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Converge with Casey Newton - Dream Machine’s Alexia Bonatsos makes a surprisingly good case for an Airbnb for horses

Dream Machine’s Alexia Bonatsos makes a surprisingly good case for an Airbnb for horses

07/11/18 • 43 min

Converge with Casey Newton

Alexia Bonatsos has watched countless startups come and go. First as the editor in chief of TechCrunch, and now in her current role as the founder of venture capital firm Dream Machine, Bontasos’ job has been to understand what makes a tech company succeed. “A lot of it’s gut, but gut’s not magical woo-woo dust,” she says. “It’s taking in data and information, and eventually making a decision based on that.” Bonatsos has seen thousands of companies, and so on today’s episode of Converge, we turned the tables. Using two decks of cards — one with a set of famous companies, and the other with a set of random nouns — we invited Bonatsos to draw two cards, and pitch us the resulting company.

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Alexia Bonatsos has watched countless startups come and go. First as the editor in chief of TechCrunch, and now in her current role as the founder of venture capital firm Dream Machine, Bontasos’ job has been to understand what makes a tech company succeed. “A lot of it’s gut, but gut’s not magical woo-woo dust,” she says. “It’s taking in data and information, and eventually making a decision based on that.” Bonatsos has seen thousands of companies, and so on today’s episode of Converge, we turned the tables. Using two decks of cards — one with a set of famous companies, and the other with a set of random nouns — we invited Bonatsos to draw two cards, and pitch us the resulting company.

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Previous Episode

undefined - Front’s Mathilde Collin on why email is making a comeback

Front’s Mathilde Collin on why email is making a comeback

It’s been four years now since Slack arrived to kill email — and yet, email persists. While the group chat app has plenty of ardent fans and continues to grow quickly, it also draws criticism for its distracting, always-on nature. At many workplaces, if you’re at work, you’re also expected to be available on Slack. For some people, that means the thing that “replaced” email replaced it with something much more demanding. Mathilde Collin says the workplaces of the future ought to take a different approach. She’s the cofounder and CEO of Front, which makes tools for sharing inboxes with your teammates. If you’ve ever emailed a business address starting with “contact@” or “info@,” there’s a chance the team is managing the emails with Front. But Collin’s longer-term vision is to build what she calls an asynchronous version of Slack. Like Slack, Front will be integrated with all the other software tools you use — Asana, Trello, Github, Google Docs, and so on — and collect any important notifications in a place where you can read them on your time. It takes away the constant pinging of Slack in favor of something calmer and more conducive to doing focused work. Not only hasn’t email died — the tech industry’s current focus on Time Well Spent might have made it stronger.

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Next Episode

undefined - The Human Utility’s Tiffani Ashley Bell on how small nonprofits are stepping up

The Human Utility’s Tiffani Ashley Bell on how small nonprofits are stepping up

Tiffani Ashley Bell is the founder of the Human Utility, a nonprofit organization working to restore water service to people who are unable to pay their bills. The organization, which was founded in 2014, began its work in Detroit and has since expanded to Baltimore. Bell lays out her thoughts on how Silicon Valley should change its priorities on this episode of Converge.

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