Wealthfront, a startup that has been disrupting the investing and personal finance space, is debuting a new video tonight that is definitely worth a look. The video features content from Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz, Qatalyst CEO Frank Quattrone, and Benchmark Capital partner Bill Gurley and features their perspectives on recent tech IPOs and their significance to the industry. You can access the video below or here.
Some of the highlights include lessons learned from the last bubble, what to expect from this new wave of tech IPOs and why going public is great for companies. For example, Schmidt gives his advice for employees of companies going public: he recommends taking your time and being careful about selling stock so that you actually make money and don’t just incur a heavy tax liability.
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Flipboard is rolling out the first major update to its social magazine tonight since its December launch on the iPhone. The new release brings the iPhone app’s most popular feature, “Cover Stories,” to the iPad’s bigger screen. Now, iPad users will see a large, double-tiled pane on the first page of their Flipboard app. There, you’ll find a mix of stories popular among your friends, those that are popular across Flipboard’s network, as well as those that are uniquely relevant to you.
Also new in tonight’s release are a number of design tweaks, meant to give Flipboard a print magazine-like appeal, as well as a much-requested third page in Flipboard’s Table of Contents. And for international users, there’s even more big news: Flipboard just launched its first standalone European edition with the arrival of Flipboard in France, and is promising more localized editions to come. → Read More
If you’re a new entrepreneur or an angel investor and you haven’t heard of AngelList, it’s time to get a clue. The hybrid social network, communication and crowdsourcing tool is designed to connect first-time entrepreneurs with angel investors. It’s “easily the most important innovation in the industry,” as 500 Startups’ Dave McClure commented in response to our coverage last month of AngelList’s 2011 Yearbook. That product offers users, among other things, a highlight reel of all the activity that went down in the community (500 startups and 2,500 investors joined, resulting in a total of 12,500 introductions), fundings, and more.
Now, we’ve learned that AngelList is in the process of experimenting with more than just timelines plus CrunchBase data. AngelList Venture Hacker (and former Head of Product at Friend.ly and WePay) Khang Tran says that the company’s goal is simple: Help great startups connect with great investors, and, in doing so, it’s experimenting with how startups present themselves to investors with a new “pitch deck page.” → Read More
It’s not exactly a secret that gaming has found new life on the web, social and mobile platforms. Of course, with it, especially the rise in free-to-play gaming, developers need to find ways to monetize their apps, or their browser-based games. Beyond mobile or banner advertising, there is the option of in-app or in-game purchases — the old in-game freemium model. Give your game away for free, sell new levels, armor, weapons, life for a buck or two. Lots of games have incorporated virtual marketplaces to hawk virtual goods of all kinds. → Read More
A research team with members from University of Michigan and University of Pennsylvania has been investigating the feasibility of what they call “computational sprinting,” a technique by which existing chips could be made to operate at hugely increased speeds for short periods of time. They have concluded that “it is indeed possible to engineer such a system.”
Not the best of news to readers who were hoping for these sprinting chips to hit the market next year, but the news shouldn’t be set aside just because at the moment the implementation is theoretical. It could change the way you use your devices. → Read More
Samsung, or rather Samsung’s Advanced Institute of Technology, has created what they claim is the first CMOS sensor that can collect both visible light data (which you’d use for a normal digital image) and depth data (like a Kinect). It’s accomplished by mixing in depth-sensing pixels with the RGB photosites normally found on such sensors. It was presented at ISSCC 2012 and reported by Tech-On.
The technology could be extremely influential: a small sensor that is able, with one lens, to determine the distance and size of objects it sees — the applications are extremely diverse. It could power autofocus, track gestures or individuals, or help determine the device’s position. → Read More
With increasing smartphone adoption and with users in turn becoming more and more comfortable using their mobile devices to do things traditionally reserved for the Web or desktops, every industry is going mobile. But, when you consider the effect mobile technology has still yet to make on transactions — ye olde exchange of money/goods — there is a huge opportunity for disruption. Carriers, OEMs, startups — everyone knows this. Three, five years from now, mobile payment solutions has the potential to be a massive business. Yet, as things stand right now, carriers and mobile OSes are still finding it hard to come to terms, with users suffering as a result. → Read More
Seedcamp, the European seed funding network and startup accelerator, came through San Francisco this week as part of its annual multi-city trip to the US. All 18 companies were solid — you can find the full list here — but I pulled aside five of the most compelling startups for one-on-one interviews to get a bit more insight on what they do. → Read More
Former Mashable editor-at-large Ben Parr is ready to share a few details about his new startup. He’s raising a small seed round, so he created a posting on AngelList, and he also talked (vaguely) with me about what he’s been up to.
The company is listed as The Peep Project, but it sounds like that’s just a temporary stealth name. The listing describes the product as “your intelligent assistant.” Now that’s probably a description you’ve heard before, so the posting also says, “We are not building Siri.” → Read More
DigiMo, is a mobile payments platform that actually makes sense to me. When I sat down with CEO Yossi Yarkoni and VP of Marketing Nir Shimony at the Mobile World Congress to hear about their concept, which is piloting in Israel right now, the first thing I thought was “wow, why didn’t somebody think of this before”. It’s a pretty good idea and solves many of the problems that plague mobile, face-to-face payments.
It actually works with existing infrastructure and requires no Point Of Sale hardware changes by merchants. Really. No NFC terminals to buy. No new card readers needed. This is a major sticking point for merchant adoption of new mobile payments platforms. → Read More
Mixpanel, the analytics startup backed by Sequoia Capital, hasn’t yet succeeded in its goal of unseating established analytics services like Omniture — but momentum is building.
Let’s start with the biggest number that co-founder Suhail Doshi shared with me this week. He says the company is now tracking 4 billion actions every month. Back in July 2010, that number was “only” 1 billion. He also says there are more than 2,500 organizations who are sending Mixpanel data every month (I guess that’s Mixpanel equivalent of an “active user”). And that customer base was built through word-of-mouth because, Doshi says, “We basically do almost no marketing” the startup’s total monthly marketing spend is between $3,000 and $5,000.
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If you were only allowed to read one piece of tech news today, I’d bet you’d read up on the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. The beta became available today, though we were lucky enough to go hands-on with the OS for the past week or so, and people can’t stop talking about it.
Windows 8 is a merging of old with new. A Metro UI offers up live tiles much like Windows Phone, but there are still some apps that require the old-school XP interface, sending you directly into the past when you least expect it. → Read More
Facebook has just confirmed my scoop from last week, announcing its business performance metrics tool Page Insights will start reporting data with a latency of 5-10 minutes, not two or more days. It will open new tactics for marketers such as amplifying a well-performing post’s reach with ads, or deleting one receiving negative feedback before it can trigger Unlikes or a PR crisis.
Insights Product Manager David Baser tells me real-time Insights will roll out globally over the next two weeks, and I think the way it ties to Sponsored Stories ads could boost Facebook’s revenues. Impressions, clicks, negative feedback instantly. Data wizards rejoice! → Read More
A bit of news that squeaked out during the Win8 festivities was the launch of the Microsoft app store. In the version of the software I was using, the app has always been there but it wasn’t available until today. To be clear, the app store here is still in its absolute infancy and is, at best, a hall of demos for various app providers.
The real test of Windows 8 will be the adoption of the OS’s new design paradigms. While everyone will eventually have to fix their apps to reflect Win8′s major architecture changes, there is going to be a lot of hand-holding until the Win9 (potentially) destroys all vestigial Windows cruft. For example, Windows 8 still uses a legacy version of the registry inside Windows 8, a necessary evil required by many applications. Many apps won’t be able to update to Win8 UI standards and many more apps won’t trickle over to the Microsoft app store. It’s this disconnect that will challenge Windows 8 in the first few years of life. → Read More
Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley spent this afternoon in Barcelona, explaining his location company’s potential to Mobile World Conference attendees. Someone else didn’t need to hear the presentation, though. Existing investor Spark Capital is buying $50 million worth of its stock, according to sources, in a deal to provide at least some employees with liquidity.
The result is a valuation north of of the already-impressive $600 million from its last round, I’ve heard. This is even though the company continues to focus on product development instead of trying to maximize revenue.
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You’re not unpopular, it’s just the nature of the news feed. Amongst all the business-related news at FMC, Facebook revealed that the average news feed story from a user profile reaches just 12% of their friends. Your actively shared links, photos, and status updates probably reach much higher than 12% of your friends, while more inane auto-generated posts about new friendships, wall posts, and articles you read may only be seen by your closest buddies.
Overall, this is actually a good thing, because the reduced visibility of irrelevant content makes room for what you want to see. But don’t be alarmed if your all your friends don’t like that awesome concert photo, they may just be offline. → Read More
The team behind startup Tasted Menu thinks it has the technology to help you find the exact dish you’re looking for. The company is launching its iPhone app today (its website was already live), and it’s also expanding from its hometown of Boston into Austin — just in time for South by Southwest.
Of course, there’s already a popular iPhone app for food recommendations — Foodspotting, which said in January that it has nearly 2 million app downloads. However, Tasted Menu CEO Alex Rosenfeld argues that Foodspotting and similar apps “effectively amount to check-in apps for food,” whereas Tasted Menu helps the vast majority of people who aren’t interested in that, but “would love a product that helps them make better ordering decisions and discover new dishes and restaurants.” → Read More
Enterprise social network and communications platform Yammer has finally closed that big round we and PandoDaily heard about earlier this year. The company has raised $85 million in new funding, bringing the total investment in Yammer to a whopping $142 million. DFJ growth and Social+Capital Partnership (who led Yammer’s last round) led this round. Other investors joining the round include Meritech, Khosla Ventures, Capricorn (the investment arm of Jeff Skoll), as well as existing investor Charles River Ventures, Founders Fund, USVP, Emergence Capital Partners. Founder and CEO David Sacks tells us that the company had over $30 million of insider investment in the round. We’ve heard the company’s valuation for the round was around $500-$600 million (Yammer wouldn’t comment on this)
Sacks says a number of angel investors also participated in the massive round including Sacks’ old PayPal colleague Max Levchin, as well as CrunchFund, Bill Lee, Ronnie Lott, and a few others. Randy Glein from DFJ Growth will take a board observer seat.
Earlier this month, Cary Sherman, the RIAA’s CEO, wrote a controversial op-ed in which he raised questions about the impact of Google and Wikipedia on America’s “democratic process”. So when I Skyped with Sherman earlier this week, I leveraged social media’s democratic process to ask the RIAA CEO some direct questions from my Twitter community about piracy, the music industry and American democracy itself. → Read More
Looks like it’s self-improvement time for Betterfly, a startup that, as the name suggests, allows users to “better themselves” by signing up for classes on everything from belly dancing to web design.
The company just announced that it has raised a $1.5 million Series A from previous investor Lightbank, the Chicago firm created by Groupon co-founders Brad Keywell and Eric Lefkofsky. Betterfly is also naming Todd Sullivan as the company’s new CEO — founder and former CEO Joshua Schwadron will remain as chairman of the board, and the startup says he will still be “active in day to day operations.” → Read More
San Francisco, CA
