This Week in Startups

LINKS to brackets: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1zqc-2vDRl7e86USf4okiX8DRcXPzX1HW || https://www.canva.com/design/DADuVKZjuc4/9Qt3B4m4DU-Z_HxbuDTb6w/view?utm_content=DADuVKZjuc4&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=sharebutton 0:29 Jason intros Garry & Zach 3:02 Jason goes over the bracket-style breakdown 3:15 Best of the decade: Ride-Sharing vs. AI/ML 8:32 Best: Amazon Prime vs. 4G LTE 10:07 Best: Tesla M3 vs. Disney buying Marvel + Star Wars IP 14:15 Best: Streaming vs. Mindfulness 17:01 Garry's Best: AI/ML vs. 4G LTE 20:20 Jason's Best: Model 3 vs. Mindfulness 24:05 Zach's Best: Ride-Sharing vs. Streaming 25:12 Jason & Guests pick their biggest win from the last decade 29:20 Jason tees up worst of the decade bracket 29:45 Worst of the decade: 2016 Election Fiasco vs. City San Francisco/Amazon Eating the World/Snowflake Culture 38:01 Worst: ICO Madness vs. Zuckerberg 40:34 Worst: WeWork vs. Vaping 44:13 Worst: Juicero vs. Theranos 44:48 Zach's Worst: 2016 Election vs. ICO Madness 45:09 Garry's Worst: Amazon Eating the World vs. ICO Madness 45:56 Jason's Worst: 2016 Election vs. Zuckerberg 49:52 Jason's Worst: WeWork vs. Theranos 51:56 Garry's Worst: Amazon Eating the World vs. Theranos 53:47 At what stage does Garry & Zach like to invest in companies? 55:52 Championship round Jason: Mindfulness vs. Zuckerberg Garry: Mindfulness vs. Theranos Zach: Streaming vs. 2016 Election Fiasco 59:52 What topics will define the 2020's?

0:52 Kenny from Bacarai asks Jason how to start a flywheel with paid pilots as a pre-revenue company in the group airfare space 13:30 Elyse from Bloom Bras asks Jason some tactical questions around converting bounced website visitors 32:05 Pranav from Glyph asks Jason about goal-setting around raising a Seed round 50:31 Mark from Recapped asks Jason how to better understand & capitalize on investor feedback

0:48 Jason intros Gil and asks about his lengthy background in cybersecurity 3:02 What experiences inspired Check Point? 8:31 Gil explains how he raised money for Check Point in the early 1990's 14:04 How did Gil build and price his first product in a developing market? 16:46 Dealing with the first batch of cyber attacks at Check Point 19:10 What was the profile of a typical hacker in the early Internet? When did the criminality start and how does crypto tie in? 25:20 Potential of Chinese hardware hacking & hackers stealing wired money from venture firms 30:16 What are the risks associated with high-level governmental cyber security breaches 31:42 Should companies be required to build backdoors into their messaging apps? 34:24 Are Tor networks totally safe? 38:19 Gil is the "Godfather of Cybersecurity" 38:55 How protective are two-factor authentication & biometrics? 41:26 What are the most dangerous types of hacks? 44:08 Why are Microsoft products more susceptible to hacks than Apple? 46:03 Will deep-fakes lead to more threats? 50:05 Best cyber-protection advice? 55:28 Are the electrical grids a huge liability? 57:55 What is their recruiting playbook?

0:52 Jason intros TWiST Live guest and one of his first investments Marco Zappacosta & Marco describes how they met in 2010 2:28 What did Thumbtack look like back in 2010? How has it changed in 2019? 6:09 Dealing with regional price differences 7:58 How much has mobile demand increased since starting Thumbtack? 11:53 What was it like running a startup in 2010 vs. 2019? 14:38 Impact of starting Thumbtack 2 weeks before Lehman Brothers went out of business 15:43 How did Marco's first try at institutional fundraising go? What did he learn from a bad investor experience? 23:13 What should founders optimize for during fundraising? 27:50 What drove growth at Thumbtack? How did they reach $10M in revenue? How did they remain focused on digging after striking oil? 31:56 Focusing on output over input 35:07 Transforming the Thumbtack experience after hitting $100M in revenue 44:33 What has Marco learned about building a marketplace over the past decade? 52:22 How has the gig-economy impacted overall employment in the US? 56:59 What is private/public healthcare's impact on entrepreneurship in a society? 1:02:33 How is Thumbtack dealing with the scarcity of trade workers? 1:04:41 What advice would Marco give himself in 2010? 1:07:16 Thoughts on minimum wage?

0:58 Jason welcomes the Startmate companies to the TWiST Studio 1:36 Zac from JigSpace pitches an AR platform for educational presentations 11:56 Teresa from Brandcrush pitches an experiential marketing platform 24:57 Jimmy from Syncio pitches a 1-click Shopify inventory sync extension 37:53 Alice from Ovira pitches a wearable device that helps stop period pain 46:14 Brett from Flaktest pitches an educational gaming platform teaching school subjects thru e-sports 54:48 Gemma from WORK180 a women-oriented job site where only endorsed employers can post jobs 1:03:34 Jason sits down with Startmate's Head of Operations Michael Batko and reveals his top 3!

1:08 Jason intros Joel Flory 2:12 What is VSCO? How is it different than Instagram, Facebook & other photo-sharing apps? 4:33 How does VSCO grow at hyper speed without follower counts, likes, etc.? 8:28 What is VSCO's scale so far? 12:23 How does VSCO get people (mostly Gen-Z) to pay for a social network? How do they view pricing? 18:09 How VSCO uses themselves as a tool for other social networks 19:52 What is a VSCO Girl? How have they capitalized on the Gen-Z meme phenomenon? 21:31 Joel's thoughts on e-commerce 27:19 Joel is a long-time TWiST fan! 30:00 Mistakes Joel learned from in his 9-year journey at VSCO 32:26 Has iPhone photography ruined the photography industry? 36:53 How does VSCO deal with inappropriate content? How does their feed algorithm work? 43:59 Jason goes through VSCO's funding history and asks why Joel didn't sell VSCO for a massive profit 46:06 Is the greatest art created by those who don't care about what others think? 47:41 Collapse of the photography industry & sense of belonging at VSCO 51:44 Advantage of having HQ in Oakland 54:59 VSCO global expansion 57:17 Magic of subscriptions 1:05:01 The 3 truth's of VSCO

0:51 Jason intros Josh Browder & DoNotPay 2:48 Starting DoNotPay in college 6:12 How much $ has DoNotPay saved citizens since launching in 2016? 7:46 Josh explains his product roadmap to Jason 15:14 DoNotPay's mission and how Wells Fargo scammed its customers 17:37 Josh takes us through DoNotPay's suite of features starting with the robot lawyer/chatbot 19:57 Josh describes the "Skip Waiting on Hold" feature 23:37 DoNotPay's "Contract Reading AI" 28:31 Benefits of capitalist markets when consumers are treated poorly 30:51 Thoughts on Facebook? 34:05 "Hidden $ Discovery" on DoNotPay 34:47 What is DoNotPay doing for immigration 41:59 Jason asks Josh about his father, Bill Browder life and book, "Red Notice" 48:47 What is the CCPA? How does it relate to DoNotPay? 54:59 Long-term vision of DoNotPay? 56:24 Full audio of Ryan Block's call with Comcast

0:44 Jason intros Luke and describes how he found out about Farmer's Fridge 5:01 How did Luke overcome barriers of making a vending machine feel like a restaurant 9:18 Luke's life before Farmer's Fridge 11:52 How Luke discovered the issues of distribution that led to Farmer's Fridge 16:18 Building the first Farmer's Fridge vending machine 23:48 Ideal locations for Farmer's Fridge machines & where the first machine was placed 29:35 How did Farmer's Fridge begin to expand and hit critical mass 34:22 Using sales data to craft the most appealing menu 37:00 Getting VCs interested 41:57 Who was the first bold VC to put $ in? How did they prove themselves to institutional firms? 46:27 Machine cost over time & maximizing inventory 49:56 How hardships made Luke fearless 51:30 "Startup cannibalism"??? & low-burn culture 54:27 Farmer's Fridge NYC expansion 58:27 How does Farmer's Fridge compare to fast-casual salad restaurants

1:04 Jason intros Alexandr 2:19 Alexandr shares his personal startup history 5:17 How & why did Scale start? 8:26 What is the best example of Scale in practice? What problem are they solving? 10:44 Video demo of Scale's platform 15:34 Acquiring the scale.com domain name & insights on the unique spelling of Alexandr 17:31 How does Scale deal with data-sharing between customers? 21:34 LIDAR vs. non-LIDAR... or both? 32:29 When will we have capable self-driving vehicles from Palo Alto to San Francisco? Over/under 2030? How will gov't regulations affect self-driving? 36:03 China vs. US in the race of self-driving 41:22 Explainability in ML 47:26 Does it matter that we sometimes don't know the answer to ML systems? 51:39 Should explainability have to be proven in ML? 55:13 How should inherently biased data-sets (like US justice system) be handled via ML? 1:00:00 Importance of focusing on higher-value work 1:02:41 Are dangers of AI overblown? 1:08:50 Will "General AI" happen in our lifetime? 1:12:26 What's the next major AI trend after self-driving? 1:23:46 Does Alexandr remember a time before the Internet? 1:26:35 Jason plays "good tweet/bad tweet" with Alexandr

1:06 Jason intros the Pegasus concept & Yousician's Chris Thür 3:52 Chris explains Yousician 5:22 How did Yousician start and what did Guitar Hero have to do with it? 11:02 Capitalizing on Apple's inclusion of subscriptions 16:00 What were the early days of Yousician like, and was it hard to raise $? 20:32 Is being based in Finland an asset? 27:00 Chris gives his best advice for founders 29:34 Does Chris feel pressure to take $ off the table through secondary shares? 30:45 What does Chris look for in investors and what motivates Finnish employees? 34:55 Jason & Chris talk speeding tickets in Finland 42:19 Chris demos Yousician and Jason sings along 45:25 Jason tries to get on the Yousician Cap Table 47:21 Why Jason believes Yousician will get to 10 million subscribers in the next few years