Cyan is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Zivity, a prolific angel investor with her husband Scott Banister (Tagged, SpaceX, Uber and others (See [AngelList] (https://angel.co/cyantist) for full list), board member, advisor and also a contributing writer for TechCrunch.
Cyan co-founded the controversial website Zivity.com, which is a subscription based social networking site for creators and fans of beautiful and tasteful glamour photography. She currently serves on the board of directors for Mimoco, best known for their MIMOBOT line of designer USB storage devices.
Cyan has held many leadership roles throughout her career, from leading technical operations teams in an enterprise software company to helping women master technology as CTO of a nonprofit organization.
As a side note, Cyan donates money every year to the world juggling federation, women’s division.
On June 14th, 2010, Michael Arrington awarded a Crunchie to two members of Goatse Security via a blog post for discovering, publishing and trying to fix a pretty egregious security flaw that they discovered on AT&T’s public website. Before going to jail, Andrew Auernheimer’s (aka “weev”) bucket list of what he wanted was the Crunchie that TechCrunch awarded to him. → Read More
Every month I see several birth announcements on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I know exactly what moment the baby was born, what they looked like in sonogram photos, what their first food was, their favorite animal, who their siblings are, where they traveled on vacation, etc. I’ve enjoyed these moments, but in the back of my mind, I find myself feeling sad for children who are growing up… → Read More
I’m going to go out on a limb here, but my guess is if you went around and asked people in the startup community what they thought about Mike Maples at Floodgate, they would describe him as a sensible and successful entrepreneur turned investor and someone you’d most likely be thrilled to have on your team. In my personal opinion as an investor, I think he makes some pretty sound investment… → Read More
There are a lot of dating application and website choices out there, but lets face it, some of them are kind of creepy. I’m not dating, but I have a lot of friends and loved ones that are and I watch the agonizing process on the sidelines.
Can these apps track your location? Which profiles are real? Is the person a total whack job psycho killer? Will we have anything in common? Will we have to… → Read More
I’ve gone through various stages of “connectedness” in my life. We all have. Some of you are so young that you’ve never known anything else and some of you remember the days when you only knew the local news and big events like going to the moon. Today, we no longer have to rely on travelers spreading information like a game of telephone through roadside diners along Route 66.
Nowadays the… → Read More
San Francisco has had an awesome few weeks of 75th anniversary celebrations. The Golden Gate bridge celebration was pretty obvious, as there was a lot of fanfare with fireworks etc., but another celebration went on rather quietly and TechCrunch was fortunate enough to be part of it.
The 75th anniversary of the Herman Street US San Francisco Mint.
One of the most mysterious buildings in San… → Read More
There have been a lot of complaints voiced over the last couple of years from people who wish entrepreneurs would address the world’s “real problems” or do “something bigger” rather than create “me too” applications and websites. I’m not a fan of that sentiment but that’s really a whole other post I need to write. In all honesty, there’s a place and need in the world for all sorts of business… → Read More
This week’s guest on Speaking Of is no stranger to the world of television. She’s Jesse Draper, creator and host of online talk show, “The Valley Girl Show.” The show profiles entrepreneurs and businesspeople, but in a format not often seen in Silicon Valley: on a pink-themed set, Draper draws her guests out of their shells in fun, light-hearted interviews that focus less on numbers and more on… → Read More
ArcticStartup recently broke the news about an ambitious seasteading endeavor called Blueseed started by Silicon Valley founders Max Marty and Dario Mutabdzija. The post came shortly after Max pitched the idea (embedded below) at JumpStartDays on October 17th, in which he received a huge round of applause.
Seasteading isn’t a new idea. Other than pirates, one of the first well known attempts at… → Read More
I tried out Kindle Cloud Reader and holy shit, I feel like Mosaic was just invented and now we have tags. (Do some of our readers even know what Mosaic is these days? Well, it was really cool at the time. Revolutionary even.)
Or rather, that someone finally figured out how to use the image tag. HTML 5 has been out for some time, but everyone else seems to have been asleep at the wheel. → 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… → Read More
Vibrating sex toys have been around for over a century, starting out as crude steam powered devices and now resembling something very cool that you might pick up at an Apple store. Sex toys have been the source of giggles, controversy, pleasure and up until the last 5 years, were not a mainstream product. They were devices you bought and had shipped in unmarked brown packaging or slipped into a… → Read More
We read a lot of news about amazing companies when they receive financing, have a change in leadership or launch new products, but we rarely get a glimpse into the companies and people that use those products and tools in incredibly meaningful ways. This week’s Speaking Of… is with Roxy owner Nic Alder, son of Lou Adler who’s famous for producing bands/acts such as Cheech and Chong, The Mamas… → Read More
My special guest on this week’s Speaking Of is actress Cindy Morgan. Cindy is known in the film world for two iconic roles: as Lacey Underall in Caddyshack and as Lora/Yori in the original TRON.
I didn’t mention this in my original overview of TRON Legacy, because I didn’t want to spoil much of the movie for everyone, but I was very saddened by the fact that two of my favorite characters (Bit and… → Read More
It is 25 degrees here in NY and I feel like a wuss. We California people aren’t cut out for the weather out here. I’ve got thermal underwear (top & bottom), another shirt on top, pants, sweater, jacket, long coat, gloves and a hat on. So, the next time I bitch about it being 50 degrees and windy in San Francisco, I need to remind myself to STFU. These people endure some serious cold. Look at… → Read More
Part of the TRON press event included an advance screening of TRON: Legacy. We’ve been under embargo not to review the movie, but someone broke the embargo, so we are no longer going to keep it secret.
If you do not like movie spoilers, do not click to read more and do not read on, because I’m going to tell you what I think about the movie and I’m going to include some information about it that… → Read More
Greetings programs! I have the ultimate TRON interview for you: Jeff Bridges. I had 3 minutes with Bridges, so I asked him this question from TechCrunch fan “itbedave”:
I’m curious as to what Jeff Bridges thinks of blue screen acting then (original TRON) vs. now (TRON Legacy) – and if it’s “advancement” has enhanced or ruined acting in big Hollywood films?
Jeff, who plays Kevin Flynn… → Read More
Ok TRON fans, have I got a treat for you!
I just returned from a two day TRON press event with some awesome interviews from the creators, cast and crew of TRON: Legacy and the original TRON. I asked many of the questions I solicited from TechCrunch commenters and everyone seemed to love them — especially Jeff Bridges. I mean, maybe they say this to everyone, but his handlers said they had not… → Read More
In about 3 hours I’m heading over to a press event to interview some of the major cast and crew for the upcoming Disney release of TRON: Legacy.
I was working on my list of questions to ask last night and realized that the TechCrunch community should really be asking them instead of me. Interviews take place from 12:30p – 4:30p (Pacific Time) and I’ll have my computer with me to look at the… → Read More
Picture this:
A hotel party thrown by Tony Hsieh of Zappos. A group of people, crowded around a laptop, laughing at a video of a doctor rapping and singing about ulcers. Suddenly one of the group starts rapping out loud to the video. Now people are laughing so hard that they are crying….
This is how I came to know ZDoggMD, a rare – and virtually undiscovered – talent that I would now like… → Read More
Have you ever stopped to evaluate your life in terms of small decisions you made that impacted who you are and what you do? Decisions such as a left turn here, saying hello to a stranger, picking one place to eat over another? Ever wondered what life would be like if you went the other direction, ignored that new person or picked the sub place over the soup place?
Simple decisions like these are… → Read More
Ever wonder what a Technical Director of Pixar does in his free time? Well, in the case of Oren Jacob, the answer is: things that begin with “competitive”. Not only has Oren – along with his wife Justine and filmmaker Alex De Silva – recently completed a film called ‘Ready, Set, Bag’ about competitive grocery bagging but he’s also a competitive gardener. He grows things that are as big as I am… → Read More
When you get a good story, sometimes you just need to whip out your flip camera and hope for the best. Apologies for the lighting on this one, but Micah Baldwin’s interview was just too good to miss.
Graphic.ly (a really cool digital comic book community) is based in Boulder, Colorado, which is starting to get a reputation for its hotbed of startups.
There are several interesting venture backed… → Read More
This week’s episode of Speaking Of… is with the originator of the modern Batman movies and creator of the Batman franchise, Michael Uslan.
Michael Uslan’s story is the typical story of success. From the outside, it seems like an obvious win, but from the inside there was a long and painful struggle to get to the other side. It took Michael 10 years of pitching a dark and serious Batman in order… → Read More
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