This Week in Startups - Video

At the LAUNCH Incubator 2, Jared Fleisler of Matrix Partners (previously Square, Slide) takes us through 3 important steps toward growth. First, how do you BUILD your product? Begin by identifying focus, market size, status quo, experience, and timing. Second, make sure you understand MESSAGING versus marketing. Craft your message - and test it! Gain your customers trust. And third, know your MARKET. And much more! Do NOT miss this jam-packed, inspiring, and highly tactical talk from one of the industry's greatest growth gurus.

On today's show is entrepreneur extraordinaire Jeff Dachis, former CEO/Founder of Razorfish & current CEO/Founder of OneDrop.today, an incredible management & social platform for people with diabetes that won Best Design at LAUNCH Festival 2015. Soon after Jeff learned that he had diabetes in 2013, he discovered the complete lack of tools available to manage it -- and decided to invent them. OneDrop, a Waze for diabetes, pulls together data that is normally siloed, and gives users all the information they need, in one place: tracking glucose levels, meals consumed, exercise & activity information, and much more. OneDrop also connects users, letting them share their data & support each other's endeavors. Jeff walks us through an awesome demo of his product, including sneak previews of features & new monitors coming soon. It's a rich conversation in which Jason and Jeff also discuss the need for more prevention-based healthcare solutions in our problem-based system, health care versus self care, disease management as a market, the differences between diabetes types 1 and 2 (and the future/hope for each...), what Jeff has learned on his entrepreneurial journey since web 1.0 (hint: talent is everything) -- and more. Join us!!

All "Ask Jason"/Shark Tank is back! Today’s show, hosted at the Samsung Global Innovation Center, features companies asking for Jason’s honest advice on their fledging startups, and entrepreneurs asking Jason their most burning questions. And the ideas sparkle & fly! We meet a music event startup, a virtual reality startup, a live video journalism app (reverse Periscope), an on-demand personal assistant app, an idea network, and more. Jason covers the importance of conducting user interviews, the importance of solving a singular problem really well, why the metaverse (a 3D version of the web) will not be productized, how working on virtual reality now feels like working on the internet right before broadband (a 5-10 year journey), why crowdsourcing live video for journalism is a GREAT idea, how it can be better to focus on getting one high-profile partnership than growing organically, the main criterion for Jason typically to invest (contrary to most investors!), execution > money, the huge advantage of working in a wide open space -- and so much more!

#TWiSTLive!! Virtual reality is an exciting & hotly debated space. Its potential is massive, but will it ever really "arrive"? In today's live show, recorded at Samsung Global Innovation Center, Jason answers this question with a resounding YES, as he demos the latest & greatest VR and hosts a riveting fireside chat with Amir Rubin, VR pioneer & CEO of Sixense, a premiere virtual reality platform. After a lively demo of Sixense's cutting-edge, award-winning products, Jason talks with Amir about his inspirations, the state of the field, and what's coming. We learn why VR is not just about gaming but about every industry (esp. healthcare, education), why motion sickness is no longer an issue, how technologies like 3D printing help VR immensely, how developers are building amazing applications on the Sixense platform, how every phone going forward will be VR ready, why VR is so effective in training for high-risk jobs like welders & pilots, why service providers will give VR headsets away for free, how VR is going to be a new way for creative people to monetize their skills, how movie studios can use VR for you to actually experience being the super hero, why the biggest challenge facing VR is educating consumers -- and much much more!

It's News Roundtable Friday! Joining Jason today is Jessica Lessin, Founder & Editor-in-Chief of The Information and Ari Levy, Senior Technology Reporter at CNBC. The three tackle the latest, greatest, juiciest stories of late in this epic episode. Nothing is left off the table. Secret's bank heist, how Google is like Game of Thrones, is Android poised for world domination?, the combustible combination of venture + journalism, and several of the greatest existential questions of our time: what is the future of advertising on mobile, what happens when you give nerds $20m, and when will Amazon start delivering weed?? And, oh, so much more.

From the 2015 LAUNCH Festival! An inspiring fireside chat with Marc Benioff, CEO/Founder of Salesforce and one of the great leaders of our time. Talking to Adam Lashinsky of Fortune, Marc focuses on the incredible importance of philanthropy and why companies need to give back to their communities and improve the state of the world. Marc shares his personal journey in philanthropy, starting when Colin Powell invited him to the 1997 America's Promise conference, to creating Salesforce & its 1-1-1 policy: dedicating 1% equity, 1% profit, and 1% employee time to giving back. Marc's key advice to entrepreneurs: the intentions you set for your companies right now are going to result is what your company becomes; clarity and vision are key, right from the start. Join us!

On the show today: a debut! Michael Robertson, inventor, entrepreneur, and CEO/founder of DAR.fm and MP3.com, is in the studio to launch his brand-new product. 6 Seconds is a free, mobile, powerful search engine that plays songs from any radio station, at any time, in any country around the globe. Michael walks us through his innovation, explaining its advantages over all existing music services (hint: unlimited number of skips & selection) and bold vision. Jason and Michael dive into a rich conversation dissecting the major listening platforms, both broadcast and interactive (look out Pandora, Spotify, and TIDAL), the cross-pollination of politics and technology, Google and the difference between monopoly and market share dominance, why one day smart kids will stop going to college, the inevitability of taxing robots, the unsolvable riddle of the minimum wage, the Walking Dead, drug wars, how creativity is torpedoed in the music biz, are we in a bubble or what? -- and much more.

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!

It's the News Roundtable! Today Jason hosts Liz Gannes, Senior Editor of Re/code, and Matt Mazzeo, VC at Lowercase Capital. Liz covered the trial of Ellen Pao vs. Kleiner Perkins and shares her courtroom insights and analysis about the case and its ramifications. The trio then dives deep into a discussion of gender discrimination and unconscious bias in Silicon Valley and VC culture (including a revealing look into how the venture capital system actually functions), and emerges with key takeaways and thoughts on facilitating dialogue and forward progress. And it's off to the races with the latest in mobile live video and all the ways Periscope & Meerkat are creating content, forging new communities, and changing the social game ... forever? (At the very least, you should follow @mazzeo to catch his daily Morning Coffee streaming sessions!) Stay to the end to see Jason wager a bet with Matt over the upcoming Presidential election (will this be a Nixon/Kennedy moment?), a lively debate over Jay Z's new music service Tidal, and further reflections and reactions from Liz on the jury's verdict at the Pao trial.

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!