Forget ad optimization: This VC wants to invest in startups working on real problems

The U.S. will face some very serious challenges in the coming decades, including arresting damage to the environment, rebuilding our infrastructure, reinventing education, defending against new geopolitical threats, and venturing to Mars. Traditionally, we look to the federal government to tackle these problems—but that tradition may be over. The technical talent needed to confront our biggest problems now works in the private sector, because that’s where the money is. And too many of those talented people are spending their days working on trivial problems like ad-tech algorithms and photo-sharing apps. Katherine Boyle [Photo: courtesy of General Catalyst] To lure tech workers into focusing on important problems with fresh ideas, Katherine Boyle at the venture capital firm General Catalyst is starting a new investment sector within the fund: She will invest in civic-tech startups targeting aerospace and defense, public safety, education, transportation, and infrastructure. “A big part of our thesis is that innovative companies can fill in where existing government agencies have fallen short,” Boyle tells Fast Company . Boyle will work the sector from her new home in Miami. She believes she might have a clearer view of the field of civic tech startups from a vantage point far away from tech industry hubs such as the Bay Area and Austin. Boyle and General Catalyst have already made some bets on companies that could be called “civic tech.” Crunchbase shows that General Catalyst participated in three funding rounds for Anduril Industries , the Palmer Luckey -founded defense startup that produces autonomous drone surveillance systems. ‌ Boyle’s investment thesis recognizes that engineers and designers and programmers and data scientists aren’t likely to take a pay cut and move from San Francisco to Washington to work for a government agency. Innovation happens in the private sector. Her new fund is part of a growing awareness that the government should lean harder on private-sector startups—civic tech startups—to find new approaches to the massive challenges we face as a society. Where the talent is Boyle says that there was a time in America when entering civil service professions within the government were a source of social cachet and a respectable salary. This attitude among professionals was influenced by President John F. Kennedy’s famous words, “ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” That maxim came in the midst of the Cold War (and the Space Race), when, regardless of their political party, Americans felt the presence of a common enemy in the Soviet Union. How times have changed. We live in a deeply polarized society with great distrust of the government, and as a result, working within it is no longer as popular. Read More …

This startup lets you make money like an Airbnb host—for screening movies

Back in early March of 2020, Christie Marchese was feeling good. She’d just received a $100,000 investment for a new company that was set to launch that month. Her plan was to apply the Airbnb model to the movie industry and turn individuals into movie screening “hosts” who would be given the tools to organize film screenings in places like churches and community spaces. This would bring smaller, independent films to areas of the county they might not normally travel to, and also allow filmmakers and others to help build a bigger audience for a film that, say, was only destined for streaming.   “Our thought was, can you have a movie theater chain that distributes independent films, foreign-language films, to a much wider network of theaters that aren’t traditionally theaters? Where you don’t have to show a movie five times a day for three weeks to barely break even?” says Marchese, who’d already dabbled in the entertainment space as the founder and former CEO of Picture Motion, a social impact agency that builds campaigns around TV shows and films. “So can we use mixed-use spaces? And can we create a financial model that encourages entrepreneurship or that taps into that—to sound super cheesy—gig economy? Where someone could make $500 hosting a movie one night a week? That’s pretty good money.”   [Image: Kinema] Then, of course, COVID-19 hit. Suddenly a company built around in-person gatherings was an unsustainable proposition. Marchese’s dream of disrupting the movie theater business was put on hold. But rather than wait the pandemic out, she turned to her CTO, Tim Knight, and asked, “can you build a virtual cinema?”   After all, people might not be able to attend a live, screening of a film, but they could attend one digitally. Knight came up with a prototype for a digital platform with built-in, live text chat and video broadcasting capabilities so that after a film is streamed, audiences can participate in a panel discussion or virtual chat with a filmmaker Read More …

How two Southeast Asian superapps beat Uber at its own game

In 2009, while Uber’s cofounders were gearing up to launch, a cadre of young Asian entrepreneurs-to-be entered the MBA program at Harvard Business School. Out of that group came two ride-sharing startups that would evolve quite differently than their American cousins. The company now called Grab was conceived by Malaysian students Anthony Tan and Hooi Ling Tan (no relation) as their entry in a business-plan contest. They didn’t win—but later, they wound up out-Ubering Uber in burgeoning cities across the 10-country ASEAN region in Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, another classmate took a zigzag route to the top. Nadiem Makarim, working remotely with buddies back home in Indonesia, started Gojek as a side project while finishing his MBA. This ride-share app has branched into businesses from massage therapy to moviemaking. And just this week Gojek announced the largest business deal in Indonesia’s history, its merger with e-commerce giant Tokopedia. (Disclosure: Golden Gate Ventures is a small shareholder of Gojek via its acquisition of Ruma Mapan. We’ve also invested in Gojek’s spinout, GoPlay.) Both Gojek and Grab are now venture-funded decacorns. Each is headed for a dual IPO on New York and Asian exchanges. And they’re racing to dominate much more than ride-hailing on Southeast Asians’ mobile phone screens. Grab and Gojek each offer what hasn’t yet been seen in the U.S. market: a superapp combo, featuring a payment app that’s a potential gateway to selling anything people may wish to buy. Gojek’s Winding Road Gojek began modestly in 2010. At first it was a “minimum viable product” venture—a local, low-tech operation led on a part-time basis by its faraway founder. Read More …

Why do startups fail? This Harvard professor blames the ‘speed trap’

How fast is too fast? Fab.com cofounder and CEO Jason Goldberg learned the hard way. When it launched in 2011, Fab was a flash-sale site that curated distinctively designed consumer products and sold them at deeply discounted prices. It was an instant hit. Fab’s featured offers spread like wildfire through social media, so Fab didn’t have to spend any money on marketing—initially. The products were shipped directly to consumers by their designers, so Fab didn’t hold any inventory—initially. As a result, the fledgling venture had positive cash flow—temporarily. To prepare for further growth, Fab raised $320 million in venture capital Read More …

The simple reason tech CEOs have so much power

Coinbase’s plan to go public in April highlights a troubling trend among tech companies: Its founding team will maintain voting control, making it mostly immune to the wishes of outside investors. The best-known U.S. cryptocurrency exchange is doing this by creating two classes of shares . One class will be available to the public. The other is reserved for the founders, insiders and early investors, and will wield 20 times the voting power of regular shares. That will ensure that after all is said and done, the insiders will control 53.5% of the votes . Coinbase will join dozens of other publicly traded tech companies —many with household names such as Google, Facebook, Doordash, Airbnb, and Slack—that have issued two types of shares in an effort to retain control for founders and insiders. The reason this is becoming increasingly popular has a lot to do with Ayn Rand , one of Silicon Valley’s favorite authors , and the “myth of the founder” her writings have helped inspire Read More …