Loup Ventures: Recent Episodes
Loup Ventures
The term podcasting, a combination of the word ‘iPod’ and ‘broadcasting’, is generally attributed to Ben Hammersley in an article written for the Guardian in 2004. Fun fact: in 2005, the New Oxford American Dictionary chose “Podcast” as the word of...
Dr. Matt Angle is the CEO and founder of Paradromics, a brain-computer interface company developing high-bandwidth implantable neural interfaces. Matt completed his B.S. in Biology at Carnegie Melon University and his Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute. Top 3...
Dr. Ramses Alcaide is the CEO and Founder of Neurable, a Loup Ventures portfolio company focused on non-invasive BCI. Ramses earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Washington in Electrical and Electronics Engineering and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the...
Brave early adopters are the hallmark of an innovation set to create immense human value. In this story, the innovation is cutting-edge technology for interfacing with the nervous system, and the brave early adopter is Ian Burkhart. Ian, a young man...
CNBC reported on Friday that Amazon is building a health and wellness team inside its Alexa division to work on making Alexa a better tool for healthcare. Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JP Morgan recently announced plans for a joint healthcare company focused on reducing...
The core insight of science fiction is that all technologies live on a spectrum of good and evil, useful and harmful, and our perception of their place on that spectrum vacillates over time. It’s a truth that we've long known innately but are now being forcefully reminded of in our real world.
Fortnite is a battle royale game, where 100 players parachute onto an island with the goal of being the last one standing at the end. A "storm" serves as a boundary that closes in at set intervals, shrinking the playable area and forcing players closer and closer together. Players begin with no equipment and must scavenge around the island looking for weapons and supplies to give them an advantage over the opposition.
We’re bullish on esports and committed to learning more about the space. The following note is an introductory piece that ‘shows our work’ as we get up to speed. Given the recent explosion in popularity of esports leagues, we wanted to...
After our first visit to Amazon Go, Amazon's automated retail store in Seattle, we're not surprised to hear the company has plans to open up to six more cashierless convenience stores later this year. The automated retail space is getting more and more crowded, but the Go store suggests that Amazon has the pole position.
Garauv Sharma. Garauv won the 2016 BCI Award for real-time cortical control of functional wrist and finger movements in a human with quadriplegia. Gaurav currently works as a Senior Research Scientist at Battelle Memorial Institute in Ohio. Gaurav holds the lead...
We believe that automation will make customer service — delivering empathy — the most in-demand job in tech. Humans will need to take advantage of the three core capabilities that robots can't compete with: creativity, community, and empathy, and The Empathy Economy will arise as a result of job loss from automation.
Last week we wrote about simplicity as a driving force behind the world’s biggest technology offerings. We’re extending our thoughts on simplicity into a series that explores the necessity of simplicity in frontier technology. First, we’ll dive into AR.
Simplicity for AR in 2018 must start with a question: “What does AR do?” Not in the literal...
We’re investing in Enjoy as a counter-automation play on the future of retail. Enjoy enables empathic retail through a personalized product delivery and setup experience.
Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer, about five times bigger in that space than Walmart and its Jet.com subsidiary. Yet despite Amazon’s deep online roots and dominance over Internet shopping, I believe it will buy Target in 2018.
Simplicity is underappreciated. In many things. But most obviously right now in our world of consumer technology. Simplicity is a requirement of mass adoption. Look at the iPhone, Google, Amazon, and Uber as examples: The iPhone never shipped with a manual...
Conclusion. Get ready for another $10 a month drag on your credit card. It’s a rebranded, all in one Apple video and music offering in 2-3 years. An Emerging Area of Investment. It’s no secret that original content will be an emerging...
Every VC says they only invest in great founders, but the majority of venture-backed businesses still end in relative failure. Does that mean we as VCs are just bad judges of founders or do we not know what great founders look like? This is a question we’ve obsessed over since we started Loup Ventures — trying to define what makes a great founder and how to test for it. It’s hard.
When Apple launched the iPhone SDK in March 2008, they correctly anticipated a gold rush for iOS developers selling apps on the new App Store. Another gold rush is about to begin with the debut of iOS 11 and ARKit.
Given...
Special thanks to David Kroger, Steve Van Sloun, and Austin Bohlig for their work on the Non-Tech AI Portfolio.
In ten years, every company will have to be an artificial intelligence company or they won’t be competitive. While traditional tech companies have been...
The sickness adoption hurdle. The timing of most tech adoption curves can be anticipated by a combination of cost and utility. The lower the cost, the higher the utility, the faster the adoption. We define mass adoption as 500m or...
If we had to sum up our investment approach in one word, it would be non-incremental. Venture capital is a power law game: the vast majority of venture returns come only from a few investments. We believe we have to...
It’s no secret that online retail is slowly killing offline retail. In Q4 2016, 8.3% of total US retail sales were online (about $103 billion), up from 5.1% just five years ago (about $53 billion). Offline sales were 91.7% of...
If artificial intelligence is the brains, then robots are the brawn in the future of work. Earlier this week, we attended the AUVSI XPOENTIAL trade show in Dallas, the largest global gathering of unmanned systems providers, robotic software developers, and industry...
This note was originally published on Business Insider.
Apple is the world’s largest company with a market cap of nearly $770 billion as of this writing. Tesla is one of the world’s largest automakers with a market cap of close to $55 billion...
Vibrant culture driven by shared values separates the best companies from the rest. Without clearly stated values, a “company” is just a temporary group of people, not a sustainable organization. Working together over the past 10 years, we’ve identified a set of four...
At this point, it might not even be that crazy to say it, but we think AirPods are going to be a bigger product for Apple than the Watch. After using AirPods for the past month, the Loup Ventures team...
The trend in computing towards more natural user interfaces is unmistakable. Graphical user interfaces have long been dominant, but machines driven by more intuitive inputs, like touch and voice, are now mainstream. Today, audio, motion, and even our thoughts, are the basis for the...
Apple’s AirPods are a step towards the future of computing. Starting with the move from the keyboard and mouse to the touchscreen, computing continues to move towards more intuitive user interfaces. Audio and motion capture are the basis for most innovative computer hardware today...
The combination of artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual reality, and augmented reality will fundamentally transform how we live — for the better. It will enable a world of infinite and limitless exploration. A world where humans find purpose in creativity, community, and experience. A world where humans can be more human. Loup Ventures is pursuing this absolutely fantastic future: The Future Perfect.