Welcome back to Forests Over Trees, your weekly tech strategy newsletter. It’s time to zoom-out, connect dots, and (try to) predict the future.
1/ iHeart Waymo
Waymo has a lot going on… they dropped their San Francisco waitlist in June, got $5B in new funding from Google in July… and had the pleasure of taking me on my first ride last week! When I first joined the waitlist a few months ago, I promised I would share an update if/when I ever got to try it, so indulge me for a quick fanboy moment.
Honestly, I was so pumped for my first ride that I ran outside a few minutes early — it felt like I was a kid again, finally old enough to take the bus to school… nearly exploding with anticipation. And the experience mostly met my lofty expectations. The driving absolutely delivered. It felt safe but assertive, even though it won’t (yet) take any highways. Other things I noticed — the vibe of the car is clean and futuristic, and the welcome video/announcement is a nice touch (spa music + safety briefing).
My biggest gripes are extremely random… 1/ The app was kinda laggy, with ETAs that jump around, and 2/ there didn’t seem to be a quick way to connect to bluetooth to play music from my iPhone, so instead I had to rely on their Pandora-like music channels.
If you’ve tried it or have takes, reply to this email or hit the comments — I want to hear about it! And you can read more about Waymo’s fundraising here from TechCrunch.
2/ Advice to the Wiz Kids
Google’s rumored $23B purchase of Wiz, the Israeli cybersecurity startup, is off. For Wiz, my advice is the same as what I recommended for Figma when their Adobe deal fell through – 1/ stay focused, 2/ stay nimble. Big firms suck at doing these things, growing in breadth and slowing in speed, but that’s your super power. Resist the urge to add new products, and keep moving quickly/boldly. I loved seeing the Wiz CEO’s rallying note to his team (see below… LFG!!). Read more here from CNBC.
Wizards,
I know the last week has been intense, with the buzz about a potential acquisition. While we are flattered by offers we have received, we have chosen to continue on our path to building Wiz.
Let me cut to the chase: our next milestones are $1 billion in ARR and an IPO.
Saying no to such humbling offers is tough, but with our exceptional team, I feel confident in making that choice.
The market validation we have experienced following this news only reinforces our goal — creating a platform that both security and development teams love. We are grateful for the faith our employees, investors, and customers have in us as we build the best cybersecurity company in the world.
Thank you for your hard work and focus during these days, which helped us stay on track and finish the quarter stronger than ever. As we always say: LFG.
Assaf
Quote Source: TechCrunch
3/ Reddit Duz Sportz
They cut deals with the NFL, NBA, PGA Tour, NASCAR, and MLB to show licensed highlights + ads. It’s a good idea, given that short form videos (aka highlights) are the bees knees right now, and video ads are the most (relatively) profitable ad units.
Plus, it’s another example of Reddit following in the footsteps of other tech firms. First, they locked down their APIs (just like Twitter, StackOverflow, and Quora), realizing the value of their data for AI training and working to cut deals. Now, they’re following in the footsteps of Apple (cough, Messi + MLS deal!) and Netflix (cough, X-mas NFL games, etc.) by embracing sports. I’m loving the speed Reddit is running with right now. Read more here from The Verge.
4/ Smart Idea
Andrej Karpathy is one of the smartest computer scientists in the world (if you’re familiar with LinkedIn posturing, he’s ex OpenAI, ex Tesla, ex Stanford)… and he’s got a new idea. He’s launching an ed-tech company, Eureka Labs, to bring AI to education. The goal is to give anyone, anywhere, in any language, the opportunity to have a world class teacher. In other words, he’s stealing my idea from summer 2023!
All jokes aside, I think this is incredible, and I hope he’s successful. I’ve already learned a ton via AI (nagging ChatGPT for explanations, asking for help deciphering code, etc.). Having dedicated AI products for learning, with the structure and intent of a curriculum, could be really powerful. Read more here from Reuters.
5/ State of the Spotify
Spotify had their earnings call this week, and we got a nice peek into how CEO Daniel Ek sees the platform evolving. In my last post about them, I pitched an idea to embrace short-form video for both fans and artists/podcasters, and Ek alluded to a possible plan there… (transcript from Seeking Alpha).
…if you’re already uploading video to other platforms today, you’ve taken most of your cost already, so it makes a lot of sense for you to try to amortize that cost against as many platforms as possible. You see this already, where a lot of people on the short side are uploading not just to one platform, but are uploading to many platforms, and we’re start to see some of that behavior happening on Spotify too…
But where he sounded even more excited was with longer form content, specifically video. Is Spotify aiming for TV!?
…[for] podcasts, engagement is even higher than what we’d seen when it’s audio only, which is a really positive testament…
… longer form content tends to do really well on Spotify on the video side…