This Week in Startups

Today’s episode features two superstars in their respective fields. Tony Hawk is the masterful professional skateboarder who catapulted his sport into the national spotlight, and Chris Sacca of Lowercase Capital is a legendary angel investor (Twitter, Uber, Instagram, Kickstarter). Tony and Chris have been long-time friends and both talk in-depth with Jason at the LAUNCH Festival 2015. It's an awesome, dynamic conversation about their friendship, how each took massive risks to reach the top of their profession (eating ramen for years... borrowing money from assistants...), how Tony’s video game was a tipping point for skateboarding and why he he shows up unannounced to random parks to skate with kids, the amount of hustle it takes to be great, how moving outside of Silicon Valley actually helped Chris’s business, how Tony and Chris think about their legacies, what they are each looking forward to in the future, and how Tony uses Twitter for a worldwide treasure hunt, and how Chris is looking forward to another crash in tech so the pretenders clear out. Join us!

Live-video streaming is shaking the tech world and today Jason talks to major player Kayvon Beykpour, CEO & Cofounder of the recently Twitter-acquired Periscope. Jason periscopes this rollicking conversation (see those hearts fly!), as Kayvon (@kayvz) shares his views on the perceived dogfight with Meerkat, why Periscope sold to Twitter before launching, his current & future product strategy, and why the time is now for live-video streaming. They also dive into Periscope's lessons from early adopters, Kayvon's inspiration for the product idea, where exactly monetization sits on his radar, how Kayvon's Iranian-born parents sparked his entrepreneurial spirit, and much more. Tune in!

Tumml, Highway1, and RockHealth are three of the leading startup accelerators/incubators in the country, each focusing on different verticals: urban problems, hardware, and healthcare, respectively. At LAUNCH Festival 2015 Tumml CEO Clara Brenner, Highway1 CEO Brady Forrest, and RockHealth CEO Halle Tecco all joined Jason for a fascinating panel discussion on their mission, strategy, industry trends, and the funding landscape. Among the many topics discussed: what it takes to be accepted into their accelerators, diversity in tech, is incubator-hopping good or bad?, the dangers of attending a predatory accelerator, why RockHealth is actually a seed fund, whether companies really need prototypes, having domain expertise versus fresh eyes, thoughts on co-investing with large venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz -- and much more.

The Pebble watch made crowdfunding history in 2012 when it raised $10m from 69,000 backers on Kickstarter -- and now they've smashed the record again, with $20m+ from 77,000 backers for their 3.0 Pebble Time. On the last day of his historic campaign, Pebble Founder & CEO Eric Migicovsky sits down with Jason to talk about his inspiration for creating the watch, why he went back to Kickstarter, Pebble's amazing fan base, and his vision for its future (alongside the mighty Apple). It's a fascinating discussion covering the signature developments in the new watch (hello, color!), lessons learned over each iteration of the watch, how app developers can use and optimize the platform and the massive opportunities in the Pebble Timeline API, what about Apple?!, including what Eric thinks of the Apple watch and why he hasn't changed his strategy in its specter, the two metrics Eric cares most about, the company's sustainability, profitability, future, community, and much more.

Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn since 2008, has grown 32m members to 347m, $78m in revenue to $2.2b, and 338 employees to 6k. Prior to LinkedIn, Jeff lead various product teams at Yahoo for more than seven years, most recently as EVP of Yahoo's Network Division where he led a team of 3,000+ employees and managed products reaching 500m+ consumers. Jeff sits down with Jason at the Launch Festival 2015 and reveals the biggest driver of LinkedIn’s revenue (along with the other area that has been the fastest growing product in the company’s history), how members can use the publishing platform to increase personal opportunities, why Jeff took over the product function, what five attributes make a great product, what it was like working at Yahoo, why he doesn’t want to buy The Wall Street Journal, and what the future holds for this powerhouse company.

Glenn Beck is an entrepreneur, libertarian, television personality, radio host, author, producer, and filmmaker. Previously on CNN and Fox News, Glenn and his company reach 50m people per month through his radio and television shows and TheBlaze, an independent TV network and website he founded in 2011. Jason sits down with Glenn at the LAUNCH Festival 2015 for this fascinating discussion about the intersection of technology, mainstream America, and national interests. Glenn speaks candidly with Jason on the similarities of his audience and Silicon Valley, how radio is changing, CNN and Fox’s biggest competitors (hint: a 16-year-old with something authentic to say!), why Glenn trusts corporations more than government, how tech can help solve national problems, why Glenn is addicted to Facebook, how the US needs national principles, why his 10-year-old son will not go to college (most likely), & much more. Don't miss it!

Peter Thiel is one of the most considered, intelligent, and successful minds we have in this generation of Silicon Valley. Peter is a serial company founder (PayPal, Palantir), billionaire investor (first outside investor in Facebook and 100+ others), and author of "Zero to One." Peter’s first startup was PayPal, which he co-founded in 1998 and led to a $1.5 billion acquisition by eBay in 2002. He is now the Managing Partner at Founder’s Fund, a venture capital fund with $2 billion in assets. At LAUNCH festival 2015, Peter sat down with Jason and opened up about investing (as a contrarian and being right), monopolies and governments, why trends are overrated, how Elon Musk pulled off Tesla and SpaceX at the same time, whether we should be scared of Artificial Intelligence or not, should marijuana be legal, and what you should do if you hear the words “big data” and “cloud computing” during a pitch (hint: run!). You aren’t going to want to miss this one!

Kickstarter, the premiere global crowdfunding powerhouse, is easily one of the five most important companies of our time. Made by creators for creators, with 80,000+ successful campaigns, 8m backers, and $1.5b moving through its platform in just six years. At LAUNCH festival 2015, Jason sits down with Cofounder and CEO Yancey Strickler to talk about the site's past, present, and future. A former professional rock 'n roll critic and record label entrepreneur, Yancey candidly shares Kickstarter's origin, early days, and breakthroughs, biggest Kickstarter successes (spoiler alert: Pebble Time!), when the movie business will start funding through the platform, Yancey's "written in stone" rules to keep integrity and honesty in the system, how they were able to raise venture capital money while publicly stating they will NEVER sell or go public, what they are working on for the future, and why he's having the most fun he's ever had. Join us!

Today's episode kicks off our 2015 LAUNCH Festival series in style! Jason sits down with Fred Wilson, Cofounder & Managing Partner of Union Square Ventures and one of the most renowned venture capitalists and bloggers in the country. A VC since 1986, Fred and Union Square Ventures have invested in countless stellar startups, such as Zynga, Etsy, Tumblr, Twitter, and Kickstarter. During his candid fireside chat with Jason, Fred reveals the common characteristics of good founders and good VCs (hint: care more about the company than the investment), why he still owns stock in Zynga, what makes Kickstarter special, why Tumblr sold to Yahoo!, USV’s current investment focus, startup ecosystems, the best entrepreneur on the planet, his own strengths & weaknesses, what he's learned from his kids, and so much more.

We are tackling two extremely important topics in todays episode: childhood obesity (40% of all kids in the United States are overweight or obese) and health literacy (the first step to increasing your overall health is increasing your health literacy). This is a two-part episode from the Rock Health Summit: first with Joanna Strober, Co-founder and CEO of Kurbo Health, which is a platform to help fight and prevent childhood obesity using video and text-based one-on-one coaching. Previously, Joanna was a venture capitalist, and she has been featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal for her work with many well-known and successful companies including Blue Nile and BabyCenter. Part two is Munjal Shah, Founder and CEO of Health IQ, which measures not how healthy someone is, but rather how health conscious they are using a Q&A app with 10,000+ questions across 300+ topics. Prior to Health IQ, Munjal was Co-founder & CEO of Like.com (computer vision/machine learning company sold to Google) & Co-founder & CEO of Andale (eventually sold to Alibaba). He is also an investor in numerous companies like Taskrabbit and Swell. This episode is jam packed with knowledge including: are parents to blame for their child’s weight problem, how much doctor’s actually know about losing weight, weight psychology, does health literacy keep you out of the hospital -- and much more!