The startup
Who they are: Wright Electric, a startup backed by Y Combinator in Mountain View.
What they do: Electric airplanes.
Why it’s cool: Electric cars are commonplace around the Bay Area, Tesla is working on an electric semi-truck, and now Wright wants to take that technology to the sky. The founders say going electric will make air travel cheaper and better for the environment — they estimate a 300-mile flight in a Boeing 737 costs $1,500 in fuel, compared to $793 to fly the same distance in an electric plane.
Where they stand: Wright Electric is working on building its first 150-seat electric plane designed for quick trips like New York to Boston. Its founders want to make every short flight electric within 20 years.
Only in silicon valley
Introducing Completed: the online platform that lets you rate and review everyone you interact with during your day, from co-workers, to waiters, to your boss. Users rate people with stars — one star is the worst, and five stars is the best — and write a brief, free-form review. The idea is that the reviews can pinpoint areas of weakness that help employees improve their work. And employers can use them to get an honest depiction of potential hires. Think of it as a hybrid of Yelp and LinkedIn.
Users can write reviews anonymously or use their real name, and Completed prohibits harassing, threatening or embarrassing reviews. Professionals also can create profiles that help them manage their reputation on the site and question feedback they think is unfair.
“The current professional review landscape is broken, and there is a clear need for a central information source and a trusted review system,” CEO Michael Zammuto wrote in a news release.
The San Francisco-based company launched last month and raised a $150,000 seed round from an unnamed former Google employee.
Run the numbers
Smartphones are so last season. Demand for smartphones hit a nine-year low last quarter, according to a recent study by 451 Research. Just 8.3 percent of people surveyed said they plan on buying a smartphone in the next 90 days, down 2.7 points from the previous quarter’s study.
Why? Analysts blame lengthening smartphone upgrade cycles, and a lack of revolutionary new features.
Apple is holding onto its lead as the preferred smartphone maker, the researchers report, with 38 percent of people who plan to buy a smartphone saying they will choose Apple. The survey looked at responses from 4,075 consumers, primarily in North America.
Quotable
“It is a masterpiece on many levels. It is the most complex project that has ever been undertaken, arguably the most expensive computer project anyone has ever done.” — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiling the company’s new, super-powerful Tesla V100 chip.
Huang also revealed that Toyota will use the Nvidia Drive platform for its self-driving cars, and debuted a “Robot Simulator” that uses a virtual world to train robots to perform certain tasks.
