Tim Draper is perhaps one of the world’s foremost proponents of Bitcoin. “It’s an exciting time for us bitcoin-ers,” the Draper Fisher Jurvetson founding partner recently told AWS Startups. “In five years, you’re going to try to pay in fiat currency at Starbucks and they’re going to laugh at you.” In addition to talking up the digital currency, Draper also had plenty of advice for entrepreurs looking to pitch him with ideas.  Listen on for more startup advice.

VC Tim Draper on why entrepreneurs should travel the world

For Reshma Sohoni, the co-founder and managing partner of London-based investment fund Seedcamp, the window for which startups can go global is getting shorter and shorter. What she tells companies funded by Seedcamp, which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, is that before they decide to grow internationally, they need to know who or what they are to their customers and users—as well as what they are not. “Some products are inherently more global by nature,” she explains. Listen on for more global insights from Reshma Sohoni.

Seedcamp’s Reshma Sohoni: "Global means something different now”

According to Amazon.com CTO Dr. Werner Vogels, every startup should be thinking about their voice interfaces. ’"This [development] is not a fad,” he says. “Voice is going to become one of the major interfaces, and if you want to unlock very large groups of potential customers, you need to think about how to voice-enable your applications—or maybe even use it as the primary interface.”

To hear more from Vogels, including his opinions on deep learning, listen on below.

Amazon.com CTO Werner Vogels wants to talk to you

Josh Elman, a consumer specialist at venture capital firm Greylock Partners, couldn’t have been blunter about “acquihiring,” the practice of big companies paying big bucks for startups to hire teams for their expertise. “There was this funny little period time where that seemed like it was a thing,” Elman recently told a crowd of startup entrepreneurs at the AWS Loft in San Francisco. “I think that's gone.” That doesn’t mean big companies aren’t buying startups, Elman continued. In fact, it turns out that acquihiring didn’t translate to getting better talent than just hiring—it's just more expensive. Here’s what else Elman sees coming for startups, and what he’s paying special attention to as an investor. You can listen to the entire interview here.

What Greylock Partner’s Josh Elman saw in 2017—and what’s coming next for startups in 2018

First Round Capital’s Hayley Barna and Boldstart’s Ed Sim look back on the startup landscape in 2017, and toward the trends powering the year ahead.

VCs Hayley Barna and Ed Sim on YOLO, The Six-Week Fundraising Rule, CryptoKitties

Front's Mathilde Collin on the 8 Things Your Y Combinator Application Must Deliver

Picture this: You oversee a fleet of servers that supports one of the world’s most massive online retail companies, and a special promotion everyone thought would bump sales by 21% is actually giving closer to a 120% boost—all in the first minute. That’s exactly where Brian Herman, Director of Datacenter Compute Capacity at Amazon Web Services, was standing in 2015, moments after the first Prime Day launched. The fleet Herman oversees doesn’t involve a single truck or plane. Instead, it’s the servers and services that run the retail, Kindle, Alexa, and Instant Video factions of Amazon.

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