This Week in Startups

News Roundtable! Joining Jason today is Cade Metz, Senior Writer at Wired, and Jeff Bercovici, SF Bureau Chief for Inc. It's been an eventful couple weeks to say the least, and our panelists get right into. Kicking off is all things Google & Alphabet, which Cade covered extensively, into the Amazon controversy and work culture debate, next WTF is up with the Stock Market!? including, naturally, the latest on are we in a bubble-or-what, Ashley Madison hack scandal continues to drop jaws and erode any remaining illusions of online privacy, and the ethics of watching violent, terrorist-generated content online.

Joining Jason today is Ben Nader, CEO/Founder of Butterfleye, a smart, wireless, portable, activity-based home security camera that Jason has dubbed "the love child of GoPro and Dropcam." Ben is in the studio to announce his Indiegogo campaign launching 8/25/15 (at the time of this writing: TODAY!), and it's a special, unique one at that: the product is actually here, works beautifully, and is ready to ship. Ben shares his inspiration for the product, his experiences as a technical founder, hearing "no" 74 times before meeting Jason (who is an investor), the challenges and opportunities of innovating in hardware, why he went with Indiegogo, what's happening in security, how many full-time employees it takes to create a product -- and much more! [ Campaign at getbutterfleye.com ]

Jason's guest today is Larry Lessig (Harvard law professor, co-founder Creative Commons, and political activist) who just launched his latest incredible endeavor: an exploratory campaign to run as the Referendum President in 2016, to fix our nation's corrupt campaign and restore representative democracy. If Larry raises $1m by Labor Day, he will officially run. (Check out his crowdfunding campaign at lessigforpresident.com!) Larry stops by the studio during his campaign tour to talk with Jason about why his wants to run for the country's highest office and his bold vision for implementing change -- including his intention to serve only one day as President, just long enough to sign campaign reform into law and then turn the reigns of power over to his VP. It's an amazing conversation about corrupt government, what we should expect from a democracy, how far we've fallen, the solutions to turn it around (and the time is NOW), economic elitism, an unforgiving criminal justice system, progress in changing copyright laws, Larry's shortlist for VP (a very important choice considering his plan!) -- and MUCH more. You don't want to miss this.

Today’s guest, Carrie Southworth, is the Cofounder of Twigtale, a platform to create personalized children's books to help them through transitions (i.e., going to a new school, moving to a new home, new siblings, etc.). Jason and Carrie discuss how her having children inspired this idea, the brain science behind why stories are so effective in connecting with children, how experts have been recommending this teaching method forever but no one had modernized it until Twigtale, how the product is incredibly easy to use from desktop or the app, what it was like participating in the Disney accelerator (leading to a partnership with Disney), how Twigtale is trying to help parents raise integrated adults, how they raised a $1m SEED round from Larry Page, Ivanka Trump, and others, how they’ve employed only word-of-mouth marketing up to this point (which will change soon!), Carrie’s experiences acting in “Buffy: the Vampire Slayer” and “General Hospital” earlier in her career -- and much more!

VC Jalak Jobanputra, Founder of FuturePerfect Ventures, brings her 20yrs investment experience to the LAUNCH Incubator 2 class and delivers a comprehensive breakdown of funding options for startups in 2015. The landscape is slippery and ever-shifting, but Jalak's pointed analysis of players in this "investor soup" -- including the pros/cons/consequences of aligning with each and essential questions founders need to ask of investors and of themselves -- gives us sure, solid footing. (Know your goals. Do not simply follow what everyone else is doing.) A must-listen.

Today Jason sits down with an incredible entrepreneur, Maren Kate Donovan, Founder and CEO of Zirtual. Maren’s startup provides remote EAs (called ZAs) for entrepreneurs, small teams, and professionals. Zirtual connects high quality professionals with companies desperate for help but not necessarily in a position to hire full-time, on-site staff. Jason and Maren discuss how the idea for Zirtual was born, what it was like moving 400 Zirtual Assistants from independent contracts to employees (and incurring 20%-30% more costs because of this), how most Zirtual Assistants have a “helper” personality type (helping others provides a lot of personal fulfillment), how the recent launch of Zirtual for Teams will be the product that 10x’s this business, how they have an $11 million run-rate after just $4 million in investment and four years operating, an upcoming beta test offering the 3-5 most specialized service requests soon (i.e. PowerPoint, etc.), what it was like to get Tony Hsieh as their first investor, what challenges Maren has faced as a female founder, and much more!

News Roundtable! Today joining Jason is Ben Parr (investor @dominatefund, author @captivology, ex- @mashable @cnet) & Declan McCullagh (founder, recent.io, ex- @CBS, @CNET, @Wired, @Time). The latest in Twitter lows & highs. Stocks in trouble and a leadership vacuum but ... cool new news tab! (For selected users.) A shot across the bow for all news apps? What's next for this enigmatic company that we're all addicted to? Also, content creation and the state/future of media, including Hank Green's recent Facebook slam which raised a million questions about Facebook vs. YouTube video. (And we answer most of them here.) Also: Declan's upcoming @recentapp, a thorough (and dishy) dissection of presidential candidates alternately courting and alienating Silicon Valley, Jason's tweet-chat with Jeb Bush, hacking & protesting in China, whither smart gun tech, cyber-attacks, should the U.S. government concern itself with building supercomputers, Jason's intentions both to run for president and write a book (you heard it here first!), and much more!

A special two-parter for you today. First up is Ahryun Moon, founder of EtchApp, a company that crushed this year's LAUNCH Hackathon and went onto product success, with their recent launch -- and feature -- in the Apple store. EtchApp is a multi-tasking replacement keyboard for devices so you can send messages & access services without switching -- and just might be, as Jason predicts, THE killer Watch app. We see the product in action, hear what inspired its creation (hint: learning Chinese), learn about what it's like innovate in this vertical, comparisons to U.S. and Korean markets, and how the LAUNCH Hackathon started it all...... THEN! It's the return of #AskJason! Jason takes questions from fans. Brace yourself!

Direct-to-consumer is one of the hottest trends in our industry. No retail, no malls, straight to the customer, and please pass the savings. Today Jason talks to direct-to-consumer entrepreneur Julie Fredrickson, who is innovating in a $60b market ripe for disruption: cosmetics. Stowaway creates make-up in small sizes that you can carry and finish, thereby reducing the inefficiency and waste that characterizes an industry which is 70% controlled by 10 conglomerates. Stowaway, co-founded by Julie and Chelsa Crowley, is also one of Jason's investments, so it's a great conversation about how he became involved, his thoughts on the space, Julie's experiences as a female founder, the power of a simple message for your product, the importance of a good referral program, what it's like to take on a backwards but powerful industry, and much more.

Today Jason talks with Ali Vahabzadeh, Founder of Chariot, an entrepreneur hoping to change the way we move around cities. Despite recent innovations in private transportation options, mass transit remains mostly a mess. Even in cities where public transpo exists, there are always inaccessible routes and neighborhoods. Ali's Chariot offers an alternative with a commuter shuttle service, that has learned lessons from where other shuttles have failed and reinventing the model. Cost-effective, reliable, scalable and -- here's a first -- crowdsourced. Once a certain city route gets enough votes, service is launched there, guaranteeing riders. Jason and Ali discuss the nature of cities and transportation, the current broken system, we see the Chariots in action on the site (during rush hour), why it's important that Chariot drivers are W-2, the differences between operating in a drive-first city versus a transit-first city, Ali's upcoming plans to introduce social features -- and more. This is the second episode of our Tumml 2fer, featuring two founders who graduated from the Tumml accelerator & are tackling tough urban problems. (Interestingly, both went on to YC, as well.)