FundersClub Weekly Newsletter - November 23, 2016
FundersClub Portfolio News
analyticsMD announces that it has secured $13M in funding to accelerate the delivery of its artificial intelligence software platform to U.S. health systems in "AI for Healthcare Goes Mainstream with analyticsMD."
Eight, a sleep technology startup, is launching a smart mattress so you can keep yourself connected to the internet of things while catching some sleep. The mattress allows for custom temperature control on either side of the bed, monitors moving and breathing rate to determine when you’re asleep and what stage of sleep you’re in, tracks sleep scores over time and connects to other devices and apps in "Alexa will warm Eight’s new Smart Mattress."
Notable Labs is building on the idea of personalized medicine in cancer research and using a patient’s own cancer cells to guide therapy in "Robots Race for the Cure."
OnboardIQ, whose software automates the hiring process for hourly workers, releases its first On-Demand Jobs Report and it shows a healthy and growing on-demand sector that doubled hiring in the first 10 months of 2016 in "Hiring Doubles in On-Demand Economy Through First 10 Months of 2016, OnboardIQ On-Demand Jobs Report Shows."
GitLab, which provides a platform to help teams of developers write, test and ship code, is transitioning their CephFS storage tool to bare metal infrastructure that they will manage themselves instead of using the public IaaS cloud in "GitLab ditches the public cloud."
Investor Thoughts
Christopher Steiner of FundersClub looks at the car business and analyzes how the balance of power will continue to shift away from incumbent carmakers as it morphs into a technology business in "The Uncertain Future of Carmakers."
Benedict Evans of Andreessen Horowitz discusses mobile phones, image censoring, and poses some questions about implications for the future in "Cameras, ecommerce and machine learning."
Aaron Harris of Y Combinator breaks down the occasional misaligned incentives between VCs and growing companies that causes them to spend money too quickly, and how founders should respond in "Why VCs sometimes push companies to burn too fast."
Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures discusses how data is not a way to create new ideas, but rather, a filtering tool in "The Limitations Of Data And Benchmarks."
CB Insights maps out how long it took for the 20 most highly valued US-based unicorns to get to a billion dollar valuation after their first-ever equity financing in "The Fastest Unicorns: From First Financing to Billion Dollar Valuations."
Kent Goldman of Upside Partnership shares his Investment Decision Checklist for those thinking of becoming an investor or those wanting a better sense for how a seed investor approaches investment decisions in "A Seed Fund’s Investment Checklist."
Ash Rust of Trinity Ventures shares ways to solve the problem of when your company is running out of money in "3 Ways to Fix your Startup’s Cash Crunch."
Founder Institute gathers insights from top startup specialists and entrepreneurial experts to provide a resource for crafting the perfect startup pitch in "Don’t Pitch Your Startup Until You’ve Read This."
Founder and Operator Thoughts
Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt shares a few ways to come up with side project ideas, as those can turn into viable businesses in "How to come up with side project ideas."
Corey Breier of Life is a Game shares lessons about having happy, healthy, and productive days that he has learned from 50 interviews with founders, nomads, and authors in "Steal these Daily Habits of Self-Employed Entrepreneurs."
Larry Kim of WordStream sources a handful of TED talks that offer leadership insight in "These 5 Brilliant TED Talks Will Teach You How to Be a Great Leader."
Felix Feng of Radius shares his own bootcamper’s journey of finding and applying for jobs after graduation, and 5 things he wishes he had known before in "I spent 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp. Here’s what I learned."
Benjamin P. Hardy offers a simple routine to help you tap into your subconscious mind to unlock connections and solutions to your problems and projects in "This 10-Minute Routine Will Increase Your Clarity And Creativity."
Abhishek Chakraborty of Linkletter lists a few lessons he has learned for an early stage startup to keep in mind while hiring in "This is How We Can Nail Our Startup Hiring."
In Other News
Amazon Web Services (AWS) announces a significant price drop for some of its storage services. In addition, it has also launched a few new features for developers who want to use its Glacier cold storage service in "AWS drops its storage prices and launches new cold storage retrieval options."
Facebook wants to be unbanned in China, so it’s built a censorship tool that could hide posts about prohibited topics from people in China in "Facebook built censorship tool to get into China despite human rights risks."
Did You Know?
Did you know that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) comes online in October 2018 to replace the Hubble Telescope, and will enable humanity to witness the until now unobserved formation of the universe's first galaxies?