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| Hi, welcome to your Weekend!
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| The Valley is small and memories are long. I’ve heard countless versions of that
old venture capital saw. And true enough, it sometimes seems like Silicon Valley
is one clubby, insular, gossip-addled village. |
| That’s why it can feel so disorienting when the outside world gets interested
in Valley business. As TI Weekend staffer Josh Duboff writes this week,
Hollywood’s been doing a whole lot of tech parachuting lately. There are at
least eight star-driven vehicles based on real-life tech sagas that are currently
being adapted into prestige TV series and feature films. In some sense, Hollywood’s
fascination with tech isn’t surprising—the industry and its most notorious and
charismatic figures aren’t just local concerns anymore. They’re linchpins in popular
culture. |
| As the never-ending Theranos trial comes to a climactic conclusion in the coming
weeks, the next made-for-Hollywood tech scandal is likely just around the next
corner. In fact, it may be even closer that that. Which brings us to
this week’s cover story on troubled health-tech unicorn Modern Health... |
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The Inside Story of a Scorched-Earth Breakup Between Two Founder Friends
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| Alyson Watson and Erica Johnson were the type of co-founders who would take sunrise
bike rides up Marin’s Hawk Hill together. Then came lawsuits, accusations of
racism, and whistleblower claims of fraud and kickbacks. Their uncivil war offers
a rare view inside a Silicon Valley unicorn that continued to raise hundreds of
millions of dollars even as its founding partnership imploded. |
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Coming Soon to a Theater Near You: Every Tech Scandal Under the Sun
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| What’s the latest genre capturing Hollywood execs’ attention? Silicon Valley scandal
porn. From Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes to Jared Leto as Adam Neumann, it
seems that every fallen tech luminary is getting their own Social Network (Aaron
Sorkin script not included). Here’s your sneak peek at the latest tech origin stories
getting the silver screen treatment. |
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Redwood Trees and NFTs: Silicon Valley’s Holiday Gifting Arms Race Is Back
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| Raindrops on roses and, uh, drones and caviar on kittens? Every year, the Valley’s
most prominent individuals send out a few of their favorite holiday things to their
nearest and dearest. But not everyone knows what to do with these meticulously
curated gestures. Anyone need a spare Coast Redwood seedling? |
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CEO Phil Libin Moved to Arkansas at Random—Now, He’s Putting Down Roots
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| Evernote’s former CEO (and current boss of video communication company, mmhmm)
found himself stressed out by San Francisco, so he picked up and moved to Bentonville.
Now he’s discovering tree-lined walking trails, mid-day pool dips and living a
traffic-less existence. |
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Jon Steinberg, Weekend Editor, on The Beatles: Get Back:
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It’s interminably long. It’s unquestionably boring. There are times when you wonder, is this actually bad? Are the Beatles over-rated? And then...ob-la-DA! Artistic transcendence captured in its rawest, purest infant state. Peter Jackson’s stupefying, eight-plus-hour Disney+ documentary on the last days of the Beatles is a must-watch for anyone engaged in the building of technology. Good ideas compete with bad. The new world displaces the old. Self-centered people derail the process. Yoko sits on an amp. Everybody wants to quit and go home. And then, slowly, luminously, something essential is born.
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Reading: Snapping up (un)real estate in the metaverse
In recent months, the volume of real estate transactions skyrocketed—not in New
York or San Francisco, but in the Land of Make Believe. Okay, fine, the metaverse.
Per Debra Kamin in the
New York Times
, investors are laying down hard-earned crypto for a piece of the highly-speculative,
avatar-populated pie in places like Decentraland in Crypto Valley, where the rights
to a fashion district recently closed at a cool $2.5 million. Others can snap up
more tangible, though still virtual, versions of IRL landmarks like, say, the Taj
Mahal. Once you buy a property, owners get a share of whatever commerce happens
there. Mr. Monopoly would be proud. |
Noticing: Alexis Ohanian, in a mancave, flogging Lolli
We were transfixed by this little peek into Chez Ohanian (albeit without any Serena
or Alexis Jr. cameos—booo!). The Reddit founder
posted a Cyber Monday videoin support of a new crypto rewards program called
Lolli. While the video itself is standard issue angel-investor hype, there is
just so much to take in behind him: A shaggy dog. An Everlast punching bag. A Colin
Kaepernick jersey. A Statue of Liberty figurine. Some sort of neon pink wall fixture.
It is one of the more dynamic Zoom set-ups we’ve come across. If we’re understanding
Lolli correctly, can we get some bitcoin back if we buy this stuff? |
Listening: A podcast that makes spreadsheets sexy
Kat Norton has amassed
over a million followers on
TikTokand
Instagramby creating content about....wait for it...Microsoft Excel. As thrilling
as that sounds, Verge honcho Nilay Patel and Norton engage in
a spirited, edifying conversationabout being the lord of your data and not
the other way around. Norton claims to earn six figures a day from her Excel mastery
(she uses her social platforms to funnel viewers to her video courses hosted on
Thinkific), which opens the door to so many legacy software-influencer possibilities. |
| Makes You Think |
| Last year:
Robots dancing to Motown. This year:
Robots emoting and peering thoughtfully at their hands. Next year: We shudder
to think. |
| And one last note until next Weekend. Yesterday marked
The Information’s eighth birthday. That’s two presidential terms, folks. Congrats
to the whole TI squad!
Thanks for reading. |
| —Jon
|
| A Message From The Northern Trust Institute |
| Market Currents Podcast: Listen Now |
| Market Currents, a new podcast from the Northern Trust Institute, explores today’s
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