#what reality is ACTUALLY like. tech obsessed and pretty much one giant city. even the farms are so. gestures. meat has become a thing made

[cal-x]

fixatingon your own ocs is so cringe

[wintcrwinds]

(me: matty is on break also me: here is a giant matty factfile)

The Basics

Name? Mateo Rosario Hernandez Moreno

Age? 26

Approximate height? 5′9

Hair colour? Dark brown

Eye colour? Brown

Do they speak with an accent? No

Where are they from? Zuzu City

Where are they now? Stardew Valley

Backstory

Who are their parents? Héctor and Jennifer Moreno

What is their earliest memory? Watching campy old superhero cartoons on tv with his dad, back at their old apartment. Matty would stay up late waiting for him to get home from his job bussing tables at their local diner, and would inevitably fall asleep before the show was over.

What did they want to be when they grew up? A costumed crime-fighter, a server at JojaBurger, or Tony Hawk, in that order.

What did/do their parents want them to be? They don’t really see each other enough to get into it on the job front, though Matty supposes it would’ve been nice if he’d’ve been a tech genius like them - carried on the family business or something.

Do they have siblings? Older or younger? Brothers or sisters? None, but he did have an imaginary older brother in the same way most kids have imaginary friends. Bit sad, innit. 

Do they have or have they ever had children? How many? No, none, and never!

Do they or have ever had a significant other? Are they still with them? Why? Why not? Not a significant other - he’s dated a little, but his enthusiasm tends to scare people off.

Up until now, what’s the most noteworthy thing they’ve done? To them? To the people around them? Matty doesn’t really think he’s done anything noteworthy. Noteworthy things are for other, cooler people.

Tastes

What’s your character’s favourite colour? Red! No, blue! Wait, no, red!

Do they/would they choose to wear a scent? What would it be? Axe bodyspray, he’s rich but also basic.

Do they care about what things look like? All things, or only some? Not at all. His apartment looks like a college dorm crossed with Comic Con crossed with a dumpster.

What’s their favourite ice cream flavour? Phish Food!

Are they a tea, or coffee drinker? Or soft drinks, or do they drink a lot of alcohol? What kind? Doesn’t really drink tea or coffee because his palette is that of a ten year old. He drinks a lot of JojaCola, and only bothers with alcohol when he has someone to share it with. Which isn’t very often.

What kind of books do they read? What TV shows and movies do they watch? Matty doesn’t read anything except for graphic novels and comic books because focusing on lots of words is haaaard. In terms of TV he likes most popular stuff if it isn’t too cerebral, stuff like the Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, anything from the MCU...

What kind of music do they like? Do they like music at all? He likes pop punk mostly, it’s hype!

If they were about to die, what would they have as their last meal? Mexican feast, next question.

Are they hedonistic? In all cases? Or does practicality sometimes/always/often win out? Yeah, in a way! Matty doesn’t see the point in doing stuff if he’s not excited to do it!

Do they have any philias or phobias? Nah.

Morals, Beliefs, and Faith

Do they have an internal or an external moral code? Both?

To what extent are their actions dictated by this code? Mostly, though some things (mostly grafittiing and trespassing) are worth breaking the law for.

Do they believe in a God or Gods/Goddesses/Higher being of some description? Nah.

Are they superstitious? Not really, but he will call out stuff as being bad luck.

Do they believe in an afterlife? If so, what’s it like? Yeah dude, he believes in like... alternate universes. So you die, and then you start your life over again in another version of reality.

Do they have any specific beliefs that manifest obviously? No.

Are they respectful of the beliefs of others? To what extent? Yeah, but he’d rather not talk about it? He thinks religion is private and therefore awkward to talk about.

Have they ever had to stand up to criticism for being religious? Or not being religious? Nope!

Would they be more likely to act for the good of the one, or the good of the many? The good of the many.

Relationships

Do they make friends easily? Not really, in the past people have tended to find his personality too intense to handle, and he has been told frequently that he’s annoying.

Do they have a best friend? It’s Bartholomew, his butler. Bit sad innit.

Can they get people to do what they want them to? If so, how? No. Even bribery doesn’t really work.

Do they have a lot of romantic relationships? Serious, or short term? Matty hasn’t found anyone to tolerate him long enough for any kind of romantic relationship.

Do they fall in and out of love easily? Yeah, he’s a sucker for a pretty face and a kind word.

Do strangers and acquaintances actually like them when they meet? Historically, no, but he’s hoping that will change!

Do they have a network? Not really... his parents are too often absent to count, and Bartholomew can’t be a network on his own.

What is their relationship like with their family? BIT SAD INNIT. Matty really loves his parents, and he knows they love him too, but the physical distance between them has made a metaphorical distance too.

Are they still in touch with non-family people they were in touch with a year ago? Five years? Ten? More? No.

Do they like children? Do they want children of their own? He likes kids (and frankly they usually have overlapping interests), but Matty is more a fun uncle than a father figure, he thinks.

Physical Appearance

How does this character dress? How would they choose to dress, if all options were open to them? T-shirts, hoodies, jeans, converse, denim jacket, and probably a hat of some description. Matty has enough money to dress how he wants, but his tastes trend on the cheaper side.

Do they have any tattoos? What do they mean? None.

Do they have piercings? How many? None, but maybe he wants his nose pierced.

Do they have scars? Where did they come from? Yes, Matty is extremely accident prone and hurts himself a lot. Luckily, most injuries don’t phase him much.

Do they alter their appearance in some way on a regular basis? Nope!

Is there something they’d choose to change about their appearance if they had the opportunity to? His wonky chin? :(

Is there something about their appearance they’re particularly proud of/happy with? His hair!

Objectively, are they physically attractive? Fairly plain? Unattractive? He’s cute for sure.

Do they have an accurate mental picture and opinion of their physical appearance? Yeah dude, Matty knows what he looks like, and he thinks he looks fine!

How much time do they spend thinking about their physical appearance? It would be a lot less if he wasn’t so obsessed with his hair.

General Knowledge

Can they navigate their own local area without getting lost? To what degree? No, his sense of direction is absolute garbage. Without his phone he’d be lost like 90% of the time.

Do they know who the top politician or monarch is where they live? What about elsewhere? He knows Mayor Lewis, does that count?

Do they know if/where there are any major conflicts going on right now? No.

Do they know the composition of water? ... no...

Do they know how to eat a pomegranate? Carefully?

Are they good with the technology available to them? Average? Completely hopeless? Okay, tech is something Matty is good at. 

Could they paint a house? Without making a mess of it? Paint it? Yes. Do it without making a mess? Absolutely not. He’s happy to be invovled though!

Could they bake a cake? Would you eat it if they did? No, and no, he’d try so hard, but he’s literally useless and would definitely give me food poisoning.

Do they know how to perform basic maintenance on the common mode of transportation? He can maintain his skateboard, but that’s it.

Do they know the price of a loaf of bread? How much can a loaf of bread cost? 20G?

Specific Knowledge

Do they have a specific qualification in a narrow area? The only qualification he has is his high school diploma, so no.

Is there something they do or know exceptionally well that most other people don’t? He’s actually a very good artist.

Do people often comment on a particular skill or area of knowledge to this character? Behind their back? Maybe on his lack thereof. Matty doesn’t really give the impression that he has any skills or knowledge. 

Is there an area this character could be considered top of their field or a genius in? God no.

Have they deliberately sought to gain knowledge in a specific area? If so, why? No, he’s stupid :(

Do they speak more than one language? More than two? Why? He speaks an embarrassingly small amount of spanish - the white family butler literally speaks more spanish than him.

Does their cultural background effect what they would be expected to know? I mean, maybe his taste in Mexican food should be better than frozen burritos from JojaMart.

Have they ever been publicly acknowledged for being well-versed in something? Never.

Have they ever been bullied for knowing a lot about something? Yeah, he reaaaally loved superheroes as a kid, and got rinsed for talking about them so much.

Do they actively seek new knowledge, or let it come to them naturally? If anything Matty avoids knowledge.

Miscellaneous

What did they have for breakfast this morning? Dry cereal because his milk went bad and he was too lazy to go and buy more.

What ridiculous belief/s did they have as a child? ): I mean, the imaginary older brother was pretty silly.

Do they like marshmallows? Yeah!

Do they sleep on their side, front, or back? On his front, mouth open, snoring.

Do they work better with sound or silence? Sound! Music makes brain work faster.

Do they have a strange obsession with something minor? His hair? Superheroes?

Do they like art? Uhhhhhh, medium? He likes comics and stuff, but he’s not going to a museum anytime soon.

How fast can they run? Fast!

Do they prefer to sit on the floor or on a chair? Floor.

What do they want, right now? A breakfast burrito. Preferably one he didn’t have to microwave himself.

[toomanysinks]

Why longer term sheets are better

Recently in a conversation, the length of term sheets came as a topic (I assure you, it was a riveting conversation). The complaint was that a term sheet which had recently been received was too long, and therefore the VC who sent it wasn’t being founder friendly. The travails of successfully raising money!

Actually though, a longer term sheet is much more founder friendly and good business practice, and founders should be leery of VCs bearing short contracts.

Historically (i.e. about 6 years ago), term sheets used to be staid affairs, printed on plain white paper in standard Times New Roman font right out of Word. It was a wretched and horrifying world until the cool VCs showed up, who added design accoutrements (Bolded section heads! Logos! Colors!) while claiming that they had a “single-page” term sheet for founders, implying that the term sheet’s simplicity and prettiness showed that they weren’t really investors, but more like a Brooklyn barista with an art side hustle (and a lot of cash).

Here’s the thing, term sheets have an incredibly important purpose, which is to set forth in clear language the terms of a deal. Unfortunately in modern venture capital, there are a lot of terms that have to be negotiated in any equity round, from financial terms to option pools, to board structure, to voting rights on major business decisions like selling the company, and much more. Simpler term sheets either relegate many of these items to “standard venture capital terms apply” or some other vague language, or just wholly don’t mention them at all.

The challenge is that once the term sheet is signed, it becomes the blueprint by which the legal counsels for the VC and founder begin to write up the legal contracts that allows the VC to buy equity in the startup. When term sheets are clear, precise, and comprehensive, the lawyers just go to work and turn those agreed-upon terms into legal language in relatively short order.

When there are key terms that are “standard” or absent from a term sheet though, lawyers do what lawyers have to do: they negotiate for their respective party. Suddenly a term that seems fairly standard is up for debate, and unless a founder (and their VC) is paying very close attention to the legal process (from experience, no one really is), then the legal bills for the round can spiral very, very rapidly. That can pose a double whammy for a startup, since many VCs continue to charge the legal fees of conducting a round to the startup they are investing in.

I’ve seen founders in absolute sticker shock after seeing the legal costs of their round total into the upper tens of thousands of dollars because their lawyers racked up time trying to plow through term after term that could have been made clearer by the parties up front.

So, what’s more founder friendly: a longer term sheet that sets the deal terms clearly up front and likely saves the founder legal costs, or a shorter (but color!) term sheet that can end up costing far more down the line?

This is mostly a problem for first-time founders raising their first round of capital. I have a sinking feeling that many VCs take advantage of this naiveté to get better terms than they might have gotten otherwise had they actually walked through all the language up front. In later rounds, founders either ask all the right questions about the next round of capital, or their other existing investors figure this out on their behalf.

It’s good legal practice to always get all material terms figured out before your lawyers start writing contracts, whether in fundraising, or customer contracts, or what have you. You can’t always predict if there is something else that will end up being a disagreement, but getting most of the terms squared away will save legal time, and that is money ultimately in your pocket.

Side note: Extra Crunch published part two of five of our comprehensive guide to legal issues facing startups, this time focused on intellectual property. Don’t miss out on part one which focused on corporate issues.

Extra Crunch’s first conference call is today

We are hosting the first conference call for Extra Crunch subscribers today at 2pm EST / 11am PST. Call-in details are being sent out to members by email roughly one hour in advance. Today, Eric Eldon and I will talk briefly about Extra Crunch, and then TechCrunch social and product maestro Josh Constine is going to talk about the strategic issues confronting the social giants. Join us!

More SoftBank Vision Fund sadness

Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Written by Arman Tabatabai

Get out your popcorn because there’s more drama involving SoftBank’s giant Vision Fund and its LP base. Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund stated that it no longer planned to invest in the Vision Fund. Despite previous discussions with SoftBank, the fund plans to instead put its money into infrastructure across areas like energy, healthcare, and education.

With assets of roughly $15 billion under management, Bahrain’s fund is small potatoes when it comes to SoftBank, and its contribution likely would have been much smaller than those of its Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia counterparts. However, after recent reports that Persian Gulf LPs are growing frustrated with the Vision Fund and are putting more money to work in infrastructure, Bahrain’s decision could indicate a broader change in sentiment towards the Vision Fund. Just look at the comment the CEO of Bahrain’s Fund gave to Reuters:

“We talked with them and with many people, but it shows we’ve not seen something we think we can add value to or it could add value to us.”

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has wanted to scale up the size of Vision Fund II, but that dream may well be fading as more large wealth managers decline to engage.

Steam and video game streaming

Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Extra Crunch writer Chris Morris had a dive into the challenges facing Steam yesterday. Steam is facing two trends. First, publishers are increasingly getting smart about owning their customer relationship, which is hard to do with the design of Steam’s platform. The second is that video game streaming is getting closer to reality, and that doesn’t bode well for a game store. Plus, developers want to keep more of their revenue, and Steam takes a lot.

What’s interesting here is that publishers (and I mean big, AAA publishers) are increasingly comfortable with the notion that they can attract customers to their own independent store fronts and don’t have to pay the Steam tax in order to get in front of customers. What concerns me is that indie developers both don’t have the leverage to negotiate with Steam and don’t have the marketing budgets or fanbases to reach out to a wide audience. That’s not a great world, and an opportunity I think to figure out how to create a more even playing field for independent game creators.

The chip space keeps getting hotter as Korea’s SK leads round for Chinese chipmaker

IvancoVlad via Getty Images

Written by Arman Tabatabai

TechCrunch writer Rita Liao reported overnight that the A.I.-focused Chinese chipmaker Horizon Robotics raised a $600 million round led by subsidiaries of Korea’s SK Group, including its semiconductors segment.

We’ve previously discussed the intensifying global competition in the chip space, and SK’s investment shows that no one wants to miss out on the next innovative technology like previous incumbents who now find themselves playing catch up.

It’s worth noting that Intel’s venture arm, Intel Capital, is also an investor in Horizon and led their previous fundraise, as Horizon seems to offer up another opportunity for the US chip giant to make up lost ground in AI chip innovation and to gain share in the Chinese market now that they have canceled a partnership with China’s state-backed chipmaker Unisoc.

The data point is another positive for Chinese chipmakers, who seem to still have access to foreign capital on top of more than enough domestic — often state-backed — investments. The city of Beijing just raised its first venture fund with $1.5 billion focused on chips, A.I., and other areas, while China is reportedly nearing the closing of its second state-backed semis fund that some estimate might be nearly $50 billion in size.

More news

Written by Arman Tabatabai

California may have canceled HSR, but China is moving forward with an IPO

While US high-speed rail (HSR) projects continue to fall flat on their face, China Railway Corporation is now planning to IPO its Beijing to Shanghai HSR line within the next year. There’s always some financial risk with publicly-traded infrastructure, but the line’s securely profitable and the deal should help shore up the finances of its owner as it plans to make its largest rail investments ever this year.

Japan’s antitrust investigation is the latest in Asia’s new wave of regulatory scrutiny

Japan is reportedly initiating an antitrust investigation into the country’s biggest ecommerce platforms. Investigators will be looking to see whether Amazon Japan, Rakuten and SoftBank-subsidiary Yahoo! Japan launched benefit programs that ultimately are subsidized by and cut into the revenue of its small-to-midsize vendor suppliers.

The investigation is the latest in Japan’s broader effort to increase regulatory scrutiny on big tech, a global trend that seems to be permeating Asia as seen in our previous discussions on India. While it’s unclear how the heightened scrutiny will impact companies’ perception of these markets, it’s certainly clear that the “move fast and break things” playbook is getting tougher to run.

Obsessions

We have a bit of a theme around emerging markets, macroeconomics, and the next set of users to join the internet.

More discussion of megaprojects, infrastructure, and “why can’t we build things”

Thanks

To every member of Extra Crunch: thank you. You allow us to get off the ad-laden media churn conveyor belt and spend quality time on amazing ideas, people, and companies. If I can ever be of assistance, hit reply, or send an email to danny@techcrunch.com.

This newsletter is written with the assistance of Arman Tabatabai from New York

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/27/why-longer-term-sheets-are-better/

[fmservers]

Why longer term sheets are better

Recently in a conversation, the length of term sheets came as a topic (I assure you, it was a riveting conversation). The complaint was that a term sheet which had recently been received was too long, and therefore the VC who sent it wasn’t being founder friendly. The travails of successfully raising money!

Actually though, a longer term sheet is much more founder friendly and good business practice, and founders should be leery of VCs bearing short contracts.

Historically (i.e. about 6 years ago), term sheets used to be staid affairs, printed on plain white paper in standard Times New Roman font right out of Word. It was a wretched and horrifying world until the cool VCs showed up, who added design accoutrements (Bolded section heads! Logos! Colors!) while claiming that they had a “single-page” term sheet for founders, implying that the term sheet’s simplicity and prettiness showed that they weren’t really investors, but more like a Brooklyn barista with an art side hustle (and a lot of cash).

Here’s the thing, term sheets have an incredibly important purpose, which is to set forth in clear language the terms of a deal. Unfortunately in modern venture capital, there are a lot of terms that have to be negotiated in any equity round, from financial terms to option pools, to board structure, to voting rights on major business decisions like selling the company, and much more. Simpler term sheets either relegate many of these items to “standard venture capital terms apply” or some other vague language, or just wholly don’t mention them at all.

The challenge is that once the term sheet is signed, it becomes the blueprint by which the legal counsels for the VC and founder begin to write up the legal contracts that allows the VC to buy equity in the startup. When term sheets are clear, precise, and comprehensive, the lawyers just go to work and turn those agreed-upon terms into legal language in relatively short order.

When there are key terms that are “standard” or absent from a term sheet though, lawyers do what lawyers have to do: they negotiate for their respective party. Suddenly a term that seems fairly standard is up for debate, and unless a founder (and their VC) is paying very close attention to the legal process (from experience, no one really is), then the legal bills for the round can spiral very, very rapidly. That can pose a double whammy for a startup, since many VCs continue to charge the legal fees of conducting a round to the startup they are investing in.

I’ve seen founders in absolute sticker shock after seeing the legal costs of their round total into the upper tens of thousands of dollars because their lawyers racked up time trying to plow through term after term that could have been made clearer by the parties up front.

So, what’s more founder friendly: a longer term sheet that sets the deal terms clearly up front and likely saves the founder legal costs, or a shorter (but color!) term sheet that can end up costing far more down the line?

This is mostly a problem for first-time founders raising their first round of capital. I have a sinking feeling that many VCs take advantage of this naiveté to get better terms than they might have gotten otherwise had they actually walked through all the language up front. In later rounds, founders either ask all the right questions about the next round of capital, or their other existing investors figure this out on their behalf.

It’s good legal practice to always get all material terms figured out before your lawyers start writing contracts, whether in fundraising, or customer contracts, or what have you. You can’t always predict if there is something else that will end up being a disagreement, but getting most of the terms squared away will save legal time, and that is money ultimately in your pocket.

Side note: Extra Crunch published part two of five of our comprehensive guide to legal issues facing startups, this time focused on intellectual property. Don’t miss out on part one which focused on corporate issues.

Extra Crunch’s first conference call is today

We are hosting the first conference call for Extra Crunch subscribers today at 2pm EST / 11am PST. Call-in details are being sent out to members by email roughly one hour in advance. Today, Eric Eldon and I will talk briefly about Extra Crunch, and then TechCrunch social and product maestro Josh Constine is going to talk about the strategic issues confronting the social giants. Join us!

More SoftBank Vision Fund sadness

Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Written by Arman Tabatabai

Get out your popcorn because there’s more drama involving SoftBank’s giant Vision Fund and its LP base. Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund stated that it no longer planned to invest in the Vision Fund. Despite previous discussions with SoftBank, the fund plans to instead put its money into infrastructure across areas like energy, healthcare, and education.

With assets of roughly $15 billion under management, Bahrain’s fund is small potatoes when it comes to SoftBank, and its contribution likely would have been much smaller than those of its Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia counterparts. However, after recent reports that Persian Gulf LPs are growing frustrated with the Vision Fund and are putting more money to work in infrastructure, Bahrain’s decision could indicate a broader change in sentiment towards the Vision Fund. Just look at the comment the CEO of Bahrain’s Fund gave to Reuters:

“We talked with them and with many people, but it shows we’ve not seen something we think we can add value to or it could add value to us.”

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has wanted to scale up the size of Vision Fund II, but that dream may well be fading as more large wealth managers decline to engage.

Steam and video game streaming

Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Extra Crunch writer Chris Morris had a dive into the challenges facing Steam yesterday. Steam is facing two trends. First, publishers are increasingly getting smart about owning their customer relationship, which is hard to do with the design of Steam’s platform. The second is that video game streaming is getting closer to reality, and that doesn’t bode well for a game store. Plus, developers want to keep more of their revenue, and Steam takes a lot.

What’s interesting here is that publishers (and I mean big, AAA publishers) are increasingly comfortable with the notion that they can attract customers to their own independent store fronts and don’t have to pay the Steam tax in order to get in front of customers. What concerns me is that indie developers both don’t have the leverage to negotiate with Steam and don’t have the marketing budgets or fanbases to reach out to a wide audience. That’s not a great world, and an opportunity I think to figure out how to create a more even playing field for independent game creators.

The chip space keeps getting hotter as Korea’s SK leads round for Chinese chipmaker

IvancoVlad via Getty Images

Written by Arman Tabatabai

TechCrunch writer Rita Liao reported overnight that the A.I.-focused Chinese chipmaker Horizon Robotics raised a $600 million round led by subsidiaries of Korea’s SK Group, including its semiconductors segment.

We’ve previously discussed the intensifying global competition in the chip space, and SK’s investment shows that no one wants to miss out on the next innovative technology like previous incumbents who now find themselves playing catch up.

It’s worth noting that Intel’s venture arm, Intel Capital, is also an investor in Horizon and led their previous fundraise, as Horizon seems to offer up another opportunity for the US chip giant to make up lost ground in AI chip innovation and to gain share in the Chinese market now that they have canceled a partnership with China’s state-backed chipmaker Unisoc.

The data point is another positive for Chinese chipmakers, who seem to still have access to foreign capital on top of more than enough domestic — often state-backed — investments. The city of Beijing just raised its first venture fund with $1.5 billion focused on chips, A.I., and other areas, while China is reportedly nearing the closing of its second state-backed semis fund that some estimate might be nearly $50 billion in size.

More news

Written by Arman Tabatabai

California may have canceled HSR, but China is moving forward with an IPO

While US high-speed rail (HSR) projects continue to fall flat on their face, China Railway Corporation is now planning to IPO its Beijing to Shanghai HSR line within the next year. There’s always some financial risk with publicly-traded infrastructure, but the line’s securely profitable and the deal should help shore up the finances of its owner as it plans to make its largest rail investments ever this year.

Japan’s antitrust investigation is the latest in Asia’s new wave of regulatory scrutiny

Japan is reportedly initiating an antitrust investigation into the country’s biggest ecommerce platforms. Investigators will be looking to see whether Amazon Japan, Rakuten and SoftBank-subsidiary Yahoo! Japan launched benefit programs that ultimately are subsidized by and cut into the revenue of its small-to-midsize vendor suppliers.

The investigation is the latest in Japan’s broader effort to increase regulatory scrutiny on big tech, a global trend that seems to be permeating Asia as seen in our previous discussions on India. While it’s unclear how the heightened scrutiny will impact companies’ perception of these markets, it’s certainly clear that the “move fast and break things” playbook is getting tougher to run.

Obsessions

We have a bit of a theme around emerging markets, macroeconomics, and the next set of users to join the internet.

More discussion of megaprojects, infrastructure, and “why can’t we build things”

Thanks

To every member of Extra Crunch: thank you. You allow us to get off the ad-laden media churn conveyor belt and spend quality time on amazing ideas, people, and companies. If I can ever be of assistance, hit reply, or send an email to danny@techcrunch.com.

This newsletter is written with the assistance of Arman Tabatabai from New York

Via Danny Crichton https://techcrunch.com