Friday Fives
Friday Fives
A round up of five things that have caught our eye (or ear) this past week.
1. THE DEATH OF ONCE HIGH VC FUNDS
In the aftermath of the implosion of sweetheart VC firms Formation 8, Binary Capital, Social Capital and Rothernberg Ventures, Techcrunch charts the rise and fall, and lessons learned for startups, VCs and Limited Partners.
Read the article here: “The death of once high flying VC funds”
2. HARDWARE GENDER DIVIDE
The rapid adoption and use of mobile phones in Africa has been lauded as a significant step to bridging the region’s digital divide. In today’s world, the use of digital services is seen as essential for economic and social progress - lack of digital services impacts on job creation and employment opportunities. Kenya in particular has seen significant uptake of smartphones, which with 83% of internet traffic coming from mobile, is fundamental for enabling first internet experiences in the country, offering an entrance to the digital economy.
However recent research on Kenyan women’s rural realities from Susan Wyche and Jennifer Olson of Michigan State University, reveals a mobile handset hardware quality divide between genders. Digital development entrepreneur Wayan Vota looks at this research and how this hardware gender divide may actually be exacerbating gender inequality in Kenya.
Read the full article here: “Beware the mobile phone hardware quality divide for rural African women”
3. AI FOR HUMANITARIAN ACTION
This week Microsoft, in conjunction with the UN General Assembly, announced a new five year, $40million program - AI for Humanitarian Action. The new program is touted to use the power of AI to address four priority areas: helping the world recover from disasters, addressing the needs of children, protecting refugees and displaced people, and promoting respect for human rights.
Microsoft states that AI can solve humanitarian challenges by collaborating with NGOs. The expertise of NGOs paired with data science can make humanitarian efforts more effective in forecasting and detecting natural disasters, targeting and disrupting human trafficking, optimizing aid/supply delivery to refugees, and monitoring/preventing human rights abuse.
There has also been a lot of scepticism over AI technology and its impact. Some of the potential challenges are impact on jobs, privacy and data concerns, and ethical questions over use. And another major criticism is the lack of diversity within the AI field - a recent Wired article states that only 12% of leading AI researchers are women. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft addresses these challenges.
“we need the people who create AI for the world to reflect the diversity of the world” - Microsoft President, Brad Smith
Read more about the initiative on Brad Smith’s blog post: “Using AI to save lives” and watch the announcement here.
4. CHINA’S PODCAST INDUSTRY
China’s podcast industry is 23 times larger that America’s and is ontrack to exceed last year’s mark of $7.2B primarily due to Chinese podcasts being almost all paid subscriptions.
Read more from The Hustle here: “The podcast biz in China is 23x more valuable than in the US thanks to paid subscriptions”
5. AIRBNB PETITIONS FOR HOSTS TO GET EQUITY
In recent sharing economy developments, Airbnb has petitioned the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) to allow it to start issuing equity in the company to its hosts.
Current provisions only allow private companies to give shares to investors or employees, but the proposed changes from Airbnb would extend this to include “gig economy workers” such as Airbnb hosts or Uber drivers. Under the existing legislation, hosts are considered to be contractors rather than employees, and Airbnb see this as a means to maintain loyalty with their hosts, and also provide them with another means of compensation.
Critics make the point that this could be a convenient way to boost sales before Airbnb’s planned 2019 IPO. They also note that companies like Airbnb and Uber have in the past been very careful not to position their contractors as employees, so as to avoid costly obligations like minimum wage protection, and perhaps improving basic benefits to contractors would be a better place to start.
Regardless of motive, the proposed change has some work ahead of it in order to be passed into legislation, but remains one to watch.