New Florence. New Renaissance.

Everything you wanted to know about SPACs but were afraid to ask

Business Week about Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, also called Blank Check Companies

"SPACs raise money through an initial public offering that sells shares and warrants in a bundled unit usually at $10. SPACs usually have 24 months to identify and complete an acquisition. If investors of the SPAC dislike a planned purchase, they get to sell their shares but keep the warrants. That gives them the possibility of an upside even in transactions they opt out of, if a merger goes better than they expected. That combination is seen as making SPACs a safe bet especially during turbulent markets. Once the business combination is completed, the acquisition target becomes a public company."

another perspective from Yahoo Finance

P&Gs startup studio

For Procter & Gamble, that startup studio is known as P&G Ventures, which has created four consumer-facing brands since it was founded in 2015. The studio’s aim is to work outside P&G’s current categories to find areas where the company could create the next $1 billion brands that could eventually fold into its portfolio. So far, the studio has launched natural insecticide Zevo, digital skin analyzer Opte, skin-care treatment Metaderm and menopause brand Pepper & Wits.  

Digiday

 

Singapore's startup ecosystem

Singapore’s effort to create an ecosystem to support startups is gaining ground, with the city-state now home to more than 150 venture capital funds.

L’Oreal SA, Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. are among more than 100 entities running incubator and accelerator programs, according to Enterprise Singapore, the government agency spearheading enterprise development. Venture funding has increased to $10.5 billion in 2018 from $800 million in 2012, according to data from PitchBook.

BusinessWeek

 

 

 

Movies about developers

Quick, which is your favorite movie featuring developers? Other than this one involving Steve Ballmer ...

Stacey Fish and Craig Cmehil of SAP, Jon Reed of Diginomica and I were recently at BYU kicking off a hackathon where the students blended HR datasets extracted from SuccessFactors and employee survey data from Qualtrics.

As much fun was the drive from Salt Lake City to Provo. Quite of bit covered anecdotes which have to be preceded with "I could tell you, but then I would have to....". But we did talk quite a bit about changing developer communities around the world - open source, IoT in Germany, ML in China and many others

The conversation then turned to movies about geeks and developers. Here is a list of movies we came up with - in no particular order

• Hackers
• Sneakers
• Pump up the Volume
• Revenge of the Nerds
• War Games
• Tron
• The Net
• Misfits (tv show from the 80's)
• Real Genius
• Unfriended 

The comments were pretty philosophical - the movies focused on the triumph of the misfits, what society rejects becomes the source of your redemption, they mock the empty values of the beautiful people who don't get code. These movies in past taught: ethics, societal responsibility... today's highlight cool apps, the Uber-type startup geeks.

It truly was an enjoyable afternoon and evening set in the beautiful Wasatch scenery

Readers, what are some other geeky movies and shows that you would add to the list?

 

New York City as Tech Capital

It’s the first time in the report’s three iterations that New York came out on top. Austin, Texas, and San Francisco took the No. 1 and 2 spots, respectively, in both the 2015 and 2017 studies. The Savills index scores cities on the costs of living and doing business, investment opportunities, real estate prices and access to transit, among other things.

New York got points for its venture capital investment, which was billions of dollars greater than in San Francisco over the past three years, according to the report. That and plentiful transportation options helped offset the city’s poor score for real estate costs, Tostevin said. New York’s rents for offices -- including co-working space -- and housing are among the highest, according to Savills.

Bloomberg

Vid below covers tech investment in China and around world.

Masayoshi Son’s empire

On the surface, the story of the Vision Fund is about money. How could it not be? The numbers are eye-popping. The Vision Fund’s minimum investment in startups is $100 million, and in just over two years since its October 2016 debut, it’s committed more than $70 billion. Son, 61 years old, will also back companies he likes via SoftBank itself or other means: He’s put some $20 billion–and counting–into Uber and WeWork through a combination of financial instruments.

FastCompany

The NASA iTech Challenge

NASA has selected 10 competition finalists to present their ideas at the iTech forum in Hartford, Connecticut, on Oct. 25-26, 2018. Chief technologists from various NASA centers, other federal agencies and industry will listen to presentations and meet with participants. NASA judges will ultimately determine three winners of the 2018 NASA iTech Cycle III competition.

The competition challenges entrepreneurs to consider how their biomedical, software and other technology ideas could be adapted and used for future space exploration missions. Among the finalists are artificial intelligence, big data, advanced materials and other unique innovations.

NASA

NFL Tech Accelerator

The NFL season kicks off tonight

TechCrunch on a tech accelerator run by the NFL Player’s Association

The accelerator is called One Team Collective, and is run by an executive board made up of leaders from the tech industry as well as a player advisory board with nine current and former NFL players.

Founded about a year ago, the group has invested in four startups: WHOOP, StatMuse, Rep the Squad and CampusLore (in video below)

Fortune 40 under 40

the 2018 list of disruptors, innovators, rebels and artists is out here

“A-Team of AI”

according to Fortune