How To Play VC Poker With Billions In The Pot

d ve a direct effect on late-stage investors, who are most aware of these final prices and are concerned with exiting their investments in a timely manner. But it also matters to earlier-stage investors.

While VCs always care about those final exit prices, they care far more about getting their portfolio companies to their next round of financing. VCs at each stage of the pipeline are deeply cognizant of the valuations that will be offered in the next stage. The high valuations being offered by late-stage investors leads to higher valuations from growth-stage investors, and then from early-stage u investors all the way to seed funds.f

With a massive pot, unicorn poker players are willing to put up equally massive bets.
In The Event Of A Hard Landing

Of course, that excellent exit market can suddenly turn south for any number of geopolitical and business cycle reasons. Unfortunately, late-stage investors are put in a tough place during changing market conditions due to the lack of liquidity offered by startup equity.

Public investments are elastic – any investor can buy one share or one million of them at will. As market conditions change, then so can the size of your stake in a company. Think that a typhoon hitting Thailand may affect the availability of Apple’s new watch? Sell the stock. Your timing doesn’t even have to be impeccable to make money, so long as your thinking is ahead of the rest of the market.

This is precisely the opposite of private company investments. Here, you have a window of opportunity to get your money into a company during its fundraise. Miss the window, and you may never get another opportunity to invest. Once in, you have little ability to change your ownership either up or down. It’s a one shot bet in private equity versus a continuous one in the public markets, greatly increasing the risk of these investments. If you close an investment on Thursday, your whole thesis could blow up by Monday. There is nothing you can do about that.

Late-stage investors are not venture capitalists. They are often public market investors who aren’t finding great opportunities in the stock market due to those high stock prices, and are thus looking for pre-IPO companies that are “assured bets” and trying to invest in them early. They need downside protection since their goal is not to get a 100x return on one of their investments, but to get a 20% return with high probability and little risk of capital loss.

And it is here that we see where the bets are being made. So long as the technology sector continues its fast-paced growth, all of those investments will continue to make sense at the valuations we have been seeing. But if something changesgtt, then all of those investors are locked into assets with few places to offload them. That matters less with a $20 million early-stage round, but it can have serious repercussions with a $400 million late-stage investment.

Most investors are clearly betting that the market we are seeing is going to continue for some time. Every investment firm has the ability to fold and walk away, but the pot is so large right now. With unicorn poker though, that pot can suddenly vanish without a trace. Investment firms are taking calculated risks – let’s hope they are holding a flush and not a high card.

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Swifty Teaches Apple’s New Programming Language On Your iPhone

Last summer, Apple surprised almost everyone at WWDC with the announcement of Swift, a new programming language for iOS and Mac development.

The language feels like something Apple would invent. Like several of the languages currently popular in web development, it has a concise, readable syntax that’s easier to pick up than Apple’s older language, Objective-C. It was engineered by Apple’s compiler experts, so in addition to being compatible with existing code and Cocoa libraries, it’s also faster by some metrics.

But even though Apple’s tagline for the language is that it “lets everyone build amazing apps,” no novice is going to pick up Swift and get to coding full-on iOS or Mac apps without some guidance.

To that end, Apple and its developer community have done a heck of a job getting lessons out there. The same week Swift was announced, Apple released a version of Xcode with support for the language, released a free book detailing the syntax and launched a blogwith posts detailing updates and best practices. Even the beloved Stanford iOS course shifted from Objective-C to Swift.

For those just starting their journey into the world of coding, however, those resources are still intimidating to jump into. Enter Swifty, an app that provides an interactive set of tutorials that gradually guide you through the basics of Swift on your iPhone or iPad.


There are more than 200 tutorials in Swifty, starting with the very basics of variables and data types and progressing to the essentials of object-oriented programming. Obviously the iPhone keyboard isn’t the best tool for cranking out lines of code (especially if you’re just starting out), so creator Johannes Berger came up with an interesting interface that looks and feels like coding while actually acting more like an interactive quiz.

Each tutorial in Swifty starts with a one-to-three-sentence explanation of a new concept or an important aspect of a concept previously covered. Below, you’re shown a few lines of pre-written code, with a blank field where some vital name, type or value is missing. When you tap it, it lets you choose from several options. If you choose one of the correct options (sometimes it gives you several that work to demonstrate different output), it “runs” the code and shows the result.



Now, the output from the “console” at the bottom of the screen is pre-written — you’re not actually writing working code in the app. But the format quickly gets you comfortable with the look of Swift code and things like naming and accepted styles for creating blocks of code in functions or classes. While it might be a bit difficult for me to judge given my prior experience with the language and coding in general, I think most novices could jump into Xcode’s “Playgrounds” and muck around with simple text-based projects after an hour or two of using Swifty.

It’s clear that a lot of work went into making Swifty as accessible as possible, and that the app is worth the $2.99 to unlock every lesson if you spend some time on public transit that you’d like to use to become more familiar with Swift. If you’re not sure about the app (or even learning the language itself), you can make your way through the app’s first 13 tutorials for free.

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Facebook Plans To Turn Messenger Into A Platform

Next week at its F8 developer conference, Facebook will announce new ways for third parties to offer experiences through its Messenger app, according to multiple sources. Facebook hopes to make Messenger more useful, after seeing Asia’s chat apps WeChat and Line succeed as platforms that go beyond just texting with friends.

At first, Facebook will focus on how third parties can build ways for content and information to flow through Messenger. Depending on the success of the early experiments, Facebook may then mull bringing more utilities to Messenger.

While the Messenger platform is said to be a major part of F8 by all the sources, it’s unclear exactly what form the third-party integrations will take. Considering what WeChat and Line have done, there are plenty of opportunities including ways for businesses to communicate or share content directly with users, or options for richer friend-to-friend content sharing.

The platform is likely to start slow, with Facebook working with preferred partners, but it may eventually open to more developers. Facebook declined to comment on this story.
Avoiding Spam

Facebook is looking to recreate the best parts of its earlier web platform efforts without repeating its mistakes.

Facebook’s web canvas thrived with games, as it let users quickly bring their identity and friends to third-party experiences. And its Open Graph protocol connected people’s apps back to their Facebook profiles. Both were popular because they helped developers find an interested audience. That’s something especially tough now in the mobile era, as the app stores have become highly competitive and overcrowded.


Facebook Game Spam, circa 2010

The problem was that the web platform became so overrun with game spam that Facebook had to reduce its virality. Eventually, it withered as engagement shifted to phones during a time when Facebook was confused and slow moving on mobile. Open Graph got a rotten reputation for over-sharing, as it auto-published news, music and video consumption to the News Feed Ticker.

Learning from those experiences, Facebook is likely to be careful not to let spam slip into its relatively pristine Messenger app.
Inspired By Asia’s Monolithic Chat Apps

Until now, Messenger has been almost entirely a Facebook experience. Websites can integrate a Send button that lets users send the URL privately to a friend. But otherwise, Messenger focuses on letting users send and receive texts, phone calls, photos, videos, stickers, voice clips and money, all through Facebook’s own systems.

Facebook subtly hinted new developer capabilities for its chat app would be in store for F8, as it told me that Messenger would have announcements at the conference. And Messenger head David Marcus told Wired last year that he’s intrigued by how businesses and people communicate directly, citing the poor experience many have with touch-tone phone numbers and airline customer service. Facebook previously offered a little-known way for users to send private messages to Facebook business Page admins.

For Messenger’s platform, Facebook is said to have eyed Line and WeChat. They were pioneers in using their frequently used instant messaging apps as the centers of mobile interfaces that act as monolithic portals. Snapchat is another messaging app that’s recently explored a platform approach.



Line’s platform page

Japanese messenger Line includes a “More” tab with access to a Sticker Shop for buying premium emoji to share through Line, Line Pay for making quick transactions in brick-and-mortar stores, and featured collections of Line companion apps and games. Those apps range from homemade emoji makers that let you send your face to friends, Line Toss for photo sharing, Line Brush for drawing, Line Card for sending greeting cards, Line Camera for making collages, B612 for jazzing up selfies, and Line WebToon for reading manga.


Snapchat Discover

Line also lets users follow Official Accounts that let them receive content directly from celebrities, entertainment properties, news organizations, and brands like Paul McCartney, The Walking Dead, Manchester United, and the BBC. Compared to the constant barrage of posts to their Facebook and Twitter accounts, Line Official Accounts are designed for lower-volume, higher-signal, direct communication with fans.

Snapchat has pursued a premium, glossy content strategy with its Discover page. Major media outlets like Comedy Central, CNN, Vice and ESPN can offer up Snap-formatted photos, articles, and videos with interstitial ads. Meanwhile, WhatsApp has seen its Send buttons drive massive traffic for media properties by letting users push URLs to friends through WhatsApp messages.

Facebook could take inspiration from any of these apps. An option would be for Facebook to let third-parties help people create and share richer content like embellished photos through Messenger. Facebook already released its own Stickered For Messenger companion app for slapping stickers on photos and sending them to friends.

Alternatively, Facebook could allow users to follow or visit official accounts. That might help them stay current with things they love that might get lost in the News Feed, or communicate with businesses directly in a way that’s more efficient than a phone call. One more possibility is that Facebook might try to make it easier for web and mobile content properties to gain viral traffic via Messenger. Facebook’s own News Feed could get better ways for people to push stories they see to Messenger.


Facebook Stickered For Messenger

China’s WeChat platform has centered more around commerce. Users can buy movie tickets, pay for taxis and more through the messaging app.

While content is said to be the focus of Facebook’s initial Messenger platform efforts, it could expand into commerce eventually if third-party experiences gain traction. Just this week, Facebook added a way to make freefriend-to-friend payments through Messengerby adding a debit card. With a native payment interface already in Messenger, it would be easier for Facebook to build in more commerce opportunities.


China’s WeChat offers commerce experiences in its app. Via Benedict Evans

With well over 500 million users, Facebook Messenger has become one of the most popular apps in the world. While Facebook’s main app is essentially a version of its website ported to the small screen, Messenger was built for mobile. Facebook is something you lazily browse with little intent, whereas Messenger is designed for taking action and getting things done. For some around the world, Messenger has become the primary way they use Facebook. Improving content inside it could make sense for users who aren’t glued to the News Feed.

Facebook’s mission for Messenger as of late has been to make it “more useful, expressive and delightful,” according to its payments feature’s product manager Steve Davis. Now it’s ready to ask for some help from outside the walls of 1 Hacker Way.

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Medium Now Lets You Write Posts From Its iOS App

Popular blogging platform and publisherMedium has announced that the latest update to its iOS app will finally let users compose posts from their iPhone or iPad.

It’s a feature that many fans of the platisher (publorm?) have been begging the company for from day one. It’s landing in the wake of another recent update, which let you start writing an outline or short post in an editor located at the top of the page. Both changes encourage more writing by lowering the bar for how much work is “expected from” the person writing a post.


In fact, one of the use cases most frequently mentioned with regards to a theoretical (until this point) compose feature in the mobile app is that it could be used in place of the infamous “tweetstorms” plaguing Twitter since Marc Andreessen introduced them when he joined the service in early 2014.

Instead of manually stringing together a series of tweets to make a larger point, one could jump into Medium (which is already built on Twitter identities), put 150-250 words together, and quickly come back to Twitter with a beautifully formatted post.

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This Box Bruteforces Your iPhone PIN Without Triggering The 10-Guess Limit

A simple PIN might keep your iPhone safe from the prying hands of a curious toddler or a drunk friend. But slap that thing in a robot that exists for no reason but to try every possible PIN one-by-one, and it’ll crack it right open.

These machines have existed for a while, but this one is particularly crazy: if you’ve got your iPhone set to clear all of its data after 10 failed guesses, it’ll try to exploit its way past that.

Note the “try” in that last sentence: while we’re still waiting on confirmation from Apple on this one, there’s a good chance that the trickery at play here only works if you’re on a build of iOS older than iOS 8.1.1 (Shipped November 2014). Apple’s notes for 8.1.1mention patching a bug (CVE-2014-4451) that could circumvent the “the maximum number of failed passcode attempts”; it’s not clear if that’s the same bug at play here, though it seems likely.

Here’s the device in use, via MDSec, who was able to obtain the bruteforcer for around $300:







It can be a bit hard to tell what’s going on in the video, so here’s what you’re looking at:
On the left is the iPhone, splayed open for direct access to its internals
On the right is the bruteforcing box.
The iPhone’s internal battery appears to be disconnected, giving the bruteforce box the ability to cut the iPhone’s power instantly
Each time the device makes a guess, it sends it to the iPhone over USB. (It makes its first guess in the video above at 0:30)
If the guess fails, an optical sensor strapped to the screen recognizes it, and…
In a split second, the bruteforce box cuts the power and forces the iPhone to shut down before it can write the failed attempt to memory.
The iPhone resets, and the box is free to try again.
When the optical sensor detects a successful entry (like the one at 1:53 in the video above), the box stops guessing, logs the correct PIN, and starts beeping to get the attention of whoever was using it.

Because each failed attempt requires a reset, each run takes roughly 44 seconds. If it fails until the very last try on a 4-digit password, that’s 4.5 days of bruteforcing. That’s not exactly Hollywood spy movie speed hackery — but if they’ve outright stolen your phone and really want to see what’s inside, it’s plenty quick.

So, how can you protect your device from this?
Update. If this isn’t fixed in iOS 8.1.1 or 8.2 (and it seems likely that it is), you can bet that Apple is rushing to patch this one now that this video is floating around.
Use a longer password. As JWZ points out: at 44 seconds per try, a 4-digit pin take up to 4 1/2 days to crack. A 7-digit pin takes up to 12 years.

We’ve reached out to Apple for comment on the status of the exploit at play in the video, but have yet to hear back.

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Apple Researching Taptic Feedback For Keyboards With No Physical Keys

Apple has a new patent application that modifies one of their existing inventions based on one of their newly announced techs: Taptics. The application, published by the USPTO today (via Patently Apple) features a virtual keyboard design that resembles the current Magic Trackpad accessory in its construction, with a smooth piece of aluminum used instead of physical buttons. Virtual buttons without touch-based input are used instead, and Apple employs haptics to provide feedback for key presses.

Its own taptic version of haptic feedback could theoretically be used in the way it’s employed with the new Force Touch trackpadApple has created for its MacBook and 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro. This would allow users to get the sensation that they were actually pressing physical keys, even though the keyboard itself would have no mechanical movement, which would answer one of the biggest criticisms users have of virtual keyboards.

Apple could also then offer up user customizations for the input device, configurable via software, the way it has on the Force Touch trackpad. You might be able to select different “depth” of key press sensations, depending on preference, or use Force Touch (secondary, deeper presses) to activate features like special characters, accents for other languages, or for triggering function keys.


Virtual input for things like standalone or MacBook keyboards has a lot in the way of potential benefits – imagine a keyboard that never needs dusting, or even thinner MacBooks thanks to the elimination of the need to build-in key travel. It’s also just less mechanically complex, which should make for longer life without failure. Apple’s recent advances with taptics could finally mean that this kind of keyboard is possible without the drawbacks of eliminating the physical typing sensation, which would differentiate it from other efforts to do the same.

We’ve already seen many predict that taptics will come to the iPhone and iPad next, but Apple’s tech is also a logical next step for its hardware keyboards, too.

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Apple Researching Taptic Feedback For Keyboards With No Physical Keys

Apple has a new patent application that modifies one of their existing inventions based on one of their newly announced techs: Taptics. The application, published by the USPTO today (via Patently Apple) features a virtual keyboard design that resembles the current Magic Trackpad accessory in its construction, with a smooth piece of aluminum used instead of physical buttons. Virtual buttons without touch-based input are used instead, and Apple employs haptics to provide feedback for key presses.

Its own taptic version of haptic feedback could theoretically be used in the way it’s employed with the new Force Touch trackpadApple has created for its MacBook and 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro. This would allow users to get the sensation that they were actually pressing physical keys, even though the keyboard itself would have no mechanical movement, which would answer one of the biggest criticisms users have of virtual keyboards.

Apple could also then offer up user customizations for the input device, configurable via software, the way it has on the Force Touch trackpad. You might be able to select different “depth” of key press sensations, depending on preference, or use Force Touch (secondary, deeper presses) to activate features like special characters, accents for other languages, or for triggering function keys.

Virtual input for things like standalone or MacBook keyboards has a lot in the way of potential benefits – imagine a keyboard that never needs dusting, or even thinner MacBooks thanks to the elimination of the need to build-in key travel. It’s also just less mechanically complex, which should make for longer life without failure. Apple’s recent advances with taptics could finally mean that this kind of keyboard is possible without the drawbacks of eliminating the physical typing sensation, which would differentiate it from other efforts to do the same.

We’ve already seen many predict that taptics will come to the iPhone and iPad next, but Apple’s tech is also a logical next step for its hardware keyboards, too.

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