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We’ve been working on a series of gift guides for the past month. Today Devin’s guide to gaming headphones is online! If you missed any of our gift guides, here’s our full set so far!
Our favorite gift would be “more hours a day” and “a week of sleep,” but failing that, maybe some hot chocolate and an uninterrupted three-hour window to read books would be fantastic. — Christine and Hey
Table of Contents
The businessroundups.org Top 3
- 3D render text: That’s what’s new about OpenAI, as it releases Point-E, an AI that generates 3D models. And not just any models, Kyle writes – it “generates point clouds, or discrete sets of data points in space that represent a 3D shape – hence the cheeky abbreviation.”
- Someone calls 911: A Porsche 911 runs on synthetic fuel from the car manufacturer’s Chilean pilot plant. The move comes after years of talking about it, Tim Stevens writes.
- More AI: Kyle had another widely read artificial intelligence story, this time about Petals creating a free, distributed network for running text-generating AI.
Startups and VC
It was a yearyou all. Brian, Kyle, Mary Annand Natasha M remember, this year’s recap wasn’t particularly fun to write. No one wants to see startups fail, but we are all well aware that most of them eventually do. An oft-cited figure suggests that 90% of these companies will eventually fail. But even with that in mind, 2022 just hit differently… Here’s “Remembering the startups we lost in 2022.”
Apropos annual review, Miranda collected the best recordings from the businessroundups.org+ team, including Amazon buying One Medical, interesting startup theses, and whether or not the TC team would be sad if Twitter disappeared from our screens.
And of course we raise our eyes to the future, with Connie‘s reporting on Bradley Tusk of Tusk Ventures and the three counter-intuitive 2023 predictions about Musk, SFB and even Kraft.
Okay, that’s enough about the past and the future. Here are five stories from here, now.
Ban vanity metrics from your startup’s pitch deck
![Image of a young woman standing in front of a skyline with five stars above her head.](http://businessroundups.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Vanity-metric-hazards-plans-for-failure-Black-Founders-survey-•.jpg)
Image Credits: We are (Opens in a new window) /Getty Images
It’s legitimately nice to give your hard-working team goals to work towards, but vanity stats (e.g., X email signups in Y days, 20% more retweets) are like a Little League awards dinner. Everyone goes home a winner!
“The truth is investors know what traction looks like,” Haje Jan Kamps writes, meaning feel-good metrics have no place in a pitch deck.
“Don’t confuse fluffy numbers and vanity statistics with your go-to-market strategy.”
Three more from the TC+ team:
businessroundups.org+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams lead the way. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!
Big Tech Inc.
You’ve seen the video in your feed, but now TikTok is going to tell you why the algorithm chose it for you, Aisha writes. “This feature is one of many ways we’re working to provide meaningful transparency to the people who use our platform, and builds on a number of steps we’ve taken to achieve that goal,” the company said.
And we have four more for you: