We’re not learning. The tragedy of this pandemic has been laced with ignorance and neglect of science and public health education from the start. Our pandemic world needs education, and a new ability to learn science and adaptation.
Unmentionable wins! Actually, it was a tie: Judging the finals at another exciting venture bootcamp at UC Berkeley
“And the winner is...hard to describe in front of a bunch of people I just met.”
Had a fun morning meeting all the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed brilliant students, program coordinators like Justin Wong and Simran Kaur and Anika R. and other venture judges and Silicon Valley investors like Alexander Walterspeil (head trader at Indaba Capital Management), Brandon Drew (General Partner at SaaS Growth Ventures), and Bob Upham of Tess Ventures to hear the pitches for Gigi Wang’s Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship Bootcamp Final Presentations.
I’ve been mentoring and judging Bootcamps at Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology for about five years since I met Gigi at the European Innovation Academy in France. Every Bootcamp is different but they’re all a whirlwind of inspiration and learning, and a shot in the arm of what my fellow startup mentor Pamela Day calls “Vitamin S”, for Students.
This year in my track we heard four startup ideas developed during the week’s Bootcamp accelerated process. I was joined by two venture capitalists: Bill Reichert, Partner at Pegasus Tech Ventures; and Shuonan Chen, general partner at Innovation Overflow Venture Capital.
“We chose two pitches, it was a tie! ”
“One winning team, described as 50% ‘hipster’, proposed a second-hand furniture service for student communities.”
The tie was between a second-hand furniture service from a team that self-described as 50% hipster and delivered an all-bases covered pitch including customer validation and operating expenses on their financial projections; and a company that I found intriguing, but not easily mentionable during my one-day appearance at Bootcamp.
Most years when I can, I enjoy mentoring the teams during the week leading up to the final, giving me a chance to get to know the entrepreneurs and advise their team formation and development of their venture pitch.
I didn’t have that chance this year, otherwise I certainly would have had more time to construct how I might present Anvio as winners, live on the Zoom to all participants. Somehow I still did that within minutes of hearing of them (waiting for the video of the event to recall exactly what I said without using the term the team suggested: “sex toy”, this is FAR MORE than a toy). And now I’m struggling to describe it here, on the Internet where nothing ever dies.
I’m not sure I want to rank for these terms in perpetuity….
“I don’t want to rank for these terms yet I see the need for this intimate smart device and subscription service …there’s definitely something there with this sexual wellness training tool. ”
…there’s definitely something there with this sexual wellness training tool.
There’s something there in its not-often-enough-spoken-of problem, its ‘non-gendered’ solution, a knowledge and support community, a data-driven wellness option, an intriguing new smart device, a relationship aid, a subscription service for a monthly box of related products, and still there is so much left unsaid.
You’ll have to look for it in the slides above!
As Shuo Chen suggested during the judging, the Anvio team can always start with a MVP (minimum viable product) of a box subscription and discussion community as they continue to research and develop the intimate electronic device itself, and design and build the mobile app that supports it.
This particular problem space may be hard-to-talk-about (sort of, Teen Vogue famously covered it in 2017, and incited a backlash for erasing women — calling them “non-prostate owners”) yet the problem is a known source of trauma for millions of newcomer practitioners.
“Ok, ok. Enough prevarication.
You might call the Berkeley Bootcamp winner I championed...
’A SMART BUTT PLUG’.
Yep, went there! 😱”
Phew, I said it and I’m still alive. (Now to watch my website ranking skew over time…)
Let’s put it this way. This winning formula is…
Anvio = a not-often-spoken-about problem + a non-gendered solution + a knowledge/support community + a data-driven wellness option + an intriguing new smart device + a relationship aid + a mobile app supporting a subscription service for data + a box subscription service for related products.
Congrats again to all the hard-working BMOE teams for a great Final Presentations Day. I look forward to what you do next!
Ringing the bell at the New York Stock Exchange with a unicorn company!
I was walking down Wall Street last week. It was 90 degrees and muggy, a moment of after-lunch calm. As I passed the historic, columned stock exchange I over heard a New York Tour Guide talking to a group of tourists.
Pointing to the facade announcing Owlet Baby Care’s IPO, she said: A baby went public today.
“A baby went public today.”
Not quite, but funny!! The connected nursery startup Owlet is 7 years old and now it’s a publicly listed newcomer on ‘the granddaddy of stock markets’.
I called out into the quiet street, ‘‘They make smart socks that measure blood oxygen and other vitals to alert you if your baby is in trouble.”
“Good to know,” a man in the tour group called back.
Seriously, this happened.
A spunky JLo could play me in the romantic comedy where a scene like this would be more likely to take place.
It is good to know.
Owlet says they’ve monitored the health of 1 million babies.
When Burc joined them in 2020, we discovered that unlike other startups both of us had worked with in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Istanbul, almost everyone we mentioned it to knew this Silicon Slopes Internet-of-Things (IOT) product. They had either used it with their own infants — some were on their third device — or had just gotten one for a coming birth, or had given one to a friend with a budding new family.
I waved and kept on walking. I was going to meet my husband and the president of Owlet around the corner before we were due to gather inside ‘the center of global financial markets’, the NYSE, for the closing bell ceremonies that mark the end of the day’s trading.
Photobombed by a Faberge urn
That urn over Burc’s shoulder — it was always in focus, he was blurry — was “produced by House of Faberge, gifted to the exchange by Czar Nicholas II of Russia in 1904 for listing a $1 billion bond issue”.
After passing stock exchange museum pieces at the entrance but not getting to look at them, like the original Thomas Edison stock ticker machines I noticed just at the elevator, we assembled in the classical revival Board Room that hosts world leaders, celebrities and business icons before heading down to the trading floor. There were cookies.
That big clock
is the original 1867 clock used to mark time behind the president on the original NYSE trading floor
There was a short program about becoming listed on the exchange, a ceremony with a commemorative coin presentation by a stock exchange executive who joined the team on the balcony downstairs, and a speech by the CEO Kurt.
Congrats to my husband Burc Sahinoglu & everyone at Owlet Baby Care for going public as a unicorn (translation: that’s “a company with a $1+ billion valuation”) and for ringing the closing bell at NYSE last week!
It was a stellar New York summer day, finished by a cruise around the island getting to know Owlet founders, executives, family, board members, and investors, enjoying the sunset breezes over enduring landmarks and stunning new developments.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I love New York!
We know you're talking down to us and it depresses us
Women know we're being talked down to. We know we're being denied opportunities. We know we're being terrorized for the reason that someone else is sexist.
That’s what I told a podcaster last summer in an interview about misogyny and sexism. I believe misogyny leads to a low grade depression that all women experience.
Men need to engage and participate in the stamping out of misogyny. However, far too many are studiously avoidant. They’re not on the hashtags, they’re not in the conversations, they’re not sharing the revelations with their fellow men. This is not a topic they find interesting.
Newsflash: Women don’t find it ‘interesting’ either. It’s simply our reality.
Your performativity robs us all
Paying lip service is easy, that’s why people do it — to check a box that other people think is important, in the most efficient and expeditious way possible.
But lip service is also a waste of your resources, literally. You’ve wasted the opportunity to do something worthwhile for other people. Especially if you have a platform you can lend.
Washington Post has my opinion 8 months later
Washington Post says America needs civics and history to save democracy.
This is how the Post’s Editorial Board puts it today. “While the country spends about $50 federal dollars per student per year on science and math education, only five cents per year per student is allocated for civic education,” notes Lawrence Tribe whose tweet I first saw. “Democracy demands a population better educated in history and civics,” says the professor emeritus at Harvard Law School.
I said as much 8 months ago when announcing my pro-democracy knowledge project: America needs a re-education.
Helping people requires what one of my readers called “a new civil service journalism to inform citizens at a time when the Fourth Estate is dying and under attack, and news media has devolved into propaganda machines.”
My mission is to help with what comes next: when we dig out from the damage, there will be a massive need to educate people about what just happened.
Last June I wrote about my work on a curated knowledge & awareness project for concerned citizens.
A year into the pandemic, what was #TheMoment when you knew?
NPR and NPR Weekend asked us on Twitter what was the moment we knew things were going to be ‘different’ due to the pandemic.
They ask us now, “one year into the pandemic”, expecting the answer to be “a year ago today, end of February I knew things were going to be different.”
But a year ago today I already knew. I was early to recognize the pandemic.
Welcoming a babytech unicorn to the family
Mine is a household of entrepreneurs. My husband Burc and I have both been working in the tech venture and startup world for decades. We’ve done startups together too!
Today the Silicon Slopes Series-B IOT company he joined last year — Owlet Baby Care, which makes a smart sock to measure blood oxygen levels in infants, among other connected nursery products — announced their merger with a special acquisition corporation at a Wall Street valuation of more than $1 billion. That’s a unicorn in Silicon Valley parlance.
Among the new partners Owlet is gaining are some fashion world luminaries like Tommy Hilfiger and the chairman of Tom Ford, Domenico De Sole, who are sure to take Owlet from Utah to the world.
Congrats to everyone who made Owlet a success!
"I wish no one was allergic to dogs" and other 2021 best wishes
✨Happy New Year, everyone! May your wishes for 2021 come true.✨
A good moment for the right vanity press/publishing service
Publishing friends, authors, business women, entrepreneurs: what do you think of this new initiative from Worth Media?
A new pipeline to publishing for their subject-matter expert members to help build and further their careers,
an opportunity for people who traditionally have a harder time getting published or recognized,
to be released through an imprint/house for an established publisher (Simon & Schuster),
and author retains the rights.
My first thought? Vanity press. In a downmarket for publishing.
And then, well, okay. It's a good business opportunity to provide publishing services direct to an underserved information-rich community. And, then, hey maybe better than OK. For everyone involved, including the readers of these books. Read about it here.
I told you education of the citizenry is our next chapter
Radical, systemic change in the tech industry starts with us
You may have guessed that women in tech & digital are under represented across management/teams.
I live tweeted an antiracism panel attended by 300 people from around the global and produced by Ada's List, an intersectional group committed to changing the tech industry at scale — from culture of a company, an overt policy, to processes that sideline women.
Radical, systemic change starts with us, says Ada’s List founder Merici Vinton.
Ada’s List is the place for professional women who work in and around the internet to connect, conspire, and take a stand. The group of 700
promote, support, hire & interview women
recommend 1 qualified woman or POC to interview for each open position
make our environment positive
help juniors progress in their careers
Sound familiar? It’s their take on the Shine Theory of Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, says Vinton.
On White Privilege: Getting uncomfortable with our privilege, bias, and 3 actions to take is an event to keep focused on dismantling racist structures, raises funds for three Black-led organizations (@TheSisterSystem @ThisIsYSYS @azmaguk), and is part of the Ada’s List ReStructure Series. The rolling series of talks discuss and proactively work through some of the biggest issues coming out of the events happening right now.
"How are you doing?", Vinton as moderator of the panel asks the women of color, re Black Lives Matter protests.
"I spent the last 3 mos having these conversations. The process of exploring, meeting people where they are is quite healing," says one woman.
"Pissed it's taken so long for people to recognize this is a problem," answers another.
In company replies to BLM, "The voice of perpetrators & observers was amplified, centering their response rather than centering the pain,” points out Shefaly Yogendra. She digs into this in her blog "BLM in the Boardroom". "Where are your metrics?" she asks these companies that are virtue signalling. (Read Shefaly’s Twitter thread about the panel.)
Many corporations put out Black Lives Matters messages, while having few if any POC on their boards, in management, in their workforce
Virtue signalling. Have you heard of it? Another example of virtue signaling is the number of “BlackoutTuesday” profiles vs. the number of people signing petition to see justice done in the case of Breonna Taylor, one panelist pointed out.
"This is 400 years of oppression, it's not going to be solved in a webinar," says a panelist.
Also, "Resistance is normal", it's not a sign you shouldn't continue to speak up as a white ally when appropriate....get used to that feeling.
Be aware where you can be most effective. Not all platforms are the right place, fighting trolls on Twitter may not be worth your while.
Some conversations will be more effective when done in private. But NOT saying something is no longer an option.
"Diversity and inclusion is like any other business performance metric, or at least it should be," says Ashanti Bentil-Dhue
"Don't ask POC to do your org's work for free" says Yogendra.
"Talking about race is a non-negotiable now," adds Bentil-Dhue, but some business leaders think it's optional.
"We have a problem in the corporate space that can't talk about unconscious bias, in gender & race," says Naomi Jane.
Ada’s List round up of the best tweets about the panel on the #AntiracistAdas Twitter tag, and homework.
As a white person, you can decide where your money goes and a corporation's work in antiracism (or failure to address appropriately) can be a trigger to patronize a business or not.
"As a black woman it's frustrating to hear we need to go back to basics, that we need more research and surveys. The research is there!" says Bentil-Dhue.
That's something our white peers can do, direct people to the existing research.
This history of management is based in slavery & we have to address that to improve
The history of management is based in slavery, once you see it you can see what it's doing to the people you work with and what you can change to make people the best they can be, says Yogendra.
If you have the ability to 'tap out' from what's going on, acknowledge that you have privilege to do so.
What are you going to do about it, recharge and come back and do something impactful?
How does the recruitment process or governance structure of your organization perpetuate racism?
POC have to provide unpaid labor to teach white people not to be racist.
"When white people can't get your name right chances are everything you do will be reduced to a stereotype," says Shefaly Yogendra.
Getting someone's name wrong is a micro aggression. White people, make the effort to get a POC's name right (and no need to make a big deal about doing so, it's the same as your name, just a name).
What's a good way to address intersectional identities?
Find & amplify people who have those intersectionalities & pay them for their fundamentally important expertise. We have to pay them, says Naomi Jane.
Making early sense of the pandemic
“I saw the coronavirus coming in January”
I saw the coronavirus coming in January and have been tracking the pandemic ever since. It’s been uniquely disturbing to see a mysterious wave of illness and death surging toward us, with far too many people refusing to face it.
~ Andrew M. Slavitt (former Acting Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services)
“A wave of illness and death is surging toward us with far too many people refusing to face it”
I’d been looking to see which flus were coming out of China as my family members and business associates were heading to CES in Las Vegas in mid January. I wanted to know which bugs they might be dealing with at the massive consumer electronics trade show.
I’ve been highlighting points made on Twitter by various sources about the COVID-19 pandemic — and the antivax movement, which as it happens will be even more destructive a force in society with this true-blue no-vaccine killer virus on the loose.
So I found the pandemic in January. In February I found the general response we’d need to preserve our medical system and suppress the spread of the virus.
I'd discovered the below graph of Philadelphia vs. St. Louis deaths from the Spanish Flu, showing how social isolation helped depress the infections and deaths in one town while the other’s lax policy resulted in a spike of unnecessary deaths.
A response blueprint in February
I saw a German computer scientist share this Spanish Flu example of what we need to do as a society to flatten the curve of COVID
Correct public health policy saves lives
A French multinational biotech company shared this study of how public health decisions saved citizens and flattened the curve of the Spanish Flu
It was great to see a Bloomberg deep dive on the same example when it came out a few weeks later, and the term “flatten the curve” make its way into public health communications on COVID.
Collecting resources for all in March
Click through to reach my list.
I also follow these COVID lists, click on their names to see: Kim Mai-Cutler and Brian Koppelman.
I started a Twitter list of COVID-19 expert sources in early March.
It seemed especially important to gather my own science and public safety sources (and follow other lists compiled by early pandemic watchers) at a time when the president and far too many government leaders were ignoring or downplaying the disastrous and monumental impact of this virus on the planet’s human population. The disinformation campaign against early effective action will go down in history as a genocide.
“People said “I don’t need that leaflet - I don’t live here.”
That’s ok, viruses love to travel! ”
In early March I was activated by the Fire Department as an emergency response worker for disaster preparedness. SF had declared a health emergency the prior week. The activation meant passing out coronavirus health department leaflets downtown (wash your hands, don’t touch your face [impossible for humans I believe], elbow cough, make plans).
Handing out public health COVID preparation leaflets on that busy Financial District street corner was brutal. People didn’t want to hear it.
Some people laughed, some people said no!, some people said “I don’t need that - I don’t live here.” I thought, That’s ok, viruses love to travel! A handful were grateful and said “hey thanks for doing this.” They knew we’re all in it together and with 2 community transmission cases in SF that very day, the virus was already here, and also waiting in a cruise ship off the Golden Gate.
To be continued…
A knowledge service to cut the noise in today’s infodemic
“If you can’t follow what’s happening, you can’t adequately think or act in this crucial moment.”
Trump impeachment rally - San Francisco Federal Building 12/2019. Image by me.
Today’s info war sure is info hell, isn’t it? The United Nations is calling it an “infodemic”.
When I talk to people — intelligent people, educated people, media and news professionals, tuned in people, random people — pretty much when I talk to everyone, they don’t know at all what I know.
Or they know a lot less, or they admit they get their news from “CNN…and FoxNews, for balance”, or they simply aren’t trying to follow the firehose of info flying at us these days.
The enemy is noise, the goal is clarity.
~ Jon Stewart told the New York Times this week
Most people I talk to are clinging to an outdated and irrelevant opinion or worldview like it’s a life raft.
This is a problem.
An information diet that doesn’t serve you is COSTLY
during a pandemic that requires us to reenvision how we live;
in an Election Year;
when Western Liberal Democracy is under attack both domestic and foreign, with a main weapon being military-grade psy op disinformation and propaganda directed at a civilian population.
If people can’t follow what’s happening or learn the historical basis of what’s happening or perceive the machinations of global alliances and systems including the largest law enforcement action against organized crime that the world has ever seen, they can’t adequately think and act in this moment.
It’s a costly problem that can be solved, as Jon Stewart points out, by clarity.
“For more than a decade I’ve been following sources & stories that are coming together now. I want you to see what I see.”
I’m an info hound as you know. I’ve been curating speciality lists of expert sources on Twitter for more than a decade, and relying on them almost exclusively for my news gathering needs through the Arab Spring and the Gezi Park Protests in Turkey. The list of 1,000 sources I mention in this post was meant to be my lens on American politics and current affairs for the 2016 Presidential Election.
I’ve been following stories that are all coming together now. And I’m working to share that with you. So you can see what I see.
Introducing a curated knowledge & awareness project for concerned citizens
See a few news stories a day…
Subscribe to a daily Trust Is A License Nuzzle newsletter with just a few of the top news stories shared from 1,000 curated sources
Knowledge Is Power (formerly referred to as Trust Is A License, a phrase from Shefaly Yogendra) is generative journalism, a community service to inform citizens
At its core the project is a Twitter account run by a small group of diverse centrists who see all sides of global and societal threats and want to ensure our fact-based perspective gets voice and distribution in this age of extreme disinformation campaigns.
We’re also exploring a variety of other ways to connect, present, and share this vital and contextual information that only become more relevant with each passing day. We all need to know this. It’s our history. More on that soon.
One of our readers has described us as civil service journalism. “What you’re doing is generative journalism. It’s a community service to inform citizens at a time when the Fourth Estate is dying and under attack, and news media has devolved into propaganda machines.”
“We vet content & sources, metabolize info & amplify points to help you understand this moment in time. ”
As the mainstream media failure became clear, citizen researchers and curators like me picked up the slack. At Knowledge Is Power, our focus has been on vetting the content and sources, metabolizing the information, and finding ways to underline and amplify clear points we believe are valuable to cutting through the noise and understanding this moment in time.
We hope to connect the dots for ourselves and others. We started doing this for OURSELVES. Yet, it’s for others. Without any marketing the account’s organic reach has grown 160x in its first year.
By vetting and amplifying the work of citizen researchers, whistleblowers, journalists, social justice workers, national security experts and more, we aim to strengthen democracy and stop the playing-the-extremes-so-nothing-gets-done horseshoe that divides us.
“Our mission is to help with what comes next: when we dig out from the damage, there will be a massive need to educate people about what just happened.
”
As people begin to dig out from the damage of the cyber war/information war/total kinetic war against Western Liberal Democracy (including Trump & transnational organized crime) that we are currently experiencing in America and throughout the world, there’s going be a need for a massive education of the American people about what just happened. Hollywood is already telling these stories. We want to help with that.
…or get everything we share
Follow the Trust Is A License Twitter feed to see who & what we’re highlighting & what discussions we’re a part of.
Scan some recent tweets.
Scan some top tweets.
Or subscribe to our Substack newsletter (which we may start publishing on soon!):
A message to white people: you must do the work to be anti-racist
If you're not doing the work to be anti-racist, you're not doing the work that matters to our fellow humans of color.
***This is a message to all the white people I know and don't know: WE HAVE TO GET THIS. This is on us.***
Please, and thank you: Apply yourself to see and understand structural racism, an insidious force in our institutions and society that keeps POC from partaking in the kind of life and opportunities you as a white person expect and often enjoy without question.
Then understand it some more and share what you learn with all the white people you know. This is on us.
P.S. Your white privilege cannot be renounced, you've got it for life, and it's granted to you because other people perceive you as white. It doesn't matter what you think of yourself. "Oh I may be whitish but I'm not a racist". So bear the burden of finding out what white privilege is and how to use it for good as a white ally. The #1 thing you can do is educate other white people. I'm doing that in a variety of ways. Ask me something you've been wondering, and I'll try to answer. Send me a private message if you want. I am here for questions.