- Will's Weekly Roundup
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- Will's Weekly Roundup
Will's Weekly Roundup is a weekly newsletter of curated tech, business, and startup news.
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Business
The business headlines you missed (or need to see again)...
Layoffs - Lyft, Dropbox, and Tyson Foods will cut 30%, 16%, and 10% of their respective workforces. LINK
SVB - Silicon Valley Bank's CEO and CFO resigned. LINK
Snap - Snap beat Q1 EPS estimates but missed revenue as changes to its advertising platform hurt demand for ads. They also forecasted lower-than-expected Q2 revenue. LINK
Bitcoin - Bitcoin’s 9% drop last week resulted in $650.9 million in long liquidations. LINK
First Republic - First Republic requested big banks' help with the threat of $30B in losses if ignored. LINK
Harvard - Harvard had $5.2 Billion in total revenue in 2021, which is more than both Twitter and Snapchat. $2B of that was profit from their endowment, $1.2B from tuition (only 20% of their revenue), $1B from research grants, $500M from donations, and $300M from their media arm that publishes their review journal and sells case studies to other business schools. LINK
Tech
The tech headlines you missed (or need to see again)...
Gates on AI - Bill Gates says AI chatbots will teach kids to read within 18 months. LINK
6G Internet - The White House is set to meet with governmental, corporate, and academic experts to develop a roadmap for rolling out 6G communication and reclaiming telecom dominance from China. LINK
Apple & AI - Apple boosts its health focus with AI-powered features like a health coaching service called "Quartz" and a mood tracker that analyzes users' speech, typing, and device data. LINK
AI Hallucination - There’s a report detailing the ‘hallucination’ rate of different large language models like ChatGPT. LINK
Siri - There is growing skepticism among Apple employees about Siri's future, with many expressing dissatisfaction with its performance. LINK
AutoGPT - AutoGPT is the new AI tool with all the hype. It enables a model to link various GPT queries to achieve a specific objective. Rather than submitting one prompt at a time, you can assign objectives and tasks, and the system can generate a sequence of prompts independently. LINK
SpaceX - SpaceX launched the world's 1st 5G satellite that will bring global connectivity to the Internet of Things. LINK
Watchlist
Startups and companies I’m keeping an eye on…
Allotrope Energy is a startup turning tree pulp into the next generation of fast-charging batteries. LINK
Yogi is a startup that lets you buy access to college applications from people who got into your dream school for as little as $10. LINK
Humane is a secretive tech firm founded by ex-Apple employees that showed off its first wearable device that uses AI and image projection to create a pocket assistant. LINK
Hawkr is a UK-based music merchandise startup that offers a print-on-demand service for artists to sell merchandise directly to fans during concerts. LINK
Ursa Major is a rocket engine startup that quietly closed $100M in new funding from BlackRock and others. LINK
Dawn Aerospace is a New Zealand-based company that built a rocket-powered spaceplane. LINK
JackBe is a drive-through grocery store developer attempting to revolutionize how we shop. LINK
AirOps is a startup making it easier to bring AI to work by creating AI apps that seamlessly integrate large language models like ChatGPT with your data and business logic. LINK
Outside Interests
Interesting internet finds…
Powell Pranked - Jerome Powell spent 16 minutes on a call with Russian pranksters posing as Ukrainian President Zelensky. LINK
TikTok Ban - 46% of US voters support a TikTok ban. LINK
Biden 2024 - Joe Biden formally announced a re-election bid. LINK
Criminals - Drug syndicates and other criminal groups bought into the idea that a new kind of phone network couldn’t be infiltrated by cops. They were wrong—big time. Here’s the story. LINK
College Essays & ChatGPT - ChatGPT is causing a decline in earnings of Kenyan writers who previously provided cheating services by writing college essays for American students. LINK
Climate - G7 nations are considering a near-total ban on exports to Russia. LINK
Trump & Biden - More than half of Americans do not want to see a Biden-Trump rematch in 2024. LINK
Hamptons - The average price for a house in the Hamptons (NY) just hit a record $3 million. LINK
Sports Venues - This website lets you see what your view will look like from your seat at an event or sports arena. LINK
Text-to-Speech - Speechify is the best text-to-speech tool I’ve come across. LINK
Visuals
Three visuals worth taking a look at...
Flying taxis may no longer be a flight of fancy. This visual compares a large airline with advanced-air-mobility (AAM) operators.
This venture capital funnel shows how the odds of becoming a unicorn, a private startup valued at over $1B, are only about 1%.
Commercial real estate is in trouble. $2.9 trillion in commercial mortgages will need to be renegotiated in the next 24 months when new lending rates are going to be up by 350 to 450 basis points. Vacancies are also about to hit 20%.
Wisdom
Two quotes of wisdom...
"The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born—that there is a genetic factor to leadership. That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born." ― Warren Bennis
"Whoever has the most fun, wins." ― Ed Headrick
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