This Week in Startups

0:55 Jason intros Balaji Srinivasan and tees up his incident with Recode's piece: “No handshakes, please”: The tech industry is terrified of the coronavirus
4:28 Balaji shares his experience with the story and his issues with corporate journalism
15:16 Balaji explains why he reacted the way he did to Shirin Ghaffary's request for an interview
19:52 History of techlash: 1995-2020, when things turned from positivity to overwhelming negativity
26:26 Balaji brings up a sentiment analysis chart published by Recode
31:25 Did both sides of the political spectrum fail in their coverage of the virus? Is citizen journalism the answer?
39:40 Balaji envisions for a new kind of journalism
41:43 Are corporate journalists too like-minded in their approach because of not being representative of the demographics of the US?
48:16 What is modern journalism's biggest blind spot?
51:22 Tips on how to start decentralizing media
54:34 Are modern journalists uncomfortable with subjects playing an active role in the reporting of the story? Did Recode & other outlets fail their readers?
1:01:55 Will the US "let it rip" strategy of dealing with COVID prove catastrophic?
1:05:53 Endgame scenarios: Bull, Bear & Base
1:10:08 Should we be experimenting with "Challenge Trials"?
1:18:52 How culpable is China for the spread of COVID-19? Should wet markets be shut down for good?
1:23:39 Why is the US still behind on mass testing? More on endgame scenarios
1:31:03 Possibility of COVID-19 being a biological weapon?
1:36:27 What should we learn from this crisis? What societal changes will happen?

0:41 Jason intros "Edge" Author Laura Huang
3:00 How do Harvard MBA students compare with Stanford MBA students?
7:17 Why did Laura write "Edge" at this time?
8:55 Overcoming disadvantages based on race, ethnicity & gender
14:56 Laura's experience reading her own audiobook
17:23 What does her research show about structural bias against Female entrepreneurs?
23:33 How can a founder turn adversity into an advantage when asked a question with a negative bias?
28:01 How being underestimated inhibits the opportunity to enrich & provide value? What is an example of delight in p2p interaction?
36:39 How should we look at intent when discussing bias & privilege?
44:35 How to deal with being bitter vs. getting better and controlling emotions while still allowing ourselves to feel?
1:00:17 Laura & Jason share personal stories about bitter vs. better & explain how she converted her energy
1:05:09 What is Laura's hope for the lasting impact "Edge" has on its readers?

0:50 Jason intros Coatue Management's Dan Rose
1:52 Dan takes Jason through getting his internship at Amazon in 1999 and meeting Jeff Bezos
6:55 What was Amazon's core business in 1999? What was it like incubating the Kindle in the mid-2000s?
10:04 How did Bezos grow as a leader and businessman during Dan's tenure at Amazon?
18:21 How does Bezos' ability to turn Amazon around in the eyes of public investors relate to Uber, Lyft and other large & unprofitable companies? How does Bezos inspire so much loyalty?
23:27 What was Amazon's company culture during Dan's tenure? How was AWS developed?
26:08 How did Dan wind up at Facebook as employee ~130? What did he see in a young Mark Zuckerberg?
32:13 Who created the original Facebook News Feed?
35:34 How did they get the ad-network to work at scale?
42:50 Where do Elon, Bezos & Zuckerberg rank in the Pantheon of Entrepreneurs?
44:06 How did the billion-dollar acquisition offer from Yahoo! fall apart?
46:42 Why launching open registration led to the billion-dollar investment by Microsoft
48:30 Insights on the Instagram deal
51:00 How Facebook bounced back from the stock dropping from $31 to $17 shortly after IPO & how Dan's experience at Amazon helped him rally the troops?
58:44 Zuckerberg's response to mistakes
1:03:01 How did Dan wind up at Coatue Management leading a $700M early-stage fund?
1:08:01 What is Coatue's strategy around data science?
1:11:20 Dan had over 100 Angel investments before joining Coatue
1:13:18 What is Coatue's new fund strategy?
1:16:09 How does Dan think of diligence in regards to early-stage companies?
1:20:25 What does Dan want to see in an ideal founder?

Geoff Lewis is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at Bedrock Capital. He joins to discuss lessons from entrepreneurship (1:25), why "vibe" is the critical way he assesses founders (11:44), his investment in Praxis, a city-state building company (23:15), his unique answer to the contrarian question (31:17), defense tech, AI and much more.

First Jason covers Zoom's Q3 earnings and reflects on broader tech valuations (01:53). Then, Jason does a Startup Checklist episode on how to get your startup ready for an investment (16:10). The episode covers the basics like making sure you have the right structure (18:06), the ways you can fundraise (39:33) and more.