Call it a coincidence, but over the past few days I have spent a lot of time with folks who used to work for Amazon but are now out doing new things. It all started with Jason Kilar, the CEO of Hulu, who was a keynote speaker at our NewTeeVee Live conference. Then last night I met with Dave Schapell, founder and CEO of TeachStreet, an e-marketplace for teachers. And this morning I had coffee with Jeff Lawson, co-founder of Twilo. My buddy Dave McClure was the one who pointed out that they are all part of the Ex-Amazon club....
If you don’t know what being RickRolled is, go look it up because you don’t want to be the last person to figure it out. YouTube even RickRolled its own users as an April Fools joke. Anyway, tonight I get a call on my mobile phone. And it’s that damn song. Apparently it’s some new startup called Twilio, and according to a Facebook message it was initiated by Dave McClure, who is probably advising them. Congratulations Dave, you’ve found a unique way of bugging me. Hope there’s more to the business than that. Did you get my text message...
Europe’s biggest annual event for the tech industry is looming once more, and this year Le Web’s regular startup competition - run alongside the conference itself - has attracted 30 companies from Europe, and a few from the US, across a wide range of sectors. This year the overall organisation for the comeptition is being handled by the Europe-wide SeedCamp incubator-come-startup-competition. They are (in alphabetical order)… 2Win-Solutions - FRANCE 3scale networks S. L. - SPAIN [TC50 Demopit] Apture - USA Box.net, Inc. - USA Brozengo SA - FRANCE Charge Ventures - UK Cmune - FRANCE ConTrust - ISRAEL DoctorSIM -...
by Brian Solis At the Web 2.0 Summit, Microsoft announced its new BizSpark program to help transform today’s most promising startups into tomorrow’s most successful businesses. Microsoft and the BizSpark team celebrated with an official launch party at Ozumo in San Francisco. The event was one of the highlights of the week. The ambiance was a conductor for incredibly enthusiastic conversations fortified by positive spirits. I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story… Karen Hartline of Mashable Dave McClure and Heather Harde Gregarious Greg Narain 100 hundred bottles of beer on the wall… Michael Sheehan of GoGrid Jacob...
Our guest writer, Larry Chiang, is at times a tortured blogger. If you have seen his GigaOm post, “9 VC’s You’re Gonna Want To Avoid” to, then you read his ONE Techmeme hit. This article might be part of his book… By Larry Chiang San Francisco, Calif — November 7th — Web 2.0 Summit I am sleep deprived and in creative mode at “Web 2.0 Summit” (as opposed to execution mode when I’m in Palo Alto CA). Here is what I learned at Web 2.0 Summit: -1- New networking rules. It is who you know AND what you know. In...
In his post on why the traditional CPM model doesn’t work anymore, Dave McClure breaks the CPM denial balloon, noting that the popular content-centric, keyword-based Google Adword model delivers a click-through rate of less than 1%. Dave posits that the problem is not Google-specific, but reflects the problem with the CPM model in the new world of social networks and distributed conversations. As an answer to the problem with lackluster clicks, especially within social networks like Facebook, Dave looks to widgets to serve up content based on the interests of individuals: “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. It will be...
Has the current economic climate caused our dear angel and VC friends to be delectably off-humor in their blog posts? Or are they merely giddy at the thought of becoming VC billionaires in the downturn? 10 Funniest Blog Posts by Angels and VCs this month: -1- Brad Feld: It’s Monday. Do you know what your VC is doing? “This doesn’t mean sit around with your thumb up your ass.” -2- Dave McClure: Fear is the Mindkiller “If you are running an existing startup, you are probably going to have to cut spending, cut hiring, and you may even end up...
Webware survey, 491 respondents. On the one hand, I agree with Dave McClure and his bombastic post, Fear is the Mind Killer. He's right. Start-ups are by nature risky. Even in good times, when venture capitalists are spreading money on entrepreneurs like farmers spread manure, they expect only a few roses to bloom. The rest of you? Weeds. You're going to get lopped off--by competitors, your investors, or your own incompetence. That's part of the fun. But a healthy amount of fear is a good motivator, and I have to part with McClure on one thing: there are some entrepreneurs...
Some of my readers who missed the dotcom boom and bust from the early 2000s may not be familiar with FuckedCompany, a Web site that was dedicated to gloating about layoffs and other misfortunes at Web companies as the tech bubble popped. Although fairly popular at the turn of the century the Web site was nothing more than postings about which companies had recently had layoffs, rumors of companies about to have layoffs and snarky comments about stock prices. You can read some of the old postings yourself in the WayBack Machine for FuckedCompany. I guess schadenfreude is a...
I believe that there are really only two questions: Where have we been and where are we going? Lamentably we all know where we have been, as the events of this week have made themselves self-evident to everyone save except those who are willfully ignorant. And I will be the first to admit that I have no clue where we are going and that is possibly the scariest aspect of the times we live in. Anyone who proclaims to know where we are headed, save for perhaps a belief that there are dark times ahead, might as well be...
There are posts all over the place over the VC memos to their startups. I wrote yesterday explaining my view of the Silicon Valley situation that it isn’t cratering. The fact is startups are hard. I’ve been doing early stage (zero stage) startups for 10 years (with a family as well) and I can tell you that doing a startup isn’t easy (Dave McClure has it right listen to his candid point of view). However the key to success (as in life) is product and sales with an emphasis of sales. Even thought I have a computer science degree the...
The most recent PageRank update sparked some intense discussion in the blogosphere with people like Steve Rubel, John Battelle, Danny Sullivan and Dave McClure joining the conversation. "Judge me by PageRank" Credit: Blaugh Danny Sullivan was surprised when the Google PageRank of SEL dropped from 7 to 6 - "Not that it matters, but then again, there’s no good reason for that to have happened." Matt Cutts then pointed to this article by Udi Manber which suggests that Google "made significant changes to the PageRank algorithm in January" and that may have caused the dip in PageRank. John Battelle asked...
Yay start-ups!(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET) Proving that a fundamental characteristic of a start-up entrepreneur is unbridled optimism, the mood at the Startonomics conference is bouyant, in the middle of the United States' worst economic crises in a generation. That's not to say that the game is not changing for entrepreneurs or the people who fund them. On the funding side, ubiquitous valley VC Jeff Clavier's advice is straightforward: Raise as much money as you can. "If there more available, take more." I asked if this attitude shifts the power in the entreprenurial economy back to the funding side of...
Want to meet some VCs? Hear from founders like Lance Tokuda, of Rock You, and Garrett Camp, of StumbleUpon, about what it took to build a business from the ground up? We’ve got 2 free tickets to giveaway to Startonomics – the October 2 conference put on by Dealmaker Media (the team behind the Under the Radar) and Dave McClure. The day will be packed with sessions of stories and tips from Valley entrepreneurs who’ve been through trial by fire and will teach you how to avoid startup pitfalls and steer yourself towards a “win.” How do you win free...
