The Bold: February 28th, 2018
Good morning and happy Wednesday! I hope you have all had a fun and productive past couple of weeks. Ever since the last edition of The Bold, I am excited to announce that this newsletter has over 95 subscribers. Thank you all for tuning in, and I will continue do my best to make this newsletter fun as well as valuable.
For anyone who loves to take snaps, you will enjoy the story in this edition of The Bold.
As always, please jump to the sections that interest you the most, and here is the question of the week: By what percentage has the number of new U.S. companies (aka startups) increased or decreased from 2006 to 2014?
To know this answer, go to the bottom of section 4).
Now lets begin.
1) The World’s Nervous System
2) Blockchain, AI, and Cornell Shoutouts
3) The Fast Eight
4) Story of The Bold
The World’s Nervous System
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I have a habit. When I hear something awesome, I write it down. One of the quotes that has always stuck with me came from a man named Kevin Kelly, the creator of Wired magazine, who described the internet as “the world’s nervous system.” When we think about some of the world’s most powerful companies such as Google and Facebook, without the internet they would never have existed. So the internet matters, and knowing a basic outline of its history could be instructive when watching many of the current technological trends today. Here is a brief but important overview of how the great world wide web was born with cool videos at the end.
The Internet
The history of the internet as you can imagine is long. Here are the highlights.
The Beginning: It all began just a few decades ago … in 1969. This timing happened to be during the Cold War, and the US was investing heavily in new technology. One of these departments was called ARPANET, and after a few years it had an amazing achievement: the message “lo” was sent between two computing devices, located in UCLA and Stanford. Wondering what “lo” meant? ARPANET originally meant to send “login”, but only “lo” went through. Nevertheless, the internet was born!
During the 1970’s, this technology went through steady advancements. By the early 1980’s, only scientists and engineers were able to communicate through this platform to send messages. However everything changed when a man Tim Berners-Lee came into the picture.
Open to The Public: There was a reason only scientists were able to use the internet in the 1980’s. It is was tough to use. The first person to make this technology more accessible to the public is a man by the name of Tim Berners-Lee, who was a researcher at CERN. His creation was the World Wide Web, which enabled anyone in the world to have the ability to join the information highway that is the internet today. I find it interesting that the man who had one of the greatest contributions of our time never had a chance to take a cut or percentage of that wealth that he helped create.
At this moment the internet went through a momentous phase: from being accessible to only researchers and experts to becoming accessible to all. Many technological trends go through this phase, where at first only a segment of the population has access to it, but eventually everyone is able to use that technology as a resource. As Chamath Palihapitiya, famed investor of Social Capital often says, the startups that are able to turn a scarce resource into an abundant resource are the most successful.
The next step was in 1993 when a man named Marc Andreessen created the first graphical interface called Mosaic. Before there was Google Chrome, Firefox, and others, there was Mosaic. Mosaic made connecting to this information highway even easier. Now the internet revolution was ready to begin. It took 24 years for the internet to evolve from just being able to send one message to becoming the platform we recognize and use today.
Welcome to The Revolution (Shout Out to Mark Cuban): The internet now was ready to take off. Amazon was created in 1994. Google was created in 1998. From 1995 to 2000, the market increased 500%. Everything was looking great, right?
Not exactly. Many of these so-called “dot.com” companies recklessly spent a lot of money in a short period of time. People who had previously never participated in the stock market were now investing in stocks just because of the “dot.com” in the name. All these trends and more led to the collapse of prices in 2000, with the S&P 500 shaving off 50% of its value.
In fact Mark Cuban made a wise decision during this time. He sold his company Broadcast.com for $5.8 billion to Yahoo! right before the internet bubble burst. This move made him a billionaire. Yet once the internet bubble burst, guess what happened to Broadcast.com? Three years after getting acquired the service shut down.
The Fittest Survive: Yet not all the internet companies failed during this time. The strongest of these companies were able to survive despite the headwinds. In addition, ever since the internet bubble there have been many new internet powerhouses that have come into existence such as Facebook, which was created in 2004. In fact six of the largest ten companies by market cap today would not have existed if the internet did not exist.
I hope from seeing how the internet evolved as a technology, you might notice how the trends of current technologies compare or contrast to this story. It is amazing how in just 20 years our world has changed so much due to the internet. These two videos encapsulate that idea for me:
1) CNN Report on the Internet — 1993. From this video is the Best Quote Ever from a CNN reporter: “… Vice President Gore on Wednesday said he can see the day when a youngster just home from school given a choice between Nintendo and Encyclopedia Britannica will choose to access the encyclopedia.” I guess not all predictions during this time were accurate.
2) Katie Couric speaking about the internet — 1994
Blockchain, AI, and Cornell Shoutouts
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Blockchain
One of the hottest trends in tech. Here is the news to know.
Nations Taking Interest: Over the past couple weeks, various nations have shown interest immense interest in this technology.
1) Russia: When I say Russia, of course I mean Putin. In a speech, Putin spoke about how in relation to Blockchain “The Stone Age did not end due to lack of stones, but because new technologies appeared.” Clearly he believes in the importance of Blockchain.
2) Venezuela — The Petro: Things in Venezuela are not the best. The inflation rate is about 482%, so every year the price of goods more than quadruples in price. Most supermarkets have been ransacked by angry mobs. And governments such as the US have placed sanctions on this nation. To avoid the sanctions, the leader of Venezuela, Maduro, has introduced a cryptocurrency called The Petro. Whether or not The Petro works, this action shows how potentially bad actors may use cryptocurrency to escape stronger authorities.
Telegram Raises $850 Million in Pre-Sale: Originally Telegram wanted $600 million, but who would say no to an extra $250 million.
The Most Interesting Thing in Crypto: Great and short article I read about how multi-layer innovations are the most exciting thing in cryptocurrencies. For those who like this topic, highly recommend a read or glimpse through.
AI
Google AI and The Eye: Imagine if someone just from a picture of the back of your eye, could figure out your age, your blood pressure, whether you smoke, and your risk of heart disease. Well, Google did it.
Your Voice Can Be Made to Say Anything: It used to take hours of audio for researchers to be able to make your voice say anything. However Baidu researchers have created a new innovation, where instead of hours, researchers needed just 50 seconds of your voice. These newly generated voices fooled experts 95% of the time. Welcome to the future.
Cornell Shoutouts
Swipe to Unlock: Are you a non-coder that is interested in tech and looking to get a high level understanding of how everyday technology works? Then I highly recommend reading Swipe to Unlock, a book by Cornell alumni Parth Detroja and Adi Agashe. This book is a #1 Amazon Business Bestseller for a reason. Every section has a cool question, and than answers the question in language that a newbie like me can understand.
For example, one of the sections is ever wonder how Robinhood makes money without charging fees for trading? As this book explains, Robinhood makes money from the freemium model (charging users to do more stuff) as well as earning interest on unused money similar to a bank. It also breaks down how everyday products like Google search work in a way that anyone can understand. I really enjoyed the book so far, and I am excited to read it more to help me learn about cloud computing and other important topics.
Felix Grey: For those who are on their screens way to long like me, than listen. Cornell alumn David Rogers created Felix Grey, a startup that creates glasses to ease the strain of looking at screens. But these glasses are more than style. Studies show that too much screen time is bad for your eyes, so these glasses help prevent it. Interested in learning more? Hit up David Rogers.
The Fast Eight
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Coolest News of the Past Two Weeks
1) Ever Having Trouble With Your Memory? Scientists at UPenn have been able to increase the memory of people with epilepsy by 15%. That is crazy. However you will need 200 electrodes implanted in your head for this to work. But this work is a sign of an industry which I believe ten years from now will be incredibly important, which is finding ways to enhance the brain by literally connecting it to technology. Companies such as Kernel, Neuralink (Elon Musk), Google, and even Facebook are in this space.
News that I thought Interesting in The Past Week
2) SpaceX Satellite beaming down internet: This trend was talked about in the last edition of The Bold.
3) Cellularity Raises $250 Million: Company looking to expand our lifespan.
4) 5G Internet Heating Up: Ever frustrated with the lag time on your phone? 5G’s got it covered.
5) Chinese Infrastructure: China built a railway in nine hours. Impressive.
6) Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Letter: This company is one of the top ten most valuable companies in the world. Here are the highlights of the report.
7) Nissan Automobile Service: Every car company is now joining the party.
8) Democrats Decline to Endorse Dianne Feinstein: Even though she is still likely to win election, this news is another example of the upheaval in our politics.
Other Random Thoughts
Time Zones: Time Zones were invented just 130 years ago. Just imagine what will exist 130 years from now. Very Exciting.
This Week in Startups: Literally one of the best podcasts ever. From one interview I found out that if cancer is caught one stage earlier, costs go down 30% and survival rates double. Watch more of us become incentivized to take these pre-diagnostic tests in the future because it lowers the cost for all the players involved.
Story of The Bold
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Hustle + Resourcefulness > Talent any day of the week. This statement is embodied by the founders of Snapchat, Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy.
Snapchat
As with most entrepreneurs, Evan’s first startup, which was called Future Freshman, did not grow as much as he expected. In fact, Future Freshman did not grow at all. However two years later in 2011, Evan as a junior at Stanford met Bobby and Bobby shared an awesome idea: what if there was a way we could send pictures to each other that would then disappear? With this insight, Pictaboo was launched. With months of hard work to create the app, and then months of hustling to spread the app, these young men only had 127 users subscribed to the app. On top of this disappointment, the young team had constant infighting, with Evan and Bobby kicking out one of the team members who were essential to the making of Pictaboo.
After months of hard work, they produced a product that nobody used! Yet of course Evan and Bobby did not give up. After learning from their experience, they relaunched the product. Instead of Pictaboo, the app was now called Snapchat. And things took off quickly from there. So quickly in fact that Facebook came to Snapchat a few years later with an offer: allow us to buy you for $3 Billion, or choose compete against us. Facebook had many more users than Snapchat at the time, and threatened to create a competing app that would function exactly like Snapchat. Would you do, take the $3 Billion or go to battle against Facebook? This moment was essential to the history of Snapchat. If they lost this battle, Evan and Bobby could have been worth $0, losing all the monetary value they have already gained from Snapchat.
However the founders Evan and Bobby made a bold decision, telling Mr. Zuckerberg that they were ready to go to battle. And the battle was quickly won. Facebook released Poke, known as a “desperate Snapchat clone.” This tactic only increased users of Snapchat, because it made people more aware of the service. People quickly saw Snapchat as a better product than Poke. Ever since that moment Snapchat has gone through steady growth, with a current market cap today of around $20 billion.
Answer to the question of the week: From 2006 to 2014, the number of new U.S. business has decreased 26.25% from 614,024 to 452,835. In fact more U.S. business were started in 1977 than that in 2014. At a time when we seem to have more organizations set up to help entrepreneurs succeed, it it fascinating to learn that in fact there were more creators of new businesses in 1977 than in 2014.
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You are all awesome. For those that took the time to read this, I hope you enjoyed it as well as gained value! Have an unbelievable two weeks ahead, and talk to you soon.
“[The most important thing is] …to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.” — Steve Jobs. From Parth Detroja’s book, Swipe to Unlock.
Warmly,
Justin
