👉 Last Week on Tech Twitter TLDR - Aug 18
Apple hates jeans, YC demo day JOMO, don't be friends with VCs
Yo! Here’s what happened on Tech Twitter this week.
As always, reply with feedback and forward to friends!
YC Demo Day JOMO
YC’s Summer 2019 batch had their demo day. Lots of cool startups, but plenty of hilarious subtweets as well.
1/ If you want to find out what is in the Y Combinator S19 batch, @Golden has compiled (using public signals) a near complete list of truly exciting companies.
If we are missing any or you want to help improve the data you can edit the topics.
golden.com/blog/using-the…
Today is YC's Demo Day, where founders try their hardest to give away control of their company.
Let's celebrate bootstrapped and self-funded founders with our own "Demo Day". Reply with:
1. A description of your company in 10 words or less
2. MRR (if any)
3. Link to your site
Live footage of investors at YC Demo Day trying to meet companies raising at under a $15M pre-money valuation
Apple Card Shenanigans
The Apple Card was released and everyone thinks it’s going to be industry-shaping, and wardrobe-shaping.
The Apple Card is the last step before we get rid of credit cards altogether, and payments are just authenticated by your phone and face.
@pm They’ll aggregate the buyers via fraud-free Apple Pay and commoditize the banking layer, which will be bid out.
The mobile OS duopoly will get bigger and suck all the margin out of consumer finance.
Classic aggregation theory cc @benthompson
does anyone at Apple wear pants
AppleInsider @appleinsider
"Don’t put the Apple Card in your wallet. Hang in a floating glass frame in a dimly lit, year round 70 degree, humidity controlled location. No flash photography please."
AppleInsider @appleinsider
@Appleinsider @Apple Never place near other cards.
Do not look directly at card.
Annoint with myrrh and francincense once per month.
Founders debate making friends with VCs
Watch the founders of juggernauts Flexport and Brex debate whether or not to invite VCs to their lunch table.
TIL many more founders than I would've expected vocalized a feeling (most borne out of experience) that they don't want to burn too many calories to build a relationship w/ a VC ahead of raising rounds.
No judgment here, but that was surprising to hear in such force.
@semil It’s highly counterproductive in my experience. None of the people I built relationships ever funded us. In fact, building a “relationship” was a counter indicator for whether they would invest.
@typesfast @semil Hm, interesting! Our experience was the exact opposite. All our rounds were led by people that I had been building building a relationship for 6+ months. In our experience we *only* raised from people we had a strong relationship with.
Smartest Tweets
"Inversion is often at the core of great art."
The best products break the rules. Let's invert Facebook:
1. Too many parents: social network for teens only
2. People I don't know: social network where you have to "re-friend" people every month
Inversion is a powerful tool.
It’s the next step up for technology.
If YC is about making something people want, BTC is about stopping people from taking everything you have.
Paul Graham @paulg
Network Effects are not all created equal.
Some quick thoughts after a number of pitches recently that seemed to not understand the nuances of network effects and their strengths. 1/
First sell to startups.
Then sell to LOB (line of business / departments).
Then sell enterprise wide.
Almost impossible for a SaaS startup to build sales momentum any other way.
PM is an awesome job: make big decisions about the product, often be the face of it in presentations/meetings, etc.
I haven't been one for years now and have since led almost every other function, so I feel like I can share a different perspective freely... PM is the worst job:
✅BUY
• Family: marriage/kids
• Self-education: books/podcasts
• Ancient wisdom: faith/meditation
⚠️HOLD
• Fitness: physical/mental health
• Real estate: house/rentals
• Cash: savings/low burn
🚫SELL
• PC/outrage culture
• Dopamine/info overload
• Instant gratification
Courses that should be taught in high school:
1. Building credit/savings
2. Career paths/expected salaries
3. Student debt
4. Excel
5. Mental health
6. Nutrition/exercise
7. CS/data science
8. CPR
9. Substance abuse (Juul addiction)
10. Cyberbulling
What would you add?
Funniest Tweets
From the "it ain't talking shit if you can back it up" school of living is this 2016 letter from TopTal CEO to potential investors
D2C Mattress 1.0: we ship your mattress to you in a box.
D2C Mattress 2.0: self-driving mattresses.
Juris @JurisAbramenko
always 👏 be 👏 influencing 👏 even 👏 as 👏 you 👏 feel 👏 the 👏 sweet 👏 embrace 👏 of 👏 o/a0Lo359D41
Tanya Chen @Tanya_Chen
Most Interesting Tweets
Every day there are over 5.6 billion searches on Google.
According to their annual report, Google has never seen 15% of these searches before.
That means 840 million searches every day are people looking for something that no one has looked for before.
Insane.
VC-funded vs US population
White: 77.1% vs 76.5%
Asian: 17.7% vs 5.9%
Middle Eastern: 2.4% vs 3%
Latinx: 1.8% vs 18.3%
Black: 1% vs 13.4%
Men: 90.8% vs 49%
Women: 9.2% vs 51%
Startups which everyone is always requesting but never seem to take off:
• See which friends are free to hang out right now
• Micropayments for content
• Personal CRM
• Social travel
What are others?
On this day in 1989: Saved by the Bell debuts
Zack Morris’ Motorola phone:
*took 10 hours to charge
*had 30 minutes of battery life
*would cost $9,865 in today’s prices
Estimated annual content budgets for Netflix, Amazon & Apple:
2019: $27 billion (combined)
2013: $3.5 billion (combined)
Sources:
JPMorgan, CFRA, Loup, FT
I'm always massively impressed with the attention to detail that the Uber design team put into all of their work. World-class.
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