This Week in Startups - Video

Laura Huang is a Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Laura’s research examines how an investor’s gut feel plays a role in innovation and entrepreneurial decision making. She explores how perceptions and cues influence an individual’s ability to make important, high-stakes decisions, how attractiveness and gender affect pitch success, and if investors are behaving differently in those circumstances because of the valid pressure on the investment community to see more diversity.

Founder & CEO Ryan Carson was a guest on TWiST Episode 198, and he returns today to talk about Treehouse, his online trade school for adults that does one thing really well: taking anybody who has never coded from zero to job-ready. Ryan figured out how to reduce the cost of a computer science degree ($58k) down to 2% of that, with complete geographic and time shifting freedom. Join us as he and Jason debate the value of apprenticeships and explore the way traditional universities are run.

Brit + Co is a media company that inspires, educates, and entertains real women with a creative spirit through content, online classes, and creative products. Brit + Co connects a community of over 125m online and across platforms every month, bringing a creative lens to the women’s lifestyle space. The company's audience consists primarily of millennial women. Today, we are excited to have the founder and CEO as our guest, Brit Morin. An ex-Googler and Apple alum, Morin brought her innovative spirit from Silicon Valley to the digital media world. Brit + Co has had a strong year of growth, partnering with Target and raising $15m in Series C funding led by Verizon Ventures. Join us as Brit shares her inspiring story of turning a passion into a thriving business, Brit + Co’s partnership with Target, Generation Z and her optimism for the future, and much more.

We are pleased to have one of Jason’s investments as our guest today, Robinhood co-founder Vlad Tenev. Tenev went to Stanford in 2004 looking to become an academic, first studying physics and later math. During this time, he met and became good friends with his co-founder Baiju Bhatt. Together, they started a bootstrapped and profitable software company called Chronos Research, which was formed to respond to the increased influence of algorithmic trading in the financial industry. This inspired them to build something bigger than just software that helps hedge funds and banks optimize their trading. Robinhood is a no-fee stock trading app with a mission to open up access to the American financial system. So, whereas other discount brokerages charge $7-$10 for every trade and have account minimums of $500-$2,000, with Robinhood, there are no minimums and no trading commissions, thus tapping into an underserved part of the market. Join us to learn how Robinhood went from a clever idea to a billion dollar valuation.

Most days at startups, you have more problems than you have solutions, and more bad days than good days. As an angel investor, as a founder, and as host of 700+ episodes of TWiST, Jason constantly receives questions from founders and superfans about startups. Today, he offers timeless advice — from why most startups fail after product market fit has been achieved, to his thoughts on the state of VC in consumer apps, from patent protection, to fundamental ways to transition into a long-term thinking company. Plus, find out what lesson Jason learned the hard way.

LAUNCH Festival 2017 kicked off with a unique twist. Live equity crowdfunding was offered for a handful of companies that were simultaneously listed on the SeedInvest platform, which connects venture capital, angel investors and accredited investors. These companies each delivered a 3 minute explanatory pitch to a host of judges. Today, Jason and Clipisode CEO Brian Alvey share 6 companies that pitched at this year’s Festival. The first company is Swiftmile, a solar-powered electric bike sharing system for corporate commuters. Next is Lendsnap, which powers mortgage lending with unparalleled financial data access for lenders and their borrowers. Then Kylie.ai pitches autonomous A.I. that clones personalities to automate communication. Next is LEAF, which is smartphone “plug and plant” app to help you grow marijuana (and more). Then NowRX pitches their mobile app that offers same day free delivery for prescriptions. The final company is Laugh.ly, which is a streaming radio app dedicated to comedy.

News Roundtable! Molly Wood of Marketplace and Ben Parr of Octane AI are in the studio to talk with Jason about the latest tech news. On tap: the relevance of net neutrality for the startup economy, what lies ahead for Google Lens, Uber Freight connecting truck drivers with shipments, Biz Stone's return to Twitter, Elon Musk's new underground tunnel project, drone skydiving, and more.

Today’s TWiST introduces a new format called “The Syndicate,” where 7 top startups across 7 verticals pitch to 20 world-class investors in Silicon Valley every 6 weeks. These top startups are selected based on feedback of the angel investors: who has the most traction, the most viable product, who could be the most meaningful in the future. Each company presents for 3 minutes, followed by 6 minutes of feedback. Join us to learn how effectively to present your company and answer hard questions. And if you’re thinking about becoming an investor, this is a great primer at how to look at a company and the right questions to ask. Featured startups: - Cafe X: The world's first robot barista - Connected Signals: Bridges the gap between autonomous vehicles and crucial capabilities - Blokable: Ship homes that are modular, stackable, and smart - Tueo Health: Transforms the way we care for asthma - Interviewed: Combines structured job assessments and employee testing to identify the strongest job candidates accurately and easily - PowerScout: AI Enabled Marketplace for Smart Home Improvement - Underground Cellar: Online wine deals w/o bastardizing brands

It’s Part 2 of Inside LAUNCH Incubator. In this hour, we will meet 4 more innovative startups that have gone through the Incubator, learn about their products, give and receive candid feedback about the highly competitive Incubator, key takeaways, struggles, the funding process, and more. The first founder is David Bennahum and his startup Ready, which is a cross-platform programming environment for personal robotics that makes robotics accessible to all of us. Next is founder Jennifer Simchowitz of Keepster, which is a toolkit to curate your text messages and keep what matters most by turning them into books and cards. Then co-founder Jesse Lakes pitches Genius Link, which solves the geo-fragmentation challenge in a world of global e-commerce. The final founder is Dan Grueter and his startup Poppins, which is an invitation-based childcare service that uses a care algorithm to source the best caretaker in the Poppins network based on a family’s specific needs.

Today Jason and Brian Alvey talk with LAUNCH Incubator founders about their products, give and receive candid feedback about the highly competitive Incubator, key takeaways, struggles, the funding process, and more. The first founder is Tyson Woeste and his startup Transported, which offers virtual reality tours for real estate. One of the great things about VR is that it’s not tethered to reality, so instead of wandering through a home, you can jump in anywhere — you can zoom in on the sink, you can see if the floor is actually as good as it looks, you can look at the ceiling, etc. There is a level of detail that you wouldn’t get from photos. Next is co-founder Allen Chen & FitBod, which offers personalized strength-training powered by machine learning. Everyone thinks that apps are over, and that the fitness space is too crowded, yet FitBod found a way to come out on top.

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.

E728: “Angel” Sneak Peek + Startup Tune-up: Founder Institute students get first-look at Jason’s upcoming book on angel investing, as he refines their pitches & shares career lessons, insights & advice

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.