Valley Nordic

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In this episode, Arne and I discuss Internet of Things (IoT) market. What is the current state of the market, barriers to adoption, product development in, new opportunities for entrepreneurs in this market, and interconnectedness with Cloud, AI, Semiconductors. 

We briefly discuss common hiring mistakes at Startups. 

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In this episode, Arne and I discuss how technology-led and business-led startups evolve differently. Business-led startups target one market and develop technologies to solve problems in that market. And, technology-led startups can target many markets with the technology under development. In general, how to think about technology commercialization. In our hot or not section we cover drones. 

Useful links: 

1. Innovation and its challenges 

2. DJI (Consumer Robotics company) 

3. The founding of Audience 

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In this episode, Arne and Chander go deeper into the business of venture investing. How do venture firms raise money, how do the venture capitalists make money, how do they make investment decisions? We also talk about how the venture investing business has changed over the last three decades and what are the differences between Nordic and Silicon Valley approach to venture investing.

Useful links:
Norwegian VC in Silicon Valley 
How does Silicon Valley work?

Subscribe to the podcast here. And, see the notes from the previous episode here. 

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In this episode, Arne and Chander talk about the new Facebook cryptocurrency, Libra. Answer an audience question on what are the barriers to entry for WeWork, Zoom, Airbnb, Uber, and Lyft. We end with discussing SLACK- direct IPO, business model, valuation, future prospects. 

Useful links:

Facebook Libra 

Slack S1 

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In this episode, Arne and Chander talk about decision making under uncertainty and ambiguity. How it requires a different way of thinking which is different than the linear thinking we grow up with. Startups and innovation are prime examples of working with uncertainty. Our conversation discusses an entrepreneur and a venture capitalist perspectives on seven heuristics that I have learned on decision making. The talk is based on a Forbes article Chander wrote.

Useful links:
1. Forbes article on decision making for startups 
2. Forbes article on how silicon valley works
3. New England Complex Systems Institute 

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In this episode, Arne and Chander talk about StitchFix - business model, valuation, and challenges. Then we move on to marketing - basics, common mistakes startups make, and a debate on branding. We end with hot or not i.e. tech trends in silicon valley. Today, we discuss Blockchain and Autonomous Systems. 

Useful links: 

1. Advertising 

2. Why do we buy things?

Subscribe to the podcast here. And, see the notes from the previous episode here. 

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In this episode, Arne & Chander talk about Zoom Video Communications, Inc. [Nasdaq: ZM], one the latest tech unicorn IPOs. What is Zoom's competitive advantage? Is it sustainable? Is the stock fairly priced? Then, we discuss two very different perspectives on Product Market Fit. How the Europeans might see it differently than the Americans. Finally, we discuss two mega trends in Silicon Valley - Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality (AR)/Virtual Reality (VR).

Arne explains a new term, "Technology Market Fit" he came up with.

Subscribe to the podcast here. And, see the notes from the previous episode here. 

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In this episode, Arne and I, talk about how to think about Business to Business (B2B) vs. Business to Consumer (B2C) startups. Why Arne's venture capital firm, Alliance Venture, prefers to invest in B2B startups. Then, we move to talk about hardware and software startups. Why hardware startups are hard. Nordic advantage in creating hardware startups. Finally, we discuss the capital markets for startups in silicon valley and Nordic countries. How the Nordic capital markets are different. 

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In this episode, Arne and I talk about Facebook's plan for a cryptocurrency, how do startups start, how to scale a startup, the skills needed at different stages for startups. We also discussed a method to find a product-market fit and growth vs profit mindsets.  

A few useful links that we discussed in the podcast: 

1. Blockchain fundamentals 

2. Net Promoter Score (NPS) WSJ Article 

3. Decision Making at Startups 

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Enjoy! 

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In this episode, Arne and I talk about UBER (valuation, how will they make money) which is going public tomorrow,  LYFT (valuation, operations) which announced 1Q 2019 earnings earlier this week. How Uber and LYFT are different, how capital markets have changed and have led to going IPO with losses and unpredictability about their business, And, we touch on my favorite shareholder meeting which was held last week i.e. Berkshire Hathaway. 

See the previous episode notes at https://cdoq.blogspot.com/2019/05/valley-nordic-new-podcast.html