Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Business Insider’

New leaked images claim to show the screen of a massive ‘iPhone X Plus’ by Avery Hartmans – Business Insider

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 26, 2018| Leave a Comment »

New leaked images claim to show the screen of a massive ‘iPhone X Plus’

Avery Hartmans
iPhone X Hollis Johnson
  • New leaked images claim to show parts from a 2018 iPhone.
  • The photos show a large notched display that would reportedly be for an “iPhone X Plus,” a massive 6.5-inch phone said to be coming later this year.
  • The parts may not be for an Apple phone however, since the original post claims they were manufactured by LG rather than Samsung.

New leaked photos claim to show the screen of an “iPhone X Plus,” a 6.5-inch iPhone said to be coming in 2018.

The photos first showed up on the MacX forums, although the post has since been taken down. MacRumors saved the images and said the original post claims the parts are from an LG facility in Vietnam, and are part of a “trial run of production equipment.”

Apple is said to be releasing three new iPhone models in 2018: an upgraded iPhone X with a 5.8-inch OLED screen, a larger model with a 6.5-inch OLED screen, and a third iPhone model with a less expensive LCD screen.

The leaked parts would seemingly be for the larger, 6.5-inch iPhone X Plus:

—MacRumors.com (@MacRumors) February 25, 2018 //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js ” data-e2e-name=”embed-container” data-media-container=”embed”>

It’s clear from the photos that the screen is larger than the iPhone X but has the roughly the same size notch at the top of the screen. According to MacRumos, the part number printed on the flex cable attached to the screen is similar to Apple’s format. Still, there’s no way to verify whether these parts are legitimate and not made for an iPhone knockoff.

Plus, if the original post is to be believed, the parts were manufactured by LG in Vietnam. While Apple did reportedly invest $2.7 billion in LG Display to build the OLED displays, Samsung was Apple’s exclusive OLED supplier for the iPhone X.

Read Full Post »

The Early Stage Slump- Fred Wilson – Business Insider – raising capital

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on December 4, 2017| Leave a Comment »

The early stage slump

Silicon ValleyHBO

  • The seed and early stage angel investing market has cooled over the past few years.
  • On a dollar basis, the cooling off has been mild.  On a deals basis, the cooling off has been dramatic and looks to be getting worse.
  • For entrepreneurs just starting out, this means it will be tougher to raise your first rounds. For investors, it means seed rounds are going to be the place to be. 

I tweeted out this article from TechCrunch in the middle of last week:

And the response from the Twittersphere was a desire to hear my views on it.

The data is pretty clear. The seed and early stage investing market has cooled substantially in the past few years.

Angel seed activityAVC/Venture Monitor

On a dollar basis, the cooling off has been mild.

On a deals basis, the cooling off has been dramatic and looks to be getting worse.

So what is going on?

When I talk to my friends who do a lot of angel investing, I hear that they are being more selective, licking some wounds, and waiting for liquidity on their better investments.

When I talk to my friends who started seed funds in the past decade, I hear them thinking about moving up market into larger funds and Series A rounds.

You can see that in the data. Less deals and bigger deals.

Here is the thing. Seed is really hard. You lose way more than you win. You wait the longest for liquidity. You lose influence as larger investors come into the cap table and start throwing their weight around.

It is where most people start out. Making angel investments, raising small seed funds. They learn the business and many see better economics higher up in the food chain and head there as soon as they can.

If you hit one or two right, you can make a fortune in seed. But those bets take a long time to get liquid. And if you don’t hit one or two right, you end up with a mediocre portfolio.

The Facebook IPO in May 2012 was a real boon to the angel and seed markets. A lot of instant millionaires re-invested their gains back into startups (just as BTC and ETH instant millionaires are re-investing their gains into ICOs right now). Many startup people reinvented themselves as angel investors, AngelListers, seed VCs, and early stage VCs. As I quoted TechCrunch in my tweet “2012-2016 was a bubble in early-stage funding.” I think the bubble actually started letting out air in mid 2015.

You could see all of this in the pricing of seed rounds. For most of my career, seed rounds were sub $1mm and they bought 15-25% of the company ($4-6mm post money). At the peak of the seed bubble, uncapped notes of $3-5mm were the norm for seed rounds. That wasn’t going to work. It was unsustainable.

So where does that leave us now?

For entrepreneurs just starting out, it will be tougher to raise your first rounds. That is how it always has been so it is a return to normal. It is not great news, but it is the reality. If you price your seed round appropriately and have a good team and plan, you can raise money. But it will be harder.

For investors, it means seed rounds are going to be the place to be. When others leave the market, it is time to get in. The uncapped note will turn into a priced $1mm round at $4mm pre/$5mm post. This is as it should be. The risks of seed investing are so significant that the valuations need to be reasonable. When you lose on 60-80% of your investments, you really need the ability to make 10-20x on your winners. And getting the entry pricing right is part of how that happens.

You can tell where there is too much money and too little money by looking at valuations. When valuations are extended, that means there is too much money. That was seed in 2014, growth in 2015/2016, and ICOs in 2017. The trick is to get into these sectors before the money shows up and get out when it does. And then get back in after it leaves. And not get burned along the way.

Read Full Post »

50 startups that will boom in 2018, according to VCs by Julie Bort – Business Insider

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 26, 2017| Leave a Comment »

50 startups that will boom in 2018, according to VCs

50 hot startups 2018BI Graphics

2018 is almost upon us and so it is once again time to predict which startups will take the tech industry by storm next year.

Who better to ask than the startup experts, the VCs that watch the industry, guide the startups, hear their pitches, and invest in them?

We reached out to a number of top VCs and asked them which startups will boom in 2018. We invited participation from investors from a variety of backgrounds and investing philosophies. This includes some of the top VCs in the Valley (Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Bessemer, Greylock Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia).

We included VCs of note who specialize in seed and early rounds (8VC, Bloomberg Beta, BBG Ventures — which backs startups with at least one female founder.) We also asked some top VCs from the startup nation Israel (JVC, OurCrowd) and VCs that have been known for picking hits (like IVP’s Somash Dash).

We asked them to name a company they’ve backed that’s on track to have a great 2018. After all, they believed in those companies so much they invested. But we also asked them to name another startup they think is cool that they don’t have any financial interest in.

As startup lovers, they gave us this list chock full of amazing up-and-comers creating tech for businesses, gamers, personalized health, robots, high-tech money, new forms of super computers, and even outer space.

http://www.businessinsider.com/50-startups-to-boom-in-2018-according-to-vcs-2017-11/#nauto-an-artificially-intelligent-dashcam-for-vehicles-1

Read Full Post »

Here’s why I like Google’s speakers better than the Amazon Echo by Matt Weinberger – Business Insider

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 8, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Here’s why I like Google’s speakers better than the Amazon Echo

google home mini The Google Home Mini in a Google-exclusive “coral red” color. Matt Weinberger/Business Insider

  • This holiday season, Google Home and Amazon Echo will be very popular gifts, with both companies releasing new products in the line.
  • Amazon Echo is great for Amazon fans, with a wide range of hardware and some nifty software.
  • But Google Home is better for most people — Google’s AI and ability to answer even weird questions makes all the difference.

This holiday season, the escalating war between Google and Amazon is coming to a store shelf near you.

Amazon will be pushing its revitalized line of Echo smart speakers, powered by the Alexa voice agent. That includes the ever-popular Echo Dot, now $40, a revamped $99 Echo, the $129 Echo Spot alarm clock, and more Alexa-powered gadgetry, besides.

In the other corner is Google, which is hyping up the $50 Google Home Mini, powered by its own Google Assistant. Also on offer: The original $129 Google Home, and, come December, the $400 block-rocking Google Home Max.

There are other options, sure. The Harman Kardon Invoke is powered by the Microsoft Cortana agent, for instance, while Apple’s Siri-powered HomePod will likely be on store shelves before Christmas.

But I’m here to make the case that it’s Google, and the Google Assistant, that reigns supreme. There are all kinds of little reasons I believe this, but there’s really one big one: Google Assistant is much smarter than Alexa, Siri, or pretty much anything else on the market today.

Here’s the skinny.

Amazon Alexa is good…

At the most basic level, Amazon Echo and Google Home can do most of the same things. You can set alarms and timers, play music, check your calendar, add items to your shopping list, get the weather, make phone calls, and control your smart-home gear.

Both products also carry some corporate synergies. With an Amazon Echo, you can shop on Amazon, control a Fire TV streaming box and listen to Amazon Prime Music; with a Google Home, you can control Chromecast streaming devices, access Google Play Music, and shop with Google partners like Target and Walmart. It’s a matter of taste.

amazon echo spot Checking your calendar with the Amazon Echo Spot Matt Weinberger/Business Insider

Amazon Alexa has been around for a little longer, and it shows in a few areas: Alexa supports a slightly wider range of smart home appliances, and sports nifty Echo-to-Echo voice and text messaging features. Plus, Amazon keeps releasing new and innovative Echo devices to showcase what Alexa can do. Google Assistant is adding new features to catch up all the time, Amazon has been relentless about improving Alexa.

Okay, so if the two devices are the same in so many ways, why do I like the Google Home better? Well, to answer that, I’m going to have to take a big step back and explain why I like the Google Assistant better than Amazon Alexa.

…but Google is smarter

Because it taps straight into Google’s base of knowledge, both global and personal, Google Assistant can answer lots of questions, even the really obscure ones. “OK Google, what day was the Battle of Hogwarts?”

Here’s a great example of how that translates into a more usable device. If you ask Amazon Alexa if your dog can eat tomatoes (or carrots, or cereal), it gives you a canned response with all sorts of things dogs shouldn’t eat. Ask Google Home if your dog can eat something, and it usually gives you a yes/no answer, with its source cited.

In general, the Amazon Echo can answer some basic questions (“When do the Yankees play next?”). But, despite Amazon’s efforts  to smarten Alexa up over the years, it tends to stumble over anything more complicated (“How do I get rid of a depleted fire extinguisher?”)

google home The $129 Google Home speaker. Hollis Johnson/Business Insider

If you ask a question Alexa doesn’t know, it nudges you towards “skills” that extend its knowledge and functionality — skills for recipes, for games, and trivia, and relaxation. Not every Alexa skill is great, though, and frankly, I don’t always remember which skill I need when I’m just trying to figure out a question.

And that smarts manifests itself in other ways, too. This goes back to those corporate synergies, but it’s nice to be able to say “OK Google, display my engagement photos on the bedroom TV,” and have it grab the relevant imagery from the Google Photos service, and use the Chromecast to put them up on the correct screen.

So, yeah, it’s a matter of taste, especially as more and more smart speakers come online. But in the battle between Amazon and Google, the artificial smarts really make all the difference.

Read Full Post »

This GIF nails how the iPhone X could be the foundation for Apple’s rumored smart glasses by Dave Smith- Business Insider

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 4, 2017| Leave a Comment »

This GIF nails how the iPhone X could be the foundation for Apple’s rumored smart glasses

In case you haven’t noticed, Apple is slowly but surely pushing augmented reality into the mainstream.

But if you’re wondering how Apple can make the jump from something like the new iPhone X to a pair of smart glasses, this GIF nails how that evolution could take place:

This GIF was a concept made by Leo Costa, which he uploaded to the 3D-sketching “uMake” app for iPad. As you can tell from the GIF, Costa uses the same TrueDepth camera system from the iPhone X — with its front-facing camera and sensors to capture 3D information — to serve as the foundation for Apple’s augmented-reality (AR) smart glasses.

Augmented reality, for those unfamiliar, lets you see virtual images in the real world. As Paul Canetti put it so well recently, AR is like “photoshopping the whole world.” So if you look at the GIF, putting the TrueDepth camera system on the front of a pair of smart glasses would make a great deal of sense, since a pair of AR glasses would need to be able to capture depth information on an ongoing basis to work properly.

For over a year now, we’ve been hearing that Apple is working on a pair of AR smart glasses. Apple laid the foundation in June with the announcement of ARKit, which effectively baked augmented reality into iOS. A few months later, it announced the iPhone 8 and iPhone X, the first iPhones with the A11 Bionic chip that’s capable of producing more detailed AR experiences. Apple even showcased several AR demos at its September event.

Apple isn’t the only tech company invested in AR. Snapchat uses AR for its popular “Lens” feature, which adds special effects to your selfies. Microsoft also makes an AR headset, the HoloLens, which is currently available to developers. And Magic Leap, based in Florida, recently raised $502 million in October to bring its rumored AR glasses to life.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »