Everything just changed in the angel investing world.
Two years ago Yuri Milner, through his investment firm DST, disrupted the traditional Silicon Valley venture capital model when he began investing in the hottest startups – companies like Facebook, Zynga and Groupon – at very high valuations and extremely easy deal terms. He looks brilliant in hindsight, with all of his U.S. investments at significantly higher valuations since he invested.
Most top VC firms have begun emulating DST’s deal structure.
Now he’s partnering (as an individual, not as part of DST) with Ron Conway’s angel fund, SV Angel. And they’re making a bold investment move. This evening they’ve just made a blanket investment offer to every Y Combinator startup in the most recent batch. They’re going to invest in all of them. Every single one. And this is the biggest Y Combinator class to date – some 40 new startups. → Read More
Nothing much to see here folks. Just a bunch of people drooling at the mouth over, to them, the most anticipated phone (ever) moving to a similar, but different network, their network. With tensions so tight, someone had to let people know down to the hour just when they should keep hitting their browser’s refresh button. 3AM. 3AM. Eastern time zone Friday Thursday February 3rd, that is. That is when everyone and their mother will crash Verizon’s website. → Read More
Looking good while skiing isn’t easy, and occasionally ends up in a yard sale on the slope. Function comes first when you’re hurtling down a double diamond with 15 feet of visibility. That said, these Audi-designed skis are so sexy they may cause other skiers to forget where they’re going. → Read More
Blekko, the search engine that is fighting the good fight against web spam with human editors, is joining biggies Google and Bing in the mobile search arena today with an Android and iPhone application double whammy. Says Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta, “In a world where people want the most relevant answers on the go, mobile search is becoming increasingly more significant.” → Read More
Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) just recently got its first SDK release, and it looks like the enterprising hackers in the Android community have already ported it to the Nook Color hardware. Well, partially. It’s a “zombie” made by mixing the SDK with the Nook’s kernel, and it runs like a dog. Getting hardware acceleration (a major part of the UI snappiness in Honeycomb) working is the next step, and hacker dhoshman over at XDA says he’ll be working on that over the weekend. We’ll keep you updated. → Read More
The heat may be surrounding the Android 3.0 tablets coming in the next few months, but if you’re too impatient to wait for those, or just need a few budget tablets for around the office, the Enspert E201U could be the iPad-lookalike Froyo unit for you. → Read More
In the seemingly never-ending discussions about Europe vs. Silicon Valley – how much digital ink can be spilled on ‘why Europe will never be the next Silicon Valley’, ‘why Europe will definitely become the next Silicon Valley’ and ‘Silicon Valley and Europe: a comparative look at fauna and flora’ anyway? – I’m quite amazed by how often pundits point out we could use more role models in Europe’s tech industry.
The idea seems to be that, inspired by their story of how their startup became the next Google, aspiring entrepreneurs need only look at people who’ve built or even exited companies and became fabulously famous and wealthy in the process. I disagree. → Read More
Ever wish Angry Birds had more poop in it? Well look no further than the App Store today, as Apps Genius has launched Angry Turds. As a monkey in Angry Turds, you get to battle evil island explorers who have stolen your monkey babies with various projectile weapons.
The concept is similar to Angry Birds as your objective is to throw stuff but the stuff here goes beyond rocks to coconuts, turds, banana bombs and grand poop-bas (I am so glad I never spent any money getting a journalism degree). → Read More
There’s a new religion brewing in the athletic milieu that requisites fitting foot condoms around the phalanges. You know what I’m talking about: the Five Fingers phenomenon. Not dissimilar to the once popular Crocs, Vibram banks on being different as a means of selling shoes. What’s different about Five Fingers is nothing entirely new, in fact, it dates back to thousands of years ago: perambulating barefoot. While it makes sense to use your natural foot articulation to cushion the blow from today’s hard surfaces, Vibram may have taken it a bit too far with this year’s Five Fingers, with what they are calling “Casual Shoes”. → Read More
Yesterday afternoon, an LG Optimus 2X finished the last leg of its rigorous journey from a South Korean factory to my front porch in California. As the first Android smartphone (and the first smartphone of any platform, really) to make it into the wild with a dual-core Tegra 2 processor, it is — for the time being at least — the most powerful Android phone in the world. We’ll have our full review up in just a few days, but in the mean time I figured you guys might enjoy this footage I shot earlier this morning comparing the 1080p video recording of the LG Optimus 2X to that of the iPhone 4. Check it out after the jump. → Read More
Here’s more evidence that regular people have zero time for things like Google TV, Boxee, and Roku, if only because they’re too complicated for their own good. Hill Holiday, a “caffeine-fueled ad agency,” asked five Boston-area families to participate in a cord-cutting experiment. For one week each family was asked to forgo traditional cable TV in favor of one of the following devices: Apple TV, Google TV, Boxee Box, Xbox 360, and Roku. These devices, of course, are the premier devices for people looking to break free of their cable company while still being able to enjoy television. And how did it turn out for these five families? → Read More
I love asking companies if the timing of events is on purpose or purely coincidental. Not only do they almost always say that it’s purely coincidental, but they often try to claim that didn’t even realize a rival was also doing something when they made their plans. Sure.
Next week will feature another such situation. Earlier this week, News Corp. and Apple sent out press invites for an event to unveil the new iPad-only app, The Daily. And then this evening, we’ve just received an invite to a Google event to show off the latest version of Android, Honeycomb. The one meant for tablets. And guess what? They’re on the same day. → Read More
For decades, my mother and grandmother have both religiously scanned the weekly coupon books and circulars that arrive in the weekend newspaper. While clipping coupons can be tedious, grocery stores’ weekly deals can often take out a significant chunk of change of the weekly food bill. Of course, as print couponing becomes obsolete, many consumers are looking to the web for deals at their local grocery stores. Today, Y Combinator-backed AnyLeaf is launching its intelligent grocery deal aggregator to the public.
AnyLeaf scours local grocery store sites in the San Francisco Bay area and aggregates all the deals from these stores, including CVS, Lucky, Nob Hill, Raley’s, Safeway, Target, and Walgreens. You simply enter your zipcode and email address, and AnyLeaf will send you a weekly email with deals from the local grocery stores near you. → Read More
Sometimes, all it takes is a little spark to set off a major forest fire. That is what seems to have happened with my New Year’s Day post on Why We Desperately Need a New (and Better) Google. Over the last two months, there has been an avalanche of articles echoing my post, including New York Magazine, Business Insider, GigaOm, TechCrunch, CNN, and The Wall Street Journal.
I had a feeling that this would get Google’s attention. And I had the same concern as when I challenged the Russian government, once, in a Bloomberg BusinessWeek article about Skolkovo (a new tech park). I feared that Google would either blacklist me or do its equivalent of putting me in a Gulag—deliver even more spam when I search websites. → Read More
Over here in Europe we’re really glad that US-based Groupon, which has rolled up a lot of local clones in the last year, is entering in to our sexually enlightened culture. The latest example of this is the sending out of offers like “Brazilian Wax and Glittering ‘Glitzini’ Decoration.” Yes folks, you too can “bring the sparkle back to your Nether lands with today’s Groupon: for £25 instead of £63, jazz up your bikini line with a Brazilian wax and choice of glittering decoration at Victoria Colonnade Beauty Rooms.” Just in case you are unaware of what this is all about, here’s the definition. And they say Groupon is a flash in the pan. Ha! → Read More
Meetup, a long time go-to place to create local online groups, has undergone a major re-launch in the past day. However, it may have missed a trick: not consulting the meetup organizers who pay through the nose for the service. There now appears to be something of a revolt going on amongst some organisers, who are vociferously protesting about the changes.
The reaction of annoyed organisers and members has turned into two, count-em, Twitter hashtags: #newmeetup and #meetuporganizersunite.
Alternatives to Meetup like BigTent are being touted, as is GroupSpaces – a startup which last year raised $1.3 million from the likes of Index Ventures and Angels like Dave McClure and Chris Sacca. It is is already gunning for “FormerMeetupOrganizers” with its own group and a blog post on the subject. → Read More
This week’s Ask a VC has a different twist, since we had a different kind of VC on the show, John O’Farrell Andressen Horowitz’s guru on business development and deal-making.
The questions you asked O’Farrell are below. As usual, feel free to watch the whole show or use the links to skip ahead to your question.
“Have you ever invested in a single employee startup? Would this be a situation in which you guys would make a deal?” → Read More
About an hour ago, Ina Fried over at Mobilized posted that Google would be hosting an event next week to show off the latest version of Android, codenamed “Honeycomb” a bit more. Sure enough, an invite has just landed in our inbox.
The invite reads: → Read More
We procalimed the Motorla Atrix 4G as CES 2011′s Best Of Show. The whole ecosystem from the powerful smartphone to the docking units are really, dare I say, innovative. This official Motorola ad spot shows why. → Read More
