Industry News

Top articles of the week | July 9th



The age of distributed truth                        Eugene Wei

Fascinating article about truth and fake news. Eugene covers some of the recent headlines (Bill Cosby, sexual harassment in the valley, Uber, etc) and provides arguments on what it took for people to start believing.

We live in the age of distributed truth, and it’s an environment in which fake news can spread like mold when in viral form


China’s all seeing-surveillance state is reading its citizens faces             WSJ

This news update doesn’t sound all that important. Everyone knows that China has more limited personal freedoms than in the West. What is dystopian about this update is where we are headed. It reminds me of the episode of Black Mirror about social scoring. The Chinese government will soon be able to have a score on each of its citizens.


How the Growth of E-Commerce Is Shifting Retail Jobs               NY Times

Quick visual representation of the impact of ecommerce on retail jobs in the US. As you might guess, ecommerce takes away more jobs than it creates.


In a few years, no investors are going to be looking for AI startups       Frank Chen, a16z

A few years ago, every single startup pitch was about being mobile first. Today, it’s about being AI first. Frank Chen from venture capital firm a16z argues that the distinction of being AI first is going to disappear quite rapidly. It will be simply expected that your startup will be employing the latest machine learning technologies.


Why CMOs Never Last          HBR

Great read on HBR about the struggles that CMOs face. They need to be more customer centric in their roles (especially in a connected age) but their roles are constrained by the CEO. HBR argues that the CMO should given more P&L responsibility and ultimately responsible for growth.