Tech News for MBAs with Paul Canetti

It turns out that creative tasks are *not* immune to the robot takeover. Meta AI researchers have created a new AI that can generate video content on the fly from a simple text prompt. Basically, you send a text of what you want, and it creates a video of that exact thing. Film students everywhere, beware. – PC Links Meta AI: Make-A-Video DALL-E GPT-3 DreamFusion My new online course web3 for Business Disclaimers and Disclosures This content is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not financial advice.

Welcome to Season 4! It was a big week in the world of crypto with the success of The Merge, in which Ethereum transitioned to a proof-of-stake network. As if that wasn't enough, Helium Mobile was announced– the world's first decentralized cellular network. Buckle up, web3 is upon us! – PC Links The Ethereum Foundation: The Merge Bloomberg: The Ethereum Merge Ups the Stakes—and Reshapes the Crypto Universe Helium Mobile For $5 A Month, Crypto Now Has Your Cell Plan Covered My new online course web3 for Business Disclaimers and Disclosures I hold ETH. This content is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not financial advice.

We end Season 3 in the same place we started: Meta's latest earnings report. Spoiler– it's not looking good. Why is this happening? Is it general market conditions? The maturation of social? Apple's "bullying"? All of the above?! Companion episode from a year ago: Apple and Facebook Battle for the Future H.A.G.S.! – PC Links Meta Reports First Quarter 2022 Results Meta says its metaverse biz lost another $3B, but the 2030s will be "exciting" Apple Podcasts: Apple and Facebook Battle for the Future Spotify: Apple and Facebook Battle for the Future Other links: Apple and Facebook Battle for the Future Also - my new online course Customer Experience Strategy Disclaimers and Disclosures I hold $TWTR and $APPL. (but not $FB) This content is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not financial advice.

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This week I talk about two seemingly unrelated stories: a paralyzed man who is able to communicate using only his thoughts and the first ever basketball game captured through a new technology called volumetric video.  What do they have in common? Both have to do with how we perceive and communicate our reality, and both represent a way to essentially bypass our normal five senses. As I like to say, the future is gonna be weird. – PC Links Nature - Spelling interface using intracortical signals in a completely locked-in patient enabled via auditory neurofeedback training NYT - Brain Implant Allows Fully Paralyzed Patient to Communicate Wait But Why - Neuralink and the Brain’s Magical Future The Verge - The first NBA broadcast rendered with volumetric video puts basketball in the uncanny valley HG - The future of photos isn’t cameras Disclaimers and Disclosures This content is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not financial advice.

Substack announced its new iOS app that looks a lot like... every other news app. I thought this was a tool for writers to sell email newsletter subscriptions? There are a lot of great business lessons embedded in their strategy, which is perhaps the hardest kind there is: B2B2C. Also, I briefly touch on Apple's new product releases and the Biden administration's latest executive order on crypto. – PC Links Introducing the Substack app Apple unveils all-new Mac Studio and Studio Display Biden Takes Step Toward Regulating Cryptocurrencies Donate to Ukraine A step-by-step guide for a new crypto user to donate to Ukraine Flags of Freedom– My first NFT project, 100% of proceeds to Ukraine Flags of Freedom on OpenSea Disclaimers and Disclosures This content is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not financial advice.

The war in Ukraine is an atrocity, and it has been a long time since there was a military invasion in Europe. There are a lot of interesting ways that internet technology is playing an outsized role in this modern age. Live images and video on social media, propaganda campaigns, and as we will discuss in this episode– the benefits of decentralized tech are being put into practice in this conflict. Ukraine is soliciting donations in cryptocurrency, SpaceX is delivering internet connectivity via a distributed satellite network. And it has only been a week. I have also launched an NFT project to raise money for Ukraine and a guide for donating crypto. Please consider giving. Links below. – PC Links A step-by-step guide for a new crypto user to donate to Ukraine Flags of Freedom– My first NFT project, 100% of proceeds to Ukraine Flags of Freedom on OpenSea @Ukraine on Twitter @elonmusk on Twitter Mykhalio Fedorov Starlink Helium – Introducing The People's Network Disclaimers and Disclosures This content is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not financial advice.

Super Bowl LVI was chock-full of ads for cryptocurrency exchanges, reaching over 100 million people who were all wondering the same thing: "Should I be buying crypto? And also, what is crypto?" I thought this would be a good excuse to do a cryptocurrency 101 episode. What is a blockchain? What are cryptocurrencies? What is Bitcoin? What is Ethereum? Spoiler– I spend a lot of time on Ethereum. First, because it's awesome. But also, because it's a good example of how cryptocurrencies are often associated with a rich underlying project or business. (Bitcoin isn't, which actually seems to be the exception, not the rule.) I recorded even more but ended up cutting out a bunch. It's just too much info for one ep! I am positive this will not be the last crypto/web3 related episode of this season, so hopefully this will give you enough of a baseline to have some deeper conversations as we go. – PC Links YouTube: Coinbase Super Bowl Commercial YouTube: Don't Miss Out on Crypto: Larry David FTX Commercial YouTube: The Moment of Truth | Crypto.com YouTube: eToro’s Big Game Ad: Flying Your Way Disclaimers and Disclosures I hold $BTC, $ETH, and other cryptocurrencies. This content is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not financial advice.

To kick off Season 3 we did our first ever live recording, in front of the classroom of my Intro to Product Management class at Columbia Business School. We just set up a mic and went for it! Now everybody can have a taste of the classroom experience.  I have to say, it was way more fun to record with a live audience of 80 students, in a big beautiful room at our new Manhattanville campus, instead of by myself, in a small office.  We talked about Meta's record stock drop, Amazon's record gain, Apple's intense defending of its fully integrated stack, and how all three companies are trying to achieve verticalization, at scale. Thank you to the students who helped to make this a successful experiment. Season 3 is off with a bang! – PC Links Meta’s market value plunges by $230 billion in one day Amazon surges with record $190 billion gain in value Amazon has a $31 billion a year advertising business Facebook Feels $10 Billion Sting From Apple’s Privacy Push Our new classroom Disclaimer I hold $AAPL and $AMZN. This content is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not financial advice.

We review these last 12 insane months, drawing out a central theme: community. Again and again, we saw examples of collaboration via digital tools to accomplish things in the physical world. A lot to think about as we head into 2022... And also, thanks for listening to the first year of Tech News for MBAs! – PC Disclaimer This content is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not financial advice.

Netflix, Venmo, and Roomba were all down for hours on Tuesday. Why? Because they all use Amazon Web Services. We are incredibly reliant on just a small handful of solutions to power our entire society. Is that a smart idea? What if the web3/decentralized crowd have a point...  + Some thoughts on Instagram's Senate hearing. – PC Links Lawmakers urge the head of Instagram to better protect children. An Amazon server outage caused problems for Alexa, Ring, Disney Plus, and deliveries Disclaimer I hold $AMZN. This content is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not financial advice.

We are going deep down the web3 rabbithole this week with a bizarre tale of anonymous strangers raising almost $50 million to buy a physical copy of the US Constitution, only to be outbid by an internet villain, and then in the end lots of people make a lot of money, completely accidentally. I'll tell you the whole story through my own experience, where in the last few weeks I made a 50x return in crypto without even knowing I was investing in the first place. 🤔💸 – PC Subscribe to my free newsletter Hypothetically Great Links @jack on Twitter Square, Inc. Changes Name to Block ConstitutionDAO NY Times: They Love Crypto. They’re Trying to Buy the Constitution. Hypothetically Great: How I made $10,000 out of thin air a.k.a. incentives in web3 Disclaimers I hold $TWTR, $SQ, and $PEOPLE. This content is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not financial advice.

How the times have changed! It used to be you couldn't raise a seed round without some traction– now you can go public. Rivian, the company creating "electric adventure vehicles", just had one of the biggest public offerings in history. We will dive into how a company that doesn't even have a business yet could be valued at over $100 billion, electric vehicles generally, and the macro trends around speculative trading. – PC Links Rivian announces pricing of upsized initial public offering Disclaimers I hold $TSLA and $LCID. This content is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not financial advice. This is a Hypothetically Great podcast.

Oh Twitter, my beloved Twitter. User growth has almost stalled, but revenue growth is still going strong– and now, for the first time, a major social network has a SaaS subscription product available to its users. Twitter Blue is $2.99/mo and represents not only a new revenue channel for Twitter, but perhaps a new model for social products altogether. Also, we'll kick things off with a bunch of metaverse-related announcements from this week. – PC Links Introducing Twitter Blue - Twitter’s first-ever subscription offering Microsoft Teams enters the metaverse race with 3D avatars and immersive meetings Niantic Opens Lightship Platform Globally, Empowering Developers to Build Their Visions for the Real-World Metaverse As Nvidia pushes for leadership in metaverse, here’s everything it announced at GTC 2021 Qualcomm launches new AR dev kit, acquires Clay AIR Disclaimers I hold $TWTR and $NVDA. This content is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not financial advice. This is a Hypothetically Great podcast.

My favorite shoe brand IPOed this week to much fanfare, and its success says a lot about the state of enabling technology platforms like Shopify, which Allbirds is built upon. We also breeze through a couple of other headlines about the new laser eyed major of NYC and Airbnb's blowout quarter. And, I couldn't help myself, so I had a couple more things to say about Meta. – PC  Links: Eric Adams on Twitter Airbnb Announces Third Quarter 2021 Results Yahoo Finance: Allbirds surges 90% on IPO day

There is no Facebook, only... Meta.  Mark Zuckerberg has laid out a longterm vision for his company in a way that most public CEOs wouldn't dare– and if he pulls it off, Meta has the potential to be much bigger and even more influential than Facebook ever was. We'll dig in on what was announced and what it means for the future of the internet. – PC Links Meta.com Connect Opening Keynote Meta: Founder’s Letter, 2021

The fall semester is in session, and we're back for Season 2!  I talk a bit about what to expect this season, what I've been up to over the summer (spoiler: a lot), and we will take a tour through the headlines from this week that set the stage thematically for where tech is going. Welcome back to Tech News for MBAs. – PC Links: CNBC:  Bitcoin jumps to new high above $66,000 after landmark U.S. ETF launch Jack Dorsey on Twitter The Verge: Facebook is planning to rebrand the company with a new name Reuters: PayPal in $45 billion bid for Pinterest Fox News: Trump announces 'TRUTH Social' network will be rolled out first quarter of 2022 NY Times: In a Blue Origin Rocket, William Shatner Finally Goes to Space

Hi! As we approach the fall semester, I'm just checking in with a quick mini-ep to let you know what I've been up to, why Tech News for MBAs has gone dark the past few months, and to assure you that I will be back at it soon!  Fun trivia: My band in college was called Missing In Action. – PC

Tim Cook gave a rare and revealing interview on Kara Swisher's Sway podcast responding to Mark Zuckerberg's assertion that Apple is one of Facebook's biggest competitors. (Spoiler: Cook says they're not.) But what if their competition isn't set for the present, but for the future? Professor Paul Canetti goes deep on his theory about how Apple's defensive moves against Facebook are less about advertising and privacy and more about handicapping a future challenger for the next paradigm shift in tech: augmented reality. Links Sway - Is Apple's Privacy Push Facebook's Existential Threat‪?‬ MBA Media & Entertainment Conference 2021

We do a deep dive on a popular but difficult to execute tech strategy that manages to connect the dots between many disparate customers into a massive (and valuable!) network, exemplified by new features from Slack and Stripe that were announced this week. Links: Facebook, Google, Twitter CEOs face House grilling Bounce House Come for the tool, stay for the network Slack - Start a direct message with someone outside your company Stripe - 1-click payments using Link with Stripe

A deep dive on Stripe, now worth almost $100 billion, Facebook’s moves into emerging markets, TikTok’s monetization strategy, and Uber faces new regulatory changes in the UK. Plus a new Random Startup You’ve Never Heard Of. Links: Stripe has raised a new round of funding to accelerate momentum in Europe and reinforce enterprise leadership Facebook targets emerging markets with the launch of Instagram Lite, an Android app that takes up just 2MB, in 170 countries TikTok will make personalized ads mandatory on April 15th Uber 'willing to change' as drivers get minimum wage, holiday pay and pensions Bounce House Shelf Engine

Pandemics are the worst… unless you’re talking about tech. Reflections on a horrible year in physical reality that was great for software, the Roblox IPO (no pandemics inside virtual worlds is a plus!), Facebook moves deeper into the creator economy, Russia is pumping the brakes on Twitter, and Random Startup You’ve Never Heard Of. Links: 12 Charts That Show How Tech Took Off During a Year of Shutdowns Roblox goes public: What to know as RBLX stock debuts on the NYSE Hangio Facebook expands fan payments, subscription options in appeal to creators Twitter plans to roll out Twitter Spaces to everyone in April Russia slows down access to Twitter

JAY-Z and TIDAL join Square, new privacy laws and the death of third party cookies, Netflix launches a TikTok killer, Instagram tests out life without likes, and a random startup you’ve never heard of. Links: Jack Dorsey on Twitter: “Square is acquiring a majority ownership stake in TIDAL” Axios - Privacy laws push online ads beyond tracking Sponsor: Bounce House - Sell your service online Random startup you’ve never heard of: Kumospace The Verge - Netflix has created a TikTok clone that lets people scroll through funny clips Insider - Instagram is testing removing public 'like' counts and influencers say it would be good for the industry. Here's why.

Special guest Seyi Taylor helps explain what NFTs are and why it matters, Twitter wants you to pay for certain tweets, Spotify launches a new ad network, Random Startup You’ve Never Heard Of, and more! Links: What you need to know about NFTs, the collectible digital tokens that are selling for millions online Seyi Taylor on Twitter Twitter announces paid Super Follows to let you charge for tweets Mirza David Dobrik's retro photo app Dispo raises $20 million Facebook says it will pay news industry $1 billion over 3 years Spotify announces major expansion, new ad network

Australia tries to bully big tech and Facebook fights back, Bumble goes public, robots take selfies on Mars, and Shopify challenges Amazon. Plus our new segment “Random startup you’ve never heard of” Links: Augment Nation: Moving Humanity to the Software Layer Facebook Newsroom - Changes to Sharing and Viewing News on Facebook in Australia CNBC - Bumble IPO: The female founder behind the dating app making market history App Store - Dispo - Live in the Moment Engadget - NASA's Perseverance rover lands safely on Mars Shopify Announces Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year 2020 Financial Results

Our first expert guest! Shawn Cheng of Consensys Mesh explains the basics of Bitcoin so we can understand why Elon Musk is so obsessed with it. Clubhouse has Facebook hot on its heels. And soon you won’t even be able to tell who has a real face. So... just a typical week in tech. Links: AP - Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, will accept as payment soon Shawn Cheng on Twitter NY Times - Facebook Is Said to Be Building a Product to Compete With Clubhouse Digital Humans | MetaHuman Creator - Unreal Engine

This week we got hit with the news that Jeff Bezos is resigning as CEO of Amazon, Apple promoted an executive to work on a topic secret project, and we go through an overview of earnings reports from Amazon and Google. Links: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees Apple Newsroom - Dan Riccio begins a new chapter at Apple Amazon.com Announces Financial Results and CEO Transition Alphabet Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2020 Results

A busy week of tech, and it’s still only January. Subreddits > hedge funds. Newsletters > tweets. Audio > video. Apple > everyone. Links: NY Times - 4 Things to Know About the GameStop Insanity NY Times - The GameStop Reckoning Was a Long Time Coming Bloomberg - How ‘Flows Before Pros’ Is Disrupting Stock Markets Twitter Blog - Making Twitter a better home for writers Clubhouse Blog - Welcoming More Voices Apple Reports First Quarter Results Microsoft Earnings Release FY21 Q2 Facebook Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2020 Results Tesla Q4 and Full Year 2020 Financial Results and Q&A Webcast

This week we discuss two major funding events in the new class of car companies, how people are worried about WhatsApp's new terms, the latest on Parler, Nancy Pelosi's stolen laptop, and changes to the way you will shop at the airport (and in general). Links: TechCrunch - Rivian raises $2.5 billion as it pushes to bring its electric RT1 pickup, R1S SUV to market TechCrunch - Microsoft invests in Cruise in new $2 billion round BBC - WhatsApp and Facebook to share users' data outside Europe and UK Business Insider - India is reportedly asking WhatsApp to reverse a controversial change to its privacy policy The Verge - Parler resurfaces on Sunday with an updated timeframe Business Insider - What we know about the laptop that was stolen from Nancy Pelosi's aide during the Capitol siege Forbes - Hudson Creates New Store Concept Around Amazon’s ‘Just Walk Out’ Technology

This week we discuss the fallout across the Internet as a result of the siege on the Capitol including the removal of President Trump from many major platforms, its implications, and what it says about how ingrained technology is in our society. Other headlines include OpenAI's DALL-E, Apple's car initiative, and the failed acquisition of fintech startup Plaid by Visa. Links: Wizardest - The limit of process OpenAI Blog - DALL·E: Creating Images from Text Bloomberg - Apple Targets Autonomous Car for Consumers by 2024 (paywall) Plaid Blog - The Year Ahead

In this brief introduction, Professor Paul Canetti explains what Tech News for MBAs is all about and its origins from the classroom.