Amazon uses AI to help customers shop for apparel, Waymo to test driverless passenger vehicles

Top News

Amazon turns to AI technology including large language models, generative AI, and machine learning, to help customers shop for apparel online. - Link

Waymo will start testing its driverless passenger vehicles on the highway later this month. - Link

Apple plans to ship the $3,499+ Vision Pro on February 2 in the US, after opening pre-orders on January 19 at 8am ET. - Link

Amazon launches its Health Condition Programs, a new initiative for people to discover digital health benefits to help manage chronic conditions. - Link

The Wi-Fi Alliance begins certifying devices with Wi-Fi 7, which could offer big speed and efficiency gains over Wi-Fi 6 in phones, laptops, and routers in 2024. - Link

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Advice of the Day

Cohort Retention and Other Startup Metrics You Should Track

Adam D’Angelo, the founder of Quora and former CTO of Facebook, emphasizes the importance of user value and tracking key metrics, like active users, revenue, and transaction volume. Another critical metric is cohort retention, which involves tracking groups of users based on their start time with the product. D’Angelo also notes the importance of retention rate, warning that a decline in cohort retention can lead to losing existing users and exhausting potential new ones. Startup teams should identify and measure relevant metrics, implement cohort analysis, aim to maintain a stable or increasing cohort retention rate, and focus on building a product that attracts new users and retains existing ones. - Link

Startup Demo of the Day:

Stylar brings controllability to AI-assisted design. It offers a drag-and-drop canvas to simplify composition, layering, and style application, making image generation accessible to graphic designers, illustrators, artists, and marketers.

Founder University is a 12-week pre-accelerator program run by Jason/LAUNCH for builder founders. We're investing $25k in 20-30 companies from Cohort 7. Apply at founder.university/letsbuild.

This Week in Startups

E1875: A discussion featuring Bill Gurley, Brad Gerstner, and Jason Calacanis covers various tech market aspects, including startup shutdowns, market insights, Altimeter's activity, reflections on IPOs, Series B/C deals, starting a company, venture success, Silicon Valley talent, AI impact, and Meta and Apple's positions in AI. - Watch

E1874: Cecilia Ziniti joins Jason to discuss the NY Times vs. OpenAI lawsuit, delving into legal aspects such as fair use, attribution defense, and potential outcomes. They also explore parallels with past cases like Roy Orbison vs. Two Live Crew and Google vs. Java, providing insights into the legal challenges in the context of digital platforms. - Watch

E1873: Sunny Madra and Jason discuss 2024 AI predictions, including bets on AI-generated music hitting the top 100, AI hosting a TWiST segment, an AI-generated Pixar short going mainstream, local deployment of small AI models on mobile devices, and the rise of open-source multimodal models. The conversation also touches on music industry dynamics, the New York Times lawsuit's implications, and OpenAI's financial success. - Watch

E1872: Lon Harris and Jason discuss the film "The Founder," praising its portrayal of the McDonald's story and highlighting entrepreneurial insights on efficiency, customer focus, product-market fit, and the role of complementary skill sets in startups. The conversation also touches on topics such as the franchise model, the influence of spouses in startup formation, the journey of doubt and uncertainty for founders, and the power dynamics between Ray Kroc and the McDonald brothers. - Watch

E1871: Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman covers key aspects of the residential real estate market, including tips for first-time home buyers, solutions for the housing crisis, and innovative concepts like "developer homes." He also discusses Redfin's success, simplifying business operations, and adapting to remote work dynamics for sustained productivity and company culture. - Watch

E1870: FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr joins Jason to discuss regulatory harassment, Starlink subsidies, and China’s LOE ambitions. Topics include Amazon's position in the satellite internet race, the emergence of 5G, and the digital divide. - Watch

E1869: Author Steven Berlin Johnson joins Jason to speak about the significance of document organization and the concepts and features of "sources" in NotebookLM, a platform that gives you a personalized AI, grounded in the information you trust. - Watch

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