👉 Tech Twitter TLDR #2
Russian spyware, $800M for Notion, $700M for Adam, how-tos for founder-parents
Yo! Welcome back to Tech Twitter TLDR, the newsletter curating the best of Tech Twitter every week so you don’t have to!
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Here’s what happened on Tech Twitter this week:
Notion raised $10M at an $800M valuation
Notion just raised a $10m Series A at a staggering $800m valuation. 💰💰💰
How were they able to close this wild round?
Here’s my thoughts on the strategy, along with what risks it presents...
(a thread 👇)
I've heard a lot of people say that the @NotionHQ round was crazy. But if I'm being honest, I think those people don't see the real potential. I'm not an investor, but I think this is a truly awesome product that is rarely equaled. I salute them for their awesomeness.
The CEO of WeWork has been cashing out
Translation: CEO of WeWork is set for life on a scale beyond 99% of even the most successful startup founders, no matter how hard his company crashes and burns in any potential real estate downturn
Scott Austin @ScottMAustin
The only true contrarian position in Silicon Valley is being long WeWork at $47B valuation. Including its CEO & Founder...
The Wall Street Journal @WSJ
Viral FaceApp was made in Russia and people are upset
We have not learnt anything from #CambridgeAnalytica ! 🤔
Viral App #FaceApp Now Owns Access To More Than 150 Million People's Faces And Names of cost which they can use as they wish. Via @Forbes
#faceappchallange forbes.com/sites/johnkoet…
-Everyone: “Omg don’t use FaceApp, it gives your photos to hackers”
-Also everyone: *constantly does unsafe shit on the internet*
Forgive me for all the FaceApp tweets but as everyone knows the best thing to do with machine learning algorithms is to feed them recursive data so I fed my old picture through until it stopped recognizing a face and here’s the progression.
Other Stuff
Great tweet(storms) and discussions in no particular order
21 US tech VC backed IPOs in 2018
2019 IPOs YTD:
1. Lyft
2. PagerDuty
3. Pinterest
4. Zoom
5. Beyond Meat
6. Uber
7. Fastly
8. CrowdStrike
9. Slack
10. RealReal
11. Medallia
Filed:
Peloton
WeWork
Others:
Postmates?
DoorDash?
Airbnb?
Datadog?
SquareSpace?
Perhaps the key reason Silicon Valley should be wary of U.S. regulation of big tech is that it will make it that much harder for the new startup to disrupt said incumbent.
I look at a bunch of DTC brands everyday, and I’m starting to realize that:
1/ The best categories are flexible
2/ The best founders are solution agnostic
3/ The best companies are ambitious beyond their vertical
A thread…
I've seen so many really beautiful, useful products with exactly the same use case and target market. It's evident that past that bar, only go-to-market matters.
A few techniques and tools that have helpful me stay just-enough-productive during this phase of my life where I don't have the structure of a full-time job. Thread 👇
It's basic but I can't stop thinking about this:
VC is an asset class where the best assets pick their investors
So spend less time trying to be a good picker, and more time trying to be worth being picked
As a founder-parent I've had to:
1) Hire an EA
2) Be home by 6pm
3) Work my ass off from 8am-6pm, M-F
4) Not work on weekends
5) Have a full time nanny
6) Go to sleep and wake up earlier
7) Box out alone time with my wife
8) Spend less time with friends*
*painful reality
This is one of the main differences I’ve noticed between SF and Wall Street talk. Wall Street calls it “losing money” while SF calls it “investment” or “R&D” or “growth” or even just Tech.
Success metrics for these projects aren’t immediate profit.
Liz Hoffman @lizrhoffman
Funny & Interesting
Some lols to start your week off right
Perhaps the greatest lesson I learned as a PM at Google is to include GIFs and memes in your presentations as much as humanly possible.
Post-Apollo, here are some candidates for Grand Technological Projects:
- Permanent base on the Moon we can see from Earth
- Harvest massive geothermal energy from Yellowstone
- Underwater city with trans-Atlantic hyperloop
- Actually build lots and lots of housing in SF
in 1997 Crayola made the leap into a cyberpunk future with the release of these internet themed crayons.
Web Surfin' Blue is my colour.
Does the rest of America think the Washington panic about Big Tech is kind of weird?
5 most popular brands among Millennials were Netflix, Google, Amazon, YouTube, and Target.
Among GenZ: Google, Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, and Oreo.
BONUS: Remote Bulls
A few investors and operators shared some insights and learnings on the rising tide of remote work
I think we’re underestimating the impact of the shift towards remote work and distributed teams. As this becomes the norm (and for many teams a necessity), people from anywhere in the country / world can participate in the opportunities abundant in Silicon Valley.
Love this graph
Speak about momentum…
"How recently did you switch from primarily working out of a central office to remote?"
1/ Massive lesson learned today regarding running a remote company: you must register as a foreign entity in every state you have employees.
I incorrectly assumed that using a PEO absorbed all the tax nonsense.
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