“Venture capital funding breaks records—and fuels bubble concerns.” Headlines like these abound these days. When reading the tech press, you would think that entrepreneurs are drowning in capital. But while this may be true in some sectors, the reality for the vast majority of founders throughout America is very different. The percentage of venture funding going to female-only founding teams has dropped to 2.2% in 2021. That’s the lowest it’s been in five years
On a recent tour of company headquarters, Gather founder and CEO Phillip Wang showed off some of the typical tech office attractions: plenty of conference rooms for private meetings, places to relax or have spontaneous conversations with coworkers, a secure area only unlockable by employees, and even a scenic roof deck. Some employees having a client meeting stopped to wave as we passed by. What made the tour unusual was that Wang and I weren’t in the same place, nor was he strolling thro
When I was 15 years old, I was diagnosed with anorexia. I fully recovered, unlike many of my peers, but it was an uphill battle. One thing I’m grateful for is that in the years I was most acutely suffering from the disease, I didn’t have access to Instagram, with its continuous drip-feed showing images of unattainable bodies that young people are exposed to today. But I did have Facebook. I vividly remember returning home from treatment and immediately reconnecting with treatment f
It’s that time of the year again, friends. The days are getting shorter, the weather’s getting colder, and there’s calorie-dense food for miles. Stay ahead of the dreaded holiday heavies with these five great apps, which have one main thing in common: great free versions. Try them out for the next couple of months, and if they help you stay trim through New Year’s, maybe splurge on their paid, premium features. Adidas Running There’s no shortage of running apps
Microsoft isn’t standing still as other companies try to reinvent the document editor. On Tuesday, the company announced Microsoft Loop, a new Office app that takes clear inspiration from online collaborative editors such as Notion and Coda. There’s a sidebar for toggling between pages, interactive elements such as charts and task lists, and the ability to move parts of a document around by dragging and dropping. But while those other editors want to eliminate Office files entirely
On Monday evening at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon, a crowd of pre-pandemic proportions packed the Altice Arena for the event’s opening session. The night’s headline speaker wasn’t some tech executive. Instead, ex-Facebook employee turned whistleblower Frances Haugen talked about her decision to release thousands of documents from her former employer. The revelations in those documents have led to a flurry of investigative reports into Facebook’s
Two artists sponsored by the Mozilla Foundation have flipped the script on law enforcement’s troubled history of using big data to anticipate where future crimes might be committed. Their project, called Future Wake, uses artificial intelligence and data of past instances of police violence to predict where police brutality might strike next. Future Wake is an interactive website featuring the images and stories of fictional people who, the data suggests, could be victims of police brutal
Stanford remains Silicon Valley’s singular institution—the root of its vibrancy and hegemony. And because of Stanford Research Park, whose original tenants included Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors, it’s also a physical reminder of the huge role defense played in the early life of the Valley. Even though the industry around it has moved on to smartphones and social networks, a popular course at the university has made Stanford’s defense connection current
Lots of people ask me, “Why is Amazon so successful?” A few years ago, the CEO of a large European insurance company who was attending Bill Gates’s annual CEO summit contacted me through a friend on his board and wanted to meet with me. When we met, he asked, “What are Amazon’s secrets of success?” I told him, as I tell others, “Amazon has no secret management principles.” Jeff talks about them all the time at “all-hands” meet
SpaceX’s growing constellation of Starlink internet satellites will finally have some U.S.-based company—just not much of it to start. On Monday, Amazon filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission for an experimental license to launch the first two prototype satellites for “Project Kuiper,” its planned answer to Starlink. Amazon’s designs for Kuiper (named after astronomer Gerard Kuiper) involve a full 3,236 small satellites in low Earth orb