I am currently an independent consultant working on mobile, growth, and operations with a small handful of early-stage, venture-backed companies. Previously, I spent six (6) months as an EIR with Javelin Venture Partners, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm investing in software startups for consumers and the enterprise, as well as in cloud technologies and infrastructure. Prior to this, I’ve held operational roles at Votizen and Rexly (acquired by Live Nation) and have also been an Official Columnist at TechCrunch since January 2011, where I write a weekly column on Sundays (“Iterations”) and run a weekly television show on Thursdays (“In the Studio),” where I host founders, operators, and seed-stage and venture capital investors in the TechCrunch TV Studios. I have written extensively on the forces changing high-technology venture capital, how the industry is transforming, and consumer-facing and enterprise IT technologies. For more information, please visit: blog.semilshah.com
In 2013, we have seen a reincarnation of “man vs. machine,” except this time, the machines aren’t algorithms — the machine is government. Within a few months, various levels of government across the United States have made headlines with respect to new technologies, products, and services. Unmanned aerial drones, which have a touchy relationship with citizens worldwide already, present… → Read More
If you keep up with all the tech startup news, it’s easy to develop the impression that money is just sloshing around the Valley and even the worst products and ideas curry investors’ interests. Thankfully, this is far from the truth. As many of you know, raising institutional funding is quite hard and the process takes a long time, sometimes years. Years ago, Pandora suffered through brutal… → Read More
“Membership has its privileges.” A slogan made famous by American Express today also applies to an online membership many, many people happily keep: Amazon Prime. Ever since committing to Prime — and this is anecdotal — but our household trips to Target steadily decreased, and in 2013, outside of one trip to replace a defective item in a pinch, I haven’t shopped for household goods in any… → Read More
After spending time in the valley as a founder, operator, and venture capitalist, my friend Ryan Spoon left the comforts of Silicon Valley to head east — to Bristol, CT of all places — to follow the intersection of his passion: technology and sports. And he’s not just at another sports company — he’s at ESPN, a sports network which reaches over 100M homes with annual revenues approaching… → Read More
Apple has a good deal of cash. And, in the Valley, the startup ecosystem — for many reasons — wants to see Apple spend that cash. As their cash pile continued to grow as their stock price and market cap soared, Apple’s inability to provide robust software services combined with opportunities to expand their reach through acquisitions has become a fancy parlor game which includes every stripe of… → Read More
This is the final episode of my show on TCTV, “In The Studio.” The final guest is a good friend, Parth Shah (no relation), an engineer with VMware, and before that, at Yahoo! Parth combines the precision of CMU CS graduate’s take on web development with a hacker mentality, and has the rare skill of being able to explain some of the most complex enterprise IT concepts to those who don’t have as… → Read More
“What are the cool new apps you’ve seen lately?” To this oft heard question, lately, there have been lots of answers. So, mobile is indeed exciting and moving fast. And, just recently, a fun new app came out that instantly captured my attention — no, it’s not from a Stanford dropout or from the ”innovation lab” of a large technology company. No. It’s from Snoop Dogg — excuse me — … → Read More
This is the penultimate episode of “In The Studio.” The show, which features developers and entrepreneurs working on enterprise technology, will be ending. This week’s guest is Varun Singh, CEO and founder of ScaleArc, a young startup which began in India but registered as a US-company with designs to expand to this country once it got off the ground in Mumbai. ScaleArc operates in the space of… → Read More
Facebook’s mission is to make the world more open and connected. Indeed, great things can come from this, and for many of its one billion users, Facebook isn’t just on the web — it is the web. It is where images, biographical data, and every speck of a connection to a person, place, or thing lives, both the dream of a doting family spread miles apart and a marketer close by. It is a place… → Read More
Those who know in the Valley know the name Sam Pullara. Whether it was his time as a repeat entrepreneur and technical founder, or stints as an EIR at some of the Valley’s most premier venture capital firms, or his time as a lead technologist at two of the largest tech companies in the Valley (most recently at Twitter), Pullara has occupied nearly every seat at the table throughout his career. → Read More
People won’t stop talking about Google Glass, and rightfully so. Ever since the epic parachute-hangout demo, the Valley has been buzzing about the future coming of what is arguably one of the biggest potential advancements in computer interfaces since the iPhone. Lately, the buzz has been bubbling as Google employees, early adopters (Scoble just posted his detailed review), tech bloggers, and… → Read More
“In The Studio” ends April by welcoming Tim Sullivan, the CEO of MicroVentures, a San Francisco-based crowdfunding venture firm that connects retail angel investors with startups. While the venture industry itself continues to undergo a long series of shifts, contractions, and market corrections, the larger trend of crowdfounding — ranging all the way from the Kickerstarters of the world to… → Read More
During the summer of 2012, while working in venture capital, one of the early-stage companies I stumbled upon was founded by a trio of guys based in Singapore. We met a few times in the Valley and quickly became friends, and I informally helped them, from time to time, navigate the waters of moving to the Valley and getting situated here. I hadn’t talked to them in a while but we recently… → Read More
“In The Studio” this week hosts a special guest who doesn’t typically go on camera that often. As a result, I decided to make this particular episode of the show longer to capture my entire discussion with Greylock’s David Sze. For anyone who follows the ins and outs of venture capital, Sze’s name looms large. By now, most everyone knows of Greylock’s impressive run over the last decade, a firm… → Read More
There isn’t just a bubble in the Bitcoin economy, there’s a bubble in the number of posts about Bitcoin. I’ll pile on, even after this week’s mini-crash, but with a twist. A few weeks ago, I wrote some brief notes on what I thought about Bitcoin, but the over-arching feeling I had was that I couldn’t put my finger on what could become of this currency in the future. Perhaps that’s part of the… → Read More
“In The Studio” rolls on this week by welcoming a long-time Valley operator, founder, angel investor, venture capitalist, and now general partner at one of the first “super angel” funds.
Charles Hudson, now a partner with SoftTech VC, has sat on every side of every table in the startup world. With stints as an operator at Google, as an investor with In-Q-Tel (the CIA’s venture capital arm), and… → Read More
Everyone wants more transparency. It is part of a deep, fundamental trend. In government. In the workplace. Inside large systems like health care. And, more recently, around early-stage startup metrics and investment data. The crowd wants more transparency. They want to know more about metrics, revenues, and stats, and they want to know more about how investment dollars are allocated. Yet, the… → Read More
“In the Studio” opens up Q2 of 2013 by hosting a three-time founder who, after stints in engineering and the biomedical industry in India, happened to team up with a young leader in the art world to create one of the art world’s most fascinating online auction houses.
Aditya Julka, a co-founder of online art and collectible marketplace Paddle8, has carved an unusual path of entrepreneurship. → Read More
Now that the Mailbox sale to Dropbox is complete, let’s move on to the next native iOS app that everyone wants to replace: The Calendar. Yes, the calendar. Nearly every other conversation I had this past week included some chatter about all the new calendar apps (see the screenshot of my iPhone). Peeling back the layers on all these calendar apps and the herd-like interest in the space, however… → Read More
“In The Studio” welcomes a digital media savant who has hustled his way up through the music world by interning for Rolling Stone, The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Museum, MTV Networks (through Viacom), Hulu, and Twitter, worked as an editor and analyst for ABC News and Fuse TV, and eventually embarked down the path of entrepreneurship to be recently acquired by Live Nation. → Read More
For this week’s column, I wanted to write about something entirely different than the normal market trends and product analysis you’d see on “Iterations.” When I moved back to California in the middle of 2010, I had just spent the previous 18 months consulting and trying to get a life sciences company off the ground in Cambridge, Ma. I moved here and wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do or could… → Read More
“In the Studio” opens the spring of 2013 by welcoming one of the most well-known “super angels,” who arrived to Valley, by way of Boston, Philadelphia, and Istanbul, in the mid-1990s, held early product management stints at Silicon Graphics and a little startup called Google, which ultimately catapulted his career into what it is today. → Read More
On Friday, Dropbox’s acquisition of Mailbox marked the first time the tech community lit up in amazement and awe of a consumer transaction since Facebook acquired Instagram back in April 2012. The attention is well-deserved. For a variety of reasons beyond the high ticket price of the deal, the acquisition of Mailbox contains many interesting sub-stories that captured the tech community’s… → Read More
“In the Studio” this week welcomes a Silicon Valley veteran with decades of operational and investing experience under his belt, an active board member to many successful companies, and who holds a wealth of experience around financial services and tools for both individuals and businesses.
Mark Goines, a Partner at Morgenthaler Ventures, brings a true wealth of experience in financial products… → Read More
People often ask me some variant of this question: “What’s a startup out there that will be a great investment hit but no one really thinks of that way yet?” There are many possible answers, but I’ll focus this week’s column on one: Disqus. Now, there are many smart folks who believe online comments are either dead or worthless, and they have some valid points. Some believe online… → Read More
“In the Studio” welcomes a co-founder of a company which went public, a native Texan who studied engineering in Silicon Valley and business on the east coast, and who, upon returning to the Valley to begin investing, encountered a different path than he originally anticipated. → Read More
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been genuinely surprised by the depth and reach of the reaction to any moves made by Yahoo! As someone who hasn’t been around the this place for too long, my sense is Yahoo!, despite its recent history of countless missteps, is still vitally important to the cultural memory of Silicon Valley. And, as a result, the moves its new CEO makes becomes the subject of… → Read More
“In the Studio” welcomes a first-time founder with a diverse set of experiences — ranging from economics to advertising, from product management to design, and from startup CEO to advisor of a venture capital firm — who now is at the helm of one of the most interesting online education startups on the web today. → Read More
“FOR every reporter employed in America, around six people work in public relations: a few too many, some might think.” So began The Economist’s obituary for Daniel Edelman in January 2013, a sharp eulogy commemorating the life of a public relations giant. For decades, Edelman, in addition to founding and running the firm that bears his name today, successfully convinced legions of companies and… → Read More
“In the Studio” rolls on this week by hosting an ex-management consultant who grew tired of that career path, wrote a book about how to prepare for and perform well during case-style interviews, self-published the work and started to make money from those sales proceeds, and eventually ended up in YC to help build out his new content-publishing business, Hyperink. → Read More
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