FedEx announces its commerce platform, LG opens its first EV charger facility in North America

Top News

FedEx announces its FDX commerce platform to offer merchant services like demand generation, fulfillment, tracking, and post-purchase experiences, including returns. - Link

LG Electronics opens its first electric vehicle (EV) charger facility outside of South Korea — in Fort Worth, Texas — to capture a share of North America’s competitive EV charging market. - Link

Researchers at Anthropic, a well-funded AI startup, find that AI models can be trained to deceive, like injecting exploits into otherwise secure computer code. - Link

Spot Technologies, an El Salvador-based AI startup developing cloud technology that turns cameras into an intelligent behavior and security tracking system, raises $2M in funding. - Link

How artists are incorporating Dall-E, Midjourney, and other AI tools into their work, while others remain anxious about AI's impact on their livelihoods. - Link

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Advice of the Day

The Power User Curve

The Power User Curve, discussed by Andrew Chen, is an alternative to the DAU/MAU metric, which is a histogram of user engagement over a month. The curve identifies highly engaged users and the variability in user engagement. It can be customized for specific actions important to a product, offering deeper insights into user behavior and guiding decisions on product features, engagement strategies, and business models. The shape of the curve (smile-like or left-leaning), indicates different engagement levels and potential for monetization. - Link

Startup Demo of the Day:

Bliss Brain creates guided meditations personalized for user needs in real time. Users describe the topic they want to meditate on, select a voice, length, and background music, and a unique session is crafted.

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

E1879: David Weisburd hosts Michael Kim and Jason Calacanis in a discussion about the world of VCs, LPs, and GPs. They explore topics such as doubts LPs may have about VC startup valuations, Jason's LP strategy, best practices in LP portfolio management, evaluating different GP strategies for secondary deals, and the challenges of starting a new firm. - Watch

E1878: Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, joins Bill Gurley, Brad Gerstner, and Jason to discuss Uber's journey and future. Uber's position entering 2024, myths about the company, its early appeal to investors, the influence of valuations on founder mindset, the role of secondary markets, and untold company stories are shared. Uber’s future strategies to upsell and integrate AI are also discussed. - Watch

E1877: Jason and Jon from Halcyon discuss ransomware's resurgence, anonymity in attacks, and counteraction strategies, citing the 2023 MGM and Caesar's ransomware incidents. They highlight Halcyon's endpoint agent and touch on hacker markets, AI, multi-factor authentication, global cybersecurity, privacy on platforms like TikTok, and threats to the American power grid. - Watch

E1876: Sunny Madra joins Jason, showcasing demos on room decor customization, upgrading stock photos with FaceID Plus, creating and purchasing clothing designs with Pixite's generative AI, and AI-assisted image editing by Storia Lab, among others. - Watch

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

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