Currently it costs almost half a million dollars to store one iTune on the dominant incumbent chains, hence the referenced data are mostly stashed behind someone else’s firewall, not at all optimal.) And searchable. (Currently the dominant blockchains are largely opaque, like the Web before search engines.) And secure. So … now what? Dixon is a true Master of the Blockchain Universe. Not (like me) a practiced propagandist. Thus he buries his lede on page 179: “The stakes are high. As I’ve argued here, blockchain networks are the only known technology that can re-establish an open, democratic internet.” Hello Congress my old friend, I’ve come to talk to you again…. This re-establishment is a very big deal indeed. What’s next? For the tantalizing promise of the blockchain to be realized we need smart policy that protects the public while not stifling innovation or exporting this cutting-edge tech, and the potentially trillions of associated dollars, to Berlin, Singapore or Zug. Imagine how worse off America would be today if Congress and our regulators had effectively deported the headquarters of the big Web success stories, like Google, to Europe or the Pacific? The need for a savvy legal and regulatory environment is something that legislators, regulators, and the ethical actors within the industry (like Dixon) all agree upon. Yet Washington has thus far proved mostly thrown, acting like the primates upon encountering the monolith at the beginning of . 2001: a Space Odyssey We’re at the precipice of deporting Web3 and its associated power, prestige and wealth. That may be about to change. The blockchain’s thought leaders are at long last gearing up to help guide the footsteps of the Washington elite back onto the Paths of Righteousness via smart policy, smart legislation, and smart regulation. Some very smart leaders of the blockchain ecosystem are now promising to , a modest investment in support a multi-billion dollar sector. invest $78M in lobbying and advocacy in 2024 The open question? Will they deploy their resources effectively? Or be taken in by the wily Beltway Bandits? What to do? Those of us who remember C.P. Snow’s seminal understand that the “physical scientists” (which would include software engineers, notwithstanding that software is, so to speak, metaphysical) among whom I count myself as a very lesser figure do not really understand the “literary intellectuals” (among whom I also count myself in a very minor way). The Two Cultures And The Scientific Revolution This misunderstanding causes a terrible disconnect. As Snow reported, in 1959: “They have a curious distorted image of each other. Their attitudes are so different that, even at the level of emotion, they can’t find much common ground.” This can be countered… if the blockchain thought leaders know how to adopt an effective approach. There is abundant potential common ground. Dixon’s book offers a “ ” – the brain’s bridge connecting the left (logical, dominating the physical scientists) and right (narrative-based, dominating the literary intellectuals) hemispheres – to enable both sides to understand each other. corpus callosum To their mutual, and our, great benefit. There’s a simple way to expedite this process, one with a high ROI. Were the thought leaders of the $78M blockchain advocacy effort to allocate an absurdly small fraction (less than 1%) of their dedicated resources to distributing two copies (one for the Congressperson or Senator, one for his or her most relevant legislative aide) of Read Write Own, the impact almost surely will be disproportionately valuable compared to the low cost of such an operation. How do I know? I’ve pretty much single-handedly gotten (non-blockchain related) legislation passed through the House. Twice. There are a lot of smart, idealistic, people working on Capitol Hill, many actively interested in the blockchain and in its tantalizing potential. Put Read Write Own in front of them! The power of can hardly be overestimated: Joseph Pulitzer’s principles “…put it before them briefly so that they will read it, clearly so that they will understand it, forcibly so that they will appreciate it, picturesquely so that they will remember it, and, above all, accurately so that they may be wisely guided by its light.” The late supply-side chief propagandist Jude Wanniski’s book “The Way the World Works” played an outsized role in igniting the worldwide wave of unprecedented equitable prosperity driven by supply-side economics. This arcane fact is mostly long forgotten. That said, I was there and remember. In the , “And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.” words of Ishmael Read Write Own, properly deployed, very well could catalyze a comparably magnificent equitable prosperity transformation. Putting Dixon’s Read Write Own in front of the right eyeballs in the right way on Capitol Hill, could very well release the djinn of “the only known technology that can re-establish an open, democratic internet” from its lamp. Which eyeballs? Don’t try to guess. Simply trust the process known as “ as described by James Surowiecki. the wisdom of crowds” Flood the zone and let the implicate order take it from there. And then … let a new golden age of equitable prosperity, via the road thereto so ably mapped out by Dixon, foment well-designed policy and thereby foster the next great manifestation of equitable prosperity for America. And the world. Read. Write. Own.

Here Comes Web3: Chris Dixon’s Read Write Own

এখানে আসে ওয়েব 3: ক্রিস ডিক্সনের পড়া লেখা নিজস্ব

Hier kommt Web3: Chris Dixons Read Write Own

Aquí viene Web3: Lectura y escritura propia de Chris Dixon

Voici le Web3 : Lire, écrire et posséder de Chris Dixon

यहाँ आता है वेब3: क्रिस डिक्सन का पढ़ें लिखें अपना

Web3 の登場: Chris Dixon の Read Write Own

Web3 출시: Chris Dixon의 읽기 쓰기

Aí vem a Web3: Read Write Own de Chris Dixon

А вот и Web3: книга Криса Диксона «Читайте, пишите сами»

İşte Web3 Geliyor: Chris Dixon'ın Oku Yaz Kendin Yaz

Đây là Web3: Tự đọc và viết của Chris Dixon

Web3 来了：Chris Dixon 的 Read Write Own

138 Stories To Learn About Startups Top Story

*Note: a SWOT analysis is an evaluation of the fundamental, operational, technical, social, economic, and even to some degree administrative elements of a project. This is not a model to be used for trading purposes. (NFA, DYOR) Composed of four elements, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, a SWOT analysis framework provides excellent insight for establishing a high-level understanding of the state of a project’s well-being through the lens of a birds-eye view. It can help formulate decisions around which areas require more attention, set performance goals, and organize a foundational understanding of where a project is headed. Rarely (if ever) used in crypto, it is time to apply this timeless method of evaluation to the digital asset space. Today, ( ), a leader in the decentralized storage sector and the innovator of the “Permaweb,” will get a SWOT. Arweave AR 💪 Strengths (Internal) (Helpful) 1. Single One-Time Fee One of the killer distinguishers between AR and all other decentralized storage solutions is the “Single One-Time Fee” for permanent storage. Somewhat reminiscent of Amazon’s “one-click buy,” the single one-time fee for permanent storage is a game-changing restructuring of the cost burden for end users. By abstracting away the complexity of the process, a wider audience becomes interested in participating in the solution, and more data is brought on-chain. Ultimately, users don’t care about tech; they care about experience. Single One-Time Fees could be the simplification that onboard users without having to sell them technology. 2. Blockweave Technology Data structures exist at the core of Web3, where intricacies on how information is stored, its ability to resist manipulation, and the ability to formally verify the quality of the information have given rise to the radical new digital economy we are currently building. Blockweave is a novel adaptation of blockchain, where the data structure is based on intertwining randomness in the form of prior access points while maintaining maximal simplicity in synchronizing new nodes to the chain. Blockweave allows new nodes to join the network without having to download the entire history/chain; instead, reference lists (of prior blocks and active wallet addresses) allow nodes to join on the fly. Full synch is an option but not a requirement, which presents itself as an appealing solution to the new generation of market participants. 3. Proof-of-Access Novelty in consensus mechanisms marks a true understanding of the technology of the digital economy. Arweave has developed its own consensus mechanism, POA (Proof-of-Acces), that is rooted in lightweight randomness with a hint of resemblance to POW. In its simplest form, it is this innovation that provides the security and performance guarantees that AR provides (blockweave). The logic of POA is found in the concept of miners having to prove that they have access to a historic state before being given the right to mine. 4. Well Developed, Accessible Environment Arweave has done a fantastic job building out a suite of ancillary applications and organizing information about itself in a very user-friendly way. Immediately upon arrival on their website, there are options to “save a file forever,” “host your webpage on the permaweb,” interact with calendar/events, plug into their wiki, and so much more. This ease in presentation is very effective as dirting users, by default, to almost fall into a rabbit hole of interacting with the protocol through simple interfaces. 5. Supportive of Ecosystem Development Arweave is very community-friendly and champions decentralization. Looking to support others that are building on top of them, Arweave has a multitude of dedicated investment affiliates (DAOs, VCs, and other entities) that are open to actively contributing to the growth of AR by helping projects (in any stage of maturity) integrate Arweave into their tech stacks with some complimentary capital injections. 6. World-Class Investors Backing the vision of Arweave is what can be referred to as the “perfect” group of venture capital firms: One Block Capital, 1kx, , Multicoin Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Coefficient Ventures, Arrington XRP Capital, Greenfield One, Techstars, LedgerPrime, Union Square Ventures, and a16z Crypto among others. Being supported by such a sophisticated network of entities provides an extremely high degree of access to the brightest minds and the best technology in the industry, which in turn provides greater robustness against failure. Coinbase Ventures 7. Powerful Professional Relationships Over 115 projects are currently leveraging Arweave as their decentralized data storage backbone. Meta, Mirror, Instagram, Paragraph, Hackernoon, and Metaplex (just to name a few) have all integrated AR into different vertices of their systems, in turn showing that real-world adoption is happening. With such a powerful community lineup, the odds are that new businesses will opt for using Arweave; after all, as network effects of cryptosystems have shown us, just as liquidity begets liquidity, adoption begets adoption. 8. Hard-Coded AR Max Supply Set to 66,000,000, the $AR token carries the highly desirable economic element of having an inflation-resistant supply. Coupled with the utility of providing permanent storage, there is an obvious inflection point where demand would outstrip downward pressure and create immense upside potential. Theory here being that the higher the price goes and the longer the project lives, the more likely that its total economic value would be more than if there were an inflationary force. 😞 Weaknesses (Internal) (Harmful) 1. Censorship via “Democratic Content Policy” Part of the appeal of a truly decentralized system is that there must be no hurdles or firewalls that discriminate against the data types. Content, whether positive or negative, must be viewed objectively as simply content. Creating a point of potential conflict with its “Democratic Content Policy” that allows network nodes to issue blacklists around certain content, Arweave is hindering the development of an open economy. If these blacklists are adopted by a majority of the nodes, then the entire network will deny blacklisted content from even appearing on-chain. 2. Dense Information Not Easily Available While the developer docs are stacked with a depth of well-documented information and the website provides an extremely friendly experience to such as otherwise dense subject matter, whenever looking to dive into some of the specific nuances of the project (such as tokenomics), there is no easily accessible single data source. In order to build up a serious understanding of the how/why AR is different from other projects, people have to jump through hoops (scavaging Reddit, joining Discord, reading white/lite/yellow papers, and looking for independent external research). 🧐 Opportunities (External) (Helpful) 1. Growth of Decentralized Storage A common thread for all of the projects operating in the decentralized storage sector, this thread of the economy is one of the most profitable and has among the highest anticipated CAGR. Currently sitting at an expected ~27% with a $390 Billion USD market size by 2028, presents itself as an incredible market opportunity for Arweave that is currently floating around the sub $300 million USD market cap. 2. Creator Economy Growth The Creator Economy refers to a community/user-driven environment where education, entertainment, and other segments of information are created by individuals through a breadth of form factors (infographics, memes, gifs, videos, blogs, podcasts, and everything in between). The Creator Economy is set to experience an explosion alongside the further digitization of society and an improvement of tools and incentives. Arweave has uniquely positioned itself to appeal to both enterprise-grade clientele as well as individual creatives. They provide simplified tools that allow somebody without technical experience the ability to appreciate on-chain immutability, provenance, and the like. 😳 Threats (External) (Harmful) 1. Market Competition With a multitude of giga-brain innovators flooding the space, Arweave is subject to the externalities of market forces where the users ultimately dictate what technology becomes permanent and what fads drift away. Sometimes, it is not a matter of technology itself but the market interpretations of it, the marketing of it, and the adoption of it. Arweave may provide a slew of superior advancements that will be disregarded by the masses and become nothing more than a hobbiest’s preferred tool. Takeaway: Painfully underappreciated, Arweave is arguably the most innovative project in the decentralized storage sector that is used for more than just being speculated on. Subject to the same forces of positive and negative externalities associated with the opportunities and threats in decentralized storage, Arweave has been able to present an angle that has not been explored by anybody else yet. The “One Time Fee” for permanent storage could prove to be a driving differentiator between any competition. The raw amount of strengths and opportunities outweigh any of the weaknesses by a mile! It is hard (if not impossible) to picture a future for decentralized storage without Arweave in the lineup. Conclusion: Arweave certainly takes the crown when it comes to technological innovations, from Wildfire and blockshadows to SPoRA (Succinct Proof of Random Access) and blockweave; the elegance in the design of AR is inspirational. Would I invest in AR? Yes. IMO, it is a top-tier play on the future of decentralized storage. Personally, everything that Arweave has done so far, ranging from how they position their brand to how they designed the tokenomics to the technological approach, all left a very positive imprint on me. If you know something that I don’t or feel as though I might have missed anything worth noting, please do share; I would tremendously appreciate some feedback. Thank you so much for reading, I hope this serves you well on your journey. Live long and prosper 🥂 Also published . here

The Arweave (AR) SWOT Analysis

is a company co-founded by Sam Altman, the now-infamous CEO of OpenAI (of ChatGPT fame). The premise for the company’s flagship project, , is simple: Tools for Humanity WorldCoin Exponential improvements in Artificial Intelligence technology will one day lead to the creation of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). When this happens, the global economy will be disrupted beyond recognition by job destruction, wealth concentration, etc. A post-AGI world will need something resembling a Universal Basic Income (UBI): money with no strings attached to par inequalities. AI improvements will make proving that someone online is a human very difficult. But, for UBI projects to work, you will need to verify that the people receiving it are real and are not cheating the system. So far, so good, right? It’s, however, all downhill from here. WorldCoin is the weirdest project happening in the tech world right now. How does WorldCoin “work”? To solve the issues mentioned above, WorldCoin has a two-step plan. . First, the company wants to scan your eyes This is being done using metallic spheres the size of bowling balls called . You Stare Into the Orb, and the Orb Stares Back at you. The device uses a thermal scanner to check people’s body temperature, a 3D camera to map out their faces, and high-resolution cameras to capture video and images of their bodies, faces, eyes, and irises. Orbs The irises are supposedly the important part. Since , it’s possible to create a code based on this specific biometric information. This unique crypto-graphic identifier is called a “World ID” or “IrisHash.” This code would supposedly replace IDs in an AI-dominated future. all irises are different unique If that feels like random techno-babble, trust your instincts. If this was it, this project would be creepy… but not nefarious. But no. Altman and his goons aren’t thinking about the future. They’re trying to peddle a cryptocurrency. Once your irises have been scanned, you download an app (there’s always an app). is yet another crypto wallet, which you can log onto by linking it to your IrisHash and proving you’re a human. At this point, you automatically receive some WorldCoins, which are supposed to be the basis for a new post-AGI, UBI-based economic order. This is your reward for selling out your biometrics. The World App , WorldCoins is not backed by any cash flows and are not tied to a fiat currency. Unlike other tokens, it doesn’t give , either. It is essentially worthless. Like most cryptos voting powers Congrats, you sold your eyes for something worth less than a Chuck e Cheese token (~17 cents). Like everything in crypto, this is a silly solution looking for a problem. Why is WorldCoin a Bad Idea? More than 2 million people have supposedly already had their eyes scanned by one of the 300+ Orbs in the world today, with the ominous spheres popping up in most major cities of the world. It must be noted, however, that most of that data was gathered , in what can only be referred to as . in the developing world while violating privacy laws crypto-colonialism : As the MIT Technology Review writes It’s just cheaper and easier to run this kind of data collection operation in places where people have little money and few legal protections. Ay, there’s the rub! If some form of Universal Basic Income was created in the future, it would exist to help the global poor. And so far, . At all. the global poor used as guinea pigs don’t feel helped The project’s leadership also fails to address the risks of the Orbs being hacked or how (which is how most crypto-scams come to be) could be used to derail their plans for a fair and transparent UBI system. And don’t expect transparency on this any time soon. social engineering As the reports: MIT Technology Review WorldCoin has promised to open source its code, including repeating to MIT Technology Review on multiple occasions that this would occur “within the next few weeks” — since we first contacted the company in February. Oh, the guy building a super-intelligent AI is compiling a permanent electronic identification database of all humans and refusing to explain how he’s using that data. That’s not an alarming science-fiction premise at all. Obviously, regulators will have something to say about the project if it gains traction because we have systems to distribute money to people in need. They are based on national identity and work fairly well. Sure, there is some fraud… but that fraud is usually committed like Sam Altman and his backers. UBI isn’t happening because we lack the technology; it’s happening because we lack the political will to do it. But that’s a story for another day. already by rich people Why does WorldCoin exist, really? WorldCoin is backed up by the usual crypto suspects: , , and (maybe?) are all investors. Coincidentally, these are all venture capitalists . Andreessen Horowitz Khosla Ventures Three Arrows Capital with massive crypto-related losses These people didn’t invest because they cared about the world’s poor or privacy. To them, this is a last-ditch effort to make fetch happen and recoup some of their losses. It didn’t work in the West, so they’re now . setting their sights on the global south Want UBI? Scared of AI? They will spin it however they can to get you onboard. They hope that using enough buzzwords like AI, , , and will make users forget about WorldCoin’s core concept. Which, again, . biometric data verification censorship-resistant transfer Sybil attacks is getting your eyeball scanned for free If the team in charge of WorldCoin was serious about UBI, they would be working on the political will to give money to people all over the world. But that’s . And that would make WorldCoin a tech company. It would make it a . And tech bros profits. The fact that makes that abundantly clear. difficult not non-profit love investors hold 10%+ of the WorldCoin supply I have no doubt that Sam Altman has good intentions. But that doesn’t really matter, does it? There is a reason the phrase “ ” exists. Actions speak louder than words, and right now, his actions point to him building a crypto- . the road to hell is paved with good intentions Panopticon The project launched “officially” in late July. The quicker it goes back to obscurity, the better. Good luck out there. Also published . here

The Strangest Tech Project Happening Right Now: Scan Your Eyeballs for Crypto

Relentlessly pushing the boundaries of blockchain and VR technology in the metaverse, Co-founder and CEO of Super World, is helping to create a more immersive and interactive future for the internet. Hrish Lotlikar, In 2021, the New York Times quoted Hrish in its ‘virtual land boom’ story amid the surge in virtual real estate investment. I recently sat down with him for an interview about virtual real estate and Super World. Can you please tell us more about your background and about the founding of Super World? My background has kind of taken me through a variety of different areas of specialty. I started off in management consulting, then moved into investment banking. I was at UBS Investment Bank and HSBC in New York and started off in real estate, investment banking in physical real estate. I didn't know at the time, I would one day go into virtual real estate, but life's funny that way. The strong backgrounds got me into venture capital investing across tech and biotech. And then about fourteen years ago, I had this idea that wouldn't it be cool to go somewhere in the emerging markets and start a venture capital fund? I got on a plane, I didn't know anyone, and I went over to Eastern Europe. I went to Ukraine, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Moldova. I ended up with two partners and started a venture capital fund based in Ukraine, backed by an investor named Victor Pinchuk, who's a very big investor in that part of the world. We started an early-stage fund called Eastlabs where we invested in about 25 companies in the region. We were the first investor into preply.com, which is an online tutoring marketplace, which is one of the biggest and I think the biggest online tutoring marketplace in the world. They just completed their Series C last week and then did the same thing in Belarus. So I'm on the board of Tech Minsk, which is backed by the US State Department and Google. The company that Facebook acquired that does all of the face filters for Instagram and Facebook is a company called MSQRD, Masquerade. They went through Tech Minsk and got acquired by Facebook. I had early exposure to augmented reality through that. And then after that I was an early employee at Top Towel, which is a talent marketplace backed by Andreessen Horowitz. So I helped grow and scale Top Towel and  I learned a lot. Prior to Super World, I started Rogue Initiative Studios, which is a film, television, gaming, and virtual reality studio in Los Angeles and Hollywood. My co-founder had produced Call of Duty Modern Warfare series and Ghosts, and my production partner is Michael Bay, the action director. And at Rogue Initiative, what we're focused on is building franchises from the ground up. What I learned there was that a Michael Bay movie and a Call of Duty game are really the same thing. They're built in an engine, Unreal Engine or Unity Engine. I learnt that one can build anything in an engine. And what happened was about six years ago, Pokémon Go came out, became this huge hit, people running around looking at Pokémon around the world. Then I got together with my cofounder Max Woon. Max and I met because we had worked together previously at a company on the YouTube platform. When we saw Pokémon Go, we thought if we can't build the next Pokémon Go, we could build a world where the next thousand Pokémon get built onto it. In other words, how could we enable anyone to have the tools to create, discover and monetize anything in real world locations? What is your vision for Super World? As I mentioned, we were really inspired by what we saw Pokémon Go do and as you know the company Niantic continues to do tremendously well and are really innovating the space. We thought the opportunity to enable users to create, discover and monetize content in real world locations is very interesting. If we could give people the tools, you know, to create anything, anywhere, to discover anything from anywhere and to monetize in all different ways. And so that was the vision of Super World. Well, the way I describe it is I use three analogies, and I'll walk you through that. https://youtu.be/31JfjxEiJ4w?embedable=true So the first analogy is Pokémon Go. It's an analogy for adding digital information to the real world, right? I have a world. You have a world. Brands have worlds. So anyone can, you know again, create and discover and monetize any type of content anywhere: 3-D,2D, audio; you can put AR VR, MR, any type of content anywhere. I have a world,you have a world. The second analogy is Foursquare. It's a data analogy. On the data side, our vision is that we want to build what I call live to earn, which is how we can bring tokenization into your real life. How can I incentivize you to do the things in your life that you love? You know, can I get Nike to incentivize you to run a marathon or can I get Bacardi to incentivize you to go and activate something at their next event? In other words, how can I bring tokenization into your real life? This isn't play to earn. This is what I call live to earn. So the things that are related to things that you love to do in the real world, right? And then have you ever seen that movie Social Dilemma on Netflix? It is a great documentary. I highly recommend you watch it. It's all about how we're living in these algorithmic bubbles. It's about how we're all staring at our phones more and more. If you look at your phone fifty times a day, like four years ago, now you might look at it two hundred times a day. It is about how kids and adults alike are plugged into video games or obsessed with social media. A really big part of our vision at Super World is how we can build a virtual world that actually enhances your real life, your physical life. We want to keep you in the physical world and we want to use these technologies to enhance your physical life. As I always say, I have two kids, and the last thing I want to do is build a virtual world that sucks them into it. How do we build a virtual world that keeps you going outside? Although you can go as virtual as you want, the idea is how to get you out there doing things in the real world.  The other part of it is to build a decentralized world together that actually enhances humanity. We partnered with the World Bank and the Caribbean. As you know, we have tribes in the Amazon jungle that created digital art so that people could learn about deforestation that's happening in the Amazon jungle. The idea is can we build a virtual world with the goal of really solving these SDG problems and issues and be able to kind of work together to do something very positive. The third analogy explains the real estate part of what we do. What we have done is we have divided the surface of the earth into 64 billion virtual plots of land 100 meters by 100-meter point, 01.01 longitude, latitude. You can buy any location in the world as a digital asset and when you buy those locations again you are a stakeholder. There you can activate monetization from your actions. You can create, discover and activate ways to monetize in all those locations and also you can you know activate monetization from other activity that's also happening there in those locations. Speaking of virtual reality, what is virtual real estate all about? Virtual real estate, as I explained in the third analogy, is what we've done. We have divided the surface of the earth into 64 billion virtual plots of land, 100 meters by 100-meter point, 01.01 longitude latitude covering Earth. And so again each one of those is a digital asset. It's on Polygon currently priced at about 100 Matic. When you buy those plots, as I mentioned, you can activate monetization from advertising, e-commerce, digital commerce, data analytics, gaming, and DeFi in those locations and you can become a stakeholder in SuperWorld and at those locations and so that's how we define it. As you know, I think virtual real estate in general is a pretty nebulous term. It can mean different things. For us It's about the places you care about places maybe you have a business, places you want to go on vacation, and places in the world you love. How does virtual real estate and physical real estate connect in SuperWorld? So virtual real estate in SuperWorld covers the earth. We have a virtual layer on top of the real world, right? And within that layer, you know, there's an infinite number of filters. So anyone you know can create a world. I have a world, you have a world, brands can create worlds. And so this content, whether it's 3-D,  2D audio, any type of content can be placed in real world locations. And you know, one of the beauties of this is when we talked to many of our customers and we asked them why did you buy, you know, this city or New York City or London or Paris or whatever city in the world that they have bought. One of the things that we understand is a reason a lot of people buy virtual real estate is they actually own physical real estate. In those locations, they own a residence or they own a store or they own a mall or they own some kind of commercial real estate, some kind of physical property, and when we talk to them about what they want to do many of them tell us they want to build digital twin. So they want to enable the visualization of their of their physical real estate, they want to build, you know, a way for customers to see and rent or buy the physical real estate they have. Moreover, they want to create a way for their potential customers to see their store or to walk into their store and experience their store in a way that's virtual and that enables their customers regardless of where they are in the world to really experience their products or to maybe purchase buy from them. If they own a gallery, they may want them to see the artwork that they have in there. What we have enabled in SuperWorld is for our customers, whether they own virtual real estate or not, if they have physical real estate in real world locations, they can come to SuperWorld and build digital twins and those digital twins enable those customers to click and see those properties and so it connects the physical and the  virtual. Judging by the virtual land boom of 2021, why is virtual real estate an exciting opportunity? When I am talking about virtual real estate, you know, I am specifically talking about virtual real estate in SuperWorld, and you know I think the reason that it's a very exciting opportunity is because virtual real estate and super world covers real world locations and so it enables you to again become a stakeholder in places in the world that you love. Ultimately, SuperWorld is a community of people that want to use these technologies: immersive tech, Web three, and AI to enhance their life, and maybe to market themselves and their business. And so, virtual real estate enables them to own those locations that they care about and become a stakeholder in those locations. I think one way to think about it is we think about media assets. It's like owning a geospatial media asset covering the surface of the earth. My cofounder and I both work together on the YouTube platform and you know a YouTube video is a media asset. When you think of virtual real estate, the best way I'd kind of put that opportunity is like owning a geospatial media asset that covers the earth that you can benefit from and essentially enables you to have this kind of connection to a real world location. Whether it's for digital commerce, e-commerce, advertising, or decentralized finance, there's still a lot of different use cases that are evolving. As you know, spatial computing evolves as generative AI evolves, and as Web 3 evolves, I think there's going to be a tremendous opportunity from what we are building. I would like you to explain the technology that Super World virtual real estate is built upon. We have built a virtual real estate platform covering Earth. As I mentioned, we're built on Polygon, which is a layer 2 blockchain technology protocol. It's, you know, practically gasless. So it has very low gas fee and very fast transaction speed. But the idea is we're building on technologies like Mapbox, Google Maps, Apple AR kit, and Google AR core. We can build on Oculus and the type of content that you can add into Super World are 3D, 2D, audio MP4 files, Jpegs, and GLB files, which are 3D files, and the point of that is you can create any type of experience because the technologies that we've built on are cross-platform. You can literally build almost anything. The opportunities are limitless. I started the story by telling you that when you build in an engine anything is possible and that's to point you to the fact that what we're enabling on the virtual real estate is this cross-platform utilization of technologies that's very agnostic. As we continue to build and as we continue to add integrations, we want to give users the possibilities to create and monetize and discover all kinds of content around the world. I see a slew of technologies. How does virtual real estate intersect with other emerging technologies in SuperWorld? How do you combine them? I think our vision has been very agnostic on the tech side. So we have kind of brought together a variety of different technologies. As you know, there's an infinite number of filters on the world that can be created. We have launched a partnership with Sports Illustrated where we added 250,000 events onto the platform and that includes event ticketing, NFT marketing. So just to give you an example that I think will blow your mind. If you come to Super World and you buy tickets to the Yankees game in New York, but you've bought the virtual real estate encompassing the area where Yankee Stadium is. Well, you're a stakeholder in that location and you're going to be able to monetize ticket sales from events that happen there or events that you are creating anywhere around the world, live or virtual. Ticketing and events is a kind of a platform idea, but the other thing is, we will expand that with real world assets. So that goes into digital twins and being able to build visualizations of real world properties. As I mentioned, the opportunity to connect the physical and the virtual is huge and as we continue to evolve, there's going to be more opportunities to bring in other technologies for communication, for monetization, for digital asset, etc. What do your users do on Super World? I think there's a lot of people that are very interested in these technologies, AR, VR, Blockchain, Web 3, NFT, etc. A lot of people are interested in these terms. They are interested in figuring out how they can use these technologies to improve their business or things in their personal life. But when they come to Super World, they might not completely understand all of those concepts just yet, but they understand where they live, where they have a business, where they, you know, want to go on vacation and they come to super world and they buy those locations. And now they become a stakeholder in the locations and the next thing they want to do is to create NFTS. They ask me how to create NFTs, how to get into AR, VR, and how to get into DeFi. The first thing you can do as a user is you can add content anywhere in real world locations, 3D content, 2D content, photos, videos, GLB files, AR content BR content digital twins, and there is the opportunity to add any content anywhere and individualize that content from anywhere. I could be in New York City and I could look at a digital twin that's located in Miami and zoom in on that in a 3D environment or pull it up in augmented reality on my phone. The second thing that we're enabling is ticketing and live and virtual event creation and ticketing sales. So at a live event, you can place that live event wherever the event is in the real world and you can sell tickets for that event, NFT ticketing or traditional ticketing. And then as your attendees go to that event, they could leave content at the live location which people can view from anywhere in the world: 360 photos, 360 videos, traditional photo or video GLB files and so you can bring events and content creation, user-generated content together. I could sell an NFT at an event that you are throwing and if you know you own the virtual real estate there you monetize on the NFT that I sell as well. You'll have your own map of the world where you can add content, you can, you know, discover content from other worlds and bring those into your world. There's a lot of cross-functionality between worlds that's coming very soon. What piece of advice do you have for other entrepreneurs out there who would like to follow in your footsteps? I always say that it's really important to take that first step. Find your passion, find a problem that you want to solve and that you're excited about. It can be something that you have some really strong first-hand experience with and then take that first step, whether it's a first step of learning about how to approach it or the first step of moving towards that goal. Entrepreneurship is a long journey. And it's a journey that you have to be really excited about every single day and so you know first and foremost is figure out what your why is figure out like what really gets you excited and motivated about something and then every day remember what is that why and keep going towards the goal. It's a  a real journey and it's something that you should really enjoy every step of the way.

Exploring Virtual Real Estate With Super World CEO Hrish Lotlikar

Let's learn about via these 19 free stories. They are ordered by most time reading created on HackerNoon. Visit the to find the most read stories about any technology. Ycombinator /Learn Repo 1. How Silicon Valley Bank Went Under - And the Tech Execs Who Stepped Up As small-scale startups scrambled to make payroll while the future of the tech industry stood threatened, many of its prominent leaders looked for ways to help. 2. Mighty App: Fad or Rad? The Mighty App promises a lot and it might seem like a waste of money but, thanks to some quirks, it can be very useful when it comes to downloading at speed. 3. From Graduating College to Raising $1+ Million Dollars in 9 months I was studying Mechanical Engineering in my final year at college in the UK when I joined my roommate and his friend in building an app called Cluttr they started developing in the Summer of 2017. 4. How We Applied Twice for the Same YCombinator Batch Back in September, we were iterating on many ideas. We had come up with a 2-day invalidation process to make sure that we were not wasting too much time on bad ideas. 5. How We Pivoted 3 times In The 1st Month of YC If you ever think about joining YC, be intentional about the value you want to get from it. 6. Five Tips for Applying to YC 2021 Tips and resources for applying to Y Combinator 7. How to Prepare for your Y Combinator Interview Tick tock, it’s the day the YC interview invitation is sent out. I remember anxiously waiting for my startup’s (Cotter) invite. 8. Top 5 Podcasts for Startup Founders Top 5 Podcasts for Startup Founders in December packed with first-hand industry experience. 9. How Serverless Empowered Us to Accomplish More with Less We explore how we use Serverless at Courier, review some Serverless basics, and show how Serverless has empowered our team to accomplish more w 10. The 10 Things I’ve Learned Attending Y Combinator Startup School 2020 Y Combinator shouldn’t need any presentation, but just in case, let me give a quick intro. 11. Releaf: Evolution of African Agritech Releaf is Y-combinator African startup who are an agritech and supply chain startup. They do B2B work, digital banking, aid and geo-spatial tech for farmers. 12. How My Startup Got New Funding from Andreessen Horowitz We are very excited to announce that we have raised a new round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) with participation from Y Combinator Continuity. 13. The Top 4 Startup Accelerators: Is Y Combinator Still the Best? Where is the next Facebook, Google or Postmates coming from and why you shouldn’t choose Y Combinator? A comparison of the world’s top 4 startup accelerators 14. The Ultimate Guide to YCombinator Interview Preparation During my own preparation for Winter 2018 class interviews, I’ve reviewed every public resource on the topic and did over 20 practice interviews with Y Combinator alums. Everything I’ve learned is summarized below. This guide is my personal take and doesn’t represent an official position of YC. 15. Everything you need to know about YCombinator S19 startups It is not a secret to anyone that YCombinator is the most successful accelerator in the world. They have made well over 2,538 investments. 16. 6 Lessons From YC Startup School Delhi SMB Meetup #1 YC Startup School’s Delhi founders who work for SMBs met online to share the problems they were working on and what they learnt while building for SMBs. For the first meetup, we had mouve.app, restat.co, designforpeople.in, and Uplift Inc. 17. 10 Steps to Build a High-Value Startup with $44k Free Credits 10 steps to build a high value start up with $44k free credits and the best tools out there 18. Founders at Work: 150+ YCombinator Founders’ Stories Jessica Livingston's book "Founders at work" (2007, 32 stories) inspired thousands of founders to start their startups. 19. How Early Stage Startups Can Leverage Startup Incubators A Startup Incubator is a collaborative organisation designed to support new startups that are looking to validate their formed product vision. Thank you for checking out the 19 most read stories about Ycombinator on HackerNoon. to find the most read stories about any technology. Visit the /Learn Repo

19 Stories To Learn About Ycombinator

Let's learn about via these 42 free stories. They are ordered by most time reading created on HackerNoon. Visit the to find the most read stories about any technology. Podcasting /Learn Repo 1. 5 Ways To Produce A Podcast That Stands Out Among The Rest There is still space for high-quality podcasters. Take time to set yourself up for future stardom by following these successful podcast production secrets. 2. The Do's and Don'ts of Starting a Podcast The two main factors that determine a new show's popularity are the level of production and effort, and the consistency of the episode release schedule. 3. An Interview with Johanna Hoof, Co-Founder of Social Audio Network Logcast Hackernoon spoke to Johanna Hoof, co-founder of Logcast — a social audio network empowering the next generation of audio creators in web 3.0. 4. Spotify's Backdoor: How Podcasts Could be the Platform's Downfall The podcast market has been more consumed than ever, and the unpreparedness of music platforms, may lead to piracy within them 5. 3 Step Guide to Starting a Podcast Nearly 55% people in America listen to podcasts each month, which translates to about 160 million people. 6. How Live Streaming Is Helping Businesses During The Coronavirus Crisis? The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 as a global pandemic, which means that it is an infectious disease passing from person to person in many parts of the world at the same time. The maximum cases have been reported in China where it originated and has more than 245,463 confirmed cases across the world. While China has quickly coped with the situation and reported zero new locally transmitted cases, Italy has become the epicenter with over 41,035 cases. As Governments have halted flights from affected countries, shut down businesses and entire cities, people are being insisted to stay at home to contain the spread. 7. How Podcast Players Generate Revenue [General Overview] The podcast industry is growing. The more growth, the more money will go into the industry. Podcast players make money from consumers and businesses through several methods. 8. Pitch the World's Most Misbegotten Podcast A listicle of unfeasible, unpleasant, and unproduceable podcast concepts, as nominated by the Hacker Noon top writers and editors Slogging community. 9. How to Start The Podcast You've Been Talking About Forever—In 8 Easy Steps Podcasting is a great opportunity to reach a new audience, but the process for starting a podcast can be complicated. In this article I will walk you through the process of starting a podcast and I will provide you with resources to get started. 10. 7 Podcasts That Every Aspiring Entrepreneur Should Listen to Podcasts are a fantastic method to keep learning, build abilities, and broaden our knowledge while still being enjoyable. 11. Podcast Analytics: How to Accurately Measure Content Performance The podcast industry is booming. Each week the number of Americans who listen to podcasts tops the number of those who have  Netflix accounts. 12. Top 5 Podcasts for Startup Founders Top 5 Podcasts for Startup Founders in December packed with first-hand industry experience. 13. How To Launch Your Podcast On Alexa Devices (Amazon, Google Nest & Apple’s HomePod) The beauty of podcasts is that they’re incredibly portable and easy to consume. People can listen to your Podcast on Alexa devices, so here is how to start! 14. How to Build a Product in Public And Get Traction Image by Jorge Guillen from Pixabay An increasing number of indie makers decide to build in public. Some do it via their blog, on Twitter, on an open page or via communities. But it can be incredibly daunting to makers who are used to build their products in a more private fashion. 15. Andreessen Horowitz is Betting on the Passion Economy Andreesen Horowitz has invested broadly across the creator economy, and, by platforming media, stands to gain billions whether or not creators succeed. 16. How to Measure the ROI of Your Podcast: 7 Metrics Indicate Success Want to keep track of your podcast's success? Read this list of seven ways to determine the ROI of your podcast and maximize your content strategy. 17. Brand Storytelling and Digital Publishing to Guide Your Audience Brand Storytelling Agency and Custom Digital Magazine Publisher tells brand stories to connect businesses with their customers. Don't let your audience get lost 18. Happy 1-Year Podiversary, Hackers! Wow, someone pinch me! One year of The HackerNoon Podcast already?! 19. Prevalence of Podcasts in India The podcast industry has a lot of things to offer in terms of content but the growth of this industry is slow in India. The key reason behind its slow growth rate is the adoption rate has been on the lower end. It came to know that the essence of the podcast is a question regarding getting people to listen to it. 20. How to Interview A Podcast Guest The key to interviewing a guest is preparation. A host should prepare for an interview in several tasks before the interview.  such as research, mapping out the interview, and testing the software. This article will go over the basic concepts of interviewing. For those still on the fence about doing interviews. They will learn the benefits of interviewing along with the downsides. Then, everyone will learn how to find guests for their podcast. 21. 7 Reasons to Launch Your Podcast With 4-7 Episodes Here, we are going to talk about a few solid reasons why you should launch your podcast with fewer episodes. 22. Some Tips on Podcasting These tips are ideas to consider. A host does not need to do any tip that is listed. The changes may have no impact on the podcast at all. A host will only benefit from experimenting with each tip. 23. 3-Must-Haves to Win Podcast Search Optimization And Bring in New Listeners Keep these hacks in mind and benefit from additional opportunities to stand out from the crowd of competitors and win new listeners through search algorithms. 24. Starting A Podcast Production Company with Renay Richardson Renay Richardson — podcast industry legend, Founder and CEO of Broccoli Content, creator of About Race, independent Sony Music Entertainment deal-closer —  is under pressure. 25. Pessimists Archive: The Ultimate Podcast for Techno-Liberitarians By Brent Rose 26. How The Darknet Diaries Podcast Scaled from a Part-time Hobby to Eight Million Downloads By Pam Moore 27. The Art of Creating Valuable Podcasts We've made incredible leaps since the days of wireless radio. 28. How Podcasts Make Money: A Guide for Complete Beginners Do you want to set up your own tech podcast and make money from it? Let me teach you to successfully start your podcast in this article. 29. Exploring the Broadcasting Industry with James Mulvany In this Slogging AMA, we had the pleasure of being joined by the founder and CEO of Radio.co, Podcast.co and Matchmaker.fm, James Mulvany. 30. How Another Host's Podcast Helps Promote Yours For many growth methods, a host can take action on their own. Working with hosts that have similar podcasts is another option. Two hosts can do a podcast to podcast promotion. 31. How to Host a Solo Podcast Some people that want to start a podcast feel they need a co-host or to interview someone to start one. When they cannot find someone, they give up. There is no need for a co-host or interviewee, but a solo host needs to prepare more before recording. To be a successful solo host, a potential host needs to choose a format for a podcast. While there are some advantages to having a solo podcast. There is an opportunity cost that comes along with the solo podcast. 32. How to Start A Podcast with 3 Simple Steps in 2021 Thought about launching a podcast but don’t know how? Maybe, you’ve come close but never have enough time? 33. AI and Quantum Computing to the Rescue, or: My First AI-Voiced Podcast Ever wondered what a podcast would sound like if it was hosted by an AI? Look no further. In this episode of Hacker Noon's Noonies chatcast series, Natasha Nel's AI alter-ego asks three top Hacker Noon Contributors which technological innovation they think will save the world and why. Buckle up for surreal meta moment from the future of robot podcasting. 34. How to Launch a Podcast: A Checklist by ACAST It's been an insane year. 35. How to Monetize Your Podcast & Make it a Sustainable Project Monetizing Your Podcast & Making It A Sustainable Project 36. Why 50% of podcasters fail. Here's how we fix this. This Slack discussion by Adrian, Linh and David occurred in hackernoon's official #slogging-beta channel, and has been edited for readability. Stay tuned for more infor on slogging (slack blogging). 37. Podcasting And Ethical Dilemmas When starting a podcast, it is normal for a host to want to grow the podcast as much as possible. The desire to grow might lead a host to take actions that are not moral. A host has to keep in mind that taking these shortcuts are short-term solutions. Any misdeeds will either backfire or not help in the long-term. 38. Podcast Growth Tips: Use Surveys to Learn About What Listeners Want A podcast host should always be thinking about the listeners when creating content. Some times a host has no idea what listeners want to hear on the podcast. Creating a survey is one method for getting listener input. A survey is an opportunity to get direct feedback from listeners. A host receives the exact answers that they want from listeners. 39. How To Monetize A Podcast Monetizing a podcast is different from monetizing an ebook or Saas product. The methods for monetizing podcasts are not as obvious as other internet content. In this chapter, I will go over the methods of monetizing a podcast. 40. How to Adjust the Blue Yeti Microphone Settings For Podcasting Over the past year, I've made many audio mistakes and it has been fabulous for my career and growth. Here are the lessons I've learned from using the Blue Yeti. 41. Demystifying AI with Louis Bouchard on The HackerNoon Podcast Amy chats with Louis about his content creation journey, what motivates him, and how he balances student life with YouTube video creation. 42. How To Promote Your Podcast During In Person Events To promote a podcast, a host must use every option available. One option is in-person events. There are several different types of events that a host can attend or host. These events take preparation, but the potential ROI may lead to more than listeners. Thank you for checking out the 42 most read stories about Podcasting on HackerNoon. to find the most read stories about any technology. Visit the /Learn Repo

42 Stories To Learn About Podcasting

Since the dawn of the blockchain in 2008, the idea of what’s possible within the crypto space has changed dramatically. There’s been an evolution from simple cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin to full-fledged DeFi applications, games, and more. But this evolution isn’t complete. “The cryptocurrency market is developing at an ever-increasing pace. Still, we are only at its early seed stage, where the foundations are laid and norms established.” Today, the crypto industry faces even more seismic shifts. Web3 is ushering in a myriad of changes in the way the blockchain is used for business, advertising, and recreation. Governments around the world are looking at ways to regulate various aspects of the industry. With a growing global eye on blockchain technology, one question is at the forefront of everyone’s mind: What lies ahead? While we don’t have a crystal ball that can peer into the crypto industry’s future, we can make some educated guesses by looking at the past. The USA’s Early Crypto Dominance It shouldn’t be a surprise that many of the crypto industry’s earliest pioneers and adopters hail from Silicon Valley. Major players like Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase, and Ripple Labs all have roots there. And countless other influential voices have come from the US’s west coast. But this is only one reason why the United States has played such a dominant role in crypto’s story. The US is home to dozens of major corporations, the largest stock exchange in the world, and unparalleled financial and technological infrastructures. Plus, the country’s legal and regulatory environment tends to be friendly toward entrepreneurs and startups. In many ways, the United States was the perfect incubator for the blockchain. That’s the reason the vast majority of crypto projects were launched and targeted within the English-speaking world. The United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Australia were the dominant players in crypto. But all that began to change after the collapse of FTX. The Fall of FTX and the Rise of Crypto Regulations In the summer of 2022, FTX was riding high. Earlier that year, they’d made several headline-worthy announcements, including the creation of a $2 billion venture fund, plans to offer stock trading to their US customers, and the development of a gaming division. The future looked bright for the company and the crypto industry as a whole. But then, in November, things began to unravel. And by the middle of that month, the massive exchange and hedge fund has filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy. John J. Ray III, the CEO who was brought in as a liquidator, summed up just how bad things were when he said, “Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.” And this was from someone who had also been involved in the bankruptcies of Enron and Nortel. FTX’s collapse sent shockwaves through the crypto industry. Governments around the world began looking more seriously at the possibility of introducing stricter regulations on cryptocurrencies and projects. And since FTX’s fall happened on the US’s watch, lawmakers there were even more eager to “do something.” While comprehensive crypto regulations haven’t been passed yet, uncertainty surrounding the future of crypto in the US has sent entrepreneurs and investors scurrying for other options. Many people who are interested in the crypto space are rethinking their plans for the US, eyeing South American, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries instead. US Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) recently put the situation into perspective, saying, “The failure of the United States Congress to enact policy is pushing the industry to other countries. Europe is ahead of us in terms of its regulatory framework. Australia and the U.K. are getting ahead of us. Switzerland is far ahead of us.” According to Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple, the crypto industry already has a foot out of the door as they head for greener pastures overseas. While some voices in the industry are less confident in this geographical shift, noting the US’s history of being a technological and economic leader, there can be no doubt that rough waters lie ahead. Change is coming one way or another. Changes in the Crypto Industry Examining the history of blockchain use allows you to see that it followed something of a natural progression. It began with cryptocurrency, one of the most intuitive and obvious applications for a digital ledger. Once cryptocurrencies were a thing, it only made sense to form cryptocurrency exchanges. But it was the introduction of smart contracts by Ethereum in 2014 that made it possible to go beyond currencies to fully functional applications. This is when decentralized finance (DeFi) projects began to pop up. But the evolution didn’t stop there. There was simply too much potential in the blockchain to end in static assets. The gamification of the blockchain was an inevitability. Over the past year or two, the crypto industry has seen an explosion of growth from the GameFi side of the crypto world. This can clearly be seen from data provided by Bitmedia, one of the blockchain industry’s leading advertising networks. **“Until 2022, the top three advertising campaign niches were crypto exchanges, NFT metaverse games, and gambling betting projects. Since then, the number of GameFi and gambling betting projects has dramatically increased, rising to the very top of the charts.”
\ The following chart reveals just how much of a shift the industry has undergone over the past year. Beginning in 2023, crypto exchanges have swapped places with gambling projects, dropping from 35% to 20% of ad placements. Gambling projects, on the other hand, have risen from 15% to 35%. The fact that the gambling side of the industry hasn’t been hit by regulations has led to this exponential growth. All of this is indicative of a massive change in the industry, and it bodes well for those involved in blockchain’s gaming sectors. Crypto Ad Campaigns Distribution by Niche. Bitmedia data: 2021 % 2023 % Crypto exchanges / DEX 35 Gambling/Betting 35 NFT games 15 Web3 projects 25 Gambling/Betting 15 Crypto exchanges / DEX 20 Web3 projects 10 NFT games 10 Other 15 Other 10 This is especially the case in parts of the world where crypto didn’t have as strong of a presence until more recently. Again, Bitmedia’s data is helpful here. The top locations for Web3 advertising have moved in an increasingly eastern direction. Prior to 2023, four of the top five countries were native English-speaking, and the fifth, Singapore, uses a form of English as its unofficial language. By 2023, four of the top five nations for Web3 advertising were in southeast Asia, and the fifth was African. This signals a major change in the industry. And it’s one that shows no sign of slowing down. Top Geos for Web3 Advertising. Bitmedia data: 2021 2023 USA Philippines Canada Thailand UK Vietnam Australia Indonesia Singapore Nigeria According to a , the “most consistent interest in GameFi has been from the East Asia region,” including South Korea, Hong Kong, and China. study by CoinGecko https://twitter.com/coingecko/status/1658665199208140805?s=20&embedable=true As interest in GameFi grows around the world, there will be an ever-increasing number of opportunities for crypto investors and startups. We at Bitmedia as noted this growth and the growing potential for leveraging the space for advertising. “The use of an open source distributed ledger (or blockchain) would enable users to confirm the trustworthiness and validity of those people participating, their backgrounds and interactions with others. Fake accounts or suspicious individuals without any background could be easily identified by publishers and gaming platforms who could see which accounts are trusted and have numerous interactions with other members of any given blockchain. The benefits go beyond mere transparency and accountability, important though they are; it would also ensure greater budget effectiveness, as the new data adds an extra layer of precise data that can be used to tailor ad campaign targeting to a molecular level”. Looking Behind and Ahead Crypto adoption and regulation related to the industry are different forces that don’t always align with one another. At times, regulations lag behind adoption. In other instances, they lead. Much depends on infrastructure and the kinds of proposed regulations. However, one thing is clear: both of these factors play a significant role in the development of crypto businesses in the world. This can be easily seen by taking a brief look at the development of the crypto industry up until today. As we face uncertain waters ahead, both in terms of crypto adoption and regulations, we ought to recognize the difficulties and opportunities. Anxiety about legal regulations will continue to have an impact on where crypto projects pop up. The competition presented by those new projects will also impact the future of the industry. With all that said, now is the time for entrepreneurs to find a niche they can grow into. There’s never been an easier, cheaper time to do it. Furthermore, the rise of new bursting-with-demand geographies poses as an added layer of opportunities that once again helps the blockchain adoption and, therefore, the world.

Who are Crypto and Web3 Companies Fighting For In 2023?

112 Stories To Learn About Funding

Global markets experience a calmer outlook as inflation continues to decrease. The latest US CPI figures came in at 4% year-on-year, recording the lowest reading since March 2021. For the first time in 15 months, the Fed has interest rate hikes, a move that should have spiked confidence in the equity markets. paused However, despite the positive outlook, the Fed is yet to achieve its 2% target, and on yesterday’s FOMC meeting, the anytime soon. Committee clearly signaled that they are not considering easing the interest rate levels If you ask me, I think we are closing in on the last quarter of the bear market conditions. Sentiment turned bullish for the first half of the year, and now market participants are waking up to the fact that it will take even more time before things get better. Such times are not ideal for being long in the market as the rapid shift in sentiment will likely continue with valuations going nowhere. However, I find it likely that now is the time to eye for positions. With that, a well-meant reminder that the tides always turn at some point. Crypto Market Fatigue: BTC Slightly Holds as Altcoins Tumble The crypto market liquidity dropped by close to 4% on Wednesday, signaling fatigue and the effects of SEC lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase last week. What’s interesting to observe is that BTC’s price is holding up much better compared to altcoins, the former has only tanked by around 5% so far, in comparison to most altcoins which are down over 15% over the past week. It is in times like this that Bitcoin's resilience in the face of market fluctuations showcases its perceived as the ‘digital gold’ and potential to act as a safe haven asset. store of value Binance Woes Continue Binance.US's woes seem to be far from over. Although a US judge recently the SEC's request to freeze funds, this has not stopped market makers from fleeing the troubled exchange. denied According to the latest data from Kaiko Research, liquidity on Binance.US has dropped by over 80% within the past week, from highs of $34 million to below $7 million. The BNB native token is also down to $247 as of writing, from over $310 before the SEC lawsuit news broke. Image source: Kaiko The latest actions by the US SEC will undoubtedly have far-reaching consequences for the crypto industry. On one hand, it could be the final blow for crypto companies to exit the US, while on the other hand, it could set the stage for regulatory clarity. Noteworthy Mentions Blockchain and AI: The Forces Shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution Artificial Intelligence (AI) is currently the hottest topic in the tech industry, with VCs pivoting, and companies like Nvidia reaping big from their AI-oriented products. But what can a combination of AI and Blockchain achieve? You'd be surprised by how complementary these two revolutionary technologies are. We recently published an in-depth article where we explore their full potential, here is the link to the full . article Industry Shakers BlockFi says customer withdrawals could start this summer BlockFi, the infamous crypto lending company that temporarily halted withdrawals following the collapse of the FTX exchange, has announced its plans to enable certain customers to retrieve their funds starting this summer. The company is currently working on necessary improvements and testing to facilitate the process. Withdrawals will be conducted in batches, and eligible individuals will receive personalized emails from BlockFi. House Republicans try to oust Gensler with a new bill After going hammer on crypto last week, Gary Gensler is facing some heat. Two House Republicans, Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota have collaborated on a bill called the SEC Stabilization Act. The proposed legislation aims to remove Gary Gensler from his position as SEC chair and replace it with an "executive director" responsible for overseeing operations. a16z Opening Office in London (citing clear regulatory guidelines) Just days after intensified regulatory actions by U.S. authorities on the digital assets industry, a16z crypto, the crypto investment division of Andreessen Horowitz, announced the launch of its first overseas office in London. Recognizing the significance of a robust regulatory framework for the success of the crypto space, a16z crypto cited the United Kingdom's existing regime as conducive to fostering startups while ensuring consumer protection from fraud and manipulation. Bank of China issues $28M in digital structured notes on Ethereum blockchain BOCI, the investment bank subsidiary of Bank of China, recently revealed the launch of digital structured notes valued at 200 million Chinese yuan ($28 million) on the Ethereum blockchain. This groundbreaking initiative establishes BOCI as the first Chinese financial institution to issue a tokenized security in Hong Kong. UBS will play a key role in developing and offering the product to its clients in the Asia-Pacific region. Also published here .

With Fed Rate Hike Pause, Is the Tide Finally Turning?

Well, what did we tell you! Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is steaming ahead with plans to create a social network platform that would be similar to Twitter. Meta's take on the social media platform is becoming real by the day and is already trying to woo celebrities, including the Dalai Lama and Oprah Winfrey, to be a part of the first batch of users who get enrolled. Referred to as "Project 92" internally, the platform is aimed at users who want the convenience of Twitter without having to worry if it's being run by a literal slavedriver. “We’ve been hearing from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is sanely run, that they believe that they can trust and rely upon for distribution,” Meta’s chief product officer, Chris Cox, was quoted as telling employees working on the project. No word on when the platform will be released but we do know that a new standalone app for the service will be based on Instagram and integrate with ActivityPub, the decentralized social media protocol, The Verge reported. Instagram ranked #2 on HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings this week while Facebook was on the #8 spot. Major VC Firm Bets Crypto's Future is in the UK 🪙 While the U.S. seems hell bent on reigning in on cryptocurrency and crypto trading, the U.K. seems to be embracing it. In fact, so bullish is Andreessen Horowitz about the U.K.'s prospect as a crypto hub, that the American venture capital firm — which manages billions and counts multiple success stories in its portfolio, including Facebook — has decided to expand outside the U.S. and open its first ever off-shore office in London. "We believe that the UK is on the right path to becoming a leader in crypto regulation. It is home to more unicorns than Germany, France, and Sweden combined; to some of the world’s largest financial markets and pools of capital; and to highly-sophisticated, world-class regulators. All of these make the UK strongly positioned to lead in web3," the firm, one of the more prominent VCs betting on crypto, said in a statement. Andreessen Horowitz's expansion outside the U.S. makes sense; roughly 90% of crypto trading already takes place outside the U.S. With the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission coming down hard on crypto, it's no wonder that more forward-minded investors are seeking avenues outside mainland America. Though whether Andreessen Horowitz's bet will pay off, only time will tell. For now, the VC firm left this tidbit in its announcement, perhaps for the naysayers. "A common question we hear is: 'What problems do blockchains solve?' Services built on blockchains solve the same problems that other digital services solve, but with better outcomes." 👋 You’re reading part 2 of HackerNoon's Tech Company News Brief, a weekly collection of tech goodness that combines HackerNoon's proprietary data with internet trends to determine which companies are rising and falling in the public consciousness. Part 1 went live yesterday. Prefer reading the whole thing a day early AND in one go? No problemo! Just subscribe here to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday. In Other News.. 📰 AMD is clawing back at Nvidia, looking to launch its own AI "superchip" to compete against Team Green, which already dominates the AI computing market with 80% to 95% of market share.
The UK will host the first major global summit on AI safety later this year.
Intel was unable to convince the German government to give it more subsidies for the currently in construction advanced semiconductor manufacturing facility near Magdeburg, Germany.
In an apparent FU to Google, Twitter is refusing to pay its Google Cloud bills as its contract comes up for renewal this month, Platformer reports.
Reddit's decision to charge exorbitant prices for third-party apps via its API is not sitting well with its userbase. And that's a wrap! Don't forget to share this newsletter with your family and friends! See y'all next week. PEACE! ☮️ — Sheharyar Khan, Editor, Business Tech @ HackerNoon Well, what did we tell you ! Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of Facebook , Instagram , and WhatsApp , is steaming ahead with plans to create a social network platform that would be similar to Twitter . what did we tell you what did we tell you Facebook Facebook Instagram Instagram WhatsApp WhatsApp Twitter Twitter Meta's take on the social media platform is becoming real by the day and is already trying to woo celebrities, including the Dalai Lama and Oprah Winfrey, to be a part of the first batch of users who get enrolled. Referred to as "Project 92" internally, the platform is aimed at users who want the convenience of Twitter without having to worry if it's being run by a literal slavedriver . literal slavedriver literal slavedriver “We’ve been hearing from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is sanely run, that they believe that they can trust and rely upon for distribution,” Meta’s chief product officer, Chris Cox, was quoted as telling employees working on the project. No word on when the platform will be released but we do know that a new standalone app for the service will be based on Instagram and integrate with ActivityPub, the decentralized social media protocol, The Verge reported . The Verge reported reported Instagram ranked #2 on HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings this week while Facebook was on the #8 spot. Tech Company Rankings Tech Company Rankings Major VC Firm Bets Crypto's Future is in the UK 🪙 Major VC Firm Bets Crypto's Future is in the UK 🪙 While the U.S. seems hell bent on reigning in on cryptocurrency and crypto trading, the U.K. seems to be embracing it. In fact, so bullish is Andreessen Horowitz about the U.K.'s prospect as a crypto hub , that the American venture capital firm — which manages billions and counts multiple success stories in its portfolio, including Facebook — has decided to expand outside the U.S. and open its first ever off-shore office in London. prospect as a crypto hub prospect as a crypto hub "We believe that the UK is on the right path to becoming a leader in crypto regulation. It is home to more unicorns than Germany, France, and Sweden combined; to some of the world’s largest financial markets and pools of capital; and to highly-sophisticated, world-class regulators. All of these make the UK strongly positioned to lead in web3," the firm, one of the more prominent VCs betting on crypto, said in a statement . statement statement Andreessen Horowitz's expansion outside the U.S. makes sense; roughly 90% of crypto trading already takes place outside the U.S. With the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission coming down hard on crypto, it's no wonder that more forward-minded investors are seeking avenues outside mainland America. 90% of crypto trading 90% of crypto trading Though whether Andreessen Horowitz's bet will pay off, only time will tell. For now, the VC firm left this tidbit in its announcement, perhaps for the naysayers . naysayers naysayers "A common question we hear is: 'What problems do blockchains solve?' Services built on blockchains solve the same problems that other digital services solve, but with better outcomes." 👋 You’re reading part 2 of HackerNoon's Tech Company News Brief, a weekly collection of tech goodness that combines HackerNoon's proprietary data with internet trends to determine which companies are rising and falling in the public consciousness. Part 1 went live yesterday. Prefer reading the whole thing a day early AND in one go? No problemo! Just subscribe here to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday. 👋 You’re reading part 2 of HackerNoon's Tech Company News Brief, a weekly collection of tech goodness that combines HackerNoon's proprietary data with internet trends to determine which companies are rising and falling in the public consciousness. Part 1 went live yesterday. Prefer reading the whole thing a day early AND in one go? No problemo! Just subscribe here to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday. You’re reading part 2 of HackerNoon's Tech Company News Brief, a weekly collection of tech goodness that combines HackerNoon's proprietary data with internet trends to determine which companies are rising and falling in the public consciousness. Part 1 went live yesterday. Prefer reading the whole thing a day early AND in one go? No problemo! Just subscribe here to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday. part 2 Part 1 Part 1 here complete In Other News.. 📰 In Other News.. 📰 AMD is clawing back at Nvidia, looking to launch its own AI "superchip" to compete against Team Green, which already dominates the AI computing market with 80% to 95% of market share. The UK will host the first major global summit on AI safety later this year. Intel was unable to convince the German government to give it more subsidies for the currently in construction advanced semiconductor manufacturing facility near Magdeburg, Germany. In an apparent FU to Google, Twitter is refusing to pay its Google Cloud bills as its contract comes up for renewal this month, Platformer reports. Reddit's decision to charge exorbitant prices for third-party apps via its API is not sitting well with its userbase. AMD is clawing back at Nvidia , looking to launch its own AI "superchip" to compete against Team Green, which already dominates the AI computing market with 80% to 95% of market share. AMD AMD Nvidia Nvidia launch launch The UK will host the first major global summit on AI safety later this year. host host Intel was unable to convince the German government to give it more subsidies for the currently in construction advanced semiconductor manufacturing facility near Magdeburg, Germany. Intel Intel unable unable In an apparent FU to Google , Twitter is refusing to pay its Google Cloud bills as its contract comes up for renewal this month, Platformer reports . Google Google Twitter Twitter reports reports Reddit's decision to charge exorbitant prices for third-party apps via its API is not sitting well with its userbase. third-party apps third-party apps not sitting well not sitting well And that's a wrap! Don't forget to share this newsletter with your family and friends! See y'all next week. PEACE! ☮️ — Sheharyar Khan, Editor, Business Tech @ HackerNoon

Meta is Actually Making a Twitter Clone 

মেটা আসলে একটি টুইটার ক্লোন তৈরি করছে

Meta erstellt tatsächlich einen Twitter-Klon

메타는 실제로 트위터 복제를 만들고 있습니다

Meta Aslında Bir Twitter Klonu Yapıyor

It looks like Microsoft isn't the only company popping champagne at their offices. OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, is also rolling in dough. A new report from TechCrunch indicates OpenAI has raised $300 million in venture funding, including from billionaire (and longtime Elon Musk friend) Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and Sequoia Capital, which famously backed Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX, a decision they came to regret later. Other VC investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive, and K2 Global. According to the report, the latest round of funding values OpenAI at between $27 billion and $29 billion, which would mean it's now more valuable than eBay (~$24.6B), Roblox (~$22B), Snap Inc. (~$14B), and even Dropbox Inc. (~$7.1B). VC funds usually like betting on promising ventures, and OpenAI is a no brainer. At its current valuation, it's only a matter of time before it joins the likes of tech titans. We're talking Amazon, Meta, Google, big. OpenAI is famously backed by Microsoft, which entered a $10 billion strategic partnership with the company soon after the launch of ChatGPT. But it wasn't the first time Microsoft invested in OpenAI; their association actually began in 2019, when Microsoft made an initial investment in the budding startup. A little known fact about OpenAI is that one of its founders is Twitter/SpaceX/Tesla-CEO Elon Musk who not only recently urged the company to immediately pause the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4, but also announced plans to launch his own generative AI called TruthGPT. At this point in time, there's nothing that indicates that TruthGPT will surpass the success of ChatGPT, but hey, that's not going to stop Musk. That said, it's hard not to feel bad for Musk who left OpenAI in 2018 due to… let's say, creative differences with the OpenAI management. In the years since, OpenAI has transformed into a force to be reckoned with, and had Musk still been with the company, he likely would have been billions richer than he already is at the moment. Meta still full-steam ahead on the Metaverse (Kinda!) 🚂 Ah, the metaverse. They say Zuckerberg's fate with the metaverse is written in the web3, let's just hope it's not a verse about getting Zucked! While Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are duking it out in the AI space, Zuckerberg has had his eyes on the metaverse for years. That bet has largely not paid off, with Zuckerberg losing more and more of his net worth by the day. But the biggest losers of Zuckerberg's ambition have been Meta employees, thousands of whom have been laid off back to back as the middle-aged CEO balances investor demands with his ambitions. For now, investors are taking a sigh of relief after the company posted better than expected financial results. Meta, the parent of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, reported a first-quarter revenue of $28.10 billion, beating expectations of $27.66 billion and up 3% year-over-year. Despite the revenue beat, Meta’s net income company-wide was down 24% year-over-year, from $7.47 billion to $5.71 billion. Still, investors believe the company is headed in the right direction, especially considering that Zuckerberg is changing his tune on the metaverse to focus more on AI (who would've thought 🙄). Still, Zuckerberg hasn't given up on the metaverse yet. "A narrative has developed that we’re somehow moving away from focusing on the metaverse vision, so I just want to say up front that that’s not accurate," Zuckerberg was quoted as saying following the release of the company's earnings release. "We’ve been focusing on AI and the metaverse, and we will continue to." But it's not all rosy for Zuckerberg; the company's biggest stakeholder — its employees — questioned his leadership during an hour-long town hall meeting recently. According toThe Washington Post (which is owned by Amazon's Jeff Bezos btw.), employees asked the CEO why they should have confidence in his leadership, especially considering the thousands Meta has had to lay off because Zuckerberg flew too close to the sun. Now, morale is low, particularly given that Meta is expected to let go of another 4,000 employees in the near future as part of the 10,000 cuts it announced in March. Whether Meta can navigate these turbulent times, only time will tell. For now, its earnings have bought it a lifeline. Meta ranked #25 on HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings this week. Facebook was in the #1 spot, while Instagram was trending on #35. 👋 You’re reading part 2 of HackerNoon's Tech Company News Brief, a weekly collection of tech goodness that combines HackerNoon's proprietary data with internet trends to determine which companies are rising and falling in the public consciousness. Part 1 went live yesterday. Prefer reading the whole thing a day early AND in one go? No problemo! Just subscribe here to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday. In Other News.. 📰 Microsoft is still vying for Activision-Blizzard despite facing a setback in the UK.
Geoffrey Hinton, the 'Godfather of AI', recently quit Google to speak about the dangers of artificial intelligence.
Mastercard will expand its cryptocurrency payment card programme by seeking more partnerships with crypto firms, Reuters reported.
The European Union is likely to reach a political agreement this year that will pave the way for the world's first major artificial intelligence law. And that's a wrap! Don't forget to share this newsletter with your family and friends! See y'all next week. PEACE! ☮️ — Sheharyar Khan, Editor, Business Tech @ HackerNoon Featured image generated using Kadinsky 2 with the following prompt: “stock chart going up” It looks like Microsoft isn't the only company popping champagne at their offices. OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, is also rolling in dough. Microsoft Microsoft popping champagne A new report from TechCrunch indicates OpenAI has raised $300 million in venture funding, including from billionaire (and longtime Elon Musk friend) Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and Sequoia Capital, which famously backed Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX, a decision they came to regret later . Other VC investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive, and K2 Global. new report new report famously backed famously backed regret later regret later According to the report, the latest round of funding values OpenAI at between $27 billion and $29 billion, which would mean it's now more valuable than eBay (~$24.6B), Roblox (~$22B), Snap Inc. (~$14B), and even Dropbox Inc. (~$7.1B). eBay eBay Roblox Roblox Dropbox Inc. Dropbox Inc. VC funds usually like betting on promising ventures, and OpenAI is a no brainer. At its current valuation, it's only a matter of time before it joins the likes of tech titans. We're talking Amazon , Meta , Google , big. Amazon Amazon Meta Meta Google Google OpenAI is famously backed by Microsoft, which entered a $10 billion strategic partnership with the company soon after the launch of ChatGPT. But it wasn't the first time Microsoft invested in OpenAI; their association actually began in 2019 , when Microsoft made an initial investment in the budding startup. 2019 2019 A little known fact about OpenAI is that one of its founders is Twitter /SpaceX/ Tesla -CEO Elon Musk who not only recently urged the company to immediately pause the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4, but also announced plans to launch his own generative AI called TruthGPT . little known fact little known fact Twitter Twitter Tesla Tesla TruthGPT TruthGPT At this point in time, there's nothing that indicates that TruthGPT will surpass the success of ChatGPT, but hey, that's not going to stop Musk. That said, it's hard not to feel bad for Musk who left OpenAI in 2018 due to… let's say, creative differences with the OpenAI management. In the years since, OpenAI has transformed into a force to be reckoned with, and had Musk still been with the company, he likely would have been billions richer than he already is at the moment. creative differences creative differences Meta still full-steam ahead on the Metaverse (Kinda!) 🚂 Meta still full-steam ahead on the Metaverse (Kinda!) 🚂 Ah, the metaverse. They say Zuckerberg's fate with the metaverse is written in the web3, let's just hope it's not a verse about getting Zucked ! Zucked Zucked While Microsoft, Amazon , and Google are duking it out in the AI space, Zuckerberg has had his eyes on the metaverse for years. That bet has largely not paid off, with Zuckerberg losing more and more of his net worth by the day. Amazon Amazon Google Google not But the biggest losers of Zuckerberg's ambition have been Meta employees, thousands of whom have been laid off back to back as the middle-aged CEO balances investor demands with his ambitions. For now, investors are taking a sigh of relief after the company posted better than expected financial results. Meta Meta Meta, the parent of Facebook , Instagram , and WhatsApp, reported a first-quarter revenue of $28.10 billion, beating expectations of $27.66 billion and up 3% year-over-year. Despite the revenue beat, Meta’s net income company-wide was down 24% year-over-year, from $7.47 billion to $5.71 billion. Facebook Facebook Instagram Instagram reported reported beating expectations beating expectations Still, investors believe the company is headed in the right direction, especially considering that Zuckerberg is changing his tune on the metaverse to focus more on AI (who would've thought 🙄). Still, Zuckerberg hasn't given up on the metaverse yet. focus more on AI focus more on AI "A narrative has developed that we’re somehow moving away from focusing on the metaverse vision, so I just want to say up front that that’s not accurate," Zuckerberg was quoted as saying following the release of the company's earnings release. "We’ve been focusing on AI and the metaverse, and we will continue to." "A narrative has developed that we’re somehow moving away from focusing on the metaverse vision, so I just want to say up front that that’s not accurate," Zuckerberg was quoted as saying following the release of the company's earnings release. "We’ve been focusing on AI and the metaverse, and we will continue to." quoted as saying quoted as saying But it's not all rosy for Zuckerberg; the company's biggest stakeholder — its employees — questioned his leadership during an hour-long town hall meeting recently. According to The Washington Post (which is owned by Amazon's Jeff Bezos btw.), employees asked the CEO why they should have confidence in his leadership, especially considering the thousands Meta has had to lay off because Zuckerberg flew too close to the sun. The Washington Post asked asked because Now, morale is low, particularly given that Meta is expected to let go of another 4,000 employees in the near future as part of the 10,000 cuts it announced in March. Whether Meta can navigate these turbulent times, only time will tell. For now, its earnings have bought it a lifeline. let go let go 10,000 cuts 10,000 cuts Meta ranked #25 on HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings this week. Facebook was in the #1 spot, while Instagram was trending on #35. Tech Company Rankings 👋 You’re reading part 2 of HackerNoon's Tech Company News Brief, a weekly collection of tech goodness that combines HackerNoon's proprietary data with internet trends to determine which companies are rising and falling in the public consciousness. Part 1 went live yesterday. Prefer reading the whole thing a day early AND in one go? No problemo! Just subscribe here to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday. 👋 You’re reading part 2 of HackerNoon's Tech Company News Brief, a weekly collection of tech goodness that combines HackerNoon's proprietary data with internet trends to determine which companies are rising and falling in the public consciousness. Part 1 went live yesterday. Prefer reading the whole thing a day early AND in one go? No problemo! Just subscribe here to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday. You’re reading part 2 of HackerNoon's Tech Company News Brief, a weekly collection of tech goodness that combines HackerNoon's proprietary data with internet trends to determine which companies are rising and falling in the public consciousness. Part 1 went live yesterday. Prefer reading the whole thing a day early AND in one go? No problemo! Just subscribe here to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday. part 2 Part 1 Part 1 here complete In Other News.. 📰 In Other News.. 📰 Microsoft is still vying for Activision-Blizzard despite facing a setback in the UK. Geoffrey Hinton, the 'Godfather of AI', recently quit Google to speak about the dangers of artificial intelligence. Mastercard will expand its cryptocurrency payment card programme by seeking more partnerships with crypto firms, Reuters reported. The European Union is likely to reach a political agreement this year that will pave the way for the world's first major artificial intelligence law. Microsoft is still vying for Activision-Blizzard despite facing a setback in the UK. still vying still vying Activision-Blizzard Activision-Blizzard Geoffrey Hinton, the 'Godfather of AI', recently quit Google to speak about the dangers of artificial intelligence. quit quit Google Google Mastercard will expand its cryptocurrency payment card programme by seeking more partnerships with crypto firms, Reuters reported . reported reported The European Union is likely to reach a political agreement this year that will pave the way for the world's first major artificial intelligence law. political agreement political agreement And that's a wrap! Don't forget to share this newsletter with your family and friends! See y'all next week. PEACE! ☮️ — Sheharyar Khan, Editor, Business Tech @ HackerNoon Featured image generated using Kadinsky 2 with the following prompt: “stock chart going up” Featured image generated using Kadinsky 2 with the following prompt: “stock chart going up”

Stories, News & Mentions about ANDREESSEN-HOROWITZ

Andreessen-horowitz’s Stories on HackerNoon

Andreessen-horowitz's News & Mentions