Very exciting to see more companies open up prod + engineering divisions in NYC - I feel as though typical bay area tech satellite NYC offices are go-to-market focused first before expanding out to prod/eng so interesting to see Gusto go the other way first!
"Most discussions around data defensibility actually boil down to scale effects, a dynamic that fits a looser definition of network effects in which there is no direct interaction between nodes."
Good distinction between scale vs network effects, not every company with scale has a network effect...
Toxicity in gaming + virtual communities (particularly against women) seems to be an issue that no company has a great grasp on.
I recently gave Fortnite a try and ended up turning chat off due to relentless abuse by someone that sounded like they were pretty young. It made me a bit sad - I met some of my best friends growing up online in irc channels playing CS, WoW, etc - not sure if I would be able to do so today.
Also Polygon article where Ninja talks about why he doesn't stream with female gamers (for whatever reason espn didn't link...) -
Has there been any commercial use case for graphene yet?
I feel as though I've been hearing about its potential constantly for many years, but can't recall any commercial use cases yet.
(side note - it also reminds me of the many hours I spent using the scotch tape method and looking at my chip under microscope to try and identify graphene...)
"Ant says it wants to be known not as a financial conglomerate but as a technology provider or “lifestyle platform,” with future profits coming mainly from fees from institutions using its technology."
As fintech companies get larger in China, interesting to see how marketing shifts as being less a disruptor of banks to being a partner, in order to avoid regulatory attention.
Starting to see that in the US too, as more consumer fintech apps are also beginning to converge with each other in regards to product offerings...
Username + password is a huge attack vector, especially for services where users signup and eventually stop using or forget. I wish there was some obligation to reset password or require some form of MFA for applications that experience no usage on my account (especially if the service typically encourages continuous usage)...
Would also potentially add "voice control" to this list. It's amazing to me that by trying to be "innovative/modern", most car user interface designs have become increasingly user unfriendly.
Case in point, the other day I spent 15 minutes trying to figure out how to connect my phone to a car via bluetooth (I'm still used to there just being a button for pairing).
Ended up having to search online for the instruction manual to figure it out, turns out pairing is only available via voice command when the car is in park ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Meanwhile, CVS + Walgreens lost $6B in market cap on the news Amazon is moving directly into pharmacy space.
It's crazy how competitive Wall Street views Amazon moving into a market; have there been examples of Amazon making a large purchase/move but completely failing? (sure there are, just not coming me off the top of my head)
Interesting answer to Verizon's acquisition of AOL + Yahoo, until all the recent acquisitions I (naively) just assumed ISP's revenue was primary from selling services (cable, internet, tv, data, etc) and reselling the data somehow, but did not connect that they're all very much in adtech...
As it relates to sponsorship transparency, I think platforms such as instagram, youtube, etc have broader issues with their influencers whether CGI'ed or not...
I did find it really interesting that a CGI character could be more appealing to brands as there is much more complete control over image, no past issues, etc.
Reminds me of Hatsune Miku, virtual pop singer in Japan. As CGI continues to improve, wouldn't be surprised if we start to see entire digital labels churning out multitudes of artists/bankds
Main goals of a salesteam include building accurate pipeline, and closing that pipeline as quickly as possible.
In B2B, level of touch definitely depends on the size of the deal. Excellent discovery + qualification done quickly is super important for larger companies.
E.g. signing up for Dropbox for my 2 person company is (and very much should be) self service, with transparency around price and what it will look like as I grow in the short run.
Signing up for Dropbox for an enterprise company for thousands of licenses, each with different apps, permissioning, environments, infrastructure, etc should be a much in depth conversation. Typically enterprise clients with volumes also expect to have discounts due to their scale (they know they're worth $$$), and in order to have a properly managed negotiation, a sales team needs to full understand who they're selling to, what they care about, what levers can be moved, decision maker, timing, etc. All of these attributes are typically much more distributed in large companies vs leaner entities with 1 decision maker.
First call closes are great, what I can say is that I've never heard of a $1mm deal close on just one call.
we currently don't have an updated official go library for our API, but shoot me an email ([email protected]) and can shoot over some recs for third party libraries
Correct! We have three environments you can send API traffic into - sandbox, development, and production.
Sandbox + development are 100% free to use, development just requires a quick request through the dashboard after signing up for API keys. (https://dashboard.plaid.com/signup)
Sandbox- gives access to sandbox data to test the integration.
Development - add up to 100 live bank accounts
Production - add as many live accounts with paid account
I signed up to be a Bird charger in SF and it's been quite difficult to find scooters to charge. All the scooters go offline at 9pm to be charged and then have to be dropped off by 7am the next morning in order to get paid. I've encountered a ton of issues trying to find more "valuable" scooters as they tend to appear to be in unsafe areas that I don't necessarily want to be at night (most of the high value scooters tend to be in the tenderloin and I'm guessing have already been broken down, I can usually tell if it's not there due to the last known location being a few days ago)
I've started to view the expensive Birds as a way for the company to have people try and find their lost scooters, in which case $25 is a pretty great deal...