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👋🏾 Hey From Colorintech - #026

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What do you like to hear about the most?
 Diversity and inclusion news
 Things that make you go hmmm
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 The latest from the Colorintech team
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🗞️Diversity and inclusion news🗞️
🤑Microsoft released its Diversity report🤑
 
Colorintech backers Microsoft released their latest diversity report👩🏽‍🤝‍👨🏾

The highlights are women now represent 28.6% of its global workforce, which is one percentage point up from last year. Looking at race, the company has seen almost no movement though, with Black and African American employees are 4.9% of the U.S. workforce and 5.2% of individual contributors, but only 2.9% of managers, 2.6% of directors, and 2.9% of partners + executives.🤨

They announced a swathe of commitments to increase representation and strengthen their culture of inclusion and notably put some money towards it, so let's see how they get on🤔 You can read what they say here

As a bit of friendly competition, here is a snippet of what Google is doing and guess who is featured 😜
📦Black Business success🛍

With the backdrop of another report letting us know that on average, Black entrepreneurs report much lower turnover (over a third less), productivity and profit than White owners, we thought we'd point to some of the stories from those entrepreneurs to add some nuance to the rather blunt report (which you can read here)

Check out the report from Nadine White here 

If you felt any sort of emotion in that video it may be worth checking this resource out as it may be a consequence of bias👀
🧠Things that make you go hmmm🧠
👩🏾‍⚖️Back to the courts👩🏾‍⚖️

So the big news in tech this week was another lawsuit and this time it's the US Justice Department (DOJ) versus Google. The DOJ is alleging that Google is “unlawfully maintaining monopolies in the markets for general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising in the United States.”👀

The last time the US gov got this heavy with a tech giant was Microsoft in the 90's (which ironically probably enabled Google to flourish)😅

Make no mistake Google will fight this (and it has deep pockets too) and it issued a brief outline of what it's the defense will be on Twitter noting that "People use Google because they choose to -- not because they're forced to or because they can't find alternatives."👀 If this deal is anything to go by, some may have reasonable grounds to contest that (p.s. that article is a great read) so lets see how this one pans out. Don't expect a decision quickly though. It's likely it will drag on for years 😩.
 
So what?: Google is fighting a lot of battles in the courts these days, and this may be its biggest battle yet👩🏾‍⚖️.
 
🤑BITCOIN is back🤑
 
Payments company PayPal announced it was partnering with Crypto company Paxos to enable users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies. In 2021 it wants to go a step further by letting users use crypto assets as a funding source for PayPal purchases. This could be a good way to use cryptocurrencies for everyday purchases for its 26 million merchants.🛍

Fees are around the 2% mark and PayPal plans to support Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin at first.🧐

This is all under the backdrop of the news that the price of bitcoin is up 25% in the past month to hit its highest since January 2018 It is currently trading above $12,400.💸

A question we had though is did we miss the crypto hype? - Well hear what the experts at Black Tech Fest thought about it all🤔
 
So what?: Bitcoin is back and looks like it's here to stay🤑
 
📱FAILED📺
 
There is always a lot of talk about Tech's successes, so this week it was an interesting departure as the news hit that Quibi (the short-form video platform) co-founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg (Former Disney Chairman) and Meg Whitman (Former HP Enterprise CEO) is shutting down😓.

Quibi was notable due to its founders and the fact it managed to raise nearly $2bn from backers including Alibaba, Goldman Sachs, Disney, Sony Pictures, WarnerMedia, MGM, and many more😲.

Why did it fail? Well, rumors have it users weren't overblown by its quasi short, but not social media short📱, and long but not, I'm going to sit down and watch this long📺, video format. It also blamed the covid pandemic for reducing the commute 👀. It has been mooted that it still had about $350m to return to shareholders, so not a total wipeout🤔.
 
So what?: Online streaming is hard, Just ask Netflix who after its results had its share price plummet, after its earning suggested that the pandemic entertainment boom is slowing. Perhaps competition is though too that even despite spending $1bn in 6 months, it failed to hit is subscriber targets with the likes of Apple, Disney, Netflix, Amazon and more all going after the same eyeballs📺

🤔Deepfake Nudes😲
 
Perhaps one of the most distributing tech stories you'll read is that there is a telegram bot that makes Deepfake images of nude women and in some instances underage minors.😱

The AI ‘removes’ items of clothing from a non-nude photo to create a computer-generated "nude". The images are automatically created once people upload a clothed image of the victim to the Telegram bot from their phone or desktop😨

Wired mag reported that every day the bot sends out a gallery of new images to an associated Telegram channel which has almost 25,000 subscribers. The sets of images are frequently viewed more 3,000 times. A separate Telegram channel that promotes the bot has more than 50,000 subscribers😯

It's not the first time that we have heard about such tech abusive practices with, WIRED previously reporting how reported on how deepfake porn videos had gone mainstream. More than 1,000 abusive videos were being uploaded to the world’s biggest porn websites every month. One 30-second video that uses actress Emma Watson’s face and is hosted on some of the websites had been watched more than 30 million times.😯
 
So what?: Tech has some very dark uses.
 
👩🏿‍💻For the creators👩🏿‍💻
📈 The tools behind the tech📉
 
📦Product📦
🌐Events and opportunities 🌐
💻RISE IS BACK 💻
 
Our very own Rise Program is back!

We built it for entrepreneurs, with entrepreneurs, to support Entrepreneurs and this year we are super proud to have Atomico (one of Europe's Biggest and successful VC's) and our friends at M12 (Microsoft's Venture Arm) backing our work too!

It's equity free, has some of the worlds best advisors, and we have some super free free-bees to support entrepreneurs from some of our partners including Google so watch out for further announcements 

Read more about what we have in store

Oh and here's a useful guide for those who want to be on the other side of the table How to break into VC

📚YSYS have launched an investor lounge 📚
 
Our friends at YSYS have partnered with @innovateuk have launched #FoundersDoor Investor Lounge.
 

The event will be packed with workshops, panel talks and office hour opportunities with @atomico, @SalesforceVC, @Cornerstone_LDN, @ForwardPrt  and @bpVentures

Register here if you want to attend: https://bit.ly/2FvjXgU

🙌🏾The latest from the Colorintech team🙌🏾
😃What we are consuming😃

A week to remember 

😎And that's the bottom line😎
 

👊🏾Let us know what you think if you have any feedback on the newsletter here👊🏾

📩If you think someone else would enjoy it, they can sign up here📩, you can forward it or you can share 
    


🤗In these challenging times, we hope you and your loved ones stay safe.🤗

❤️Love, peace and happiness from the Colorintech Team!❤️

28/10/20 
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