Mental Health Map, Ye Combinator, and Superhuman for Students
What We've Been Following 9/25/20
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Long-form interviews with leading founders, operators, and investors. These are released every Monday. Check out: Sam Altman (OpenAI; formerly Y Combinator), Jeff Moris Jr. (Chapter One), Ashley Brasier (Lightspeed), Ryan Choi (Y Combinator), Domm Holland (Fast)
Curated content that our Team found interesting and relevant for our subscribers. These are released every other Friday / Saturday. (This newsletter is an example)
What’s up people! ✌️
Hope everyone has had an exciting week at Zoom University — where there is no limit to the amount of time you can spend in your apartment. I’ve personally found that the decrease in travel time, as well as the ability to walk around during class, has led to an increase in my productivity. Enough about “me”, it’s been an exciting few weeks at The Takeoff!
Earlier this week: One of our biggest interview releases yet, where Michael interviewed St. Louis native, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and former President at Y Combinator. Given the positive reactions to the interview with Sam, I’m planning on producing a podcast version of the conversion, which should be released in the next couple of weeks. Be sure to check that out once it is live, and, in the meantime, you can find the written version of the conversation👇
Last week: Last Friday, I released the third episode of my Telehealth podcast series with Saurabh Bhansali, Partner at Health Velocity Capital. Very excited to record more espidoes as the semester starts up again :) Check out the interview with Saurabh, below!
Also last week: Roshan chatted with Sridhar Ramaswamy about Neeva, the future of search, the importance of protecting your personal privacy, and more.
Hope you enjoy this week’s What We’ve Been Following newsletter! As always, you can find us on Twitter @_TheTakeoff.
(Today’s What We’ve Been Following newsletter is written by Lukas.)
Mental Health Care via Telehealth Map 🗺️
A sneak peek…
Giving you a little sneak peek into the deep dive into mental health care via telehealth that I am working on this semester. Working part-time for an ABA provider and interviewing many brilliant people for my Telehealth podcast series has given me the motivation and insight to take another step into the industry. The report is very much still a work in progress, as is this map. But, I wanted to share a glimpse into what I’m working on!
Podcasts 🎙️
Alex Tew, Founder and Co-CEO of Calm, on 20VC
Alex Tew, the founder and co-CEO of Calm (one of my favorite companies), chats with one of our favorite podcasters, Harry Stebbings. Alex talks about his many attempts to become viral before founding Calm, with one attempts, The Million Dollar Homepage, finding success (learn more, here). This act made me think about how much skill is involved with going viral and how one learns such skill. Alex also made me think that a sliver of the answer to this question is leaving aside time for creative thought, undisturbed by work, phones, and computers.
Andreas Klinger, Head of Remote at AngelList, on Venture Stories
Andreas Klinger, Head of Remote at AngelList and creator of Remote First Capital, joins Erik Torenberg on Venture Stories, where they talk about the growing trend of remote work. Andreas made me realize that I had been thinking of remote work in way too binary of a sense: certain positions (such as engineers) are more suited for remote work, while others really require in-person meetings (such as executive teams). As such, a company can be both in-person and remote. Andreas also speaks about the difficulty of interviewing, which I don’t think about much as a college student. One thing he advises is recording and transcribing interviews to help with recall.
Nick Kokonas, CEO of Tock, on The Tim Ferris Show
Nick Kokonas, CEO of Tock and co-owner & co-founder of The Alinea Group of restaurants, talks with Tim Ferriss, famous author and podcaster, about the stressful times COVID has brought to the restaurant business. Nick, a world-class executive, spotted the troubles on the horizon early on from his restaurants in Hong Kong and realized he needed to adapt quickly in the US, much to the disbelief of his peers. Nick describes this horror movie while seeming calm, cool and collected, treating his employees with the highest respect. But finally, at the end of this interview, he describes how far behind he is in reality and how mentally draining this has been for him, showing that everyone is vulnerable during this incredibly difficult situation.
A few other podcasts our team found worthwhile: The Chainsmokers on 20VC, Sal Kahn on How I Built This
Tweets 🐦
Kanye is at it again with another “Ye-zy” idea. With Sam Altman and Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit offering help, Kanye wants to liberate the music industry. Let’s see what comes of this...
Was thinking of putting the Naval, Joe Rogan podcast in here but thought this would be enough (though, you can check out the podcast, here). Don’t just make money so you can buy fancy stuff, make money so that you can worry about important problems that will improve the state of this world.
I said this in my Guide to Cold Outreach! I get way more junk messages on my LinkedIn than my email, so I take my email more seriously. Same seems to be the case with older folks.
Superhuman recently added a plan for students and teachers: Superhuman for Education. The discounted plan is $10/month.
Articles / Companies 📰
Snowflake, a cloud-based data platform, IPO’d last Wednesday in what was the biggest software IPO to date. Snowflake priced its IPO at $120 (up from its original expectation of $75-$85). Snowflake closed day one on the NYSE up 112%, at a price of $254 (good for a $70B valuation). Congrats to the Snowflake team, investors ICONIQ Capital, Sequoia, Redpoint Ventures, Sutter Hill, Salesforce Ventures, and all others involved on the IPO! Snowflake is not the only recent software IPO to see massive first day gains: Duck Creek, a provider of P&C insurance software, soared nearly 50% on its first day of trading in August; DTC insurance provider Lemonade saw a skyrocket in its debut, soaring 135%; JFrog IPO’d last week, surging almost 50% on its first day of trading (this is not a comprehensive list, just a few I thought were worth mentioning). Why are banking struggling so much to accurately price these IPOs?
A 900k-user Reddit forum called r/WallStreetBets or r/WSB for short has been having such a significant impact on the market that veteran traders have been unable to ignore them. r/WSB is filled with day traders, many of whom trade options, that go by profane usernames online. They post Robinhood screenshots showing their massive wins and losses. This subreddit has been able to significantly move the market in the short term.
These r/WSB traders are similar to the 1990 day traders.
Algorithmic traders have algorithms monitoring the subreddit.
There is a rising belief that someone else will come along to buy a surging stock at an even higher price, regardless of fundamentals.
“Chatter on a Reddit message board is pushing up prices on some stocks and reshaping the options market. Retail traders are back—for better or for worse.”
A website working to build a community of student entrepreneurs, provide jobs + funding to college students/entrepreneurs, and offer educational content for college students to develop businesses. They are also developing a podcast interviewing different voices in the world of student entrepreneurship and talk entrepreneurship, VC during/post-college, and college life.
That’s all for today’s Edition of What We’ve Been Following!
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We have some amazing interviews lined up to be released in the coming weeks, starting with Monday’s newsletter with Saam Motamedi, General Partner at Greylock Partners.
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