Shout out to businesses (big and small) that are being so extraordinarily creative as we enter the reopen phase of the pandemic.

• On a personal level, after more than a year of pandemic life, I too know that I need to be adaptable and creative to get through these crazy times.
• My mission now is to stay positive and nip negativity in the bud, e.g., I’m only allowing myself to check the Citizen app twice a day as opposed to every time I get an alert. And I’ve moved the app off the first page of my home screen.
• I’m also broadening my horizons to add more exploration to my day-to-day. This is not that hard since NYC is rebounding, e.g., Governor’s Island (one of my absolute fave biking destinations) is reopening on May 1st.
• Going forward, I’m doubling down on learning, growing, and most importantly staying focused on the bright side of life. And that’s a win in my books.

And on that note, please Scroll down for this week’s Top 10

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I was happy to be invited to a small-format dinner for startup founders and a few VCs last week. The ostensible goal was to discuss trends, lessons learned over the past year and challenges currently being faced. It turned out to be less upbeat evening than I had anticipated BUT I learned a lot about the state of startups as we head into 2020.

I’ve been to a variety of these dinners over the years – always fascinating to meet the movers and shakers of the startup world and see the future through their eyes. This dinner, however, felt different. The vibe I picked up was of worry and a sense of opportunities slipping away. WeWork hung over us like a black cloud. There was very little optimism about “exit strategies.” The days of easy unicorning appear to be over. I felt like I was witnessing the end of an era. The WeWork debacle was the tipping point but just the tip of the iceberg of what is yet to come (see Casper, MedMen and Knotel below).

Scroll down for a few of the recurring themes.

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Anybody else notice their Alexa saying/doing weird stuff recently?

I use Alexa almost daily to play music. And the three performers I ask her to play most often are k.d. lang, Leonard Cohen and Sade. Each of these artists has a playlist that runs several hours.

Lately, Alexa seems to have checked out while she’s gigging at my house. She’s definitely not paying attention to tasks she’s performing. She doesn’t even know when the music is playing and when it’s not.

For example, EVERY time the music (that has been playing for several hours), finishes, Alexa now says:

“Sorry. Amazon Music stopped playing sometime ago because there hasn’t been any activity on this device in several hours.”

Alexa

Huh? But the music was playing up until a second ago. How can this high-tech device not know this?

And then there are the mix-ups with certain artists

Again this is a new snafu. Of late, when I ask Alexa to play Sade, invariably she tosses in various other artists who are nothing like Sade, e.g., Macy Gray or Teresa Cooper. The latter is a total unknown from the country music world. This only started happening within the last few weeks.

A friend from the digital music world told me this is Amazon’s way of strong-arming me to sign up for a higher tier of service (vs. just using Prime).

And finally, Alexa isn’t up-to-date on this whole pronoun thing

In writing this – and referring to Alexa as “her” – I thought it only appropriate to ask her what her pronoun was. She was nonplussed and proceeded to tell me what a pronoun is and how to use in a sentence. I’m not sure if I’m disappointed or happy that Alexa wasn’t more “evolved” in this regard.

Bottom Line.

I know Jeff has had a lot of distractions lately but I wish he’d pay a little more attention to our virtual assistant and her work habits. This going rogue thing is the first step to getting fired.

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