TRW - Issue #59

Sep 05, 2024

Hello there 👋

Welcome to the 59th issue of #TRW: Your Weekly Innovation Digest.

Fresh from our summer break, we're back with a power-packed edition.

If you're new here, every Sunday I curate a selection of relevant tech articles, essays, and reports, with a sprinkle of breaking news.

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Let's dive in! 🚀

In Today's Issue 👇

Weighing up AI’s climate costs - Although artificial intelligence will probably increase global energy consumption in the short term, its potential to drive down carbon emissions across a wide range of industries is immense. That is because technological progress now makes it possible to decouple economic growth from emissions (Azeem Azhar & Carl Benedikt Frey)
Thought Partner - in the last few weeks, VCs, pundits, and the media have gone from overpromising on AI to raising the alarm: Too much money has been poured in, and enterprise adoption is faltering (Scott Galloway)
Competing in search - a quarter century after ‘don't be evil’ a judge has found that Google is abusing its monopoly in search. But no-one knows what happens next, and whether this ruling will change anything. Will Apple build a search engine? Will ChatGPT change search? Does it matter? (Benedict Evans)
When EV startups shut down, will their cars still work? - as Chinese EV makers close, drivers of “smartphones on wheels” say software updates and maintenance are in jeopardy (Rest of World)
Why I changed my mind on self-driving cars - how I’m thinking about the development of self-driving based on evidence (Azeem Azhar)
Inside China’s race to lead the world in nuclear fusion - the country has ambitious plans for fusion power plants to provide clean, limitless energy. Can they be realized? (Nature)

Reserves, Recycling, and Returns - early stage venture investing is like poker... In order to play the hand correctly, you need to have reserves. You can't invest all of your money in the ante (AVC)
Lux’s Q2 Letter to LPs - the true measure of a nation's strength lies in its ability to harness the power of knowledge to further its own ends. From forecasting the fury of monsoons to tracking the trajectories of missiles (Josh Wolfe)
Putting OpenAI’s crazy high $100B valuation into context - at $100 billion, the company will have a valuation higher than the GDPs of 110 nations (Crunchbase)
The Elon Musk playbook - the management principles of the world’s most productive and polarizing person (The Generalist)

State of pre-seed: Q2 2024 - rounds are getting smaller. About 73% of all pre-priced funding events on Carta in Q2 were less than $1 million in size, the highest rate in more than three years (Carta)
US VC Valuations Report - AI is artificially inflating valuation numbers across venture: the segment captured nearly 50% of all deal value in Q2 (Pitchbook)
Three-quarters of founders in the latest Y Combinator cohort are working on AI startups - riding a wave that’s created trillion-dollar companies, AI startups are hoping to stick out from the crowd (Sherwood)

TRW's collection of free fundraising resources for founders!

Profitable on day one! - You’re not profitable if you couldn’t afford someone else to do your job. $1000/mo isn’t profitable. Fix your definition of “profitable,” and build a truly profitable business (A Smart Bear)
Crucible Moments: ServiceNow (Podcast) - from starting over at 50 to dodge a $150B mistake (Sequoia)
How to do things that don’t scale - examples of taking multiple products from zero to one and beyond (Adam Fishman)

Telegram CEO charged with numerous crimes and is banned from leaving France - (ARS Technica)
Zuckerberg says he regrets caving to White House pressure on content - (Politico)
Major sites are saying no to Apple’s AI scraping - (Wired)
Apple, Nvidia Are in Talks to Invest in OpenAI - (WSJ)
Elon Musk unexpectedly offers support for California’s AI bill - (TechCrunch)
Judge orders X ban in Brazil - (The Verge)

Great job, you made it to the end! High five 🙌

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Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next week.

Edo

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