Community! Betaworks Week Finish - (Notes from Feb 4 - Feb 10, 2019)

Hello all! Two straight weekends where I didn't work - shocked! Feels good until you get to Monday and realize the list is the same as Friday. Not a bad thing, just not something I'm used to doing. I enjoy the coffee shop time and weekends feel like less pressure. Time with family and friends, though, especially in good conversation and meeting people (good wine, too) is a blast.With the primary focus of the episodes I listened to being part of the Betaworks week of Twenty Min VC, I wanted to highlight how important community and always being open to expanding your network. Asking for help or helping others who ask should be met with open arms, as long as it comes from a genuine position and with respect - especially at a time now where it's easier than ever to reach out.I'd be pleasantly surprised if there's anyone that has made it to where they are without a large amount of assistance, whether it's from a concentrated portion of their network or a few pieces from an expansive web. Local community, high school, college, Greek system, emigrating locale, project, start-up or corporation, church groups, sports or other extracurricular - we find and connect with common-thinking persons. And now - toss in the internet and the vast array of communication avenues to make these connections stick (or create new ones)!Mentioning the massive internet-lead data science community, especially the ladies supporting each other has to be included. I'm a part of multiple Slack channels #Py4DS, #BSU and #MethodDataScience, which have been excellent, along with the cornucopia of Twitter and LinkedIn users that are crazy active. It's all generally positive and uplifting, sharing information and solutions or hacks to help others in their projects and increasing ROI to client/customers/companies/gov/public alike.

• Peter Rojas (@peterrojas), Betaworks (20min VC 079)
• Established Engadget and Gizmodo, co-founder of ReferBoost
• Started with Red Herring (original dot-com wave in late 90s)
• Sold engadget to AOL in 2005 and he stayed on initially to help them out
• Side project Downtown (record / music label)
• After selling Gadget to AOL and staying on as Director of Strategy, he decided to go to SF 14 years in NY
• Betaworks has done ~30-35% in SF, so as it ramped up seed investments, wanted someone on ground Can tap into a whole network to connect with people that are experts in product/ops/scale
• Tech differences between SF / NY - west coast is absolutely massive
• Asked whether more seed funds and capital makes it contribute to higher valuations
• Said that it's possible the funding has somewhat started to rationalize
• He said he takes a look at all types of communication - cold emails included vs other VCs that don't
• Said he was lucky when starting to get emails answered, even as a Latin/Mexican-American
• Wants to give people outside of the traditional networks a chance
• He doesn't look at metrics much, he looks at the product
• Was closing his first deal with Betaworks (1.5 months in) and releasing at this time Uses Angelist and checks the new companies - credited Naval
• Mentions his favorite current book as Antifragile - Taleb
• Kickstarter raising money - if you can lay out product vision, it can take away the constraint for actually building a product
• Daniel W. Linna Jr (@danlinna), visiting prof @ NW, Work of Tomorrow, Law & Tech (Wharton XM)
• Predicted at end that he sees the number of lawyers probably staying about the same Better to note that the function of lawyers could / should change with the rise of tech
• Innovation lab with lawyers at Northwestern between Comp Sci Masters and law students Real world problems with partners available
• Wants to see more of increasing data sets
• Roland Van der Meer (@RA_Vandermeer), Ultra Capital (Bay Area Ventures, WhartonXM)
• Venture and operating expertise to solve and scale investments profitably
• Fundamental resource sustainability in agriculture, energy, water and waste
• Small and mid-size projects to get consistent attractive investment return
• Now COO at Resonance Technology Group - advanced physics tech
• Luminas patches is one of the companies
• Surprising Science of Meetings, author Steven Rogelberg (Wharton XM)
• Shortening meetings by 5-10 min to change attitude Not starting on the hour, but give 5 min to people to finish up and do this
• Changing from 40 min meeting to 35 or 32 to make it feel more productive
• Leaders often say meetings are great, but not many others
• Zack Brogue, MP at Data Collective VC (Launch Pad, Wharton XM)

• Starting Founder's Den before Airbnb - office space with interesting people built around his network
• Vetted with partner, 6 months lease, business at break-even
• Partners that wanted excitement (inverse correlation with exciting start-ups and active ones, so time limit)
• Docker started there, AdBlock, others
• Data Collective with connecting of data and ultimately figuring out fission tech (fusion would be better) Can you scale fission/fusion (maybe halve the carbon emissions that are man-made)
• Third Love and Tala as recent investments
• Value add as a partner for DCVC by being a YGL (Young Global Leader) and invited to WEF / Davos
• Kuan Huang, Founder @ Poncho, Betaworks Week (20min VC FF017)
• Joined start-ups and tech in 2008-09, built an app with a friend to identify birds, received funds from McAfee Foundation
• Schoolteachers and students to use the app
• Spent the money without knowing how to make money
• IAC that owns a bunch of companies - joined Hatch Labs incubator to build start-ups, hard engineer
• Recruit, business and due diligence roles
• Built a mobile app that simulates casino experience and got tokens after watching video ads Raised money from IAC, sold back to IAC
• Joined Betaworks in 2013, 4-5 hackers at the same time
• Given 3-5 months to build a company to start, turned into Poncho with Betaworks and launched
• Weather software/apps that gave him interest (he said he wasn't interested)
• Used the standard iOS apps, Sam (partner) was interested in it - innovation was limited, weather.com
• Said that he would get weather from his mother at school back home in China (only called to tell him to bundle up, umbrella)
• Inspiration for when it was necessary - it comes to you when you need it
• Transit statuses and when you may wake up or go to work - default notifications for daily routine
• Started with niche market at Betaworks - tech savvy, then NYC necessity - 15 states at time, then got to 60%
• Had to keep audience focused and then identify how to keep them, early-stage customers Engagement, active users truthfully
• Challenge for Poncho was how to scale to other cities without hiring all new managers - editors for one message with similar forecast
• Group the locations, based on data scientists, for the regions that are similar (scaled faster, this way)
• Scaled 6 states by adding 1-2 editors initially
• Goal was to get Poncho to be commerce-related for monetization with the data / locations (e.g. Uber ride purchase, umbrella, etc…)
• Under $100 spend - coffee and whiskey - too hilarious