What’s on our minds

If we had to sum up our investment approach in one word, it would be non-incremental. Venture capital is a power law game: the vast majority of venture returns come only from a few investments. We believe we have to…

In celebration of the iPhone’s 10th anniversary, we went to the University of Minnesota and the surrounding area to ask 25 people a series of questions to get their insights on the iPhone.  Most insightful were the answers to questions…

The most important lesson from Uber’s travails is that bad culture doesn’t scale. Talented teams with bad culture can build fantastic businesses, but not businesses that last. A unicorn with bad culture is a unicorn with a bomb strapped to its back…

At the Viva Tech conference in Paris, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt stated that he believes automation will create more jobs, not eliminate them. I think he’s wrong, and I hope he’s wrong. Disagreeing with the Chairman of the most advanced AI company in the…

I read about 80 books a year and am always looking for new suggestions from people in technology (email us your recommendations). A number of VCs and technologists recommended Failure Is Not An Option by Gene Kranz, flight controller for…

On Tuesday, Snapchat rolled out new features to its platform, including an infinite snap timer, looped videos, emoji drawing, and a magic eraser. With the new snap timer and looped videos, recipients will now be able to see a picture…

Expect Slight Upside In Mar-17 From Easy Comps and Typical Conservative Guidance for Jun-17. Apple reports Mar-17 quarterly results tomorrow, May 2nd. Despite shares at an all time high, investor optimism for an iPhone X super cycle this fall remains…

Google CEO Sundar Pichai used tonight’s Q1 call to double-down on his “AI-first” mantra.  Several areas were highlighted, where Google will lead and define its mission to organize the world’s information with machine learning.  Beyond AI initiatives to enhance core…

Vibrant culture driven by shared values separates the best companies from the rest. Without clearly stated values, a “company” is just a temporary group of people, not a sustainable organization. Working together over the past 10 years, we’ve identified a…

Yesterday Apple released Clips, a new app for iPhone users. Apple describes Clips as, “A new iOS app for making and sharing fun videos with text, effects, graphics, and more.” And Clips is fun, but it doesn’t show us the kind of augmented reality…

Google’s smartphone-powered VR platform, Daydream, represents the company’s most significant push to date in its effort to accelerate the adoption of VR. We’ve spent the last few weeks testing the platform with a Pixel phone and a Daydream View headset. Bottom line: Daydream isn’t there…

At this point, it might not even be that crazy to say it, but we think AirPods are going to be a bigger product for Apple than the Watch. After using AirPods for the past month, the Loup Ventures team…