Fwd: Abundance Insider: April 29 Edition

In this week's Abundance Insider: Flying taxis, brain-controlled drone racing and printer ink made from pollution.

Cheers,
Peter, Marissa, Cody, Maxx, Kelley and Greg

P.S. Send any tips to data@diamandis.com, and send your friends and family to this link to subscribe to Abundance Insider.

Taxis to Take Flight

What it is: The e-volo Volocopter VC200 is the world's first certified multicopter -- and it just received its permit to fly as an ultralight aircraft in Germany. The electric personal aerial vehicle takes off and lands vertically using a simple joystick control, and e-volo boasts that its design is easy enough for anyone to pilot it. The company's next goals are to initiate air taxi services, enter the air sports market, and continue its autonomous mobility development.

Why it's important: As autonomous vehicle technology continues to improve, futuristic transportation methods like this one may become a cheaper, easier and faster mode of travel than even self-driving taxis on the ground. Expect to see even more innovative approaches when the Transporter XPRIZE launches.

Spotted by Ryan Wolfred

World's First Brain-Controlled Drone Race

What it is: Drone racing is gaining widespread popularity, and the University of Florida broke new ground in this niche with the first-ever brain-controlled drone race. Sixteen pilots used BCI software, electroencephalogram headsets and their focused thoughts to send drones down a 10-yard indoor course.

Why it's important: Another early demonstration of BCI advancements. It won't be long until we can interact with objects around us -- in our homes, at work and everywhere else -- just using our thoughts. Talk about magic!

Spotted by Keith Gargiulo

Printer Ink From Pollution

What it is: What if the black carbon found in air pollution could be transformed into industrial paint? That's exactly what Sbalabs is doing with Kaalink: "repurposing pollution's carbon capture to industrial-grade raw material for [the] printing industry (inks, pigments, paints, etc).

Why it's important: With aftereffects like premature death, bronchitis, heart attacks and aggravated asthma, air pollution is definitely a billion-person problem. This process takes carbon out of the air and turns it into a raw material with thousands of industrial applications -- now that's turning scarcity into abundance!

Spotted by Rajat Gupta

Artificial Intelligence Now Fits in a USB Stick

What it is: Modivius, whose chips power everything from FLIR cameras to DJI drones, has announced the Fathom Neural Compute Stick, a USB drive that enables users to rapidly prototype neural networks. "Fathom contains the Myriad 2 MA2450 VPU paired with 512MB of LPDDR3 RAM," Engadget explains. "The Myriad 2 is the chip found in the previously mentioned DJI and FLIR products... [and] can handle up to 150 gigaFLOPS (150 billion floating-operations per second) while consuming no more than 1.2 watts."

Why it's important: An impressive dematerialization and demonetization of neural networking capabilities. It has the form factor of a normal thumb drive, but Engadget writes that using just this USB drive and a Raspberry Pi, any user can add "advanced computer vision capabilities to something like a GoPro."

Spotted by Marissa Brassfield

SignAloud Gloves Translate Sign Language

What it is: University of Washington students Navid Azodi and Thomas Pryor have developed SignAloud gloves, a set of gloves with the power to translate American Sign Language into text or speech. The glove's sensors record movement and transmit gesture data wirelessly to a central computer, which then parses the data and dictates all recognized gestures through a speaker.

Why it's important: How do you think about your customer base when you no longer have language barriers? These lightweight, inconspicuous gloves let sales representatives, customer service agents and teachers communicate with ASL speakers in a natural, seamless way.

Spotted by Greg O'Brien

How Cheap Can Electric Cars Get?

What it is: Futurist Ramez Naam has analyzed how cheap electric cars can get, and his predictions are exciting: by 2030, electric vehicles with a 200-mile range will be cheaper than the least expensive car sold in the U.S. in 2015. Naam backs up his claim by citing enabling factors like improvement in batteries and production efficiency increases.

Why it's important: As the materials and technologies behind renewable energy continue to improve, prices will continue to plummet -- which will only accelerate their adoption.

Spotted by Marissa Brassfield

Machine Learning Rivals Human Skills in Cancer Detection

What it is: KurzweilAI.net reported two key developments that suggest deep learning algorithms are just as effective as humans at detecting cancer from ultrasound images and in identifying cancer in pathology reports. The first was the development of Samsung Medison's RS80A ultrasound imaging system, which features a built-in deep learning algorithm for breast lesion analysis. The second was a study out of the Regenstreif Institute that found open-source machine learning tools to be as good or better than humans at "extracting crucial meaning from free-text (unstructured) pathology reports and detecting cancer cases."

Why it's important: Shaun Grannis, M.D. describes the importance perfectly: "We have come to the point in time that technology can handle this. A human's time is better spent helping other humans by providing them with better clinical care. Everything -- physician practices, health care systems, health information exchanges, insurers, as well as public health departments -- are awash in oceans of data. How can we hope to make sense of this deluge of data? Humans can't do it -- but computers can."

Spotted by Marissa Brassfield

The Playboy Interview With Ray Kurzweil

What it is: Ray Kurzweil's Playboy interview went live this week, in which he illustrates several future scenarios in depth. Topics include the future of sex, the future of education, nanobots in our bloodstream, and how humans are merging with nonbiological technologies.

Why it's important: Ray's lifetime predictions about the future are accurate over 80 percent of the time, so anytime you have a chance to hear or read one, take note. Tracking technology's progress and making proactive business decisions are essential skills in this exponentially growing world.

Spotted by Peter Diamandis

Musk: Tesla's Autopilot is 50 Percent Better at Avoiding Accidents Than You Are

What it is: Elon Musk recently made a bold safety claim about Tesla's Autopilot function: "The probability of having an accident is 50 percent lower if you have Autopilot on. Even with our first version. So we can see basically what's the average number of kilometers to an accident -- accident defined by airbag deployment. Even with this early version, it's almost twice as good as a person."

Why it's important: One more piece of evidence that autonomous cars will be significantly safer and more efficient than human-driven cars.

Spotted by Marissa Brassfield

What is Abundance Insider?

This email is a briefing of the week's most compelling, abundance-enabling tech developments, curated by Marissa Brassfield in preparation for Abundance 360. Read more about A360 below.

Want more conversations like this?

At Abundance 360, Peter's 250-person executive mastermind, we teach the metatrends, implications and unfair advantages for entrepreneurs enabled by breakthroughs like those featured above. The program is highly selective and we're almost full, but we're still looking for a few final CEOs and entrepreneurs who want to change the world. You can apply here.

Know someone who would benefit from getting Abundance Insider? Send them to this link to sign up.

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Fwd: how X (Google) experiments

 

This blog explores how to run great experiments in your company, based on recent conversations with my friend Astro Teller, Chief of Moonshots at "X" (formally Google X, Google's R&D factory).

X's mission is to invent and launch "moonshot" technologies that could make the world a radically better place… dare I say, help create a world of Abundance.

Astro leads a team of brilliant engineers, scientists and creatives developing solutions to dozens (perhaps hundreds) of the world's toughest problems. Some of their publicly known projects include: the self-driving cars, the smart contact lens, high-altitude wind-power generation, and Project Loon, just to name a small fraction.

All of these projects started as a series of experiments.

Today's most successful companies, the ones that are "crushing it," started as a series of crazy ideas, followed by experiments to test just how viable those ideas might be.

Experimentation is a crucial mechanism for driving breakthroughs in any organization.

BTW, you may also want to check out Astro's 2016 TED talk which was just released: The Unexpected Benefit of Celebrating Failure.

What Are Experiments and Why Do They Matter?

Experiments help you test a hypothesis about your product or service and help you find answers to your most difficult questions.

Good questions are questions that, if answered, fundamentally change (and improve) the way you operate.

Understanding how to focus your team on asking good questions and turning good questions into experiments is critical. 

So what makes a good experiment?

The Three Principles of a Good Experiment

Astro explains that the following three principles describe a good experiment:

Principle 1: Any experiment where you already know the outcome is a BAD experiment.

Principle 2: Any experiment when the outcome will not change what you are doing is also a BAD experiment.

Principle 3: Everything else (especially where the input and output is quantifiable (i.e. measurable)) is a GOOD experiment.

Seems simple enough, right?

You need to be asking questions to which you don't know the answer but such that if you did know the answer, you'd change the way you operate.

If you already know the answer, or if you are testing an insignificant detail that doesn't matter, you'll just be wasting time and money.

How to Ask Good Questions and Design Good Experiments

In any organization, you get what you incentivize.

In order to get good questions/experiments, you have to create a culture that incentivizes asking good questions and designing good experiments.

Astro describes a very unique approach to doing just this:

"At X, we set up a 'Get Weirder Award'. The whole point of the Get Weirder Award was to focus the team on experiments and to drive home why they needed to think in terms of experiments."

Teams would be challenged to ask "weird" questions – to put forth crazy ideas around framing problems differently and to design experiments that really push the limits.

Critically, Astro gives out the Get Weirder Award before the experiments are run.

"If you give out the award before you've run the experiment, then people start to really feel that you don't actually care about the outcome. You care about the quality of the question. So every two weeks, we would give out an award for the best experiment."

Doing so constantly (and viscerally) reinforced the behavior of asking good questions – and as such, at X, they've built a culture around celebrating the questions themselves.

How to Manage Experiments

Once you've designed a good experiment and assembled an intellectually diverse team to tackle it, what are the best management principles to keep from screwing it up?

Management Principle 1: Don't Be a Bottleneck!

As a CEO or manager, it is critically important that you don't get in your team's way by micromanaging them or by demanding to be the sole decision maker.

If you need all of the information, all of the time, your team will never get their work done.

Astro explains, "Your job as a manager is to give your team your recommendations and empower them to do whatever they think is right.  Allow them to learn."

He continues, "I work super hard for me not to be the bottleneck at anything that goes on here. Ironically, that's a full-time job."

One funny story involved two employees who had a major strategic conflict.  They wanted Astro to make a decision as to which one was right.

Rather than do so, he said, "I believe I already know which of you is right and which of you is wrong. I can just make that decision right now, but I'm not going to. The problem is: if I tell the two of you who's right and who's wrong, in my opinion, the next time you have conflict, you will come back and ask me to do it again, and that does not scale. I will spend however as much time it takes to either train the two of you to work well together or figure out that you can't."

Not being a bottleneck means deliberately letting your team learn. Sometimes it's hard to do, but it's a necessary step if you want to derive the most value from your experiments.

Management Principle 2: The Value of Secrecy

In a previous blog, I mentioned the notion that ambitious entrepreneurs (and companies) need to get comfortable with being misunderstood.

Interestingly, experiments are one of the most publicly misunderstood domains within a company.

We talked in great depth in the last blog about why you have to focus on killing your ideas –in line with that discussion, an experiment that proves an idea won't work is as successful of an experiment as proving that one will work!

The problem is: the public (and especially the press) doesn't understand this.

They see "failed experiments" and think, "failed company" – which adds enormous pressure and stress to your employees and investors.

Thus, it can be useful to keep your experiments secret.

Astro explains, "The main value of secrecy is not 'to hide our awesome ideas', it's to make it easier to kill ideas. Secrecy offers air cover. It allows the team to have the emotional space to solve the problems without outside pressure."

Management Principle 3: Don't Worry about Success -- Worry about Progress & Learning

Finally, if you are worrying about success, you are going to be paying attention to all of the wrong indicators and misguiding your team.

You need to focus on progress and learning – and success will follow.

Rather than creating a culture that only celebrates big wins, create one that celebrates progress on tough projects and running good experiments.

You'll be amazed by the difference in your organization with such a small mindset and cultural shift.

Join Me

This is the sort of conversation we explore at my 250-person executive mastermind group called Abundance 360.

The program is highly selective. If you'd like to be considered, apply here.

Share this with your friends, especially if they are interested in any of the areas outlined above.

This blog is part of a series I am doing on "Hiring, Culture, and Experimentation". If you have questions or comments about these topics, tweet at me @peterdiamandis and @codyrapp, and we'll incorporate them into our research.

P.S. Every week I send out a "Tech Blog" like this one. If you want to sign up, go to Diamandis.com and sign up for this and Abundance Insider.

P.P.S. I've just released a podcast with my dear friend Dan Sullivan called Exponential Wisdom. Our conversations focus on the exponential technologies creating abundance, the human-technology collaboration, and entrepreneurship. Head here to listen and subscribe: a360.com/podcast

 

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Fwd: Abundance Insider: April 22 Edition

In this week's Abundance Insider: 3D printing stem cells in real time, origami-inspired metamaterials, and bacteria-powered solar panels.

Cheers,
Peter, Marissa, Cody, Maxx, Kelley and Greg

P.S. Send any tips to data@diamandis.com, and send your friends and family to this link to subscribe to Abundance Insider.

Virtual Art Sessions Let You Experience Fine Art in Your Browser

What it is: A new initiative from Google Chrome called Virtual Art Sessions brings fine art -- and its creation -- to life. Using the Google Chrome browser, users can observe six famous artists as they use the Tilt Brush app to create new works in virtual reality from start to finish, with views from any angle, including the artist's perspective.

Why it's important: This intimate look into artists' creative process is enabled -- and significantly enhanced, at least for the viewer -- thanks to virtual reality. By digitizing, dematerializing and demonetizing fine art, the Google Chrome team will also democratize its access to people around the world.

Spotted by Alan Livshin

3D Printing BioPen Lets Surgeons Draw With Stem Cells

What it is: The BioPen is a 3D printing device that enables surgeons to perform "in-situ biofabrication" -- which, as Mashable describes, is "the ability to effectively print viable human stem cells into damaged joints to regrow cartilage." The BioPen lets surgeons sculpt the material in real time as they draw -- enabling them to precisely place stem cells in challenging areas like crevices or beneath existing tissue. The BioPen was developed by Peter Choong at Melbourne's St. Vincent's Hospital and Gordon Wallace at the Australian Research Council's Center of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES).

Why it's important: This is a powerful breakthrough for orthopedic surgery -- and one more example of how 3D printing can revolutionize and enable truly personalized healthcare. The most exciting aspect of the BioPen, however, may be its price: ACES director Gordon Wallace revealed to Mashable that the cost of assembling the hardware is around $10,000.

Spotted by Keith Gargiulo

Generation Beyond Prepares America's Students for Deep Space Exploration

What it is: Generation Beyond is an emerging national educational program from Lockheed Martin with the goal to bring science and space to life using technology and ultimately get a new generation of school-aged children interested in space exploration. The Lockheed Martin Mars Experience Bus -- an immersive virtual reality vehicle that replicates 200 square miles of the Martian surface -- is one core piece of the curriculum, and there's also a companion app called HelloMars.

Why it's important: The Mars Experience Bus alone has been hailed as a real-life version of the beloved "The Magic School Bus" books and television programs. Virtual reality enables us to create experiences that are intensely immersive, lifelike and entertaining. Why not apply this capability to education?

Spotted by Cody Rapp

Netherlands Looks to Ban All Gas, Diesel Car Sales by 2025

What it is: Dutch politicians are hoping to pass legislation that would ban the sale of any vehicle that emits emissions as soon as 2025 -- including efficient hybrids and plug-in hybrids. It's the latest, most aggressive effort in the Netherlands to increase the country's percentage of renewable energy. "The lower house of the Dutch parliament recently supported the motion put forward by the Labour PvdA party," the Globe and Mail reports. "The cabinet must now come up with a plan to implement the proposal."

Why it's important: Peter often discusses the benefits of constraints on innovation. While critics of this proposed legislation dismiss it as "overambitious and unrealistic," it may actually incentivize tremendous breakthroughs in clean power, autonomous vehicles and eco-friendly transportation.

Spotted by Gaetan Soltesz

Origami-Inspired Metamaterial Eyed for Robots, Space Station

What it is: Harvard University engineers and scientists have created a shape-shifting metamaterial with tremendous promise for robots or space structures. Inspired by snapology (modular, unit-based origami), the researchers developed a transformable material with three degrees of freedom -- meaning, as Design News describes, "it can be actively deformed into multiple, specific, three-dimensional shapes through embedded actuation." Thermal, water and dielectric actuators can all be embedded in the material.

Why it's important: "This research demonstrates a new class of foldable materials that is also completely scalable," said graduate student Johannes T. B. Overvelde, lead author of the article, in a press release. "It works from the nanoscale to the meter-scale and could be used to make anything from surgical stents to portable pop-up domes for disaster relief."

Spotted by Shaun Arora

USPS's Digital Mail Program Will Go Nationwide in 2017

What it is: The U.S. Postal Service has just announced Informed Delivery (ID), a free app that sends users digitized previews of the day's mail. Currently, Informed Delivery shows photos of each envelope; by 2017, full-color cameras will be able to capture images and deliver interactive marketing pieces.

Why it's important: This digitization of physical mail has interesting implications on the direct mail industry. For example, imagine if Informed Delivery becomes a frontend for Amazon and similar ecommerce sites by packaging the day's delivery of mail previews with a digital catalog populated contextually.

Spotted by Stafford "Doc" Williamson

Researchers Generate Clean Energy Using Bacteria-Powered Solar Panel

What it is: Researchers at Binghamton University's Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science have created a bacteria-powered solar panel that connects biological-solar cells into a bio-solar panel. This panel, the first of its kind, generated more wattage than any other small-scale bio-solar cells in existence in recent tests.

Why it's important: Creating fuel from abundant sources like bacteria -- specifically, cyanobacteria, which is found in nearly every habitat on Earth -- is an especially promising path to clean, renewable energy.

Spotted by Aryadeep S. Acharya

FemtoSats Are Tiny New Satellites That Could Democratize Space

What it is: We've covered the CubeSat satellites in previous Insider issues, and a team at Arizona State University has created a new iteration called FemtoSat that's cheaper, smaller and lighter than previous generations. Sending a single FemtoSat into lower Earth orbit will set you back $3,000 and $1,000 to send to the International Space Station.

Why it's important: We're witnessing the demonetization of spacecraft development and the democratization of space research. "By reducing the launch cost, it is hoped a wider community of educators, researchers, and hobbyists can develop their own spacecraft," said the ASU researchers.

Spotted by Clyde R. Dennis

Solar Panel Produces Hydrogen Gas

What it is: A team of Belgian bioscience engineers has developed a tiny solar panel that transforms sunlight and water vapor from the air into hydrogen gas. The all-in-one, carbon-neutral system doesn't use a drop of water -- only sunlight and air -- to produce hydrogen. "Chemistry is often frowned upon as a polluting industry, but for a challenge such as climate change, it may very well provide the ultimate solution," explains Johan Martens of the KU Leuven Centre for Surface Chemistry and Catalysis.

Why it's important: This solar cell's small footprint -- and its all-in-one system -- make it especially promising for use in developing countries or remote areas like the middle of the desert. But it isn't just for the developing world: imagine a hydrogen-powered autonomous car that can generate its own fuel using rooftop solar panels.

Spotted by Koen Lenssens

What is Abundance Insider?

This email is a briefing of the week's most compelling, abundance-enabling tech developments, curated by Marissa Brassfield in preparation for Abundance 360. Read more about A360 below.

Want more conversations like this?

At Abundance 360, Peter's 250-person executive mastermind, we teach the metatrends, implications and unfair advantages for entrepreneurs enabled by breakthroughs like those featured above. The program is highly selective and we're almost full, but we're still looking for a few final CEOs and entrepreneurs who want to change the world. You can apply here.

Know someone who would benefit from getting Abundance Insider? Send them to this link to sign up.

If you wish to stop receiving our emails or change your subscription options, please Manage Your Subscription
PHD Ventures , 800 Corporate Pointe, Suite 350, Culver City, CA 90230

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Fwd: Abundance Insider: April 15 Edition

In this week's Abundance Insider: Synthetic skin that sweats, smartphone 3D printers, and sensor-packed fake eggs.

Cheers,
Peter, Marissa, Cody, Maxx, Kelley and Greg

P.S. Send any tips to data@diamandis.com, and send your friends and family to this link to subscribe to Abundance Insider.

Domino's is Trialling an Autonomous Delivery Robot

What it is: Domino's recently announced a new autonomous robot called the Domino's Robotic Unit, or DRU, that can deliver pizzas within a 12-mile range. DRU is a little over three feet tall and can carry up to 10 pizza boxes (and many cold beverages) in its dual insulated compartments. Its onboard sensors help it avoid obstacles, and it's built to navigate roads and sidewalks with ease.

Why it's important: This Domino's development is effectively the digitization of delivery drivers. Soon, delivery bots will be as commonplace as the car-top pizza delivery signs we see on the road today.

Spotted by Cody Rapp

Scientists Develop 'Transparent Wood'

What it is: Researchers at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden have developed a transparent material based on wood that could revolutionize how we create solar cells and windows. The researchers first removed lignin from wood fibers, leaving the wood pure white, and then mixed it with prepolymerized methyl methacrylate (PMMA), transforming it into its transparent state.

Why it's important: This material has a number of properties that make it ideal for construction purposes: toughness, low thermal conductivity, strength and low density. Eventually, it could replace silica-based glass in windows and solar cells.

Spotted by Aryadeep S. Acharya

Tokyo 2020: The Olympics of the Future

What it is: We still have four years to go until the Tokyo Olympics, but local organizers have already teased some of the innovations they plan to bring to the global stage. Among them are a robot village filled with cutting-edge automatons that can help people with transportation, directions and translations; instant language translation; autonomous taxis; 8K TV broadcasts; and artificial meteor showers for the opening festivities.

Why it's important: Historically, the Olympics is when cities show off their innovation, and Tokyo 2020 is no exception. (Remember in 2002, when the Salt Lake City Winter Games debuted instant video replays?) It'll be interesting to see which of these "leaked experiences" are commonplace by 2020, thanks to exponential growth.

Spotted by Cody Rapp

First-Ever 3D Printed Robots Made of Both Solids and Liquids

What it is: Researchers at MIT CSAIL have created a new technique that paves the way for 3D printed dynamic robots that are ready for use immediately after printing -- no assembly or cleaning required. The inkjet printing technique enables simultaneous printing of solid and liquid materials, or "printable hydraulics."

Why it's important: "It's an important step towards the next big phase of 3-D printing -- moving from printing passive parts to printing active integrated systems," explains Hod Lipson, a professor of engineering at Columbia University. This capability has massive implications for disaster relief: imagine being able to print a complex, hydraulically powered robot that's ready to go to work immediately.

Spotted by Sarah Black

A Fleet of Trucks Just Drove Themselves Across Europe

What it is: A tiny fleet (about a dozen) of commercial trucks has just crossed Europe using primarily autonomous driving modes -- the first feat of its kind on the continent. It's all part of the European Truck Platooning Challenge, an elaborate event organized by the Dutch government that hopes to unify the automotive industry and accelerate autonomous commercial trucks.

Why it's important: "Platooning," or the act of autonomous vehicles following each other, has tremendous effects on efficiency: it's cheaper than driving on cruise control, and according to Quartz's reporting of a TNO study, it can also "reduce fuel use by up to 15%, prevent human error from causing accidents, and reduce congestion."

Spotted by Dan Swift

NVIDIA Launches World's First Deep Learning Supercomputer

What it is: The NVIDIA DGX-1 is a supercomputer that's designed especially for deep learning. The "turnkey system" has GPU accelerators that can deliver the equivalent throughput of 250 x86 servers, plus an array of deep learning software, development tools and hardware. All together, the system can deliver "12X faster training than four-way NVIDIA Maxwell architecture-based solutions from just one year ago," according to a NVIDIA press release.

Why it's important: "Artificial intelligence is the most far-reaching technological advancement in our lifetime," said Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO and co-founder of NVIDIA. "It changes every industry, every company, everything. It will open up markets to benefit everyone. Data scientists and AI researchers today spend far too much time on home-brewed high performance computing solutions. The DGX-1 is easy to deploy and was created for one purpose: to unlock the powers of superhuman capabilities and apply them to problems that were once unsolvable."

Spotted by Tyler Achtem

Breakthrough Starshot: Yuri Milner & Stephen Hawking's Next Moonshot

What it is: Last year, we covered Yuri Milner's $100 million Breakthrough Listen initiative to search for extraterrestrial life, but the Russian billionaire isn't done. He, along with Stephen Hawking, announced a new project called Breakthrough Starshot, which will "explore the technologies needed to create small, light-powered spacecraft capable of reaching Alpha Centauri in just 20 years," as The Verge reports. Mark Zuckerberg is on Starshot's board of directors, and former NASA AMES director Pete Worden will lead the project.

Why it's important: Besides the prospect of space exploration, this project has a tremendous development potential for business. Chip-sized spacecrafts, like the ones Breakthrough Starshot plans to develop to get to Alpha Centauri, could also be used to deliver free global wifi or gather extensive data on the Earth's surface (crops, water, and more).

Spotted by Arun Gupta

Facebook Unveils 'Surround 360' Open Source Camera

What it is: At F8, Facebook revealed a durable, super-portable, 17-lens 3D VR camera called the Surround 360 that's specifically designed to capture high-resolution footage (up to 8K) while dramatically simplifying and optimizing post-production work. What's more, according to TechCrunch, Facebook will open source the hardware designs and video stitching algorithm on GitHub.

Why it's important: By building a world-class camera and then open-sourcing every bit of its design, Facebook is positioned to dramatically accelerate the pace of VR and 360 adoption and content creation.

Spotted by Cody Rapp

Reverse Photosynthesis: Energy Source of the Future?

What it is: University of Copenhagen researchers have recently announced a breakthrough discovery: reverse photosynthesis. In contrast to photosynthesis (solar rays building plant material), reverse photosynthesis means the energy in solar rays breaks down -- and when combined with natural enzymes called monooxygenases, solar rays can be used to produce biofuels and chemicals for plastics in an incredibly resource-efficient manner.

Why it's important: In nature, reverse photosynthesis enables fungi and bacteria to access the nutrients and sugars found in plants. Researcher David Cannella explains the implications for industry: "...by using the Sun, we can produce biofuels and biochemicals for things like plastics -- faster, at lower temperatures and with enhanced energy-efficiency. Some of the reactions, which currently take 24 hours, can be achieved in just 10 minutes by using the Sun."

Spotted by Jens Krabbe

What is Abundance Insider?

This email is a briefing of the week's most compelling, abundance-enabling tech developments, curated by Marissa Brassfield in preparation for Abundance 360. Read more about A360 below.

Want more conversations like this?

At Abundance 360, Peter's 250-person executive mastermind, we teach the metatrends, implications and unfair advantages for entrepreneurs enabled by breakthroughs like those featured above. The program is highly selective and we're almost full, but we're still looking for a few final CEOs and entrepreneurs who want to change the world. You can apply here.

Know someone who would benefit from getting Abundance Insider? Send them to this link to sign up.

If you wish to stop receiving our emails or change your subscription options, please Manage Your Subscription
PHD Ventures , 800 Corporate Pointe, Suite 350, Culver City, CA 90230

Fwd: culture & experimentation – with Uber’s Chief Product Officer

If you want to create a successful, hyper-growth company, you've got to focus on creating the right culture and learning how to rapidly experiment.

In this blog, I continue my discussion on these two key subjects with Jeff Holden, a brilliant entrepreneur and executive who has held leadership roles at three hyper-growth companies – Amazon, Groupon, and Uber. Today Jeff is the Chief Product Officer of Uber.

As Jeff explains, there are critical lessons for every entrepreneur, so let's dive in.

1. You Have To Continually Invest In Culture

Culture is often difficult to define – and yet, it's extremely important to get right.

For a startup without structure, culture can be this amorphous "thing" that is often a reflection of the attitudes of the people on the team – an emergent property, of sorts.

But if you're not careful, the wrong culture (or even the 'lack of culture') can be lethal to your business, especially in the early days of hyper-growth.

You have to be deliberate about creating and investing in culture.

To illustrate this, Jeff shared a fascinating story about Jeff Bezos' relentless obsession with culture and customer-centricity at Amazon.

He explained, "Bezos was a fantastic leader and he invested in making the company durable. He was continuously investing in the culture."

"Building a solid culture was so critical, especially for a hyper growth company. It was our resilience fabric. It held the whole company together through all kinds of different things."

"I worked at customer service one Christmas, and I remember this woman who was traveling to Russia for the holidays. She ordered all of these Christmas presents, and they weren't going to make it there in time. She called customer service, worried sick."

Without hesitation, the Amazon team pulled out all the stops to fix it.

"We spent probably $500 or $600 to overnight her $1,000 worth of gifts, and she was so completely blown away that she couldn't stop saying,'Oh my god, you saved my Christmas!'"

"It was the Amazon way. It was so core to the culture. There was this energy and passion to just win for the customer and to do something no one's ever done before."

2. Be Crystal Clear About Your Mission

One of the most important parts in the process of establishing a culture is clearly defining the mission of the company.

Jeff goes on, "You have to be very clear about your mission. At Amazon, we knew the top three things customers cared about were: Price, Selection, and Convenience."

As such, they were able to define their culture around how best to provide the lowest prices, most selection, and most convenient service for their customers.

And within a company as dynamic as Amazon, one of the best strategies to doing so was to be constantly experimenting!

3. You MUST Build an Experimental Engine from Day 1

The only constant is change, and the rate of change is increasing.

The only way to keep up is to be constantly experimenting and innovating. Hyper-growth and experimentation are very closely linked.

Bezos likes to say, "Our success at Amazon is a function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week, per day…"

Jeff Holden, who has built experimental engines at Amazon, Groupon, and Uber, agrees: "The philosophy is you have to build your company to be a big experimental engine and it has to start right at the beginning."

It's not easy to just "retrofit" that engine in later – it's a cultural shift. You have to be in the mindset of constantly testing crazy ideas, new business models, new products, and new processes.

You've also got to be scientific.

At Amazon, in the early days, they had a huge experimental platform that was available to almost everyone – meaning, if somebody wanted to test a new button or new feature on the website, they could.

The problem was – many of these experiments were useless.

Jeff continues, "They had no chance of yielding any value. There wasn't any point to them. We were just kind of curious. We were just running a lot of experiments, which have a cost by the way, and taking up experimental slots (so others couldn't), and things started colliding with each other."

Their solution was to create an 'Experiments Group' – if you wanted to do an experiment, you had to run it through this group.

The first question the group would ask was: What's your hypothesis? The second question: What's the value proposition to our company?

"If you couldn't articulate your hypothesis crisply or your hypothesis didn't matter for Amazon or Uber or Groupon, then they must not do that experiment. Often times you'll be like go back to the drawing board or recast the experiment. The company learned and we got much better."

Finally, "you have to be able to interpret the experimental results really well. It's statistics. Know the difference between statistically significant and insignificant results."

Uber, for example, runs thousands of experiments per month to test different features. They A/B test key features that are core to the business and choose the one that performs best.

For those of you that DON'T have an experimental culture in your business, Jeff advises:

• "Build a team inside your organization that has an experimental ethos, and make sure that the experiment, value proposition, and hypothesis are really thought through before you invest the time and energy to actually do them."
• In general, only hire people who are familiar with the experimentation / data-informed mindset.

4. Get Comfortable with Being Misunderstood

Part of having a strong culture around experimentation means: you are going to be misunderstood by outsiders.

Jeff explains, "That tolerance of being misunderstood or being beaten up by the outside world was so important to launch our success."

"Amazon Prime could have been one of those catastrophic failures. We tried auctions and that failed and we tried zShops and that failed. But we just kept going, and we finally cracked it."

"Then, when we launched it to the world the response was: 'You guys are insane!' 'This is like, super risky.' 'You're going to blow up with all this margin from shipping'.

Bezos, characteristically, replied, "Yeah, I kind of figured this would be misunderstood…"

These days, Amazon Prime has over 50 million members who spend on average $1,100 every year -- nearly double the purchases of non-Prime members.

As another example, at Uber, maybe 20-30% of the experiments they run actually work. The rest don't… but they are informative and useful nonetheless.

Innovative companies just need to be very comfortable being misunderstood.

Jeff's advice: "You want to look inside and be inside out about the way you think about your company."

In other words, ignore the noise and keep building.

Join Me

This is the sort of conversation we explore at my 250-person executive mastermind group called Abundance 360.

The program is highly selective. If you'd like to be considered, apply here.

Share this with your friends, especially if they are interested in any of the areas outlined above.

This blog is part of a series I am doing on "Hiring, Culture, and Experimentation". If you have questions or comments about these topics, tweet at me @peterdiamandis and @codyrapp, and we'll incorporate them into our research.

P.S. Every week I send out a "Tech Blog" like this one. If you want to sign up, go to Diamandis.com and sign up for this and Abundance Insider.

P.P.S. My dear friend Dan Sullivan and I have a podcast called Exponential Wisdom. Our conversations focus on the exponential technologies creating abundance, the human-technology collaboration, and entrepreneurship. Head here to listen and subscribe: a360.com/podcast

If you wish to stop receiving our emails or change your subscription options, please Manage Your Subscription
PHD Ventures , 800 Corporate Pointe, Suite 350, Culver City, CA 90230

Fwd: Abundance Insider: April 8 Edition

In this week's Abundance Insider: Synthetic skin that sweats, smartphone 3D printers, and sensor-packed fake eggs.

Cheers,
Peter, Marissa, Cody, Maxx, Kelley and Greg

P.S. Send any tips to data@diamandis.com, and send your friends and family to this link to subscribe to Abundance Insider.

A Drone Startup Just Conducted the First Legally-Sanctioned Urban Drone Delivery

What it is: Last year, we covered Flirtey CEO Matt Sweeney's first-ever legal drone doorstop delivery of medical supplies to a rural Virginia health clinic. Now he's made history once more with the first autonomous urban drone delivery in the U.S. -- an emergency supplies parcel that traveled about a half-mile using GPS coordinates.

Why it's important: This test proved that drones can safely deliver goods to their destination without hitting street lamps, rooftops, power lines, or other obstacles (like pedestrians).

Spotted by Aryadeep S. Acharya

Sensor-Packed Fake Eggs Are Helping Revive Endangered Vulture Populations

What it is: UK conservationists are using sensor technology to help researchers learn more about endangered species. The EggDuino is a 3D printed egg that looks and feels exactly like a vulture egg, but it's packed with sensors that measure movement, humidity and temperature -- valuable information to understand vultures' natural incubation behaviors and processes.

Why it's important: By understanding how endangered animals naturally reproduce and incubate their young (without disturbing their natural habitat), conservationists can replicate these natural processes in captive breeding environments. Combined with complementary emerging technologies like synthetic biology, and conservationists have a powerful toolchest that could help us slow down or even eradicate extinction.

Spotted by Marissa Brassfield

Artificial Skin That Can Grow Hair and Sweat

What it is: We've seen lab-grown skin grafts and even 3D printed skin, but scientists at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Japan have created lab-grown skin that can sweat and even grow hair. Unlike today's lab-created skin, which has just one or two layers, RIKEN has the typical three layers of tissue found in human skin, which is why it can hold hair follicles and sweat glands.

Why it's important: One step closer to truly lifelike artificial skin -- which will revolutionize how we treat burn victims and those with skin diseases.

Spotted by Marissa Brassfield

Africa Internet Group is the Country's First Unicorn

What it is: Africa has its first billion-dollar company: Africa Internet Group. Founded in 2012, AIG operates 71 companies in 26 industries -- all of them focused on bringing Africa online and into the 21st century. Most recently, AIG landed an $85 million investment from French mobile company Orange, which will no doubt help AIG increase its influence in Africa's mobile space.

Why it's important: We've heard Peter say that the best way to become a billionaire is to help a billion people. AIG is doing exactly this in Africa, and we're excited to see what happens as millions of its clients/consumers begin participating in the global economy.

Spotted by Marissa Brassfield

If Google Built a Tech-Filled City From Scratch, Would You Move There?

What it is: Dan Doctoroff, CEO of Alphabet subsidiary company Sidewalk Labs, recently made a comment at The Information Summit in New York that piqued journalists' interest. When asked about a rumored technology city test bed, Doctoroff coyly replied that it "would be a great idea," and that "thinking about a city from the internet up is really compelling…[but] cities are hard. You have people with vested interest, political, physical space…But the technology ultimately cannot be stopped."

Why it's important: Technology is changing how we do just about everything. Why not city planning? If we were able to run Google-like experiment sprints on social programs, recreation, transportation, employment, education and environmental issues, we'd gather priceless data -- and possibly world-changing insights.

Spotted by Marissa Brassfield

New Implantable Device Alleviates Pain by Tricking Your Brain With Electrical Pulses

What it is: Researchers from the University of Texas at Arlington have developed a pain management solution that involves electrical stimulation of the brain. Unlike similar technology available today (for example, transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation), this UTA device works at the spinal cord level to block pain signals before they reach the brain.

Why it's important: This pain management technology doesn't have the dangerous side effects of prescription painkillers, like risk of addiction. UTA's studies have shown that this brain stimulation not only blocks pain, it also triggers dopamine release, making it a viable solution to alleviate chronic pain.

Spotted by Marissa Brassfield

OLO: The First Ever Smartphone 3D Printer

What it is: We've seen how a variety of physical devices have been dematerialized into smartphone apps, and OLO's new Kickstarter campaign indicates 3D printers might be next. This $99 device enables users to print 3D objects from their smartphones; according to the OLO campaign page, an iPhone 6 can print 1 inch of material in just under 2 hours.

Why it's important: Think there isn't a market for inexpensive consumer 3D printers? Think again: OLO has raised over $2 million thus far, with 12 days left in their campaign. By dematerializing and demonetizing the traditional 3D printer, making it available to anyone with a touchscreen smartphone, OLO is poised to catalyze democratization of 3D manufacturing.

Spotted by Jeffrey Krause and Cliff C. des Ligneris

Tiny Autonomous Robots Repair Circuitry Without AI

What it is: Joint research from the University of California at San Diego and the University of Pittsburgh has yielded an autonomous nanobot that can do its job -- repairing broken circuits -- without guidance from artificial intelligence. The researchers were inspired by nature, and specifically how blood platelets aggregate after you cut yourself to catalyze the healing process.

Why it's important: Autonomous nanobots could be used to intelligently deliver drugs within the body, or for self-healing materials. Imagine cellphones that can repair their own cracked screens!

Spotted by Ian Pitchford

Paul Allen Doubles Down on AI Research in Seattle

What it is: Paul Allen's Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence has announced plans to advance its Aristo technology to an eighth-grade level, and is scaling up its team and Seattle office quarters to do so. Aristo is an AI that is training to be a science expert -- a unique challenge, considering they don't have an unlimited number of scientific test questions at their disposal for training purposes.

Why it's important: "Eventually, AI2 wants to have a smart enough system that it can act as an assistant in different fields of science," reports the Seattle Times. "For example, it could scan hundreds of thousands of medical-journal articles in an instant to give doctors immediate answers to their questions." Eventually, Aristo could potentially create its own hypotheses.

Spotted by Sarah Black

What is Abundance Insider?

This email is a briefing of the week's most compelling, abundance-enabling tech developments, curated by Marissa Brassfield in preparation for Abundance 360. Read more about A360 below.

Want more conversations like this?

At Abundance 360, Peter's 250-person executive mastermind, we teach the metatrends, implications and unfair advantages for entrepreneurs enabled by breakthroughs like those featured above. The program is highly selective and we're almost full, but we're still looking for a few final CEOs and entrepreneurs who want to change the world. You can apply here.

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Fwd: Key Hiring Lessons from Amazon, Uber, Groupon, etc.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Peter Diamandis <peter@diamandis.com>
Date: Sun, Apr 3, 2016 at 10:01 AM
Subject: Key Hiring Lessons from Amazon, Uber, Groupon, etc.
To: STeve <stevescott@techacq.com>

If you want to create a successful, hyper-growth company you've got to get one thing right – hiring.

To kick off my series of blogs on "Hiring, Culture, and Experimentation", I had a chance to catch up with Jeff Holden, the current Chief Product Officer of Uber.

Jeff is a brilliant entrepreneur and executive who has held leadership roles at three hyper growth companies – Amazon, Groupon, and Uber.

We talked about many things, but in this blog, we'll focus on Jeff's advice for hiring -- these are critical lessons for every entrepreneur, so let's dive in.

Jeff Holden's Rocket Ride…

Jeff spent the first 5 years of his career at D. E. Shaw & Company, a hedge fund in New York.

With a background in computer science, Jeff soon linked up with another Jeff at D.E. Shaw…. Jeff Bezos, that is. Bezos was his first manager at D.E. Shaw, and when Bezos decided to leave the hedge fund to build an Internet company to "sell books," Jeff Holden joined him.

Holden then spent 1997-2006 on the ground floor of Amazon, which now has a market cap of $277 billion.

Holden left Amazon in 2011 to join Groupon, where he spent three years as the SVP of Product Development.

And in 2014, Travis Kalanick (CEO of Uber) tapped Jeff to come lead the product team at Uber.

Over the past 20 years, Holden has learned how to build amazing teams and create powerful cultures around experimentation and solving big problems.

As such, here are few of the key principles Jeff shared around attracting and hiring the best people in the world.

1. A-players Hire A-players and B-players Hire C-players – So Be Ruthless about Hiring A's

In order to hire the best people, you have to be ruthless.

As Jeff Holden explained, "There's literally nothing more important than getting the right people on your rocket ship."

If you lower the bar on the quality of people you let in, they will have a lower bar for the quality of people they hire. The spiral will continue to cascades downward until you're left with, well… a mediocre company.

Jeff has a saying that "A's hire A's and B's hire C's" – I couldn't agree more.

You have to be ruthless about the bar you set.

If you're going to be ruthless, you have to have simple, easy-to-follow mechanisms to make the process work.

Jeff shared some of his experiences creating these mechanisms in very high-pressure, high-growth environments, where hiring managers were ordered to build their teams and not to "dilute themselves into mediocrity."

Here's the story he shared:

"We had to make sure that we kept the bar high, so we created a program called Bar Raisers. It was very powerful and the idea was pretty simple."

"First, we handpicked a small group of people who we knew were ruthless hirers with very high standards. We dubbed them 'Bar Raisers' and their role in the interview process was pretty simple: (i) There always had to be one Bar Raiser in every single interview; and (ii) the Bar Raiser has veto power and nobody can override their veto, including the CEO or the hiring manager."

"What ends up happening is that these Bar Raisers become cultural leaders for raising the bar. They become passionate advocates of "The Bar", almost evangelists."

"Then, the Bar Raisers actually run the hiring debriefs where they collect all of the feedback and data from all of the interviews and distribute this data to the decision makers."

"The first thing we did was to take a vote. We did this with our thumbs. You could vote by putting your thumb in one of four positions – Strong Hire, Inclined to Hire, Not Inclined to Hire, Strong No Hire."

You can't choose "Middle".

"Then, there's a discussion that ensued about what do based on the voting pattern that we observed."

Finally Jeff offered, "We made a decision in that room about whether or not we're going to proceed with an offer or not. This rigor is extremely important."

You'll likely make less offers than you would have without these processes, but the quality of people you do bring in and keep will drive extraordinary value into your business.

2. Always Gauge the Passion & Interest of a Candidate

It's critical that new hires are passionate about and mission-aligned with the company.

You need to screen for this in the hiring process to ensure that there will be cultural fit amongst new people you bring onto the team.

There is a simple way to do this, as Jeff explains, simply ask them "Why do you want to work for this company?"

"It's unbelievable how many people have a terrible answer to that question," Jeff said, "The generic answer is – 'Well, you guys are doing really well…'."

Find people whose answers fit with your culture and core values (a topic we'll discuss in future blogs) and…

3. Be an Owner, Not a Renter -- Hire Patriots, Not Mercenaries

Jeff has a quote that he referenced – "Wars are won by patriots, not mercenaries" -- This is a really important idea.

In the context of hiring, this means that you need to bring patriots onto your team who aren't in it for the money.

You're looking for team members who are passionate about the mission, folks who behave like owners (of your brand, product, vision, people, mission, etc.), rather than renters who always have one foot out the door.

If the candidate just wants to make a lot of money, and they aren't passionate about the mission, they are going to burn out when things get tough and it's going to cost you. These are mercenaries, and they are bad for sustainable growth.

Note**: Be careful – a lot of mercenaries are really good at "saying the right things" to make it seem like they are value-aligned. You have to run a series of culture fit experiments to see if their actions back up their words.

4. Make sure you're working with people that 'Make You Feel Dumb'

Finally, make sure you are working with bright, intelligent people who are constantly pushing you to learn.

The people you surround yourself with in these often stressful work environments (and especially as a startup entrepreneur) can make or break your experience, and more than that, they can make or break the company.

As mentioned, this was just the tip of the iceberg of my conversation with Jeff. We'll dive further into culture and experimentation next week.

Join Me

This is the sort of conversation we explore at my 250-person executive mastermind group called Abundance 360.

The program is highly selective. If you'd like to be considered, apply here.

Share this with your friends, especially if they are interested in any of the areas outlined above.

This blog is the first in a series I am doing on "Hiring, Culture, and Experimentation". If you have questions or comments about these topics, tweet at me @peterdiamandis and @codyrapp, and we'll incorporate them into our research.

P.S. Every week I send out a "Tech Blog" like this one. If you want to sign up, go to Diamandis.com and sign up for this and Abundance Insider.

P.P.S. My dear friend Dan Sullivan and I have a podcast called Exponential Wisdom. Our conversations focus on the exponential technologies creating abundance, the human-technology collaboration, and entrepreneurship. Head here to listen and subscribe: a360.com/podcast

If you wish to stop receiving our emails or change your subscription options, please Manage Your Subscription
PHD Ventures , 800 Corporate Pointe, Suite 350, Culver City, CA 90230