Yelp announces new features in its winter release, Studio launches an AI-powered school for musicians

Top News

Yelp announces new features in its winter release, including a more visual feed, AI-powered business summaries, and number masking while contacting businesses for better privacy. - Link

Studio launches its AI-powered online school for musicians to learn from top artists, create new songs, get feedback from like-minded peers and access Studio’s AI coach. - Link

PadSplit aims to address the lack of supply, access, and affordability in the rental market with its co-living marketplace, creating over 10K rooms in 18 cities across the US. - Link

BlueLayer, a new European startup, is building a software platform for carbon project developers, helping these companies manage their carbon credits at scale. - Link

Tiger Global and a16z-backed productivity company ClickUp, acquires Hypercal to boost its platform offering. - Link

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Advice of the Day

Evolving with Market Insights

Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Square, initially believed they were creating hardware for credit card swiping. However, startups often begin with a product idea and gradually clarify market details over time. Square's journey mirrored PayPal's, following three steps:

1. Create a product hook

2. Discover market insight through product use

3. Operationalize that insight

Both companies started with a simple product, learned from user adoption, and built their organizations based on discovered market insights. - Link

Startup Demo of the Day:

Huudle AI Project Assistant enables users to connect meetings and messages around the same topic in a single space. Users can track key points with AI-generated highlights, video message your short updates on any progress, and let AI follow up on the actions.

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

E1888: Sunny joins Jason for the 100th demo on the show. The episode includes demos of MultiOn, Paid Leave, Consensus, and Depth Anything. Sunny also showcases AI advancements posted by Barsee on X. This episode is dedicated to the memory of Aaron Swartz. - Watch

E1887: Aileen Lee talks with Jason about her journey in the male-dominated tech world and overcoming challenges as a woman. They discuss her role in popularizing the term "unicorns" for successful startups. The conversation covers the effects of the ZIRP era on the Unicorn Club, changes in VC trends, and insights into US unicorn founders. They explore key traits of successful startup founders and predict future unicorn status. - Watch

E1886: David Weisburd, Elizabeth Yin, Zach Coelius, and Jason Calacanis explore the current state of venture funds. Despite a slow market, venture funds are growing in size. The conversation touches on the performance comparison between smaller and larger funds, focusing on Hustle Fund's quantitative approach to evaluating startups. The group also discusses the resurgence of the Bay Area and the increase in the number of unicorns, although liquidity has decreased. The session concludes with a rapid-fire segment highlighting top recent investments. - Watch

E1885: Jesse Lyu from Rabbit joins Jason to discuss their latest innovation, the Rabbit R1, a compact AI device. They cover various aspects of the product, including its introduction, pricing, and the distinction between large language and action models. The video gives insights into Rabbit's early development, Jesse Lyu's journey, AI prospects, and a discussion about the product's timeline and getting it to early adopters. - Watch

E1884: Sunny and Jason discuss how AI is used at work, especially in remote settings. Sunny shows different AI tools like Hour One, Bland AI, Dinnerfly, and AI Comic Factory. They also talk about Apple's behaviour with smartwatches and share a short film called "Borrowed Time" made entirely with AI. - Watch

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