Strictly Curious Newsletter №69
News
Unicorns: They hire leaders faster than other businesses (Interesting report from Notion Capital). Link
Artificial Intelligence: Towards a conversational agent that can chat about…anything. Google’s chatbot is approaching human levels of conversational ability. Link
The dark side of financial inclusion: Tech startups are flooding Kenya with apps offering high-interest loans. Tala and other companies are bringing quickie loans wrapped in the language of “financial inclusion” to developing countries. Link
Innovation: A New model for crowdsourcing innovation (Great piece from my colleague Dr. Oguz Acar). Link
Electric Cars: New battery lets electric cars go 200 miles on a 10-minute charge. Link
Vintage Tech: Why are so many young people obsessed with disposable cameras? Many from the “iPhone generation” are switching to an older form of photography. Link
Google X: Watching Loon and Wing grow up. Obi Felten looks back at the past six years at X, Alphabet’s moonshot factory. Link
News: Maybe Information actually doesn’t want to be free. Jessica Lessin’s online tech publication costs $399 a year and has no ads. Silicon Valley’s elite is eating it up. Link
3D Printing: Handheld bioprinter treats severe burns by ‘printing’ new skins cells directly onto wound. Link
Investment: A guide to impact investing for startups. Impact investing is on the rise — but raising money can bring just as many challenges as it does opportunities to startups focused on social and environmental good. Here’s what to look out for. Link
Emerging tech: Good at StarCraft? DARPA wants to train military robots with your brain waves. Link
Renewable Energy: Anti-solar panel can generate electricity at night…you just need them to operate in the exact opposite way solar panels work during the day. Link
Blog Posts
Fashion: Too nice for the likes of us: why buying fancy stuff makes us miserable. Luxury purchases should make us feel like a million bucks but impostor syndrome is at work even while we’re shopping. Link
Music: Why are pop songs getting sadder than they used to be? Link
Interesting Numbers
Internet: Web traffic increases in 2019 were driven by mobile; top 100 sites saw an average of 223B monthly visits. Link
Advertising: Amazon is ‘biggest advertiser on Earth’ as ad spend hits $11bn. Ecommerce giant accounts for nearly 2% of global ad expenditure. Link
Entertainment: Disney+ has surpassed 28 million subscribers since launch. Link
Social media: Instagram brings in more than a quarter of Facebook sales. Instagram generated about $20 billion in 2019. Link
Dating apps: Tinder made $1.2 billion last year off people who can’t stop swiping. Link
Video: Ayelet Fishbach on why we fail to learn from failure
Detours
Jerry Neumann outlines (early-stage investor at Neu Venture Capital) the most important principles of business writing in two pages. Link
And the award goes to…Acceptance speeches are a rare peek beyond the highly filtered veil of modern celebrity. The moment of surprise that comes from winning a major award like an Oscar or an Emmy can throw some stars off so much that they’re left speechless, say too much, or have the kind of awkward moments created by the pressure of live television. Link
Retail Therapy
Clemens Habicht’s 1000 COLOURS puzzle. Link
Contemplation
“Don’t postpone joy until you have learned all of your lessons. Joy is your lesson.”
(Alan Cohen)
