The end of the road for Convoy is a cautionary tale for startups and investors

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TODAY'S TOP STORIES

What the heck happened at Convoy? We explore that question on a new episode of the GeekWire Podcast, examining the market forces, debt, and other dynamics that put the digital freight marketplace out of business this week

  • GeekWire co-founder John Cook, who has covered startups and venture capital since before the dot-com bust, compares Convoy’s implosion to past flameouts of high-profile startups, and explains the trends that served as the backdrop for Convoy’s demise.

  • Listen here, or subscribe to GeekWire in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. 



“I think it’s mostly nonsense.”
That’s the take from Seattle-area science-fiction writer Ted Chiang, speaking Thursday at the GeekWire Summit about “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” published by venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. 

  • Chiang, whose work inspired the movie Arrival, said AI is too often unjustly portrayed as a high-tech panacea. That claim came through loud and clear in Andreessen’s manifesto, which called AI a “universal problem solver.”

  • "Technology can solve certain problems, but I think the biggest problems that we face are not problems that have technological solutions,” Chiang said. Read more

Hot Links:

  • Xbox and PlayStation light up The Sphere: The new eye-catching attraction in Vegas had a gaming theme this week. (The Verge

  • Tesla planning new Seattle-area service center: The EV giant filed documents for a 115,000 square-foot building in Renton, according to public records. (Puget Sound Business Journal)

  • ‘The Great Amazon Heist’: A new documentary uses pranks and humor to take on Amazon. (Wired)

Thanks for subscribing to the GeekWire newsletter, and have a great weekend. — GeekWire managing editor Taylor Soper, taylor@geekwire.com; and GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop, todd@geekwire.com.
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