A stealth startup is a type of startup company that operates in quiet and silence to outsiders, avoiding public attention. This may be done to hide information from competitors (which may include non-disclosure agreements), or as part of a marketing strategy to manage public image and generate ...

Stealth startup - Wikipedia

For true “stealth mode”, startups avoid any public awareness of their existence, buying time to validate ideas before emerging into the spotlight. There are several strategic reasons highly secretive stealth tactics make sense for some companies:

Stealth startup: The complete guide | by Marshall Hargrave | Medium

191 Stealth Startup reviews. A free inside look at company reviews and salaries posted anonymously by employees.

Stealth Startup Reviews | Glassdoor

A stealth startup is a startup company that operates in stealth mode, i.e. that avoids public attention. This may be done to hide information from competitors, or — as part of a marketing strategy — to manage public image. The phenomenon is well known in the venture capital (VC) community.

Stealth Startup | LinkedIn

A way to find stealth startups is to track the movements of employees, for example, when a person of caliber such as a distinguished university, entrepreneur community, ex-engineer at FAANG

Stealth Startups - The Good, The Bad & Where To Find Them

Who doesn’t like to keep a secret, even if it’s a whole business operation? Here’s what a stealth startup is, and why you might want to give it a try.

What is a Stealth Startup - Should Your Business Go Stealth-Mode?

A stealth mode startup refers to ... While other startups seek the public limelight, startups in stealth mode do the very opposite and hide information about themselves, having only a general summary description of the company published....

What is a Stealth Startup? Stealth mode startups explained

I’ve hinted at some of the problems stealth startups face above, but fear and lack of confidence aren’t the only ones. Here are a few aspects of building a company that get harder when you’re trying to keep your operation under wraps:

The Founder's Guide to Stealth Startups - Karl Hughes

In stealth startup a startup operates in temporary secrecy to avoid public attention, be invisible to competitors or hide information.

What Is Stealth Startup? - Types & Examples – Feedough

Read this exciting story from Inc. December 2019. Once a recurring punch line in Johnny Carson’s monologues, the agriculture-and-oil town of Bakersfield, California—home to the country’s most prolific carrot farm—is not the most obvious example of a West Coast startup hub.

California's Stealth Startup Hub

Stealth Startup

stealthstartup

Interoperability in blockchain technology refers to the ability of different blockchain networks to seamlessly communicate, collaborate, and exchange information or value with one another. The blockchain faces a trilemma problem which is to ensure that , and are achieved simultaneously. But this is easier said than done. While many newer chains claim that they have solved the trilemma problem, it still remains to be proven. Only 2 out of the above-mentioned 3 aspects have been achieved by all the chains. Security Decentralization Scalability That is the reason there are lots of new Blockchains coming up every now and then solving a niche problem faced by previous existing chains. Hence, many different types of dApps are built on different chains leading to the fragmentation of resources and assets across chains. Also, transactions have always been a single-chain concept. This makes it more than ever, the need to have an interoperability infrastructure that makes it possible to transfer assets cross-chain. And these infrastructure/protocol needs to work in a trustless manner to ensure they uphold the very foundation that the web3 technology is built. In this article, we will be looking at one such project working on interoperability called LayerZero. #WhatTheFork is LayerZero? LayerZero started out as a stealth startup and describes itself as an interoperability protocol that uses a low-level messaging system to enable cross-chain transactions. omni-chain LayerZero sets itself apart from other bridges by mentioning that it relies on simple messaging, unlike other bridges which use lock and withdrawal mechanisms (which will be explained in the later part of this article). At the time of writing this article, LayerZero has raised about $120M in its series B round, hitting a valuation of $3B. Their investors include giants like Multicoin Capital, Binance Labs, A16z, FTX (lol), Sequoia, Coinbase, Gemini, PayPal, Uniswap and many others. LayerZero announced their beta launch at around mid-March 2022 with 7 EVM chain integrations — Ethereum, Avalanche, Polygon, BNB Chain, Fantom, Arbitrum and Optimism. By Sept 2022, LayerZero supported 11 chains including Swimmer, DFK, Harmony, and Moonbeam. Since we have set the context for What is and the Importance of Interoperability, let’s look at how LayerZero achieves this differently from other bridges. How do exchange bridges function? Creation of a representation of the asset: When a user wants to move an asset from one chain to another, the bridge creates a representation of the original asset on the target blockchain. This representation is often referred to as a “wrapped” or “pegged” token. Locking of the original asset: To ensure the total supply of the asset remains unchanged, the original asset is locked or put into a smart contract on the source blockchain. This ensures that the asset cannot be accessed or spent while it is being used on the target blockchain. Verification and confirmation: The bridge uses a combination of validators or nodes to come to a consensus, so as to verify and confirm transactions between the two blockchains. These validators are responsible for ensuring that the transactions are valid and secure. Minting of the wrapped asset: Once the original asset is locked and the transaction is confirmed, the bridge mints the wrapped or pegged token on the target blockchain. This token represents the original asset and can be used within the target blockchain ecosystem. Redeeming the original asset: When a user wants to move the asset back to the source blockchain, the wrapped or pegged token is burned or destroyed on the target blockchain. The bridge then unlocks the original asset on the source blockchain, making it available for the user to access or spend once again. The intermediate consensus layer as described in step 3, though usually implemented in a secure manner, does require the user to trust a side chain to facilitate the token transfer. Also, there are unnecessary overheads in the form of wrapped tokens which then have to be swapped for the actual tokens the user wants to use. This solution is cost heavy and if the consensus layer breaks for some reason, that can become the reason for a huge disaster. How does LayerZero work? Before diving into the depths, let’s take a look at the various components involved in making this whole thing work and then, a step by step guide on the entire transaction lifecycle. Components of LayerZero Endpoints Oracles Relayers Endpoints Endpoints are a collection of smart contracts Every chain has one endpoint implemented as a series of on-chain smart contracts An Endpoint’s purpose is to allow the user to send a message using the LayerZero protocol backend, guaranteeing valid delivery Endpoints are split into 4 modules: , & Communicator Validator Network These 3 modules make up the core functionality of LayerZero Endpoint. These modules act in a manner similar to a network stack, with messages sent down the stack on the sender side — to to and then up the stack on the recipient side. Communicator Validator Network Libraries LayerZero Endpoint can be extended via , which are auxiliary smart contracts that define how communication for a specific chain should be handled. Libraries Each chain in the LayerZero network has an associated , and each Endpoint includes a copy of every . Library Library Oracles An Oracle is a third-party service that can make off-chain data available on-chain. Here, Oracle provides a mechanism to read a block header from one chain and send it to another chain. Relayers The Relayer is an off-chain service that is similar in function to an Oracle, but instead of fetching block headers, it fetches the proof for a specified transaction. To ensure valid delivery of messages, the Oracle and Relayer must be independent of each other. The users can implement their own Relayer service and the Oracle is handled by Chainlink which is currently the industry leader. Architecture Let’s break the above architecture into multiple steps A User Application (UA) uses LayerZero’s reference and executes a transaction. The UA sends a request to LayerZero’s with information about the transaction, such as a transaction identifier, data to be transferred from A to B (payload), identifier pointing to the UA smart contract on Chain B (dst), etc. Relayer Communicator The sends this data in the form of a LayerZero Packet to the . Communicator Validator The sends the transaction identifier and the identifier for the smart contract on Chain B to the . As a result, the gets notified that the block header from Chain A needs to be sent to Chain B. Validator Network Network Summary of steps 1–3: A UA packages and transmits the data on Chain A to LayerZero’s endpoint on Chain A. 4. The forwards this information to the . As a result, the is notified to prefetch the transaction proof and send it to Chain B. Validator Relayer Relayer 5. The sends the identifier for the smart contract on Chain B along with the block ID of the transaction to the . As a result, the is notified to fetch the block header for the current block on Chain A and send it to Chain B. Network Oracle Oracle Summary of steps 4 & 5: LayerZero’s Endpoints on Chain A send the transaction’s information to LayerZero’s reference Relayer and block ID of the transaction to the Oracle. 6. The then obtains the block header from Chain A. Oracle 7. The receives the transaction proof from Chain A and stores it off-chain. Relayer Summary of steps 6 & 7: The Relayer and the Oracle receive the transaction proof and block header, respectively, from Chain A. 8. The waits for a certain number of block confirmations before confirming that the block has been successfully committed on Chain A. Post confirmation, the sends the block header to the on Chain B. Oracle Oracle Network 9. The sends the block hash to the Network Validator. 10. The forwards the block hash to the . Validator Relayer 11. The sends transactions that match the current block. Relayer 12. The ensures that the transaction is valid and committed by going through the transaction proof and the block headers stored by the . If the block header and transaction proof match, the transaction information is sent to the communicator in the form of a Validator Network Packet. 13. The emits the information (Packet) to the User Application on Chain B. Communicator Summary of steps 8–13: LayerZero’s Endpoint on Chain B obtains the information initiated by the UA on Chain A using the block header and emits it to the UA on Chain B. What’s in it for the users No more hassle of switching between multiple networks. Less the clicks, the better the UX. No need of executing multiple transactions and switching between tokens and their wrapped counterparts. Less money spent on transaction fees means more money to spend on other things. No need to trust any centralized systems or intermediary chains. Ease of transacting between chains and access to a very wide range of liquidity pools. What’s in it for the developers — User applications building with LayerZero simply needs to implement two functions — send and receive. Any of the supported chains can be integrated with constraints. Basically, the team over at LayerZero has taken the approach. Ease of Integration developer-first — LayerZero, as its name suggests, is a ground-level piece of infrastructure that can be utilized by liquidity networks, multi-chain yield aggregators, multi-chain lending protocols, and many other dApps to build out super interesting and uniquely multi-chain crypto use cases. Potential — LayerZero has built out its own explorer — , where cross-chain transactions are now tied together in a single database which allows users and developers to easily pull the state, status, and timing of transactions. LayerZero Scan LayerZero Scan To summarize The current experience of using bridges is not a pleasant one. LayerZero looks quite promising and if the developer and user experience turns out to be how they claimed, then it can be a game changer in bringing about mass adoption. That’s all for now folks.. Will be back with more articles in the #WhatTheFork series. Also being a web3 engineer by profession, I am planning to write developer guides on such topics, explaining in detail such protocols/products from an integration perspective. More of degen less of normies stuff. Find me on the web . here Also published . here

#WhatTheFork Is LayerZero

In , LinkedIn released news highlighting the increasing prevalence of contracting roles in technology companies, with 19.5% of all paid tech listings on LinkedIn being for contractor positions, up more than three times from 5.7% in January 2021. December 2022 This can be attributed to a variety of factors, including but not limited to the rise of remote employment due to the COVID-19 pandemic, increased flexibility by Web3-native workplaces, and even cross-border national and state-level employment rules, to name a few. This enhanced insight into the future of employment, particularly when it comes to Web3, offers an interesting use case on how employers and employees will work together in the future. Current trends like China’s “ ” ( 躺平) movement and the rise of the eponymous “ ” trend have taken employers by storm, contradicting efforts by both the Chinese government and American employers to return to previous working relationships after the COVID-19 pandemic. lying-flat quiet-quitting Additionally, these trends highlight a distinct desire for reduced reliance on corporate identities that require very staunch employer-employee relationships, something that companies and startups alike have begun to explore as change agents themselves. Recent Trends in the Employment Space Employer-employee agreements have changed in recent history, with trends in the few years throughout the world highlighting the need to evolve from a simple “I am an employer and you are my employee” relationship that many have been accustomed to in past decades. In China, the “ ” ( 躺平) movement began trending in , with individuals participating in this movement adopting a more laissez-faire approach to employment, in contrast to societal pressures to overwork, as represented by China’s , where employees are expected to work from 9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week. lying-flat early 2021 996 work culture A predominately Western-based perspective adjacent to “lying-flat” began taking the Internet by storm in , with individuals subscribing to “quiet-quitting” simply doing their job, but not going above and beyond for their employers. mid-2022 Changing Employment Narratives via Web3 Web3’s decentralized emphasis will undoubtedly place an even greater change on the typical employer-employee dynamic. Concepts like decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), new takes on profit-sharing arrangements, and other forms of rewarding employees for work will result in further changes away from the traditional employer-employee dynamic. DAOs are unique because of their organizational structure as entities that are collectively-governed organizations with no centralized form of leadership. In this format, members are able to earn tokens based on their , with individuals working as much or as little to achieve increasing benefits such as improved status, additional rewards, and/or more. contributions to the DAO Web3-based profit-sharing arrangements such as DAOs are just one way of rewarding individuals beyond the traditional employer-employee relationship, with another example being Bitcoin mining, with miners receiving rewards for essentially growing the Bitcoin ecosystem. While some may argue that decentralized work arrangements common to Web3 are ineffective and can result in drastic entity collapses such as in the case of the , the collective buy-in from individuals on a global scale to participate in the ever-growing Web3 ecosystem, as represented by , highlights that such examples are simply the minority. FTX meltdown cryptocurrency users These types of “growing pains” will nevertheless continue, particularly as governments and individuals alike continue to learn about and grow participation in Web3, forever changing the traditional employer-employee relationship. Changing Identities in the Decentralized Workplace Cultural perspectives towards work have also changed in recent history. In previous years, reliance on having a specific corporate entity tied to one’s individual identity, as exemplified in Japan’s infamous , was highlighted as particularly important for individuals in terms of salary, compensation, and status. salaryman culture However, Web3 removes some of these consolidated barriers to entry for individuals, with automated protocols and decentralized tools being among some of the functions replacing traditional brick-and-mortar institutions for rewarding individuals for work. This reduction in corporate reliance can even be seen in something as simple as employment histories, with some individuals working just months on a Web3 project, while others work on multiple projects simultaneously. The need for one employer to establish social credibility and work history is changing alongside individuals’ need to find validation via their employer in society. Identifying Alternative Models of Employment New methods of employment are also on the horizon in terms of changing the employer-employee dynamic in the Web3 world. The tech field itself brought such change to popular attention due to the between contract work and full-time employment (FTE), with differences in wages, benefits, and paid time off being among some of the differences between contractors and FTEs. divide Additionally, the tech field has also popularized a project-based approach to employment, with workers being employed primarily by a scope of work established by a parent company. This project-based employment approach differs from contracting because of its more limited engagement period, and also distinguishes itself from traditional general management consulting engagements because of its more niche and specific application. Large tech companies and startups alike are seeing the growth potential of project-based employment, with programs like offering short-termed project durations for contract workers, with many of these roles facing . Accenture Flex Web3-adjacent fields Additionally, some startups are putting their own spin on this niche industry, with one example being a subscription-based marketplace platform for talent operators, executive strategists, and career coaches. “We’re interested in changing the way people view work and how people are rewarded for their time,” says stealth startup founder and CEO John Dio, an expert in human resource management and recruiting. “We’re also currently seeing individuals seeking out opportunities that work with their schedule, particularly in Web3. We’d like to ensure that we play a part in facilitating that connection between companies and people.” Conclusion All in all, the changing nature of how employer-employee relationships work will change the nature of employment in the future. Web3 offers an interesting alternative to a traditional conglomerate hiring and retaining individuals for specific tasks and their time, with current workplace trends running antithesis to what some might call an “ ” model of employment. outdated It will be interesting to see how the concept of employment changes further in the future, with Web3 accelerating alternative transitions to how individuals view work, and employers needing to be flexible and agile to new definitions of work.

Exploring the Future of Employer/Employee Relationships in Web3

Web3 এ নিয়োগকর্তা/কর্মচারী সম্পর্কের ভবিষ্যত অন্বেষণ করা

Erkundung der Zukunft der Arbeitgeber-/Arbeitnehmerbeziehungen in Web3

Explorando el futuro de las relaciones empleador/empleado en Web3

Explorer l'avenir des relations employeur/employé dans Web3

Web3 में नियोक्ता/कर्मचारी संबंधों के भविष्य की खोज

Web3 における雇用主と従業員の関係の未来を探る

Web3에서 고용주/직원 관계의 미래 탐구

Explorando o futuro das relações empregador/empregado na Web3

Web3'te İşveren/Çalışan İlişkilerinin Geleceğini Keşfetmek

Khám phá tương lai của mối quan hệ của người sử dụng lao động/nhân viên trong Web3

探索 Web3 中雇主/雇员关系的未来

Launching a startup is not a walk in the park. From talking to VCs, closing deals, and intense time management, to research and development, every entrepreneur knows that starting a business from the ground up is like pushing a boulder up a mountain. On today’s episode of Startups On Demand, I am joined by , CEO and Co-Founder of , a stealth startup in the field of healthcare analytics. Ian Sanders Blue Cape We talk about his journey as a special forces operator turned security consultant turned software engineer turned CEO, the inception of Blue Cape, and what it takes for an entrepreneur to succeed in today’s competitive business environment. Omri: Thank you so much for being on the show. Tell me something about yourself and your background. Ian: I come from a security background. I started as a special forces operator in Unit 217 which is my military service. Afterward, I went into the world of security contracting. So I became a security consultant for the leading mining companies in the world, and I did that for quite a bit of time. That’s also when I tried starting a security consulting company dealing in the mining industry, which was my first taste of entrepreneurship and got me so hooked. I tried to give a go of it, couldn’t make it, and that’s life. You just pick up and keep on moving, and that’s it. I decided to come back to Israel and started exploring computer science and started building all these applications, and different products, and got super interested in the world of environmental surveillance, and basically, when COVID-19 hit us, we saw how these little respiratory diseases are able to cause massive disruption in multiple markets, and almost crashed the world economy at the time. It became extremely clear to me that instead of trying to build these weather prediction models at the time, there was this entirely new field of respiratory disease models that we need to overcome. We need to have that data. We need to provide that data. And that’s what Blue Cape is here to do, at the end of the day. Omri: Can you talk more about what Blue Cape does? Ian: We consider ourselves as a synergy of health and environment where they both come together. We work more on respiratory diseases directly. First, with the virus – COVID-19, influenza, then eventually we move on to COPD and asthma. Omri: Take me to your day-to-day life right now. What does it look like? Ian: In the very beginning, we were really grinding it out, but now, we’re doing more on long sales cycle enterprise deals. The deals that we’re doing right now, in particular, are in motion with the number of clients, and it’s really about building our presentations, going to this meeting, going to that meeting, setting up our partnership channel, finding the right people, and setting everything up to be completely ready, so the minute that we launch in the US, we’ll take the entire market. https://youtu.be/hgDFg3bJS6w?embedable=true Omri: We now have different levels of entrepreneurs. How do you think the level of the playing field changes with each level? Ian: An entrepreneur becomes much more strategic as the company grows. It’s like being in a team. The higher you go up in ranking and the more people you have, the bigger the organization that you need to understand, and the more strategic your thinking needs to be, both short-term and long-term. I really give credit to Elon Musk because I think he’s one of the greatest, if not the greatest entrepreneur of the 21st century, because even at his current stage with everything that he’s doing, he’s willing to directly go to the head of R&D or head of DevOps, and he would have a good understanding of what exactly needs to be done. That’s exactly what a CEO needs to do. Omri: These days, some CEOs and leaders are no longer doing the work. I think the leading entrepreneurs, they’re able to set out a few hours a day to actually do meaningful, deep work. What’s your take on that? Ian: Peter Thiel said that the greatest entrepreneurs are not the super experts. They’re not the person with the perfect GPA. They’re not going to be those types of people. It’s the generalists. It’s the people who are decent in machine learning, have a good understanding of engineering, good understanding of distribution channels, etc. They have 10 or 15 skill sets that are good. There is no total lack of information, and they can combine all those things together into a very deadly combination. Also published here

An Interview With Ian Sanders: Entrepreneurship, Being a Leader, and More

Rising Above the Tide: How Space Startups in Spain Pioneer with Cutting Edge Tech 

Among the 2,000+ deserving humans nominated across 5 categories for over 200 award titles, we discovered , who’s has been nominated for a 2020 #Noonie in the Without further ado, we present to you, our big techy world, from the perspective of The 2020 #Noonies are here,and they are both much greener and much bigger than last year. Iman Tumorang  from Indonesia Software Development and Technology categories. Iman  . 1.  Which 2020 Noonies have you been nominated for? Hacker Noon Contributor of the Year - Golang; Hacker Noon Contributor of the Year - DOCKER; Hacker Noon Contributor of the Year - KUBERNETES; Hacker Noon Contributor of the Year - LEARNING TO CODE; Hacker Noon Contributor of the Year - PROGRAMMING; Hacker Noon Contributor of the Year - SOFTWARE ENGINEERING; Hacker Noon Contributor of the Year - TESTING 2. Tell us a bit about yourself. I'm Iman, a Software Engineer. I love solving scaling problems from a product perspective, because I believe there's no such a silver bullet to help to scale products. And working on products forces me to learn and improve myself, every time. I also love to solve engineering problems, like  helping engineers move faster without being blocked by manual processes. I'm passionate about Startup culture: is my motto. Move Fast and Fix Things I have with expertise in Software Architecture, Microservices Architecture and Design, API Development and Go (Golang). 3. What's your writing process? I love writing about stuff that I experienced, especially in Software Engineering. Like for example, every time I face interesting obstacles or solve a new problem when work on any given project, then I'll write about it as soon as possible. just 4. What are you most excited about right now? I'm excited about my side project... It's a stealth startup, so I can't disclose it for now. 5. What are you worried about right now? Covid. It's getting worse, but people are just getting used to it. 6. What's the most useful advice you've ever given somebody? Sometimes it's okay to a bit selfish for your career. 7. How has the pandemic changed your life and/or career? I'm still good, and my current employer also doing well. 8. If we gave you $10 million to invest in one thing right now, where would you put it? I'll work on my startup! (I'll gladly discuss for the details, if anyone is in the market for a wise investment... 😉) 9. Which apps can't you live without? Google! It's just getting better, and it's becoming my 3rd brain. 10. What are you currently learning? Finding my "ikigai"... For much the same reasons Hacker Noon decided not to put good ideas behind pop-ups or paywalls — nor abuse your personal data to target you with creepy ads — we also decided that you don’t have to be a #thinkfluencer or have 50k followers on Twitter to earn the recognition that comes with a 2020 Noonie Nomination. NOONIES NOMINATIONS ARE OPEN ACROSS 5 CATEGORIES — , , , and , — UNTIL AUGUST 12, 2020Make somebody’s day and nominate them to be recognized in the internet’s most independent and community-driven awards: ! technology decentralization software development future heroes, back to the internet Blockchain NOONIES.TECH

"It's Okay To Be Selfish For Your Career" — Iman Tumorang, 7x Dev Noonie Nominee

It should come as no surprise that investment in tech startups is booming. Early stage startups are on-pace to reach over $8 billion dollars of funding this year in 2018, while late stage startups are receiving over $70 billion. But what does this mean for startups in stealth? If you haven’t heard of a startup, does it even really exist? Are credible startups with real venture dollars remaining in stealth for longer as they build their technology? What we’ve seen at Brex is that the stealth startup economy is thriving. Brex has identified over $1.43B in stealth capital outstanding, with the vast majority raised in the last two years. These stealth startups make up 3–5% of the overall startup market. And some of the most high profile startups in Machine Learning, Autonomous Driving, and Fintech are announcing large capital raises directly out of stealth. So where are VCs investing their dollars the most? We did a comprehensive analysis of thousands of companies to see what are the major trends in terms of which industries are getting funding — and which are not. Stealth Capital *click to expand graphics What’s Hot Last year, VCs predicted that the top industries that would see investment were: Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Fintech, and Security. Were these predictions applicable to stealth companies, and if not, what were the top 5 industries in stealth for VC investment? Here’s what we found among startups in stealth: Financial Services saw the highest amount of stealth VC investment this year Healthcare came in at #2. Surprisingly, VCs invested in 23% fewer companies in this space than the #1 spot Consumer & Enterprise Software is the 3rd fastest growing industry in stealth Real Estate and Biotechnology round out the top of the group Artificial Intelligence and Security are among the top 40th percentile of stealth VC investment What’s Not So where was VC investment in stealth startups light this year? Depending on who you ask, less VC funding in specific industries could signify a great market opportunity for emerging startups in 2019. Reviewing the findings of our data, there were some surprises. Here were the industries with the least amount of stealth startup investment in 2018: Natural Resources, Government Technology, and Operating Systems were all tied as bottom performers in terms of VC investment this year The Event Technology space saw a slowdown in VC funding Video, Messaging, and Technology as well as Content and Publishing also saw light investment this year Gaming saw less investment in 2018, part of an overall decline in gaming investment since 2014, and a shift towards investment in gaming in the VR space Conclusion Operating in stealth is a tactic many startups use strategically, often to develop more complex technologies, protect intellectual property, or increase interest in their product before their public release. While some have speculated that investing in stealth is risky, our findings reveal that VC funding in stealth startups show no sign of slowing down. As an emerging startup, it can be difficult to gain a full line of sight into your industry — especially when many others might be operating in stealth mode. For startups in stealth, we hope this analysis sheds light on just how many of you are out there and how large of an impact you have on the venture world. Methodology Brex analyzed thousands companies. We compared these companies with comprehensive outbound databases of known startups — including sources like Crunchbase. If a company existed in our signups, but not in our outbound database, then we classified the startup as in stealth. We found that over 3% were in stealth. Because we are a corporate credit card, we have access to our client’s financial activity including capital raising. We used the max value across all bank accounts to determine the amount of funding they have received. We aggregated this capital over each stage and imputed a similar distribution to the total probable stealth market, giving us $1.43B in total early stage stealth capital. Companies who asked that their data not to be shared were not used, and any company that does not wish to share its data for future aggregated analysis may request to exclude it from being shared in the aggregate.

2018 Stealth Capital Report: Tracking Hidden Billions

Unicorns are sooooooo 2016. Hello, investor! I know you see a lot of pitches every day. Some might seem promising, or even too good to be true. But let me tell you today about a deal you’ll sincerely regret if you don’t accept it right now. I’d like to introduce you to my startup, which I, the founder and CEO, am valuing at $6,000,000,000,000. I can’t tell you much about the company because I don’t want you to steal the idea, but TRUST ME when I say my stealth startup is going to be worth three times the GDP of a medium-sized developed nation! I know my startup has mass market potential because my friends Larry, Sue and Jerrod all said it “sounded cool” when I asked them about it over kamikaze shots at TGI Friday’s. I’m well aware that this valuation in 12 times that of Amazon. However, my company has something Amazon doesn’t: a really quirky logo! In fact, my startup is so innovative and synergistic it doesn’t even have a NAME! Instead, I had a street artist named Drunk Charlie develop a symbol made up of zeros to represent all the money I’m going to make when my startup reaches its $6,000,000,000,000 potential. My product is in demand! I’m proud to say it has 972 backers through our crowdfunding effort. Therefore, please understand that in order to be part of a our $6,000,000,000,000 startup, you’ll be put on a cap table with 972 other people who helped us raise a grand total of $1,280. I understand the odds are against me. But I believe I have everything I need to succeed, such the terrific advice of extremely reasonable and trustworthy strangers on reddit. They’ve never steered me wrong, like when they told me the best way to get rid of a cofounder is to hide the body. Thank you for the great advice, KewlGuy1026! I understand investors typically invest in the founder and not just the product. You should know I’m an outlier. I know it’s true because I read that Malcolm Gladwell book. I’ve been working 23 hour days just to make sure I can get my 10,000 hours in a year and a half. I don’t even sleep! I just use that extra hour to laugh at people who need eight hours of sleep at night to function. Hahaha… you guys are all idiots! There is NO competition for my product! Some might say that this is because thousands of startups have tried and failed with our concept once they realized there isn’t as much demand as they’d hoped. But I think it’s because my project is so innovative that even Elon Musk is going to be like, “Dude, I can’t believe I didn’t think of that! Let me throw money at you! Daddy’s gonna MAKE IT RAIN!” The market is everyone in North America. And South America. And Africa. And Europe. And Asia. And everywhere! Except Australia — no one on my team wants to deal with the 20-hour flight just to drive down the highway and accidentally hit a kangaroo. You might be curious why I need money to accelerate my company’s growth. As of right now, we’re pre-revenue… and pre-product… and pre-business model. But, if you fund us, I plan to make the most of your investment by spending that money on an awesome ping-pong table, copious amounts of alcohol and company swag made from 14-carat diamonds. Fuck other startups and their damn tote bags! Tote bags are too small for big shit and too big for little shit. I’d also like to get a pet stallion in the office as a company culture initiative, but I understand if that’s a cost that should wait until Series B. In the future, my product will combine AI with VR and machine learning for big data on the blockchain, all while using self-driving cars leased in Bitcoin. If this sounds absurd and pointless, then let me tell you, you clearly aren’t reading enough industry buzzwords! Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from when you’re ready to hand-deliver a check for $30,000,000,000. Like this piece? I promise to write more if enough of you click on the ❤️ below! Thanks so much for your support!

Please Invest In My Startup, Which I’m Valuing at $6,000,000,000,000

Most people won’t give you any real advice, but then again, most people aren’t looking for real…

Everything, everywhere, will soon be continuously recorded and uploaded to the internet. This will start with dense, urban areas, but over time every single square meter of every part of the globe will be recorded. Advances in computer vision & AI mean this data will be usable at scale, which will revolutionise advertising, law enforcement, and bring us back to a pre-privacy world. (and yes, you guessed it, the movie to pair this post with is Minority Report) Photo Courtesy of Tesla Video Everywhere Here is where we are today: record videos of anywhere on earth. This is what enables for instance (a Google subsidiary) to sell HD video feeds of any place on earth for commercial applications. In most cases the resolution is still quite coarse — for instance you can monitor whether a truck is on a building site from space, but not see its license plate. Satellites & Drones Terra Bella have proliferated as sensor costs have dropped and surveillance requirements increase both at the national security level and the individual level (home security, babycams, etc). There are more than 6 Million CCTVs in the UK ( ). CCTVs & Home Camera systems source recordings have increased ridiculously. For an order of magnitude: more than 4 Hours of video are uploaded to Youtube each day ( ). This isn’t slowing down as the 50% of the planet who do not yet have smartphones get access to them, and products such as Facebook Live, Twitter’s Periscope, and Snapchat drive current smartphone users to take more (now ‘live’) video. Consumer Video Million source But the real step change is around the corner: will become mass market, and will need to record a constant video feed of what the user is seeing to be able to augment the view with software.. Today Microsoft Hololens and Snapchat Spectacles are leading, and have very small penetration. But many smart, well funded people are working on making AR work, spearheaded by $5bn in funding and 700+ employee stealth startup . Augmented Reality “googles” Magic Leap Photo courtesy of Snap Inc This is huge when you consider the scale of this AV revolution as a , but even more mind-blowing when you consider the role AVs in an even bigger market — logistics. As the market demands increasingly “on-demand” goods ( ) AVs (including drone) will be the cost effective path for companies to satiate this need. If driving the vehicle is free and powering it becomes practically free (with the advances in electric engines efficiency and Solar Power) — why not get 10 shirts shipped to your door for you to try on and return the 9 you don’t like? (For more on this: my friend Alex Flamant gave on this topic at the London Futurists meetup.) Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) will become mass market and will capture continuous, high definition, high frame rate, 360° video. replacement for all cars today Amazon now offer 1 hour deliveries a prescient talk Source: Google Self-Driving Car Project Monthly Report As these technological evolutions march on, we are getting closer to continuous HD video recording of every square meter of every part of the globe. Now. As awesome as some videos are ( ), no one is going to sit through and watch all this stuff… here’s a funny one From Video to Insight Fuelled by this explosion of video data, there have been incredible advances in Computer Vision over the last 20 years. Let’s start with something you may not be aware of: Very high definition video feeds can now be processed by algorithms to reconstruct the sound as it was in the area filmed. This works by being able to recognise tiny vibration motions caused by sound on surrounding objects (some of the same technology that enables us to get someone’s heart-rate from a video feed). In a striking example in , . The recovery is good enough to understand what people were saying, While there is no reason for AVs, CCTVs, etc to record sound, these techniques may help get better sound definition, especially at long distances and in noisy places… Videos as Microphones: silent this video researchers are able to recover a conversation by filming a packet of crisps from behind sound-proof glass and there was no sound recorded at all! not Hearing through a pack of crisps. The Visual Microphone: Passive Recovery of Sound from Video : Your clumsy Google Now or Siri may betray this today, but in the research lab we’re there in terms of reliably going from sound to text. As with Facial Recognition, the explosion of data on which to train NLP algorithms (from conversational interfaces in smartphones, bots, and Amazon Alexa/Google Home speakers) has spurred this innovation. In 2016 Microsoft beat human benchmarks for speech-recognition. Shortly after, Google showed off new ways to do live translation for 8 language pairs, showing that the innovation is perfectly comfortable whizzing past what (most) humans can do! Natural Language Processing Finding a Voice — The Economist can be considered solved. In June 2015, Yann LeCun, head of artificial intelligence at Facebook, that on a set of 40 000 from Flickr, Facebook’s algorithms were able to correctly identify faces in 83% of cases. Interestingly people’s faces didn’t have to always be in the picture — with enough data about a user the algorithm could use other cues such as clothing to identify them (“Mark seems to wear a lot of grey t-shirts…”) Photo-based recognition is continuously improved with the explosion of photos and the continuous feedback Facebook and Google get as users tag their friends in pictures. With video, and a of each user’s habits, clothing style, and locations, . (remember the last time you struggled to recognise someone you hadn’t seen in a few years?). They might also take visual cues better than you: Facial Recognition announced pictures history the algorithms will easily surpass people in recognising who is who Extracting the needle from the haystack AI systems are capable of inferring higher level concepts (‘features’) from raw data. For example, faces are a feature that is inferred from raw pixels forming the video feed. This effectively makes all video, and all sound, searchable. Clarify.io as an example of a company providing a service to do this: Clarify.io (seems to work — the top result was an Elon Musk video!) But AI goes much further than enabling humans to search. It can effectively perform all possible searches for you and return higher level ‘features’: interesting patterns, anomalous events. It also does so across as many data sources as are available, joining the data sets on common identifiers across them. ( , all browsing activity, all messaging, all social network opinions, etc) So it’s not “there is a face in this video”, it’s also the name behind the face, the internet ‘breadcrumb’ of this person including all other locations where this face was seen ever and any other data set that might be available. These AI systems will continue to improve, and . Say the UK police runs an algorithm through all public CCTV recordings from the last week, looking for a criminal’s face. Today’s algorithm may not find it, but a future version will. each improved version will reprocess the raw data So, what are the implications of these advances? Commercial Implications The aim remains to build a detailed profile of you to sell you more stuff and quantify the risk/liability you represent. Advertisers, insurers, retailers, banks, will feast on this new data like they have d0ne with all other internet data so far. Ubiquitous video combined with ever improving AI systems provide: where you live, where you work and how much, whether you go drop off kids at school, who you hang out with, where, how frequently Your socioeconomic status: where you shop, what you wear, what your friends wear, what you have to wear at work Your shopping habits: : how active you are, whether you smoke/drink, which kinds of restaurants you visit or order from, how many doctor visits you have been to Your health truly 121 advertising with a side of leather jackets and guns (Minority report) It also brings up some interesting forecasting opportunities at a more macro level: What happens to the fashion industry when half a dozen static $100 cameras can tell you everything that anyone in Shoreditch wore this year — when you can trace a trend through social and street photography from start to the mass-market, and then look for the next emerging patterns? — Benedict Evans, Cameras, ecommerce and machine learning It seems inevitable that these video-sourced insights will be resold by the AV companies, in the same way that Google and Facebook sell targeting based on browsing history and likes. The commercial opportunity is huge. Whether this happens officially will depend on the nature of the regulation surrounding the use of this video data. Unofficially, given febrility of security on the internet, this data will get used for commercial means. Privacy Implications “The Right To Privacy” ~ December 15, 1890, Harvard Law Review As brilliantly lays out in , Gregory Ferenstein The Birth And Death Of Privacy full transparency is humanity’s natural state. Privacy as a concept is only about 150 years old. For a long time, it was not materially possible to have any form of privacy as we’d think about it today. Tribal communities all lived together in caves, Romans all lived in one room houses, medieval families and servants all slept in the same bed — there was no practical concept of private space or individual intimacy. As private life became possible — physically with separate houses, rooms, beds, and through communication with new technologies like writing and the telephone — the desire for privacy emerged. The first privacy-orientated law in the US was the 1710 Post Office Act, which banned sorting through the mail by postal employees. Nonetheless, privacy has always remained a secondary concern to convenience and cost. This explains the consistent, broad adoption of new technologies which encroach on our privacy but are deemed worth it. Today, Autonomous Vehicles is one of these new technologies to evaluate. Isn’t it crazy that today we let people drive a ton of steel at 100s of miles per hour, just with a few signs telling them not to press on a pedal too much? It is — and it causes 30 000 deaths per year in the US (that’s one every 17 minutes). With autonomous vehicles, this number will significantly decrease, which by itself makes this technology very attractive. But what are the privacy implications? This time, you can’t opt out The smartphone & internet revolution has also been a profound change, but you could choose not to have a smartphone or not to use Facebook, Google, or any other services that make a living collecting and selling your data. In the Video Everywhere world, tracking moves fully offline. The moment you step outside, all your movements are streamed to a database, timestamped, geolocated and added to your digital profile. You can’t opt out. (To delay this day as much as possible, you could (1) make sure your face is not on the internet, (2) live in a place that will have AVs last, e.g North Korea, (3) live in a cloudy place such that drones and satellites struggle to see you from far. On the plus side, I bet your rent will be cheaper there) 100% Enforceability As we all know, the USA-pioneered surveillance-without-warrant state is in vogue at the moment, for example with the recent , or the . UK ‘Snooper’s charter’ bill becoming law emergency state being preserved in France Video Everywhere means potentially one more source data from which to find anomalous citizen behaviour. This will be used by intelligence agencies for defence purposes, but it directly affect you and me in the hands of your average prosecutor. If the prosecutor can codify all infractions in a video processing algorithm — say jaywalking (to take a particularly ridiculous law) — and run it on all video ever taken of public life in the US, it could then immediately charge all jaywalkers. Law becomes 100% enforceable. I think the most important idea is to remember that there have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal — Edward Snowden Another factor to consider is the that results from more data collection, particularly video data. As tracking moves to the offline, physical world, so does the targeting — you could for instance imagine a drone being hijacked to go and hurt someone who was identified by hacking into an AV’s video feed. increased breadth and effectiveness of cybercrime 😬. What now? Today, the public debate about Autonomous Vehicles and AI focuses on the most pressing issue: the economic and societal impact of automating millions of jobs (such as truck driver which is the most popular job in America.) This is what the electorate is most worried about. However the privacy implications of Autonomous Vehicles also need a place in this public debate. Autonomous Vehicles should be a societal choice made after the pros and cons have been carefully weighed, including the privacy impact. deliberate The output of this debate should be clear regulation that addresses: Which data can be collected from AV video cameras, in which format, what should be anonymised and how? Where will this data be stored, shared, and secured, for how long, and what control will the public have on it? Who will control the algorithms for processing video information and how will we assess their effectiveness and regulatory compliance? (will judges need to learn to code? Will law become code…?) As the finishing touches are applied to the technology ( ) it is time for the policy debate to seriously consider the impact of privacy. Elon Musk expects the first fully autonomous Telsa by 2018 So far in my research, all I have seen in the US on this is one bill introduced by two Democrat senators called “Security and Privacy in Your Car Act of 2015” Introduced in July 2015, crickets since. ( ) Bill Tracker at Congress.gov This bill aims to: protect against unauthorized access to: (1) electronic controls or driving data, including information about the vehicle’s location, speed, owner, driver, or passengers; or (2) driving data collected by electronic systems built into a vehicle while that data is stored onboard the vehicle, in transit from the vehicle to another location, or subsequently stored or used off-board the vehicle. As reported , this bill was introduced in July 2015, and executives from Google, General Motors, Delphi, and Lyft appeared before a US Senate committee on March 15 2015 to discuss it. The executives were asked whether there should be minimum standards for privacy and cybersecurity, and all but one participant declined to say yes or no. Since then, the bill has not been discussed further. here Autonomous Vehicles may bring about a step change in public tracking and surveillance — everything, everywhere continuously recorded, this time with no way to opt out. I’d love to be proved wrong, but it seems that privacy is a complete afterthought in the push towards our driverless future. Thanks for reading — feel free to reach out with any thoughts by replying here or 👋 on my twitter Thanks to Christian Moroy , Alex Flamant , and Gabriel Oppetit for great conversations on all this mind blowing stuff (and patiently critiquing this post.)

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