This Week in Startups

There’s a new way to make stock market predictions. Numerai, a hedge fund based in San Francisco, has gained a following as the first hedge fund that gives stock market data to machine learning data scientists using structure-preserving encryption to prevent them from mimicking the fund’s trades themselves. Several thousand anonymous data scientists compete to create the best trading algorithms—and win bitcoin for their efforts. At the same time, the company carefully organizes this encrypted data in a way that allows the data scientists to build models that are potentially able to make better trades. Founder Richard Craib believes that Numerai can become even more successful if it can align the incentives of everyone involved. His hope is that his new kind of currency, Numeraire, will turn online competition into a collaboration—and turn Wall Street on its head in the process.

Jason’s passion is to create things in the world that make a difference, and that’s really at core of what entrepreneurs are. They are the people who decide that they’re not just going to have an idea, but that they will take that idea and have it manifest itself in a product, service or company. Jason has the unique perspective of being on both sides of the table - as an entrepreneur and now as an angel investor for the last 6 years in 150+ companies, and as such, he has started to think about what it means to invest in a company. Join us as he shares insights into what angel investors should do and how they should approach the work. Plus, he shares excerpts from his upcoming book, “Angel,” and answers questions from the audience about pitch meetings, how to behave in them, how to craft an email to an investor, and much more.

Filmed at LAUNCH Festival 2017, Jason sits down with Alex Garden of Zume Pizza, Henry Hu of Cafe X, and Deepak Sekar of Chowbotics to have a candid discussion about the future of robotics in the food industry—the inspiration for their companies, successes, regulation challenges, and the great debate around automation of labor. And then Amanda Richardson of HotelTonight shares her experiences of being a small company in a crowded industry, getting attacked by one of their largest competitors, and how her team went from 2-3 bookings a day to now doing tens of thousands of room nights a day, with 20m downloads, in 37 different countries. She challenges us to focus on the “superpower” of being a small company, to know your users, and to think about your differentiation in the industry.

Just because you write the check doesn’t mean that you’re the important person in the equation. In fact, the check is not important in the equation either. It’s the people who get up everyday and do the hard work, and that kind of humility, work ethic, and dedication is what set Hunter Walk of Homebrew, Megan Quinn of Spark Capital, and Jalak Jobanputra of FuturePerfect VC apart. Filmed at LAUNCH Festival 2017, Jason sits down with this all-star panel of builders-turned-investors to discuss lessons learned, equity crowdfunding, VR predictions, and much more. And then Rishi Garg of Mayfield helps us understand the M&A process, how to be proactive, and how to get the right help. Previously, Rishi ran corporate development and strategy teams at 3 public companies, most recently at Twitter, where he was VP of Corporate Development, as well as at Square and MTV Networks. Along the way, he also started and sold a venture-backed company and worked for a couple other venture firms, so M&A is a topic that he cares deeply about, and has seen from many angles.

500 Startups is a global venture capital seed fund with a network of startup programs headquartered in Silicon Valley, with investments in more than 1,800 technology startups all over the world since its inception in 2010. Jason sits down with Founding Partner Dave McClure to talk about early mistakes, lessons and insights learned, his investment approach, and advice to founders in 2017. Then, Sarah Tavel of Greylock Partners reflects on her early days at Pinterest as she watched the company grow from 30,000 registered users to 100m monthly active users, and distills 10 lessons from her experience there.

There are two things that startups need: money and growth. Money is the fuel, and growth happens typically through investments, and through making better products and technique. Filmed at LAUNCH Festival 2017, Jason interviews an all-star panel of investor thought leaders. Gil Penchina is a super angel of super angels that has dominated the syndicate space. Cyan Banister started as an angel investor and has moved upstream to be a venture capitalist at Founders Fund. SeedInvest CEO and co-founder Ryan Feit is making a huge bet on the equity crowdfunding revolution.

Filmed at LAUNCH Festival 2017, Jason sits down with Stripe CEO Patrick Collison to explore his journey to solving one of the toughest barriers to a global e-commerce economy: payments. About a decade ago, companies were mostly working with legacy players like banks, gateways and processors, and they were essentially looking to buy a technology service from them. These financial institutions were huge, but focused on particular markets, which provided an opportunity for Stripe. Today, Stripe works with companies in 124 countries and handles billions of dollars of aggregate revenue every year. Join us as Patrick shares an inspiring story of his early days at Y Combinator, mistakes and triumphs, opening the Atlas program to US-based startups, and his views on public/private markets.

Filmed at Cisco Spark Haus, SXSW 2017, Jason sits down with Capital Factory Mentor founder of Josh Baer, who helps people quit their jobs and become entrepreneurs. Josh is a tireless supporter of startups, but more specifically, has made Austin a center of gravity for entrepreneurs. Capital Factory Mentor boasts a mentor network of 100+ experts from diverse backgrounds and uses it to grow startups. Josh discusses his investment successes, failures & greatest misses, the thriving entrepreneurial scene in Austin and growing venture community, and why bridge loans are usually a bad deal for both entrepreneurs and VCs. He then takes questions from the audience about crowd-funding, why it’s only easier to be a founder in today’s times, and the importance of setting the stage for international entrepreneurs.