CB Insights - does Silicon Valley have bad taste?

Hola, 

This week's Apple keynote was a window into what Silicon Valley considers to be the height of good taste. Everything was sleek, razor-thin, and glossy. 

Don’t get me wrong. From the circular Apple HQ in Cupertino, to the new iMacs, to the partnership with Hermès to make pricey leather accessories, everything looked nice and all.

But that’s kind of the point. Silicon Valley’s ideas on what looks good have taken over consumer electronics, the internet, and increasingly the rest of the physical world. Are we sure they are the best arbiters of taste?

I am no Versace, but here are some questions I have:

• When did we decide that computers had to be razor-thin and as light as a feather rather than have a place for my accessories to plug in? 
• When did we decide that it was a good idea to make phones out of metal so highly machined and polished that they slip out of your hands like soap? Weren't these devices meant to be held in your hand!!?
• Do all big tech and app websites have to feature colorful, long-limbed cartoon people in happy poses, the design aesthetic one critic has dubbed “Humans of Flat”? 

My questions might grow from my own pet peeves, but at the very least it’s worth voicing one’s reservations. Otherwise we’ll all just mindlessly decide to like the same things that Zuck or Jony Ive like. And that would be, at the very best, boring.

Then again, as Charles Bukowski said, "Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste."

Walk the talk

Over the last 20 years, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has spent $50B+ on challenges like reducing poverty and developing vaccines.

Here are 5 innovation lessons from their annual letters that every industry should know.

On loan

Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Google are going after the $3T+ global SMB lending market.

We dig into their financial strategies and analyze the market in this client-only big tech in lending report.

Seeing is believing

We have 25 great companies demoing at the CB Insights Tech Market: Digitizing P&C event (May 13-14).

We asked each company to describe their product in 5 words or less to give you an idea of what to expect. Here’s a sample:

• Akur8 — Demo category: Predictive Analytics — “Speed, Performance, Transparency”

• Betterview — Demo category: Geospatial — “Accurately and instantly predict risk”

• Groundspeed — Demo category: Data Enhancement — “Unlocking value from unstructured data”

• Hazard Hub — Demo category: Geospatial — “Hazards, Property Characteristics, and Permits”

Check out the full list of demoing companies here.

There’s still time to get your ticket. Register here and save $50 with code demos.

$4B: Social audio app Clubhouse raised a Series C round at a $4B valuation — a 40x increase from the $100M valuation it received just 11 months ago. We detailed 11 Clubhouse competitors that investors and acquirers should know here.

$436M: AI-powered biotech company Recursion raised $436M in its IPO and now has a $5B+ market cap. We recently selected Recursion for our fifth annual AI 100 list. Get a behind-the-scenes look at the AI 100 in our upcoming webinar.

48%: Paris-based Alan, a digital-first health insurer, raised a $223M Series D round at a unicorn-minting $1.7B valuation. We predicted Alan would pass the $1B+ valuation mark in our 2020 Future Unicorns report, made in collaboration with Fast Company. So far, we have a 48% hit rate (including exits).
 

50 years: Elon Musk’s SpaceX won a NASA contract to ferry astronauts to the moon later this decade as part of the Artemis program. It will mark the first time astronauts have touched down on the lunar surface in over 50 years. Beyond space, see 7 other industries Elon Musk and his companies are disrupting here.

8 stores: Amazon plans to bring its Amazon One palm-scanning checkout tech to 8 Whole Foods stores in the Seattle area. Until now, Amazon One, which connects shoppers’ biometrics to their payment information, has only been used in Amazon-branded stores. Dig into how Amazon is disrupting the payments space — alongside 8 other industries — here.

Over 150M years ago, a small creature — looking part frog, bat, and dragon — flew above Jurassic China eating bugs.

Researchers identified the new species of pterosaur after discovering a crushed skeleton fossilized in rock in China’s Hebei Province.

Have a great rest of the week.

Marcelo

P.S. Our friends at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati are hiring a business development analyst. Apply here.