This Week in Startups

Back by popular demand is Casey Winters of Greylock (previously Growth Head Pinterest, Grubhub), who gives the LAUNCH Incubator a master class on measuring retention & product-market fit. Do you have product-market fit? How do you know? How do you go about measuring & demonstrating customer retention? All of these are critical building blocks in building & scaling your startup. Join in as Casey walks us through his framework and then workshops the formula with three Incubator companies: Quinn, Funerals360, & LiveHotel. For Casey's slides check out: caseyaccidental.com

Ben Narasin has a unique view on early-stage investing, quite different than Jason's, and today on "Angel," he shares his proven thesis and dives into a track record that speaks for itself, with over half of his seed companies reaching Series A, and 3 unicorns. Ben explains what he looks for in a startup (teams factors heavily, but not exclusively), the absolute critical characteristic a founder must have to succeed, and executing on the strength of your convictions. Plus, portfolio hits, misses, regrets, and more.

At Stockholm Tech Fest 2017: Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde talks with Jason about his P2P revolution for global technology access & impact, lessons he learned from the resulting jail time, our completely broken democracy, the total death of privacy, redefining politics & what to hope for, his continued activism & entrepreneurship, & the frightening specter of President Zuckerberg.

On today's News Roundtable, Molly Wood of Marketplace & Sarah Frier of Bloomberg join Jason to talk the biggest news of the week: Facebook deploying Russian money for ads during the election. The ethics of FB ad targeting, Zuckerberg's intentions, targeting ads by race are all dissected here, including: what will the next FB bombshell? The trio also covers the latest from Apple launch, A.I.'s (questionable) identification of sexual orientation, Instagram v. Snap influencers, the Bodega blow-up -- and more!

Today’s guest features CEO of Front, Mathilde Collin. Originally based in France, she moved her company of 17 people to Silicon Valley and now has thousands of customers for her enterprise product, which is currently used by Inside.com. She went to Y Combinator and has raised $10m+ from some of the most famous investors in the industry, including Dave Morin of Slow Ventures, Alexis Ohanian of Reddit, and Stewart Butterfield of Slack. She is in the studio to talk about her product, Front, which is a collaborative inbox for businesses. Front is like a beautiful LEGO box with every possible feature you need to improve your email workflow. Join us as Jason and Mathilde explore how Front streamlines communication, the competitive landscape with Slack and Zendesk, the impact of machine learning and AI on customer support, work culture in France vs. Silicon Valley, and more. Plus, find out Mathilde’s secret to keeping her team happy.

In today's episode of "Angel," Jason welcomes Syndicate leader Zach Coelius, Triggit founder who, only after 2yrs as an angel, has already enjoyed a $1b exit (Cruise, bought by GM). Zach shares his insights as a founder-turned-investor, including finding deals & deal-breakers, hustling & other techniques to be a better investor, advising your way onto the cap table, what stage of product development is the most exciting, the skinny on AngelList funds, his (tremendous) hits & (very few) misses, and, from personal experience, the great respect & empathy he has for entrepreneurs ("startups are like rocket ships into the walls of your incompetence"). Thank you Audible for sponsoring this podcast.

Today on the program, we are going full science fiction with a company that is at the forefront of the VR revolution, Leap Motion. They are making great progress in this space, recently raising $50m from investors like Bill Warner, Founders Fund, and Andreessen Horowitz. Join us as CEO and co-founder, Michael Buckwald, talks about his mission to remove the barriers between people and technology, his 10-year journey of funding before product-market fit, Leap Motion’s 3D motion-control technology, AR/VR predictions, and more.

Tim O'Reilly is one of the great thought leaders in the history of technology. His much anticipated book (coming 10/10), called "WTF: What’s the Future & Why It’s Up to Us,” breaks down his lessons & observations from a life in tech to draws a roadmap for our future economic survival.

Today, we’re going to get a lot smarter about ICOs and cryptocurrencies with today’s guest, Kathleen Breitman, co-founder of Dynamic Ledger Solutions, which has developed Tezos, a new blockchain-based smart contract platform with an on-chain governance mechanism to coordinate and push upgrades to its network. Tezos is making major waves right now with its recent record-breaking $232m ICO and ongoing fundraising in the Crypto Valley that is Zug, Switzerland. Join us in this special episode as Jason and Kathleen do a deep dive into her new cryptocurrency project, how it’s different from Ethereum, running a fundraiser with a Swiss non-profit foundation, the cypherpunk movement, and the long-term impact of cryptocurrency.

If you’ve been paying attention, blockchain, bitcoin, Ethereum, and ICOs are hot topics. After talking about cryptocurrency for a few years on This Week in Startups, it is now having its shining moment, with one bitcoin trading at over $4000. Our guest today, Peter Smith, is the CEO & co-founder of Blockchain, the leading integrated bitcoin platform that makes using different blockchains easy. Join us as Peter distills bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and blockchain fundamentals, regulatory issues and why the U.S. is slower in the cryptospace, effects on the dark web, ICO predictions, and more.