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 The Studio” continues this week by welcoming a former Oxford PhD student who, upon completing his long education, ended up in San Francisco, toyed with a few web ideas, eventually was so inspired by an idea, based in part to his experience in a PhD program, that he found his passion and founded his first real startup.
Richard Price had an interesting path to be on this show. After launching… → Read More
The biggest news in consumer technology this week was created by Facebook. The social network’s new product – “Graph Search” – was the subject of an international press event where analysts initially speculated on all new things, from a Facebook partnership on the scale of Spotify or even their own phone. There were a lot of posts about Graph Search. Facebook is an important, powerful company, and… → Read More
“In the Studio” welcomes a quiet, unassuming early-stage company veteran who has been through the ups and downs of Valley startups before landing at a certain search engine around the year 2000, after which he spent nearly seven years in various finance leadership roles and helped steer the company to its blockbuster public offering.
Pietro Dova, now a Managing Partner at XG Ventures, is not a… → Read More
Every week, it seems, a new marketplace or services business is born. Some of the hottest companies of 2012 — after photo-sharing apps, of course — were online and/or mobile marketplace- or services-based companies, pioneered by the likes of Uber, for instance, and all the way to a newer company (with a common investor) to help you find someone to watch your four-legged friends while you’re… → Read More
“In the Studio” this week welcomes a former economist who worked for his country’s treasury department and reserve bank, a former intern with The Economist Group, and by way of his very unique company bio page, a former windsurfer and kiteboarder who is now settled in San Francisco and the founder and CEO of one of the most interesting data companies I’ve come across. → Read More
There are many misconceptions about technology-focused venture capital out there. One timeless misconception is that venture capital is monolithic. By now, given the attention driving the tech scene and the age of celebrity investors, we all have a better understanding of how an investor’s tastes can range between sectors and stages. And, when it comes to consumer-facing products and services… → Read More
“In The Studio” kicks off its second season and 2013 by welcoming an entrepreneur with an eclectic past, ranging from time as a lab assistant, media strategist, business development manager, and consultant to many NYC startups until he and a college friend stumbled upon what could be a big idea during a short hackathon and who, ever since, have been slowly growing their addictive and highly… → Read More
In the few years I’ve been in Silicon Valley, if someone asked me to sum up — in one word — what defined and dominated consumer technology applications during that time, I’d have no choice but to answer: “Photos.” Now, it’s easy for others to sit back and roll their eyes at the thought of it. “Why not solve big problems?,” an aggravated chorus might wail. Looking back over this time period, the… → Read More
Editor’s Note: Semil Shah is an EIR with Javelin Venture Partners and is a contributor to TechCrunch. You can follow him on Twitter at @semil.
“In the Studio” closes out its inaugural year by welcoming the young CEO of one of the web’s hottest startups who, before his current breakthrough, immigrated from Ireland, dropped out of MIT, founded and sold his first company, and is now taking on an… → Read More
A few years ago, when I was going back and forth to India for work, I’d routinely carry with me the eye prescriptions and a few old frames for some of my family members in the States. They didn’t want to pay local prices in the States because they knew the deal back home — for a small fraction of the cost, they could get their new prescriptions and probably a couple of spare pairs of glasses… → Read More
“In the Studio” welcomes it’s first two-guest show ever by hosting two long-time Valley veterans, former founders, investors, seed fund LPs, and executives who, most recently, had the presence of mind to anticipate an investment trend and build an entire investment business around it, ahead of the curve.
For Paul Martino and Rich Melmon, both managing directors at Bullpen Capital (along with… → Read More
Back in September 2011, a full year before the iPhone 5, I wrote an post here speculating, mostly for fun, how Facebook could approach the iOS platform by using a federated strategy to separate their core offerings into single-use apps across Apple’s App Store. Of course, this didn’t happen, though Facebook has a separate app for private messages (Messenger, through the acquisition of Beluga)… → Read More
“In the Studio” approaches the end of 2012 by welcoming the type of entrepreneur that doesn’t end up in the tech blogs very often, if ever, as they’re generally working on technologies that most of us would never fully understand and, given the stakes, spend the first few years of initial development in stealth mode for fear of being scooped by the competition.
Kieran Harty, CEO and co-founder… → Read More
This post is about Apple’s Passbook. It’s not about mobile wallets, or Google Wallet, or Square, or anything else. I realize the space is vast and dynamic, but I only have an iPhone, and I’m here to write about Passbook. With that disclaimer out of the way, I’d like to share some thoughts about Passbook, a thesis I’ve developed around “cards vs. apps,” the big opportunity this… → Read More
“In the Studio” begins to wind down the year by hosting someone who can lay claim to the following roles — developer, engineer, CTO, VP of Engineering, and founder — and now, after a few years of angel and seed investing, has moved down to Sand Hill Road as a partner at a large venture firm.
You may not notice on first glance, but Ross Fubini has racked up a diverse set of experiences in his… → Read More
Over the past few years, I’ve helped a small handful friends move from one gig to another. It’s a highly personal process, and I’m not a “recruiting expert.” Generally, in my limited experience, it often takes many conversations even before a close friend opens up about their desire to move or try something new. The motivations for each change are so different. Some want to work in a different… → Read More
“In the Studio” turns the corner into the winter months by welcoming a career finance journalist with a widely-read and often-cited daily email newsletter and, in my opinion, is the single best writer covering venture capital and private equity today.
Fortune’s Dan Primack has been covering the world of private equity and venture capital for over a decade. His work speaks for itself, with his… → Read More
Recently, while traveling, I came across a “traditional print business magazine” and read it on the plane. It had nothing to do with startups, so it felt novel. There was one segment in the magazine where the editors solicited a few business leaders to share the most important advice they’ve ever received, and I found it to be unexpectedly powerful. So, I decided to try it on people that I… → Read More
“In the Studio” powers through Black Friday by welcoming a serial entrepreneur, originally from South Africa, who has now started his third company out of Palo Alto and timed his moves perfectly for recent advances in mobile hardware and the holiday season.
Vinny Lingham, the CEO and co-founder of Gyft, has devised a brilliantly dead-simple idea to attack the growing gift card market and enable… → Read More
“In the Studio” presents the first of two special holiday segments this Thanksgiving holiday by welcoming one of the co-founders of one of my personal favorite startup companies. Almost five years ago, Sifteo’s David Merrill and his cofounder, Jeevan Kalanathi, embarked on a long journey that would take them from MIT’s Media Lab to San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood, to blazing a trail for… → Read More
“In the Studio” kicks off some special holiday episodes this weekend by hosting a repeat entrepreneur, a product maker and marketer, a technology operator, a venture capitalist, an innovator in the venture model space, and a longtime friend of TechCrunch.
Ron Palmeri, founder of MkII Ventures (pronounced “Mark 2″ Ventures) is one of my favorite kind of entrepreneurs, the type who has throughout… → Read More
The act of “bundling” and the unleashed energy created by “unbundling” are both powerful forces. As consumers, we’ve all been subject to the bundling powers held by companies with unfair regulatory advantages, price collusion, and less competition every time we look over our monthly cell phone bills or cable bills. Years ago, the first software product I worked on was mildly successful… → Read More
“In the Studio” welcomes an engineer, originally from India, who came to the U.S., earned an MBA, worked stints as a software engineer, investment banker, and database architect before becoming a venture capitalist and now, up-and-coming investor who makes big bets on both consumer and enterprise IT products.
Bipul Sinha, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, is a rare breed of young… → Read More
In today’s world of popularized tech entrepreneurship, especially the consumer-facing variety, the constant (social) media attention maintains a fever pitch. In this current lifestyle wave, the plethora of online publishing and distribution tools means that folks with knowledge can openly share it with others, and one of the most popular topics people in this ecosystem enjoy creating, sharing… → Read More
“In the Studio” welcomes someone who created a project during his sophomore year of high school, released it to the world two years later, spent three years in college before dropping out to work on the company full-time, and now, almost eight years later, is continuing to build technologies and products for millions of students and teachers worldwide.
Andrew Sutherland, the founder and CTO of… → Read More
If there was a time-lapse video chronicling how humans have shared and received news information throughout history, the transcript of that video would go something like this: Chest-thumping. Hand gestures. Screaming. Cave paintings. Language. Carrier pigeons, or personal messengers. Scrolls and the printing press. Pamphlets, periodicals, telegrams, and newspapers. Eventually, television, and the… → Read More
“In the Studio” this week hosts a first-time founder and entrepreneur who began his career as an engineering student at two of the country’s finest universities and played baseball for his college team, after which he worked at one of the country’s largest technology research and product companies before enrolling in and dropping out of business school to work on building a company in Silicon… → Read More
very now and then, I’ll get sucked into the distracting, immersive, emotional habit of flipping through pictures online. Rifling through albums can stop time. It’s disorienting, like stumbling upon an old photograph in your drawer, the type of visually arresting trigger that takes you back through time. For me, I keep a small cigar box full of all my old photographs, dating back to childhood. → Read More
“In the Studio” hosts an entrepreneur who, after studying astrophysics, went on to handle various product management roles at a small startup eventually acquired by Google and who know, most recently, helped launch a venture-backed mobile application startup based in San Francisco.
Rishi Mandal, co-founder and CEO of Sosh, has brought a team together to bring real web scale technologies to a… → Read More
In this post, I’m going to try illuminate a tactical problem many application developers face, but unfortunately, I must claim upfront that I don’t know if any solution exists without a fundamental change occuring. The topic for this week’s column is to peel back the layers on mobile app distribution in Apple’s iOS, and in doing so, hopefully illuminate areas developers can exploit given… → Read More
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