This Week in Startups

Jason wrote a blog post on "Trading Open Standards for Corporate Ones," in which he referred to the upward trend of corporate agents controlling what we read, especially on Twitter and Facebook. An example he used was Twitter permanently banning all of the accounts of blogger Chuck C. Johnson. Chuck reached out to Jason, who in turn invited Chuck into the studio to talk about censorship. What transpired is a conversation that takes many turns into the territories of aggressive journalistic tactics and controversial human beliefs. We'd love to hear what you think. Tweet @jason and be part of the conversation.

Today we have a great episode on an important topic: water. It's one of the biggest problems we face as a society, especially with many regions experiencing drought. Joining Jason is Christine Boyle, founder of Valor Water Analytics, who tracks and finds the biggest culprit of our broken system -- waste. Poor data, faulty pipes, leaks and loss run amok! Christine explains the tools she's developed, with a 60%-2000% ROI, that focus on conservation and process efficiency rather than drastic, unrealistic measures. She and Jason talk data, bad water behavior, worst offenders, desalinization, evapotranspiration (say it fast!), William Shatner's wild ideas, where is that breaking point (for real), how San Francisco is more efficient than Los Angeles, is it necessary to flush urinals, and so much more! This is the first 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.)

On today's show is Brian Hoffman, lead developer of OpenBazaar.org, a decentralized P2P open marketplace to buy and sell anything using bitcoin. Parallels to Silk Road abound, and Jason and Brian explore these in-depth, as well as discuss how this previously-believed unfundable idea secured $1m funding from heavyweights Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures, dive into the marketplace itself so we see how exactly it works, how sites like reddit and other technologies might decentralize and what that means, how Brian went from being a security consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton to creator of this radical marketplace for trading freedom online and becoming CEO at OB1, its umbrella startup -- and much more. It's a fascinating and slightly scary discussion you don't want to miss!

Today’s guest is Andy Weir, author of “The Martian,” NYT bestseller and soon to be a major motion picture directed by Ridley Scott & starring Matt Damon. For nearly 20 years, Andy has been a prolific writer, following his science fiction passion when not at his full-time computer engineering job. “The Martian,” which started as a serialized book on his website for a small loyal audience, was eventually discovered by Random House and the rest is history. Jason and Andy have a fascinating conversation about “The Martian” (the book & movie), science fiction, writing, creativity, and inspiration. The story, about an astronaut who has to survive for years on Mars after being accidentally left behind, is an intelligent and exciting exploration of how people use resources in unexpected ways to solve unexpected problems. Andy shares how his research was as scientifically accurate as possible (NASA is happy), why now is the best time in history to be a writer because there are no more gatekeepers, what it was like to find out Ridley Scott and Matt Damon would be doing the movie (but why he never popped any champagne), the differences between tours at NASA vs. SpaceX (hint: SpaceX is a rocket factory & they don’t have time to mess around!), why the key to space travel is driving the price down to where middle class demand can reach it, why he is an optimist about energy and our planet, we learn Jason and Andy’s favorite Ridley Scott movies, and much much more!

**apologies: audio low in spots during first 10 min** News Roundtable! Today joining Jason is Nellie Bowles of Re/code and Dave Mathews of NewAer. All the happenings at Reddit this week, plus predictions!! (Amazingly, some are proved right and some wrong -- not 5 minutes after this show ended!) What's up with those tech outages at NYSE, United, and WSJ this week -- glitches, hackers, end of days? (Dave has a definitive answer.) The first non-accredited investor, equity crowdfunding deal since the Title IV of Jobs Act, in the form of a sweet, 3-wheeled, 2 passenger vehicle. (But would any our panelists drive it?) Meerkat integrates Facebook, luxury pot on demand is FINALLY here, colorful (related) stories involving Nelle's Greek grandma, 23andMe becoming a unicorn, hackers gone wild, sex scandals and advertising at Cannes Lions, Tinder, Grindr -- you name it and our panelists cover it this week!

LAUNCH Incubator 2: Pinterest product Jason Shellen (formerly Google, AOL & founder of Boxer, Hike Labs) talks to the class about decks done right and why effective storytelling about your product and company is critically important to getting the right attention and excitement from investors. (Hint: people love stories, not decks.) From his successes in raising money for his companies, Jason shares essential deck do’s and dont’s, candid advice from investors on what they want to see in presentations, using your struggles, pain, and adversity to make your story better, what to do in the face of inevitable conflicting VC advice, when to send a deck (don’t), and much more. FOR MORE INFO/RESOURCES: check out Jason Shellen’s blog post about speaking to the Incubator class: https://medium.com/@shellen/7ba0f87429f8

Joining Jason today is Steven Kotler, NYT bestselling author of "Tomorrowland" & "The Rise of Superman," co-author (w/Peter Diamandis) of "Bold" & "Abundance," and co-founder of the Flow Genome Project. Jason and Steven dive deep into entrepreneurs' unique opportunities now to change the world, the science fictions that have already become science fact (hello, bionics!), the gathering steam (and storm) of exponential technologies, which world issues are currently terrifying scientists & which attract needless worry, the triggers & (amazing) benefits of the flow state, what ONE thing drives most successful people, and much more -- all while trying to outdo each other in "Blade Runner" quotes. Join us!

Content businesses are incredibly hard, but that isn’t stopping today’s guest entrepreneur. Jason sits down with former Deadspin and Gawker Editor-In-Chief A.J. Daulerio, who has now launched Ratter.com, a network of a local tabloids & national news. Jason and A.J. discuss what it was like battling in the content business in the early 2000’s, how A.J. first got started at the failed gambling blog OddJack (and was eventually fired by Lockhart Steele), why A.J. and Nick Denton thought the local tabloid idea for Ratter would work even though the similar Patch.com had just failed, how A.J. plans to do stories that blow the doors off of everything else on the web (and how he plans to monetize it), why investigative journalism is so unique today with Twitter and live-video, why Twitter is more important than mainstream media (and why mainstream media should be paying people on Twitter), what made A.J.’s story covering Texas Rangers Josh Hamilton his first big hit, why Hulk Hogan is suing A.J. and Gawker for $100 million over a sex scandal story (which might bankrupt both of them), whether it is a good idea for journalists to pay for stories or not (hint: if it is absolutely crucial to a story and you do it infrequently -- yes), and so much more!

In this next installment of This Week in Startups/Inside Drones, we've got an exciting two-parter. First, Jason is on location at Skycatch, the first fully-autonomous, intelligent & scalable data retrieval/aerial robotics platform. Jason gets a chat and demo with CEO Christian Sanz and Senior Mechanical Engineer Fran Wang. Second, it's a product premiere!! In our studios is Bryan Elliot, CEO/Founder of PixiePath, who shows us his awesome new system of orchestrating drone fleets remotely. Bryan talks about his inspiration for developing this platform, his entrepreneurial journey, the latest in FAA regulations, and where we're headed! Join us!!

Today Jason sits down with Rowan Trollope, tech pioneer and SVP/GM of the Collaboration Technology Group at Cisco. Despite incredible tech innovations in every aspect of our lives, video conferencing continues to be clunky, with only 5% of conference rooms equipped with a setup that works. Rowan's new, beautiful, and affordable product, Cisco Spark, aims to solve this problem once and for all, and get us to 100% video connected. Rowan shows us Cisco Spark in action. It's simple (you don’t need IT) and affordable (less than $2K) with no numbers or codes to dial and no pairing needed. We learn how Cisco is using an open community of startups on top of this platform to usher those companies into the enterprise, how Rowan introduced startup innovation into a big company by acquiring three startups (which then made up the Innovation Team on Cisco Spark), why most acquisitions fail (and why that doesn’t matter), how the most requested Slack feature is integration with real-time video, why agility (not efficiency) is what matters in an exponential world -- and how collaboration is essential for agility, why innovation needs to spread beyond Silicon Valley, how the on-demand economy is completely changing society, and so much more!