Billy Gallagher is a contributor for TechCrunch.
He is currently the co-student body president at Stanford University, where he is on track to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 2014. Billy was previously the president and editor in chief of The Stanford Daily.
Disclosures: As a poor college student, I own no stock and have no financial interests in companies that I cover.
Being a current Stanford student, I know a number of founders and cover companies that are run by my peers. I never let these connections cloud my judgement on what to cover or how to cover it–if I did, I would spend so much time covering bad Stanford startups that I wouldn’t have time to do anything else.
“We’re big believers in founders,” Ben Horowitz says, explaining part of Andreessen Horowitz‘s strategy. “We really wanted to back founder CEOs and help the founder become the CEO.”
Horowitz and Bill Campbell, chairman of the board of directors of Intuit, just spoke at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. → Read More
18 companies presented at the StartX summer demo day today. The summer 2012 class is StartX’s seventh and largest class; the accelerator, started in 2010, has graduated more than 90 companies in its history, about 85 percent of which have received funding.
If you’re unfamiliar with StartX, it’s a non-profit startup accelerator at Stanford. StartX companies own their intellectual property and… → Read More
DeveloperAuction has built what they call the “first transparent marketplace for recruitment,” allowing engineers to put their talent up for auction from startups that need talent.
In the company’s first auction, which ended August 31st, 88 engineers put themselves up for auction and 142 startups, including Quora and Dropbox, submitted over $30m in job offers. → Read More
The rise and fall of Facebook’s stock has been one of the most-covered topics of the summer, and for good reason. Everyone wants to know what will happen next, so we asked investors, CEOs and media pundits about when they think the best time to buy will be.
Because of its 950 million users, an Oscar winning movie based on its founding story and an ecosystem of other companies built off of… → Read More
Have a good day off? Some of us will return to work Tuesday morning rested and ready to go. Others may have enjoyed the holiday a bit too much and will be paying the price for a long weekend of celebrating.
The good news is that when you wake up Tuesday morning, you don’t have to drink coffee that tastes like motor oil. Whether you’re peppy and so happy to be alive at 6 AM (I hate those… → Read More
Earlier today I was showing a friend this spectacular Oregon Duck Gangnam Style parody video and saw a two and a half-minute ad in which James Franco displays the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1.
My first reaction was: how have I not heard of this before?
The ad is almost two weeks old, but I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about it. It is absolutely absurd. → Read More
Facebook updated its site integrity system today in an effort to crack down on fake likes, a move that the company says will benefit legitimate users and page owners.
The company says the improved automated efforts will detect and remove Likes obtained by malware, compromised accounts, deceived users or purchased mass Likes. While Facebook says it has always protected against these threats, the… → Read More
Stanford University announced the creation of an Office of the Vice Provost for Online Learning today, appointing computer science professor John Mitchell as the office’s inaugural head.
In the past 20 years, Stanford has only established two Vice Provost offices, for undergraduate and graduate education, both of which “fundamentally reshaped education at Stanford.” University spokeswoman… → Read More
Pokki announced today that it is coming out of beta and adding a notification center and new apps for Angry Birds, Pandora and Pinterest. The company also said it has surpassed 1 million monthly active users.
Pokki says the new apps are made possible by a new app packaging technology, which they’ll be providing to developers in the future, to turn a web app or game into a Pokki desktop app. → Read More
You know that long to-do list that you never get to? The emails that have been starred for months, but still haven’t been replied to? Stky can help save you from your insurmountable to-do list.
The app, built by CrunchFund EIR Dave Feldman, gives you a blank sticky note every morning, which you can fill from a “drawer” full of tasks and use to structure your day. The next morning, the… → Read More
Zynga announced today that Chief Creative Officer Mike Verdu will leave the company after three years to lead his own startup. This might raise questions for some investors, as Verdu has been a driving force behind Zynga’s success over the years.
But, it’s not a complete separation. Zynga will “be on the ground floor” and be an investor in Verdu’s new startup. Verdu’s new company has not yet… → Read More
Facebook updated its standalone camera app today, showing users notifications when someone comments, tags or likes a photo and allowing users to upload photos to specific albums.
This is the latest in a series of mobile app releases for the social giant. Last week, it rolled out a new mobile app that is twice as fast and update its mobile messenger app, adding emoticons and showing when a… → Read More
Popular online tutor service InstaEDU now allows students to choose particular tutors in advance and schedule future sessions. The company, which launched in public beta this past May, previously only offered on-demand tutoring.
CEO and cofounder Alison Johnston tells me the expanded services stem from feedback the company has received from students. Students had sessions with tutors they liked… → Read More
Data visualization company SumAll launched SumAll Social Metrics, tracking a company’s social activity against web traffic and revenue and providing insights on the company’s return on social marketing.
SumAll claims it is the first analytics tool to give users transactional, social and web traffic on a single dashboard. Users can see their full social history updated in real-time and can… → Read More
Apple announced today that Craig Federighi, vice president of Mac Software Engineering, and Dan Riccio, vice president of Hardware Engineering, have been promoted to senior vice presidents, where they will report to Apple CEO Tim Cook and serve on Apple’s executive management team.
The company also announced that senior vice president of Hardware Engineering Bob Mansfield will stay on at… → Read More
Apple stock reached a new all-time high as it rose 1.79% to $675.11 in after-hours trading at the time of publication. The stock opened Friday morning at $659.51.
A few hours after the market closed on Friday afternoon, a jury in San Jose federal court ruled in favor of Apple in a landmark patent case. Samsung must pay Apple $1,051,855,000 (although that exact figure is being disputed) in… → Read More
The jury in the landmark Apple-Samsung trial ruled mostly in favor of Apple, including awarding Apple $1,051,855,000 in damages. Samsung, on the other hand, was granted a total of $0 in damages.
Here’s a quick rundown of how the jury came down on both of the companies. Remember, there are plenty of devices at play here — on Samsung’s side alone, there’s the Captivate, Continuum, Droid Charge… → Read More
NiftyThrifty, an online, pre-owned, vintage clothing store, announced today that it has raised $2 million from Tribeca Venture Partners, Signal Ventures, Greycroft, idealab and Howard Morgan.
The Brooklyn-based company will launch in October as a membership website that sells vintage clothing. The company will target women exclusively at first, but will follow with apparel for men in a few… → Read More
Pagelever, a popular Facebook analytics company, released a new, free tool called Minilytics today. The company claims it is the first tool that lets users measure how many fans see their posts on Facebook pages.
Previously, page owners could not measure a post’s fan-specific reach because when Facebook reported post views, it didn’t separate fan views from non-fans. → Read More
Former secondary daily deals marketplace DealsGoRound announced today that it has relaunched as MyCabbage, an online and mobile platform that allows users to organize, share and redeem gift cards, coupons and daily deals.
The company is backed by $950,000 in new investment from Lightbank, I2A, New World Ventures and several angel investors. → Read More
Facebook announced today that it has redesigned Facebook Messages with side-by-side layout and easier search.
The new layout shows a scroll menu of all your messages on the left, with the full contents of a selected message on the right. The style is similar to many email clients. → Read More
CouchSurfing announced today that it has raised a $15 million Series B Round from General Catalyst Partners, Menlo Ventures, Benchmark Capital and Omidyar Network.
The new funding brings the social travel network’s total funds raised in the past year to $22.6 million. CEO Tony Espinoza tells me the company now has nearly 5 million users in more than 93,000 cities after a very successful… → Read More
Dropbox appears to be having significant issues as users have experienced slow speeds and/or inability to access their files for at least nine hours. Some users claim the site has been slow since Monday morning.
This morning, Dropbox co-founder and CTO Arash Ferdowsi posted in the Dropbox forum → Read More
Facebook announced on its Developer Blog today that it will allow users to mention their friends in messages in Open Graph apps.
While users can already “action tag” their friends using other apps (Facebook uses foursquare as its example), the update will allow users to “mention tag” friends as well. The difference, as inferred from their names, is that action tags are for doing something with… → Read More
Fifteen-year olds Austin Schwab and Tyler Plack co-founded Reserverr, a website that automatically books reservations for free.
“We like to think of Reserverr as a calendar on steroids,” Schwab tells me. → Read More
PayPal co-founder and famed investor Peter Thiel has sold the majority of his shares in Facebook, according to an SEC filing. Thiel has sold 20.6 million Class A shares, leaving him with only 5.6 million shares, all of which are Class A.
A significant portion of the filing seems to be on behalf of the Founders Fund, in which Thiel is a partner. Other entities named in the filing include Lembas… → Read More
I’ve been in a wonderful state of bliss for the past week boating in North Carolina (did ya miss me? I missed you). But I came back today and I’m still pretty pissed at Uber for charging me $97 for a $65 ride to the airport last Friday. More importantly, the charge worries me about the company’s future.
Last Friday I needed to get from my apartment (by AT&T Park) to SFO. Simple, right? → Read More
A little over a year ago, cloud communications company Twilio launched Short Codes, dedicated 5 or 6 digit numbers for sending and receiving text messages at volume. Since then, Twilio has become the fastest-growing short code provider and has found surprisingly differing uses for its product.
“People have started using our Short Code product in ways we didn’t ever expect,” Patrick… → Read More
You know that frustrating feeling when you order clothes online and they fit really poorly, like the target demographic is some weird mix of Kim Kardashian and Yao Ming?
Vastrm, a Y Combinator summer 2012 company founded by Jonathan Tang, hopes to give you the perfect, customized fit, starting with polo shirts. → Read More
While we usually bring you photos of the iPhone 5 or Google Glass spotted in the wild, I’ve seen something much more rare.
This morning, I saw a woman reading words on printed paper.
This is the most disruptive thing since Dalton Caldwell’s last bowel movement. → Read More
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