The Dish Daily – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Wed, 19 Jun 2019 03:39:31 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 The Dish Daily – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Stanford-developed sleep mask claims to cure jet lag https://stanforddaily.com/2015/08/18/stanford-developed-sleep-mask-claims-to-cure-jet-lag/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/08/18/stanford-developed-sleep-mask-claims-to-cure-jet-lag/#respond Wed, 19 Aug 2015 05:33:36 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1102898 A startup founded by Stanford researchers wants to use one second of light while you’re sleeping to cure your jet lag. A sleep mask developed by LumosTech emits the light while the user sleeps, which developers claim make people feel tired three hours earlier or later per use, making it easier for travelers to adjust to a new sleep schedule.

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A startup founded by Stanford researchers wants to use one second of light while you’re sleeping to cure your jet lag. A sleep mask developed by LumosTech emits the light while the user sleeps, which developers claim make people feel tired three hours earlier or later per use, making it easier for travelers to adjust to a new sleep schedule.

LumosTech CEO Vanessa Burns. (ALINA ABIDI/The Stanford Daily)
LumosTech CEO Vanessa Burns. (ALINA ABIDI/The Stanford Daily)

The team adapted the technology from Jamie Zietzer, Stanford researcher, who studies the connection between sleep and light. Through millisecond pulses of light, the masks stimulate light sensitive nerves to affect users’ circadian rhythms without waking them. Though a few other companies utilize light to treat jet lag, this is the only one that works while you’re sleeping.

“It doesn’t preclude you from getting the seven to nine hours of sleep you’re supposed to get, but we can shift when that seven to nine hours happen,” said Vanessa Burns, LumosTech CEO and Ph.D. candidate at the School of Medicine.

According to Burns, travelers naturally recover from jet lag one hour per day, and LumosTech hopes to cut that time into a third. While a stay in London, which is eight hours ahead of California could take a week to adjust to naturally, the mask claims to cure that jet lag in a few days.

LumosTech Chief Marketing Officer Biquan Luo. (ALINA ABIDI/The Stanford Daily)
LumosTech Chief Marketing Officer Biquan Luo. (ALINA ABIDI/The Stanford Daily)

The team, comprised of four women, met in an entrepreneurship seminar at the University’s Innovation Farm, where they had to create a business plan based on a technology. For the project, they decided to focus on Zeitzer’s sleep research, who currently serves as a scientific advisor for the company. His work especially appealed to Biquan Luo, Stanford Research Fellow and Chief Marketing Officer of LumosTech — she often flew to China and was well aware of the effects of jet lag.

Currently, LumosTech is beta testing locals who travel by using 15 mostly handmade prototypes. After they get more feedback, they’ll move into production.

Zeitzer’s original technology shifted sleep cycles about 45 minutes, one-fourth of the three hours it boasts now. He and the four scientists will try to further increase that number and to further cure jet lag, one second at a time.

 

Contact Alina Abidi at alinafabidi ‘at’ gmail.com.

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Startup Call9 offers immediate medical attention https://stanforddaily.com/2015/08/02/startup-call9-offers-immediate-medical-attention/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/08/02/startup-call9-offers-immediate-medical-attention/#respond Mon, 03 Aug 2015 05:12:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1102612 Call9, a telemedicine service that acts as an alternative to calling 911, recently brought its product out of its beta test phase and into the market.

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Call9, a telemedicine service that acts as an alternative to calling 911, recently brought its product out of its beta test phase and into the market. The startup team members—two of them Stanford alumni—created a service for businesses such as hotels and nursing homes, providing immediate medical attention at the click of a button.

Call9 ‘s product consists of two components: an emergency kit, complete with an ultrasound and EKG machine, and a mobile app that can directly contact an on-call medical professional. Participating businesses receive one of Call9’s kits and can stream all data collected with its devices to the doctor working remotely.

The system recently ran its first real-life trial, in which a nursing home resident had suddenly fallen ill. Using the app, the on-call doctor was able to obtain the patient’s medical records as well as monitor his vital signs. The doctor guided a nurse at the home through the steps of the EKG; when the test revealed the patient was having a heart attack, the doctor immediately called an ambulance to the scene. Without this timely diagnosis and action, the patient may have lost his life.

In addition to the obvious perks of direct medical care, the app also provides a more flexible work schedule for emergency doctors. Currently, these medics work 12-hour shifts, giving them little flexibility in their schedule. Call9 offers an alternative financial model, allowing doctors to add extra hours according to their needs.

Perhaps, the holographic doctors from Star Trek are a not-so-distant reality; Call9 certainly pushes medical technology further into this realm.

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SUPost.com suffers temporary outage https://stanforddaily.com/2015/07/22/supost_out/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/07/22/supost_out/#comments Wed, 22 Jul 2015 22:10:16 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1102481 SUPost.com, an online classifieds site used by the Stanford community, was found to be unresponsive as of Wednesday afternoon.

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SUPost.com, an online classifieds site used by the Stanford community, suffered an outage for a period on Tuesday and Wednesday. The page, found to be unresponsive as late as Wednesday afternoon, but was later available late evening.

SUPost, a widely-used student hub for selling used books and other items, was created by Greg Wientjes ’04 M.S. ’06 Ph.D. ’10 several years ago, and has long been a integral part of the Stanford experience. SUPost.com was restricted to members of the greater Stanford community, requiring Stanford University email aliases to post classifieds on the site.

SUPost.com as of March 20, 2015. Courtesy The Wayback Machine, Archive of The Internet.
SUPost.com as of March 20, 2015. Courtesy The Wayback Machine, Archive of The Internet.

In the interim, users intent on reaching the SUPost.com landing page can access it via The Wayback Machine, courtesy of The Internet Archive.

The Daily has reached out to Wientjes for comment.

This post will be updated.

Do-Hyoung Park contributed to this story.

Contact Nitish Kulkarni at nitishk2 ‘at’ stanford.edu

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Stanford grad founds popular Polarr photo app https://stanforddaily.com/2015/07/20/polar-ceo-borui-wang-14-created-polarr-as-a-way-to-make-professional-photo-editing-tools-available-to-everyone-inspired-by-his-passion-for-photography-and-his-desire-to-have-a-product-where-people/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/07/20/polar-ceo-borui-wang-14-created-polarr-as-a-way-to-make-professional-photo-editing-tools-available-to-everyone-inspired-by-his-passion-for-photography-and-his-desire-to-have-a-product-where-people/#respond Tue, 21 Jul 2015 01:33:19 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1102454 Polar CEO Borui Wang '14 created Polarr as a way to make professional photo editing tools available to everyone.

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polarr
(Courtesy of Borui Wang) The Polarr Team (left to right): Grace Lee, Borui Wang, Karissa Paddie, Derek Yan. Not pictured: Enhao Gong.

Polarr CEO Borui Wang ’14 created the app as a way to make professional photo editing tools available to everyone. Inspired by his passion for photography and his desire to have a product where people could draw out the beautiful images they only see in their minds, he decided to create Polarr — an app that received 250,000 downloads in its first 48 hours according to an article in Business Insider.

In this interview with Wang, the founder revealed his secrets to running a successful startup and creating a product that people truly need.

 

The Stanford Daily (TSD): What were some of the most valuable insights you took away from the experience of building Polarr?

Borui Wang (BW):  I think the most valuable insight I would say is just realizing that what we are doing is not completely completely new. Before iPhones you had older cell phones — It’s just iteration after iteration. I don’t see [Polarr] as  necessary , quite honestly. We basically do certain things a little bit better than the best. And when you have all these small things that add up, then you become the new best thing.

TSD:  Can you talk a little bit about the Stanford experience of your team and how that played a role in the success of your app?

BW:  For me, the Stanford experience means a very tight schedule. In turn it sort of helps you to develop your ability to fight with deadlines. There’s plenty of classes at Stanford  that […] have the same pace as doing a startup. These classes helps you understand how to prioritize your time, your energy, how to communicate with your team, and how to  make compromises.

TSD: Can you talk a little bit about the culture and attitude of your startup?

BW:  We are very product-driven team which means we spend most of our time trying to observe how people use our products.  Some of the process that we were doing requires days and days of thinking, testing, redesigning, reimplementing, storing away brand new ideas and starting all over again. We don’t really work for long hours. Everybody in the company has plenty of their personal time but when they come back they are very productive and creative.

TSD:  If you could talk to a programmer who is thinking about making their own app, what would you say to them?

BW:  You want to work on something that you feel really matters. Be very robust, be very careful, be very detailed about the user experience. It is important to not be biased by yourself. Sometimes people do that and they will become the only user of their app. If you’re making an app, a really good signal is if your friends start to use it. Writing code — that’s almost secondary because once you have a clear idea of what people need, coming up with features, engineering and architecting it will be a lot easier.

TSD:  What is your vision regarding the future of Polarr? Where do you see your app in a couple years?

BW:  [Polarr was]  pretty much a pro editor made for everyone — we felt like people are smart enough to use professional tools. The next phase of the company is making that process even easier. People can dream of really really beautiful things but since they are not painters, they only have that image in their mind. How can you allow software to help you draw that out? I think the next step to Polarr is thinking about how we can develop these platforms and tools that use Artificial Intelligence to understand people’s intentions.

TSD:  Any other thoughts?

BW:  First of all, I would like to say that our app only works on the later iPhones. But I do want to say one other thing. Our app — if someone were to compare our app to other apps — is not the most feature rich. The reason we are so successful is we focus on just a few very special features. So, when people are spending time with our app they feel like there are no cheesy or extra features […]  all are essential. I think that’s really why we stand out.

 

This interview has been condensed and edited.

 

Contact Riya Berry at 18rberry ‘at’ castilleja.org.

 

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Air Conditioning on Campus: Where to stay cool https://stanforddaily.com/2015/06/08/air-conditioning-on-campus/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/06/08/air-conditioning-on-campus/#respond Tue, 09 Jun 2015 03:48:23 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1102062 Summer weather is finally upon us. If you’re not done with finals yet, then the fountains aren’t an option to cool off. The Daily is putting together a list of place on campus that are well air-conditioned so that you can study in peace for your last few finals. Check out our map below for […]

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Summer weather is finally upon us. If you’re not done with finals yet, then the fountains aren’t an option to cool off. The Daily is putting together a list of place on campus that are well air-conditioned so that you can study in peace for your last few finals.

Check out our map below for all the places on campus where you can beat the heat. Got more places? Tell us in the comments!


Using Google Custom Maps

Contact Nitish Kulkarni at nitishk2 ‘at’ stanford.edu

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3D Printing and Raspberry Pi: Why Stanford students should take notice of Microsoft again https://stanforddaily.com/2015/05/18/3d-printing-and-raspberry-pi-why-stanford-students-should-take-notice-of-microsoft-again/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/05/18/3d-printing-and-raspberry-pi-why-stanford-students-should-take-notice-of-microsoft-again/#respond Tue, 19 May 2015 05:50:56 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1101134 Conventional criticism aside, there’s a lot of reasons why Stanford should be taking the “New Microsoft” (as they call it) in a different light. The company has long been trying to shed its image of archaism and lethargy, and this time around, it seems like they’ve finally figured out how to shake it off. There was […]

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Conventional criticism aside, there’s a lot of reasons why Stanford should be taking the “New Microsoft” (as they call it) in a different light. The company has long been trying to shed its image of archaism and lethargy, and this time around, it seems like they’ve finally figured out how to shake it off.

There was a time when what Microsoft did had little bearing on the lives of students at Stanford, especially engineers and computer scientists. That’s no longer the case. The new Microsoft ecosystem, highly based on interoperability and incorporating open-source technologies for the first time, is something that students should take note of.

One of the most talked-about products at Build 2015 is Microsoft’s “Universal Platform,” which is a common platform incorporating applications for Windows, Xbox and Hololens. The platform allows developers to write code once and have it be deployed across the entire Microsoft ecosystem.

“How can Windows 10 let you take the code you have today and reach a billion users?” was the common refrain at Build, and we got a taste of what that meant.

More interesting about this, though, is the “Universal bridge” that Microsoft unveiled during today’s keynote.

The company created multiple pathways to the Windows 10 platform, including conduits for iOS, Android and Web applications to be automatically parsed and converted into applications compatible for the entire Windows 10 ecosystem, which includes Phone, Desktop, HoloLens and Surface.

“There is one design language and control set across the platform,” we were told at the keynote on day 2.

What is more interesting, though, from a development point of view, is that the new universal platform makes developing natively for the Microsoft platform a far more favorable option, especially if Microsoft’s parsing capabilities from Windows to iOS and Android projects is as good as they say it is.

The system performed well in what they stated was a live demo, turning a Visual C# project into Android and iOS solutions automatically, though we didn’t get the chance to run performance metrics on what the iOS and Android versions ran like.

Another cool new feature that Microsoft touted at Build was the new diagnostic setup in Visual Studio that lets you see section-specific CPU and memory utilizaion without having to run a separate profiling tool. This is definitely something that would be useful for a lot of students, though word’s still out on whether this would create issues with the Honor Code.

Development solutions aside, let’s get into what will really interest the broader Stanford community: integration with Raspberry Pi and Arduino. With Windows 10 capable of running on the new Raspberry Pi, development opportunities are endless — it’s super easy to build code for the Raspberry Pi and push it to the Windows 10 install that’s running off of it. Microsoft didn’t go too far into the details but promised to show us lots more in the coming months.

Disclaimer: I worked for the SHAH tester program for Windows 7 when I was in high school. My opinions of Microsoft and its relevance to Stanford students in this piece are based solely on my experiences at BUILD 2015.

Contact Nitish Kulkarni at nitishk2 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Throwback: ‘Stanford’s next big Internet start-up?’ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/05/13/throwback-google/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/05/13/throwback-google/#respond Thu, 14 May 2015 05:35:28 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1100807 The Stanford Daily has always been cautious about startups and their trajectories. Back in 1999, The Daily had the chance to speak to Sergey Brin MS ’95 Ph.D. ’98 and Larry Page M.S. ’98, about their (new at the time) venture Google. At the time, Google featured a Stanford-specific search feature. Anthony Chiu ’02, Contributing […]

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The Stanford Daily has always been cautious about startups and their trajectories. Back in 1999, The Daily had the chance to speak to Sergey Brin MS ’95 Ph.D. ’98 and Larry Page M.S. ’98, about their (new at the time) venture Google. At the time, Google featured a Stanford-specific search feature. Anthony Chiu ’02, Contributing Writer at The Daily at the time, asserted that “[w]hile the future is not certain for the company that proclaims itself as “Stanford’s next big Internet startup,” Google has a good chance of success because of its flexibility.”

From the archives, 22 January 1999. The Stanford Daily, Volume 214, Issue 64.

Hoping to follow in the footsteps of other successful Stanford Internet startups such as Yahoo! and Excite, two former Stanford doctoral students recently launched a new search engine company, Google.com. Google’s founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, discussed both the technical and business sides of their new company before about 40 people in the Gates Computer Science Building on Wednesday night. Frustrated by the irrelevant results that Internet searches often produce, Brin and Page worked for three years to find a better solution.

They came up with PageRank, a procedure that estimates the importance of Web pages by analyzing the link structure of the Web. “Every single Web page can affect every other Web page,” Brin said. “We consider not only [what pages] point to you, but how important they are.” With the rapidly increasing amount of information that is being added to the Internet, better search solutions are in high demand. As a result, Brin and Page saw the potential for a new company, which they have stopped out to pursue. “We had something really good at Stanford and we wanted to bring it to the world,” Brin said. Other unique features include a “Stanford Search,” which looks through Stanford Web pages, and a large number of cached pages. Cached pages are comparable to backup copies of sites, so that a user may still access the page even if it is not currently available. “Cached links are useful because if the page goes away or the server’s down, you can still get to it,” Brin said.

While the future is not certain for the company that proclaims itself as “Stanford’s next big Internet startup,” Google has a good chance of success because of its flexibility. “Fortunately, we’re not locked into any position,” Brin said, meaning that they have not yet had to decide, for example, whether to maintain a search site themselves or license their technology to others. Google is being backed by “a number of excellent ‘angels,’ only some of which we have made public,” Page said. These sources of funding include Andy Bechtolsheim, the cofounder of Sun Microsystems, as well as Stanford Computer Science Prof. David Cheriton. In addition, Google plans to go public, ideally making its initial public offering within a year. This is ambitious, as companies usually take two to four years to reach that stage, according to Brin. The site is still resolving several problems. “Duplicate links … are the biggest problem we face right now.” Brin said. “That’s something that is going to have to be reworked in the next version.”

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Stanford students ditch the small screen at BASES Demo Day https://stanforddaily.com/2015/05/10/bases-demo-day-2015/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/05/10/bases-demo-day-2015/#respond Mon, 11 May 2015 01:33:38 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1100670 The BASES Challenge Finale took place in the Arrillaga Alumni Center on the afternoon of Friday, May 8. The rows of tri-fold poster boards at the event’s Public Showcase might remind a viewer of a high school science fair, but the presenters here were pitching innovative business and socially-oriented product concepts. The event’s mass-attendance spoke […]

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The BASES Challenge Finale took place in the Arrillaga Alumni Center on the afternoon of Friday, May 8. The rows of tri-fold poster boards at the event’s Public Showcase might remind a viewer of a high school science fair, but the presenters here were pitching innovative business and socially-oriented product concepts. The event’s mass-attendance spoke to the continued strong interest in innovation on this campus. A more novel insight, however, can be gleaned from examining the types of companies presenting.

Of particular note amongst the companies in attendance is the relative abundance of products not based on a smartphone app. Given the preponderance of this type of product to the point of cliche, it was refreshing to see entrepreneurs exploring the world of opportunities available beyond a 4.7 inch screen. Smartphone apps have a lot of potential, and some of the more impressive displays at the event were indeed apps, but it is healthy for an innovative community to pursue opportunities across a broader array of possibilities.

Perhaps one reason for the diverse set of products on display this year is the BASES Challenge’s new consolidated competitive structure. While in past years business and social ventures competed in separate, siloed competitions, this year all ventures are entered into the same competition. At this point, the teams are judged based on two sets of criteria: one for overall venture viability, and one for social impact.

Audacy, a company that aims to provide uninterrupted communications to commercial spacecraft operators, was the overall winner of this year’s BASES Challenge. The winner in the Social Venture category was Evimed, which built a port protector device that attaches a needleless connector on a catheter hub to reduce central-line associated bloodstream infections.

Contact Jason Lopata at jlopata ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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The Relentless Ann Miura-Ko https://stanforddaily.com/2015/05/04/the-relentless-ann-miura-ko/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/05/04/the-relentless-ann-miura-ko/#respond Mon, 04 May 2015 07:26:42 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1100032 Public speaking was Floodgate co-founder Ann Miura-Ko’s, Ph.D. ’10, biggest fear. During her junior high piano recitals, she struggled to say her name or the name of the piece she was performing. “I was a painfully shy student,” Miura-Ko said. In eighth grade, Miura-Ko’s older brother had to accompany her on stage to announce her […]

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Public speaking was Floodgate co-founder Ann Miura-Ko’s, Ph.D. ’10, biggest fear.

During her junior high piano recitals, she struggled to say her name or the name of the piece she was performing. “I was a painfully shy student,” Miura-Ko said.

Ann Miura-Ko, Floodgate cofounder Courtesy Ann Miura-Ko
Ann Miura-Ko, Floodgate co-founder, did her Ph.D. in the Quantitative Modeling of Computer Security at Stanford
Courtesy Ann Miura-Ko

In eighth grade, Miura-Ko’s older brother had to accompany her on stage to announce her name.

“This is ridiculous,” Miura-Ko thought. “I need to get over this.”

As a freshman at Palo Alto High School, she joined the speech and debate team – entirely a personal decision.

Throughout her freshman and sophomore year, she didn’t win a single tournament. Her protective parents didn’t believe a child raised in a Japanese-speaking family could compete with English-speaking household children. In fact, before Miura-Ko’s junior year, her parents told her she had to quit the team if she lost the first two tournaments.

This motivated her even more.

In the summer, Miura-Ko immersed herself in books to prepare for the upcoming year. She convinced Stanford undergraduate students to coach her since the high school lacked funds.

She didn’t have to quit after junior year. She won the first two tournaments and eventually the Tournament of Champions in Lincoln Douglas debate.

“I think if I hadn’t taken speech and debate, I wouldn’t have gotten over it,” the now confident and articulate Miura-Ko said.

Like overcoming her fear of public speaking and winning the National Debate Championship, Miura- Ko does everything relentlessly and with “world class effort”. Growing up, her father consistently asked her and her older brother, “Is that world-class effort?” Whether it was asked during household chores or while completing a book report, the question resonated with her.

“It’s a question I ask myself almost every day on a lot of different dimensions,” Miura-Ko said. “It helps me figure out not only if the effort was good enough, but also what are they ways I would improve it if I were to do it over again.”

Miura-Ko’s world-class effort is evident. Since co-founding Floodgate in 2007, she has made successful investments including Lyft, Ayasdi, Xamarin, Refinery29, Chloe and Isabel and TaskRabbit.

An Entrepreneur From Day One

Raised by a father who was a NASA rocket scientist and a mother who encouraged exploration, Miura-Ko was an intensely curious child.

When Miura-Ko was six years old, her father bought her a PCjr. She didn’t just use it as a normal computer. The young Miura-Ko wanted to dissect it and see how it functioned. In the third grade, she realized there was no Japanese font for the PCjr. For her science fair, she created her own. This was the start of the determined entrepreneur.

“I would develop interests and I would be relentless about pursuing them,” Miura-Ko said.

As a four year old, Miura-Ko would play on the piano until her parents told her to stop.

“There are certain things if I wanted to do it, I would be relentlessly persistent in asking my parents for help in doing it,” she said. “And then also doing it myself.”

Recognizing Potential

Throughout her childhood, Miura-Ko didn’t have a set a career path. She dreamed of being many things such as a farmer. She also wanted to be a doctor, but she soon learned she was afraid of blood and hospitals.

During her junior year at Yale University (B.S. Electrical Engineering ‘98), she had a chance encounter with Hewlett Packard CEO Lew Platt. Platt offered Miura-Ko the opportunity to shadow him for a week over her spring break.

After the externship, Platt sent Miura-Ko two photos: one of Platt sitting on a white couch and talking with Bill Gates, the other of Platt sitting on the same exact couch talking with Miura-Ko. [see photo]

“I don’t know if I saw Bill Gates so much as a role model as much as almost a pivot in how I saw the potential in myself,” Miura-Ko said. “It took someone like Lew Platt, CEO of Hewlett Packard, to allow me to see that in myself.” Miura-Ko aspired to create her own Bill Gates success story.

PhD Student, Venture Capitalist and Mom: Making it All Happen

The odds were against Miura-Ko when she had to make the decision to co-found a venture capital firm. It was 2008 and the nation was in the midst of a financial crisis. She was also still competing for her PhD in Quantitative Modeling in Computer Security at Stanford University — all while she was pregnant with her first child. Miura-Ko had originally wanted to become a technical founder of a company, but found the opportunity to be an investor alluring. She was determined to have it all.

“Knowing what the rewards are of doing all of those things… How could you not do it? So what would you actually leave out?” Miura-Ko said. “There was no part of it I wanted to leave out. I wanted to be a mom. I wanted to found Floodgate. I needed that PhD. I devoted so many years of my life to it. I needed to finish it.” To this day, Miura-Ko sees this as her proudest accomplishment.

Floodgate cofounder Mike Maples still doesn’t understand how she it handled it all. “If she decides something is important to her she doesn’t go halfway ever,” Maples said. “She has this incredibly strong will to overpower the subject of her interest and relentlessly get better and smarter at it. It takes incredible amount of mental stamina to do that.”

“You make it happen by doing the things that you need to do like waking up whenever you needed to. But then, also asking for help in the right places,” said Miura-Ko. She learned to be unafraid of asking for help and often reached out to her husband, parents and friends for support. “It was a whole cheerleading section and a support structure that allowed me to do it.” Her support system allowed her to take the risk to pursue her dreams.

Miura-Ko is now a mother to three children. Maples admires Miura-Ko’s drive to manage the work-life balance. “She has crazy high energy like a hummingbird,” Maples said. “You have to film that a thousand frames a second.”

Whether it’s reviewing a startup pitch, advising portfolio companies or raising her three children, Miura-Ko is sure to do it with tenacity and “world-class effort.”

Contact Kasey Quon at kquon ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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The Pentagon’s attempted tryst with Silicon Valley https://stanforddaily.com/2015/05/04/the-pentagons-attempted-tryst-with-silicon-valley/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/05/04/the-pentagons-attempted-tryst-with-silicon-valley/#respond Mon, 04 May 2015 07:18:11 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1100171 Cemex Auditorium was filled to the brim on the morning of Thursday, April 23, with an audience eager to hear the recently appointed Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, deliver this year’s annual Drell Lecture (the Drell Lecture, named for the first director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, is an annual public event […]

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Cemex Auditorium was filled to the brim on the morning of Thursday, April 23, with an audience eager to hear the recently appointed Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, deliver this year’s annual Drell Lecture (the Drell Lecture, named for the first director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, is an annual public event addressing a critical national or international security issue). The audience knew Secretary Carter well—Carter has long been a part of the Stanford community, most recently as a visiting scholar at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) immediately before assuming his present role—and the attendees read like a who’s who list of the departments based in Encina Hall. But Secretary Carter did not come back to Stanford just to reconnect with old friends: He came to Silicon Valley with a mission to attract technological talent which can help the US government adapt and respond to the new range of threats it faces on the cyber front.

Secretary Carter outlined the new profile of threats the United States faces. The development of Internet technology has brought incalculable economic benefit to America and many other places around the world, yet our new-found reliance on Internet technology has led to “real liabilities.” As more of our world becomes connected to the Internet, the potential for harmful agents to use the Internet to inflict lasting economic or physical harm grows. The United States government seeks to mitigate that risk as much as it can, while balancing security measures with a commitment to maintaining the spirit of freedom and privacy that is essential to America’s character.

Secretary Carter stressed that a closer partnership between the government, private businesses and academia is crucial to keeping up with the threats we face. He cited WWII as an example of a time when this partnership was very strong, and noted the critical role that government defense spending has had in initiating and sustaining Silicon Valley as we know it. Yet Secretary Carter would also acknowledge that, at times, the dynamic between these three has not been so mutually amicable. He thinks that the bond right now could be stronger.

The main thrust of Secretary Carter’s speech came as he outlined his plan for “Rewiring the Pentagon,” the title of this lecture. This “rewiring” essentially consists of adjusting the means through which young people can work with the Pentagon, so as to improve the innovative talent it can bring on-board. The Department of Defense recognizes that young people today want flexibility, and are less inclined to want to be bogged down on a single career path. Thus, the Pentagon will pursue initiatives such as exchange programs and set-time fellowships that will allow people to “try” working on a government mission; the Pentagon hopes that some who try will like their experience enough to stay.

Additionally, the Pentagon recognizes that it is unable to offer the same financial incentives to its employees as would be available to a person with similar talent working in Silicon Valley. To address this question, the Pentagon hopes to be able to attract people through the strength of its mission—along the lines of being a part of something bigger than yourself—and the unique, complex challenges defense research offers.

In general, Secretary Carter seemed to offer a “rotating door” of sorts. Those with innovative talent can bounce around the private sector, the public sector, and academia. This type of interplay already exists a fair bit at the higher levels—Secretary Carter is himself a perfect example. Now he would like to extend this arrangement to greater numbers of people, fostering sectors that more directly feed off one another. Such initiatives by the Pentagon may open new types of job opportunities for Stanford graduates, amongst others.

Secretary Carter went on to describe in more detail his department’s approach to cyber-security. He outlined his objectives as defending DoD systems, protecting American civilians from cyber threats that could cause loss of life or lasting economic damage and developing offensive cyber capabilities so as to deter potential attackers. Intriguingly, this set of objectives sounds quite similar to the Pentagon’s objectives with respect to conventional threats. Perhaps, as was the case with defending our skies at the outset of the Cold War, the Pentagon will need to add a new means of defense to its arsenal so as to respond to a threat on a new front brought about by global technological advancement.

If it is indeed the case that the development of cyber-warfare mechanisms in the 2010s and 2020s plays a similar role as did the development of air power during the 1940s and 1950s, we may expect to see a lot more than exchange programs out of the Pentagon on this front; we may expect to see large-scale direct investment in technologies which help the Pentagon keep American cyber systems safe. Aspiring entrepreneurs, take note.

Contact Jason Lopata at jlopata ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Beyond Starbucks: The ‘Third Place’ for work and socialization https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/22/hanahaus-breather/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/22/hanahaus-breather/#comments Thu, 23 Apr 2015 05:00:10 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1099468 Starbucks has grown to become a near-ubiquitous feature on the American urban landscape since its initial expansion in the late 1980s, because of the space it provides for people, not because of its coffee. Starbucks pioneered what it calls the ‘third place’, a place less formal than a workplace and more intimate than a person’s […]

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Starbucks has grown to become a near-ubiquitous feature on the American urban landscape since its initial expansion in the late 1980s, because of the space it provides for people, not because of its coffee. Starbucks pioneered what it calls the ‘third place’, a place less formal than a workplace and more intimate than a person’s home, opening coffeehouses in the Italian tradition in the United States. Over the past week, I’ve had the chance to learn more about two new public spaces in our area.

Starbucks' creation of a 'third place' set the tone for many emulators. Ashley Westhem/The Stanford Daily
Starbucks’ creation of a ‘third place’ set the tone for many emulators.
(ASHLEY WESTHEM/The Stanford Daily).

On March 17, while Stanford students were preoccupied with final exams for Winter Quarter, HanaHaus, a new coffee shop and collaborative workspace opened up in the historic New Varsity Theater building on University Avenue. Set in a 15,000 square-foot space comprising the mission-styled courtyard of the old theater and the building’s interior, HanaHaus occupies the former home of the Borders bookstore which closed in 2011.

HanaHaus' Main Entrance on University Avenue Jason Lopata/The Stanford Daily
HanaHaus’ Main Entrance on University Avenue
(JASON LOPATA/The Stanford Daily).

It is difficult to describe what kind of a place HanaHaus is using straightforward categories. On one hand, HanaHaus is a cafe, with food and beverages supplied by the Blue Bottle Coffee Company and a picturesque courtyard. Yet affixed to the cafe is a large workspace which resembles the basement of the Huang Engineering Center on the Stanford campus. HanaHaus charges clients by the hour for usage of its open work space and private meeting rooms.

The relationship between these two halves may not be immediately clear to customers of either, but when I visited, HanaHaus had the foresight to station a friendly greeter at the main entrance to explain how this unorthodox arrangement worked.

Generally speaking, HanaHaus appears to have good prospects for doing well down the road. The food and drinks compete well with other cafes in the area–though the menu is fairly limited in breadth–and it seems reasonable that many people in the vicinity of Palo Alto would be willing to pay for flexible office space on an hourly basis, particularly at a location as central as that of HanaHaus.

That being said, I think that there are a few hitches that HanaHaus will need to overcome in order to be successful in the long-run. First, their website does not paint the picture well of what a customer will experience at HanaHaus. HanaHaus articulates its three main ideas as Work, Learn, Play–and inexplicably connects these three concepts to a red square, a yellow triangle and a blue circle, respectively.

HanaHaus' Courtyard Jason Lopata/The Stanford Daily
HanaHaus’ Courtyard
Jason Lopata/The Stanford Daily

The website describes the “Work” component well, but it certainly falls short on the other two categories. HanaHaus claims that it will be hosting events regularly where “entrepreneurs can come together to meet, socialize, share ideas and connect with experts.” This sounds like a really cool idea! But when you follow the link to find out more about these events, the Eventbrite page shows zero past or upcoming events. In terms of “Play,” the website gives no further explanation than “There are plenty of fun things to do at HanaHaus,” accompanied by a picture of a foosball table. Based on my visit, their picture selection was apt; the single foosball table they had in a corner was the only obviously fun thing to do at HanaHaus.

Beyond the website, there are some issues on the ground which call into question the viability of HanaHaus. While the convenient access of an affixed cafe is nice for a work station, the associated kitchen noises certainly are not. During my visit, the clanging of the dishes and the whirring of the coffee machines were loud to the point where I had to actively focus even to hear the ambient music playing overhead. This issue may well deter clients who need to minimize distraction and focus on getting their work done.

Additionally, HanaHaus will need to make sure that they get people to book their private meeting rooms, for which they charge substantially more than the general access fee. The general access fee is rather inexpensive, so it is hard to see HanaHaus making much of a profit from their workspace unless they can bring in the greater revenue streams which come from the private rooms. I grant that it was a Sunday, but when I was there the open workspace was pretty busy but not a single private room was in use. With these issues taken care of, however, HanaHaus may well become a permanent fixture on the downtown Palo Alto setting.

Breather, a startup with roots in Canada which launched 15 months ago in New York, takes a dramatically different approach to the ‘third place’ from HanaHaus. Where HanaHaus seeks to foster collaborative work by bringing people together to a common workplace, Breather aims to fulfill a different market niche by allowing users to rent private rooms in central urban locations on an hourly (or even sub-hourly) basis. Operating under the tagline “peace and quiet, on demand,” Breather believes that often times people want a place which is not in public but where they can meet others or get work done on their own. I was invited by Breather to sample a couple of their 16 San Francisco locations.

View from the Breather at 703 Market Street, San Francisco Jason Lopata/The Stanford Daily
View from the Breather at 703 Market Street, San Francisco
Jason Lopata/The Stanford Daily

Armed with free and fast Wi-Fi, comfortable furniture, and people to clean the locations after each use, Breather rooms accomplish their mission of providing a quiet, well, ‘breather’ from the pandemonium of the urban streets. Yet given their privacy, Breather locations may well accomplish missions other than those for which they were intended; nefarious minds might think of many uses for a totally private space booked by the hour, “on demand.” Such total privacy may also make Breather rooms less attractive for certain types of seemingly wholesome meetings as well, as the guest of the meeting who may never have met the host cannot rely on the security of the public gaze.

Breather Interior, 9 Kearny Street, San Francisco Jason Lopata/The Stanford Daily
Breather Interior, 9 Kearny Street, San Francisco
Jason Lopata/The Stanford Daily

Yet Julien Smith, the CEO of Breather, assures me that although almost every investor and critic has raised similar concerns, they are more imagined than real. Smith claims that illicit activities have not caused much issue for his company, and that the bigger problem he is facing at the moment is to expand the amount of space Breather has on offer to meet the overwhelming demand. Critically, Smith points out that Breather’s target market is slightly different from that of competitors like Starbucks or HanaHaus. While coffee shops and cafes may be good places to work for an hour or two on your own or with a small group of people, when you want to really dig into a big project for a longer period of time with a larger group of people, you need a more spacious and private workplace. As such, Breather has seen a lot of business from start-ups or even bigger companies who need a quick, temporary expansion of office space to tackle a particular project. Thus, he sees places like Starbucks more as complements to his product than competitors.

Indeed, the increasing variety of ‘third place’ locations available in the Bay Area can only be seen as a boon to companies and individual professionals. While no location is good for all purposes, the diversity of locations, each offering its own advantages and disadvantages, add up to create a whole which gives people here the flexibility to choose different settings for different types of interpersonal objectives.

[justified_image_grid ids=1099584,1099585,1099586,1099587,1099588,1099589,1099591]

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XPRIZE: Funding solutions for tech-enabled learning https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/21/xprize-funding-solutions-for-tech-enabled-learning/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/21/xprize-funding-solutions-for-tech-enabled-learning/#comments Wed, 22 Apr 2015 06:33:39 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1099496 "There's 60 million kids around the world who don't have physical access to teachers. Can we make technology and content that is so intuitive that children can teach themselves and each other?" Covering a competition that's trying to find out the answer to that question.

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Over the past 20 years, the XPRIZE Foundation has become famous for sparking private sector innovation in space technology and exploration. Their latest challenge, the Global Learning XPRIZE, doesn’t literally reach for the stars, but is just as ambitious: it aims to bring education to every child in the world, especially the 250 million children around the world who cannot read, write or do basic math. Blending technology and education is not a foreign concept to Silicon Valley: entrepreneurs have been creating MOOCs (massive open online courses, for the uninitiated), code camps and teaching tools for years. However, Matt Keller, Senior Director of the Global Learning XPRIZE, assured me that this challenge wants to create something different.

xprize website

“There’s 60 million kids around the world who don’t have physical access to teachers. Can we make technology and content that is so intuitive that children can teach themselves and each other?” Keller asked.

Keller’s background as Vice-President of One Laptop per Child makes him perhaps one of the most qualified people to discuss technology-enabled learning – the Global Learning XPRIZE’s mission statement reads almost identically to One Laptop per Child’s: to bring software and content to children in developing countries in order to spark self-empowered learning. Supporting this lofty goal is a $15 million prize, with $1 million awarded to each of the five finalists and $10 million awarded to the ultimate winner.

While registration ends on April 30, 2015, competitors have until Nov. 2016 to work on their open-source software and content solutions, which must be offered in both English and Swahili. This initial round of submissions is vetted by judges until five teams remain. The solutions of these five finalists then undergo an 18-month pilot program: each solution is given – along with Android tablets – to approximately 3,000 children in a developing country (likely in Sub-Saharan Africa). The ultimate winner is selected by the results – whichever solution produces the largest improvements in reading, writing and arithmetic proficiency will be the winner. Post-competition, all five finalist solutions are released to the world as open-source.

Keller encourages anyone interested in transforming education to apply immediately. The Global Learning XPRIZE helps individuals find team members from around the world. It’s clear that this challenge can’t be tackled alone. Keller estimates that “a good team size is probably around 10 people.” Even if someone doesn’t have a programming background, they can bring meaningful impact to a team.

“Teams need programming expertise, but teams will need many other backgrounds, especially neuroscience, graphic art, gaming, local content and storytelling,” Keller speculated.

“Proving that kids can really teach themselves without adults is a big if,” Keller added. “But if we can prove it, we’ll have discovered something huge. It can be an answer to a real, global crisis.”

And just as Keller believes that children will use this technology if given the opportunity, he’s betting that – if the Global Learning XPRIZE confirms that software and content can enable self-education – hardware innovation will follow.

The Global Learning XPRIZE is an opportunity to be a part of what Keller labels “a civilization-wide transformation.” Keller urges “anyone with even an inkling to get involved,” as it is a competition open to students and working professionals alike.

Registration and additional information can be found at http://learning.xprize.org/. The registration deadline is April 30, 2015.

 

Contact Kendrick Kho at kkho207 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Neighborly: Invest money in social good https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/12/neighbrly-invest-in-social-good/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/12/neighbrly-invest-in-social-good/#respond Mon, 13 Apr 2015 04:47:29 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1098753 Doing well while doing good may become easier in the near future. Neighborly is a financial startup with offices in Kansas City and San Francisco focused on allowing citizens to fund local government projects and make money in the process. By making instruments called “municipal bonds” more readily accessible to individual investors, Neighborly will enable retail investors – people like you and me – to invest in relatively secure, tax-free securities while funding the communities that they care about.

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Doing well while doing good may become easier in the near future. Neighborly is a financial startup with offices in Kansas City and San Francisco focused on allowing citizens to fund local government projects and make money in the process. By making instruments called “municipal bonds” more readily accessible to individual investors, Neighborly will enable retail investors – people like you and me – to invest in relatively secure, tax-free securities while funding the communities that they care about.

Municipal bonds help local governments finance development

Put simply, municipal bonds are a way for local governments to borrow money when they need to finance projects, such as the construction of water facilities, playgrounds, hospitals, educational facilities, etc. When they issue municipal bonds, governments borrow money and pay that amount back in the future, plus interest. On Neighborly, you can currently choose to invest in projects related to “Education,” “Green Spaces,” “Transportation,” “Environment,” “Urban Spaces,” “Healthcare,” “Housing,” “Sports” and, soon, “Technology.” Municipal bonds are an especially attractive investment because their returns are tax-exempt.

Jase Wilson, a technology entrepreneur who holds degrees in urban planning and design from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, co-founded Neighborly after spending a decade studying cities and speaking with countless community builders. It was during a breakfast with a municipal bond trader in which the idea for Neighborly became clear.

“There were a lot of middleman that made you wonder how much money would actually get to the ground… Why isn’t there a Lending Club or AngelList for cities? Why isn’t there a Kickstarter for municipal bonds?” he said at the breakfast.

Neighborly has since evolved from its original concept of donation-based crowdfunding for local governments toward becoming an actual investing platform dealing in securities. On Neighborly, users can view a list of prospective municipal projects, follow along with  the developments of a bond deal, and provide financial capital to the projects that they care about.

Current projects on Neighborly’s beta platform include new housing facilities for Indiana University and St. John’s University, a bond refinancing deal for Yucaipa Valley’s water filtration facilities, new sewer systems for Sacramento, California, for example. Those projects are examples of what Wilson calls the first phase of Neighborly, addressing the municipal bond market “as is.” Eventually, Neighborly will allow issuers of municipal bonds to post deals directly, optimized for individual investors in their community. In that long range vision, smaller community-scale projects that used to lack financing options will be enabled, such as neighborhood wireless mesh networks, charter schools, community solar, skate parks and more.

Simplifying investing for retail investors

The current municipal bond system is complex enough to deter the regular retail investor. The process varies from project to project, but often takes this form: When a local government has an idea for a project, they create a proposal for a loan and hire one or more underwriters to help them find retail investors and institutional buyers to fund the loan. The issuer then publishes a preliminary official statement (a POS) that includes information about the bonds being offered and about the financial health of the issuer. Interested investors can then express interest in investing in the deal by submitting an indication of interest (an IOI), which is a non-binding indication to the broker-dealer that an investor would like to receive updates on the bond deal. During the order period, investors can confirm their intent to buy the bonds with an order to the broker-dealer, who then submits the order to the underwriter. Once this period has closed, the underwriter allocates the bonds to each investor based on order priority. The bonds are then transferred to the investor’s accounts and an official statement with the finalized price and interest rate of the bonds. Investors then receive regular payments of the interest on the bonds, which, in the case of municipal bonds, are usually tax-free. The investor receives these payments until the bond reaches it maturity, at which point the issuer pays back the original amount borrowed.

Where does Neighborly fit in? The average retail investor normally wouldn’t be able to access these bonds until after the price has been considerably bid up on the secondary market. By increasing accessibility to the bonds when they are first being originated, Neighborly allows retail investors to buy bonds earlier, at better prices, and opens up an entirely new capital base to local governments.  By helping issuers optimize for retail, Neighborly also enables more people to participate in the market, thus increasing liquidity in the market.

When asked about Neighborly’s long-term vision, Wilson said “municipal bonds are a gateway drug.” Neighborly hopes to make the broader fixed-income (bond) market more accessible to the average investor. Whereas stocks have enjoyed innovations in market infrastructure that have given retail investors access, the fixed-income market has been left in the dust, and Neighborly hopes to take its innovation in technology and market infrastructure to other types of bonds as well.

Neighborly is looking for strong developers with experience in data science, who are interested in helping cash-strapped communities through technology. Reach out via https://neighborly.com/contact if you are interested in joining the team.  

Contact Andrew Han at handrew ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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A review of the Oculus Rift https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/02/a-review-of-the-oculus-rift/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/02/a-review-of-the-oculus-rift/#respond Thu, 02 Apr 2015 18:52:49 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1098122 The Stanford Daily's review of the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset.

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Facebook’s acquisition of the Oculus Rift in March 2014 raised some eyebrows in the tech world and drew attention to emerging virtual reality technology. The Rift is a head-mounted display that, according to Mark Zuckerberg in his announcement of the acquisition on Facebook, allows its user to enter a “completely immersive computer-generated environment, like a game or a movie scene or a place far away. The incredible thing about the technology is that you feel like you’re actually present in another place with other people. People who try it say it’s different from anything they’ve ever experienced in their lives.” While the most readily apparent use case for the Rift may be in providing an immersive gaming environment, Facebook hopes to use the Rift’s technology as a communication platform: “Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face — just by putting on goggles in your home.”

Photo courtesy of Oculus Rift.
Photo courtesy of Oculus Rift.

The Dish Daily was able to get its hands on an Oculus Rift to try this experience, playing Team Fortress 2. As it stands, the use cases have yet to be fully explored, but the Rift shows enormous potential to fundamentally change the way we think about communication and entertainment media — and at a bearable price, at that!

Configuration

The Oculus set comes with a headset and head-tracking camera. The headset has two straps on the side and one on top to fit snugly over your head, and the OLED display can be seen through a goggle-like structure. With a display for each eye, the Rift is able to create a 3D, stereoscopic view.

In terms of software configuration (and this is not an exhaustive list), the Rift acts as a sort of second monitor in the sense that you can opt for an extended screen, in which windows would become visible to the Rift by dragging them outside of the standard monitor, or a duplicate monitor, where the Rift would display whatever was on the computer monitor. Another prominent setting was being able to adjust the clarity of the display to your eyesight.

Gaming: Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 is part of a series of popular first-person shooter games produced by Valve Software. Starting out, head rotation was pretty seamless. In the Team Fortress starting chamber, you could move your head 360 degrees and the display would change the scenery with startlingly low latency. However, as you start playing, the experience becomes incredibly dizzying. Given the pace of the game, turning your head as you are running and jumping around in the game landscape begins making you feel nauseous — so much so that it becomes difficult to play after a couple minutes. A solution that I found to combat the nausea was to keep my head still and play the game normally, but at that rate, the Rift just becomes a pair of 3D glasses that enable a bit of peripheral vision. Perhaps it’s because I’m not an avid gamer, but I have yet to be convinced as to how the Rift could be used to practically enhance the gaming experience.

Example of the stereoscopic view. Photo courtesy of The Rift Arcade.
Example of the stereoscopic view. Photo courtesy of The Rift Arcade.

3D videos

Although less interactive than playing video games, the Rift made watching 3D videos particularly unique. Since videos are not dynamically generated, you cannot turn your head to control the view, so it’s not truly “immersive,” but the Rift is able to turn compatible videos into an experience akin to watching a movie in 3D. It’s not too much of a leap to imagine the same technology being used to enrich other forms of entertainment media or making video communication more immersive.

The possibilities

At $350, the Rift’s price is becoming affordable to the general consumer, but with the few present use cases, it has yet to become a commonplace item. There is no doubt, however, that as more apps are developed to support the Rift and as its potential functions become more apparent, the Rift could be used in capacities such as remote interactions for patient care, training and simulation, education and so on. Combined with existing work such as Google’s Street View, the Rift could potentially make seeing any part of the world accessible at the click of a button. At that rate, the $350 price tag becomes a bargain for the sort of communicative power that the Rift could enable.

You can talk to Andrew Han at handrew ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Women in Tech: Lisa Falzone discusses Revel Systems and adrenaline rush of being a founder https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/17/women-in-tech-lisa-falzone/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/17/women-in-tech-lisa-falzone/#respond Tue, 17 Mar 2015 16:00:36 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1097650 Lisa Falzone, 30, co-founder and CEO of Revel Systems, a point-of-sale technology company, thrives under high-pressure situations. After graduating, the former Stanford varsity swimmer realized she missed the adrenaline rush and competitive spirit and filled that void with the entrepreneurship world. “It’s really team-oriented and you learn how to perform at a high level under high-pressure […]

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Lisa Falzone, 30, co-founder and CEO of Revel Systems, a point-of-sale technology company, thrives under high-pressure situations. After graduating, the former Stanford varsity swimmer realized she missed the adrenaline rush and competitive spirit and filled that void with the entrepreneurship world.

“It’s really team-oriented and you learn how to perform at a high level under high-pressure situations,” Falzone said of being an athlete.[pullquote]”Women need to be more into tech. There’s a lot of GDP missing in the United States just because women aren’t as involved as they should be.”[/pullquote]

“In entrepreneurship everyday, it gives you that adrenaline rush [like] being on that block as a swimmer. The passion I had for swimming got translated into entrepreneurship.”400

After throwing out a couple of business ideas, such as a toy company, Falzone and Revel Systems co-founder Chris Ciabarra decided to focus on the restaurant industry. After talking to local restaurant owners, they found an opportunity revolutionizing the 25-year-old and bulky point-of-sales system. Revel Systems provides retailers, such as Smoothie King and Sonos, an efficient point-of-sales system using an Apple iPad and cloud-based technology. Falzone has led Revel Systems to a $400 million valuation.

Falzone’s success is clear, and she has been named to the Forbes “30 Under 30,” Business Insider’s “30 Most Important Women Under 30 In Tech” and San Francisco Business Times “40 Under 40” lists.

The Stanford Daily: You studied history at Stanford. What’s the best advice for someone who doesn’t have a technical background and wants to enter the tech industry?

Lisa Falzone: It shouldn’t dissuade you. You always have to realize you have to learn technical skills or you have to partner with someone who is an expert in the technical field. Sales are such an important aspect of the business and finding the product market fit. The pairing of liberal arts major and computer scientist major is great to create a successful company. I think a lot of companies are unsuccessful because they’re too engineering focused and they forgot about the customer and human element.

TSD: What skills have you applied from your history major to your position as CEO of a tech company?

LF: In history, you have all of this material. If you’re in a class, you get 20 different books. It’s about finding what’s important and getting the main substance. You have to good at filtering a lot of data and what’s the most important and running a company is the same thing. You have to get good at figuring out what’s critical and focus on that and this really increases your efficiency.

TSD: Women only receive five to 10 percent of venture capital. Why do you think that is?

LF: A lot of venture capitalists are a little bit old school and they still have the mindset that women are supposed to be at home and not working. It’s a complicated issue because it definitely exists, but it’s just a matter of time before it changes. There hasn’t been a Steve Jobs as a woman. Until we have that Steve Jobs as a woman, where they can actually see someone that’s created a company from zero into a multibillion company, you’re still going to get this bias. People invest in what they’ve seen has been successful and people also invest in people who are like them and they can relate to.

TSD: How do we get women more involved?

LF: It’s all about trying. When I look back at it, all of my friends who started companies are all guys.

TSD: What made you stand out from the rest of your friends that are girls?

LF: While I certainly can’t speak on behalf of all women, I think a big differentiator for me is that I simply pushed ahead with my goals and didn’t worry about how I might be perceived. I was pretty clueless about the gender issues in technology so I didn’t really think too much about it. All my life, men were treated equal to women in school and in sports, so I didn’t think business would be any different. I think I also just had the courage to follow my dreams and the grit to meet every challenge and keep going.[pullquote]”There hasn’t been a Steve Jobs as a woman. Until we have that Steve Jobs as a woman, where they can actually see someone that’s created a company from zero into a multibillion company, you’re still going to get this bias.”[/pullquote]

TSD: Revels Systems just announced the Revels Scholars Program. It provides two young entrepreneurs with $10,000 scholarships and mentorship from you and co-founder Chris Ciabarra. What made you want to create this?

LF: Our product and company is the “American Dream in a Box.” Our vision is for people to start businesses and grow them. That is really what the scholars program is about — encouraging entrepreneurship and giving people a mentorship program opportunity where they can go to someone that’s been there and ask them questions and advice.

TSD: Can you talk about your past mentorship experience and what role it played to journey to Revel Systems?

LF: I didn’t really have a direct mentorship program, which is one of the reasons I wanted to create this: because it would’ve been super helpful for me.

TSD: What makes a good mentorship experience?

LF: It’s like treating it as a team environment. It’s more of a collaborative approach.

TSD: What is your outlook on women in tech in the future?

LF: Women need to be more into tech. There’s a lot of GDP missing in the United States just because women aren’t as involved as they should be. I think having women more involved is a win-win for everyone.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

Contact Kasey Quon at kquon ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Making Silicon Valley sense of the ‘Internet of Things’ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/13/making-silicon-valley-sense-of-the-internet-of-things/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/13/making-silicon-valley-sense-of-the-internet-of-things/#respond Fri, 13 Mar 2015 17:50:11 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1097278 Kendrick Kho talks about seeing IoT at last year's Dublin's Web Conference.

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Last November, I traveled to Dublin, Ireland to attend the Web Summit, Europe’s largest tech event with over 20,000 attendees. The most prominent trend was the Internet of Things (IoT) — adding Internet connectivity to just about any and every object around us.

Wandering around the recent career fairs at Stanford, you’ll probably hear different topics discussed over and over: “Machine learning” is one of today’s most popular terms, but contenders like “computer vision” and “wearables” also hold a great deal of popularity. While Silicon Valley is the unofficial tech capital of the world, listening to what’s buzzing in the other tech cultures around the world can be extremely informative. In Dublin, for instance, IoT seemed to take much more real estate in the minds of tech leaders than is apparent here at Stanford.

Stanford and the Silicon Valley are awash in startups attacking “big data,” “machine learning,” etc. However, IoT has had little traction around the area. This disparity is perhaps not surprising, given the lack of prominent startups explicitly focusing on the IoT space. Only two startups have gained mainstream recognition in the Silicon Valley. One such startup is Nest, which creates self-learning home gadgets. Nest was acquired by Google in Feb. 2014 for $3.2 billion. The second such startup is Dropcam, which offers remotely-viewable cameras. Google similarly purchased Dropcam for $555 million in June 2014. Outside these two purchases, IoT technology development (particularly hardware) has been largely unglamorous, hidden within the efforts of GE Software, Microsoft and other industry giants.

In Dublin, though, the Internet of Things was at the forefront of discussion. More importantly, application of the “IoT label” at the Web Summit was much less generic than the unfocused attachment of “IoT” to any project involving the Internet and physical objects. Instead, an IoT venture was understood to be the application of Internet connectivity to objects not traditionally understood as networked.

The speakers at the Web Summit were emphatic that the Internet of Things does not just comprise the microcosm of individual products, be it automated cars or fitness-measuring wristbands. The Internet of Things is also the smart home, the smart workplace, even the smart city — IoT brings with it the promise of stitching software into the fabric of our daily lives, integrated across all aspects. Yet with an ubiquitously connected world comes issues of privacy and security.

Tony Fadell, founder and CEO of Nest, shared concerns about information security.

“Nest products are invited into [people’s] homes,” he told the audience. “It’s critical to earn their trust, country by country, home by home.”

Fadell emphasized the importance of the fact that data from Nest products is not leveraged by Google for the purpose of targeted ads.

An IoT highlight of the Web Summit was a chat between If This Then That (IFTTT) CEO Linden Tibbets and John O’Farrell, who is a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Tibbets founded IFTTT, a startup which is trying to implement the “Internet of Things” paradigm by allowing users to create automatically triggered routines. Called “recipes,” these routines are triggered either by the user or a user-specified stimulus. While currently limited to app-focused recipes (e.g. automatically save Instagram photos to Flickr), Tibbets’ vision is to create an ecosystem where routines can be automated.

To help grow the IoT scene at Stanford, check out Stanford iOT. It’s a group of students who “are interested in connecting everyday objects to each other and to the web.” They have an active Facebook group with several live IoT projects (like a smart power strip, smart oven, etc.) which students collaborate on throughout the school year.

You can talk to Kendrick at kkho207 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Scoryst: A better way of grading https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/11/scoryst-a-better-way-of-grading/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/11/scoryst-a-better-way-of-grading/#respond Wed, 11 Mar 2015 17:15:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1097334 One year ago, Catherine Lu and Karanveer Mohan launched Scoryst, a platform for student homework submissions and instructor feedback. Now, their product is already being used by 50 classes, including CS106X and CS103. Read more about their journey.

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One year ago, Catherine Lu ’14 MS ’15 and Karanveer Mohan ’15 MS ’15 launched Scoryst, a platform for student homework submissions and instructor feedback. Now, their product is already being used by 50 classes, including CS106X and CS103.

That’s not the first time that they’ve built a successful product — they previously built Free Food at Stanford and Fancy That with Amrit Saxena ’15 MS ’15 and Ayush Sood ’14 (Fancy That was recently acquired by Palantir). Lu and Mohan created Scoryst for part of their CS194 senior project, but then decided to develop Scoryst further after a couple of CS classes decided to adopt the product to grade assignments.

Scoryst
The grading site interface for Scoryst.

As former section leaders for the CS106 series, they understand the problems teachers and teaching assistants face when they need to receive and grade homework. All of the problem sets and assignments can be submitted online via Scoryst, where teachers and their assistants can easily edit grades, comment on assignments and navigate quickly through questions. In this way, the grading process becomes more efficient and can be done completely online.

“Our goal was to make grading more efficient and [to] help students [and] spend less time grading and more time working on more relevant issues,” said Mohan.

The advantage for students is that they can easily submit homework and quickly receive all feedback online. They can also find homework from previous classes, which is especially useful for coding assignments — code written for previous classes can still be useful in the future. What really makes Scoryst different, however, is that it is made by students for students. With no plans to monetize their product, Mohan and Lu believe that focusing solely on building a great product will put them ahead of their competitors. When asked about competitors, Mohan is quite confident.

Scoryst_hw
The interface for feedback on individual programs is quite clear and allows for better feedback/conversations about how to improve.

“Most of our competitors are startups trying to monetize and make more money — they are not focused on the product. We are focused on making sure the students have the best experience possible. It’s not about the money, it’s not about anything else, and it’s very hard for them to compete with that,” explained Mohan.

Being in the education field with a B2B model is not simple. “Sales cycles are very long. Budgets are not huge — most of them go to salaries and projects that are not related to technology,” told Lu. Despite these obstacles, they have been able to grow steadily with very little marketing, which shows that many teachers really believe it is an efficient grading tool. Word of mouth marketing and strong recommendations from teachers have helped Scoryst grow. “People hear about us because either they used Scoryst as students and they are now teaching assistants or because other teachers have recommended us,” Mohan said.

Catherine Lu and Karanveer Mohan don’t have any plans to turn Scoryst into a startup anytime soon. They don’t plan to monetize the service and also don’t have a marketing strategy. In Silicon Valley, it is very common to think that every product that becomes successful has to end up becoming a business — just think of all the startups born from side projects that became popular, such as Product Hunt, Snapchat, Yik Yak or Yo. However, the hacker culture has been showing us the value of building products solely for fun or interest in the problem they solve. Does the life cycle of a product always have to include the business or organization aspect? Not really. Surprisingly, Scoryst’s focus on making a more efficient grading tool has helped them to build a great product that is being used in several classes at Stanford and at other universities.

You can talk to Lawrence at lmurata ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Women in Tech: Lea Coligado discusses women in Computer Science and her Fortune article https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/10/women-in-tech-lea-coligado/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/10/women-in-tech-lea-coligado/#respond Wed, 11 Mar 2015 05:37:02 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1097485 As a continuation of The Dish Daily’s Women in Tech series, The Daily had the opportunity to talk with her about her experiences in this regard, both at Stanford and in the professional world. She hopes that Women of Silicon Valley will help more young women visualize themselves being in the technology industry.

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As a computer science major at Stanford, Lea Coligado ’16 noticed that the number of women in her Computer Science classes was dropping the more time she spent in the major. Amidst the bustle of a coffee shop on Stanford’s campus, she discussed the absence of an archetype of success in Silicon Valley that included women and how this culture has seeped into and affected the experiences of Stanford students.

Lea is determined to help change the way women are seen and treated in Silicon Valley and in the technology industry. The founder of the blog Women of Silicon Valley, she is trying to help increase the accessibility of role models for young women studying and working in technical fields.

“As a woman, it’s hard being in tech without having role models,” she told The Daily, discussing her recent piece in Fortune magazine. Her writing discussed gender issues in the technology industry, and was a forthright take on the myriad issues faced by women in technical fields in academia and the professional world.

As a continuation of The Dish Daily’s Women in Tech series, The Daily had the opportunity to talk with her about her experiences in this regard, both at Stanford and in the professional world. She hopes that Women of Silicon Valley will help more young women visualize themselves being in the technology industry.

The Stanford Daily (TSD): Why did you start this blog?

Lea Coligado (LC): As a woman, it’s hard being in tech without having role models. If you’re a boy in tech, you have a lot of role models that you can look up to and feasibly visualize yourself in their shoes, like Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs. I had some bad experiences while working and I was thinking why would a woman want to work in tech if she’s treated this way.

TSD: What was your first experience with computer science?

LC: I was taking two computer science classes in high school, I was the only girl out of about 20 people. And I thought to myself that I definitely wasn’t going to do this.

TSD: What changed at Stanford?

LC: Stanford does a pretty good job in terms of diversity. They have all these societies for women and minorities, and the culture here is so focused on tech.

TSD: You mentioned that you had some bad experiences in courses here. Can you talk about that?

LC: The bad experiences that I had in courses here were not the fault of Stanford or the faculty. It’s the environment, if that makes sense. As I go further down the major, the number of women in my classes has been severely dropping. Part of the bad experience is just knowing that you are a minority and kind of feeling isolated, feeling that people can’t relate with you.

TSD: So would you say that it’s the little things that matter?

LC: It’s the gender ratio that’s intimidating, and it’s some little things. School has not been the biggest deterrent from doing CS. It’s mostly just been people I know from outside of school who don’t have the foundation of progressivism that Stanford really inculcates in its students.

There are also a lot of guys who have big egos and are kind of arrogant. For computer science especially, it’s been very glamorized by the media. Have you seen “Silicon Valley?”

TSD: Yes, I’m familiar with it [the HBO series].

LC: It basically glorifies all these arrogant young men. In computer science especially, the message the media is showing is that if you are an arrogant young man in Computer Science, you’re probably going to get big and be respected. In “Silicon Valley,” all the women are models who they hire to bring the parties. This isn’t even just on TV, like startups, when they’re doing pitches, they’ll have bikini clad women on their slide decks. It’s a very fratty culture.

There’s this very prevalent archetype of what it means to be successful in tech and it’s never female. And I know there are women out there who are absolutely awesome, but why are they getting swept behind the scenes? I think a large part of it is that their presence has not hit media awareness. Let me find these women, let me showcase them, and these pieces will stand to show that there are women out there who are super successful, who are influencing tons of consumers.

TSD: Can you talk more about how you came to contact these successful women?

LC: The summer after freshman year, I worked at Facebook, and my mentor was awesome, so I got to talk to some women in his network who really inspired him. And a lot of female alumni in CS will come back and work for the support network, so it’s been a lot easier to find women.

TSD: You were featured in a Fortune article. Can you speak more about that?

LC: The Fortune article was especially helpful and doubled my following. There have been goods and bads about the article. I read the online commentary, and some of it was just scathing, and the adage holds that you should never read the comment section. In one part of the article, I use the word ‘sausage fest,’ and I got a ton of accusations that I used the words ‘sausage fest.’ I got a lot of accusations that I’m just complaining. I got accused of being a beneficiary of affirmative action.

TSD: And how do you feel about that?

LC: The reason I wrote the article in the first place is that these sentiments exist. And the commentary online is all anonymous, but people I actually know are extremely supportive. I’ve gotten a lot of nominations about women to feature, a lot of support from friends and family, a lot of strangers reaching out who told me they could relate to this.

TSD: Is there anything you want to add?

LC: One thing I really want to say is that the article very much focused on me and my bad experiences. It made me sad, because I’m presenting a solution, but the article paid a disproportionate amount of attention of what brought me to the solution. Doing this blog has been very validating. If you look at the women, they’re very well put together and are all very fashionable.

TSD: Do you think that matters?

LC: I think that matters because part of the reason many of my female friends don’t go into CS is because they think they have social skills and don’t think women who do computer science have that. But these women disprove the widespread sentiment that you either have social skills or you’re really smart.

I have a friend who dresses really fashionably and when she goes to conventions, people are surprised and often ask her, “Oh you’re in CS? You don’t look like you’re in CS.”

Comments like that really just shouldn’t be happening. The way you look and the way you act should not make people make any implications about your coding ability.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

Jenny Lu contributed to this report.

Contact Nitish Kulkarni at nitishk2 ‘at’ stanford.edu

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Stanford Startup: Datafox, financial analytics for all https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/09/stanford-startup-datafox-financial-analytics-for-all/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/09/stanford-startup-datafox-financial-analytics-for-all/#respond Mon, 09 Mar 2015 17:25:24 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1097255 A profile on Datafox, a Stanford startup from the GSB, focused on providing business analytics for everybody, from enterprises to students.

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As an analyst in Goldman Sachs’ Special Situations Group from 2008-2011, Bastiaan Janmaat had a problem — he faced the daunting task of both compiling and updating spreadsheets containing information on hundreds of private companies. Always a tough task, such an undertaking has become exponentially more difficult with the emergence of the Internet and an attendant explosion in the variety of information sources available to analysts.

While attending Stanford’s Graduate School of Business several years later, Janmaat came into contact with three other Stanford alumni who agreed that his problem was common but potentially solvable. Datafox, incorporated in 2013, represents their best attempt to confront the issue.

Headquartered in the burgeoning South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood of San Francisco, Datafox occupies a former industrial loft shared with another early-stage startup. Though the firm’s workspace only comprises several computer workstations and a conference room, the Spartan furnishings of Datafox’s offices belie the complexity of their product, which is, in a nutshell, a Software as a Service (SaaS) financial analytics tool that tracks and reports on a myriad of private technology firms. Datafox covers private companies at all stages, from multibillion-dollar transportation provider Uber to digital payments company Venmo, providing metrics like employee counts, revenue estimates and user bases.

“It’s predictive intelligence for analysts,” Janmaat explained, describing how the service aims to appeal to a core audience of professionals in banking, investing, business development and corporate development. According to Janmaat, the startup enters a commercial sphere ripe for disruption, as Datafox’s only direct competitor is Dun and Bradstreet, a corporate behemoth and S&P 500 constituent that employs manual data input as opposed to the automated processes that power the Datafox service.

To effectively compete with Dun and Bradstreet and provide a worthwhile alternative to all of those analysts’ spreadsheets, Datafox seeks to harvest the “growing digital footprints” of private technology firms and present those conclusions in a palatable form. The main Datafox interface is fairly clean and intuitive, though it does take some getting used to.

Datafox's homepage
Datafox’s homepage

Upon navigating to datafox.co, the user is presented with a home view that provides a running live stream of events (acquisitions, revenue, IPOs, etc.) pertinent to the user’s chosen groups (or “lists”) of companies. There is a search bar at the top of the site that allows for more in-depth study of individual companies. Additionally, there are publicly shared lists of companies that have been curated by the Datafox staff (for instance, Stanford GSB Startups, Enterprise Startups and the like). These lists can serve as proxy representations for entire sectors within the private tech sphere and are one of the service’s most compelling features.

Instagram's Datafox page
Instagram’s Datafox page

Of course, none of this functionality would be available without the machine-learning and data-collection algorithms that are at the heart of Datafox. The engineering-heavy composition of their team (seven software engineers for two business development employees), reflects the enterprise’s focus on product differentiation through technical superiority. The first three engineers were Janmaat’s co-founders, Mike Dorsey M.S. ‘11 M.B.A. ‘10, Alden Timme B.S. ‘11 M.S. ‘12, a natural language processing specialist, and Ben Trombley ‘07, a former software engineer at Box.

The team explained that their overall goal is to make Datafox simultaneously close to customers and engineering-driven.

Instagram's finances subpage
Instagram’s finances subpage

Despite its impressive team and compelling product, Datafox is not without its deficiencies.  For instance, one entry on this reporter’s Event Feed stated that Dropbox had attained 500 employees; upon reading the Forbes article from which this estimate was derived, the number turned out to be mostly speculation on the part of the author. Slight shortcomings like this one lend credence to the idea that when compared to the manually compiled databases it is intended to supplant, Datafox offers convenience, though perhaps at the expense of accuracy. However, as the startup refines its software, improvements in this area are all but guaranteed.

For now, Datafox is in public beta, offering three different membership tiers — a limited $49 personal offering, the standard $400/month professional license and a bespoke enterprise solution. According to Janmaat, the firm’s revenue stream continues to grow despite the difficulties inherent in selling to larger banks and corporations. By employing a bottom-up sales strategy, Datafox is attempting to build a critical mass of analysts using their service on personal machines in the hope that the larger corporate structures that employ them will eventually formalize the relationship with Datafox.

Looking toward the future, Janmaat is optimistic, especially about potential broader applications of the Datafox platform. In his eyes, private technology companies are just the beginning, as he foresees Datafox being adapted to cover a wider range of industries. Perhaps most excitingly, Datafox is continuously adding features that complete tasks traditionally executed by analysts, freeing them up for far less tedious work.

You can talk to Cameron at camvdg ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Online food delivery: A guide for Stanford https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/05/onlinefooddelivery/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/05/onlinefooddelivery/#respond Fri, 06 Mar 2015 07:45:09 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1097156 With Dead Week and Finals Week around the corner, students will soon be searching for convenient food (more than they already do, that is). While Domino's delivery has long been the service of choice among starving Stanford students, a recent boom in food delivery platforms has dramatically increased the number of options available. Chief among this group of startups are Postmates, Doordash and Fluc, each with its own distinct advantages and disadvantages. Investigating facets from driver base (Postmates seems to have the upper hand) to cost (should you tip your DoorDash deliverer?). The Dish Daily has sampled and contacted all four of the major services to compile this guide to help you wade through your options.

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With Dead Week and Finals Week around the corner, students will soon be searching for convenient food (more than they already do, that is). While Domino’s delivery has long been the service of choice among starving Stanford students, a recent boom in food delivery platforms has dramatically increased the number of options available. Chief among this group of startups are Postmates, Doordash and Fluc, each with its own distinct advantages and disadvantages. Investigating facets from driver base (Postmates seems to have the upper hand) to cost (should you tip your DoorDash deliverer?). The Dish Daily has sampled and contacted all four of the major services to compile this guide to help you wade through your options:

 

[justified_image_grid preset=10 ids=1097151,1097152,1097153,1097154,1097155 row_height=300 height_deviation=100 disable_cropping=yes last_row=flexible_match lightbox=prettyphoto limit=0]

(CAITLIN GO/The Stanford Daily)

Contact Cameron Van de Graaf at camvdg ‘at’ stanford.edu, and Kendrick Kho at kkho207 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Women in Tech: Ellora Israni talks She++ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/02/women-in-tech-ellora-israni-talks-she/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/02/women-in-tech-ellora-israni-talks-she/#respond Tue, 03 Mar 2015 06:56:59 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1096853 In sum, we still face a gender disparity in the corporate world. In the top 100 companies, 83 percent of executive committees were men, according to the Gender Balance Score Card. As a result, The Dish Daily is launching a series on Women in Technology to highlight female leaders in the Bay Area.

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The latest edition of the Graduate School of Business’ (GSB) ‘View From the Top’ guest lecture series featured Elizabeth Holmes, founder and CEO of the biotechnology company Theranos. I was impressed by her strong yet quiet demeanor. During her Q&A, Holmes discussed a startling conversation she had with the CEO of The Girl Scouts, Anna Maria Chavez, that brought up an issue that had never crossed my mind.

She recalled a time when she was speaking to an audience consisting of the Girl Scout program’s valedictorians.

“Raise your hand if you think you’re going to be a leader in the technology business,” Chavez remembers asking the girls.

None did.

When trying to explain to Holmes why no one had raised their hands, Chavez realized that there weren’t enough women leaders in technology to be role models for the young girls.

“Women should be founders of multibillion companies and be CEO,” Holmes addressed the audience at the GSB. She urged that we need to create female role models of women to help give girls confidence in pursuing and succeeding a career in technology.

In sum, we still face a gender disparity in the corporate world. In the top 100 companies, 83 percent of executive committees were men, according to the Gender Balance Score Card. As a result, The Dish Daily is launching a series on Women in Technology to highlight female leaders in the Bay Area.

The first profile is Ellora Israni ’14, cofounder of She++, a 501 (c) non-profit that helps empower college and high school women to pursue a career in the technology. She currently is a software engineer at Facebook and serves on the board of She++. Her dream is that She++ is no longer necessary because we’ve achieved gender parity both in the numbers and how the people are treated.

Ellora Israni, Co-Founder of She++. Courtesy Ellora Israni
Ellora Israni, Co-Founder of She++. Courtesy Ellora Israni

Ellora Israni
Co-founder, She++
Software Engineer, Facebook

The Stanford Daily: How did you get interested in CS?

Ellora Israni: When I came to Stanford in 2012, CS was not nearly as big as it is now. The biggest major was Hum Bio and I was actually studying psych. I never had heard of CS in my life. I ended up taking CS106A the last quarter of my freshmen year to fulfill the engineering GER and ended up liking it a lot more that I thought I actually would. I took other CS classes and decided to switch majors and declare CS.

TSD: When you were studying CS at Stanford, what were the class demographics like?

EI: Very few women.

TSD: Was there ever a time you doubted yourself because you were one of the few women in the CS class?

EI: I don’t think I ever consciously thought about gender as much as I did that the fact that I didn’t come from the same kind of learning background as my classmates. Coming into CS 106A at Stanford, the supposedly introductory class, you have a lot of people with prior programming experience.

A lot of comes from the fact that when we’re little, boys are encouraged to play with video games or computers and girls to play with dolls so we don’t get that exposure early on.

When I got to Stanford, I was behind and I didn’t fit in. Things like this can really shake your confidence, especially when someone says something that in any other situation wouldn’t be a big deal. For example, you walk into office hours and the TA asks “Are you sure you’re in the right room?” In a normal situation, that would be a helpful comment. But in this situation you feel like you’re already behind and don’t fit in so on top of that comment makes you really question those things.

TSD: What changes have you seen since you’ve left Stanford?

EI: I think the biggest change has been consciousness. In 2012, when we started She++, no one was really thinking about the fact there weren’t too many women in tech. No one was talking addressing if it was something we wanted to change. We marketed She++ as Stanford’s first conference on women in technology and now there are so many more initiatives.

In parallel, on the national side, there’s Girls Who Code, Code 2040 and all of these non-profits that are springing up around the issue of diversity in tech and covering more media. While the numbers are slowly trending to a better place, the fact that we have national attention in the media is what’s going to accelerate change.

TSD: Who were your female role models growing up?

EI: [Pauses] This is probably one of the reasons I didn’t enter the technology industry. I had a lot of female role models, but they weren’t in tech. I consider my mom and grandmothers my role models, but none of them were in technology.

My favorite TV show was the Gilmore Girls and there were no women in there that worked in tech. I read a lot of historical fiction and lot of the women were princesses. So when I look at all the women especially in books and movies, none of them were in technology. That’s why I never made the connection between being the woman I wanted to be and being a woman in technology.

TSD: What is your outlook on women in tech in the future?

EI: Promising. One of the shifts I’ve had in the past years is to talk a little less about women in tech or certain races in tech and talk about intellectual diversity in tech. There’s a lot of research that diverse teams build better products. If you have 10 copies of the same person in the room, you’ll build a product for that type of person and solve a narrow problem.

If you talk about intellectual diversity, you get a little less push-back about why race and gender is important. You get down to the core idea, which is that we all have different experience based on where we grew up, our race and our gender and all of those experiences produce intellectual diversity. This is what produces products for the entire world.

TSD: What advice do you have for freshmen considering CS as a major?

EI: The mistake that gets made is people think, “If I study CS, I have to be in the tech industry or be a software engineer.” That’s a misconception because there’s such a wealth of opportunity. CS majors aren’t only software engineers – they’re product managers, designers, startup founders and directors of technology at non-technical organizations. Think less about the technical aspects of it all and think more about how is CS going to be a tool to getting me to what I want to do.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

Ellora Israni is a former Stanford Daily Desk Editor. 

Contact Kasey Quon at kquon ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Brad Katsuyama talks high-frequency trading and IEX at the GSB https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/01/brad-katsuyama-talks-high-frequency-trading-and-iex-at-the-gsb/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/01/brad-katsuyama-talks-high-frequency-trading-and-iex-at-the-gsb/#respond Mon, 02 Mar 2015 04:43:15 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1096752 Brad Katsuyama, CEO and co-founder for IEX, an Alternative Trading System (ATS), gave a talk at the Graduate School of Business (GSB) this past Monday, Feb. 23. Katsuyama was profiled in Michael Lewis’ well-received book "Flash Boys." IEX became well-known for being the the first equity pool owned exclusively by buy-side investors and is dedicated to institutionalizing fairness in the markets.

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Brad Katsuyama doesn’t fit into the stereotype of Wall Street pervaded by the media.

“Movies like ‘[The] Wolf of Wall Street’ piss me off, because they give Wall Street a bad name. The people who watch a movie like Wolf of Wall Street and want to work on Wall Street are exactly the kind of people who shouldn’t,” he explained.

Brad Katsuyama, CEO and co-founder of IEX, an Alternative Trading System (ATS), gave a talk at the Graduate School of Business (GSB) this past Monday, Feb. 23. Katsuyama was profiled in Michael Lewis’ well-received book “Flash Boys.” IEX became well-known for being the the first equity pool owned exclusively by buy-side investors and is dedicated to institutionalizing fairness in the markets.

At his talk, Katsuyama focused on the importance of having integrity in a business that is transaction-oriented.

“I’m a capitalist,” he emphasized. “We want to make money, but we [IEX] want to make money doing the right things. I care very deeply about the function it serves in the economy.”

Integrity is, in fact, the very thing that drove him to create IEX in the first place. In 2007, Katsuyama was running U.S. trading and managing risk for the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) when the Regulation National Market System (NMS) was promulgated by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Regulation NMS, which, in essence, ties the multiple stock exchanges together to comprise the entire market, came into play.

While Katsuyama was trading tech stocks on behalf of mutual funds, hedge funds or banks on capital, if he put in an order for 100,000 shares of Intel, he could only get 80,000 shares. In 2008, it decreased to 65,000 shares – in 2009, 48,000 shares. Katsuyama noticed that he was consistently unable to get the full order of shares that he intended to purchase.

“This actually drove me crazy for two whole years,” laughed Katsuyama. “People think I’m some renegade or crusade who was fighting this, but it was a long process and didn’t become clear until I joined the technology team in 2009.”

In 2009, Katsuyama left his team of traders at RBC to manage a group of technologists who were building the tools that traders used. It was at this point that he understood the discrepancies between what he perceived as the market and what he could access.

“That’s when I realized the market I saw on screens and the market I thought I knew wasn’t the real market,” he explained. “The market is a collection of multiple markets, but the issue was that they were all at different locations.”

He explained his point using the example of a simple purchase of 100,000 equity shares.

“Say I wanted to buy 100,000 shares,” he started.

“I’d send the order to a piece of technology that would take 4 orders and blast it out to the market, and it would arrive at BATS, the first and closest exchange; then Direct Edge; then NASDAQ; and finally NYSE. The orders were sent at the same time, but there was a two-millisecond difference in arrival time between the first and last exchange,” Katsuyama said.

One of Katsuyama’s technology team members built infrastructure for high frequency trading firms and explained to him that it only took 476 microseconds to get from the first to the last exchange. Katsuyama was also able to see that exchanges were selling technology and data that allowed high frequency traders to race the big banks and buy ahead of their purchases. By sending his orders to NYSE first, Katsuyama discovered that his fill rate went back up to 100 percent – essentially he could purchase all the shares he wanted. But Katsuyama also realized that he couldn’t have been the first to discover this.

“It dawned on me that everyone else who knows this problem exists is part of the problem. The others weren’t trying to solve it – they exploited it and perpetuated it,” Katsuyama said. “I don’t blame them. You can’t fault for people for competitively doing what their competitors are doing.”

He does, however, place the blame on the exchanges.

“The national stock exchanges are selling the data and technology and have created multibillion dollar businesses out of this,” Katsuyama said. “It’s a problem if you trade on information that other people don’t have.”

So Katsuyama and his team set out to change the system.

“IEX creates a delay of 350 microseconds to even the playing field, forgoing hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue that other exchanges gain by selling technology or data,” Katsuyama explained.

“We spent 18 months building this exchange, and on Oct. 24, 2013, the night before we launched, we had no idea what was going to happen the next day,” he added. “We knew that in order for IEX to be a success, one of the big banks needed to buy in that we are the future.”

Today, Goldman Sachs is their number one client.

“We’re a market-based solution that gives people an option to act properly,” Katsuyama said. “It’s about giving people a rational choice that’s in the best interest of the market and their clients, and Goldman – which many people find ironic – took that option. We’re making a bet on people, not on a corporation or brand.”

He ended his talk with a comment about the future, especially in the context of all the business students in the room.

“Wall Street is going through this disruption, and it’s a great opportunity for all of you,” Katsuyama said. “The entrenched businesses are the hardest to break in, but when shit’s going on all over the place, it’s a great time to be young, ambitious and curious.”

 

Contact Jenny Lu at jenny123 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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TreeHacks hackathon attracts over 670 participants https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/22/treehacks-hackathon-attracts-over-670-participants/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/22/treehacks-hackathon-attracts-over-670-participants/#respond Mon, 23 Feb 2015 07:38:03 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1096273 TreeHacks, Stanford’s first large-scale collegiate hackathon, took place this past weekend. The 36-hour event brought together college students from all over North America to "hack" in teams and create their own technology projects.

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(RAHIM ULLAH/The Stanford Daily)
(RAHIM ULLAH/The Stanford Daily)

TreeHacks, Stanford’s first large-scale collegiate hackathon, took place at the Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center this weekend and attracted over 670 participants, including 369 Stanford students. The 36-hour event brought together college students from all over North America to “hack” in teams and create their own technology projects.

A total of 124 projects were submitted by 11 a.m. on Sunday morning, and the top eight teams had the opportunity to demo their work. After being selected by a group of over 20 judges, final awards were decided by a diverse panel of seven, including professionals from the technology industry and Stanford computer science faculty professor Mehran Sahami ’92 M.S. ’93 Ph.D. ’99 and lecturer Jerry Cain M.S. ’98.

MetroArm, made by two students from Purdue University and the University of Waterloo, won first prize for a robotic arm controlled by a Leap Motion controller. Leap Motion is a device that tracks the motion of its user’s hands and fingers and translates them into computer input. The team won trips to Taiwan and Seoul to compete at HackNTU and Global Hackathon Seoul, respectively, and also received tickets for a ZERO-G Experience provided by Zero Gravity Corporation.

Fabric, a team that included Stanford freshmen Liezl Puzon ’18 and Sabar Dasgupta ’18 and students from the University of Rochester and Princeton University, won second place for their project, which also used a Leap Motion device alongside an Oculus Rift Virtual Reality headset to create an interface for designing and manipulating objects for 3D printing. Third place went to Wake, a team from Michigan State University, an app that used mobile devices to detect when users have fallen asleep at a non-scheduled time. Both teams received various hardware prizes such as an Emotiv EEG headset and a Parrot drone.

Participants also voted for their favorite hack in the top eight using Democracy2.1 and chose MAKKMat, a “smart” mat that detects various exercises, such as planks and push-ups, and sends the repetition and activity data to the user’s phone. The team included Stanford masters students Michael Weingert M.S. ’16, Adam Craig M.S. ’16 and Kornel Niedziela M.S. ’16 and USC student Kaitlyn Lee and was awarded a trip to Hawaii.

In addition, 63 prizes were also presented by various sponsors including Apple, Orange GigaStudio and Microsoft. Interdisciplinary work was also highlighted through prizes from Stanford’s English and history departments to highlight the new CS+X joint major programs.

The hackathon was co-directed by Rishi Bedi ’17, Russell Kaplan ’17 and Jason Teplitz ’17, and TreeHacks’ internal team included 20 Stanford students and several volunteers. The event was organized by the Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES) HackSpace.

“We were incredibly excited to see all of the amazing work the hackers created, which made everything worthwhile,” Bedi said.

This article has been updated.

Contact Nitish Kulkarni at nitishk2 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Kylie Jue contributed to this report.

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Cardinal Ventures brings Stanford Student Enterprises back into the incubator game https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/22/cardinal-ventures-brings-stanford-student-enterprises-back-into-the-incubator-game/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/22/cardinal-ventures-brings-stanford-student-enterprises-back-into-the-incubator-game/#respond Mon, 23 Feb 2015 04:28:54 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1096248 Stanford Student Enterprises (SSE) announced Cardinal Ventures today, an incubator program which aims to educate students on developing entrepreneurial ideas and skills. The program will start this coming spring quarter.

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Stanford Student Enterprises (SSE) announced Cardinal Ventures today, an incubator program which aims to educate students on developing entrepreneurial ideas and skills. The program will start this coming spring quarter.

Cardinal Ventures, created by Justine Moore ’16 and Olivia Moore ’16, is centered around a 10-week educational program on startup operations and creation. In addition to networking opportunities with a set of speakers and Stanford alumni in the tech industry, the program will culminate in students pitching their plan to SSE’s board of directors and a set of outside investors. Those pitching successfully will also have the option for their business to become a fully-funded division of SSE.  All teams accepted to the Cardinal Ventures incubator program will receive a grant of $1,000. Applicants for the program must be composed of between one and three Stanford students and have a life cycle of two years or more.

The program also stipulates that successful applicants must be able to be profitable within a year of operation and cannot offer a service already available to Stanford students, unless they are determined by SSE to have “strong competitive advantage” over their competition.

Like the well-known Stanford-affiliated incubator StartX, Cardinal Ventures does not take equity in companies involved in the program. StartX, Stanford University and Stanford Hospitals and Clinics operate the Stanford-StartX Fund, which has invested $31.4 million in StartX companies as of this January.

StartX, formerly named SSE Labs, was a division of SSE until it was spun off as an independent entity in 2009.

Also like the StartX program, Cardinal Ventures features a strong selection of mentors, including team members at SV Angel and August Capital. Teams in the program will partner with these mentors as well as SSE staff members.

Cardinal Ventures will host a speaker series that starts on April 1 with a talk by Ann Miura-Ko from Floodgate Ventures.

Partners of the program include General Catalyst Partners, GCV Capital, Floodgate Ventures, August Capital and Banneker Partners.

Applications for Cardinal Ventures’ spring 2014 class close Tuesday, March 24. Find out more at their websiteStartX is announcing results for its spring 2015 class by Feb. 27.

This article has been updated.

Contact Nitish Kulkarni at nitishk2@stanford.edu.

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Corporate security officers discuss technical ideas for the future https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/13/corporate-security-officers-discuss-technical-ideas-for-the-future/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/13/corporate-security-officers-discuss-technical-ideas-for-the-future/#respond Sat, 14 Feb 2015 06:54:59 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1095751 In a panel on Friday afternoon, the chief security officers of five Silicon Valley companies argued for user-safe technology and warned of the cybersecurity challenges faced by small and medium businesses.

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In a panel on Friday afternoon at the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection, the Chief Security Officers of five Silicon Valley companies argued for user-safe technology and warned of the cybersecurity challenges faced by small and medium businesses.

Moderated by Amy Zegart, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the co-director of CISAC, the discussion centered on technical ideas for a secure future.

 

Safety, not security

In a panel moderated by Amy Zegart (left), Facebook Chief Information Security Officer Joe Sullivan (right) and four others discussed technical security ideas. (CATALINA RAMIREZ-SAENZ/The Stanford Daily)
In a panel moderated by Amy Zegart (left), Facebook Chief Information Security Officer Joe Sullivan (right) and four others discussed technical security ideas. (CATALINA RAMIREZ-SAENZ/The Stanford Daily)

A guiding theme for the event was finding ways to motivate behavior that promotes cybersecurity, especially for consumers.

Scott Charney, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of trustworthy computing, advocated for technologies that prevent users from having to become security experts. For example, terms of service agreements have shown that users will click ‘OK’ on almost anything, so the burden placed on consumers should be minimized.

Yahoo Chief Information Security Officer Alex Stamos agreed that greater attention has to be paid to the user.

“We’re really good at building secure products, but that’s not the fight anymore,” Stamos said. “We need to build safe products.”

Melody Hildebrandt, Palantir’s global head of cybersecurity, argued that there isn’t enough information for consumers to make informed decisions. Cars have safety ratings and food has nutritional info, she noted, but Internet-facing products lack an analogue.

“Most consumers don’t know the questions to ask,” Hildebrandt said.

 

Small and medium businesses

The panelists claimed that small and medium businesses face an uphill battle when it comes to cybersecurity. Stamos presented the recent Sony Pictures Entertainment hack as an example, arguing that SPE operates as a relatively small subsidiary of Sony.

Large corporations like Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Facebook — each represented on the panel — are at an advantage because their cloud computing infrastructures require centralized security skills and resources. Facebook Chief Information Security Officer Joe Sullivan said that smaller businesses would be safer if they utilized cloud services and enabled optional security features.

The growing requirements of cybersecurity can also represent a barrier to entry for new companies. While Paypal grew up with relatively inexperienced hackers in the earlier days of the Internet, Stamos explained, new mobile payment apps are immediately confronted with experienced adversaries.

 

Future mindset

When the discussion turned to which technology would follow two-step authentication, Stamos asserted that “passwords are done” and Charney pointed to hardware-centric forms of authentication. Eric Grosse, the Google vice president for security engineering, brought along smart cards that he said he used as stocking-stuffers for his family over the holidays.

Zegart ended the event by asking each panelist to offer cybersecurity advice to CEOs. Hildebrandt focused on the importance of preparation.

“You’re going to be breached,” Hildebrant said. “Do you have a plan for it and a plan you’re confident in?”

Sullivan concluded by emphasizing the importance of leadership from executives.

“How a company approaches security is shaped from the top,” he said. “When the tone from the top is right, the company makes the right risk decisions repeatedly.”

Contact Joseph Beyda at jbeyda ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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White House Summit takes on balance between national security and digital privacy https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/13/white-house-summit-encourages-debate-on-the-balance-between-national-security-and-digital-privacy/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/13/white-house-summit-encourages-debate-on-the-balance-between-national-security-and-digital-privacy/#respond Sat, 14 Feb 2015 06:03:45 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1095749 Widening the flows of information between the private sector and the government was a central theme at today’s White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection at Stanford, and was an issue of contentious debate both informally and on panels at the event.

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Widening the flows of information between the private sector and the government was a central theme at today’s White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection. The topic was an issue of contentious debate both informally and formally through panels at the event.

Phyllis Schneck, Deputy Under Secretary for Cybersecurity and Communications at the Department of Homeland Security spoke to The Daily about some of the administration’s policy goals.

“First of all the reason we worry so much about info sharing is about connecting the dots,” she said.

Schneck talked about the importance of taking information from government and private sector resources and connecting the dots. She mentioned two interfaces, the NCIC (National Cybersecurity Communication Integration Center) and the CTIC (Cyber Threat Integration Center).

“The NCIC is the main interface for cybersecurity information sharing for the private sector,” Schneck said.

She also explained that the CTIC is a space for the intelligence community to work and combine information from multiple sources.

Not all of the attendees were as optimistic on information sharing, however. Nuala O’Connor, President and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), addressed potential issues posed by this increased information flow.

“I am very concerned about sharing [information] with the government,” she said. “Once you’ve got data in the hands of any government agency, the chances that it will flow to other government agencies for other purposes is quite high.”

O’Connor explained that the CDT was calling for improved collaboration in the private sector to allow for better threat and risk analysis but was wary of the government connection.

“To have it end up permanently in the hands of the federal government in any wholesale manner is a huge civil liberties risk,” she added. “We need to be very leery of those kinds of solutions.”

One of the more concerning issues with large amounts of metadata, O’Connor explained, was the risk of metadata being de-anonymized. She cited Jonathan Mayer’s recently publicized research in the subject.

“Trend analysis, pattern analysis, that’s all good,” O’Connor said. “Your and my personal information about our transactions and our daily lives – that has a level of privacy associated with it that I think we really want to keep on the commercial side of the house.”

O’Connor also discussed the risks behind large amounts of metadata.

“When you look at it across different platforms, you can re-identify people; you can do trend analysis that could lead you to certain assumptions and judgments about people,” she said.

“I think metadata should be treated like data,” she concluded.

Apple CEO Tim Cook’s comments about the development of Apple Pay earlier in the day spoke to O’Connor’s point.

“Security was part of the reason we developed the technology for [Apple Pay],” he said. “It starts with the premise that your credit card purchases are personal to you, and they should stay that way. For every payment, we create a unique one-time code for that individual transaction.”

Schneck assuaged fears that increasing government interest in cybersecurity would dampen the burgeoning growth of network-enabled devices, the so-called “Internet of Things.”

“The innovators and the researchers are going to hold those reins [of control],” Schneck said. “I think you’re going to push the laws of physics even further, and you’re going to control how they are used. I think the role of government is to enable that.”

Schneck emphasized the fact that one of the Department of Homeland Security’s new missions is to be a front for cybersecurity information exchange.

Arthur W. Coviello, President of the RSA Division of EMC, expressed his issues with new government initiatives for information sharing. Coviello explained that policy should take the perspective that privacy should reinforce security instead of conflicting with it. RSA was acquired by EMC in 2006.

“Having an active debate on how we can secure the privacy and freedoms of us as individuals while still being able to determine who is trying to violate that privacy in the form of criminals and nation-states and hacktivists that would do us harm – that’s the issue that really needs to be discussed from a policy standpoint,” Coviello said.

Like O’Connor, Coviello emphasized the need for information flow but cautioned about open information flow to the government.

“The problem that we’ve had with the government in the past is a lack of transparency,” he said. “A big problem with the Snowden disclosures is that the National Security Agency was viewed to have not been transparent and going over the line in terms of the kind of data they were collecting.”

“I think that set the trust between private individuals and companies and the government a long way,” he added.

Scheck acknowledged the issue of maintaining a balance between data privacy and the protection of individuals but also emphasized that it is an important and current issue of policy debate.

“We want to be able to provide the most privacy we can for people’s data, and we also have to make sure that we can track bad guys,” she said. “I think the discussion is going to be very challenging.”

 

Advice and suggestions for students

The setting of the summit at Stanford encouraged attendees and panelists to emphasize the importance of cybersecurity issues to the current generation of students.

“[The] big scary advice people give is to be very aware of what is posted online in your profiles,” O’Connor told The Daily. “You will be seen by potential employers. My number one piece of advice is be wary of how you set your privacy settings and understand that what you have posted will be used to judge you.”

O’Connor expressed that there were some advantages to the surge of ephemeral communication technologies.

“We need better ephemeral systems and technologies – I can see some benefits from Snapchat,” she added, laughing.

Coviello expressed that students need to maintain caution while being online and discussed how the current generation of students live in an entirely new environment.

“You guys eat, drink, sleep, breathe technology,” he said.

“If anything I would caution you all to be careful about what kind of information you put out there and make sure you understand where it’s going and where you go wherever you are on the internet,” he concluded.

Schneck spoke to the importance of new minds entering into and learning about the field of cybersecurity.

“It is so important that we bring the best people into government,” she said. “I think [that in] the future you’ll find careers being a mix of the government and private sector, creating a hybrid of skills.”

Echoing remarks about the importance of education from President Obama and the morning session’s panelists, Schneck talked about nurturing technical skills.

“We need to start nurturing these skills from the high school level itself,” she said.

Schneck advised students to look at building technical understanding.

“It’s always helpful to understand how something works when you are deciding the policy around it,” Schneck said. “Even if you choose not to go into a purely technical field, the background will help you make better decisions.”

 

Contact Nitish Kulkarni at nitishk2 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Victor Xu contributed to this article.

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Payment technology changes discussed at cybersecurity summit https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/13/payment-technology-changes-discussed-at-cybersecurity-summit/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/13/payment-technology-changes-discussed-at-cybersecurity-summit/#respond Sat, 14 Feb 2015 05:25:58 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1095744 The afternoon session of the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection discussed the more technical aspects behind cybersecurity policy.

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The afternoon session of the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection discussed the more technical aspects behind cybersecurity policy.

Maria Contreras-Sweet, the administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, discussed imminent payment technology changes. (CATALINA RAMIREZ-SAENZ/The Stanford Daily)
Maria Contreras-Sweet, the administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, discussed imminent payment technology changes. (CATALINA RAMIREZ-SAENZ/The Stanford Daily)

Stanford Law School Professor George Triantis, chair of the Stanford Cybersecurity Initiative’s steering committee, opened by discussing the unique role and position that Stanford has to play in terms of cybersecurity.

“Stanford has been birthplace of many of the great tech advances in computing and network innovation,” Triantis said.

“Universities play a unique role through their research and their ability to work across issues,” he added. “The Stanford Cyber initiative embraces these goals of multidisciplinary research and engagement.”

Maria Contreras-Sweet, the administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, followed Triantis with remarks on the subject and the event.

Addressing the large crowd in the Graduate School of Business’ CEMEX Auditorium, she opened with a reference to the event’s date: Friday the 13th.

“You ever notice that when you wander off from the group, things don’t go very well?” she asked. “It’s a great lesson for cybersecurity.”

Contreras-Sweet discussed several programs run by the U.S. Small Business Association, and explained that in addition to providing capital assistance in the form of loans to small businesses, it works with partners across the country to counsel small business owners through several executive volunteering programs.

She also spoke about the related Small Business Innovation Research Program, which represents the largest angel investment fund in the world.

“I would like to see more Californians apply for this fund,” she said while talking about innovation in Silicon Valley.

The fund is launching a roadshow across the country next week.

National Cybersecurity Transition

One of the highlights of Contreras-Sweet’s remarks was her elaboration on the “National Cybersecurity Transition,” which is dated for Oct. 15, 2015. The event marks the last date by which all American business owners need to have changed their payment systems from “swipe-and-sign” to the more modern “chip-and-pin.”

Chip-and-pin systems use a combination of a digital chip and a personal identification number on all credit cards, providing an additional layer of security and fraud protection.

She emphasized how much the transition would affect small business owners who did not comply with the new payment regulations.

“Small business owners who fail to act will be looking at liability,” she explained. “We have real work ahead of us to educate small businesses.”

The dangers for small businesses exposed to this kind of liability are severe. More than 180 million Americans carry a credit card today, with most carrying up to three. Last year, credit card fraud totaled $7 billion of liability on consumers and payment companies.

“We need to empower small businesses to improve their technology and protect the consumer,” she said. “Every entrepreneur and consumer needs to be aware of this — if they don’t upgrade their technology, on that day they will be liable for fraud.

“Small businesses don’t have fraud departments, so they will need an EMB reader soon. It’s going to protect their bottom line.”

The program has several industry partners, including Square, American Express, Visa and MasterCard.

“Our message is that they must take care of their customer’s personal financial data as though it were their own,” Contreras-Sweet concluded.

The issues related to this transition were addressed by Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Sarah Bloom Raskin.

“Is cost going to interfere in adoption of new technologies?” Raskin asked.

One of the many solutions to issues in the payment space came later on in the panel, when PayPal CEO Dan Schulman spoke as part of a panel.

Schulman talked about the advantages of non-traditional payment systems, such as PayPal’s anonymous and relatively safe token-based process. Tokenization — which PayPal has used for 15 years — allows for two parties in a financial transaction to an alias instead of directly communicating with each other.

“We have about 650 million users across the world that use PayPal,” he said. “Safety and security is the most important thing that we provide to them.”

Contact Nitish Kulkarni at nitishk2 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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President Obama addresses cybersecurity issues, signs executive order https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/13/president-obama-addresses-cybersecurity-issues-signs-executive-order/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/13/president-obama-addresses-cybersecurity-issues-signs-executive-order/#respond Sat, 14 Feb 2015 03:03:32 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1095716 In the keynote address of the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection, President Barack Obama called cybersecurity threats one of the most serious economic national security challenges the country faces today.

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President Obama signed an executive order Friday afternoon (KEVIN HSU/The Stanford Daily)
President Obama signed an executive order at the Summit on Friday afternoon. (KEVIN HSU/The Stanford Daily)

In the keynote address of the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection, President Barack Obama called cybersecurity threats one of the most serious economic national security challenges the country faces today.

 

Hosting the Summit at Stanford

Highlighting some of the significant technological innovations that came from the University, Obama explained that the choice to host the Summit at Stanford was natural.

“When we had to decide where to have this summit, the decision was easy because so much of our information age began right here at Stanford,” Obama said.

“According to one study, if all the companies traced back to Stanford graduates formed their own nation, you’d be one of the largest economies in the world and have a pretty good football team as well,” he added.

The President even joked about his desire to attend Stanford University.

“I’ve got to admit, I kind of want to go here,” he said. “Everybody here is so friendly and smart, and it’s beautiful.  What’s there not to like?”

In his introduction for the President, Stanford President John Hennessy explained that Obama himself has also faced challenges with security and technology.

 

Addressing cybersecurity through policy

Obama outlined the basic principles for dealing with threats to cybersecurity and consumer privacy, emphasizing the importance of the government and private sectors working together to tackle the issue.

“This has to be a shared mission,” Obama said. “So much of our computer networks and critical infrastructure are in the private sector, which means government cannot do this alone.”

In addition to sharing information “as true partners,” the sectors must focus on their unique strengths and different skillsets, the President explained.

The President also noted the need for both the private and public sectors to continue to evolve, calling the back-and-forth development of new technologies and protections between companies and hackers a “cyber arms race.”

Finally, he spoke about prioritizing the protection of Americans’ privacy and civil liberties and the difficulties of respecting privacy while also ensuring national security – an issue faced by both the private and public sectors.

“When government and industry share information about cyber threats, we’ve got to do so in a way that safeguards your personal information,” Obama said. “When people go online, we shouldn’t have to forfeit the basic privacy we’re entitled to as Americans.”

The President presented a number of policy proposals and asked Congress to pass legislation.

“This is not a Republican or Democratic issue. It’s not a liberal or conservative issue,” he said. “Everybody’s online, and everybody’s vulnerable.”

His administration is working toward establishing a single national standard that will ensure that Americans are notified within 30 days if their information has been stolen, and it has also proposed the Student Digital Privacy Act.

Obama called for a consumer privacy bill of rights that would give Americans a baseline of protections, like the right to decide what personal data companies collect and the right to know how companies are using that information.

This week, the White House also announced the creation of its Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center.

“Just like we do with terrorist threats, we’re going to have a single entity that’s analyzing and integrating and quickly sharing intelligence about cyber threats across government so we can act on all those threats even faster,” Obama said.

President Obama gave the keynote address at the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection (KEVIN HSU/The Stanford Daily)
President Obama gave the keynote address at the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection. (KEVIN HSU/The Stanford Daily)

After his speech, the President signed an executive order that he hopes will make it easier for companies to get the classified cybersecurity information they need to protect themselves. The order calls for a common set of standards around protecting privacy and civil liberties.

“I’m signing a new executive order to promote even more information sharing about cyber threats both within the private sector and between government and the private sector,” Obama said. “It will encourage more companies and industries to set up organizations, hubs, so you can share information with each other.”

Obama noted the difficulties that lie ahead in dealing with cyber threats.

“The cyber world is like the Wild, Wild West – and the government is asked to be the sheriff,” he said.

According to Obama, America holds a leadership position in the digital economy that makes it necessary for the country to focus on cybersecurity. In addition, the fact that American companies are being targeted ultimately makes cybersecurity issues a threat to America’s economic security.

“It’s our ability – almost unique across the planet – our ability to innovate and to learn and to discover and to create and build and to do business online and stretch the boundaries of what’s possible,” Obama said. “That’s what drives us.”

“If we want to maintain our economic leadership in the world, America has to keep investing in basic research in science and technology,” he added. “It’s absolutely critical.”

 

Contact Andrew Vogeley and Kylie Jue at avogeley ‘at’ stanford.edu and kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

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White House Summit panels address public-private cooperation, consumer-oriented security https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/13/white-house-summit-opens-with-public-private-cooperation-consumer-oriented-security/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/13/white-house-summit-opens-with-public-private-cooperation-consumer-oriented-security/#comments Fri, 13 Feb 2015 20:02:54 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1095711 The White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection started with substantive conversation through two plenary panels – the first on public-private cooperation and the second on improving cybersecurity practices at organizations oriented towards the consumer.

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cyber_panel-1
(CATALINA RAMIREZ-SAENZ/The Stanford Daily)

The White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection started with substantive conversation through two plenary panels – the first on public-private cooperation and the second on improving cybersecurity practices at organizations oriented towards the consumer.

The first panel, moderated by Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, focused on the details of avenues for government collaboration with industry. The panel featured chief executives from utilities, financial services, cybersecurity and healthcare and compared private-sector perspectives across industries.

Johnson opened the panel by emphasizing the role of academia in this partnership.

“We are here at Stanford to talk about the all-important subject on the subject of public-private collaboration,” Johnson said. “The discussion is relevant and timely.”

“At DHS we are responsible for securing the civilian .gov world, as well as partnering with the private sector in mitigation of cyber attacks and information sharing,” he added.

Kenneth Chenault, CEO and Chairman of American Express, followed Johnson’s comments by talking about issues faced by the payment industry regarding information security.

“In the context of collaboration, I really think that information sharing may be the single highest impact, lowest cost and fastest way to implement capabilities,” he said.

He used the example of the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, through which financial services organizations share information.

“We work very closely with local, state and federal government agencies to disseminate critical cyber-threat alerts,” Chenault said. “Much of this has to do with our close collaboration with government partners. We also work closely with government on our senior cyber council.”

Mark McLaughlin, CEO of Palo Alto Networks, also emphasized this fact and spoke about the importance of the horizontal security collaboration that occurs, even between competitors.

“We know that we can’t prevent everything, but we also knows that one of the most effective ways to increase prevention is to share information,” McLaughlin said.

Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, Deputy Secretary of Energy, discussed the role of the government in this relationship. Sherwood-Randall, who spend four years at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) going into the government, also talked fondly about her time at Stanford and discussed the role of Stanford and SLAC in cybersecurity research.

“I’m thrilled to be back on the farm with all of you,” Sherwood-Randall said.

“The DoE has a lot of national labs,” she added. “We do cutting-edge research on critical challenges. Over the last several years 80 percent of control systems vendors have been tested by government by DoE Idaho lab.”

Bernard Tyson, CEO of Kaiser Permanente, talked about his organization’s dual approach to the problem.

“This is clearly a major issue for all of us,” Tyson said. “Within KP we are a unique organization in the healthcare industry. We have two business models – a health plan and then also a comprehensive delivery system.”

Tyson also discussed different kinds of consumer information.

“Research has shown that patient information is much more sensitive than financial information,” Tyson said. “We spend a tremendous amount of time in our org doing as much as we can keeping bad people out.”

Like the others, Tyson emphasized the importance of government relationships with the private sector.

“Public-private partnership is a natural,” he said. “We want to secure information for the good of the people that are putting their trust in our respective organizations. Interest is high to be involved and engaged.”

On a more personal note, Sherwood-Randall encouraged students in the audience to participate in public service and used the example of her own son, who will be part of Stanford’s Class of 2019.

“We hope we’re going to inspire you to take careers that lead you to public service,” Sherwood-Randall said.

In the second panel, the discussion moved toward consumer protection and the roles of government and the private sector in creating solutions optimized for this goal. Chaired by Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker J.D. ’84 MBA ’84, the panel featured executives from technology firms, payments firms and think tanks.

“It’s clear that cyber risks continue to grow,” opened Pritzker. “That’s why Congress must pass info sharing and data breach legislation and update our criminal code without delay.”

Speaking to the students in the audience, Pritzker emphasized the role of the University in this effort.

“[We] need to fill in the 2000 open cybersecurity jobs in the United States today,” she said. “Our panel today is focused on the perspectives of leading American businesses.”

Renee James, CEO of Intel, talked about the importance of an established baseline for security and of collaboration with industries and among players in the same space.

“We have been working on improving the baseline of security in computing for about the last decade,” she said. “We are moving forward with initiatives like giving away free mobile security, putting in multifactor authentication in all new computers.”

“More than half of [the] computers in the world go out with the security turned off,” she added. “It’s measurably better in this next generation – telecom companites are doing a great thing in pushing security on devices.”

James and Ajay Banga, CEO of MasterCard, both talked about collaboration across industries. Banga emphasized the changes technology has caused in how businesses sell and customers buy products and services.

“There’s a consumer customer, a bank customer, the merchant, the telecom company – whether you paid with cash or with a card or a phone or biometric, what you want are safety and security in the transaction form,” Banga said.

The panelists also discussed the future of cybersecurity and the need to encourage new minds to enter the field.

“I want to inspire you – we have jobs for you,” James said to students in the audience. “Please stay in the computer science department.”

She emphasized the importance of education and the tone of dialogue in combating gender disparity in the technology field.

“We also know that young girls drop out in middle school for math and science,” James said. “We need to let them know that there are cool jobs!”

Pritzker added that students coming out of education should have the analytical skills to take on modern challenges and that there needs to be more dialogue and collaboration around evaluating the effectiveness of education.

“Do I have to be that A+ math student throughout high school and [have] taken college math at 16 to be eligible?” she asked.

Nuala O’Connor, CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology, addressed the critical issue of maintaining consumer protection and rights. She talked about a paradigm shift from looking at user information as a commodity to thinking of it in terms of the digital self.

“This is about my individual space in the online world,” she said. “At the end of the day, this is my personal data. We should be protective.”

President Barack Obama agreed with this sentiment later on the summit, during his Presidential Address.

“We need to make sure we are protecting the privacy and liberties of the American people,” he emphasized.

 

Contact Nitish Kulkarni at nitishk2 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook offers remarks on cybersecurity, consumer protection https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/13/apple-ceo-tim-cook-offers-remarks-on-cybersecurity-consumer-protection/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/13/apple-ceo-tim-cook-offers-remarks-on-cybersecurity-consumer-protection/#respond Fri, 13 Feb 2015 19:27:13 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1095709 Apple CEO Tim Cook gave remarks before President Barack Obama’s speech today at the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection. He focused on Apple’s role in ensuring consumer protection, and on trust associated with user information and data.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook gave remarks before President Barack Obama’s speech today at the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection. He focused on Apple’s role in ensuring consumer protection, and on trust associated with user information and data.

“Our hardware and software use encryption,” he said.  “We have a security and operations team monitoring our infrastructure 24/7.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook addressed the audience at the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection (KEVIN HSU/The Stanford Daily)
Apple CEO Tim Cook addressed the audience at the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection (KEVIN HSU/The Stanford Daily)

One point that Cook emphasized was the different view Apple takes with regards to data and users, attmempting to make a clear distinction between Apple and other technology companies.

“We have a model focused on selling products, not on selling your personal data,” he underlined. “When we ask you for data, it’s to provide you with better services, and you have a choice on how much information you share.”

He added that Apple set the industry’s highest standards and spoke about Apple Pay, discussing the importance of security and its integral role in the product’s development.

“Security was part of the reason we developed the technology for [Apple Pay],” he said. “It starts with the premise that your credit card purchases are personal to you, and they should stay that way. With Apple Pay, your credit card numbers are not stored on the device or the phone. Instead, for every payment, we create a unique one-time code for that individual transactions. They remain private between you, your merchant and the bank.”

He announced that starting September of this year , Apple Pay will be available for transactions with the federal government.

“[We are] working on initiatives to use this technology with [government] benefit programs,” he added.

“We can imagine a day in the not so distant future where your wallet becomes a remnant of the past, and your passport, driver’s license and other important docs can be digitally stored in a way that is safe, secure and easy to access.”

Cook closed by underlining the importance of collaboration and information sharing between government and the private sector.

“We’re commited to engaging productively with the White House and Congress and putting this into action. It’s important to realize we are all talking about the same people. Too many people do not feel free to practice their religion or express their opinion or love who they choose. A world in which that information can make the difference between life and death.”

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The Hacker + Humanist: A conversation with Xfund’s Patrick Chung https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/11/the-hacker-humanist-a-conversation-with-xfunds-patrick-chung/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/11/the-hacker-humanist-a-conversation-with-xfunds-patrick-chung/#respond Wed, 11 Feb 2015 18:00:55 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1095401 A conversation with Patrick Chung, founding partner at Xfund. Xfund recently raised its second round of $100M, and is looking to help and invest in what they term the 'hacker+humanist'.

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A few days ago, I interviewed Patrick Chung, founding partner of Xfund (podcast below). Xfund is a relatively new VC fund  that raised its second fund of $100 million just a few months ago, and is partnered with the likes of NEA, Accel, Breyer Capital and Polaris Ventures. They invest in what they call the “hacker meet humanist” — that special mix of the critical thinker and coder. Prior to founding Xfund, Patrick started ZEFER, a website-building company for enterprises during the first dot-com boom, which later got acquired, and worked as a partner at NEA, making investments in companies like 23andMe, IFTTT, Pulse, Loopt and Xoom.

Over the span of 40 minutes, we had a great dialogue (podcast below), covering Xfund’s thesis, the scalability of venture capital and what he looks for in founders.

Xfund is focused on finding people who, beyond possessing technical gifts, have the analytical minds often found in the liberal arts.

For me, the best part of Patrick’s talk came about halfway through the podcast. Patrick noted that the barriers to entry for starting a company are now knocked down: He waxed poetic and called it a golden era for innovation. This doesn’t imply that there are only good startups — to believe so would be naïve. There will always be bad startups. However, now more than ever, it’s about how gritty the founders are and how much they hustle: It’s about people, not bits. And in such an environment, where ideas and perseverance rule supreme, I have to agree.

Talk to Will Kim at wkim1 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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NovoEd: Group project-based online education https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/10/novoed-group-project-based-online-education/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/10/novoed-group-project-based-online-education/#respond Tue, 10 Feb 2015 23:50:40 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1095210 NovoEd redefines the traditional video and quiz online education pedagogy by providing a social and community-based experience. The online social learning platform’s mission is to provide their online students with what Stanford students have access to on campus: high quality smart people and the opportunity to work with them.

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NovoEd redefines the traditional video and quiz online education pedagogy by providing a social and community-based experience. The online social learning platform’s mission is to provide their online students with what Stanford students have access to on campus: high-quality smart people and the opportunity to work with them.

The platform features a collaborative space that engages the student by “learning by doing” through group projects and encouraging peer-to-peer feedback.

“It’s experiential learning. You learn by doing things. The most important thing to me is to shift away from the didactic way where you watch video after video and answer questions. That’s boring. You don’t learn much,” said Amin Saberi, cofounder of NovoEd and former faculty in Management Science and Engineering.

“We [NovoEd] shift the focus from the instructors back to the students and allow them to unleash their own creativity,” he explained. “They will come up with things the instructor in the beginning didn’t even think about.”

Some of NovoEd’s features include group forums and online hangouts to connect and share ideas.

The NovoEd user environment. Courtesy of NovoEd
The NovoEd user environment. Courtesy of NovoEd

NovoEd offers business and design-focused courses to professionals emulating a business school setting. The course costs range from free to a $16,000 eight-course Stanford Graduate School of Business program.

Coursera, another online educational platform, offers many free classes to anyone. The classes range from food and nutrition to chemistry. However, they lack the social and collaborative aspect. It doesn’t replicate the classroom experience.

“[As] President Hennessy put it at one point,” Chuck Eesley said, Professor of Management Science and Engineering, “if we can deliver 75% of the Stanford course experience at 10% or less of the cost, that’s pretty incredible.” He emphasized the power of offering affordable and quality education to the mass market.

From Project to Life Mission

Before leaving on sabbatical, Saberi was searching for a meaningful project. During a MS&E faculty meeting, Technology Entrepreneurship Professor Chuck Eesley discussed how he wanted to extend his reach beyond the Stanford classroom and make it available online.

Amin Saberi, NovoEd cofounder. Courtesy of NovoEd
Amin Saberi, NovoEd cofounder. Courtesy of NovoEd

He said he “wanted to use the advantages of the web rather than just ‘copying and pasting’ classes onto video/quizzes.”

Eesley had posted videos on a makeshift blog to try to reach more students, but he was frustrated with the inability to engage.

Since Saberi’s research focuses on social networks, he was interested in solving this pedagogical problem.

Eventually, Saberi’s Ph.D. student and fellow cofounder, Farnaz Ronaghi, made the online technology entrepreneurship class her Ph.D. project. They called it the “Stanford Venture Lab.” The goal was to experiment with social incentives to create accountability and effective remote collaboration.

Farnaz Ronaghi, NovoEd cofounder. Courtesy of NovoEd
Farnaz Ronaghi, NovoEd cofounder. Courtesy of NovoEd

“At first, this was all about research,” Ronaghi said. “[T]hen I saw the potential in it. I saw how it changes lives, how students feel empowered by having access to great content and to each other.”

At some point along the line, Ronaghi explained, the project became more than academic.

“The project was no longer a Ph.D. project, it was a mission for me, a calling to bring effective education to many from around the world,” she explained.

Technology Entrepreneurship Online Class

After endless hours of programming, the first Technology Entrepreneurship social online environment class of three HTML pages launched, with 80,000 people in 150 countries signing up. After an introduction to the class, 37,000 stayed in the class and 10,000 finished the final project.

Eesley explained that one obstacle to overcome with online education is the assignment aspect.

“You have to re-think the assignments and content to suit it to the online setting,” he said.

The online classroom pedagogy is oriented around the student experience and interaction. Eesley emphasized most of the teaching is not around him. The online community learns from each other by giving each other feedback and reaching out to their mentors.

“Peer learning is much more effective than the lecture,” Eesley explained.

Education students have received through NovoEd has been the impetus for dozens of companies worldwide, such as Tommy Jams, a web platform that eliminates the middleman by directly connecting artists and venues in India, and Stylemarks, a mobile app that connects you with upcoming designers and trends and allows to you to sell and buy products.

“I get tons of thank yous from all over the world, like [from] Pakistan or Nepal,” Eesley said, using as an example the time a team from Hong Kong that had taken his course offered to take him to dim sum.

Eesley describes his online education class as the most rewarding experience because he gets to extend his impact beyond Stanford.

Social Interaction Experience

What makes NovoEd powerful is its online environment.

“As soon as you enter the online environment, it’s like entering an event,” Saberi said. “You can see who else is there, what are they discussing, what are they working on and what are their latest submissions.”

The students hold each other accountable for attendance and submitting quality work. The attendance report is also known as the “reputation score”. After scoping out the potential group members based on attendance and interaction, they form groups of 8-10 people.

Many studies show that 90% of the people who sign up for Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) online classes don’t complete them. Online education critics say MOOCs are too boring, unstructured, lonely and unofficial.

However, at NovoEd, the retention rate for paid classes is over 90%. For the free classes, if the student completes the first assignment, the retention rate is 50-70%.

“True learning happens experientially,” Saberi said.

NovoEd also has educated hundreds of professionals from companies around the world, including many Fortune 500 companies such as Deloitte, Citrix, SRI International and Acumen. Teams can work on projects and take the class concurrently. As a result, they can apply their new knowledge and tools to the real-world projects and situations that come up in industry.

The Future of Online Education

“Education is the greatest force for mobility,” Saberi said. “I grew up on the other side of the country in Iran. I want to give back.”

Eesely believes online education is just in its infancy. He sees a lot of experimentation in the space with different business models that aim to make online education more sustainable and scalable.  Eesley predicts there will be increasing use of virtual reality and the merging of online education and gaming industries.

Last November, Stanford Graduate School of Business announced they will be partnering with NovoEd to launch their eight-course LEAD Certificate Program. NovoEd continues to grow. This September, the Al-Dabbagh Group and the Stars​ Foundations will launch Philanthropy University, an online initiative to provide unlimited capacity-building to leaders in the social sector.

Talk to Kasey Quon at kquon ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Robinhood: zero-commission brokerage that could open up the stock market https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/10/robinhood-zero-commission-brokerage-that-could-open-up-the-stock-market/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/10/robinhood-zero-commission-brokerage-that-could-open-up-the-stock-market/#comments Tue, 10 Feb 2015 08:12:19 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1095205 Robinhood is democratizing the stock market and giving a voice to more potential investors, whether for better or for worse. There are a lot of interesting scenarios that could appear when you add a new force to the marketplace, but it’s very clear that Robinhood is an idea whose time has come.

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Few startups have the real potential to produce macroeconomic changes out of the gate, but Robinhood is one of those rare fast-growing startups that, if successful, might have an impact on the bigger picture. That’s the most interesting thing about their vision — what would the possible impact of Robinhood on the stock market and economy be? The Palo Alto-based company, 44% of whose employees are from Stanford, is now defying Wall Street by offering a mobile-first, zero-commission stock brokerage. Don’t be fooled by their relatively small size (25 employees) — they have half a million people signed up and already raised $16 million (seed round and series A combined) from the likes of Andreessen-Horowitz, Snoop Dogg, Box’s Aaron Levie, and Google Ventures.

Before we can go into the bigger picture, we first need to understand the idea behind Robinhood and what makes it different from regular brokerage services. Robinhood is a zero-commission mobile stock brokerage service — in other words, their app allows anyone (whose account is approved) to buy and sell stocks from their phones without any fees, unlike traditional brokerages. For instance, I can use their app to buy Facebook stocks for $77 right now on my iPhone. What used to be an expensive operation reserved for those with the cash to burn on $7 commissions per trade is now made free and accessible through Robinhood.

The two co-founders, Baiju Bhatt (B.S. 2007 in Physics and M.S. 2008 in Mathematics) and Vlad Tenev (B.S. 2008 in Physics and Mathematics), were roommates at Stanford before they went on to work in Wall Street. They realized that the transaction costs for executing trades on the stock market were dramatically lower than what brokerages charged. Although there was virtually no cost for brokerages to initiate these trades, every retail investor was charged a seven- to ten-dollar commission. Bhatt and Tenev were confused that nobody their age at the time was engaged in trading. They decided to try to democratize stock trading and change the common idea that the stock market is daunting and confusing, which the 2008 crisis only reinforced. “The Occupy Wall Street movement had just started, and we sort of thought to ourselves, ‘What are we doing? Aren’t we a part of the problem?’ We thought there was something more we could do, especially after learning so much about the intricacies of the market and what it takes to execute trades,” says Bhatt.

The idea that mobile is important has become common sense. If you want to target Generation Y (or Z, born after 1993) customers, you need to focus on mobile. Since everything from banking to meeting new people happens on our phones, Robinhood chose to focus on mobile first, specifically iPhones for now. This puts them ahead of their Wall Street competitors, who started their services on Web and went to mobile by shrinking their services into mobile apps, which usually resulted in a pretty bad user experience.

Being mobile is important, but the zero-commission part is where Robinhood really stands out: It doesn’t charge its users for stock trading. Over the next year, they plan to become cross-platform (Android and Web), release their API and offer more securities. Since they lack the costs of banks and brokerages — storefront locations, thousands of employees — they can keep their costs to a minimum. They also believe in using high technology to operate with less overhead. “Commissions make up around 20-30% of traditional brokerages’ revenue. We believe that eliminating this revenue stream would cripple them, especially since they are publicly-traded companies,” explains a Robinhood spokesperson.

While zero-commission trades and the possibility of financial upside is exciting, it’s also important to think of the larger-scale impacts that Robinhood’s service could have. Mainly, I’d like to address their monetization strategy and the fact that they are putting a lot of power in the hands of millennials, who may not be the most informed investors.

Robinhood’s zero-commission strategy is daring and seems unsustainable. However, they do have a monetization plan. Part of this plan hinges on charging interest rates for margin trading. What is margin trading? Imagine you are gambling and you want to bet $20, but you only have $10. Your friend then offers to lend you the extra $10 so you can bet $20. While margin trading doesn’t necessarily carry the same risk as gambling, it is still a high-risk activity. Encouraging margin trading can have very negative effects. It’s worth keeping in mind that one of the contributing factors to the Great Depression was excessive margin trading at the cusp of a market correction. Of course, the Great Depression is an extreme case — firms would lend up to $9 for every $1 invested. Per regulation, Robinhood will ask suitability questions before allowing margin trading, including questions about their goals, age, income bracket and investment horizon.

The grand vision for Robinhood is to become a beneficial force in the marketplace by letting more young people become retail investors (everyday investors). According to their team, these new investors could act as a stabilizing force and help to normalize the market, leading to less volatility. “During Robinhood’s seven month beta program, and since our public launch, we’ve noticed interesting trading behavior among our customers. Instead of leaping into the markets with large initial deposits and risky investments, our younger customers tend to deposit smaller amounts at first, make a few trades, and test the waters. This is key. It reveals that our younger and less experienced investors on Robinhood are thinking strategically about their investment decisions, and learning as they go,” tells Tenev.

“While the trading behavior on Robinhood proves that people are not active, whimsical investors, we do believe that more retail investors will lead to less volatility in the market, since retail investors tend to be ‘buy-and-hold’ rather than quick sellers focused on quarterly earnings,” said Tenev.

However, it is completely possible that these new young retail customers will not be as wise as institutional investors and will cause greater volatility due to market tremors. It is questionable whether having a lot of investors with the ability to make quick, zero-commission trades at any time will truly bring more “long-term” investors, and not the short-term investors that Robinhood believes characterizes institutional investors. Even Generation Z (born 1993 and after) would be able to influence the market. The stock market, once accessible to only those investors who were serious enough to pay a premium per trade, is now open to anyone, regardless of how much they’ve thought about their investment.

Robinhood is democratizing the stock market and giving a voice to more potential investors, whether for better or for worse. There are a lot of interesting scenarios that could appear when a new force comes to the marketplace, but it’s very clear that Robinhood is an idea whose time has come.

Robinhood is currently in a limited-access early trial. To request access to try it out, sign up on their website at www.robinhood.com

 

Talk to Lawrence Lin Murata at lmurata ‘at’ stanford.edu

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Free software at Stanford: The (definitive) guide https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/08/free-software-at-stanford-the-definitive-guide/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/08/free-software-at-stanford-the-definitive-guide/#respond Mon, 09 Feb 2015 05:58:12 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1095269 It’s always nice to have new software and products the moment they come out on the market, but software is expensive and is definitely not the first thing you’d want to spend money on. Fortunately, Stanford gives students (and faculty) a huge amount of free essential software. Check if what you want is listed here before you decide to buy something online – The Dish Daily team has put together a list of free software that Stanford gives you, so you won’t have to buy it.

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It’s always nice to have new software and products the moment they come out on the market, but software is expensive and usually not the first thing you’d want to spend money on. Fortunately, Stanford gives students (and faculty) a huge amount of free essential software. The Dish Daily team has put together a list of this free software – check here for what you want before you decide to buy something.

A lot of students know that the easiest way to get access to Stanford’s huge amount of Software is to just access it remotely: as long as you have an internet connection, you can connect your computer to Stanford’s FarmShare network of computers. It’s a sure and easy way to get what you need.

Stanford provides multiple ways to connect to the network, whether you’re using Windows, Mac, or are one of the few who’ve for some reason chosen to use Linux.

You can find a list of ways to connect to the FarmShare network here and a list of software that you can access through it remotely here.

For those of you who don’t want to need an internet connection to get free software, there’s a ton of free software that you can download for keeps.

  • VMWare lets you create virtual machines on your computer, letting you run multiple operating systems and environments at once. Stanford’s Software Web Store will let you download VMWare for Windows and Mac, giving you every possible permutation and version you could ever want. Scroll to the bottom of the linked website for a list.
  • The same store gives you a link for a free download of Microsoft Office Professional Pus 2013 for Windows.
  • Windows 8.1 can be downloaded for free here.
  • For those of you who are in the need of a throwback to an older operating system, you can also get Windows 7 Ultimate here.
  • There’s a whole list of free Microsoft Software you can get for free, from Visual Studio to Lync, at the web store.
  • Stanford Engineering, through Terman Engineering Library, also provides free copies of SolidWorks, the Computer Aided Design software. You can get the software from the Terman Engineering Library front desk – they will give you a flash drive or a CD you can install it from.

Note, however, that the free software from the Web Store can only be installed on one machine – you only get one license key, and you need to have a full-service SUNet ID to download it.

Know about other free software that you can get from Stanford? Or are there some great deals on software that we missed out on? Let us know in the comments.

 

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Sesh: A mobile peer-to-peer tutoring app https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/02/sesh-a-mobile-peer-to-peer-tutoring-app/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/02/sesh-a-mobile-peer-to-peer-tutoring-app/#respond Tue, 03 Feb 2015 07:15:33 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1094800 In the midst of midterm season, Sesh, a mobile peer-to-peer tutoring app that provides 24/7 on-demand service, has the potential to become your next study partner. Releasing publicly at Stanford on Tuesday, the company was started by eight Stanford and Vanderbilt students.

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In the midst of midterm season, Sesh, a mobile peer-to-peer tutoring app that provides 24/7 on-demand service, has the potential to become your next study partner. Releasing publicly at Stanford on Tuesday, the company was started by eight Stanford and Vanderbilt students.

The selling point of Sesh, explained Zach Saraf ‘15, one of the founders, is the ‘insider information’ that their tutors can provide. Sesh takes great pride in their tutors’ “insider information”. Unlike formal professional tutors, Sesh’s tutors are familiar with class themes and styles of assignments.

“They’ve taken the class before,” Saraf said of the tutors. “They know which topics are more important to focus on.”

“They have the hidden value of having actually been there [themselves],” added Neil Hamamoto ’15, another cofounder.

Sesh's Mobile App for iOS. (Courtesy of Vanford, Inc.)
Sesh’s Mobile App for iOS. (Courtesy of Vanford, Inc.)

Sesh matches students with one another based on the classes and assignments they list in the company’s mobile app. Once a student requests a tutor, and a tutor expresses availability, the app allows the two to message each other to coordinate a meet.

Saraf and Hamamoto explained that one of the other selling points of Sesh is the opportunity for students to tutor or be tutored on their own schedules and at a competitive rate. Sesh’s tutors charge $20 an hour, which is less than half of what many established competitors charge.

The procedure that Sesh employs to assure quality control is simple: Students need to send in their transcripts to the company. They are only selected to become tutors if they received an A- or greater in the class.

After evaluating the tutor’s transcript, Sesh puts their trust in the tutor’s tutoring ability without any interaction. There is no past experience required. They provide the tutor with three simple guidelines: Be respectful, be honest and be punctual.

Based on the interactions between tutor and student, the student can give a rating on a five-star scale and “favorite” the tutor to reach out to him or her in the future. The rating is based on knowledge, helpfulness and friendliness. The tutor must maintain a four-star or above rating to continue to be eligible.

In addition to information privacy, Stanford’s Honor Code is another potential area of conflict for the product. It is common to see faculty assign similar or identical problem sets and assignments every year. Saraf and Hamamoto explained that Sesh addresses this issue by operating within Stanford’s Honor Code.

Sesh's Mobile App for iOS. (Courtesy of Vanford, Inc.)
Sesh’s Mobile App for iOS. (Courtesy of Vanford, Inc.)

While it can be tempting for the tutor to refer back to their past assignments, the two explained, protocols to prevent this are already in place. “You can totally use the app to cheat, but we’re [operating] under the Stanford [Honor] Code,” stated Saraf.

“If we find that a tutor is trying to cheat, we will kick him [or her] out immediately,” Hamamoto added.

Saraf explained that the goal of the app is to prevent cheating. “There are many ways to cheat,” he said. “But, hopefully, by providing an accessible peer-to-peer tutoring service, we can help prevent that.”

The tutors will mostly be upperclassmen because they have had the opportunity to take higher-level classes. Sesh inherently has a community-focused aspect in which the tutor will, in addition to tutoring, give the student tips and tricks about the university experience in general.

Since last December, over 100 students have signed up to be tutors at Stanford, the majority of whom help with introductory courses like CS106A (Programming Methodologies) and Math 51 (Linear Algebra and Differential Calculus of Several Variables).

Saraf and Hamamoto expressed an ambitious goal — having 40-50 percent of the student population signed up as tutors, and expansion to other campuses all over the country.

“From freshman to senior year, you gain so much knowledge,” said Hamamoto. He explained that through Sesh, he wants to find tutors who have a passion for the class and for giving back to the university.

First-time users of Sesh will get their first 30 minutes of tutoring for free.

 

Contact Kasey Quon at kquon ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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SYMSYS161: Symbolic Systems in Venture Capital https://stanforddaily.com/2015/01/26/symsys161-symbolic-systems-in-venture-capital/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/01/26/symsys161-symbolic-systems-in-venture-capital/#respond Tue, 27 Jan 2015 00:46:00 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1094353 We talk to the co-insturctors of SYMSYS161, who are taking an academic approach to exploring a thesis about venture capital.

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“At a venture capital firm, you’re working 12 a.m. to 12 a.m. – there’s no set 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule,” said Zavain Dar ’10, a senior associate at Lux Capital, a New York-based venture capital firm.

This flexibility in their schedules gave Dar and his colleague Nan Li, an investment partner at Investment Endeavors, the opportunity to teach at Stanford this winter. Dar and Li are teaching Symbolic Systems 161, a brand new course titled “Applied Symbolic Systems in VC and Entrepreneurship”. The class was met with great excitement, and had a waitlist of 40 students despite its capacity being doubled from 30 to 60.

Nan Li (left) and Zavain Dar (right) co-teach SYMSYS161: Symbolic Systems in Venture Capital
Nan Li (left) and Zavain Dar (right) co-teach SYMSYS161: Applied Symbolic Systems in VC and Entrepreneurship.

The idea for the class started when the two were talking last fall at Innovation Endeavors, a venture capital firm run by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. The two had endless conversations and debates about the similar histories of artificial intelligence (AI) and venture capitalists, and soon the pair were unknowingly cultivating the curriculum for their class. Dar explained that the class, in many ways, is a continuation of the conversations that the two had.

“Today, AI has moved from hard-coded logic to statistically-driven correlation independent of reason,” Li said, paralleling the history of artificial intelligence with that of venture capital firms. “Today, VCs think in terms of logic.”

Dar and Li will apply their theory and try to predict the future trends of venture capital firms.

The pair’s academic interests and experiences contribute heavily to the nature of the class. Li, who holds a BSE in computer science from the University of Michigan, explained that his interests in CS led him to product management.

“My interest was not so abstract, so I always try to find ways to apply technology in a more practical way,” he said.

“I was on the complete opposite spectrum of Nan,” Dar said. “I was all over the place.”

Dar wasn’t initially interested in computer science because he didn’t want to just memorize syntax. He felt the major didn’t allow him to think creatively. Dar has a B.S. in Symbolic Systems and a M.S. in Theoretical Computer Science and was in the Philosophy and Logic program. He enjoyed the process of developing theories and trying to prove it. They both bring their own views and experience to the classroom.

“[The class environment] is relaxed, like chatting over a beer,” Dar said, describing a free-form and relaxed classroom environment where students are encouraged to challenge views.

Unlike a math class where you have concrete answers, SYMSYS161 doesn’t have absolute truths. The main goal of the class is to encourage public discourse and debate.

“It’s more of a conversation than a lecture,” Dar said.

Taking their investment philosophy to the classroom, Dar and Li are grounded in creating a thesis and proving it. “It’s all about proving your axioms and the truths,” Dar said. Li added that as an entrepreneur or investor, you’re always challenging assumptions and trying to create your own worldview. “The more different your worldview is and the more correct it is, the more you’re rewarded for it.”

They praise Stanford’s technologically forward mindset and hope to take it back to their venture capital firms.

In terms of students trying to pitch their idea to the investors, Dar and Li aren’t too worried. “It’s a pass/fail class,” Dar said. “The most important part thing is showing participation and engagement.

“But, if the student has enough gumption to pitch their idea, we would like to see a final paper applying the course’s themes,” Dar added.

Looking back at their time in college, Dar and Li remember the teachers who breathed passion and were genuinely excited in the underlying theory, “like someone fascinated by a piece of art,” Dar said. The two emphasized that college as a critical time for personal growth. After college, there’s a lack of structure, Dar explained. “If you don’t have a passion for something, you’ll probably be lost.”

Dar and Li are grateful for the opportunities they had at their alma maters to discover their passions and interests. For example, at Stanford, Dar was a member of Basmati Raas and remembers dancing 20 hours a week. Li was president of Eta Kappa Nu at Michigan. Both agree that curiosity and passion are the common currency that will fuel you in life. “There’s no linear path, but it’s more of an outcome,” Li explained of getting to where they are today.

Dar and Li post their course slides online to their class website for anyone to view to invite anyone to learn and participate in the discussion. They also want to be held accountable by their students. “If we post slides that are just patently false, not only the students can see that, but the broader Silicon Valley can see it as well,” Dar said.

The new teachers are only in week four of the quarter, but hope to continue to teach after the quarter ends.

You can follow @ZavainDar and @NanLi on Twitter and use #SymSys161 to learn more about the course and join the conversation.

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CS27: a happy marriage of humanities and CS https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/14/cs27-a-happy-marriage-of-humanities-and-cs/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/14/cs27-a-happy-marriage-of-humanities-and-cs/#respond Fri, 14 Nov 2014 21:35:49 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1092021 A quick look into the magic that happens at CS27, a unique mix of humanities meets code.

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(KEVIN HSU/The Stanford Daily)
CS27 group Cureador present their project to the class. (KEVIN HSU/The Stanford Daily)

“Have you heard of Tinder?” Professor Sebastian Thrun asks me immediately after I enter the classroom. He’s standing in the front of the room along with another student, Baris Akis, who’s presenting his group’s project: the “Thinkers Accordion,” an app that presents the name of a philosopher or author or sociologist, etc. along with a small blurb of the person’s main ideas and important thoughts. If the user likes it, he/she can swipe down for more detail, but if the user isn’t really interested, he/she can just swipe to the side for another individual – a process based on Tinder, the hit dating app.

Married couple Petra Dierkes-Thrun, from the Comparative Literature department, and Sebastian Thrun, from the CS department, co-teach CS27, Literature and Social Online Learning. Sebastian Thrun co-founded Udacity, so the topic of online learning comes up a lot during conversations between the two. “We just talk about this all the time, especially because I’m involved in the humanities and him in computer science,” said Dierkes-Thrun. “The question is if any of this online learning is even applicable to the humanities.”

This class gives students in the humanities a chance to create projects they otherwise wouldn’t have the technical capability to create. “I have all sorts of ideas to integrate the humanities into the increasingly technological world, but I never actually built anything,” Dierkes-Thrun explains. “So I just thought it would be interesting to make this an interdisciplinary class, especially with the introduction of the CS+X major.”

The class mainly revolves around student projects. “Usually there’s just one syllabus that everyone follows, but in this class, we basically have six different syllabi running at the same time,” said Dierkes-Thrun.

Junior Baris Akis elaborates on his and Sophomore Farhan Kathawala’s project, the Thinker’s Accordion. “The project was inspired by the fact that you need to read a lot and have a lot of background information in order to understand many of these philosophical ideas, and that it’s very hard to discover many ideas because of this barrier,” said Baris. “Right now, people don’t want to spend time reading stuff, even if it’s just a one page article, so we thought we could just have a quote on the screen, and if people like the quote and think it’s a cool idea, they should see expanded information of that person’s ideology.”

(KEVIN HSU/The Stanford Daily)
(KEVIN HSU/The Stanford Daily)

There are also more humanities-based projects. “The class is pretty much 50/50 when it comes to techie and fuzzy majors,” said Sophomore Mirae Lee, who is considering the CS+English joint major. She and senior Vilde Opsal, a senior studying CS, are working on a project that is trying “to get people excited about classical literature by using new technology, which in our case, is the internet. We’re basically doing a fanfiction event on “Pride and Prejudice” with an emphasis on collaborative creation than on individual publishing,” said Lee. “It’s a chance to get people excited about classical literature by using new technology.”

“This kind of integrated class is something you’d only be able to find here at Stanford. I feel like we’re pushing new boundaries and entering new terrain, and it’s very exciting to be a part of that,” continued Lee. “It’s also great to be able to receive direct feedback from the professors.” Junior Asik agreed, saying, “One of my favorite parts of the class is the small setting. It’s very personal, and you know all the other people and their projects, so you can see everyone’s development.”

Even with these seemingly large, time-consuming projects, the professors haven’t had any issues with motivation. “A lot of these students wrote in their self-reflections that they just chose this class as an interesting 3 unit course, and that it’s now taking over their lives.” Dierkes-Thrun laughs, before going on to say, “But they all seem to be very engaged in their projects. It’s very cool to be able to make something that is your own design and creation.

“What I really care about is making really good methods to study literature available to a lot of the public and engaging students. I think there can be an amazing synergy when we put two and two together.”

In terms of serving as a model for professors to introduce new interdisciplinary courses, especially in regards to the implementation of the new CS+X joint major, Thrun states, “This class is a very different kind of work. If somebody like me who doesn’t really have much background in the tech field can offer something like this by reaching out to another professor across the aisle, I think there are endless possibilities out there.”

(KEVIN HSU/The Stanford Daily)
(KEVIN HSU/The Stanford Daily)

So to answer Sebastian Thrun’s question in the beginning of class: yes, I have heard of Tinder, but no, I am neither a user nor fan of the app. But after seeing how this dating application’s swiping interface has made its way into this specific course on the intersection of literature and technology in a school that’s well known as an engineering powerhouse, I have come to appreciate the significance that a simple app’s interface can have. Harnessing the power of technology and applying it towards the humanities is to explore the unexplored, where there are literally limitless opportunities. As Petra Dierkes-Thrun says, “dreaming big from time to time in the humanities is kind of a really cool thing.”

Contact Jenny Lu at jennylu18 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Stanford Startups: Conspire, a startup for smarter connections https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/10/stanford-startups-conspire-a-startup-for-smarter-connections/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/10/stanford-startups-conspire-a-startup-for-smarter-connections/#respond Mon, 10 Nov 2014 20:07:38 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1091678 Conspire is a digital network platform founded by two Stanford grads ('04), helping users find the strongest path of connection to any person of interest, with a value prop that reaches beyond just LinkedIn-style "connecting."

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Save yourself from the trouble of searching for an employer, investor or customer and awkward introductions at networking events. Conspire, a digital network platform, will help you find the strongest path of connection to any person you’re interested in and figure out the best way to get introduced through analyzing your email interactions.

Alex Devkar ’04 and Paul McReynolds ’04 are former Stanford dormmates who bonded over a common interest in computer science and a vision of creating a startup company. Fast-forward eight years later, they have launched Conspire.

After taking different career paths and attending law school, they soon rekindled their friendship after realizing they wanted to do something different with their careers. With their idea for Conspire in mind, they applied, and were accepted, to the TechStars Cloud program, where they were provided with seed funding and intensive mentorship.

The years living together at Stanford created a special bond. “We have a lot of trust. That allows us to be effective sounding boards for each other and to make decisions quickly,” Devkar said of the co-founder relationship.

Screenshot taken of Conspire in action.
Screenshot taken of Conspire in action.

Conspire reveals the power of secondary connections of your extended network created by e-mail exchanges. The startup will evaluate headers such as the “To, From, CC, Subject and Date” fields of emails. Devkar said, “If there’s little interaction, there’s no pattern. If they respond to each other quickly, that looks like a strong relationship and a strong communication pattern”. As a result, Conspire develops a graph with qualitative connections that vary based on the strength of the correspondence between various people (nodes). The goal of the company is to help people work together. When asked how Conspire is different than LinkedIn, Devkar argued that Conspire serves a different purpose.

“LinkedIn is great for potential employees to display their online resume. It’s also a resource for recruiters and a content feed to share connections or stories,” Devkar said. “But, what makes Conspire different and better is its networking side.”

“[On LinkedIn] requests don’t have any mapping to reality to who’s actually in your network.” Devkar added, “All of the connection requests look the same. Our network reaches out to people you don’t already know.”

Conspire functions as a digital telephone address book that is highly concentrated with professionals. Consequently, you must know what you’re looking for. Unlike LinkedIn, there is no “People You May Know” section, so there’s a lack of guidance if you don’t know what you’re looking for. You must search with an idea and purpose. Like a search engine, it allows you to search for a specific job role, investor or person. After this initial search, Conspire will try to determine the most appropriate second-degree connections to reach the person you’d like to get introduced to. No connection request needed. However, if you start out with a small network of e-mail addresses and only have a few exchanges, you might be out of luck and limit your ability to expand your network. Additionally, Conspire currently only supports Gmail. The nature of Conspire requires a certain critical mass of users in order to help piece together this high-resolution view of connections that can go deeper than the typical LinkedIn search. Devkar emphasizes the importance of finding authentic relationships. The company isn’t trying to force relationships, but forge relationships. “We just want an accurate picture and want to access your network in the best way possible,” Devkar said.

Although the cofounders did not disclose the number of current users, the Conspire network reaches over 27.3 million people. Right now, these are the early tech adopters, but the company hopes to reach out to a broader network.

Conspire is headquartered in Boulder, CO, so the team can be close to their board member and lead investor, David Cohen — the founder and CEO of TechStars. In addition to the beauty of the mountains, the Conspire co-founders enjoy the smaller startup community. “It’s a lot like Silicon Valley, but it’s a lot more tight-knit,” Devkar said. Even if you’re a small business, you still have the opportunity to reach out to the “bigger fish” in the startup world. “If I want to meet the most experienced guy in the area, I can actually get that meeting,” Devkar explained.

Devkar and McReynolds say they want to help students realize the power of their network. Whether it’s searching for a new job, investor or salesperson for a company, Conspire might be a solution. At the very least, it’s a fun way to do a quick search on potential connections with members of the Valley technocracy.

Conspire is currently hiring, and they encourage you to check out their technical positions. (Cool perk: they have an open vacation policy and encourage everyone to work remotely — from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection — for up to a month per year!)

Contact Kasey Quon at kquon ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Stanford Startup Series: Neoreach https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/08/stanford-startup-series-neoreach/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/08/stanford-startup-series-neoreach/#respond Sat, 08 Nov 2014 18:48:48 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1091162 About a year ago, in Stanford’s ENGR145 Technology Entrepreneurship class, Jesse Leimgruber and Misha Talavera pitched NeoReach in front of classmates, professors, and venture capitalists. They explained their vision for a tech-enabled advertising marketplace. On August 27, 2014, after a series of accelerators, NeoReach stepped out into the limelight when it raised $1.5 million in seed funding while 19-year-old Jesse was still an undergraduate student at Stanford.

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About a year ago, in Stanford’s ENGR145 Technology Entrepreneurship class, Jesse Leimgruber and Misha Talavera pitched NeoReach in front of classmates, professors and venture capitalists. They explained their vision for a tech-enabled advertising marketplace. On August 27, 2014, after a series of accelerators, NeoReach stepped out into the limelight when it raised $1.5 million in seed funding while 19-year-old Jesse was still an undergraduate student at Stanford.

NeoReach is an online platform that connects brands with bloggers and social media influencers who are looking for new brands to endorse. Brands looking to promote their product post an offer on the NeoReach platform where social media influencers select a brand that fits their channel, and share the sponsored product or content on their social media page. Brands compensate influencers on a cost-per-click basis.

Currently, NeoReach takes no cut of the social media influencers’ pay. The company is focused on creating the most effective marketplace for brands to meet social media influencers. In the future NeoReach might decide to earn revenue by charging a usage fee or taking a percentage of the price per click. However, for now, they are focused on building the “centralized hub for influencer endorsements,” said co-founder and CMO, Misha Talavera.

At Stanford, Misha was a part of Stanford Marketing, an on-campus organization whose clients include Nike, Twitter and Coach. While there, he realized the potential for more data-driven social media marketing platforms. After meeting Jesse Leimgruber, who owned a digital marketing agency with his brother PJ Leimgruber, the trio set off to build what Jesse, CEO, calls the “Google Adwords for influencer marketing.”

Image courtesy of Neoreach.
Image courtesy of Neoreach.

Misha explained, “bloggers and influencers are promoting brands and products all the time, but the process for influencer marketing campaigns is still manual and inefficient, like the airlines ticket market used to be before Expedia built a centralized marketplace.” NeoReach is building that centralized marketplace, and hoping to tap into the incredible pull of word-of-mouth marketing. Thus, for their ENGR145 final project, Talavera and Leimgruber proposed this solution to use technology to increase collaboration between brands and people. NeoReach creates a platform where users can find products, services or information that are relevant to their channel, thus facilitating organic information sharing. NeoReach tracks performance metrics (engagement, click, conversions, time on site, etc.), in order to report back to the brands and the influencers on their performance.

Misha and the NeoReach are based in the Bay Area and Orlando, FL. They are scaling their development team and are launching a new “influencer development program.” With this, they plan to keep growing their influencer and blogger community, and build their brand. We wish them the best!

Contact Alex Doll at adoll ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Boosted Board product review & price update https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/06/boosted-board-product-review-price-update/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/06/boosted-board-product-review-price-update/#respond Thu, 06 Nov 2014 19:14:03 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1091550 A review of Boosted Board's product, and its most recent price drop to $999, putting it within the reach of Stanford students seeking effective and portable last-mile transportation.

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Boosted Boards, a Stanford startup that raised over $460,000 in a Kickstarter campaign in late 2012, began officially selling its longboards in June this year. The Dish Daily was lucky enough to be able to ride one for a week to check it out.

Photo courtesy of Boosted Board.
Photo courtesy of Boosted Board.

The board was priced at $2,000, but as of today, Boosted Boards is offering a line of three products: Single, Dual and Dual+ models with boards starting at $999 for the Single, $1,299 for the Dual and $1,499 for the Dual+ (the original model), all significantly cheaper than the original board’s price tag of $2,000. Furthermore, for those who bit the bullet and bought the pricey boards early on, Boosted Board is showing its thanks with a price adjustment (up to $500 back). They have some more sweet perks that you can find on their website, including free upgrades as well as an extended warranty for current owners.

I should preface my comments with the disclaimer that I am an intermediate-to-experienced longboarder, having used one as my main mode of transportation over my freshman and sophomore years on the Farm. Occasionally, I sought out some hills in the area for recreation (the hill from the Knoll to Theta Delt, looping back down to Mayfield, for example, is a monster) so I’m fairly comfortable with speed. For the most part, I’ve used my longboard to commute to classes, so that’s the angle from which I’ll be reviewing the Boosted Board.

THE BOARD

The board is made with Loaded’s bamboo deck and Orangatang wheels in Caliber trucks. It has a 6-mile range, gets up to 20 miles per hour (the new Dual+ gets up to 25 mph, check out more of the updated specs below), and can climb up to a 15 percent grade. With the 40V lithium-ion phosphate battery, the board comes in at just 15 pounds, impressive for its power. The batteries, located around the housing, keep the board’s center of gravity very low, making for a smooth ride.

HOW TO 

Photo courtesy of Boosted Board.
Photo courtesy of Boosted Board.

You begin by switching on the remote and turning on the motor on the underside of the board. There is an arrow on one tail of the board showing which way the acceleration goes. The remote itself has a gun-like trigger button (which activates the motor) and a dial that you push forward or backward to control acceleration. You tap the power button of the remote three times to switch from beginner to expert mode (and vice versa to get back to beginner), which allows you to go at a much faster speed and powerfully climb hills.

BRAKING

Once you become comfortable with the notion of applying acceleration in the opposite direction to slow down, then braking actually becomes a supremely gratifying activity when boarding. The Boosted Board has regenerative braking, which seemed cool at first but actually became somewhat intrusive when it came to riding at higher speeds.

One problem that I assume is because of the regenerative braking is that when you let go of the acceleration, you feel a slight jolt backwards (whereas I imagine that without the braking, you would continue riding at the same pace, slowing down at a more gradual rate). As such, you have to keep your thumb dialed all the way forward in order to continue riding at the same pace. Eventually, if you make the mile-long commute from Tresidder to Gates, then your hand starts cramping when you speed along Serra Mall, the straight stretch in front of Memorial Church.

BEGINNER AND EXPERT MODE

Beginner mode was a leisurely riding pace for an experienced longboarder, although often a little too slow for someone accustomed to speeding down hills through Stanford’s circle of death at a healthy speed. In general, I can see the board’s beginner mode as a viable way to get people started on longboarding. People quickly acclimate to the beginner mode speed and become comfortable leaning to turn right or left.

Perhaps my biggest complaint (and in my opinion, the lowest-hanging fruit to improve the boards) is the sheer difference in speed and sensitivity between the beginner and expert modes. On expert mode, the speed feels uncomfortably fast on flat ground, even to the most experienced longboarder. Although it becomes a lot more useful when climbing up hills, you have to exert a crazy amount of control on the hyper-sensitive dial.

Photo courtesy of Boosted Board.
Photo courtesy of Boosted Board.

Anyone who casually longboards and has a healthy risk aversion would probably be hesitant to use expert mode regularly, because an accidental twitch of the thumb might send the board flying out from under you. Boosted Boards could greatly benefit from the addition of a middle ground between the two modes that helps you ease into the speed more comfortably. That said, for cautious, experienced longboarders, expert mode can be a load of fun speeding past bikes and golf carts with ease.

OVERALL

Initially, the board was priced at $2000, which is a steep price to pay for any college student. However, with the new base price of $999, the board is a viable option for college students looking for a fast, portable means of last-mile transportation around campus. At its updated price, I would buy a board, although I believe Yuneec’s E-Go board is a cheaper, albeit less powerful alternative ($700). This is simply a matter of personal choice, since I would rather have the enhanced capabilities the Boosted offers with the greater power output, which makes for significantly easier ascents up hills and faster speeds all-around, which makes for a special board that can be more than just a transportation device. We wish them the best of luck!

The updated Boosted line: 

Boosted Single

The Single drive is the most portable vehicle in the line. With its new one-motor drive system outputting 1,000 watts of power, it can reach a speed of 18 mph and has an increased range of seven miles. The board climbs hills up to a 15 percent grade and weighs just 13.5 lbs. Priced at just $999, the Single drive is available for pre-order now and will ship in limited quantities in January 2015.

Boosted Dual

The Dual drive features a unique twin-motor system for superior handling. The 1,500 watt board has a top speed of 20 mph, a range of six miles, a weight of 15 lbs. and the ability to climb hills up to a 20 percent grade. The twin motors enable balanced carving up and down hills, appealing to surfers, snowboarders and recreational riders alike. The Dual drive is available immediately in limited quantities for $1,299.

Boosted Dual+

The original and acclaimed Boosted board, now called the Dual+, was designed for riders who demand the very best performance. The Dual+ features a 2,000 watt power system, has a 6-mile range and weighs 15 lbs. With its upgraded software, the board has a top speed of up to 22 mph and can climb grades up to an amazing 25 percent, making it the most powerful light electric vehicle ever built. The Dual+ drive is available immediately in limited quantities for $1,499.

Contact Andrew Han at handrew ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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