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Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak just launched a new startup to reinvent tech-industry training

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steve wozniak

Steve "Woz" Wozniak, cofounder of Apple Computer and inventor of the Apple II computer, announced on Friday the launch of his latest startup, Woz U.

The venture is a "digital institute" meant to help people gain skills in computer science to fill gaps in high-paying technology roles. Wozniak, beloved for his affability, said Woz U was created to make tech less intimidating.

"People often are afraid to choose a technology-based career because they think they can't do it," he said in a statement. "I know they can, and I want to show them how."

Many economists predict that robotics and artificial intelligence are poised to replace sizable chunks of the American workforce, particularly those working in low-skill jobs. Without the proper training, these predictions suggest, millions of employees could be out of a job.

Woz U was launched in an effort to give people relevant skills as a kind of insurance policy. As tech becomes even more of a dominant presence in the US economy, America's tech sector will need more people to fill new roles. According to Wozniak, there's a way to do that without racking up thousands in college loans.

"Our goal is to educate and train people in employable digital skills without putting them into years of debt," he said in a statement.

Woz U is hardly the first coding school designed to make seasoned engineers out of novice techies. Udacity, for instance, was founded in 2012 and boasts more than 1.5 million users. Around the world, there are dozens more bootcamps with a similar mission. Critics, however, have said the tech industry rarely hires the bootcamp graduate over the person with the four-year degree, arguing the skills they gain still tend to fall short in the workplace.

Woz U wants to separate itself through its various divisions. The primary one is the collection of online classes that people can enroll in to learn the basics of computer support and software development. In time, the curriculum will expand to include data scientists and cybersecurity experts. Woz U will also focus on getting students career-ready by helping them with their resumes, practice coding tests, and building out their portfolios.

In addition, Woz U will look to enter schools to encourage kids in K-12 to pursue science, tech, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM); it'll build an accelerator program to "develop elite tech talent"; and it'll work with companies to recruit and train new talent on-site, through Woz U programs.

Over the coming years, Woz U will set up 30 brick-and-mortar locations around the US to expand its digital institute into the physical world. The company said it will announce the specific locations within the next couple months. The accelerator school will be based out of Arizona.

Woz U couldn't disclose exact costs for students, but a spokesperson said "cost of tuition would vary based on the students program or retraining needs." The flexible approach comes from Wozniak's lifelong belief that technology should be available to everyone, beginning with Apple's earliest computers, which his cofounder Steve Jobs believed should be sold, not given away.

Woz U is the tech veteran's latest project intended to stick to his original and enduring vision.

SEE ALSO: 32-year-old investor with ties to Elon Musk wants to upend America with a crazy utopian plan for the future

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NOW WATCH: Watch Google repeatedly mock Apple at its October Pixel event


Secrets to scaling a startup, from the cofounder who expanded Lyft to more than 600 cities

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John Zimmer

  • John Zimmer is the cofounder and president of the $7.5 billion ride-hailing service Lyft.
  • In an interview on Business Insider podcast "Success! How I Did It," he said that the keys to scaling the company were staying close to the product, and saying "no" to opportunities that would make them scale too fast.
  • To stay close to the product, Zimmer drives every New Year's Eve, and plans to do more driving in the future.

If you're planning to take a Lyft ride this New Year's, look out for a 30-something driver named John.

That's John Zimmer, by the way, cofounder and president of the $7.5 billion ride-hailing service.

On an episode of Business Insider's podcast, "Success! How I Did It," Zimmer told Business Insider US editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell that he and his cofounder, Logan Green, make a point of driving for Lyft on occasion.

Zimmer does it every New Year's; more recently, he said, he's committed to driving every month.

"It's been really helpful to be close to our product," Zimmer said. Driving for Lyft — and using it daily as a passenger — is one of his secrets for scaling his company, which he founded in 2012 and which now exists in more than 600 cities.

 

Another one of his secrets: learning how to strike a balance between "expand quickly" and "don't expand too quickly."

Zimmer said: "Sometimes some of the best decisions we made were to say no. So whether that was international expansion or we learned sometimes we expanded too quickly in the US and sometimes we had to redo it in a better way."

Indeed, a 2011 report from the Startup Genome Project found that 74% of high-growth technology startups fail because of premature scaling, which is a "result of firms focusing on one dimension in their operation and advancing it out of sync with the rest of their operation." The report indicates that "startups that scale properly grow about 20 times faster than startups that scale prematurely."

As Zimmer put it, "It's finding that right balance of speed."

SEE ALSO: How Lyft's John Zimmer went from sleeping on a couch and eating frozen Trader Joe's meals to running a $7.5 billion company

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NOW WATCH: Barbara Corcoran reveals what separates successful entrepreneurs from those that fail

Lyft's cofounders met on Facebook and lived on opposite coasts — here's how they launched a $7.5 billion startup long-distance

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Lyft driver car

  • John Zimmer and Logan Green met through a mutual friend on Facebook. Both were thinking about starting a ride-sharing service.
  • Lyft, then called "Zimride," was a side project for a few years.
  • The cofounders moved together to Silicon Valley, where they focused on bringing Zimride to college campuses.
  • Lyft officially launched in 2012.

It was 2007, and a new college grad named John Zimmer was browsing Facebook. He noticed that a guy named Logan Green had posted on a mutual friend's Facebook page that he was launching a carpooling network called "Zimride."

Zimmer might have paid no notice and continued browsing. Except Zimmer had also been contemplating starting a ride-sharing service. And the resemblance to his own name was a little weird.

On an episode of Business Insider's podcast, "Success! How I Did It," Zimmer shared the story with Business Insider US editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell:

"I reached out to our mutual friend and I said, 'How well do you know Logan, and why the hell did he call his company Zimride?' Zimmer recalled. It turns out Green had named the service after taking a trip to Zimbabwe, where many people needed to share rides.

"I reached out to the mutual friend, Logan flew to New York, and we met each other," Zimmer said. "This was 10 years ago, and we started working together."

  

Zimride would later become Lyft, a ride-hailing service that, today, is worth $7.5 billion and operates in more than 600 cities.

Zimmer and Green didn't start building their startup immediately after connecting. At the time, Zimmer was working for Lehman Brothers in New York City. Once Zimride entered the picture, Zimmer's goal was to save whatever money he made and put it toward his entrepreneurial ventures.

"I just was way more passionate about working on Zimride and felt like that was really important to be doing, and so I decided I was going to leave after my two-year analyst program. I was told that I was crazy to leave a sure thing like Lehman Brothers for a silly carpool startup."

Three months after Zimmer left Lehman Brothers, the firm went bankrupt. Zimmer used Zimride to carpool across the country to meet Green, and soon after they moved to Silicon Valley. They started focusing on bringing Zimride to college campuses.

Lyft was officially born in 2012, when Zimmer and Logan had an epiphany of sorts. Zimmer said:

"Logan and I looked at ourselves and said, 'How are we doing? It's five years in, we had this dream of starting a business, we've done that.' We had raised a couple of million dollars, which was fantastic. We had this great team of about 20 people.

"But the bigger vision, which we've always had, was providing a full alternative to car ownership. Our actual mission is to improve people's lives with the world's best transportation and, in doing so, to change our cities so that they are designed around people instead of cars. And we were just scratching the surface. We really didn't feel like we were doing enough."

They asked themselves: "What if we were starting Zimride over today? What would it look like?"

Now that smartphones were becoming more prevalent, Zimmer and Green wondered if adding a mobile component would encourage people to use the service more often.

"At the time, Uber existed, but they were just doing this for black cars and limos, and to us that was uninteresting," Zimmer said.

"And so I thought, well, getting rides for people who are working at banks — that's definitely not what I want to work on. But providing a full alternative to car ownership and allowing people to use their existing car to make money, that was really exciting. And so within three weeks we launched what we were about to call Zimride Instant, and luckily called Lyft, and that was the beginning of Lyft, in the middle of 2012."

Within the next three weeks, two engineers built the Lyft app.

Zimmer said: "It's been crazy since then."

SEE ALSO: How Lyft's John Zimmer went from sleeping on a couch and eating frozen Trader Joe's meals to running a $7.5 billion company

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NOW WATCH: The first question Richard Branson asks entrepreneurs about their business ideas

This executive left a great job at PayPal to run a gift card startup she thinks could help end poverty

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raise small

  • PayPal executive Kathleen Pierce-Gilmore left the company in October to join Raise, a gift card marketplace startup, as chief operating officer and president. 
  • Pierce-Gilmore, who grew up poor, thinks Raise can disrupt the credit industry in ways that PayPal and traditional finance companies can't.
  • The COO and president was one of three executives hired around the time that Raise got $60 million in funding — including an investment from PayPal.

Gift cards may not be the most obvious place to disrupt the banking industry, but Kathleen Pierce-Gilmore doesn't see it that way.

After two years as the vice president and general manager of PayPal's US credit division, and over a decade spent between American Express and Capital One, Pierce-Gilmore decided to leave corporate America to join Raise, a Chicago-based startup that runs an online gift card marketplace.

And it's all because she thinks Raise can have a serious impact on how low-income families manage their finances.

Katheen_Pierce_Gilmore_Headshot"I grew up incredibly poor and below the poverty line. I didn't realize it when I was younger, but it created a very strong condition in me of financial discipline," Pierce-Gilmore told Business Insider. "I started to have this growing need to help others have that same sense of financial security."

Pierce-Gilmore, who has spent most of her career in credit divisions across the financial industry, thinks prepaid cards could be a key step in helping low-income consumers escape heavy credit debts – the type of which she saw often when working at as a vice president at Capital One. 

"Capital One serves some of the most vulnerable people in America. I learned during my time there that a lot of people that worked there didn't have a deep appreciation of how their products impacted their customer's  lives," Pierce-Gilmore said. 

"The opportunity I saw at Raise was a bit more pure. There's no credit aspect, it's prepaid. There isn't the kind of bad out come possible, where someone can get in over their head," she said. "I believe technology is the better way to deliver financial services to more people and more fairly."

"We're not hurting anyone, only helping" 

Raise was founded in 2013 by CEO George Bousis, who launched the company as a place where individuals could sell gift cards they no longer wanted in exchange for cash.

It's since expanded to include discounted gift cards directly from retailers like Macy's and Fandango, which sell the gift cards for less than their cash value. Dunkin' Donuts, for example sells $50 gift cards for $40.50 — a 19% discount. Others, like Amazon, only discount their cards by 1.1%.

Raise makes a transaction fee on each purchase, and the retailers benefit because they don't have to pay credit card fees on purchases made with their gift cards. Raise is also working on various data and marketing products aimed at these retail partners. 

Customers also benefit from the often deep discounts, and convenient budget management that comes with pre-paid cards.

"We're in a unique position," Pierce-Gilmore said. "We're not hurting anyone, only helping." 

Pierce-Gilmore joined the growing team of 200 in October, around the same time as two other poached tech executives — chief people officer Tenia Davis, a Harpo alum who joined Raise from her role at iManage, and chief marketing officer Gaurav Misra, who joined from Vroom. 

shopping, women, drugstore, mallAll three execs were hired around September, when Raise announced $60 million in series C funding led by Accel Partners, which included an investment from, coincidentally, PayPal.

Now, with her staff in place and ample funding in tow, Pierce-Gilmore is on a mission to make Raise the go-to place for shoppers looking to manage their budgets with prepaid cards, as well as retailers looking for an escape from the high transaction fees that come with processing credit card payments. 

"There is so much room for disruption. I love PayPal, and I think they're doing great work globally. However I think that they're not disrupting the ecosystem as much as they might have had the opportunity to," said Pierce-Gilmore. 

Pierce-Gilmore believes that Raise can someday have the large-scale presence of companies like Amazon, in which checking the Raise app for discounted gift cards becomes a natural part of any and every shopping process.

"I'm already finding my own addiction driving my own behavior," she said. "Every time I am trying to buy something, I look in the category that I am going to shop in."

SEE ALSO: Bill.com is the latest fintech heavyweight, with a $742.8 million valuation and big-name backers

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NOW WATCH: Animated map shows what would happen to Asia if all the Earth's ice melted

How three siblings built a startup that turns your book collection into a public library

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libro library yongrim kyurim juju rhee

  • Libro Library is an app that turns your bookshelves into a public library that anyone can borrow from.
  • It's run by an unusual founder team — three siblings in different cities — something that can cause unusual challenges.
  • The business has been bootstrapped to date, but the trio are now on the hunt for outside investment.


Around two years ago, Yongrim Rhee had a problem: Too many surfboards.

The then-Google employee's Californian home was overflowing with more than 40 boards, and he wanted to do something with them. So he and his siblings came up with a plan for a business: An app that let you lend out your spare boards to others. Surfboard sharing-as-a-service!

They didn't end up making it.

But from there, a new and broader idea emerged: A neighbourhood sharing app, where users could list their spare possessions for others in the neighbourhood to borrow.

They didn't end up making that either.

Instead, the Rhees decided to focus on a single, narrow segment: Books.

And from there, Libro Library was born.

It turns private bookshelves into public libraries

libro libraryIn a nutshell, Libro Library is an app that turns your private book collection into a public lending library. You list the books you're willing to lend out, and users can then select to borrow them — and vice versa.

It's still in the early stages, and the three siblings — JuJu, Yongrim, and Kyurim — are currently its only three employees (chief executive officer, chief product officer, and chief strategy officer respectively). It's being tested in specific regions, and book exchanges become available in an area if enough people "enroll" for it.

Right now, that's only in South America, in cities like Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile. Around 400 books are scanned into the system a day, Kyurim said, while it has thousands of active users.

(Also, it's iOS-only for now, though there are plans for an Android app further down the line.)

It's an almost anachronistic idea in an era of ebooks and digital sharing — but in an interview with Business Insider in London, Yongrim and Kyurim emphasised the importance of the physicality of books and the emotional attachment they provide.

"We have a lot of books ourselves, print books we're talking about, and we grew up pre-ebook times," Yongrim said. "We never fell out of love with print books, we share this sentiment with users, they tell us 'oh, we love the smell of the books, and these almost intangible thing that ebooks don't [have]."

The team is still working out how to make money

This nostalgic sentiment is informing certain design choices the trio are making on the app. "We want to maintain the features of libraries we really like. In the old days, you can open the book, you can see who checked out a book before," said Kyurim, as he explained Libro Library is trying to implement something similar. "So you can see who the book's passed through. This is a feature we think will be really compelling for our readers."

They've bootstrapped the business with their savings so far, but are now on the hunt for outside investment. They're not yet certain how they'll make money off the app ("this might sound naive, we don't really have a monetising strategy," Yongrim admits), but they're exploring a few different routes.

They might charge independent authors to distribute books through the platform, or put up relevant adverts on the app. Or they could provide analytics to publishers, letting them track the movement of their titles as they change hands.

They're keen, however, to keep it free at the point of use — so the actual users on the hunt for new books to read won't have to pay to see what's available in their area.

Working with siblings has 'its own set of challenges'

libro libraryBefore Libro Library, Yongrim worked as a software engineer at Google in Mountain View, California, and now lives in London. Kyurim was a network engineer in Washington D.C., where he still lives. And JuJu, who lives in New York, has worked as an artist and coordinator.

All this adds up to an unusual dynamic — not only are they siblings, but they also lives thousands of miles from one another, across timezones. 

It makes communication far easier, they said — but it can also be far harder to switch off. Startups can already be all-encompassing, and the trio will sometimes find themselves chatting work at family get-togethers in the States. ("It's going to come up, it's like this ugly beast that's in the corner," said Kyurim.)

And in professional situations, things can sometimes get too familial: "The word 'let's be professional' comes up quite a lot," Yongrim joked.

"It comes with its own set of challenges," he said of working with his brother and sister. "When it's bad ... sometimes I feel like 'what have I done, why did I start this business with my siblings?' But then it gets really bad, I feel like with anyone else it would've been over but because it's my siblings I think ... 'let's thin this through and stay together.'"

Kyrurim added: "If something bad happens, if we have a bad fight, we have to get over that. I can't stop being your brother. I can walk away from my coworkers, yeah, I don't wanna talk to that person any more, but I can't stop being a brother to him."

But despite this optimism — there's still a danger that if things do go badly wrong, it could seriously damage some of their relationships. It's a risk that Yongrim has encountered before.

"I've done a startup before with my best friend from college, and we don't talk any more," he said. "So I am somewhat experienced in that. So they know what I've gone through, it was such a painful experience, so in that sense we were somewhat prepared ... I was like 'I'm never going to let that happen again,' because in retrospect it really wasn't worth destroying my friendship over.

"I don't think it was my fault," he added with a laugh. "He shouldn't have done that, but that's sort of what I'm talking about. Being siblings you never let it go that far."

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NOW WATCH: Google Pixel 2 vs iPhone X: The biggest differences between the two

Here are the benefits and challenges of working in China's growing tech scene

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beijing

  • China's tech industry isn't as exclusive as Silicon Valley's, but it's still hard for expats to connect to the right person.
  • The work culture in Chinese tech is intense, reflected by slogans like “996,” which means “working from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week.”
  • The Chinese tech industry has the unique advantage of having a strong manufacturing base.
  • There appears to be a reverse brain-drain, with many people who have worked at big tech companies globally returning to the Chinese market.

Ten years ago, people undoubtedly trained their eyes on Silicon Valley garages for an answer. But now, seeing the rapid growth of aspiring competitors in the East, even tech savvy observers may request more time to give it a thought.

China, India, and Southeast Asia have all shown their great ambition as well as fast growing competence in the tech industry. Each of them enjoys a large population with numerous emerging needs in internet business. And at the same time, they also represent the most significant target markets for each other.

In this series, China Tech Insights partners up with Blume VC, a leading venture capital fund from India, to navigate through Asian markets, and to discuss the potential of entrepreneurship and globalization in these markets, as well as challenges they are currently facing.

In the first article of the series, we will discuss whether China has become an ideal destination for global entrepreneurs.

China shows great attraction as a prosperous market and also as a rich mine of thought, experience, and capital. Its high mobile internet penetration rate along with a tech-savvy user pool save entrepreneurs efforts to educate the market. Its well-established IT infrastructure and active venture capital market also contribute to a favorable environment for tech startups.

However, in this market, we see strong global competitors in most cases, leading players in the world – retreat from the battle against their local counterparts. The most recent and significant case might be Uber China’s epic merge with Didi. On top of the list, we can also find a few other well-known names such Yahoo and Ebay, among others.

Does this imply that China is still a long way from creating an ideal tech hub for global payers? We interviewed representatives of each different stakeholder group to hear their opinion.

China

Information transparency: a systematic problem

Mettl, an Indian SaaS startup operating in more than eighty countries, tried to enter the Chinese market. However, at the moment, it is yet to see substantial progress.

“The biggest challenge during our current attempt to enter China has been inadequate knowledge of the market,” commented a Mettl employee in an email interview with China Tech Insights.

The interviewee stated the following reasons that may have ushered in the current situation:

  1. Due to the language barrier, it has been very difficult for startups to do research, competitive analysis, etc. about any company/sector at an acceptable cost.
  2. Quite a number of tools which Indian entrepreneurs thought were a default choice don’t work in China. For example, “Linkedin in China has only half the number of users of India”, which makes it harder to connect with the right person.
  3. Since English isn’t the official language in China, it can be challenging to find available and clear English translation even for administrative documents or procedures.

“We had to talk to at least 7-8 Chinese consultants to get a clear idea of what the requirements for an ICP license are,” said the interviewee.

Dealing with the language barrier is just the first step. Apart from that, the differences in legal systems can be an even bigger headache. In China, where it requires immediacies in law establishments to regulate the market, the governments may release sets of regulations, statutes, and guidelines for immediate use. This is also often the case in a fast changing business sector, such as the tech industry.

“Most startups are in the internet business. The past two years witnessed a burst of new statutes, regulations, and rules intensively aimed at regulating the internet sector,” a Chinese lawyer familiar with the scene commented. “And in some areas, there can also be detailed rules for execution at the municipal level, which startups also need to comply with.”

Regulations launched last November for ride-hailing services in China can be an example. After national regulations for ride-hailing services launched, municipal governments in Beijing and Shanghai each released their own stricter rules that required local household register and local car plates for drivers to limit the numbers of cars on the road, considering the population and congestion in these two mega cities.

“And sometimes, these rules and regulations can be ambiguous,” such as the regulations for live streaming business in China. “It leaves space for development for emerging sectors. But at the same time, there is also the risk that administrators may impose more restraints and tighten the regulation when it's considered necessary. This kind of sudden changes in the regulatory climate may take away the chances for business in emerging sectors. Thus this also appears as a sort of uncertainty for startups in daily operations,” said the lawyer.

As for global startups, it first takes much effort to find trust-worthy agents to familiarize startups with the scene; then they also need time to learn to adjust to such a fast changing regulatory environment while navigate through all these uncertainties.

uber china

Want a Mr. Clutch? Not an easy thing

What’s also noteworthy is that in some instances, through the right person is hired, the previously mentioned issues do not cause too much trouble. A skilled lawyer or an excellent government relations coordinator can help the company earn a lot more leverage in critical issues. However, hiring isn’t an easy thing.

Although the degree of exclusiveness in China’s tech industry is not as severe as the notorious Silicon Valley scene, it is still hard for expats to connect to the right person. In many cases, a degree from a top university, or a stunning working experience in BAT or other top tech companies, can be the required ticket for entry to the right social “circles” in China. These circles normally include the best investors as well as outstanding entrepreneurs. When it comes to the right circle, term sheets and contracts can be signed in minutes.

In addition, considering the great cultural conflicts between headquarters and the local team, it is always challenging to find an appropriate candidate to be the cushion between the two. “Building up Chinese leadership has been an issue for MNCs even since Yahoo entered China in 1998,” said Hans Tung, partner at GGV Capital.

“Foreign leadership is normally alien to the Chinese market while headquarters normally would not be comfortable with a too-localized Chinese CEO. This contradiction has led to a lot of problems.” Uber China, as an example, was not able to see the assignment of its CEO to the local company even when it merged with its competitor Didi.

However, good news for some global startups is that as the Chinese tech industry prospers, there appears to be a reverse brain-drain – many Chinese tech practitioners who have worked in celebrated global tech companies are willing to return to the Chinese market to meet new challenges, such as Qi Lu, the current president of Baidu, and Hong Ge of Airbnb.

It took Airbnb three years to finally come to the decision of nominating Ge as the head of its China operation. He seems to have the quality that fits both the need of a global team and a local market.

“Ge is a great choice. He’s a Yale graduate with a good performance in product development at Facebook. So he’s able to communicate well with the overseas team, fit into the company culture, and at the same time, he has a good understanding of the Chinese market,” commented Tung. GGV is an early investor of Airbnb. “And based on our communication with the headquarters of Airbnb, we see strong trust in Ge.”

“Also because of his experience of product development at Facebook, he’s trusted with a stronger say in product decisions. This, to an extent, ease the problem that local teams didn’t have enough decision making power in product localization as it happened before to global tech companies upon their entry to China.” Tung said. 

In many cases, investor recommendations are a key source for global startups to hire the right person. Flitto, for example, is a global translation community incubated in London. When it entered China, it decided to build up a local team starting with a local responsible person. Henry Huang was a product manager at Baidu and previously at Weibo, and was one of the candidates recommended to the Flitto team by one of their investors. He is now the company’s China president who built its Chinese branch from scratch, and now leads the company’s partnership with top Chinese tech companies including NetEase and his previous employers Baidu and Weibo.

Another challenge for startups concerning this long and tiring hiring process is that, even if you are fortunate enough to find the right person, chances are you will find the cost to be quite a burden. In the past few years, the labor cost in China has risen significantly. People’s Daily reported in 2016 that from 2013 to 2016, “the percentage of labor cost in a company’s overall cost rose from 5.8% to 9.17%.”

In the tech industry, a good offer can be more financially demanding for companies. And for startups, even a lucrative package isn’t enough to attract a wanted talent. “It’s common that someone you consider suitable won’t be willing to join your team, and wants to join a big company like BAT,” said Henry Huang, the president of Flitto China. “Cost isn’t the biggest problem. For startups, it’s even harder for you to meet and then be able to hire the right person.”

Ya-Qin Zhang, center, president of Chinese search engine and technology firm Baidu, speaks during a panel discussion at the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing, Thursday, April 27, 2017. At left is Kai-Fu Lee, CEO of Sinovation Ventures and the former head of Google China and at right is Vanessa Gao, CEO of The Jiangmen.

Before you’re ready to come in, they are ready to go out

Another challenge faced by foreign startups is how to adjust to the fast pace and fierce culture of entrepreneurship in this market.

“Chinese companies scale a lot faster than companies in India. The tremendous pace at which companies grow is a striking feature of the Chinese startup ecosystem,” said Dhanasree Molugu, analyst from Blume VC, in a comparison of the distinctive features of the two markets. “Besides, we also find a greater sense of discipline and hunger in Chinese entrepreneurs.”

This sense of hunger shared by Chinese entrepreneurs can be reflected by slogans like “996,” which means “working from 9AM to 9PM, and six days a week.” In this swiftly changing market, no one dares delay one iteration or two of essential features compared with their rivals. In exchange, they are willing to sacrifice leisure and even health. These sacrifices are, somehow sadly, the foundations of the achievements of Chinese tech companies today, and to a certain extent, one of their core competence that stops outsiders to easily gain any market shares in this market.

“In China, there have already been pretty competent local players,” said Tung from GGV Capital. “They’re not only competent in the domestic market. They’re even ready to expand to the global market. With such competitors at home, of course it’ll be even more demanding for MNCs to enter the Chinese market.”

According to China’s Ministry of Commerce, in the first half of 2017, Chinese investors have made outgoing non-financial direct investment to over 145 countries and 3,957 companies with a total number around 48.19 billion USD. Despite a sharp year-over-year decrease of 42.9% in total volume, Chinese investors have become more active in the Asian markets. According to CB Insights, since the end of 2015, Chinese tech companies have invested at least 3.27 billion USD in Southeast Asian startups.

Top companies such as Alibaba and Tencent have made vast investments in companies related to their core businesses, such as Alibaba’s investments in Lazada for its e-commerce business, then Ascend Money and Mynt, in alignment with its online financial services. Apart from financial support, entrepreneurs also value the experiences brought to them by Chinese investors.

“Chinese investors have witnessed the fastest growth of any economy in their country. They have first-hand experience of scaling in a short time and yet creating a strong business. This learning is rare and is of great value to startups in India,” concluded the founders of MechMocha, an Indian gaming company with investments from Shunwei Capital, the venture fund founded by Xiaomi’s founder Lei Jun, when asked about their observations on the most distinctive features of Chinese investors.

Back to the question at the very beginning: is China ready to be the center of the Asian tech market and have its own Silicon Valley?

Based on her observation of the Chinese market, Dhanasree Molugu from Blume VC gave her answer as an outsider. “We believe that a lot of cultural factors, such as globalization and a reverse brain drain, and structural changes, like the ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative and the ongoing economic reform, are shaping China’s path ahead in the tech world as a leader.

“The Chinese tech industry has the unique advantage of having a strong manufacturing base which supplements the software and consumer internet businesses really well. Another factor favoring China is the depth of the venture capital industry. It can be regarded as the most advanced in Asia in terms of experience and scale compared to others, including India’s nascent VC ecosystem.

Baidu's company logo is seen at its headquarters in Beijing December 17, 2014. 
REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon“We also observe that the Product Managers of Chinese consumer tech startups have a very keen insight into the customer's psyche and deliver a great user experience. All these factors definitely make China a strong contender for the title of ‘The Silicon Valley of Asia’.”

“However, after spending a few weeks in China meeting investors, startups, entrepreneurs, and college students, we realize that the focus on localization of Chinese startups is relatively high, and the government support for local business is pretty strong, which limits the scope of global companies to enter China. Also, having seen a few of our portfolios struggle to tap into the Chinese market, we think the regulatory and legal aspect of doing business in China for international startups still is very hazy. A more expat-friendly environment in terms of information availability, communication efficiency, and many other aspects, is still needed before China can finally claim the title.”

Although China is yet to be a perfect destination for global entrepreneurs, we have already seen impressive stories happen every day. Raz Galor is a 23-year old Israeli content creator who speaks fluent Chinese and is currently a junior student at Peking University.

He was a guest host of a Chinese reality show featuring young people from various countries who can speak fluent Chinese, introducing cultural differences of different regions, and he is now a content producer and entrepreneur. His online video channel Foreigner Study Association has 1.54 million followers on Weibo, and each of his videos has millions of views on Chinese social media. This is one of many successful expat entrepreneur stories in China.

According to China’s Ministry of Commerce, from January 2015 to May 2017, 66,634 new wholly foreign owned enterprises have been set up in China. And hopefully, with a steadily rising tech industry and a more open attitude, we may be able to see a more international, intercultural, and vigorous Chinese tech market.

SEE ALSO: China's highest-paying jobs have shifted from finance to tech

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Tech companies have a Baby Boomer problem

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diversity

All the recent focus on sexism and gender discrimination in Silicon Valley has obscured another long-festering diversity problem for the tech industry: ageism. 

Now job hiring website Indeed is shining a spotlight on the issue. The company recently conducted a survey of 1,011 currently employed US tech workers. The survey results indicate how little age diversity there is in tech and how little tech companies are doing to change the situation. 

One glaring finding: 46% of respondents said that the average employee age at their company was between 20 and 35.

Here's some of what Indeed found and how the industry is approaching the issue of age discrimination:

SEE ALSO: If you're lucky enough to have a tech salary, these are the 10 cities to get the most bang for your buck

Survey respondents said they mostly work with younger workers.

Only 26% of respondents to Indeed's survey said that the average employee at their firm was over 40.

That's not surprising given findings of other studies. According to data from 2014 collected by PayScale, a salary analysis company, the median age at Facebook is 28, and 30 at Google.

By contrast, the median age of members of the American labor force as a whole is 41.9, according to US Bureau of Labor Statistics.



Employees generally aren't worried about the paucity of older co-workers.

Only a fifth of survey respondents think the Baby Boomer generation is underrepresented at their company.



Older tech workers are more likely to look for jobs outside of Silicon Valley.

San Jose and San Francisco are the top two places tech workers of all ages seek to work. But Baby Boomers are much more likely than younger workers to look elsewhere for employment opportunities, Indeed found. And Boomers are more likely to seek employment in places younger workers shun.

For example, Huntsville, Alabama, ranked third on Boomer techies' list of most desired places to work in Indeed's study. Raleigh and Durham, North Carolina, ranked seventh and ninth, respectively. None of those cities made the top 10 list for either Millennial or Gen X tech workers.

Meanwhile, for younger tech workers, Austin, Texas, ranked number four after Seattle, but it didn't make the Boomers' list at all. 



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Lyft's cofounder didn’t take a salary for 3 years and slept on a couch in an 'apartfice' before his company was worth $11 billion

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John Zimmer

  • Ride-hailing service Lyft is now worth $11 billion.
  • But in the early days of Lyft — then called Zimride — the cofounders didn't take a salary and shared an apartment/office.
  • They turned the startup around when they thought creatively about how to fulfill their original mission and adapted to current smartphone technology.

There was a time in Lyft cofounder John Zimmer's life when sleeping in a full bed was a "major upgrade."

Zimmer and his cofounder, Logan Green, had been living in a Silicon Valley space that served as both apartment and office. They called it the "apartfice," and Zimmer slept on the couch. They survived off Trader Joe's microwaveable meals.

On an episode of Business Insider's podcast, "Success! How I Did It," Zimmer told US editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell that, during this time, he and Green weren't taking a salary from Lyft, which was then called Zimride.

 Zimmer said:

"At that point it was a side project, and so it felt like a school project where there was a lot of interest, passion, and we had a big vision, but we didn't know what it was going to be, and so we just wanted to see it work. We wanted to see if we could flip a student population at a university. We were mostly focused on college campuses and making the majority carpool to get home for spring break. That was the main challenge, and that's what we were trying to solve."

By 2012, Zimride had reached thousands of users; 150 universities and companies were participating in their closed carpooling network. But that didn't feel like the best way to fulfill their original mission.

Here's Zimmer again:

"Then, in 2012, Logan and I looked at ourselves and said, 'How are we doing? It's five years in, we had this dream of starting a business, we've done that.' We had raised a couple of million dollars, which was fantastic. We had this great team of about 20 people.

"But the bigger vision, which we've always had, was providing a full alternative to car ownership. Our actual mission is to improve people's lives with the world's best transportation and, in doing so, to change our cities so that they are designed around people instead of cars. And we were just scratching the surface. We really didn't feel like we were doing enough.

A single question proved transformative:

"And so we said, 'What if we were starting Zimride over today? What would it look like?' And when we started Zimride in 2007, smartphones didn't really exist. And one of the biggest problems we had with Zimride was that the frequency of use was a couple of times a year because there were these long-distance trips, and so we said, "Well, what if we could increase the frequency of use? Use a smartphone?" At the time, Uber existed, but they were just doing this for black cars and limos, and to us that was uninteresting."

Within three weeks, two engineers had built the Lyft app. Today, the company is valued at $11 billion.

Interestingly, Lyft went back to its Zimride roots in 2016, when it launched Lyft Carpool in San Francisco. As Business Insider's Avery Hartmans reported, regular drivers could earn up to $10 per ride for picking up riders along their morning commute.

But the service was suspended shortly after, Forbes reported, with Lyft citing a lack of driver interest. Lyft said while it expected a carpool feature would be popular one day, "the time is not right now."

SEE ALSO: Lyft is now worth $11 billion — its founder reveals how he went from taking no salary for 3 years to running a giant startup

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This interior design startup lets you try out furniture before you buy it — and it helped me make the most of my small apartment

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The Insider Picks team writes about stuff we think you'll like. Business Insider has affiliate partnerships, so we get a share of the revenue from your purchase.

ModsyRender2_preview

  • Modsy is a service that makes 3D models of the rooms you want to decorate based on pictures you send and its basic dimensions.
  • The company's interior designers will create two versions of the room, decorated with furniture from popular home stores that you can actually buy and that match your tastes and budget. 
  • For $69, you'll get the home designs and the ability to edit them on your own. For $199, you'll get more features, like a stylist who will chat with you and make adjustments and recommendations to the design for you.

If you've ever bought a piece of furniture online and realized only after the setup that it either didn't fit the space physically or aesthetically, you can already name at least one time when you would have benefited from a service like Modsy.

Modsy is an online company that lets you upload photos and dimensions of any room and then creates a 3D model, complete with recommendations from an interior designer on how to fill it — using furniture from popular home decor stores that you can buy after the fact at a discount through Modsy. If you've already got a nightstand or bed frame, you can pay $10 and Modsy will make a 3D model of it as well, so you truly never have to wonder about what something will look like once put together. You also don't need to crawl around your house with a tape measurer. 

There are two pricing options, but for both, you'll receive a 3D model of your room, curated products that match your style profile, two custom designs of how to put it together, and unlimited edits to the room itself. Every furniture option is real and shoppable, and they show you which products are used in a bar at the bottom of the design. Not only can you view the room from all the angles you'd find while standing in it, you can also see it from a bird's-eye view. At $69 for the most basic pricing level, it's a lot of value (especially for those who have a tough time imagining something like that on their own) for a low cost, especially when it's for an important investment like furniture.

In my experience, the value was definitely worth the price. The 3D designs were extremely helpful and also allowed me to be more creative with the space.

The furniture the Modsy designers use is all chosen to fit your preferences, and if you're not sure if you like "traditional" or "urban," as I wasn't, there's also a quiz they'll direct you to which will help you discover that.

If you love the furniture and want to shop it, you can buy directly through Modsy and you'll receive a discount on your purchase. For the first pricing option, you'll get $20 off, and for the second you'll receive $50 off. 

Right now, get 25% off a design package when you use "FALL25" at checkout.

Studio Image_preview

When I used Modsy, it came as a complete relief. I was moving to a new place after college and wanted to take furniture shopping more seriously, but interior design is not a natural gift. I can appreciate when things look put-together, and I know what I like, but being on the other side of things isn’t easy, particularly the visualization (which Modsy took care of for me). While my spacial awareness allowed me to parallel park during my license exam without hitting any cones, it doesn't transfer to sofas for the living room as easily. Not being able to imagine all of the furniture, light fixtures, and rugs together also had me buying more basic furniture simply so that I would know it would go together. Modsy allowed me more freedom and creativity. 

Modsy, like the best of services, did something I could not have done on my own — and did it very well for a moderate price. I would have been more than happy to shell out $69 for what was included in the basic package, but as I wanted to invest in furniture I could have for a while, I was also happy to part with $199 for the added style advice their second option offered.

Even if you can't afford all the items Modsy uses to fill your space (although they do customize the selection to your budget), it's still a great way to get ideas from experts at an affordable price. I pay a lot in rent so that I can enjoy where I live, and I felt like Modsy was a valuable tool as an extension of that. 

For me, Modsy was a great service. Their pricing seems more than fair for what you get in return, and it helped me enlist experts to do a job I knew they could do much better than me. Modsy helped me make the most out of my apartment and made sure I did so without wasting money on furniture I would later hate.

If you’re moving and don’t have the mind of an interior designer but want to love your space, I can’t recommend the service highly enough.

Here’s how the process works:

SEE ALSO: This startup makes sofas that sound almost too good to be true — they’re easy to move and only take 10 minutes to build

Getting started:

To begin, head to the Modsy homepage and click "get started" to start the questionnaire. 



Select which room they'll be creating a 3D model of for you.



And select what the reason for the redesign is.

If you're moving and looking to completely revamp your space, or just want to update your living room, Modsy will be able to help.

Sign up to get a 3D model of your own home decorating project here.



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A nonprofit focused on the 1.25 million Americans with type 1 diabetes is pushing a new way to fund startups

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insulin pump diabetes

  • JDRF, a nonprofit type 1 diabetes organization, has its own venture arm, T1D Fund, which manages $60 million.  That includes $5 million added to the fund on Tuesday from the Helmsley Charitable Trust.
  • The goal of the T1D Fund is to to spark investments into startups that are translating scientific advancements in type 1 diabetes into approved treatments. 
  • Companies that the fund has invested in see the support as "catalytic," especially since it carries the weight of JDRF's reputation. 

 

Type 1 diabetes, a condition that affects 1.25 million Americans, has seen its fair share of scientific advancements in the past few decades as researchers learn more about the disease, which affects the body's ability to monitor blood sugar levels.

But at the same time, those advancements haven't necessarily reached patients. So, JDRF the largest funder of type 1 diabetes research, started a venture fund called the T1D Fund to spark investments into startups that might be able to take those scientific advancements and turn them in to approved treatments. 

"The research progress has been amazing, but what we're not seeing is the creation of a market," Sean Doherty, chairman of the T1D Fund told Business Insider. Venture capital, in particular, hasn't been very active in type 1 diabetes in recent years. "If we don't take charge of this, show leadership, nobody's going to."

If we don't take charge of this, show leadership, nobody's going to."

The T1D fund got its start in January 2017 with $32 million. Since then, it's invested in seven companies, and now manages $60 million. That includes $5 million added to the fund on Tuesday from the Helmsley Charitable Trust, an organization that supports health programs including type 1 diabetes. 

The idea of a nonprofit starting a venture arm is relatively new, but Doherty said the T1D is taking cues from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, which backed a startup that developed breakthrough cystic fibrosis treatments.

Felicia Pagliuca, vice president of cell biology research and development at Semma Therapeutics, described the T1D Fund's investment in the company as "catalytic." In 2015, Semma raised a $44 million Series A round for its  treatments, which uses stem cells to generate insulin-producing beta cells.  

Diasome Pharmaceuticals is another one of the seven companies that the T1D Fund has invested in. The company is developing additions for insulin that helps send the insulin molecules to the right parts of the body. The idea is that by getting it to the right spots, it might have a better chance of functioning even more like the insulin healthy people make. 

Diasome CEO Bob Geho told Business Insider that a lot of funding disappeared for diabetes treatments roughly a decade ago, when the FDA wanted some more data around cardiovascular health. And because there are fewer people living with type 1 diabetes compared to the 29 million living with type 2, it was harder to get innovation there. 

At the same time the T1D Fund invested, Diasome raised a $30 million funding round led by Medicxi.  

In terms of inking future deals, the support that comes with the T1D Fund investment ideally could lead to more deals down the line. 

"JDRF's investment has been duly noted by the pharmaceutical industry," Geho said. 

SEE ALSO: Amid the exploding opioid epidemic, a new device could change how doctors treat chronic pain

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This CEO used to help the Pentagon track insurgency — now he's got $14.7 million to help Walmart track shopping trends

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sean gourley

  • Primer is a company coming out of stealth, with $14.7 million in funding. 
  • Previously, Primer CEO Sean Gourley had an illustrious career in academia and the public sector, including a stint in Iraq using algorithms to predict insurgent activity.
  • Primer uses much of that same technology to provide a market analyst in software form, scanning news stories and other massive data stores to report back on trends and important insights. 
  • Early Primer customers include Walmart and In-Q-Tel, the CIA's investment arm.

Sean Gourley already has an accomplished resume: Originally from New Zealand, and trained at Oxford as a physicist, Gourley was a Rhodes Scholar who also worked on self-repairing nano-circuitry for NASA.

Now, Gourley is revealing for the the first time a new startup venture of his own: Primer, an artificial intelligence startup with $14.7 million in funding, from investors including CIA venture capital arm In-Q-Tel.

Primer was borne out of one of Gourley's more high-profile adventures in academia. While studying as a Rhodes Scholar, he ended up researching the mathematics of insurgency and terrorism. He would end up advising the Pentagon, and even took trips to Baghdad to help analyze intercepted text messages from insurgent groups.

Now, Primer is making a business in taking much of Gourley's past research in insurgency, and applying it to business. The same kind of algorithms that would analyze insurgent communications for patterns will now analyze media reports or any other massive troves of data and report back with the insights it gleans. 

In other words, it's a market analyst in software form.

The question Primer asks its customers, says Gourley: "What could you do with a hundred analysts?" It's being built by a team of about 32 engineers, most of whom hold PhDs.

And even at this early stage, says Gourley, Primer is signing "multi-million-dollar contracts." Customers like Walmart are turning to Primer to scour the internet and report back on trends. And In-Q-Tel itself is acting as a middleman, brokering out Primer's software to federal agencies. The terms of that deal are such that not even Primer knows which agencies are its customers. 

To Gourley, Primer is a super-useful tool for parsing out the never-ending information flow that is the modern internet — it takes a human, or a whole team of humans, just to make sense of everything. That doesn't really scale.

"You have to throw people at this problem" without a system like Primer, says Gourley. 

But Primer still requires a human touch to get the most out of it. Take, for example, this demonstration visualization made by Primer, which tracks coverage of terror-related events in English-speaking media versus Russian over the course of a year. Primer sifted 40 million news stories to make the map, with a human analyst providing the context.

See for yourself:

primer map

The system is great at doing the "tedious" parts of the job, says Gourley, but the real value comes from imagination and other "things that humans tend to be quite good at."

The same principle can be applied to any business where "a sense of truth" is key, says Gourley. For Walmart, for instance, it's a great way to parse out the coverage of trends over time, with a human riding herd to make predictions and glean insights that a machine never could. 

On your schedule, Primer can send a report of all the news items it's read, and what the important takeaways are. If you're in the video game business, Primer will tell you when the media lights up with talk about the cancellation of the new "Star Wars" game, or when a major studio is hit by layoffs.

That's where the artificial intelligence bits come in, says Gourley. First off, the Primer system can pick out the parts of each story that people are most excited about. But the customer can also tune the system up, teaching it a little more about what they like, and don't like. 

"As that feedback rolls in, your system can learn from it," says Gourley.

It's just part of the massive artificial intelligence boom, sweeping everything from the smartphone industry, to the business technology sector.

SEE ALSO: Box CEO Aaron Levie says artificial intelligence will change your life and create huge opportunities

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This beauty startup raised $25 million to defy the retail apocalypse and open stores across America

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Madison Reed Color Bar

  • Online beauty retailer Madison Reed is opening Color Bars where customers can have the company's products applied in-person.
  • It recently raised $25 million to open more stores. 
  • While Madison Reed is not the only company to move from online to physical retail, many retail stores are struggling.


While many retailers are shifting away from brick-and-mortar stores to online marketplaces, Madison Reed is doing the opposite. 

Founded in 2013, the online beauty retailer developed a questionnaire and algorithm meant to determine the ideal hair color for its customers, as well as software that could make recommendations based on photos uploaded by customers.

Now, the company is taking its personalized approach one step further by opening Color Bars where customers can receive coloring services and consult with professional colorists. Two Color Bars are currently operating — one in San Francisco and one in New York City — and the company plans to have 25 open by the end of 2019.

It just raised $25 million in venture funding to help it do so, according to TechCrunch. The round was led by Comcast Ventures with participation from Norwest Venture Partners, True Ventures, and Calibrate Ventures. In total, it has raised $70 million. 

Madison Reed is not the only retailer to expand from an online store to a brick-and-mortar presence, but it is doing so in a difficult business climate. The early results have been positive, according to CEO and co-founder Amy Errett.

"The reaction to our Color Bar concept has been astounding," she told Chain Store Age. "We have focused on catering to women who are comfortable doing their hair color at home, and we will continue to do so. Now with the Color Bars, we also have a solution for women who want the help of a professional Madison Reed colorist, while saving time and money."

SEE ALSO: 8 'Amazon-proof' businesses that are defying the retail apocalypse

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The cofounder of Lyft reveals the closest his $11 billion startup came to dying

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An illuminated sign appears in a Lyft ride-hailing car in Los Angeles, California, U.S. September 21, 2017. Picture taken September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Helgren

  • In 2012, the year it launched, Lyft received cease-and-desist letters from the California Public Utilities Commission.
  • Lyft fought the orders and in 2013, the CPUC voted to approve new regulations around ride-hailing services.
  • Lyft is now valued at $11 billion.

Within a few months of launching, in 2012, ride-hailing service Lyft received cease-and-desist letters from the California Public Utilities Commission.

On an episode of Business Insider's podcast, "Success! How I Did It," Lyft cofounder John Zimmer told Business Insider US editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell how the startup handled the orders:

"Our first thought was, 'Oh, let's go talk to them and let's explain what we're doing.' We'd already done the legal analysis, which made us believe that we were in the clear because this was different than anything that had been done before, but we weren't unaware of the fact that this was very new, culturally, to be riding in other people's cars.

"And so we sat down with the regulators, in this case the California Public Utilities Commission, and said, 'What are you most concerned about? Why did you send us a cease-and-desist? Is it public safety or is it to protect against existing industries?' And they said, 'It's safety, of course.' And we said, 'Great,' and we had this document prepared that walked through all of the safety things that we did, including a criminal-background check, a driving-record check, a million-dollar insurance liability policy to cover each driver. And then we said, 'And here's what you require of the entities you regulate.' They regulate the black cars and limos in California.

"And almost everything was more significant than what they were requiring. For example, they require $750,000, I think to this day, instead of a million dollars for black cars and limos. They do not require a criminal-background check for black cars and limos, which is shocking. And so that led to about a year of back-and-forth to the point where they did create the new category and regulated using that kind of model for safety."

Zimmer said he and his team refused to give in during that tumultuous year: "I don't know that we would have thrown in the towel unless they were to lock us up or something, or if there was a moment where there was, like, a decision point."

In September 2013, the CPUC unanimously voted to approve new regulations around ride-hailing services including Lyft and UberX, according to TechCrunch.

Zimmer recalled the commission meeting:

"We had invited the driver community and passenger community and the room was filled. And I believe it was a unanimous decision. I'm not 100% sure, but after the vote, a lot of people stood up and cheered, and the commissioner said that has never happened before and it was a really exciting moment because we weren't certain of that outcome."

Lyft has also faced fierce competition from other ride-hailing services, and has nearly gotten squashed in the process. Zimmer said, "There was a point three years ago where they [the competitor] had 30 times the amount of capital as us."

Today, Lyft is valued at $11 billion.

Asked why Lyft held its ground in the face of government pushback, Zimmer said: "We kept going because we really believed in our mission, and, when I think about all the moments that were the hardest, like how close we were to failure along the way, it was really this, like, we really believe in the need for making our cities better and designed around people."

SEE ALSO: Lyft is now worth $11 billion — its founder reveals how he went from taking no salary for 3 years to running a giant startup

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NOW WATCH: Ashton Kutcher explains why he initially passed on investing in Uber and how easy it is to underestimate new ideas

This startup wants to help programmers get hired based on their coding skills rather than their résumés

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Codefights team shot

  • CodeFights is offering a new system called CodeFightsR that's designed to help companies improve their recruiting and hiring processes. 
  • Companies can use CodeFightsR to evaluate candidates based on their skills rather than their résumés

 

You don't need an Ivy League education, a degree from one of the top college engineering programs, or work experience at one of the big tech companies to be a great coder. 

But hiring managers still frequently use such markers to identify and evaluate job candidates. 

CodeFights is hoping to change that. The startup, whose website helps programmers to improve their skills by offering them coding challenges, has developed a new system designed to help recruiters evaluate job candidates based on the candidates' skills rather than on what they've listed on their résumés.

"What the recruiting industry is still doing is using pedigree as a proxy for skill," said Tigran Sloyan, CodeFights' CEO. But, he continued, "Engineers are no longer coming from top schools and top companies."

Fighting bias

For the past two years, CodeFights, which was founded by former Google and Oracle engineers, has been helping companies recruit new employees by screening programmers who came to its site to practice their coding. After seeing how well CodeFights' site worked for finding talented engineers, the company's partners, which include Uber, Asana, and Evernote, urged CodeFights to create tools they could use internally to screen job candidates.

The result is CodeFightsR. The system helps companies evaluate job applicants based on their programming skills. Companies can use CodeFights R to send applicants a programming test. The system assesses candidates' skill levels based on how they do on the test. Hiring managers can then look at applicants' scores to figure out which ones to bring in for an interview. 

The system is designed to evaluate candidates objectively, rather than having assessments clouded by conscious or unconscious biases. CodeFightsR can point hiring managers to candidates who actually have the skills they're looking for, regardless of their gender or race or the school they graduated from.

"Biases mainly kick in because of people's lack of real data, said Sloyan. "They go off of proxies to decide if someone can do what they want or not."

Codefights testing report

Finding Candidates in Unusual Places  

But companies can also use CodeFightsR to find additional job candidates, not just screen existing ones. 

Companies can use the CodeFightsR system to design programming bots and list them on CodeFights' public website. Programmers who visit CodeFights' site can play against the bots as a way of testing their skills. If they do well against a particular company's bot, they'll get a prompt asking if they are interested in job opportunities at that company. So, the system helps companies find qualified candidates who might not otherwise have gone through a formal application process. 

"Companies see the shift," said Sloyan. "When you realize that instead of looking at someone's resume and looking for keywords you can actually know this person is a great Java engineer or Android engineer without even having ever talked to them, it’s a transformation in (the company's) eyes."

Testing skills and offering feedback

CodeFights has designed CodeFightsR to help companies out even as they get closer to hiring particular candidates. 

In later stages of the hiring process, companies typically ask programmer candidates to complete a coding test with a recruiter, usually in Google Docs. But because Google Docs is formatted for plain text, not software code, it's not ideal for demonstrating coding skills, Sloyan said.

Tigran SloyanCodeFightsR includes a feature that allows candidates to do a coding test in something closer to a programming environment. The feature allows candidates to choose from any one of 38 programming languages and actually run the code they write. 

Companies can also use CodeFightsR to figure out how to improve their hiring process. The system offers automated feedback on companies' hiring processes. For example, it can alert a company if two of its interviewers gave a candidate wildly different evaluations. Or it can notify companies if the questions they're asking candidates don't seem particular relevant to the jobs for which they're applying. 

In the CodeFights office, visitors can see what the company calls its "wall of fame." It's comprised of the stories of coders who were hired after being discovered on CodeFights' website.

The wall is supposed "remind ourselves that what we do matters," said Sloyan.

CodeFights hopes the new set of recruiting tools will help it add many more stories to the wall.

SEE ALSO: An AI startup founder is teaming up with a former hostage negotiator to help businesses boost their sales

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New York City has topped San Francisco when it comes to startups raising VC cash — but it may not last

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wall street bull police

  • The New York City metropolitan area was the most highly-funded region of the US in the third quarter of 2017 — pushing San Francisco out of its long-held spot.
  • Startups in NYC saw $4.227 billion in funding during the third quarter of 2017, up from $2.689 billion in the second quarter. 
  • Funding in San Francisco/North Bay Area was flat from last quarter, with $4.177 billion invested in local startups.

New York City has surpassed San Francisco as the region whose startups attract the most venture capital money, thanks in large part to a mega-round of funding scooped up by co-working company WeWork.

San Francisco DealsVCs invested $4.227 billion in NYC companies over the third quarter of 2017, compared to $4.177 billion in funding for companies in San Francisco and the North Bay Area. These numbers come from the recently released Q3 2017 MoneyTree Report from PwC and CB Insights. 

While San Francisco's funding was flat from the previous before, NYC's numbers were up considerably from $2.689 billion in funding during Q2. The spike was due to the enormous $2.5 billion in funding garnered by the NYC-base coworking space company WeWork. 

New York DealsBarring another massive Big Apple round of startup investments, San Francisco will probably regain the top spot by the end of the year.

San Francisco, home to Uber, Twitter and numerous other big tech names, has long dominated the startup funding rankings. But it's worth nothing that Silicon Valley — the venture capital and tech hub just south of San Francisco — is calculated as a separate region in the MoneyTree report.

Silicon Valley companies saw $2.2 billion in funding for the third quarter — a big dip from $4.1 billion in the quarter prior. 

Here's how these regions compare to the rest of the US:

Q3 funding by region

SEE ALSO: The technology techies think could revolutionize money, contracts, and supply chains is getting the cold shoulder from venture capitalists

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NOW WATCH: I won't trade in my iPhone 6s for an iPhone 8 or iPhone X — here's why


Tim Cook and Eric Schmidt stripped down to try this new kind of shower head and wound up investing

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Nebia Spa Shower System

  • A startup based in San Francisco wants to disrupt the way you shower.
  • Its flagship product, the Nebia Spa Shower System, uses up to 70% less water than a traditional shower head.
  • The company is backed by Tim Cook and Eric Schmidt.

 

You might spend $699 on a new iPhone 8, but would you shell out that much for a shower?

Nebia, a startup based in San Francisco, wants to disrupt the most intimate part of your morning routine. Its debut product, the Spa Shower System, surrounds users in a warm cloud of mist and uses up to 70% less water than a traditional shower head. It costs $649.

Most shower systems, with their rain heads and removable wands, are priced between $100 and $400 at Home Depot.

"We're introducing a totally new kind of shower experience," said Nebia CEO Philip Winter.

The company counts titans of tech, including Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google chairman Eric Schmidt, among its investors, and is on a mission to disrupt the way people consume water.

The Nebia Spa Shower System filters a stream of water through a surface that creates millions of tiny droplets, which in turn covers 10 times the surface area of a traditional shower head, according to the company. By creating more droplets from less water, Nebia promises a more efficient shower experience that doesn't sacrifice water temperature or pressure.

The system has been in development for three years. And it required about 1,000 people — including Cook and Schmidt — to strip down and take a shower to make sure it worked.

Philip Winter Nebia Spa Shower System"A thousand people is not an insignificant number. It's not like you can share a link to you app and say, 'Try it at home!'" Winter said. Nebia partnered with local Equinox gyms, as well as Google, Apple, and Stanford University, to set up prototypes in their locker rooms. Nebia's cofounders sat at tables outside where they would interview volunteers about their experience.

Cook, the company's first angel investor, might be the company's biggest fan.

"He loved it immediately," Winter said.

Winter, who previously worked at a startup that made composting toilets for the developing world, said the Nebia Shower System is something you have to experience to believe. The company has a showroom in the back of its San Francisco headquarters where people can book an appointment time and pop in for a shower. Bath products and towels are provided.

The $649 price tag, which comes with a one-year warranty, may be prohibitive for most. Winter likens the company's trajectory to that of Tesla, which has introduced more affordable vehicles through the years as the cost of manufacturing them came down. Nebia expects to do the same.

Customers will recoup part of the cost with use. A person living in New York City who takes a 10-minute shower daily can expect to save about $125 in water and gas heating annually, according to the website. The savings rise to $177 in San Francisco and $137 in Seattle.

"Showers have been the same for several decades. There hasn't been any meaningful innovation to speak of for longer than that," Winter said. He added, "We took this super important part of your daily ritual and we made it better."

SEE ALSO: http://www.businessinsider.com/nobu-location-silicon-valley-review-2017-10

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NOW WATCH: Bill Gates is backing the waterless toilet of the future — here's how it works

TRANSPORTATION AND LOGISTICS BRIEFING: Auto tech startups struggle to gain traction — Mobileye already paying dividends for Intel — Parrot narrows focus

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Welcome to Transportation & Logistics Briefing, a new morning email providing the latest news, data, and insight on how digital technology is disrupting transportation and delivery, produced by BI Intelligence.

Sign up and receive Transportation & Logistics Briefing free to your inbox.

Have feedback? We'd like to hear from you. Write me at: jcamhi@businessinsider.com.


WHY AUTO TECH STARTUPS HAVEN’T BEEN A HOT INVESTMENT LATELY: 240 different startups focused on connected and autonomous car technologies have raised just over $5 billion from both corporate and private investors in recent years, according to a new Reuters analysis of funding in the space. But that is just a fraction of the money that has been spent on these technologies — Reuters estimated that automakers and tech giants have collectively spent $40-50 billion on developing autonomous and semi-autonomous car technologies. Investors interviewed by Reuters were split on whether auto tech startups will start to capture more of the money being spent on these technologies soon.

There’s little doubt that connected and autonomous technologies will disrupt the transportation space and create new opportunities for upstarts. Self-driving cars will enable a new market for digital services, including autonomous ride-hailing and in-car streaming media services, that will be worth $2.2 trillion by 2030, according to Strategy&. Tech companies and startups are widely expected to play a key role in that market. Only 15% of 80 auto and tech executives surveyed recently by legal and advisory firm Foley & Lardner LLP said that new entrants are not disrupting traditional auto companies. Additionally, 22% of the auto executives surveyed predicted that tech startups would become their primary competition within the next three years. 

However, startups in the space haven’t gotten much of the money being spent on developing digital car technologies:

  • The vast majority of the money being spent on developing these technologies is going towards internal self-driving projects at giant automakers and tech companies, including Ford, GM, Intel, and Waymo.
  • Additionally, the auto tech startup space has grown incredibly crowded. The $1 billion price tag that GM paid for small self-driving software startup Cruise Automation last year has led computer vision and robotics experts to flock to the space and found new companies, Reuters said.

Acquisitions have been growing though in the past year. Some major auto companies have spent heavily to acquire startups, including GM’s Cruise acquisition, and auto supplier Delphi’s recent $450 million acquisition of self-driving startup nuTonomy. However, with the space so crowded, it’s difficult for investors to pick winners. Additionally, major auto and tech companies are only acquiring startups that help them accelerate their own self-driving car initiatives. For example, GM recently purchased Strobe to help it make cheaper LiDAR sensors, an important step for the automaker to start mass producing self-driving vehicles. Last Friday, Ford purchased LiDAR sensor manufacturer Princeton Lightwave for the same purpose. These types of acquisitions will likely grow more frequent as automakers and tech companies close in on bringing self-driving cars to market. However, only startups that can add specific value to ongoing self-driving car projects are likely to find corporate buyers and investors.Mobility Services Market Strategy&

MOBILEYE ACQUISITION ALREADY PAYING DIVIDENDS FOR INTEL: Chip designing giant Intel discussed its recent acquisition of Israeli advanced driver assist system (ADAS) designer Mobileye on its Q3 Earnings call late last week. The company announced the $14.5 billion acquisition back in March. 

The chip giant completed the Mobileye acquisition in early August, about four months before it initially expected the deal would be finalized. This allowed Intel to collect $80 million in revenue and $39 million in operating income during the quarter from the Israeli company, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said on the call. For context, Intel earned $4.5 billion in total revenue for the quarter. 

Krzanich also said that Mobileye has secured 14 ADAS partnerships with automakers so far this year, which is already more than the 12 it secured during all of 2016. This includes automakers such as Audi, which is integrating Mobileye’s technologies and Intel’s computing systems into its A8 sedans, and Volvo, which is integrating the technologies into its XC90 SUV’s. Additionally, the company announced a slew of new partners this past quarter that are now using its technologies to build self-driving cars during the quarter, including BMW, Google’s Waymo self-driving car spinoff, and Fiat-Chrysler.

Mobileye will grow even more valuable for Intel as these partners move towards deploying Level 5 autonomous cars in the coming years. Waymo and BMW, in particular, are racing ahead to deploy Level 4 self-driving cars as soon as possible, but are simultaneously working to eventually deploy Level 5 autonomous cars several years from now. Level 4 autonomous cars are designed to operate autonomously in most scenarios, but still have a steering wheel and pedals for a human operator to intervene in case of emergencies, while Level 5 cars are fully driverless and ditch the steering wheel and pedals. As automakers work towards Level 4 and Level 5 cars, they will need more advanced sensors, cameras, and computing systems, which Intel can supply. That could help Intel draw more auto partners and push its automotive revenue to become a much larger share of its overall business, which Krzanich noted the company is already doing by leveraging Mobileye's existing partners.

Autonomous Car Shipments

PARROT HOPES NARROW FOCUS WILL FUEL TURNAROUND: French drone manufacturer Parrot has unveiled two new aircraft, Engadget reports.

  • The Bebop-Pro Thermal that comes equipped with a thermal imaging camera, runs software designed to help identify humans, and is designed to be used by firefighters. The drone, which is an updated version of the original Bebop, has a wingspan of about two-and-a-half feet, and will be available for $1,400 starting next month. Firefighting is a leading public safety use case for drones, giving the drone model a fast-growing market.
  • The Bluegrass, which comes equipped with a mutispectral sensor and flight planning software and is designed to be used in agricultural settings. The drone, which will cost about $5,000 and also be available sometime next month, can fly across 74 acres of land on a single charge. The aircraft is Parrot's first major foray into the agricultural drone space, which Goldman Sachs estimates has a $5.9 billion global addressable market through 2020.

The company likely hopes this narrow focus will help it avoid being crowded out of the drone space by Chinese rival DJI after a year where its struggled to crack the Chinese giant's dominance. DJI accounts for about 75% of all registered drones in the lucrative US market according to BI Intelligence's latest estimates, making life difficult for smaller competitors like Parrot. The French dronemaker cut 290 jobs earlier this year — or about one third of its workforce — after several consecutive quarters of missing its sales targets. The company is betting that designing its drones for these very specific use cases will allow it to find a valuable niche in the market.

In other news...

  • Uber unveiled its first ever co-branded credit card with BarclayCard US last week, according to The Verge. The card offers customers a $100 bonus after they spend $500 on any purchases in their first 90 days, 3% cash back on restaurants and bars, and 2% cash back on Uber rides. The ride-hailing giant likely hopes the card will boost customer loyalty at a time when rival Lyft is slowly eating away at its domestic market share.
  • GE is considering cutting ties with its railroad business, which it houses under its GE Transportation unit, amid pressure from investors for the conglomerate to cut costs and abandon low margin businesses, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company is considering selling, spinning off, or even looking to partner the business unit, known as GE Transportation, with another company in the industry. The unit is one of the conglomerate's oldest, and its revenue and profits have been declining for several consecutive quarters.
  • UPS plans to invest millions of dollars to upgrade its logistics network, including adding five million square feet in new fulfillment centers, and buying larger planes and more trucks in order to keep up with rapidly rising e-commerce package volume, The Wall Street Journal reports. In addition, the company is considering expanding its currently small Saturday delivery services, CEO David Abney said on the company's earnings call last week. The logistics giant joins rival FedEx in spending big to upgrade its network and cope with the rise of e-commerce.

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I discovered a new brand that makes owning delicate gold jewelry actually affordable

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The Insider Picks team writes about stuff we think you'll like. Business Insider has affiliate partnerships so we may get a share of the revenue from your purchase.

aurate main

  • AUrate is a direct-to-consumer site that is making fine jewelry more accessible and transparent. 
  • Its ethically sourced and real gold rings, necklaces, bracelets, and earrings are beautifully simple and add a touch of luxury to your everyday life. 
  • You can get many of these pieces for under $500, making them a great gift option

When you go jewelry shopping, you pretty much have two options. The first, fine jewelry, is way out of your price range, and you can only lust for it behind a carefully polished glass case as the boutique associate watches you from the corner of his eye.

The second is cheap jewelry you can get at any retail store that's just painted gold or silver and that you could care less about losing. Since I don't have sensitive skin that reacts poorly to less-than-pure substances, I tend to go for the latter and have a healthy collection of Forever 21 and H&M jewelry. I really wish I could own and cherish fine jewelry, but I can't justify paying a few month's rent for a ring. 

Sophie Kahn and Bouchra Ezzahraoui recognized this wide open gap and jumped headfirst into it by starting their affordable fine jewelry company AUrate. Just as the direct-to-consumer model has disrupted many other industries, it's proving to make total sense for the slow-to-change traditional fine jewelry industry.

When you shop at AUrate, you're getting the fair price, no high wholesale markups attached. According to AUrate, traditional jewelry can be marked up to 20 times the cost — that's a ton of money you could be putting elsewhere.

AUrate not only interrupts the chain to get you lower prices, but also ensures materials are sourced ethically.

Materials are sourced in accordance with high standards of social, environmental, and human rights practices, while diamonds and pearls are purchased from conflict-free regions. It's a guilt-free buying experience, for your wallet and your conscience. 

The jewelry itself is beautifully classic and wearable. I personally wore my solid circle necklace ($250) every day for a week because it just went with everything and was the perfect simple finishing touch. Made from real 14k and 18k gold (a couple ways you can tell is by looking for a stamp that marks the karat weight and if it's not magnetic), the rings, necklaces, bracelets, and earrings all look and feel amazing. Whether you feature it as a dainty standalone piece or layer pieces on top of each other, the jewelry is elegantly versatile. 

As you shop for jewelry this holiday season, look to AUrate for affordable luxury, gorgeous simplicity, and ethically made pieces. See some of the jewelry from AUrate for yourself below.

SEE ALSO: This is the ultimate work bag for professional women

Gold and black onyx necklaces

AUrate Black Stones Necklace, $220

AUrate Mini Charm Circle Necklace, $180



Diamond bezel ring

AUrate Diamond Bezel Ring, $150



X cuff

AUrate X Cuff, $300



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A man who sold his company for $700 million in all cash in his 20s reveals a disappointing truth all startup founders need to hear (ZG)

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Spencer Rascoff Zillow

  • Spencer Rascoff is the CEO of the real-estate website Zillow and a founder of the travel website Hotwire.
  • In 2003, Expedia bought Hotwire for nearly $700 million, all cash.
  • But the sale came right after a down round of financing, which wiped out a lot of employees' equity.


In 2003, Expedia bought the travel website Hotwire for nearly $700 million, all cash.

And while at the time this was a huge deal, it was somewhat disappointing for Hotwire's founders.

On an episode of Business Insider's podcast, "Success! How I Did It," Spencer Rascoff, a Hotwire founder who's now the CEO of Zillow, shared the story with Business Insider's US editor-in-chief, Alyson Shontell.

Listen to the full episode here, or listen later with the buttons below:

It started with 9/11. For one thing, Hotwire learned it had inadvertently sold some tickets to the hijackers for flights in the days before the attacks. And for several months afterward, fewer people wanted to travel.

As a result, Hotwire struggled and went through what Rascoff called "significant layoffs." Then it did a down round— a round of financing that values the company at less than the previous round — and Rascoff said it "wiped out a lot of the equity that the employees had in the company."

So by the time Hotwire sold to Expedia in 2003, when Rascoff was in his late 20s, it was hardly the grand exit it might sound like. Rascoff told Shontell:

"This is a good lesson for founders: A down round basically wipes out most of the employee equity because employees typically have common [stock] and investors typically have preferred [stock]. So a $700 million sale sounds really great, but it's mostly the venture capitalists who made the money, not the employees."

As Business Insider previously reported, when a company is purchased, common-stock holders get paid with the money left over from paying the preferred-stock holders. Sometimes, depending on how a fundraising deal is structured, preferred-stock holders get promised so much — particularly if a deal is riskier — that common-stock holders are left with barely anything.

"You don't have to feel sorry for anyone at Hotwire — they all did fine, and they're doing fine," Rascoff said. "But it wasn't the type of exit that I think people expected."

He added: "Read the fine print — or it usually doesn't get printed as fine print — but usually, stories like that have a little layer of complexity to them."

SEE ALSO: How the founder of Zillow and Hotwire led his startups through major crises, layoffs, and a down round to massive exits

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Media, Marketing, and The Next Big Thing — take a deep dive into each with a new feature coming to IGNITION 2017

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Igntion Twitter

Between artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and virtual reality — not to mention robots, chatbots, and just plain bots — there is a bewildering array of technology and trends to master in media and marketing.

Meanwhile, journalists, media, brands, and platforms are confronting issues of trust, transparency, and attribution on a daily basis.

To address these unique challenges, Business Insider’s IGNITION conference will feature, for the first time, three specialized Pillars: Marketing, Media, and The Next Big Thing. Attendees can optimize their agendas around their Pillar of choice, allowing them to focus on the topics that matter most to them.

“With Pillars, people will be able to take a deeper dive into their professional interests and experience the conference in a new, more customized way,” said Melanie Cornwell, executive producer of IGNITION. “Ranging from ‘How to build a business in audio’ to ‘Leveraging AI technology to optimize revenue and product development’ Pillars offer specific, actionable insights for media and marketing pros.”

For example, Marketing gurus can immerse themselves in an intensive programming block featuring best-in-class executives such as AT&T chief brand officer Fiona Carter, Amazon VP of global advertising Seth Dallaire, and Karin Timpone, CMO of Marriott International.

If Media is the name of the game, speakers like Kate Lewis, SVP and editorial director of Hearst Magazine’s Digital Media; Piera Gelardi, Refinery29’s cofounder and executive creative director; and Alex Blumberg, cofounder and CEO of podcasting empire Gimlet Media will teach us how to build audiences and businesses on new platforms.

When it comes to The Next Big Thing, a head start is everything, and with the third Pillar, Business Insider will be unveiling six of the coolest emerging tech companies that promise to transform the media landscape.

Media Pillar and Marketing Pillar speakers include:

  • Alex Blumberg, Cofounder and CEO, Gimlet Media
  • Linda Boff, CMO, GE
  • Fiona Carter, Chief Brand Officer, AT&T
  • Seth Dallaire, VP of Global Advertising, Amazon
  • Anda Gansca, CEO and Cofounder, Knotch
  • Piera Gelardi, Cofounder and Executive Creative Director, Refinery29
  • Denise Karkos, CMO, TD Ameritrade
  • Tim Kendall, President, Pinterest
  • Kristin Lemkau, CMO, JPMorgan Chase
  • Kate Lewis, SVP and Editorial Director, Hearst Magazines Digital Media
  • Janice Min, Media Strategist, Eldridge Industries
  • Naveen Rajdev, CMO, Wipro
  • Kellyn Smith Kenny, VP of Marketing, Uber
  • Karin Timpone, CMO, Marriott International
  • Nirav Tolia, Counder and CEO, Nextdoor
  • Larry Thorpe, Senior Fellow, Imaging Technologies & Communications Group, Canon USA
  • Troy Young, Global President, Hearst Magazines Digital Media
  • Mark Read, Global CEO, Wunderman

You won’t want to miss out on this lineup. Business Insider IGNITION 2017 will take place November 29-30 at the Time Warner Center in New York City. Head over to IGNITION to register today.

SEE ALSO: Axel Springer CEO: How to monetize digital news

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