Alexia Tsotsis is the co-editor of TechCrunch. She attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA, majoring in Writing and Art, and moved to New York City shortly after graduation to work in the Media industry.
After four years of living in New York and attending courses at New York University, she returned to Los Angeles in order to continue her career in new media, first as LA Weekly’s Internet culture reporter, and then as SF Weekly’s web editor. Before she joined TechCrunch, Alexia ran the SFweekly.com website while staying on top of memes, the tech scene, and human behavior in the digital age.
At TechCrunch, Tsotsis covers early stage startups, and has had the opportunity to interview everyone from Groupon’s Andrew Mason to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. Most recently Tsotsis made the Forbes “30 Under 30: Rising Stars of Media List.” Her Twitter bio reads, “Breaks news, hearts.”
Someone wise once said “If Instagram for video were to happen it would look nothing like Instagram” but, because it was on Twitter, I briefly saw that tweet before it got lost in the ether and now I can’t find it, dammit. But whoever said this is right (please reach out if it was you, I want to give you credit) and also didn’t tell Viddy, which for the most part looks exactly like Instagram for video. Fine.
Anyways, people have been reporting all over the place about Viddy’s current insane Series B so I guess I (and you) should care. And quite honestly, I (and you) totally should really care because it’s more money than I’ve ever seen. Seriously, ever seen. Which means co-founders JJ Aguhob and Brett O’Brien might just be onto something, so …
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Earning calls are super fascinating when you think about it; For multiple hours a quarter we tune in with the thousands of other tech bloggers to dissect the financials of the public companies we spend our lives covering. Here at TC we’ve started calling covering these calls “putting our Rao face on,” inspired by our star senior editor Leena Rao, who is just amazing at covering earnings.
Like any other collective experience, these calls have their own unique culture; Yahoo earnings calls were particularly hilarious back when Carol Bartz was CEO (“I’m going to go get a Diet Coke,” I recall her randomly interjecting with once). And I’ve played more than one drinking game with fellow bloggers on the Google call (Larry Page says “excited,” A LOT. Like so much that this happened.). → Read More
Apple just reported its second quarter earnings, revealing that the revenue from its Apple Stores was at 4.4 billion, an increase of 38 percent year over year.
Apple stores were responsible for a little over 10% of its total $39.2 billion revenue (with $11.6B in profit).
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It’s really beautiful outside. Like so beautiful that if San Francisco is like this more often it will become really expensive to live here. Also, Quora is raising money according to the multiple people in the past week who have told me that Quora is raising money.
From what I’ve heard, the startup wants to raise between $30 to $50 million in its Series B, at a $400 million valuation — while we couldn’t confirm whether the amount was pre or post, it strangely enough seems modest in light of the billion dollar rounds being thrown about willy nilly. → Read More
Because I’m so clearly ready to settle down and have a family, I am at the first ever 500Startups Mamabear Family conference in Mountain View today, watching a group of talks from family-oriented startups and people who have experience with family oriented startups — like Wittlebee’s Sean Percival and mama-entrepreneur Randi Zuckerberg.
Yesterday I was totally ready to remove my uterus, but today my biological clock is all “Ring the alarm!” now that I know that the mom space = major moola (that sounds really gross actually, sorry). If you too are itching to go beyond the social photo sharing black hole and build something useful for families and chillens, watch the Livestream above for tips and tricks. → Read More
We first heard about Rewinery through a stray tweet from Instagram co-founder (and fellow Brazilian) Mike Krieger. Because it was late at the office, and we were working on culling TechCrunch Disrupt finalists, we thought that having three bottles of wine delivered to TechCrunch headquarters sounded like just about the best thing in the world ….
Except we (Okay, who the fuck am I kidding here with this “we” shit? I …) didn’t quite fully understand the magnitude of disruption in the “getting alcohol delivered to you quickly” space. Rewinery was sold out! Okay I guess that’s a good sign for them and probably a good thing for me too because I made Disrupt decisions sober (we’re still looking at applications, so apply here if you get inspired by this, BTW). → Read More
The NYC-based Wander is today announcing a raise of $1.2 million from Rob Go’s NextView Ventures, Jeff Clavier and Stephanie Pameri’s SoftTech VC, SV Angel, Rich Miner’s Google Ventures, Collaborative Fund, Red Swan and TechStars.
Wander, which co-founder Jeremy Fisher describes as a “a way to the see the world through other people eyes” is still under wraps but Fisher reveals that the final product will be “adjacent” to both the curation and location space, a combination of Tumblr and Pinterest, Yelp, Tripadvisor and Foursquare.
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This just in: According to multiple sources close to the company, Facebook is eying IPO on May 17th — depending on whether the SEC agrees that all the reams of paperwork are in order. This is in line with earlier reports that the company was going to hit NASDAQ during the third week of May.
And also in line with what a single source told CNBC at depth, that the social network was considering either the 17th or the 24th. → Read More
Web design and development community Treehouse has just secured $4.75 million in funding from Chamath Palihapitiya’s Social+Capital partnership and the Greylock Discovery fund. The financing comes in addition to a $600K star studded seed round the company raised back in October 2011.
In the same hot edustartup space as Lynda, Codecademy and Udacity, the platform uses example videos, online quizzes and badges to teach people how to develop websites, web apps, iPhone apps and launch startups. Treehouse films its video lessons at its expanded film studio in Orlando, Florida and its primary offices are based in Portland, Oregon.
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There has to be something in the air: Just when I thought that I had enough distraction in my life, one more sweet clothing swap site launches, allowing me to focus on my hobby (fashion, and specifically upcycled fashion) while I’m supposed to be focusing on my work.
In the same space as Poshmarks, 99Dresses and Copius, Threadflip allows you to upload and sell items of clothing as well as buy others’ beloved but for whatever reason unwanted items of clothing. Unlike 99Dresses (which I am addicted to) Threadflip focuses on higher end clothing and expands beyond dresses to shoes, bags, accessories and jewelry. → Read More
While most of us are still reeling in shock after last week’s one billion Instagram buy, Peter Thiel — through both Founders Fund and the Thiel Foundation — is almost single-handedly leading the charge into a future where humans don’t age or suffer from cancer, among other things. Call it crazy or whatever you’d like, but there’s no doubt that people who are trying to drastically change the world for the better often do.
If a hologram can give a concert, it’s not that far-fetched to imagine a future where humans don’t die. As part of its commitment to improving the quality of human life in general, Thiel’s latest project, Breakout Labs, is awarding $5 million to companies who push the envelope with regards to “revolutionary” scientific innovation. → Read More
It is freaking cold here in Indio California, so cold that half of the folks in the house I’m staying with for the weekend left the Coachella music festival last night around 9pm. Even though I stayed until midnight (made it to Swedish House Mafia, yesss!), I ended up buying an ugly $60 Coachella hoodie to not freeze my buns off. A LOT of people now own this hoodie, I think we should totally pass it on to our kids.
In lieu of watching Coachella live, my de facto PGA Villa roommates — who have paid hundreds of dollars for their VIP tickets — have been instead addicted to the livestream on YouTube, sitting in front of our fireplace at home. Brave New Musical Festival world we live in. This is actually the second year that YouTube has livestreamed the festival, and as I attest to above people, like normal people, are watching it. → Read More
Almost all currency is virtual — In that it relies on the people who are trading it to define its value. Thus we are an economy of taste by default, so it’s about time some startup owned the taste graph. TastemakerX has the potential to be that startup, with its ”stock market for bands” app allowing music snobs to build cred based on their early on talent-spotting.
Like an Empire Avenue for the rock star-obsessed, TastemakerX lets you buy and sell shares in bourgeoning musicians, earning ”Notes,” or virtual currency from that trading profit which in turn lets you buy more shares. → Read More
“They could have done so much more,” is a quip I’ve been hearing a lot the past few days, about, who else? Instagram. The news that the Silicon Valley darling sold to Facebook left so many people heartbroken.
Paul Ford over at New York magazine even wrote a long article about why so many people were heartbroken and, gasp, threatening to delete their Instagram accounts.
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Welcome to the Monday where Facebook buys Instagram. Actually I’m as shocked as you are about the acquisition, namely because I was working on it as a funding story all morning. From what I’m hearing investors were shocked as well.
Because the rumors are true, right before its billion dollar acquisition from Facebook, Instagram closed a $50 million Series B round from Sequoia, Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital, Greylock and Benchmark at a $500 million valuation. The round was led by Sequoia, as first reported by AllThingsD’s Liz Gannes. → Read More
It all started last April when former Facebook engineer Chris Putnam (of fame) was visiting his girlfriend’s mom in Lake City, FL and saw the striking sign — ‘The Hacker Company.”
Putnam, who had left Facebook in August 2010 to do his own thing, felt an immediate affinity for the sign, after all, he actually had been hired by Facebook after hacking the site so hard it got co-founder Dustin Moskovitz’ attention. “I’ll always feel pretty close with the culture and all my friends there, so I immediately thought ‘Man, this should be on FB’s campus,’” Putnam said. So he posted a picture of it to Facebook with the caption, “Facebook NEEDS this sign.” → Read More
“Silicon Valley is high school, except it’s only the smart kids, and everyone has a lot of money.” – Kim Taylor, “Silicon Valley” star.
For an industry so reliant on the wholehearted embrace of the future, many technologists and pundits seem so completely resistant to change it’s mind-boggling. → Read More
Suddenly all your friends are wearing those dumb black nerd glasses. You, as a NYC-dwelling (of course) uberhipster in the first clip spend your day at the Strand Bookstore, chasing around a food cart, photographing street art and learning how to play something called Monsieur Gayno on the ukulele. → Read More
You know every once in a while you come across news about your company and it turns out your boss is no longer your boss anymore. If you’re me this probably happens to you every three months.
Anyways this morning I read in the media that Arianna Huffington (who I think used to be my boss) gained more control within Aol and then subsequently read that actually she had been “demoted.” Okay truth please guys?!
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San Francisco, CA
