Jonathan Lai is a general partner and founding investor of A16Z GAMES at Andreessen Horowitz, where he focuses on investing at the intersection of games and consumer, social, web3, infrastructure, and fintech.

Investing in Yellow | Andreessen Horowitz

The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed ...

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a16z partner said that meme coins thrive while blockchain startups are stuck in &quot;regulatory purgatory.&quot;

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What used to be a very manual process ... in more than $2.6 billion in losses in the United States alone. We are seeing daily imposter attacks against a16z, and this is a trend that is happening across all other industries....

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They say time flies when you’re having fun. And in what felt like a blink of an eye, I look back and realize I’ve spent over 12 years at a16z. And what an unforgettable ride it’s been. When I joined, there were fewer than 30 employees. I knew everyone’s kid’s name, I knew their dog’s ...

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ElevenLabs, a voice AI startup, has announced $80m funding in a Series B co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, Nat Friedman and Daniel Gros.

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NEAR, the native token of the layer 1 Near Protocol, rallied on Wednesday as it announced a partnership with Nym Technologies.NEAR has gained 11% over the past 24 hours, largely outperforming the rest of the crypto market.

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Andreessen Horowitz

a16z

Overview According to statistics, there were 34 funding rounds executed in the global blockchain market from February 19 to February 25, totaling 240.81 million dollars. The number of funding rounds increased by 13 and the amount of funds increased by 75.7%, compared with the previous week. The number of funding rounds in sectors of Infrastructure and DeFi is the highest, 11 of which are in the infrastructure and 7 in the DeFi area. The funds raised in the infrastructure sector are the highest, which is 170 million dollars. Funding in different sectors Infrastructure EigenLayer Round Series B Amount $100M Investors a16z, Polychain… Project Intro: EigenLayer is a protocol built on Ethereum that introduces restaking, a new primitive in cryptoeconomic security. This primitive enables the rehypothecation of ETH on the consensus layer. Users who stake ETH can opt-in to EigenLayer smart contracts to restake their ETH and extend cryptoeconomic security to additional applications on the network. Part of EigenLayer's potential lies in its ability to aggregate and extend cryptoeconomic security through restaking, and to validate new applications being built on top of Ethereum. AltLayer Round Strategic Amount $14.4M Investors Polychain, Hack VC… Project Intro: AltLayer is a system of highly scalable, application-dedicated execution layers that derive security from an underlying L1/L2. It is designed as a modular and pluggable framework for a multi-chain and multi-VM world. At its core, AltLayer consists of several optimistic rollup-like execution layers called flash layers, featuring a novel innovation that makes them disposable and thus highly resource-optimized. Flare Network Round / Amount $35M Investors DWF Labs Project Intro: Flare is a Layer-1 blockchain that enables secure, universal interoperability between chains, scaling blockchain use by allowing all digital assets and on-chain information to flow freely. Its consensus protocol for external data allows decentralized applications on Flare to safely and trustlessly acquire and use information from other blockchains and real-world data sources, solving the oracle problem and ushering in a new era of utility. Clave Round Pre-Seed Amount $1.6M Investors zkSync Labs Clave is an easy-to-use non-custodial smart wallet powered by Account Abstraction and the Hardware Elements (e.g Secure Enclave, Android Trustzone etc.), offering a unique onboarding process. Helius Round Series A Amount $9.5M Investors Foundation Capital, Reciprocal Ventures Helius aims to help creators overcome these obstacles by providing APIs (or application programming interfaces) to understand on-chain data and query transactions, as well as webhooks that enable automations and bots, plus RPC nodes that allow Solana apps to interact with the blockchain. All in all, they are designed to simplify complexity and facilitate application development. NodeShift Round Seed Amount $3.2M Investors Inovo VC NodeShift is a decentralized cloud service provider that provides a single API for accessing independent data center operators' redundant compute, storage and graphics accelerators and connecting to low-cost decentralized web services such as Akash and Filecoin. BEVM Round / Amount / Investors ViaBTC Capital BEVM is a decentralized EVM-compatible Bitcoin L2 that uses BTC as Gas. It allows all DApps which can run in the Ethereum ecosystem to operate on Bitcoin L2. Citrea Round Seed Amount $2.7M Investors Galaxy Citrea is a Bitcoin’s ZK rollup and an execution layer that settles on Bitcoin. Every transaction occurring on Citrea is fully secured by zero-knowledge proofs and verified by Bitcoin through BitVM. Inco Network Round Seed Amount $4.5M Investors 1kx, Circle Ventures Inco Network is an EVM Layer-1, utilizing fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) to enable composable and operable confidential states. Its fhEVM (FHE + EVM) makes it possible to write private smart contracts and perform computations on top of encrypted data without requiring its decryption. This innovation unlocks a wide range use cases with confidentiality components, such as card games, DID, private voting, dark pools, etc. - paving the way for a new era of possibilities. Nest Wallet Round Seed Amount $3.6M Investors Inception Capital, Orange DAO Nest Wallet is a multi-chain wallet built for traders. Powered by Safe, Nest Wallet adds a more friendly UI/UX for team to easily manage multiple Safe wallets and streamline the transaction signing process. DeFi ZeroLend Round Seed Amount $3M Investors Momentum 6 ZeroLend is a decentralized lending protocol on zkSync. Designed to provide individuals and businesses with a secure and transparent platform for borrowing and lending digital assets. The protocol operates in a peer-to-peer manner, eliminating the need for intermediaries such as banks or traditional financial institutions. After announcing the launch of their platform token $ZERO, ZeroLend has introduced a series of activities to encourage users to complete tasks and accumulate points. Recently, they have collaborated with the growth platform TaskOn to release a new set of activities. Shutter Round IDO Amount $8.31M Investors OKX Ventures Shutter Network is an open-source project that aims to prevent front running on Ethereum by using a threshold cryptography-based distributed key generation (DKG) protocol.Shutter allows users to send encrypted transactions in a way that protects them from front runners on their path through the dark forest (the metaphorical hunting ground of front runners that each transaction must cross). OX.FUN Round / Amount $4M Investors Gen Block Capital OX.FUN is a crypto derivatives trading platform. The core element of the gamified experience on OX.FUN revolves around the OX Farm. User can also expect to see leaderboards, competitions and copy trading vaults to help maximize the trading adventure. Renzo Round / Amount / Investors OKX Ventures, Binance Labs Renzo is a restaking protocol based on EigenLayer. Renzo abstracts the complex process of re-staking for end users, and stakers do not have to worry about the active selection and management of operators and reward strategies. ezETH is Renzo’s liquid, heavily-collateralized token that automatically captures rewards and ensures liquidity. ezETH allows users to participate in DeFi while retaining re-collateralization rewards. Singularity Round / Amount $2.2M Investors OKX Ventures, Binance Labs Singularity is a compliant institutional DeFi access layer that provides access to popular protocols for institutional on-chain participants with commercial confidentiality. Users will have their wallet addresses obfuscated whilst leveraging existing DeFi liquidity. Singularity uses the state-of-the-art UltraPLONK proof system with zero-knowledge circuits based on Noir. Honeypot Finance Round Pre-seed Amount / Investors AC Capital Honeypot Finance is whipping up a community-run DeFi Hub that have a honey-flavored flywheel model that churns out dual incentives. INIT Capital Round Seed Amount $3.1M Investors Robot Ventures, Mirana Ventures… INIT Capital is a Liquidity Hook Money Market: Lend, Borrow, and Access Yield Strategies with Liquidity Hook. Serving as the DeFi liquidity infrastructure for dApps to build on top, INIT facilitates diverse activities, including lending, borrowing, and yield strategies. INIT is where dApps and users meet, offering both permissionless access to a unified liquidity pool and efficient yield strategy management. GameFi Shuffle Round Seed Amount $2.5M Investors Karatage, Cypher Capital Shuffle is an all-new crypto casino that support numerous games and jackpots available for players. Matr1x Round Strategic Amount / Investors Animoca Brands, SevenX Ventures… Matr1x is the brand of Metaverse, planning to build the brand through high-quality games developed by themselves or in collaboration with third parties, game IP development and cooperation, and global Esports tournaments. Matr1x will express its game trilogy (Cyber Earth - Mars Immigration - Interstellar Exploration) through three large-scale games with a unified worldview: Matr1x FIRE (First-person shooter), Matr1x WAR (Shooting+MMORPG), and Matr1x EVOLUTION (SOC). Monkey Tilt Round Private Amount $21M Investors Polychain, Hack VC… Monkey Tilt is an online gambling platform focused on the convergence of cryptocurrencies and online gambling. Players can win real money by correctly predicting whether the player they choose will exceed or fall short of their statistical prediction. Crystal Fun Round Seed Amount $5M Investors Waterdrip Capital, Kucoin Ventures… Crystal Fun is a decentralized gaming mega-ecosystem and studio. It aims to seamlessly integrate high-quality games within sustainable economic systems, ushering in a groundbreaking gaming experience into Web3. Loong City Round / Amount $2M Investors MAZARINE SEA Loong City is the first original IP PFP metaverse project based on an improved ERC404 protocol. Autopunk and traditional China constitute the core elements of Dragon City. Each PFP is an entry ticket to this fictional world. NFT Prom Round / Amount / Investors DWF Labs Prom is the primary access point to the Web3 gaming ecosystem. With a robust marketplace at its core for trading and exchanging NFT assets, Prom offers an array of services including rental and mortgage solutions, comprehensive asset management tools, and an educational section with in-depth guides. Tools FortyTwo Round Strategic Amount / Investors LBankLong, Hash Ventures FortyTwo is a Cosmos Portfolio View Platform that allows users to clearly see the breakdown of their Cosmos holdings. Users can can connect one or a bundle of wallets. Tornado Blast Round Strategic Amount / Investors Atka Capital Tornado Blast is a Blast L2-native bot to trade and snipe tokens. User can earn $BLAST, $TRNDO & revenue share reward SocialFi Beoble Round Seed Amount $5M Investors Hashkey Capital, DWF Labs… Beoble is a communication infrastructure and ecosystem that allows users to chat between wallets. Its product includes a web-based chat app, as well as a toolkit that allows Dapps to integrate. Others HackQuest Round Pre-Seed Amount $1.1M Investors HashKey Capital HackQuest is the gateway to the Web3 development world, providing a comprehensive, one-stop educational infrastructure that minimizes friction and helps onboard developers and nondevelopers to the world of Web3. TruePNL Round M&A Amount / Investors Gate.io Labs, Magic Square.. TruePNL is a multi-chain launchpad that connects blockchain projects and crypto investors, providing a convenient, transparent, and secure mechanism for raising capital, investing, and distributing tokens. The platform enables cryptocurrency projects to raise funds by creating token exchange pools and launching public or private sale rounds using smart contracts on the Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain networks. Superfluid Round Strategic Amount $5.1M Investors Fabric Ventures, Multicoin Capital… Superfluid is a Web3 streaming payments protocol for handling subscriptions, salaries, rewards, or any other composable stream of value on a per-second basis. Its core feature is "streaming" payments, where money flows from one address to another in real-time, based on programmable logic and a single on-chain transaction. Silencio Round Pre-seed Amount $1M Investors Borderless Capital, Moonrock Capital Silencio is a global network that measure noise pollution. User will get rewarded for measuring noise pollution with phone. CeFi Januar Round Seed Plus Amount $12M Investors CMT Digital Januar is a European payment gate for crypto companies. Innovative EU crypto companies use Januar's payment account solutions to accept payments and send payouts while maintaining full compliance and stable business operations.

The Crypto Investment Weekly Recap for Feb 19 - Feb 25

Overview According to statistics, there were 21 funding rounds executed in the global blockchain market from February 12 to February 18, totaling 137 million dollars. The number of funding rounds increased by 1, and the amount of funds increased by 30.47% compared with the previous week. The number of funding rounds in the infrastructure and DeFi sectors is the highest, 7 of which are in the infrastructure sector and 4 in the DeFi area. The funds raised in the infrastructure sector are the highest, which is 46.5 million dollars. Funding in different sectors Infrastructure Analog Round / Amount $16M Investors NGC Ventures, Tribe Capital, Alumni Ventures Analog is a completely decentralized layer-0 platform for communicating validated event data with the Proof-of-Time consensus mechanism. At the core of the platform are tesseracts and time nodes that can privately fetch and confirm event data from sovereign chains, allowing different ecosystems to speak the same language. Analog aims to bring trustless, omnichain interoperability, enabling developers to build their applications via a universal protocol and an API. Additionally, Analog is unveiling a novel, superfast PoT protocol that creates verifiable event data on the Timechain, allowing DApp developers to build next-generation event-based applications. Project Intro: The testnet is now live! Enter your email to join the waiting list, and we already have nearly 100,000 reservations. In this phase, we've introduced a point system where you can accumulate Spot by completing tasks such as following Twitter, joining the community, and more. After registering, head to the Web3 platform TaskOn to complete tasks and participate in Analog's Valentine's Day event on the platform for a chance to win rewards. Important Information: Lava Network Round Seed Amount $15M Investors Hashkey Capital, Triple Capital Lava Network aims to be a marketplace for blockchain data. It incentivizes node providers and decentralized application users to enter marketplace blockchain data onto its network in the same way that Airbnb allows owners to monetize their unused space. The protocol enforces data quality, enabling node operators to use their bandwidth. Fordefi Round / Amount $10M Investors Electric Capital, Paxos Fordefi is an institutional MPC wallet and security platform that enables institutions to interact across different blockchains. Sphinx Round Pre-Seed Amount $2M Investors Archetype, Nascent Sphinx is a DevOps platform for deploying and managing smart contracts built for Foundry users. Sphinx gives developers confidence in their deployment process by eliminating the manual work of creating, approving, executing, and verifying deployments on every chain. NodeKit Round / Amount / Investors a16z, Polygon Ventures NodeKit SEQ is a decentralized shared sequencer built into a custom L1 blockchain, which allows rollups to decentralize their sequencer and increase cross-rollup interoperability. With NodeKit, SEQ rollups can easily submit transactions to a decentralized shared sequencer, which makes it easier to launch a rollup that is decentralized from the start and helps users perform cross-rollup transactions. WITNESS Round Seed Amount $3.5M Investors Coinbase, Haun Ventures Witness unlocks Web3 ownership and incentives at the Web2 scale. Anyone can use Witness to create verifiable provenance and issue digital ownership for any data without the upfront friction or cost of blockchains. This allows developers to build traditionally scalable applications that benefit from Web3 incentives. DePHY Round Seed Amount / Investors Foresight Ventures DePHY is an all-in-one DePIN framework that drastically decreases the cost and timeframe associated with DePIN project development. DePHY provides open-source hardware solutions, a decentralized messaging layer, and automatic tokenomics execution for all DePIN projects. DePHY’s messaging layer facilitates the secure, verifiable, and swift transfer of data from hardware to the blockchain, utilizing Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) and Zero-Knowledge (ZK) Oracles to guarantee data verifiability and low latency. DeFi Ethena Round Strategic Amount $14M Investors Dragonfly, BH Digital Ethena is building derivative infrastructure to enable Ethereum to transform into the Global Internet Bond via delta-neutral positions on stETH, to create the first crypto-native, yield-bearing stablecoin: USDE. Concrete Round / Amount $7.5M Investors Hashed, Tribe Capital Concrete is the native base protocol to generate credit products and derivatives. It additionally opens the gateway to build an entirely new set of financial primitives for on-chain assets using Concrete as the base layer of compute. At launch, Concrete will serve users across money markets such as Aave, Compound, Silo, and Radiant, regularly adding both established and emerging lenders. IntentX Round Strategic Amount $1.8M Investors Selini Capital, Mirana Ventures IntentX is an intent-based, decentralized derivatives exchange offering perpetual futures trading. The platform leverages several cutting-edge technologies, including LayerZero, a cross-chain communication protocol, account abstraction, and a zero-to-one breakthrough Request for Quotation (RFQ) architecture that addresses critical challenges in delivering on-chain derivatives. Hydro Protocol Round / Amount / Investors Vessel Capital, Injective Hydro Protocol is Injective Uehara Raw Quality Pressing Raw Product Partnership. 1:1 proportionate press INJ in the Injective community. Hydro's unique treatment is based on the underlying liquidity provider, which is a stimulating liquidity provider. GameFi Overworld Round Seed Amount $10M Investors Hashed, Spartan Group Overworld is a web-3-powered gaming and community project. It focuses on collective storytelling, utility-driven digital collectibles, and deep, engaging multiplayer gameplay. All of this is set in an ambitious fantasy universe. Ultiverse Round Strategic Amount $4M Investors Binance Labs, IDG Capital, Animoca Brands Ultiverse is the social gaming metaverse that connects Web3 with an immersive, fully VR-compatible virtual world of AAA quality. By empowering players of various economic abilities to build mutually beneficial relationships, Ultiverse aims to create a first-of-its-kind MetaFi. Exverse Round Private Amount $3M Investors Cogitent Ventures, Moonrock Capital Exverse is a free-to-play game bringing a fresh take on AAA first-person-shooters to Web3. Exverse’s three planets—Social, Quest, and Battle—cater to different playing styles while remaining interconnected within a single timeline, where users compete in cycles known as seasons, lasting eight weeks. The game is designed to foster community by allowing players to engage in social events and even develop user-generated worlds within an ever-expanding universe. NFT Watches.io Round Pre-Seed Amount $1.9M Investors Lemniscap, Big Brain Holdings Watches.io is the first end-to-end tracking and trading ecosystem for watches, enabling users to monitor their watch portfolios with precise, real-time market data, pursue diversification opportunities, and execute seamless buy/sell transactions. Watches.io is also the first e-commerce peer-to-peer marketplace for real physical items to be built on Web3 infrastructure. MetaStreet Round / Amount $25M Investors DragonFly,  Animoca Brands MetaStreet is a protocol for scaling liquidity in NFT credit markets. Its primary product is a Capital Vault that enables secondary market liquidity for NFT-backed notes. Participants can deposit capital to earn yield from diversified portfolios of NFT-backed notes. Tools Helika Round Series A Amount $8M Investors Big Brain Holdings, Fenbushi Helika is a Web3 technology platform that provides real-time analytics and onboarding of new users to gaming studios and popular NFT collections. With a focus on integrating analytics from Web2, in-game, on-chain, and social media data, Helika helps top Web3 brands such as Yuga Labs and Treasure to understand their communities, increase user acquisition and engagement, and drive overall growth through a data-driven approach. Others Drosera Network Round Pre-Seed Amount $1.5M Investors Anagram, Arrington Capital Drosera is a decentralized incident response protocol that leverages hidden security intents to contain and mitigate exploits. It is an automation protocol that abstracts the complexity of creating monitoring systems and automated response capability for decentralized applications. Drosera offers a framework for creating and executing automated responses to events on the Ethereum network. MercureDAO Round / Amount $1.5M Investors / Mercure DAO is a Web3 Marketing Hub catering to crypto projects worldwide, such as Incubation Services, Social Media Marketing (SMM), Influencer Marketing, Public Relations (PR), and so on. Metropolis Round / Amount $1.2M Investors Protocol Labs, Outlier Ventures Metropolis is a carefully curated, artist-created virtual world complete with a digital-physical marketplace, exclusive events, and end-to-end game features. At the heart of MetropolisX is a collaboration marketplace where creators can monetize and launch personalized products and where their fans can have a more immersive connection and access exclusive products, content & experiences. This unique approach combines digital and physical identity, gaming, and immersive experiences. CeFi Architect Round / Amount $12M Investors BlockTower Capital, Tioga Capital Architect provides traders with an adaptable infrastructure that redefines access to global digital asset markets, making it easier for large investors such as institutions to use both centralized and decentralized crypto markets.

The Crypto Investment Weekly Recap for Feb 12 - Feb 18

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

How My Startup Got New Funding from Andreessen Horowitz

Cómo mi startup obtuvo nuevos fondos de Andreessen Horowitz

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

कैसे मेरे स्टार्टअप को आंद्रेसेन होरोविट्ज़ से नई फंडिंग मिली

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

Como minha startup conseguiu novos financiamentos da Andreessen Horowitz

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

我的初创公司如何从 Andreessen Horowitz 获得新资金

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

Andreessen Horowitz is Betting on the Passion Economy

Everything About Product-Market Fit: And Why You're Probably Confused About It

During dAppcon, a , I had a chance to talk to Rene Reinsberg, founder of Celo. recent conference in Berlin A little background on Celo Celo (meaning “purpose” in esperanto) is a VC-backed project aiming to bring financial services to the unbanked through its own smart contract platform (Celo is a fork of Ethereum). Having already more than $30M, Celo’s main goal is a financial inclusion through easy-to-use stablecoins and a mobile-first approach toward user adoption. Celo Gold is the reserve and governance currency of the protocol - it serves as a proof-of-stake asset and also as one of the backing assets in the stablecoin reserve basket. raised The Interview : Rene, let’s start by giving me the Celo pitch. What’s your ambition with the project? : We started working on Celo about two years ago. We saw a massive gap in terms of the user experience, particularly ease of use of cryptocurrencies. We see cryptocurrencies as a technology that can advance an access to financial products and services, particularly in the developing world. Celo brings a lightweight decentralized identity system which maps hashes of phone numbers to wallets, thereby anyone can send and receive payments based on their phone number.  That greatly reduces the friction as one no longer needs to fiddle with public keys and the user experience is much more similar to Square’s Cash App or Venmo. It also serves as an entry point to a digital identity. We feel the identity part is quite important, as not having any official identity also means not having any credit score and no access to financial products like loans. Also while we were doing our initial research, we realized that people in developing markets were really excited about Bitcoin, but they were also concerned about its volatility - when it comes to payment use case; it’s really powerful as a store of value, of course. : You are developing a stablecoin. How will you ensure the peg holds? How does Celo’s approach compare to existing stablecoins like DAI or planned stablecoins like libra? : First of all, we don’t see any single currency taking over the world and being used everywhere. On the contrary, we see a rich ecology of many different currencies; some of them may look like traditional currencies like euros or dollars, others may be more local or function-specific currencies. We see a much richer ecosystem of currencies which can more accurately map to people’s needs and the societies they live in. Right now we see mostly that stablecoins are backed by what they represent - dollar stablecoins backed by dollars in bank accounts. We separate those two so that the representation and the backing are unrelated. Stablecoins on our platform are overcollateralized, similar to Maker. We use a basket of multiple crypto assets including our own reserve asset, Celo Gold. Through onchain governance, it's possible to introduce additional stablecoins. We foresee a creation of Celo Peso or a stablecoin pegged to the economy in Berlin. All the stablecoins will be backed by the shared reserve - there are nice properties coming out of that from the stability perspective. For anyone interested, we published a describing these properties in more detail. : So if I understand correctly there’s a shared pool of assets backing various stablecoins on the Celo platform. Who decides what kind of assets get to be in the basket? : In the long-term the rebalancing of the cryptoassets in the reserve basket will happen purely onchain through onchain governance. But so far we don’t have the tools to make that viable, so in the short-term, the rebalancing of the reserve basket will be done manually. : Could you go into more detail about the Celo architecture and what role does the Celo gold play? : Celo is a fork of geth, so architecturally you could think of Celo Gold as an equivalent of ETH and the stablecoins as an equivalent of ERC-20. Gas costs on Celo can be paid in stablecoins, which reduces the complexity for the users. Celo is running on permissionless Istanbul BFT, meaning it’s a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. The key characteristics of Celo are the identity and stability protocols, but we are also keeping the EVM compatibility, so it’s very easy to deploy Ethereum apps on top of Celo. : Could you describe the redeeming mechanism? How can the holder of Celo stablecoin get the underlying asset? KryptoJoseph (KJ) Rene Reinsberg (RR) KJ RR stability white paper KJ RR KJ RR KJ : Celo stablecoins are crypto-collateralized, so it’s not a straightforward process like with fiat-based stablecoins. But we still wanted the holders to have an option to redeem. What we came up with is an integration of an exchange directly into the protocol. The exchange is a Uniswap-style constant-product exchange with Celo Gold / Celo dollar as the initial trading pair. Stablecoin holders can always exchange 1 Celo dollar for 1 US dollar worth of Celo gold and the other way around. We have described the mechanism in more detail . : When is Celo launching? : We launched our testnet and SDK recently. We adopted a mobile-first approach to development, since many of our potential end users are just on mobile devices. Most of today’s dApps are web-based, but with our SDK, anyone can build a truly native mobile app that is running on fully decentralized infrastructure. : Do you plan a business development targeting any specific countries or regions in the developing world? : The team building Celo mainly seems itself providing the infrastructure and providing the resources and support for others  to build the applications, which is also why we launched the SDK as one of the first things. Some of the first use cases that we think that would work really well on our platform are things like institutional cash transfer programs. We’ve had several organizations already reach out to us with the intention to try the platform. For example, launch an universal basic income pilot in Liberia. There’s a lot of research showing that cash transfers are the best way of providing aid, but given that a lot of potential recipients don’t have bank accounts or any access to financial services, the operational challenges and costs of running these programs are quite high. So the idea with Celo as the underlying infrastructure for running these programs is that you only have to know the recipients’ phone numbers and you can distribute the payments. Cash transfers can also be done more frequently and in smaller payments. It’s fast, secure and with lower transaction fees. Once there is an active user base, it’s going to be very interesting to start building the DeFi stack on top, to provide an access to loans and other financial services. The loans provided may be small, for example for $10 only, but the impact of such microloans is huge in the developing countries. RR on our blog KJ RR KJ RR we’re helping Give Directly Read the Celo whitepaper here . Read about a16z's motivation to invest in Celo here . Follow Rene at https://twitter.com/followrene . . Follow me at https://twitter.com/KryptoJoseph

Interview with Rene Reinsberg, founder of Celo

& 32 other top tech stories this week What a week! Our top stories were published by a talented variety of heavy hitters, top developers, new founders, growth hackers, venture capitalists and bitcoin visionaries. Enjoy this curated list of top tech stories from . We’re working hard to provide you the best sh*t for hackers at noon. Hacker Noon Also, if you’re in San Francisco area June 20th, use the discount code “@ami” for a complementary ticket to our inaugural event . @a16z’s AI Playbook 💾 Adding AI to Your Mobile App by Andreessen Horowitz Partner Frank Chen 💾 Giving Your Software AI Superpowers by Andreessen Horowitz Partner Frank Chen 💾 Ways in Which Machines Learn by Andreessen Horowitz Partner Frank Chen Betsy Bitterly Bit A Better Bitcoin 💾 Coup You by Beautyon , who’s twitter bio reads “ Bitcoin is . And that is enough.” 💾 Don’t use a blockchain unless you need to by Alistair Roche , who wrote one of the great leads of tech blogging in 2017 Bullsh*t Bot 💾 How I made a food recognizing bot for Telegram and why it doesn’t have a future (yet) by 22 year old fast-food eating js/ruby-programming guy Artem Barbyniahra 💾 How to Build a Facebook Bot App Using Node.js by CEO & Co-Founder of Cosmic JS Tony Spiro Cold Outreach The Perfect Cold Email by writer jordangonen citing Sam Altman . Create Inbound Links How Pokemon Go And A Backlinking Strategy Helped Our Company Strike Gold by AppInstitute Marketing Manager Nabeena Mali Entertainment 💾 Does VR Have a Future? by the VR online community Hammer & Tusk How Tech Unicorns Build… & Perserve 💾 Applications of (pin)trace data by Pinterest Engineering 💾 Preserving a Culture of Innovation: Google Founders Collection Comes to Computer History Museum by Computer History Museum It’s easy to sell dollar bills for ninety cents 💾 Don’t Get Seduced by GMV by Founder Collective Details Javascript 💾 How to test JavaScript with Mocha — The Basics by Boston Full Stack Web Developer Brandon Morelli 💾 What the heck is a Callback? by Boston Full Stack Web Developer Brandon Morelli 💾 What the heck is an Immediately-Invoked Function Expression? by Boston Full Stack Web Developer Brandon Morelli Learn to Code Quick Lesson 💾 Build a naive Article Spell-checker in 10 Lines of Python Code by AMR , who is Friends with Randomness, Uncertainty, Anomaly! Life After Working for Facebook 💾 Software Engineer → SaaS Founder by Canny CEO Andrew Rasmussen Product Management Life 💾 Agile Didn’t Eat Your Homework… by Zendesk Sr. Product Manager John Cutler 💾 The Value of “Non Feature” Work by Zendesk Sr. Product Manager John Cutler React, React, React 💾 5 ways we improved our React Native app by the young, scrappy and hungry Developer Lorenzo Sciandra 💾 A React TODOs example, explained by Coding Educator Samer Buna 💾 How to Animate the Items of a React Native FlatList by Teacher & Founder Spencer Carli 💾 [Make React Fast Again] Series by LogRocket JS Founder & ex-Googler Ben Edelstein Self-Driving Cars 💾 Who’s To Blame If One Gets Killed In An (Uber/Tesla/Waymo) Self-Driving Car? by Seyi Fabode Team Building Lessons 💾 Developer, Comic Artist & Veteran Could you not: A Rant About Front-End Coding Interviews by Krystyna Ewing 💾 Software Person; Semicolon Enthusiast For an Inclusive Culture, Try Working Less by Rich Armstrong 💾 Go For Culture Add, Not Culture Fit by Foundry Group GM Brad Feld 💾 Storm To Perform: The 4 Stages Of Team Productivity by the visual collaboration tool Trello Three New Tools Worth Checking Out 💾 Designing a simple web page with mini.css by founder & web developer Angelos Chalaris . 💾 Kotlin — A Deeper Look: It feels like magic… But is it really? by Android Engineer Sebastiano Gottardo 💾 The New Chrome DevTool Feature You Want to Know About (LightHouse) by Full Stack Web Developer Dor Moshe Up to Speed on Deep Learning 💾 June Update, Part 2 by Requests for Startups Where Tech Meets Literature, and Standup Comedy 💾 Full-stack JS developer & PluralSight author A super quick comparison between Kafka and Message Queues by Hendrik Swanepoel 💾 Why entrepreneurship is like stand-up comedy by Product Enthusiast & Entrepreneur Shival Gupta Will Robots Take My Job? From Idea to 4M Page Views in 4 Weeks by Product Hunt Maker of the Year Mubashar Iqbal With $0-ish in Marketing Budget… Here’s exactly how the Fam App got 1,024,786 downloads in 10 days by Franco Iudiciani Until next time, don’t take the realities of the world for granted, , (of ) David Smooke Hacker Noon AMI P.S. Here’s an interview I did with Caycon.com: success is a function of will & timing . P.P.S. if you’re in San Francisco area June 20th, use the discount code “@ami” for a complementary ticket to our inaugural event .

Betsy Bitterly Bit A Better Bitcoin

[This post is republished from the . Click . —Frank] a16z AI Playbook here for part 1 of this coding tutorial Now let’s add AI superpowers to our iPhone app by retaining the model with our own and connecting the trained model to our iPhone app. data Setup and Test the iOS App 0. Open Terminal Like in the initial TensorFlow setup, we start by by our side — please follow that link if you need a reminder of the steps. We will continue our convention of using full paths instead of bash shortcuts to keep problems to a minimum, so whenever you see you will have to replace it with your own home path ([here's why we do this]](/docs/guides/dl-start#openTerminal)). having a trusty Terminal always open /Users/joe/ Retraining the Model Retraining the model follows the same steps and some additional optimizations that we can make on the dataset for running on . described earlier mobile Below, you will find each step with a brief description of what it accomplishes. To make it easier, however, we have created a shell script that will run the entire process you can which you can then uncompress in your home directory. download the script here as a zipfile At the top of the script you’ll find the following line TARGET_ROOT_FOLDER=/Users/joe Change that value to the folder you have been using to store both and directories, and then you can run the script: tf_files tensorflow $ ./runtraining.sh While the script is running, you can keep reading to see what the different commands are. In case of errors, the script should direct you to the right section of . this FAQ If you followed the previous examples you should already have the Inception model downloaded. However, if you want to make sure you have an unmodified copy, you can download it again by running curl -o /Users/joe/tf_files/inception.zip \ https://storage.googleapis.com/download.tensorflow.org/models/inception5h.zip \ && unzip /Users/joe/tf_files/inception.zip -d /Users/joe/tf_files/inception Then, download the training data for the app we are going to build: curl -o /Users/joe/tf_files/a16zset.zip \ https://cryptic-alpha.herokuapp.com/a16zset.zip \ && unzip /Users/joe/tf_files/a16zset.zip -d /Users/joe/tf_files/a16zset In the end, you should have both the folder and a new folder which contains two main datasets: and . /tf_files/inception /tf_files/a16zset business_card not_business_card as mentioned previously, our dataset is based on the , built as follows: Note: Stanford Mobile Dataset We selected the dataset that includes images of business cards, book covers and CD covers but did not use all 500 images for each category. We then expanded the sets with additional images obtained via web searches, verifying that they had been marked for reuse (according to Google Search) and added a new category for credit cards, which can be very similar to business cards. Finally we normalized the images to dimensions of 640x480 with medium JPEG compression. This isn’t required by the process but we wanted to keep the dataset a relatively small download and have a reference image size that we could use later with the mobile app. This showcases the flexibility afforded by DL for real-world applications while keeping complexity of the training process to a minimum. In our app the image recognition process is intended to speed up, rather than completely replace, human interaction, so even lower-probability matches can be useful. To retrain the model, we use the same command as before, pointing it to the new dataset: $ bazel-bin/tensorflow/examples/image_retraining/retrain \--bottleneck_dir=/Users/joe/tf_files/a16z_bottlenecks \--model_dir=/Users/joe/tf_files/inception \--output_graph=/Users/joe/tf_files/a16z_retrained_graph.pb \--output_labels=/Users/joe/tf_files/a16z_retrained_labels.txt \--image_dir /Users/joe/tf_files/a16zset Using the Model in the iOS App Our iOS App uses the iOS static along with our own Swift Code for it. TensorFlow library Originally published in ’s . Andreessen Horowitz AI Playbook is how hackers start their afternoons. We’re a part of the family. We are now and happy to opportunities. Hacker Noon @AMI accepting submissions discuss advertising & sponsorship To learn more, , , or simply, read our about page like/message us on Facebook tweet/DM @HackerNoon. If you enjoyed this story, we recommend reading our and . Until next time, don’t take the realities of the world for granted! latest tech stories trending tech stories

Adding AI to Your Mobile App

Today, I watched an episode of "The Ben and Marc Show", where Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz discussed how Trump's victory could change everything for tech startups. Initially, I thought, "Politics isn't really my thing," but something caught my attention, so I decided to watch. And you know what? I didn't regret it for a second. They talked about how the last four years have been a real challenge for those in the tech industry. Constant pressure and unclear regulations have been stifling innovation. The crypto industry suffered particularly hard. Imagine this: some legally compliant companies were simply kicked out of the banking system! "It was a direct act of authoritarian violence."
- Marc Andreessen Without access to banking services, companies were forced to operate exclusively in cash, which created enormous problems. Holding large amounts of cash is not only inconvenient but also dangerous—there's an increased risk of theft and other crimes. Marc and Ben noted that for tech companies, this is even more challenging than for businesses in the marijuana trade, which have faced similar difficulties. Tech companies rely on investments and rapid turnover of funds, and operating solely in cash is simply unrealistic. How can you attract investments if you don't have a bank account? How do you pay employees and suppliers? This threatened the very existence of innovative projects. An interesting fact about the Amish: it turns out that the Amish, who historically don't vote at all, came out to vote for Trump because their farms were subjected to raids for selling unpasteurized milk. At the same time, car theft is barely considered a serious crime. Marc and Ben gave an example: "If you steal a car and just go for a joyride, it's practically not a crime. But if you sell unpasteurized milk, expect the FBI at your doorstep." It's both funny and sad. This shows how selectively laws are applied and how ordinary people and businesses suffer. To stand up for the interests of startups, Marc and Ben became actively involved in politics. They supported candidates who advocate for technology and development, rather than bans and restrictions. To do this, they created an organization called Fair Shake—a political action committee (PAC) that funded campaigns for pro-technology candidates. Their efforts paid off: many of the candidates they supported won their elections. I really liked how they said, "Someone needs to stand up for IT and startups, and we're doing it." A beautiful example of democracy! Their optimistic outlook for the crypto industry is particularly encouraging. Although I personally don't use cryptocurrency much, I was always annoyed by how Telegram's crypto project was shut down. As an IT entrepreneur, I didn't like that at all. I wonder if the situation will change under Trump. Maybe government decisions will be reconsidered, and Pavel Durov will finally be able to implement what he planned. They also discussed artificial intelligence. Marc and Ben emphasized how important it is to support innovation in AI and not stifle it with excessive regulation. I myself am working on a startup in the AI field and see how quickly new technologies are taking over the world. Of course, they can be intimidating, and they mustn't fall into the wrong hands. But it's necessary to maintain a balance and allow them to develop, to trust the process, and act based on circumstances rather than preemptively banning everything. In Europe, where I am, some AI features appear later due to stricter regulations, and that's not the most pleasant trend. At the same time, I haven't heard of any tragic or truly frightening situations since the appearance of GPT-3.5. Moreover, they drew attention to energy and its connection to AI. Developing artificial intelligence requires enormous computational power, which means energy. They discussed the possibility of reviving nuclear energy as a clean and efficient source. An interesting thought. Perhaps in the future, this will help solve many problems. In fact, if the news is to be believed, this is already happening. It seems that Google and Amazon have begun constructing mini nuclear reactors. What do you think—will it now be easier for startups and tech companies to thrive? Maybe it's time for us to take part in shaping the future of technology and not stand on the sidelines. If you're interested, watch the episode yourself — here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4jWb-0nj44&embedable=true I think you'll find it thought-provoking too. Today, I watched an episode of "The Ben and Marc Show", where Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz discussed how Trump's victory could change everything for tech startups. Initially, I thought, "Politics isn't really my thing," but something caught my attention, so I decided to watch. And you know what? I didn't regret it for a second. They talked about how the last four years have been a real challenge for those in the tech industry. Constant pressure and unclear regulations have been stifling innovation. The crypto industry suffered particularly hard. Imagine this: some legally compliant companies were simply kicked out of the banking system! "It was a direct act of authoritarian violence." - Marc Andreessen "It was a direct act of authoritarian violence." "It was a direct act of authoritarian violence." - Marc Andreessen Without access to banking services, companies were forced to operate exclusively in cash, which created enormous problems. Holding large amounts of cash is not only inconvenient but also dangerous—there's an increased risk of theft and other crimes. Marc and Ben noted that for tech companies, this is even more challenging than for businesses in the marijuana trade, which have faced similar difficulties. Tech companies rely on investments and rapid turnover of funds, and operating solely in cash is simply unrealistic. How can you attract investments if you don't have a bank account? How do you pay employees and suppliers? This threatened the very existence of innovative projects. An interesting fact about the Amish: it turns out that the Amish, who historically don't vote at all, came out to vote for Trump because their farms were subjected to raids for selling unpasteurized milk. At the same time, car theft is barely considered a serious crime. Marc and Ben gave an example: "If you steal a car and just go for a joyride, it's practically not a crime. But if you sell unpasteurized milk, expect the FBI at your doorstep." It's both funny and sad. This shows how selectively laws are applied and how ordinary people and businesses suffer. To stand up for the interests of startups, Marc and Ben became actively involved in politics. They supported candidates who advocate for technology and development, rather than bans and restrictions. To do this, they created an organization called Fair Shake—a political action committee (PAC) that funded campaigns for pro-technology candidates. Their efforts paid off: many of the candidates they supported won their elections. I really liked how they said, "Someone needs to stand up for IT and startups, and we're doing it." A beautiful example of democracy! Their optimistic outlook for the crypto industry is particularly encouraging. Although I personally don't use cryptocurrency much, I was always annoyed by how Telegram's crypto project was shut down. As an IT entrepreneur, I didn't like that at all. I wonder if the situation will change under Trump. Maybe government decisions will be reconsidered, and Pavel Durov will finally be able to implement what he planned. They also discussed artificial intelligence. Marc and Ben emphasized how important it is to support innovation in AI and not stifle it with excessive regulation. I myself am working on a startup in the AI field and see how quickly new technologies are taking over the world. Of course, they can be intimidating, and they mustn't fall into the wrong hands. But it's necessary to maintain a balance and allow them to develop, to trust the process, and act based on circumstances rather than preemptively banning everything. In Europe, where I am, some AI features appear later due to stricter regulations, and that's not the most pleasant trend. At the same time, I haven't heard of any tragic or truly frightening situations since the appearance of GPT-3.5. Moreover, they drew attention to energy and its connection to AI. Developing artificial intelligence requires enormous computational power, which means energy. They discussed the possibility of reviving nuclear energy as a clean and efficient source. An interesting thought. Perhaps in the future, this will help solve many problems. In fact, if the news is to be believed, this is already happening. It seems that Google and Amazon have begun constructing mini nuclear reactors. What do you think—will it now be easier for startups and tech companies to thrive? Maybe it's time for us to take part in shaping the future of technology and not stand on the sidelines. If you're interested, watch the episode yourself — here's the video: here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4jWb-0nj44&embedable=true https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4jWb-0nj44&embedable=true I think you'll find it thought-provoking too.

How Trump's Victory Could Reshape the Future for Startups

What’s expected of tech startups and entrepreneurs in the COVID-19 crisis? A question that is on my mind for the past few months does not have a straightforward answer. Naturally, they are expected to do things they're already doing well — help people stay connected and get the stuff done. Those who do actually thrive even in the middle of the crisis, as we are seeing meal box service, AI verification platform, and digital payments service all rising multi-million investment rounds. Gousto Onfido Stripe However, is it enough just to continue what you’re doing, even if you doing it well? Apparently not. As Mark Andressen urges in his , it is the time to keep the vanity aside and build things that society desperately needs. “Every step of the way, to everyone around us, we should be asking the question, what are you building? What are you building directly, or helping other people to build, or teaching other people to build, or taking care of people who are building?… We need to get all the talent we can on the biggest problems we have, and on building the answers to those problems” he says. recent essay And who better than tech entrepreneurs are suited to build those answe rs? It comes as no surprise that have already taken or will take place to help COVID-19 crisis relief efforts. I was lucky to witness one from the inside as a mentor for the at initiative. nearly 60 hackathons Arts & Creativity section The Global Hack Back in mid-March, The Global Hack was one of the first hackathons to tackle COVID-19 related problems. The virtual hackathon was going on via Slack, reflective of the times of social distancing we’re living in. Despite the challenging format, over 12k participants from 100+ countries came up with about 500 ideas to aid the crisis relief. Looking back at the event, here are three reasons why I think the hackathons can help move the needle, and one reason why it might never happen. Global, unprecedented challenge Remember the line from the ‘Silicon Valley’ TV series? “I don’t know about you people, but I don’t want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place better than we do”. Those words of Gavin Belson, one of the series’ characters, literally characterize most of the tech entrepreneurs. Ambitious, aiming to be the first, looking out of the box — the same traits needed to create any innovative tech products are now required to battle COVID-19 crisis. The unprecedented challenge motivates thousands of tech specialists to join hackathon teams and create something meaningful for millions. For example, the overall winner , drafted a solar-powered hand disinfection station, something that many will need in the ‘new normal’ life. Or team which addressed the needs for 360+ million people for psychological support. SolarCrafter Act on Crisis People strongly motivated to create something before others, impact millions, and potentially get a good credit with VCs checking out those hackathons are the first reason why they can make a difference. Focus on relief Nearly every team at The Global Hack chose to address a social issue that COVID-19 crisis is causing. Some, like my personal favorites and , looked at solutions based on sense of community and helping each other, such as delivering food to elderly and self-isolating people. Others focus on very specific audiences such as , a platform to connect performers and audience online, or , a service for people requiring assisted mental health therapies. ShoutOut La Causa electron.live Trans-Late The reason why such ideas can make things better is that they address the issues often overlooked at a global scale. Of course, when human lives are at stake, governments and other state-level organisations need to focus on saving as many as possible, and preventing the disease to spread. However, their agenda might be missing some smaller, but still important issues the world is facing — from lightening up a in self-isolation to from disinfectants. Recognizing those challenges is the first step to relieving them. birthday party protecting aquatic animals Urge to code It may sound funny but for many engineers I personally know a hackathon is the same as a spa day or a weekend getaway for most people outside of the tech industry. Some do it for fun, some have the urge to stretch their coding muscles, some want to test their personal ideas in a sandbox. When some people look for banana bread recipes or at-home yoga practices, developers find their virtual retreats in hackathons. Who knows, maybe it takes one bored coder to finally hack the COVID-19? And the reason why not As we can see, the hackathons have a great potential to aid the COVID-19 crisis relief. And one big blocker why they might not able to do it — lack of resources to actually build. Fearing the risk of market recession, investors are choosing to back up the projects with proven business models, while the most of the hackathon projects are still to prove themselves. Despite the fact that some governments are already the early-stage startups to survive the crisis, it’s also not a fully sustainable solution. Startup industry is based on the principles of strong competition and ability to survive through the storms, and only the strongest make their way through. Even during The Global Hack I’ve seen a few startups struggling to clearly understand the problem they are addressing and how they can feasibly help. Does it mean they are not worth supporting? backing up We are now at the beginning of a long journey, and the hackathons clearly can help. In order to do so, I can see a few steps to speed up the process: Hackathon organisers can pre-define problems to address, so the efforts are not diluted Venture capitalists need to monitor the hackathons regularly and dedicate a budget they can spare to support the most promising ideas VC industry needs to clearly define the criteria to judge the COVID-19 crisis relief ideas. Apart from traditional startup evaluation metrics, those can have more focus on short-term benefits and social good, rather than monetization Finally, the participants need to be realistic about what they actually can do, even with a minimal funding. In the current situation, a small-scale, but quick to implement idea can make the world a better place.

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