Summer Picks: 2020 Edition
Every season, our team likes to share what we’re reading, listening to, admiring, and a resource we love. Think of this list as our version of the Wirecutter guide or a Buzzfeed “Life-changing things to try”, but for entrepreneurs. As we wrap up Q3, check out our team’s Summer Picks:
What we’re reading…
The Big Tech Extortion Racket: How Google, Amazon, and Facebook control our lives
This article unpacks how large tech companies continue to create a larger moat around themselves as they knock out small emerging brands from the equation. Fifteen years ago, the tech scene shaped the innovative solutions we see today when everyone had permission to build out the landscape. Today, as fewer players have control over critical enablers of innovation, startups become further excluded from participating.
On our team, we’re always looking at what’s happening at the intersection of technology, politics, and business. We love this article because it brings a historical event into today’s context and dissects how big tech players have now become more powerful than any historic monopolist contenders. They hold the power of “personalized discrimination,” and know more about us through data storage than we might know about ourselves. The article is especially relevant with anti-trust hearings surging against these tech conglomerates, and with an increase of time spent on digital platforms, largely supported by the companies listed in this article.
Selected by Strategist, Joyce Schmuslon
What we’re listening to…
In this podcast from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, Recode’s Kara Swisher and NYU Professor Scott Galloway take on stories across tech, business, and politics with their signature snark and insight.
The podcast is helpful in both summarizing the past and planning for the future. Swisher and Galloway cover the most important stories in innovation without losing detail or nuance, but also make bold predictions that provide a helpful input when planning business strategy.
In a year where tech, business, and politics feel more intertwined than ever, it’s refreshing to listen to a podcast that’s not afraid to drift lanes. As the government moves closer to action on consumer data privacy and antitrust in tech, make Pivot a part of your podcast listening schedule to stay informed and ready for the changes that are coming.
Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts every Tuesday and Friday morning.
Selected by Senior Strategist, Josh Daghir
Who we’re admiring…
Last summer, we ran our fifth Cannes Innovation Exchange program, focused on supporting international purpose-based, female-founded companies looking to solve global and local problems at scale. We were honored and grateful to have Lolita Taub, as our Investor in Residence for the week, providing VC guidance and mentorship to our selected cohort. Lolita, currently Chief of Staff at Catalyte and previously a Principal and Director of Strategic Initiatives at Backstage Capital, is a Latinx operator and investor pushing for diversity in tech.
This year, inspired by the lack of capital flowing to underestimated startup founders, she created a Startup-Investor Matching Tool to help provide access to this community. Here are some of their success stats:
This tool has gotten a ton of traction, particularly on VC Twitter, reigning supreme in helpful tips and tactics in threads, activating meaningful conversations, and thought starters across the ecosystem, specifically for underestimated founders.
We are incredibly inspired by Lolita’s efforts in enabling access, information, and networks to invest and support more Latinx founders. She’s on a mission to build up her community and, as she says, there’s money to be made.
If you’re an underestimated founder looking for investor connections, you can submit your company to be matched and introduced to investors here.
Also, on top of this admirable endeavor, on September 1st, in partnership with Flybridge’s Jesse Middleton, Lolita announced a soft-launch of The Community Fund, a $5M fund focused on early-stage community driven-companies. The application to join the investment team is now closed but you can still learn more about the fund and sign up below to receive upcoming news in your inbox.
Resource we love…
In our last picks article, we talked about how the Axios Sports Newsletter is the go-to resource for scoops & expert analysis by award-winning journalists. Across the board, Axios has become a major media and content player seemingly overnight with their HBO documentary-news series, hyper curated newsletters, smart, fast reporting, and what they call “Smart Brevity” worthy of people’s time, attention, and trust.
Last August, The Information reported that Axios was planning to enter a new business that included selling software to help companies create newsletters for their employees, coming at a moment when more media businesses are seeking to diversify their revenue through software sales. Part of the Axios pitch for the new product is that it will help organizations mimic its “Smart Brevity” style, breaking down complex issues into digestible bullet points.
When the beta version called AxiosHQ launched earlier this summer, R/GA Ventures was invited to participate in the pilot group. Though Axios sends its newsletters externally, the purpose of AxiosHQ today is to support better internal communications within the organizations that use it. We launched our first bi-weekly internal newsletter in mid-August to facilitate the sharing of insights across our different Venture Studios.
AxiosHQ is one of the most intuitive newsletter tools we’ve ever used, and our team was easily able to collaborate and get something out the door quickly and efficiently. The UI is simple and incredibly straightforward, allowing our busy team members to quickly and easily add their contributions.
When you’re creating the newsletter, it provides helpful guidance including format, popups, and recommendations on how to make your content engaging and quickly digestible. It also has an excellent library of visuals to pick from, or you can simply upload your own.
We’ve settled into a biweekly cadence, and plan to roll the newsletter out from the Ventures team to all of R/GA eventually. We’re leveraging it to help our Strategy team hone their writing skills, develop perspectives, and inform our team on current events, portfolio news, and upcoming events. Check out the guided walkthrough from Axios here.
To learn more and stay in the know, visit ventures.rga.com and follow @rgaventures on Twitter and Instagram.
