10 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2017
    1. In January 2009 the three founders of a little-known website called Airbedandbreakfast.com decided at the last minute to attend the inauguration of Barack Obama.
    1. You desperately need a good pitch when you have a bad company. When you have a great company, you don’t need a great pitch.
    1. n 1980, when a transit strike halted buses and subway trains throughout New York’s five boroughs, residents in some of the most marooned parts of the city started using their own cars and vans to pick people up, charging a dollar to shuttle them to their destinations. Eleven days later, the strike ended, but the cars and vans drove on, finding huge demand in neighborhoods that weren’t well served by public transit even when buses and trains were running. The drivers eventually expanded their businesses, using thirteen-seat vans to create routes in places like Flatbush, Jamaica, Far Rockaway, and downtown Brooklyn.

      30 year old industry

    1. AI will be the new mobile. Investors will ask management what their “AI strategy” is before investing and will be wary of companies that don’t have one.

      (I've been having this conversation with more and more with founders in our portfolio and those who we are considering for investment. The question is, what is a good AI strategy? Just having any? or is there an optimal AI strategy depending on the type of company? Anywhere this is debated our where best practices are being shared? )

    1. Led by Professor Daniela Rus of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), researchers developed an algorithm that found that 3,000 four-passenger cars could serve 98 percent of taxi demand in New York City, with an average wait-time of only 2.7 minutes.

      (how could this be used to generate more profit or lower the cost of operating so that the ride sharing business is more viable?)

    1. China has slapped millions of dollars worth of fines on alleged offenders for violating anti-pollution rules, according to state media.

      Worth noting that another motivation for innovation is the growing repricusions of the externalities of legacy industries and companies. This is encouraging investment in sustainable solutions and opening the door for new way business who's costs are lower becuase their impact on the environment is lower.

  2. Dec 2016
    1. The researchers estimate that level of trip replacement over a month would produce approximately 1,346 fewer car trips, 82.5 fewer gas gallons, 76,470 calories burnt, and 0.73 fewer metric tons of CO2 emissions from trips to Shadyside.

      wonder how this converts to roi for the city vs the cost of installing bikeshare.

    2. Bike-share trips replaced at most about 69 car trips per day, out of 2,250 daily parking events in the neighborhood of Shadyside. This is a 2 percent decrease in parking demand (adjusted for the lost curb parking space for the installation of the bike docks) after the program’s launch in 2015.
    1. One of the crucial missing pieces in the portfolio of renewable energy sources is a clean liquid fuel that can replace gasoline and other transportation fuels.

      Is this becuase of the massive infrastructure around fuel based energy, such as gas pumps and heating fuel tanks? Does this require that the combustion (in the case of gas) be similar to what auto-engines are used to?

    2. As the adjacent crystals heat up to high temperatures, around 1,000 °C, they reëmit the energy as light, but only in the band that photovoltaic cells can capture and convert.

      would this level of heat make the system dangerous?