Mercedes leveled up, AI knows more languages than Shakira
Necessary Nuggets
Happy Tech Tuesday! For those new here, welcome to Necessary Nuggets. We deliver exciting updates from Necessary Ventures and some helpful tidbits on the tech world to you bimonthly. If you can’t get enough of the newsletters, don’t worry! You can access every edition on our blog — perfect for when you can’t wait for the new edition and are dying to read more or just need a midnight snack.
THIS WEEK’S FEATURES ⚡
🚨 Want to make a big impact in tech? – NV portfolio companies are hiring! Check out jobs from Taro Health, Relief, and Particle Health.
⭐ Private Parts – Tech innovation is ahead, but data privacy is far behind.
⭐ Well-Oiled Machine – What happens when AI becomes a perfect translator.
⭐ Quick Maths – Have you ever met an angry cattle farmer? Google has.
📈 Nvidia Gets All the Attention – …And it’s all about eye contact.
JOBORTUNITIES 🚨
A few exciting opportunities with Necessary Ventures’ portfolio companies:
Taro is on the hunt for a product engineer to help them deliver health insurance designed to keep you healthy.
Are you someone who likes developing good software and is looking to make a big impact on not only a product but also a company’s growth and operations? This is your gig.
From Taro: “Our patients and doctors are actively using our software to navigate care and billing now, and we have lots of workflows we want to improve. We’d love any referrals to this role!"
Relief is looking for a strong back-end engineer to help them get people out of toxic debt.
Do you want to contribute to a fast-growing startup in the FinTech space? Even better, do you want to help Americans say bye to their debt for free? This is the perfect chance.
If you know of anyone, please reach out to us or send an email to careers@relief.app.
Particle Health is looking for a senior software engineer to help create the new world of healthcare data exchange.
Are you exhilarated by the thought of using your skills to think big and reinvent industry standards? This might be for you.
This role allows you to own all steps in the development process from design to implementation, solving complex technical challenges and driving adoption of those solutions.
Feel free to reach out with any questions! All 268 open job postings are listed here.
NV Portfolio Highlight 🎢
What would life look like if you could order food delivery, ride shares, and prescription drop-offs all from one App? That’s the premise of Yummy, a startup that began as the first food delivery app in Venezuela and has evolved into a SuperApp live across several countries in Latin America.
Yummy processes orders for groceries, alcohol, pharmaceuticals, clothes, ridesharing, concerts, and sporting events all from one platform. The app has 2.5 million registered users and processes 800,000 monthly transactions. Yummy opens new doors for Latin American merchants where e-commerce penetration and access to modern financial services are low.
Last June, Yummy raised $47 million in an upsized funding round to accelerate product development. Barney Harford, former COO of Uber and CEO of Orbitz Worldwide, was appointed to the Yummy board of directors as part of the investment. If you’re interested in contributing to this exciting time of growth and development for Yummy, you can look here for a role that might be a good fit.
GOOD READS 📖
Just as boomers are finally comfortable using Facebook, it’s becoming clear that catching up to tech transformations is more complex than first imagined. The problem extends beyond cybersecurity to data privacy concerns, where there’s a lack of clarity on mandates, roles, and responsibilities. As the cybersecurity market grows, this article makes the case that enterprises should prioritize privacy as well.
Kaley’s Comment: The IT Brew noted a similar concern in a recent edition listing three IT worries that will demand attention in 2023, including the increasing cost of cyber attacks, stalling data protection initiatives, and interestingly, environmental impact. Remote work puts increased pressure on these issues, as sensitive files are continually shared and the reliance on data centers grows.
If you’re wondering how you’ll know when your machine is better than you, one Italian company has a potential answer: translation. A startup called Translated proposes we’ll know machines have surpassed humans when they provide a “perfect translation.” Today, it takes only 2 seconds for translators to check and correct the machine’s suggested translations, as compared to 3.5 seconds in 2015. Singularity might soon be a reality.
Mercedes Drive Pilot ADAS (automated driver assist system) is exploring uncharted territory. As of last Thursday, it’s the first and only legal level-3 system in the US. Level 3 means the vehicle can handle everything driving-related, and the driver only has to be attentive – a huge step-up from Level 2’s glorified cruise controls. The system relies on a hefty combination of cameras and sensors including visual cameras, LiDAR arrays, radar and ultrasound sensors, and audio mics.
Kaley’s Comment: As exciting as this achievement is, autonomous vehicles are hitting a rocky path. San Francisco seeks to slow the expansion of robotaxis after repeated dangerous situations where robotaxis idled in the way of other cars and emergency vehicles. On a more macro-level, hardware efficiency must advance before wide adoption of autonomous vehicles to keep carbon emissions in check, as supported by recent research from MIT. With that being said, Mercedes’ sensor-based approach is substantially better than Tesla FSD’s approach, which relies entirely on cameras with no fail-safe.
Biotech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson plans to trick his body out of aging through an experimental program he calls “Project Blueprint.” As far as Johnson is concerned, money can buy happiness. With Project Blueprint, he could spend up to $2 million per year on his body for an intensive health program of supplements, meals, exercise, and bodily tests. Johnson claims an age reversal of 5.1 years and aims to encourage others to do the same through his website Rejuvenation Olympics.
Is Google moving too fast? Google provides customers with estimates on carbon emissions for popular purchases, such as flights and meat. However, scientists are still debating how to accurately estimate the impacts of those activities. While Google is leading the charge to inform users of their carbon footprint, many industries are beginning to decry the estimates as unfair, demanding a rethink on their calculations.
STARTUPS TO WATCH 🔥
Floodbase is building a flood-risk data service to close the insurance protection gap for flood-caused damages. This past week, it announced a $12 million Series A funding round led by Lowercarbon to develop technology that facilitates underwriting.
Paradigm is a clinical trial tech platform that facilitates recruitment. It raised $203 million in Series A funding co-led by Arch Venture Partners and General Catalyst and acquired an oncology patient recruitment startup called Deep Lens.
Boston Metal is an MIT spinout creating a process to produce green steel. It raised a $120 million Series C round led by ArcelorMittal and including Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund.
Stripe reportedly approached investors to raise at least $2 billion at a $55 billion to $60 billion valuation, significantly less than its $95 billion valuation in 2021. The funds would be used to cover a large annual tax bill. The news was released on the same day Stripe announced it would go public in 12 months or pursue a transaction on the private market.
REDDIT HIGHLIGHT 📈
I hope you’re a fan of psychological thrillers, because this post is more than just a jump scare. Nvidia released what might be the most unsettling video of 2023 so far (coming from someone who recently discovered the infamous video of Kendall Jenner cutting a cucumber).
This Reddit thread shows the demo posted by Nvidia for its new eye contact feature that makes video subjects look into the camera. We can only hope a blinking feature comes soon … and maybe some tasteful eye contact breaks too.
OUTRO
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Thanks for reading, and see you next week!