Technology

Perhaps best known for a career-making seed investment in Snapchat, Lightspeed partner Jeremy Liew is a leading investor across media and entertainment, making bets on startups like Cheddar, Giphy, HQ, SpecialGuest, Mic, Beme, Playdom, Duta and Flixster.

I spoke to him earlier this week about how he assesses the market for media startups, which led into a discussion about &always-on& forms of entertainment that add stimulation to a personenvironment, instead of commanding their full focus.

Herethe transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity:

Eric Peckham: Do you have a consistent framework for evaluating potential investments?

Jeremy Liew: Our perspective is that consumer technology is now more about the consumer side than the technology side. Itreally more about pop culture than new innovations in technology.

When we are assessing a consumer investment we ask ourselves, &does this have the potential to become part of pop culture?& One way to think about it is whether people who don&t use the product will still become familiar with what it is. Like how you can understand a reference to &Game of Thrones& even if you don&t watch it.

Another key question is, whether there is a scalable, repeatable way for the product to reach its audience. That can be advertising, it can be word of mouth, it could be through social channels.

We also asked ourselves, &is this product going to build a new habit?& and we assess whether the entrepreneur has a unique insight into both why this is happening and why ithappening now.

Your colleague Alex Taussig told me you have an overarching &future of TV& thesis thatguided a number of your investments. Tell me about that thesis and how it filters opportunities in the media - entertainment space for you.

I think you can split what used to be called TV into two core use cases: &TV as entertainment& and &TV as company.&

&TV as entertainment& is most of what Netflix, Amazon, Apple, HBO, and similar companies have been focused on. It is high-production quality entertainment you have to pay attention to. Think shows like &Game of Thrones,& &Succession,& &Orange is the New Black.&

Then thereanother classic category of TV — &TV as company,& which is stuff thaton while you&re doing something else. You&ve got the morning show on while you&re getting the kids ready for school or you&re getting ready to go to work. Thathow you get the five hours of TV viewing per day that Americans average.

TV as entertainment has to be so good that you choose to watch it over doing anything else; TV as company you just have to not choose to turn it off.

The vast amount of attention to the move to video — with subscription video on-demand (SVOD) and so forth — has been on TV as entertainment. There are hit shows that will attract people to Netflix, or to HBO Go, to Disney+. But what causes them to stay as a subscriber after they binge-watched all the way through the stuff that brought them in the first place?

That tends to be the TV as company content. If you actually look at hours watched in television, no one is tuning in to catch the latest episode of &Shark Week& — it is just whaton. Think about the TV Guide grid: every genre, every channel will likely have a mobile native equivalent.

Some of these already exist. ESPN — ita channel where men watch the best competitors in the world play the sports they used to play when they were in high school and then they talk about it with their friends. Twitch is a place where men, mostly, watch the best competitors in the world play the games they used to play when they were younger and talk about it with their friends.

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We&ve known for a while now that Google was bringing the &Incognito mode& concept to Maps, allowing you to run searches and find routes without them automatically being tied to your account history.

If you&ve been digging around trying to find the option without any luck, you weren&t just missing it. Though first mentioned back in May at Google I/O, the company says the rollout is just now officially underway.

Word of the rollout comes via a Google Maps support page, as first spotted by AndroidPolice.

Ita staged rollout, so don&t be surprised if you don&t see the new feature immediately, even if you&re on the latest version of maps. Itrolling out in batches, beginning with Android users. Google says it should be available to all Android users in &the next few days.&

Once itenabled on your account, you can toggle incognito mode on/off by tapping your profile picture, then flipping the switch. Herewhat that looks like:

Google Maps Incognito mode starts rolling out for Android users

So why incognito mode? As we wrote back in May: Whether itthe holiday season and you&re trying to keep your gift-hunting locations under wraps, or you&re visiting a doctor and would just prefer it not pop up the next time a friend grabs your phone for some quick directions, there are all sorts of reasons you might want to leave fewer breadcrumbs. Remember, though, that while itless visibly tied to you, itstill all stored in ways behind the scenes on Googleend; the company told Wired earlier this month that while Incognito sessions aren&t tied to an account, they arelogged with a unique session identifier that gets reset between sessions.

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All eyes are on Sin City tonight! Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez has the chance to make history and become a four-weight world champion against Sergey Kovalev tonight. And you can watch all the action as it happens, no matter where on Earth you are, with our Canelo vs Kovalev live stream guide.

The Mexican born fighter has already won titles at light

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AMD's Navi 22 and Navi 23 GPUs recently spotted in Linux driverAMD's Navi 22 and Navi 23 GPUs recently spotted in Linux driver

It seems like only yesterday when AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su promised that high-end 7nm Navi-powered graphics cards are on the way. Now, signs of such premium graphics cards are starting to pop up. 

As reported by Tom’s Hardware, 3DCenter forum member Berniyh recently spotted Navi 22 and Navi 23 graphics cards (GPUs) show up for the first

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Are you ready to find out who the BMF on the planet is?  Jorge Masvidal and Nate Diaz surely are after months of waiting and anticipation. UFC 244 is going down right now in NYC, with a welterweight grudge match in the main event slot. And with our help, you can discover the best ways to get a UFC 244 live stream - no matter where you are in the

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With a bumper $30 million prize pot spread over two days, the 36th Breeders' Cup is one of the most eagerly anticipated weekends in the 2019 flat season. This year it's back at Santa Anita Park in California for the first time since 2016. You can tune in no matter where you are in the world, using our 2019 Breeders' Cup live stream guide below, 

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