Author: admin

A founder has an identity mini-crisis after a corporate breakup

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Editor’s Note: Each week Maynard Webb, former CEO of LiveOps and the former COO of eBay, will offer candid, practical, and sometimes surprising advice to entrepreneurs and founders. To submit a question, write to Webb at  dearfounder@fastcompany.com. Q. I started my company solo but brought on a cofounder a year in. It wasn’t the right fit and I let her go, though she has equity in the company and is on my capitalization table. I’m fundraising now and not sure what to disclose to investors. Also, I’m not sure if I call myself founder, or cofounder.   –Founder (or cofounder?) of a consumer startup Dear Founder, That’s exactly what I would call you, no question. You have always been a founder and though you once had a cofounder you no longer do. I don’t think having someone on the cap table who is no longer a part of the company is uncommon. Don’t beat yourself up about the fact that the cofounder didn’t work out Read More …

Humans before hype: This investing method would make VC more inclusive

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The question I find myself asking founders the most often is a simple one: “Why are you the right person to solve this problem?” One of the least inspiring (but increasingly common) responses I hear is “I’m really excited for the entrepreneurial journey and I see an opportunity here.” That’s valid. Some incredibly talented people are motivated more by the thrill of the build than by solving a specific problem. And there are plenty of investors who, inspired by their momentum, are eager to get on board. Sometimes I’m one of them. But I also know firsthand that one shouldn’t always trust and follow the hype. There was a time in the early days of TaskRabbit, the company I founded, when we were doing fewer than a hundred tasks a day, yet getting heaps of national press. Even as Diane Sawyer ran a feature on us, we were assigning jobs to our staff members because we hadn’t yet automated our Tasker onboarding processes. It’s not at all uncommon for a company that’s generating lots of press and social mentions to not yet have the numbers to back up the buzz—and that’s a necessary part of building momentum. But with overhyped companies, it’s often the case that this momentum-building isn’t meaningful to the long-term success of the company. A huge press hit, big name investor, or vanity metric milestone can belie what’s really going on at a startup. To me, what’s much more interesting than following the hype is discovering the founder who becomes obsessed with solving a specific problem because she has a personal connection to it. Caribu founder Maxeme “Max” Tuchman is a great example of this (full disclosure: Fuel Capital invested in the company’s most recent round). This Miami-based Latina founder, who has a background in education, became obsessed with finding a solution to help traveling parents read bedtime stories with their kids back home. That idea grew into a dedicated video calling app that hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents now use to engage and connect with their kids and grandkids—a bright spot during a global pandemic Read More …

These 5 apps take the pain out of wrangling your huge photo collection

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Let’s get those photos organized. It’s about time, right? First, we’ll review and delete any bad photos on your phone, then we’ll get all your old physical photos digitized. Next, we’ll touch up any that need a little extra TLC, and finally we’ll share the best ones privately with friends and family. Sound easy enough? Great! You can do this. Let’s get started. Sort ’em That camera on your phone takes great photos and—better still—can take a lot of them. But if you’re like most people, you almost never take the time to sort the good photos from the bad. Purpose-built for photo organization, Slidebox ( Android , iOS ) lets you trash the duds with a simple Tinder-like swipe. They can’t all be keepers, after all. For photos you want to keep, you can sort them into albums with a single tap, compare similar-looking photos to see which one turned out better, and synchronize the results to your camera gallery. None of your photos are copied or otherwise kept in the app: It’s purely used for organization. Now, here’s the weird thing. The Android version of the app seems to have been abandoned, but it still works well, and it’s free as in free-free Read More …

Apple Watch and AirPods data shows that we’re exposed to too much noise

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In 2019, Apple announced a series of studies to be conducted with academic partners. Among them was the University of Michigan, which Apple teamed up with for research focused on hearing loss. The results of their study are in, and as it turns out, we are all probably exposed to too much noise. An estimated one in 10 of the study’s participants have hearing loss due to noise. The study took place between November 2019 and February 2021 and analyzed data from approximately 70,000 participants. Each participant was involved in the study for at least 60 days. In addition to noise levels, which the study captured through the Apple Watch and through Apple headphones, the study also looked at heart rate and exercise data for Watch wearers. Researchers also gathered demographic data, gave participants surveys, and used the iPhone to give participants a virtual hearing test. The main purpose of the study was to get a better understanding of what kinds of noise people are exposed to on a daily basis. “Until a couple years ago, we had 40-year-old estimates on national noise exposure,” Rick Neitzel, the associate chair of environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan and the leading researcher on the Apple hearing health study, told Fast Company in 2019 when the study was first announced. The World Health Organization estimates there are 466 million people with “disabling hearing loss,” or hearing loss at 40 decibels. The goal of the study is to help researchers at the University of Michigan gather broad data about hearing loss and specifically about noise-induced hearing loss. Read More …

Flipboard now lets you follow local news for 1,000+ cities and towns

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In January 2020, Flipboard—the magazine-esque app for reading and sharing content from a multitude of sources —introduced a new feature designed to help people find local news . At launch, it covered 23 big cities, such as Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle. Read More …