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Month: September 2021

Dolby Atmos and Apple’s rewritten audio stack

by Robert Scoble
This post is by Robert Scoble from Scobleizer

This is a reprint of my email newsletter. Subscribe here.

Human storytelling is about to become MUCH richer.

I’ve been spending the summer understanding the technology changes coming to consumers soon. Lots of people at lots of companies, from car companies, to audio companies, have told me what is coming. Which made me realize that by Christmas of 2022 we will be seeing a HUGE upgrade in all media quality.

What am I expecting to upgrade? Well, audio is being upgraded right now, so that’s one, and on a high-end audio system you already can experience better music than I did by standing in the front row of more than 150 concerts. When I was last at Preservation Hall in New Orleans Reggie Watts gave a performance three feet from me. Yes, that’s amazing. But what is more amazing is that while only a few people can fit into Preservation Hall, now we have the same audio quality in our homes. Actually better, most of the time, truth be told. 

Soon photos will upgrade. So will video, which is already seeing dramatic changes on the high end. So will VR and AR, which will provide radical new experiences in your homes from multi-party video games to new kinds of virtualized TV screens.

Lately I’ve been telling everyone to pay attention to Dolby. Why? Dolby has been working for years on what Apple is about to bring to market.

In this newsletter I’ll focus on Dolby Atmos and the changes (Read more...)

Dolby Atmos and Apple’s rewritten audio stack

by Robert Scoble
This post is by Robert Scoble from Scobleizer

This is a reprint of my email newsletter. Subscribe here.

Human storytelling is about to become MUCH richer.

I’ve been spending the summer understanding the technology changes coming to consumers soon. Lots of people at lots of companies, from car companies, to audio companies, have told me what is coming. Which made me realize that by Christmas of 2022 we will be seeing a HUGE upgrade in all media quality.

What am I expecting to upgrade? Well, audio is being upgraded right now, so that’s one, and on a high-end audio system you already can experience better music than I did by standing in the front row of more than 150 concerts. When I was last at Preservation Hall in New Orleans Reggie Watts gave a performance three feet from me. Yes, that’s amazing. But what is more amazing is that while only a few people can fit into Preservation Hall, now we have the same audio quality in our homes. Actually better, most of the time, truth be told. 

Soon photos will upgrade. So will video, which is already seeing dramatic changes on the high end. So will VR and AR, which will provide radical new experiences in your homes from multi-party video games to new kinds of virtualized TV screens.

Lately I’ve been telling everyone to pay attention to Dolby. Why? Dolby has been working for years on what Apple is about to bring to market.

In this newsletter I’ll focus on Dolby Atmos and the changes (Read more...)

Dangerous Feelings

by Collaborative Fund

Success has a nasty tendency to increase confidence more than ability. The longer it lasts, and the more it was tied to some degree of serendipity, the truer that becomes.

It’s why getting rich and staying rich are different skills. And why most competitive advantages have a shelf life. Jason Zweig put it: “Being right is the enemy of staying right because it leads you to forget the way the world works.”

It is of course possible to indefinitely maintain whatever skills brought you initial success. Lots of people and a handful of businesses have done it.

But when success is maintained for a long period the greatest skill often isn’t technical, or even specific to your trade. It’s identifying and resisting a few dangerous feelings that can nuzzle their way in after you’ve achieved any level of success.

A few of the big ones:

1. The decline of paranoia that made you successful to begin with.

A common irony goes like this:

  • Paranoia leads to success because it keeps you on your toes.

  • But paranoia is stressful, so you abandon it quickly once you achieve success.

  • Now you’ve abandoned what made you successful and you begin to decline – which is even more stressful.

It happens in business, investing, careers, relationships – all over the place.

Michael Moritz of Sequoia was once asked how his investment firm has thrived for 40 years. “We’ve always been afraid of going out of business,” was his answer.

It’s a rare (Read more...)

Give First… Build First… or Both?

by David Cohen
This post is by David Cohen from Hi, I'm David G. Cohen

“How is an early-stage founder expected to interpret the Give First philosophy?”

That’s the polite way of rewording a question Keith Coleman, Founder of Fraudmarc (Techstars Atlanta 2017), posed to Brad Feld and me in an email a little while back.

Keith got our attention with his subject line, “give first, finish last.”

His email clued us in to a difficulty he and other Techstars founders have had—or are still having—in trying to “Give First” at the same time they were rightly focusing their time and energy on the very survival of their companies. 

In conversations with these other Techstars founders, Keith kept hearing that Give First was seen as something primarily for entrepreneurs and investors who had already “made it” and who, both on a time-based (mentoring) and a philanthropic (money-giving) level, had the capacity to truly give.

Challenged by Keith’s email, Brad and I realized we needed to think more deeply about how we were articulating Give First, what it means to us as individuals, and what it means to Techstars as a whole.

To us, the question became, “How can we do a better job at telling founders how, when, why, and if to apply Give First in the appropriate way at every step of their journey?”

We invited Keith onto the podcast to discuss it further. It made for a great conversation and I invite you to listen to the full episode. 

As Brad and I are happy to acknowledge, Give First is an evolving (Read more...)

Which Countries Have the Most Nuclear Weapons?

by Omri Wallach
This post is by Omri Wallach from Visual Capitalist

Visualizing Countries with the Most Nuclear Weapons

Which Countries Have the Most Nuclear Weapons?

In theory, nuclear weapon stockpiles are closely held national secrets. The leading countries have rough estimates that aren’t regularly updated, newly nuclear countries keep their capabilities vague and unclear, and Israel has never officially confirmed a nuclear weapons program.

But thanks to limited disclosures, records, and leaks, we can visualize the full extent of the world’s nuclear arsenal. This graphic uses estimated nuclear warhead inventories from the Federation of American Scientists as of August 2021.

Based on these estimates, there are just nine countries with nuclear weapons in the world.

Nuclear Weapons, by Country

The nuclear arms race has always centered around the U.S. and Russia.

After the end of World War II and well into the Cold War, the world’s two superpowers raced to build more nuclear weapons (and more capable nuclear weapons) than the other.

Even while international organizations lobbied for the end of nuclear proliferation, the world’s nuclear weapon stockpile grew to a peak of 70,300 total warheads in 1986.

As arms agreements and non-proliferation treaties started to gain greater momentum, the U.S. and Russia cut back on stockpiles while new countries with nuclear weapons started to pop up.

CountryTotal Warheads (2021)% of Total
?? Russia6,25747.7%
?? U.S.5,55042.3%
?? China3502.67%
?? France2902.21%
?? UK2251.71%
?? Pakistan1651.26%
?? India1601.22%
?? Israel900.69%
?? North Korea450.34%

Despite reducing their stockpiles significantly since the end of the Cold War, Russia and the (Read more...)

Former Fed Vice Chair and VCs agree on Carried Interest

by Justin Field

The Wall Street Journal opinion commentary “House Democrats Miss Some Necessary Tax Increase” published on Sunday made a great point about what helps drive investment in American made innovation.

The author, Professor Alan Blinder discussed the tax treatment of carried interest for general partners of private equity funds (PE).  For those not versed in the world of investment partnerships, carried interest is simply a euphemism for the profits that general partners (GPs) receive if (and only if) the partnership is successful. Professor Blinder describes a common structure used by PE and venture capital (VC) funds where 2% of the capital in the fund is used to pay for fund operations, including salaries of general partners, and (if the partnership is successful) 20% of the profits are allocated to general partners.

Professor Blinder was incorrect in stating that the 2% management fee was “carried interest,” it’s actually the 20% profit share. But importantly, he also said, “Forget the 20%; that is capitalism.”  On this point, we could not agree more. The fact is, carried interest is capital gains.

While carried interest has become politicized, with many in the political world espousing views on the issue while not actually taking the time to understand it, the reality is it is the primary economic incentive for participation in venture capital.

VC partnerships finance the growth of technology startups, providing funding from the concept stage through an initial public offering, acquisition, or bankruptcy. These funds are critical to President Biden’s Build Back Better (Read more...)

Garry Tan of Initialized Capital: Crazy Cap Tables, Crypto, Finding Balance in a World of Endless Opportunities and Much More

by Howard Lindzon
This post is by Howard Lindzon from Howard Lindzon

I’m excited to have Garry Tan, founder of Initialized Capital, on the podcast today. Garry is a unique individual I’ve only met a couple of times. He says he’s a fan of the show, so he knows how yo sell. His resume is bananas – something we love on Panic with Friends; they may not be famous to everyone, but they’re famous to me! Garry is a Stanford Graduate, was at Y Combinator in the heyday, and was partners with Alexis Ohanian (founder of Reddit). If that weren’t enough, Garry was a seed investor in Coinbase. Oh, and Garry’s now part of my go-to list on the crypto space along with Fred Wilson and Chris Dixon.

You can listen to the podcast here on Spotify or Apple and now all the episodes are on my YouTube channel as well.

For more details on today’s conversation read on below…

Guest: Garry Tan

Profile: Founder at Initialized Capital

Where to Find Him: Twitter, YouTube

What’s Greg Panicked About?: How many companies there are in the current Y Combinator.

The Takeaway:

Garry’s a seed investor in Flexport, Instacart, Patreon, Standard Cognition — the list goes on. We talk about his start, his time with Y Combinator, and the future. We talk writing checks – everything is 10x bigger, 10x more opportunities, 10x more capital, and 10x more people who could and should start companies. Within a decade, there’ll be $1 trillion in venture capital easily. We discuss the coming explosion of (Read more...)