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When David Hornik wanted to do the unthinkable — start a blog — his partners and the firm's general counsel tried to dissuade him. To them, the idea of VC blogging was insane. But David defied all odds and launched the first VC blog (VentureBlog). In no time, it became a go-to resource center for helping entrepreneurs understand VCs better and build successful companies. In Hornik's words: "There is little question that this marketplace of ideas [the blog] was incredibly valuable to entrepreneurs. What was once a black box became a glass box." Seeing VentureBlog's success, many venture firms couldn't help but launch their blogs, making VC content marketing a norm in the venture world. What was once considered insane became a norm. Celebrating VentureBlog's 10th anniversary, Hornik wrote: "No matter what we wrote about, we were the first VCs to discuss it. And entrepreneurs were clamoring for information about venture capital. Not surprisingly, the value of this conversation we were having with entrepreneurs was not lost on others in the venture industry. And soon VC blogs started popping up everywhere we turned." It's 2022, and VC blogs haven't stopped popping. In fact, the competition is fiercer than ever, making it harder for VCs to earn mindshare with content marketing. Notwithstanding, a few VC firms have risen above that noise. OpenView Partners and First Round Capital fall in this category. How so? First Round’s organic traffic numbers are off the charts, showing a high level of brand awareness: Search alone contributes to 29.07% of this staggering traffic: OpenView also has enviable organic traffic: Search contributes to 55.65% of this traffic numbers, meaning Google considers them as a trusted resource center: Since VCs often use content marketing to build awareness, the above impressive organic traffic results prove OpenView and First Round are doing something right. Beyond that, both venture firms have attained thought leadership positions, with sites like MassChallenge, a global network of investors, ranking their blogs among the top “53 Startup Blogs Every Founder Should Read:” As a marketing lead in a VC firm, this should get you thinking: "What's the common denominator in those two firms' content marketing successes? And how can I leverage that factor for my firm's success?" The answer to that question is simple: They have a differentiating content flywheel — an engine that separates them from other VC firms and grows on a compound basis. As I showed in this , First Round is successful because they apply what I call the BEID content flywheel, meaning they: case study uild credibility with articles, B ngage their audience with newsletters, E ncrease reach by podcasting, and I istribute content via social snippets and influencers. D OpenView Partners also use traces of the framework above. Amanda (Maksymiw) Jerome, their Former Senior Marketing Associate, corroborates: "Our overall content marketing strategy has positioned OpenView as a thought leader. It wasn't one tool, one piece of content, or one event. Collectively, we have been working to share the best new ideas for senior managers of growing technology companies through our corporate blog, content site, e-newsletter, [podcast], and social media channels, and that has made an impact." Luckily, the BEID content flywheel is actionable and replicable. So, in this article, I'll break down how you can execute the BEID content flywheel in a manner that elevates your VC firm and increases your chances of attracting star entrepreneurs. Setting The BEID Content Flywheel Up for Success Before you engineer the BEID content flywheel, you need to: Understand Your Target Audience and Their Journey "Who exactly does my firm want to serve with content?" Answering this question helped First Round succeed. Alex Topchishvii, Director of Marketing at Coinlist, explains: "First Round has a very clear understanding of who their target audience is: new founders and brilliant individuals who are potential future founders. Every piece of content they create is tailored to the practical needs and utility of their audience. They provide information that their audience not just wants to see, but NEEDS to see." With the steps below, your firm can clearly understand its target audience. Who's that one person you want to provide value to via content? This will most likely be a founder. Assign a name to this persona and detail their demographics, background, personality, and preferred information sources. Select your most important target persona. Once you have pinpointed your persona, think about their goals. Say your persona is a founder. Their goals would include getting funded, hiring the right talent, achieving the right product-market fit, etc. Don't assume for your persona, though. Instead, speak to real-life founders to get their perspectives. Identify your target persona's goals. After identifying your persona's goals, think about the pain points that can stand in their way. Once aware of these pain points, it becomes easy for you to create problem-solving content that will make you the go-to VC firm. For example, if hiring the right talent is one of your target persona's pain points, you could craft a long-form article detailing successful founders' thoughts on hiring the right talent. Doing this will earn you significant mindshare and influence your audience to trust you. Highlight your persona's pain points. Armed with a great understanding of your target persona's goals and motivations, map out their journey into awareness, interest, consideration, and commitment. Understand your target persona's journey stages. List the experiences in those identified stages by speaking with your portfolio founders and top influencers. Read through your win/loss reviews too. This will give you an idea of what your persona is thinking at all stages, giving your VC the chance to answer their questions and meet their needs as early as possible. Visualize the customer journey. Determine The Size and Scale of Your Flywheel The size of your content marketing flywheel determines the amount of effort required to set it in motion and keep it going. It also determines the likely ROI. So while a bigger content flywheel will yield bigger results, it's best to have a flywheel size suitable for your marketing budget and overall capacity. This is why you need to think backward and forward. How so? Think of your firm's history, current capacity (both in financial and human resources), and track record. Afterward, consider where your firm is headed, how content marketing strategy can propel that direction forward, and the resources needed. Build A Topic Content Cluster Strategy Highlight the topics you need to cluster your content around. These topics should be relevant to your target audience's (e.g., a founder) pain points and queries. Doing this will help you build topical authority, give visitors a better experience, and make your overall content strategy more impactful. Here's a detailing how to build a topic content cluster strategy. guide Reduce Possible Friction by Putting Your House In Order Friction will slow down your content flywheel. Internally, this friction could be a lackadaisical attitude from your team, low prioritization of marketing by top stakeholders, or a lack of human resources. Externally, it could be the failure of your portfolio companies, industry-wide deterioration, or even unforeseen circumstances like the pandemic. Fortunately, there are ways to ensure none of that hinders you from making progress. In the case of internal friction, developing strong communication internally, hiring the right people, and nurturing your current staff is a way to go. If you don't have the capacity or time to build an in-house team from scratch, outsource to an agency or a freelancer. How to Execute the BEID Content Flywheel As mentioned earlier, here’s how First Round and OpenView thrive through content marketing: Build credibility with articles, Engage with newsletters, Increase reach with podcasts, and Distribute via social media, communities, and influencers. Just like a real-life flywheel needs force to spin, those four steps are the "force" useful in helping their content flywheel spin in the right direction: Here's how you can execute each of them. Build Credibility With Articles Crafting articles is one way to build your firm's credibility. Guerric de Ternay, European Innovation Lead, Software & Platforms at Accenture, : expatiates "You prove your credibility by sharing thoughtful ideas. This contributes to building a name for yourself to be top-of-mind of entrepreneurs, tech journalists, and other VCs." But merely publishing articles, albeit consistently, won't make your firm a thought leader as every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the venture world now publishes content. And so, for you to stand out, you need to craft well-thought, unique pieces. from Guerric, who did a great job at describing the need to craft unique content as a VC firm: Hear that "After almost 15 years of publishing free advice about the rules of the startup game, almost everything has been said. Everyone has access to some of the best startup lessons for free. Value comes out of scarcity. To stand out, a venture capital firm would have to do things differently: solve problems that haven't been solved, talk about things nobody talks about, come with a new angle, specialize in a vertical, and nail it." First Round and OpenView understand Guerric's point. This is why they craft actionable, in-depth content solving specific problems for their specific audience. This level of depth is possible because industry experts or their portfolio founders mostly author their blog posts. In the words of Jonathan Crowe, former Content Manager at OpenView Labs: "The main things we publish are articles. About half are produced internally, and about half are coming from guests, either people in the portfolio or industry experts." Camille Ricketts, Founding Editor of First Review, also had this to say in an : interview with Flipboard "Instead of our content coming from the company or even a content marketer at the company, we interview people who are known, proven experts at whatever it is that they're doing, and we write the articles in such a way, without bylines, that it feels like that person is speaking to you. So that's one thing—we feel like we're borrowing credibility." This is why founders have this to say about their content: Engage With Periodic Newsletter According to the Content Marketing Institute, leverage email to disseminate their content, making email the second most popular distribution channel next to social media. Another 86% use email engagement metrics such as open and click rates to judge a content piece's success. 87% of B2B marketers Email is a powerful channel, and First Round and OpenView recognize this as they have periodic email newsletters dedicated to engaging their audience. OpenView’s PLG newsletter: First Round's biweekly newsletter: New to email marketing? Here is a to direct you. guide Increase Reach With Podcast Podcasting is effective at expanding your reach and increasing your flywheel's speed as: Your busy audience can listen to podcast episodes even when they're doing something else, It allows you to share your stories expressly than written words would, and Recording a podcast episode takes less time than writing an article. These will help you stand out faster and gain significant mindshare of your desired founders. This sums it up: article on Podcast.co "Podcasts can help you transform dry and heavy topics into captivating, meaningful discussion. Storytelling, anecdotes, and interesting speakers can help bring any subject to life." First Round and OpenView use podcasting to turbocharge their flywheel. On one hand, First Round has a podcast, In Depth, spotlighting authentic conversations on company building: In contrast, OpenView's podcast, , features BUILD with Blake Barlett "conversations between venture capitalist Blake Bartlett [partner at OpenView] and the smartest folks in software." And while BUILD's episodes are authentic and informative, the OpenView marketing team extends each episode's shelf life by repurposing them into blog and newsletter formats. Take this episode, . Howie Liu (Airtable) on the Future of Low-Code/No-Code When it first launched, the team did an intensive recap via a blog post in which they embedded the episode twice. They also shared a social post containing 3 takeaways from the episode: As if that's not enough, they also created two more blog posts: and . Building a LEGO Kit, Not a Solution - Airtable's CEO on Catering to Diverse Use Cases From Bottom Up - Airtable's Approach to Distribution and Adoption Best part? Those blog posts weren't bland recap posts. Instead, they had deeper, fresh perspectives, motivating readers to listen to the episode. Similarly, podcasting can amplify your firm's reach. You can even take that amplification one step further by tapping into content repurposing just like OpenView does. That way, you're able to create once and distribute forever. Distribute Via Social Media, Influencers & Communities Excellent content marketing doesn't stop at creating and publishing content alone. Instead, it involves ensuring your target audience actually sees your content. I mean, what's the point of great content if your audience doesn't know it exists? To prevent getting crickets after publishing content, you need to adopt First Round and OpenView's tactic of distributing their content on social media. LinkedIn, Twitter, and Reddit are the top social channels driving traffic to First Round’s website: For OpenView, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are their top three social channels: But that's not all. Both firms fuel their distribution engine by leveraging a network of influencers. Hear this from Kelvin Cain, former Director of Content Strategy at OpenView: "We have spent the past few years building a substantial content factory that relies heavily on influencers. Our community site, OpenView Labs, features new content from influencers every week about the topics our target audience cares about, such as sales and marketing." According to Kelvin, OpenView has gained traction from that influencer marketing strategy. In his words: "Because we have content from a wide range of influencers, each of whom shares their content with their diverse groups of followers, we get people coming to the site who probably otherwise wouldn't. We get a steady stream of new visitors to our site every day." First Round explores influencer marketing too. But they bolster their distribution strategy by syndicating with large publications like Business Insider, Huffington Post, and Quartz. The partnership has resulted in abridged content snippets, data references, and stories about portfolio ventures, driving traffic to First Round's website: Regardless of which distribution strategy you choose, there will be occasions when your tweets, LinkedIn posts, or PR don't get traction. Whenever that happens, don't forget , Producer at Unthinkable Media: these words by Tallie Gabriel "Instead of getting discouraged when a promising tweet doesn't rack up the likes and retweets, pay attention to the clicks and check how long people stay on the page after coming from social. If your post is generating strong engagement, don't worry so much about the superficial stats." But overall, when you create navel-gazing content, engage your audience via compelling newsletters, publish refreshing podcast episodes, and distribute your unique content via socials and influencers, winning becomes inevitable. It might happen slowly, but it'll surely happen. How to Maintain the BEID Content Flywheel You've laid the foundation for the success of your content flywheel. You've also implemented the tactics vital to get your flywheel spinning. Well done! However, your job is far from complete. Just as a piece of equipment needs frequent maintenance to function optimally, you need to maintain your firm's content flywheel for continual success. Here's how to go about that. Tinker Ways to Increase Your Content Flywheel Speed The faster your flywheel is, the easier it is to achieve your goals. Consequently, improving your flywheel's speed is necessary, and you can accomplish this in two ways. First, increase the flywheel's force by creating high-impact content. For example, your audience of founders will find a well-researched market study much more impactful than five short-form pieces. Second, reduce friction by constantly reiterating your overall strategy and improving your team's quality via internal training. Refine your content strategy as you go. Think Long-Term Optimizing for only short-term, superficial gains (think: SEO rankings) rusts your flywheel. Instead of obsessing about the present, consider the end goal of your firm's marketing efforts – demand (in the form of an increase in portfolio companies or participation in your fund's events). With that in mind, focus on nurturing relationships with your audience, so you can create that demand organically and even create a community in the process. And while the BEID flywheel will help you with that, don't shy away from exploring other helpful tactics. Remember, the BEID content flywheel is a recommendation, not a silver bullet. Differentiate Your VC with a Compelling Content Flywheel With entrepreneurs having more options than ever and the VC world not as rosy as once, differentiation via content marketing has become a borderline requirement for VCs. For best results, execute content marketing in a way that compounds positive results with less effort from you over time. Enters the BEID content flywheel. Like First Round and OpenView, you, too, can use the BEID content flywheel to differentiate your firm and win competitive rounds. Start by implementing the recommendations in this article and tinkering along the way.

How to Build A Content Marketing Flywheel for Your VC Firm

The trouble with Software Innovation: from past to present Once upon a time, a bottleneck on software development innovation was access to computers. Over time, as access to computing became prevalent and software industry became a big part of the economy, the bottleneck on software development innovation switched from access to compute (since computers became ubiquitous) to the new type of development: in pursuit of profits, corporations started to restrict open access to software. To counteract this new development, a very important movement was started, led by people like Richard Stallman. For those who need a refresher: Richard Stallman leads the Free Software Movement, which shows how the usual non-free software subjects users to the unjust power of its developers, plus their spying and manipulation, and campaigns to replace it with free (freedom-respecting) software. In on “Why software should be free”, Richard Stallman argues that software He presents several reasons why preventing software distribution or modification is harmful to society: fewer people can use it, none of the users can adapt or fix the software, and other developers cannot learn from the software or create new work on top of it. his essay *development* should be viewed independently from software *distribution* or *modification*. What Richard Stallman emphasizes in his writings is that the value transfer between consumer and producer should be identified, quantified and made transparent so resources can be allocated accordingly. For example, Facebook makes $fn(x) per user based on their data footprint, and the user benefits $fn(y) from Facebook for having available and reliable services for social interactions, according to the amount of usage by the user. If Richard Stallman were to design such a value transfer, Facebook should be paying the user some marginal amount for each interaction where they glean user data and the user should be paying Facebook some marginal amount for each interaction. The vision was good, but the reality, unfortunately, didn’t exactly pan out the way Richard Stallman envisioned it. Reality: not only code is closed, but the state is also closed Unfortunately, the open source movement didn’t exactly win (for now). Even if open source as an industry is bigger than ever, most of the code is still closed due to the superior returns the software creator can extract from the ecosystem by prohibiting the free use of their software. Importantly, as the software industry evolves, something else becomes even more important than the software itself: the state of the system. “State” is information about application users and the web service itself that gets constantly updated as users use the web service. As Denis Nazarov mentioned in on “What Comes after Open Source?”, the transition from personal software tools pre-Internet (i.e. Excel, PhotoShop) to web services (i.e. Spotify, Netflix, Uber, Instagram) led to one crucial difference: instead of users maintaining their own state, a web service maintains state on the users’ behalf. This, in turn, led to a consolidation of control in the hands of services that accumulated state data (i.e. databases holding all of the information about users using the service). his essay Over time, the code that a web service is built on becomes less important than the state of the service. As more users produce more state, it leads to a more useful service that attracts further users and, as a consequence, even larger state. It becomes a virtuous (for the provider of service) cycle, resulting in more control in the hands of web services. For example, Spotify serves better music recommendations as its algorithm gets more music listening data, leading to even better recommendations and thus better user experience. As a result, more users join Spotify, which in turn generates even more data for Spotify, which then further improves the product and the user experience. It’s a flywheel: the more of the state data you have as a web service, the more value will accrue to you in long term. If you want to understand why Facebook-Amazon-Netflix-Google companies are so powerful, that’s the answer. 2019: Is Innovation Dead? This leads us to today, where both consumer web services and cloud services are in fact pretty close to oligopolies. It’s bad for the end consumer and for market innovation. When it comes to the consumer web, as Ben Thompson wrote his in : aggregation theory “The internet has fundamentally changed the plane of competition: no longer do distributors compete based on exclusive supplier relationships, with consumers/users an afterthought. Instead, suppliers can be commoditized leaving consumers/users as a first-order priority. By extension, this means that the most important factor determining success is the user experience: the best distributors/aggregators/market-makers win by providing the best experience, which earns them the most consumers/users, which attracts the most suppliers, which enhances the user experience in a virtuous cycle.” What it also means is that data saved in closed state systems leads to better user experience, further helping the dominant service grow their user base and thus grow their data. At the time of this writing, I have 11 Google apps, 7 Amazon apps and 4 Facebook apps on my phone. When it comes to the consumer web, there is a clear centralization of power going on. Not only is the consumer web consolidated in hands of few large players, but the same situation can also be observed in the enterprise software space. Ben Thompson recently observed that AWS, Azure and other cloud infrastructure services will eat open source companies alive. , but you can imagine that there will be a lot more casualties in the future. AWS and Azure will eat up the infrastructure market, while Salesforce, Workday, and ServiceNow will eat up the enterprise applications market. MongoDB is an example What’s important here is distribution: while these vendors benefit every day from using open source software, they are consolidating power due to their superior distribution. They win using the same formula as their consumer web oligopolist peers are using: the more customer data they have, the more products and services they can up-sell and cross-sell in the future. Where does it leave us? We have a consumer web controlled by companies that I can count with the fingers of a single hand, and we have an infrastructure cloud increasingly controlled by roughly the same amount of vendors. Given this consolidation, innovation outside of these companies is hard to come by. If you are an aspiring entrepreneur in 2019, it will be very difficult for you to get users, regardless of whether you’re working in the consumer web or enterprise software space. The Way Out There is a new technology that will unlock the bottleneck on software innovation. What if we take Richard Stallman’s ideas about open access to software and make them a reality? Not only this: what if we also make state data open and available for each web service? There is a combination of incentives and technology that can enable such a world. Imagine a new kind of computing. , this type of computing is both architecturally and politically decentralized, but logically centralized. Per Vitalik Buterin’s definition It is architecturally decentralized because this new computing is made of many computers talking to each other. It is politically decentralized because many individuals or organizations control the computers that the system is made up of. It is logically centralized because there is one commonly agreed state and the system behaves like a single computer. What are the advantages of having such a decentralized computer? It would allow users to see the source code that’s being executed on the back end All public data would be openly available to everyone Most importantly, it would allow for the biggest wave of innovation that the software industry has ever seen because all of the open services would be talking to each other and exchanging data Let’s call this last property “composability of services”. Composability If we take the analogy of Richard Stallman’s approach to open source software and apply it to open services, the world will be vastly different from what it is today. Per Stallman’s writings, it is important for developers to cooperate and reuse the code openly. If we apply this thinking to web services, it would mean allowing different services to use each others’ state, in turn enabling developers to reuse the web services, make them talk to each other and improve on each other’s work. Let’s see how it might work. Example #1: Open Services for Censorship Resistance Imagine a driver driving for 100 trips on Uber and gaining a stellar reputation. Imagine a scenario in which Uber censors the driver due to a bogus report, completely deleting his reputation data in the process. If OpenUber exists and is built with open data so the service talks to other similar open services, this driver now can carry his or her reputation to OpenLyft, OpenInstacart, OpenDoorDash and other web services available without any additional registration, KYC, or, more importantly, without any risk of losing the reputation. This allows all of the services to be interoperable and reusable for other interfaces and businesses, allowing the reputation of users to be also portable. This also saves users from subjective censorship. Example #2: Open Data for Better User Experience Imagine a world in which the end user owns its data. The user can provide access to his or her data in exchange for customized experience in return, thus allowing for a mutually beneficial relationship. For example, I provide my shopping data from OpenAmazon to OpenNike.com, thus allowing OpenNike.com to customize my shoe shopping experience based on the previous shoes purchasing history available through OpenAmazon. In such a world, I own the data, not the corporation I am working with. I provide my data access in exchange for differentiated user experience. It’s up to me, not up to the corporation. Conclusion That sounds like a future I want to be a part of. In order to bring this future to the present and make it a reality, we must create a new computing paradigm that would allow building scalable, decentralized and open services within minutes with intuitive development experience. As I mentioned earlier, the new type of computing, which is decentralized architecturally and politically, and yet is centralized logically, is something that can enable such a future. This future will unblock the current bottleneck in software development innovation. There are several projects focused on working towards the future outlined in this article. led by Tim Berners Lee from MIT is building a lot of fundamentals. Another example is that is building an infrastructure for open state applications, and researches ways to make such applications easy to develop and use, as well as have meaningful business models. Solid NEAR We hope that this article will spin up more projects in the area.

Richard Stallman & Future of Software Innovation

Gianluca Sacco Unveils VALR's Grand Slam Trading Incentives: A New Era in Crypto Futures

Gianluca Sacco VALR এর গ্র্যান্ড স্ল্যাম ট্রেডিং ইনসেনটিভ উন্মোচন করেছে: ক্রিপ্টো ফিউচারে একটি নতুন যুগ

Gianluca Sacco stellt VALRs Grand-Slam-Handelsanreize vor: Eine neue Ära bei Krypto-Futures

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Gianluca Sacco dévoile les incitations commerciales du Grand Chelem de VALR : une nouvelle ère dans les contrats à terme sur cryptographie

जियानलुका सैको ने VALR के ग्रैंड स्लैम ट्रेडिंग प्रोत्साहनों का खुलासा किया: क्रिप्टो फ्यूचर्स में एक नया युग

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Gianluca Sacco 揭晓 VALR 大满贯交易激励措施：加密货币期货的新时代

DePIN Tackles the World’s Most Entrenched Industries

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DePIN nimmt sich der am stärksten verankerten Branchen der Welt an

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DePINは世界で最も定着している産業に取り組む

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268 Stories To Learn About Project Management

Every year, in early January, tens of thousands of tech aficionados descend on Las Vegas for the . It’s an event best known for capturing the tech world’s current zeitgeist; 2023 was heavy on , while 2022 revolved around . Unsurprisingly, CES 2024 was all about AI. , , … this year had it all. Customer Electronic Show (CES) EVs and sustainability improved hardware and gaming setups AI for headsets AI for babies AI for pets Obviously, the press unofficially crowns winners and losers at the end of the event. There is a variety of opinions on the losers ( ), but indisputable; . Google seems to be getting a lot of votes the winner is it’s the Rabbit R1 In short, R1 is a compact, AI-powered handheld device designed to streamline daily tasks. You talk into it like you would a walkie-talkie (by pressing a side button), and get the Artificial Intelligence to tasks historically done through apps. This includes, as per the demo, planning itineraries, ordering food, or booking a taxi. Speak, then validate with a click, without browsing / tinkering. The device is equipped with a 360° camera that allows it to “see” and better answer questions regarding the physical world. Finally a piece of software accessible via a PC allows its users to “teach” it repeatable tricks to save even more time. autonomously execute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22wlLy7hKP4&embedable=true Lauded for its efficiency and simplicity, the R1 is aiming to be a to our Tony Stark. A perfect assistant. , the company making it, has already pre-sold ! J.A.R.V.I.S. Rabbit at least 30,000 units Sadly, this ( ) cute piece of tech is severely over-hyped and doomed to fail. very The Rabbit R1: the Most Over-Hyped Project in the Tech World Right Now In , Rabbit’s founder contends that Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana may understand us, but are unable to complete actions. They’re a way to use Google verbally. Hardly . He portrays the Rabbit R1 as an AI companion able to do much more, from planning a complex holiday in a few sentence to accessing your favorite artists’ concert dates. And that’s a great idea! his keynote just assistants But it’s just idea. One idea . one that could easily and entirely fit inside a single app created by a larger player Rabbit may be the first out the gate (and props to them for that), but every single device maker has had the same plan for the past 18 months. . Microsoft recently announced , specifically for its Copilot AI assistant. , meanwhile, has been a Mac staple for a while now, and is also accessible at a click of a button. Even I’ve had this idea a year ago it is adding a new key to PC keyboards for the first time since 1994 Raycast The only reason we don’t have more examples is because natively integrating app in a vast universe of products and services takes time. This is however where the value will come from: a flywheel effect wherein an actor like Apple, being already connected to all your apps (and location) via iPhone iCloud data is able to better assist you by better knowing you. yet one and Having built a whole device for a functionality literally every smartphone is going to introduce and improve on in a few months, Rabbit is essentially just another . The only reason this is a separate device instead of an app is because the company needs to have unfettered access to a camera and microphone without Apple or Google stopping them. AI wrapper Which brings us to another obvious challenge: most individuals prefer carrying or using a single device, with their phones serving as the ideal choice ( ). My iPhone will soon do what the Rabbit does… and already does so much more, today. Should you purchase a Rabbit, it will absolutely stay home when you go out. when was the last time you bought a flashlight Then we get to the R1’s party trick. The device can connect to one’s apps (Spotify, Uber, Doordash…) to take actions on one’s behalf without having to visit said apps (with the user’s permission / login via a PC). This is neat… but what if tech giants like Meta or Google or Apple refuse to play ball and make integrations with the R1’s software more complex? And what if the apps no longer want to be accessed by an AI? This type of device could seriously hurt their ad or pull-through revenues. ; how will this be any different? We’ve already seen lawsuits aimed at OpenAI / ChatGPT Strategically, this is a massive vulnerability. On the other side of the spectrum, not only do large actors like Apple and Microsoft have a breadth of offers to concatenate, they also have the power to negotiate with apps makers to provide their services via AI… and pay them for it. Which leads us to the device’s economics. , an unusually low one-time (!) price for such a product. Again, good for them, … the R1 does not use fully local AI, so you’re using their cloud. And running a cloud is expensive ( ). It’s so expensive, in fact, that a one-time purchase rather than a subscription model makes little sense, and is unlikely to last. This means the company is likely to look for new growth avenues. If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on all the “privacy-first” promises disappearing when they realise data can be sold at a good price. The Rabbit R1 is priced at $199 but 110k$ a day for ChatGPT A local AI would have been a game changer. In the future, every device, such as TVs, cars, phones, and individual applications will come equipped with built-in natural language models. These models will be small, local and limited to their purpose. What we got instead is a Pokedex connected to the Cloud. Other issues, in bullet-points, because you only have so much time to study bad tech in details During CES, Google announced it was ’s “brain”. That obsolete functions include “Checking personal travel itineraries by voice” and “making a reservation”… which were both in the R1 demo! Google has enough data to know what it’s doing: no one is using an AI assistant to do these things. removing “under-utilized features” from its AI assistant The hardware looks cool, but is pretty dreadful in terms of wasted space; around 20% of the device is empty / unused. The keyboard works poorly (allegedly), which is unfortunate : people text input because they have needs that are detailed and complex, which are not easily expressed or recorded through voice. need AI hallucinations are not addressed. Since this is an AI and nothing else, how does one check the veracity of its statements? It’s supposedly very fast (though the problem with ChatGPT was never its speed). But in the demo, I wasn’t convinced it was faster than ChatGPT4. What if you're left-handed? I could be wrong about the R1. Its first batch sold out on day One and pre-orders are through the roof. It has generated considerable consumer interest. They are the first(ish) on the market with such a gadget, and though they will be trounced by Siri 2.0, the team should be proud. It definitely seems like the early days of a tech wave. There were all kinds of weird off-the-wall designs and ideas for phones at the beginning of the smartphone wave as companies were exploring to try and find niches and see what was possible. It’s kinda fun and I’m excited to see what other weird things people come up with. Good luck out there. Also appears . here

The Rabbit R1 May Be the Most Over-Hyped Tech Gadget at CES 2024

CES 2024-এ খরগোশ R1 সবচেয়ে বেশি হাইপড টেক গ্যাজেট হতে পারে

Der Rabbit R1 ist möglicherweise das am meisten gehypte Tech-Gadget auf der CES 2024

El Rabbit R1 puede ser el dispositivo tecnológico más publicitado en CES 2024

Le Rabbit R1 pourrait être le gadget technologique le plus surfait du CES 2024

रैबिट R1 CES 2024 में सबसे अधिक चर्चित टेक गैजेट हो सकता है

Rabbit R1 は CES 2024 で最も誇張されすぎたテクノロジー ガジェットになる可能性があります

Rabbit R1은 CES 2024에서 가장 과장된 기술 장치일 수 있습니다.

O Rabbit R1 pode ser o gadget tecnológico mais badalado na CES 2024

Rabbit R1 может стать самым разрекламированным техническим гаджетом на CES 2024

Tavşan R1, CES 2024'te En Çok Abartılan Teknoloji Gadget'ı Olabilir

Rabbit R1 có thể là tiện ích công nghệ được thổi phồng quá mức tại CES 2024

Rabbit R1 可能是 CES 2024 上最被炒作的科技产品

Let's learn about via these 76 free stories. They are ordered by most time reading created on HackerNoon. Visit the to find the most read stories about any technology. Vc /Learn Repo 1. Valuing a Startup with Negative EBITDA Learn how to value a startup with negative EBITDA a startup valuation tool that stands for Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization. 2. What Will the Next Era of Marketplaces Look Like? 3. Li Jin: My Path to Venture Capital 4. Community-as-a-Service Concept: How You Can Monetize Access 5. Airtable: 26 Firms Offering Non-Dilutive Funding Options to Founders Raise money without giving up a piece of your company 6. Advice for Founders During Uncertain Times Having been in the VC business for 22 years now, we have had the misfortune of living through at least two major downturns. While each has its own unique characteristics, there are a few lessons that may be relevant in responding to the latest crisis. 7. Consider a Loan Instead of VC Money “If you’re starting a business and you take out a loan, you’re a moron,” said firebrand entrepreneur Mark Cuban in an interview with Bloomberg. 8. Being A Creator: Definition, Economy, Tools and More 9. Crypto VC Behavior Reveals Market Trends for 2023 and Beyond Crypto VCs scaled down funding significantly in 2022 due to the macro uncertainty and systemic risks such as Luna's collpase and the recent FTX debacle. 10. 10 First Principles from Investing Legends for Better Decision Making Now We're living in crazy times. Coronavirus, lockdowns, recession and riots. It's enough to make even the most seasoned investor wonder what to do next. Not to mention what it all does to an average person. 11. Invest in People, Not Companies: Identity-Centric Investment Model According to Paul A. Gompers and Anna Kovner’s research, serial entrepreneurs are the key driving forces in the modern business world. Those who succeeded once have significantly higher chances of succeeding in their next venture by 30% when compared to the first-timers. That makes the past performance of an entrepreneur is a strong indicator of a future success.[1] 12. What Will VC Investment Look Like in the Year Ahead? The crises of 2022, which came in the form of geopolitical instability, economic recession, and inflation, have taken a toll on the venture capital investment. 13. What'll Happen to Crypto After Black Monday 2020? Bitcoin was explicitly called “digital gold” back in 2011, and a 2010 InfoWorld article says: 14. Aves Lair Announces Three Startups Comprising Inaugural Accelerator Cohort New York, NY, (December 14, 2020) – Aves Lair, a New York-based venture capital and frontier technology accelerator, announced today the debut of three innovative startups in its Winter 2020 cohort. 15. Pecan.ai Raises 11 Million to Bring Machine Learning to Business Analysts Pecan.ai has just come out of stealth, raising an $11M Series A, to enable business analysts to build machine learning models automatically. Dell Capital led the round, joined by S capital and bringing the total funding of the company to $15M. 16. Bootstrapping A Marketplace: "Fake It Till You Make It" Strategy 17. Passion Economy: The "Influencer Stack" and Chinese Influencer Incubators [Tweetstorm] 18. How 100 True Fans Can Change Everything More than a decade ago, Wired editor Kevin Kelly wrote an essay called “1,000 True Fans,” predicting that the internet would allow large swaths of people to make a living off their creations, whether an artist, musician, author, or entrepreneur. Rather than pursuing widespread celebrity, he argued, creators only needed to engage a modest base of “true fans”—those who will “buy anything you produce”—to the tune of $100 per fan, per year (for a total annual income of $100,000). By embracing online networks, he believed creators could bypass traditional gatekeepers and middlemen, get paid directly by a smaller base of fans, and live comfortably off the spoils. 19. What is the Biggest Risk For Passion Economy Startups? Creators want a direct relationship with their own users, which is against the platforms’ DNA. E.g. FB restricts ability for large group admins to message members. Agree that platforms adding in direct monetization
features is a big risk though to new startups in the Passion Economy.
Here’s some tactics for startups to hedge against incumbents: 20. Future of Technology in Modern Education: Hallway Conversation 21. Why Do Investors Say "No"? All startups hunt for capital, and in order to attract it from investors or funds they need, first of all, to contact them. 22. Passion Economy: Not All Communities Are Created Equal 23. Why Hardware Will Be Sexy to Mainstream VC (in 5 Slides) If you're a software engineer looking to become a founder, consider hardware. There's a shift coming. 24. How I Managed a Fund that Gave No Money, Took No Equity and Had an Exit I managed a fund that gave no money, took no equity, and had an exit. Here's that story. 25. Passion Economy: Future of Social Products [Tweetstorm] I like this article by Sam Lessin on the future of social, but think there’s a big omission. Namely, one of the major opportunities in social is to first
focus on helping creators monetize and own their audiences, then layering in social elements on top. 26. Private Equity in Your Pocket: How Digitization Changed VC Investment Market With further simplification of access to the VC market, people will start massively investing in new technologies and shape the image of tomorrow. 27. An insight into Asia's Tech Startup Scene With the boom in technology, tech startups are booming all over the world, especially in the Asian region. In recent years, it has been noticed that startups are growing the track record of success stories in the business world. 28. Investment Trend in Generative AI Shows No Signs of Slowing Down Generative AI refers to the use of machine learning to create new content. It has the potential to revolutionize industries 29. The European Tech Champions Initiative Aims to Fend Off Non-EU Investors The European Tech Champions Initiative (ETCI) aims to fend off the threat of non-European investors acquiring such businesses as they become more established. 30. Meet the Writer: HackerNoon's Contributor Eran Elhanani, Co-Founder of BullPerks and GamesPad My name is Eran Elhanani, and I’m the Co-Founder of BullPerks, a decentralized VC and multichain launchpad, currently ranking as the #2 IDO investment platform. 31. Pros and Cons of Running a Managed Marketplace 32. Naming Your Startup: 6 Considerations for First Time Founders Naming your startup can be a tricky and time-consuming process. This article breaks down some tips and stories  from VC Partners and CEOs to get you started. 33. What Are Crypto Venture Capitalists (VCs) Investing in This Bearish Market? The value of a cryptocurrency can be influenced by various factors, including news about the cryptocurrency and its underlying technology, regulations etc 34. 5 Things That Make Ecommerce Startups Work 35. Notion : A Product That Users Love, and VCs Can't Invest Into If you somehow navigate the mysterious path to reach the Notion HQ at 1:00 PM PST on a Friday, you would find an empty office with two golden poodles and a mutt running around. The entire team would not be far though, just shy of a mile away sitting at Barzotto and eating Extra-Long Noodles pasta over a glass of sparkling white wine. Add some soft serve gelato to that. This is just one of the many idiosyncrasies you would find in this 20 member start-up that has captured over a million users with their sleek product. 36. Data Leak of $1B “Tech Unicorn” Gorillas Shows How Far Venture Capital Has Fallen VC money is spilling out onto the streets, and despite millions of dollars of investment tech companies still neglect their security. 37. Raising Money? Prioritize Smart Money When raising capital, not all startups have options—they only receive one term sheet from one interested investor. And that should be celebrated. However, some startups are “hot” enough to attract multiple VCs. 38. For Founders: How the Venture Capital Investors Deal With Your Pitch Deck А useful guide for founders on how to prepare a pitch deck and how we look on it as a VC investor. 39. Over 90% of Startups Fail, So it is Difficult for Banks to Commit Millions BBVA launched BBVA Spark in July 2022, its comprehensive financial services proposal for innovative companies in their various stages of growth. 40. How Aggregators Are Replacing Brands [Tweetstorm] 41. Your Complete Guide To Venture Capital Funding For Startups Venture Capital is an institutional investment made into early-stage startup companies. If you want the investment, you need to work on a growth plan. 42. How Technology is Helping Venture Capitalists Make Investment Decisions From stone tools to the invention of the wheel to steam engines to the internet, technology has come a long way, it has overtaken nearly all major aspects of our lives. Just take this article for example, you wouldn’t be reading it if it wasn’t for technology. 43. Critical Necessities of the Venture-Backed Startup Once you’ve obtained the capital required to launch your startup, it’s time to look at fulfilling your technical needs. Do you have a secure web server? An IT security specialist? A reliable computer setup? These are all important, but there’s more. 44. 3 Best Tips To Attract Investors Being An Outsider Unshackled Ventures founding partner Nitin Pachisia explains three ways he built a strong network during his fundraising journey. 45. Passion Economy is a Consumer Enterprization Movement 46. List of Top VC Firms Investing Into Promising HR Startups [Part 4] Hi there! My name is Vitalii Berdichevskyi, I’m a Product Manager. In this essay of the series I will share with you List of top VC's invested in HR Tech. Previous parts of the series you can find below: 47. Startup Metrics: The Dynamics of Network Effects [This essay was co-authored by my colleague D’Arcy Coolican (@dcoolican) and me. We also compiled a list of metrics to measure your network effects.] 48. [Announcement] Wise Raises $12M To Accelerate Embedded Banking Partnerships Wise, the leading embedded banking FinTech, that offers business banking via partnerships, announced today that it has closed a $12M Series A. 49. How Crypto Fund Iconium is Leading The Charge for Web3 In this post we’ll be looking at how crypto investment fund Iconium is leading the charge for development of Web3 infrastructure. 50. How To Raise Capital for Blockchain Projects (and other startups) Venture capitalists get pitched hundreds of times a year. And, even though countless articles have been written on the topic of how to present a startup to professional investors, entrepreneurs consistently fail to address check points needed by the investor to come to a decision. 51. The Hedge Fundization of VC The Hedge Fundization of VC 52. Rock, Paper, Blockchain Most data from government and financial institutions is still siloed. Public blockchains may be used by anyone and are permissionless. But how far off are we? 53. 263 Meetings, 12 Months and $128,700 in Startup Funding Later Is traction enough to raise funding for a Startup or do you need more than that? Here's how we raised $128,700 at Alpe. 54. Passion Economy: How to Organically Grow While Maintaining Paid Groups 55. Walnut Raises $2.5M Seed To Make Product Demos Easier For the Post-Pandemic World Seed round is being led by NFX with additional participation from other top SF Angels 56. Growing Your Influencer Brand Into a Sustainable Business 57. Networking at VC Events: How to Gain More Value? The pandemic and lockdowns have proven to the world the simple truth that we are social beings. 58. What Rowing For The U.S. National Team And Building A Startup Have In Common Saying “it’s not fair” won’t get you there. To be the best, you have to beat everyone. 59. Passion Economy Shall Be The Disruptor of 2021 and Beyond Clayton Christensen's disruption theory and what it means for the Passion Economy 60. The Secret Behind Successful Marketplaces [Tweetstorm] Thread: The best consumer marketplaces end up
supply-constrained, because they tap into an incredible amount of demand. For instance, Airbnb, Lyft, and Uber have seemingly infinite demand since the product/market fit is so strong–and this demand puts pressure on supply. 61. 7 Ways to Stand Out at a Tech Conference After more than 60 meetings at a major tech conference in Dubai Gitex Global 2022, I figured out what helps projects stand out and get stuck in the memory. 62. The State of Startups in the Southeast Fourth annual report reveals continued market maturation; $34.5 billion invested in southeastern startups since 2015 63. How to Choose the Right Partners in a Venture Capital Fund When you are searching for the right venture capital fund, there are a lot of factors that can go into deciding which fund to choose. 64. How Hacker Noon Leans on Our Community -  a #CUBoulder Talk by Linh Dao Smooke Transcript of COO Linh Dao Smooke's talk on how Hacker Noon leans on their community as a fundraising mechanism as opposed to traditional VCs. 65. Takeaways from Sequoia Capital's Black Swan Memo Soothsayer Sequoia Capital warned its portfolio companies in a memo—how can startups stay healthy? 66. Disruption Theory for the Passion Economy: 4 Major Implication (Part 2) Passion Economy platforms are rooted in a value proposition that deeply appeals to workers—they lower the barriers to earning income 67. The Passion Economy’s Worklife Balance The top-earning writer on the paid newsletter platform Substack earns more than $500,000 a year from reader subscriptions. The top content
creator on Podia, a platform for video courses and digital memberships,
makes more than $100,000 a month. And teachers across the US are
bringing in thousands of dollars a month teaching live, virtual classes
on Outschool and Juni Learning. 68. The Future of Marketplaces: Reinventing the $10 Trillion Service Economy [I co-wrote this essay with my a16z partner Andrew Chen. We’re excited about the future of marketplaces and the service economy. Hope you enjoy this glimpse into our thinking, and let us know if you have any feedback!] 69. Live Shopping Features On Social Media And Interview With Chinese Social Commerce Tycoon How new models of e-commerce can enable the Passion Economy 70. How We Closed Our First Pre-Seed Round in 2 Weeks We got accepted into YC on the 9th of December 2019. Originally, we wanted to raise a pre-seed round before starting YC on the 6th of January. But at the same time, we didn’t want to incorporate the company in 2019 so we wouldn’t have to deal with the taxes for 2019. Call us lazy! One would say lazy is not bad, as long as it’s smart lazy! 71. How to Fix Entrepreneurship in Europe I Studied Entrepreneurship in 4 Countries. Here's How To Fix it in Europe. 72. What to Learn from the Power User Curve The importance of power users Power users drive some of the most successful companies — people who
love their product, are highly engaged, and contribute a ton of value to the network. In ecommerce marketplaces it’s power sellers, in ridesharing platforms it’s power riders, and in social networks it’s influencers. 73. Startup Metrics: 16 Ways to Measure Network Effects [This post was co-authored by me and my colleague at a16z, D’Arcy Coolican (@dcoolican). This is a companion to our other essay exploring the dynamics of network effects. If you’re an operator, we’d love to hear your thoughts on how you measure your own product’s network effects!] 74. How to Build a Company in Highly Regulated Marketplaces: 8 Things to Consider What can founders / operators do when it comes to navigating the complexities that come with the territory in regulated industries? Here are some opportunities. 75. Bigger picture with the Decentralized identifiers This article summarizes DIDs and VCs' fundamental principles, describes the use in the real world, and provides bonus materials for tech-savvy readers. 76. How to Invest Intelligently in the Podcast Ecosystem In the world of podcasting, the flywheel is spinning: new technologies including AirPods, connected cars, and smart speakers have made it much easier for consumers to listen to audio content, which in turn creates more revenue and financial opportunity for creators, which further encourages high-quality audio content to flow into the space. There are now over 700K free podcasts available and thousands more launching each week. Thank you for checking out the 76 most read stories about Vc on HackerNoon. to find the most read stories about any technology. Visit the /Learn Repo

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