People

  • Sebastian Thrun: “If I know how to solve something, I’m not that interested in it”

    All week we’ve brought you clips of our sit-down with Udacity’s Sebastian Thrun. But his sometimes radical new take on reinventing education is one of the least sexy — and least radical — projects he’s worked on. In his previous role at Google, Thrun was responsible for two of the coolest things the company has developed: The self-driving car and...
  • Global opportunity? Sure. But Udacity is starting with education dysfunction close to home

    For all of the amazingly progressive and innovative things that come out of California — most of which are fueled by highly-educated people — it’s shocking how dysfunctional the state’s college and university system is. On average it takes six years to finish school, in part because many students are also working. But it’s also because they simply can’t get...
  • youtube_chair_pd

    An inside look at the first major acquisition of a premium YouTube channel

    Yesterday, Dreamworks announced the acquisition of AwesomenessTV for $33 million, the first such major purchase of a YouTube-funded premium video channel. Following the news, I caught up with Awesomeness’ lead investor to inquire about the deal and what it might mean for the ecosystem as a whole. (Hint: This looks like the beginning of big things to come.) Mark...
  • Andreessen and Thiel debate whether we’re still innovating

    Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel will pretty much debate anyone, anytime, anywhere about most anything. They’re both frighteningly good at it. It’s not fun to be on the other side of the barrage of obscure facts and rhetorical tricks both can easily employ. So, The Milken Institute decided to sick them on one another. At an event earlier this week,...
  • Brian Lee

    Come see ShoeDazzle’s Brian Lee! PandoMonthly LA tickets on sale now

    The LA startup ecosystem is in a make-it-or-break-it year. In recent years the ecosystem has finally received some serious respect and funding, thanks to a bunch of high profile startups that seemed to be on to something. But one by one, many of the most high profile of them have sputtered — including Viddy, Beachmint, and BetterWorks. One of the...
  • Do you have to be an educator to remake higher education?

    Silicon Valley is enamored with the narrative of the 20-something founder who doesn’t know enough of the industry he is disrupting to do otherwise. But sometimes, experience matters. I’m biased, but I’d argue that knowing a thing or two about journalism helps when building a modern media company. And last week, Lynda Weinman– founder of lynda.com– said her secret to...
  • The real problem with the tech workforce? Computer science moves faster than educators

    We’ve got two more clips from our in-depth sit down with Udacity’s founder Sebastian Thrun. In previous segments we talked about what has worked for Udacity as a business and Thurn’s radical thoughts on teaching. In these segments we talk less about Udacity as a company and more about the problems with education on a macro level. In...
  • Sebastian Thrun: “Grave times require radical thinkers”

    If you are a traditional educator, this video will likely infuriate you. In it, Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun and I talk about what is working with online education and what isn’t. He’s plenty critical of the movement he’s part of — citing the 90% drop out rates of a lot of massive online courses. “I’m the first one to...
  • How Sebastian Thrun plans to “fix computer science”

    We couldn’t let our month on online education end without a sit down with Sebastian Thrun. While he hasn’t had the billion dollar exits, Thrun is one of the only entrepreneurs today who could hold a candle to Elon Musk in the ballsy, futurist Renaissance man department. He helped invent Google’s self driving car and Google glass, but left all...
  • Lynda.com’s “agonizing decision” to take venture capital

    All week we’ve brought you clips from our interview with Lynda Weinman, the founder of lynda.com– one of the only online education companies to actually build a big, profitable, sustainable business. The company first got on our radar because of the recent whopper of a series A: $103 million round. That’s the largest round of venture capital ever invested in...
  • Gour Lentell

    Boom, crash… what? A dotcom train wreck finds a remarkable second coming

    It was 1999, right in the thick of the dotcom boom, and Sydney-based ad-serving startup Sabela Media was just one day away from closing a $14 million venture round. Things couldn’t look much better for Sabela, which in the space of 18 months had become one of the top five ad-serving platforms in the world and had expanded to New…

  • Moonfrye Sunshine

    Punky Brewster’s Moonfrye raises $2.5 million to deliver DIY activities to parents and kids

    Of all the affinity networks online, moms may be the largest and are certainly one of the most engaged. At the same time, these women control a disproportionate amount of discretionary spending and are constantly looking for inspiration and utility around the topic of raising kids. Two women who know first hand the power of this audience are Soleil Moon...
  • belly-dancer-11

    Belly dance: Can Lightbank and Chicago’s hot new company avoid Groupon’s missteps?

    The two conversations I’ve had with Silicon Valley insiders where loyalty company Belly has come up have both been effusive. But oddly enough, both have invoked the disaster that is Groupon. The first one was an off the record conversation months ago about how Groupon’s inexperience, arrogance and sloppiness tainted the promise of bringing the local retailers into the...
  • The secret to a good online course (Hint: It’s not technology)

    In our second installment of our Skype sit down with lynda.com founder Lynda Weinman, I asked a simple question: What makes a good online course? In the current frenzy around online education and MOOCs, we spend a lot of time focused on the science of what technology can enable — and less on the art about what may...
  • Solar

    Talent wars: SolarCity poaches the CEO of its largest competitor, Vivint Solar

    Elon Musk’s SolarCity appears to have gotten a two-for-one special this week, bolstering its own management team while weakening that of one of its closest competitors. The company has hired former Vivint Solar CEO Tanguy Serra as its Executive Vice President of Operations, according to a source with knowledge of the situation. While Serra and SolarCity did not...
  • dvorkin

    PandoMonthly New York with Forbes’ Lewis DVorkin, the full interview

    Forbes chief product officer Lewis DVorkin joined PandoDaily’s Adam Penenberg — who previously worked at Forbes himself — at our latest PandoMonthly New York to discuss the state of the media business, articles written by robots, and how DVorkin views Forbes’ massive contributor platform that allows “experts” and marketers to publish alongside Forbes’ journalists. DVorkin also talked about native...

The Week in Review