Click here to view this email in a web browser

Greetings all,

In this episode of Ventures, my guest Alex Giannikoulis and I discuss his journey from startup land, to angel investing, to venture capital, to founding a new company again. His current startup (https://goivee.com/) builds enhanced in-vehicle experiences. We dive into not only the story of IVEE, but how Alex’s experience as an angel investor and VC has informed his leadership style and practical advice for founders, especially regarding fundraising.

Check it out: From founder to VC to founder again: practical advice for startups and investors :: with Alex Giannikoulis

A Decentralized Cloud (DeCloud)

I’m relatively late to the party here, but check out https://akash.network/. “Censorship-resistant, permissionless, and self-sovereign, Akash Network is the world’s first open source cloud.”

If you’ve been following my newsletter for a while you are probably not surprised that I lit up when I saw the three concepts together (“Censorship-resistant, permissionless, and self-sovereign” !! ), as this is the kind of Internet I am excited to help bring about to reality.

My friends at Figment have done an AMA with Akash (notes here) that I’d encourage you to check out.

The future of extended reality (XR)

“Extended Reality” is the mix of AR, MR, VR, etc…(Augmented, Mixed, Virtual).

Wikipedia defines it more fancy-like: “Extended reality (XR) is a term referring to all real-and-virtual combined environments and human-machine interactions generated by computer technology and wearables, where the 'X' represents a variable for any current or future spatial computing technologies.” 

Pretty sweet.

I’ve recently engaged with some amazing XR pros and I’m fascinated by what they are up to. Yes, gaming is cool and fun, but I’m especially interested in how XR can help humans flourish (e.g. education, social connection, etc...).

For example, my friend Chip (who was the “someone” behind the article: Someone made the ‘Take On Me’ music video come to life with AR and it’s glorious), is now working on technology called Oloh that will enable simple, more lifelike Facetime-esque calls in AR. Check out a quick video demonstration here.

Overall, XR promises to bring us a wide variety of experiences this decade, from improved work meetings, telehealth, classrooms, labs, work training, and more. Combine this with AI, Web 3, and improvements in the biosciences and I’m very excited thinking about what the future may bring.

Have a great rest of your week!

~Will