February 2013
AngelList’s Naval Ravikant Says The Future Of VC Is In Smaller Funding Rounds
In an on-stage conversation today with Dave McClure at 500 Startups’ fifth Demo Day event, AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant gave data-driven insights on the current state of venture capital. In…
Layoffs And A Shut-Down For NM Incite, The Nielsen-McKinsey Venture That Works With Twitter On Social TV Ratings [Updated]
Here’s a surprise follow-up to the news this week of Twitter’s acquisition of a social media analytics firm Bluefin Labs. NM Incite — a social analytics JV between Nielsen and McKinsey that…
With 300 Kiosks In 20 States, Device Recycler EcoATM Secures $40M In Debt Financing To Go Nationwide
You know those mobile devices that everyone keeps raving about? Turns out it’s a huge business. Shocker, I know. Strategy Analytics recently estimated that about 1.6 billion mobile phones shipped…
500 Startups Is Setting Up Shop In China, Adding Beijing-Based Venture Partner Rui Ma
500 Startups is already focused heavily on investing overseas, with partners looking at startups in markets like Mexico, Brazil, India and Southeast Asia. Now you can add China to the…
Tumblr Adds Real-Time Notifications To Its Dashboard And It Feels A Lot Like Facebook’s Ticker
Today on its staff blog, Tumblr shared that it is rolling out real-time notifications to people’s dashboards, so that you can have even more cat- and fashion-related content thrown in…
Joe Green Steps Down As President Of NationBuilder, Joins Andreessen Horowitz As EIR
Today, we’ve learned that Joe Green, co-founder of Causes and NationBuilder, will be stepping down as president from the latter. Green, who is also an investor and advisor to Asana,…
George Lucas Files To Sell Off His 2 Percent Stake In Disney For Nearly $2 Billion
Just four months after announcing the sale of Lucasfilm production company to Disney in a $4 billion deal, George Lucas, the screenwriter and director best known for the Star Wars…
Yahoo! Signs Global, Non-Exclusive Display Ad Deal With Google
As first reported by AllThingsD, Yahoo has announced an advertising partnership with Google, not unlike working relationships it has with other companies. Yahoo in its current form has quite a…
Storybird Aims To Attack The Last Bastion Of The Printed Word, The Kids’ Bookshelf
If paper books are going to survive anywhere for the next few years, it’s in our schools and on our kids’ bookshelves. However a company called Storybird has built a…
SurveyMonkey CEO On How To Build A Great Company: Raise Money From The Right People, Don’t Sweat Competitors
At the fifth 500 Startups Accelerator Demo Day in Mountain View today, SurveyMonkey CEO Dave Goldberg gave some advice about how to build a great company based on his 20…
Yelp Misses In Q4 With Net Loss Of $5.3M, While Revenues Were Up 65 Percent To $41M
Today, Yelp announced its fourth-quarter earnings, and they weren’t as sunny as some as hoped. Net revenue was $41.2 million in Q4 of 2012 — a 65 percent growth in…
Google’s Supposed Chromebook Pixel (And Its Touch Display) Stars In Leaked Video
Got your grains of salt at the ready? Good. Rumors of a more extravagant Chromebook have been making the rounds for months now, but the new, supposedly leaked video the…
At 500 Startups’ 5th Demo Day, 32 Startups Make Their Dave McClure-Endorsed Debut
It’s demo day time once again for 500 Startups, the early stage venture capital fund and startup accelerator headed up by Silicon Valley’s favorite foul-mouthed investor, techie, and man about…
Anturis Launches IT-Monitoring Service For Small Business Market, But Open Source Critiques Are Unfounded
Anturis is an IT monitoring service for the small business market (SMB) that launched this week at the Parallels Summit with the intent of providing a service that fits in…
Google Introduces New Input Tools For Translate, Gmail, Drive, Chrome, Android And Windows
Over the years, Google has introduced input tools to allow you to interact with its services in a multitude of languages and non-Latin characters and today has introduced a whole…
Super Bowl Ad-Related Hashtags Were Used 300K Times On Sunday, Up 273 Percent
Going into the Super Bowl, folks who care about such things probably knew it was not only going to be the Most Social! Super Bowl! Ever!, but also a big win…
Facebook Launches Developers Live Video Channel To Keep Its Developer Ecosystem Up To Date
Google runs a Developers Live video channel for its developer ecosystem and starting today, Facebook will offer a very similar service under the Facebook Developers Live moniker. Starting today, the…
If Vine Is ‘Adults Only’, Then So Is All Of The Internet And My University Library
My old university’s library was a den of pornographic filth, but no one ever considered shading the windows strip-club black because a few stragglers watched sex on public computers. Yet,…
Want To “Bang With Nobody”? Use Google+
When a product idea turns into a meme, you’re probably doing something right. I’m referring, of course, to Bang With Friends, the controversial Facebook app that lets you privately nominate…
Evasi0n By The Numbers: 2 Days In, Cydia Usage Jumps To Over 4M Devices, Jailbreak Website Sees 5M Uniques
You would be forgiven if you thought jailbreaking was dead. There hadn’t been a good, untethered jailbreak for iPhone 4S or iPhone 5 running the current version of the iOS…
Dropbox Unveils Sync API For Mobile Developers, Allows Apps To Work With Cloud-Based Files As If They Were Local
Dropbox is unveiling a brand new API for developers today that should give mobile app makers an excellent new tool to work with. The Dropbox Sync API allows apps for…
Next-Gen Xbox Protection Rumor Raises The Question Of Always-On DRM
According to an Edge report, the rumored next Xbox will have a game registration system that will prevent the 50GB Blu-ray titles from being resold on the secondary market. The…
Twitter Redesigns Its Search Experience For iOS, Android And Mobile Web To Help You Find Relevant Tweets And People
Twitter has announced a much-needed update to its search product today, which will be available on all mobile devices: iOS, Android and mobile web. The company boasts that the update…
Charting The iTunes Store’s Path To 25 Billion Songs Sold, 40 Billion Apps Downloaded And Beyond
Apple today announced a new sales milestone for its iTunes digital music store, with 25 billion songs sold. The news follows an announcement made earlier this month that the App…
Fred Wilson, Ken Lerer And Ben Lerer To Speak At TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013
We’re proud of the fact that some of the tech scene’s most innovative thinkers and problem solvers are going to be speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC this year, and are happy…
Foundation: Jawbone’s Founder Hosain Rahman On How to Build Meaningful Hardware Prototypes
In this episode of my Foundation video series, I talk with Jawbone CEO and Founder Hosain Rahman. Hosain and I discuss the entrepreneurial environment at Stanford in the 1990’s, The…
Google Brings 38 Additional Ski Resorts To Google Maps
A while ago, Google took its Street View cameras to the slopes and started documenting ski runs at a few select resorts. Today, Google is expanding its mapping options for…
iPads (Thanks To The Mini) Were 1 In 6 ‘PCs’ Shipped, Tablets One-Third, And Windows RT Didn’t Even Break 1M: Canalys
The PC market is fast shifting into a touchscreen world, and Apple is leading the charge. Some new numbers from the analysts at Canalys note that in Q4 of 2012,…
Zynga COO David Ko Emphasizes “Discipline” For Future Acquisitions
A year ago, fresh off raising $1 billion from an IPO and the $180 million acquisition of red-hot gaming company OMGPOP, Zynga’s Mark Pincus did an interview with talk of…
The Teeny, Tiny Crazyflie Nano Quadcopter Is Available For Pre-Order
A few weeks ago the Crazyflie Nano captured our collective imaginations by winging its way around an open plan office and looking like a cross between a hummingbird and the…
