All posts by Charles Jo

About Charles Jo

founder, StartupStudyGroup

Blogging & Branding

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Inspired by Jason Calacanis, Chris Dixon; peer-pressured by Sol Weinreich, JD Carluccio, Terrence Yang, Kiki Schirr, Adam Marx, Chris Oestereich, Abhishek Singh

I am not sure that Steve Jobs would have blogged. He seemed more like a hyper-competitive, singularly-focused, get-stuff-done-at-all-cost kind of entrepreneur who saw everything else as a waste of time and energy. But he was a master of public relations and brand building so there is slight chance that if he were to create an Apple today, he may have invested the time to blog here and there, and possibly even religiously about his grand visions and to broadcast his reality distortion field to educate the masses.

Times are different. The brand and the person behind the brand are hard to distinguish. As a consumer, I find myself supporting brands whose leaders are similarly aligned with long-term/sustainable global perspective of improving the world for everyone. These are thoughtful, soulful leaders who believe in the power of capitalism and technology to improve the lives of taxi drivers, janitors, musicians — and the list does go on — and sure to build wealth for themselves and their investors in the process. In order to find them though, I need to research. I need to read about their visions, their experiences, and conclude if these are the kinds of leaders and brands I want to support.

It’s not just me as a fan of technology startups. I’ve heard that Y Combinator reads blogs of applicants. And I’m pretty sure a couple of the partners at the famous venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz were recruited based on their influence as thought leaders using blogs as their primary publishing tool.

So I am encouraging all founders in my network to blog and to blog regularly. Your know-how would be welcome by those who have yet to experience it. This may enhance your business and your communication skills while helping you, your customers, your investors, to understand your story. You may even create a fanbase who will support you in good times and bad. Your personal brand may enhance or outlive your startup(s).

Your constructive criticism is always welcome. Engage with me on Twitter @charlesjo. Join our growing open community of founders, angels, advisors @ startupstudygroup.com/slack/

Fittr app – to review & vote for Tampa Bay’s hottest startups poll

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Fittr is the best workout creator available on mobile. Guided by an ACE-certified personal trainer but built by neurocortical tech, Fittr workouts change with your progress and available equipment, even your preferences over time. Please vote for us in the Tech Cocktail best of Tampa Bay competition:

http://tech.co/tampa-bays-hottest-showcasing-startup-poll-2015-01

Thank you! –Kiki @kikischirr

Startuplister

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I’m Aaron Hanson and I founded Startuplister to help other startups with the labor intensive task of marketing their early-stage or established startup. With Startuplister, we submit startups to 40+ high-quality directories, review sites, and blogs to help build traffic, get exposure, and build a following.

Contact:

Aaron Hanson
Startuplister
http://startuplister.com
aaron@startuplister.com

Guest Blog by Darryl McAdams – You must be nuts! Why I’m building Language Engine

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For those interested in AI, UX and startups: please read and engage with founder on Twitter @psygnisfive.

Original post: http://languagengine.co/blog/you-must-be-nuts/

 

“You must be nuts!”

Why I’m building Language Engine

posted by Darryl on 23 Jan 2015

Heh, yeah, maybe. You’ve got to be a little nuts to start a startup, and probably quite nuts to start one with such audacious goals. But they’re important goals.

Perhaps a little history would put it in context. I’ve been interested in AI for a long time, since I was a kid, and as I learned more about linguistics, I decided to play around with the idea of building systems that could interact with a user. After playing with some fairly simple ideas in 2009, I put it aside and just continued my studies. The speech recognition side just wasn’t where it needed to be yet.

Early last year, however, I found myself using Twitter a lot while driving. (DON’T Tweet and drive!) I’d wait till I got to a red light or a stop sign, read some tweets, reply with speech-to-text, etc. It was around this time that I had seen Her (go watch it if you haven’t seen it). I thought to myself, “jeez, can’t I just talk to my phone?”

  

Americans lose enormous amounts of time and money driving. $161 billion a year! If you’ve got a chauffeur, or at least someone sitting next to you, you can recover some of it, but most people don’t. What could we be doing with that time, that money?

So I tried Siri. Maybe Apple was offering a solution and I had simply over looked it. That didn’t go as expected, and even today it doesn’t. I can tell Siri to send a tweet, but that’s about it. I looked around at what else was available and while there were interesting APIs, they couldn’t handle the complexities of natural language well enough to build a conversational AI.

I figured, since I know a bunch of linguistics, I know we can make that stuff work, and more. I knew we could make something completely new, that no one’s seen before except in scifi. And here I am, almost a year later, trying to make computers think. Nuts. But is it really? We don’t need to aim for the Samantha to do something amazing, just Jarvis.

Unlike Samantha, Jarvis isn’t really a person with his own aspirations, opinions, and free will. Jarvis is just a really good UI. He knows what to do to help you achieve your goals, as you’ve conveyed them in talking to him. He’ll help you discover a molecule in the Unisphere, he’ll catch you when you’re a little too drunk to stand. But he won’t run off with the cyberghost of Robert Anton Wilson, because he’s not a person, just a really great UI.

We could build drones that can fly around at your command. You could have a fleet of drones that monitor crops — “check the southern fields for blight, and if you find any, remove the plants”. You could have drones that inspect bridges, with the operator safely on the deck — “ok, go to the next pylon. wait, hold on. what’s that?” (camera zooms in). This super cool startup Skydio is aiming in that direction.

It goes beyond that, even. We could build robots that can manufacture, install, and maintain giant solar farms for pennies. The dirt cheap power could be used to purify water in huge quantities, ending drought, greening the deserts, and providing arable farmland to eliminate hunger, which would of course be farmed by drones and robots.

Steve Jurvetson, of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, wants to use new tech to make a world where all material goods are $1 per pound, and thereby eliminate hunger, poverty, lack of health insurance, homelessness. I think that’s a great goal. I think we can achieve it if we really try, and AI is the key. I hope Language Engine can be a part of that.

If you have comments or questions, get it touch. I’m @psygnisfive on Twitter, augur on freenode (in #languagengine and #haskell).

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Study Group on the Network Effect (Virality)​

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From my friend Andreas…

Charles Jo 650.906.2600 Charles@StartupStudyGroup.com www.StartupStudyGroup.com Twitter @charlesjo

Begin forwarded message:

several of my clients want their product/service/etc to go viral.

well, sure, everyone wants that: just release, spend zero on marketing, become a billionaire.

i’ve been looking into this: there’s very little about “network effect” (also called virality, viral marketing, Metcalfe’s Law, etc.) there’s a wikipedia article, a few more articles, and the few examples, which are all the same: fax machines, telephones, Skype.

but none of those products were launched with the expectation of virality: they were lucky to be viral.

tho’ virality is incredibly valuable, i wonder why it hasn’t been studied. there are no books on this at Amazon. there are description of it, but nothing on how to do it.

nobody is able to intentionally and repeatedly create virality. proof: if someone could, he’d be a billionaire.

– would you want to meet, discuss, brainstorm to see if we can figure this out?

– i’m looking for five or six people (highly skilled, experienced, motivated, etc.) to discuss this. you’re either in digital marketing or a dotcom founder.

– we should meet perhaps five or six times over a month or two. either we figure out how to do this (or we figure out that it can’t be done).

i have a conf room with large white boards (and coffee) in Palo Alto.

benefit to you: it’d solve your marketing problem
downside to you: you become a billionaire and you have to pay more taxes

next step: contact me. include your LinkedIn ID or website.

– i’m at linkedin.com/in/andreasramos
– you can also see my website at andreas.com

i’ll put pick a day in the next two weeks, and notify you.

yrs,
andreas
andreas.com