This guest post was written by Ethan Kurzweil. Kurzweil is a Vice President with Bessemer Venture Partners in Menlo Park, California. He works with Internet companies of all types, including Playdom, Zoosk, Crowdflower, Twilio, adap.tv, Reputation.com, Skybox Imaging, and OpenCandy. You can find him on twitter at @ethankurz. The views expressed in this post are his own, and do not represent those of Bessemer.
Hardly a day goes by anymore when I don’t hear about a reportedly “radical, new” business concept summarized succinctly as “X” (some well-known existing business) for “Y” (some specific market segment, use case, or other qualifier). These descriptors range from the logical – “Groupons for Moms” (okay, clear enough) – to the absurd – “Pandora for Cloud” (huh?). Often, I don’t even understand the analogy, as it’s so obscure, or I have never even heard of the company being compared. Sure, these monikers may satisfy our need for efficiency and brevity, but I’m convinced that in the long-run, we need to expand our collective attention spans just long enough to really describe what our businesses do. Otherwise, we run the risk of setting a model for entrepreneurship that’s entirely devoid of creativity and true innovation. → Read More
Well known US VC house Greylock Partners is launching a brand new $160 million fund aimed at internet technology companies, with the fund being deployed between Europe and Israel. Greylock is best known for its stakes in Facebook, Groupon and LinkedIn and European investments including Wonga. Greylock’s move will be a shot in the arm for European tech companies looking for more options when raising financing.
We’ve confirmed that the fund will be represented in London by Laurel Bowden, a Partner, and will cover investments from early stage and beyond. → Read More
Earlier this week, I took part in Infinity Ventures Summit (IVS) Spring 2011 in Sapporo [this and many of the following links are in Japanese], a two-day, invitation-only event that takes place twice a year in Japan. IVS attracted over 400 people from the domestic and international web industry this time and is organized by VC firm Infinity Venture Partners (which just raised US$41 million for their IVP Fund II).
Apart from panel discussions and presentations, some hours of the program gave a total of 14 Japanese start-ups the chance to present their services onstage. Here’s a rundown of all companies that participated at the IVS launchpad this time. → Read More
Thanks to Kickstarter, the idea of crowd-funding a creative project is nothing new. Post- Cory Doctorow, the notion that an established author might convince his fans to pay upfront for a special edition of an as-yet unpublished book is hardly earth-shattering. And, following the launch of Byliner, even the launch of a digital-only publishing house isn’t really news.
And yet, by combining all of the best elements of those three examples, UK-based Unbound hopes to create something very remarkable indeed. → Read More
I didn’t even want to dignify NoWhereElse’s “find” with a post, but Steve’s a good guy and maybe… and this is a big maybe… he found a case for the upcoming “iPhone 4S” at “Claire’s.” The best part is when Google translates his article the last line comes up as “So authentic dumpling or simple typo in your opinion? …” which is how I’m going to end all of my posts from now on.
Grain of salt, people. Remember: there will be no hardware at WWDC this year. → Read More
As we heard last fall, Cliqset, a FriendFeed like social aggregation platform, was shut down by its founders, Darren Bounds and Charlie Cauthen. Cliqset, which launched in 2009, was a high-powered social syndication and aggregation service, with the ability to post and syndicate content on Cliqset, Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz and 80 other sites and networks. You can read our prior coverage of Cliqset here. As Louis Gray wrote last November, the startup was one of the first networks to implement Pubsubhubbub for real-time updates, and Salmon for cross-network comment posting. But despite these technologies, the service couldn’t attract an active number of users and landed in the deadpool. It looks like Bounds is on to his next project—Glow.
Bounds writes that Glow is his “personal attempt at building a social network that doesn’t sacrifice simplicity, features or user-experience in an effort to promote decentralization, user privacy and data ownership.” The site, which is in stealth mode for now, will combine personal publishing ans social conversation. → Read More
August Capital recently announced that Oren Jacob, CTO of Pixar has joined as their newest entrepreneur in residence. After a few weeks on the job, I got a chance to interview Oren and ask him how his new gig was going. In short, he has new-found respect for venture capitalists and button down shirts.
Oren had no idea how many meetings back to back were in store for him and how hard it can be to put on a fresh face and high level of excitement for each pitch. However challenges like that – and a bad case of entrepreneurial itch – were exactly why he decided to leave Pixar. → Read More
Yesterday, the Council of Europe released a report recommending that member states rethink the way they look at radiation used in wireless communication, putting it on par with the type of health hazards found in cigarettes and genetically altered foods. The report suggests that member states should push for a return to wired communication and a ban on Wi-Fi in schools. This seems to be a pretty exaggerated response, as most of the research we have on the dangers of wireless communication is inconclusive, at best. → Read More
While doing a little browsing in the Apple App Store this morning, I came across a cute little application that I can totally see myself using just about every day: WillItRain. In most cases, I have no use for the direction of the wind or the level of humidity. I just want to know if it will rain. → Read More
After 30 startups launching on stage at Disrupt NYC, it all culminated in the final battle between six finalists: Getaround, BillGuard, Sonar, Do@, ccLoop, and InvoiceASAP. What made this final battle so fascinating to watch was not only the quality of the startups, but the quality of the judges: Fred Wilson, Ron Conway, Marisa Mayer, Roelof Botha, and Josh Kopelman.
We put together the entire final battle in the embedded video player above. Each demo is a separate video, and you can skip around by hovering over the video and hitting the channel button once it starts to play. Individual videos for all of Disrupt can also be found here. And below are links to our original writeups for each company with videos showing their first demos that got them to the final round. → Read More
You can stick anything into a can. Peaches. Corn. (Very small) Apples. Or an Arduino board and potentiometer. The latter of those items allows you to create a playable pong TV pong game in a container the size of one of the old Pong paddles from the 1970s. While you won’t be able to eat the contents of the Cansole, you can make one yourself and play the age-old game of table tennis right on your TV. → Read More
This week’s Gillmor Gang comes at the end of travel — to New York for TechCrunch Disrupt and Las Vegas for the Forrester Analyst Forum. Disrupt continues to gather a head of steam, with the social effects of an emerging app ecosystem now being built out across the media and the enterprise. Although it seems still to be at the early stages with Twitter heading off a second front from Bill Gross, outbidding UberWhatever to buy Tweetdeck serves mostly to define the shape of the acquisition market as a hedge against IPOdom.
Although the noise has died down about the Microsoft/Skype deal, enterprise analysts are tripping over themselves to handicap Steve Ballmer’s job tenure. George Colony produced a Wave chart with Apple all alone upend to the right, Salesforce.com owning the next space, and as one senior analyst put it, only imaginary companies on the horizon to compete with us. I say us because apparently there are still a few who don’t know I work for Marc Benioff. And Microsoft was well down and to the left in the view Colony calls the AppInternet. What we talk about today on the Gang may have something to with all this. → Read More
Editor’s note: Adeo Ressi, is the founder of The Founder Institute and TheFunded.com In this guest post he argues against ageism when it comes to to entrepreneurs. Ressi is 39.
The recent articles proclaiming that 25 is the peak age for entrepreneurship deserve a considered and factual response. The demographic and racial profiling that has plagued venture capital and tech entrepreneurship has a new friend—ageism. This has to stop. → Read More
There are many local, regional and global startup competitions that startups can compete in. I’m a big believer in the value of these startup competitions for two big reasons—they are a great forcing function to ship your product and refine your ability to pitch your business. Even if you have no plans to raise money, you will have to pitch your business to achieve your goals.
My startup (Avado) is a Patient Relationship Management platform for health and wellness providers such as doctors, physical therapists, nurse practitioners, health coaches, physician assistants and personal trainers. We decided to pursue the opportunity to compete in the TechCrunch Disrupt startup competition.
Each startup competition has its own selection process. In the case of TechCrunch Disrupt, a triumvirate of Erick Schonfeld (Co-editor of TechCrunch), Heather Harde (CEO) and Michael Arrington (Founder) evaluates the companies after they have winnowed down the first list of companies. My understanding is that two out of the three of them need to greenlight a company to be a finalist. During the course of the TechCrunch Disrupt event, Michael referred a couple times to Erick Schonfeld veto’ing a company. It wasn’t clear whether that was a joke or not, but he appeared to be serious. → Read More
The people who have brought you It’sthisforthat have created another way to make your life just a little bit easier and funnier. Meet DryerBro, an app that uses an accelerometer to let you know when you’re laundry’s done.
DryerBro allows you to put your iPhone or iTouch on your laundry machine and it will text you and the remaining members of your household when your laundry’s done. I’m thinking this is going to be HUGE. I mean Facebook took off at colleges right? → Read More
Facebook has no iPad app. It’s ridiculous. Their iPhone app is the most downloaded app in the history of apps. And third-party iPad apps (many of which aim to trick users) constantly dominate the top 10 lists for both free and paid apps. And yet, Facebook doesn’t seem to care at all about the device. Because they’re all about HTML5, right?
Well, someone might want to tell the Seattle office that.
On the jobs page for the relatively new Seattle Facebook office, one of the openings is for “Software Engineer, Desktop Software”. Desktop software. Desktop. Before the damn iPad. Hey Facebook, 1986 called, they want their strategic vision back. → Read More
In the old days, pole-shaping meant something completely different. However, now it is a technique for attaching multiple arms to each other at odd angles that allows them to remain upright with a load without falling. The LusionBloom is a nice example of pole shaping and, more important, is a freaking vase that tilts to the side while keeping flowers and water upright. Perfect for Mother’s Day at Quatto’s house.
The LusionBloom curiously remains upright, even while leaning. It appears as though the LusionBloom defies gravity. Filled with flowers and water, the LusionBloom still doesn’t topple. In addition, steel vases can be attached to one another. How does this happen? A unique arrangement of ferrous material and neodymium magnets (and a technique called “pole shaping”) make this possible and keep your friends guessing as to the method by which the LusionBloom remains upright.
