Entrepreneurs like Steve Blank have spent a lot of time thinking (and writing) about how ineffective old-fashioned board meetings are for startups. LeanLaunchLab is a startup building software that could finally do away with the boardroom, or at least bring it into the 21st century. Read more »
After taking a place on Square’s board of director’s last week, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers is now continuing his Silicon Valley blitz by joining venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz as a part-time special advisor. Read more »
When it comes to getting major companies to embrace building their applications in the cloud, Salesforce and its newly acquired platform-as- a-service company Heroku are relying on a tried-and-true method: Peer pressure. Read more »
The days of viewing everything in the cloud through an application lens is nearing its end. Instead, we are evolving into a world where quantity, processing speeds and distribution of data compel IT professional to see data as a platform in its own right. Read more »
Ubiquiti, the wireless technology provider, filed IPO paperwork with the SEC recently, following hot on the heels of the Boingo and Fusion-io IPOs. Though VCs, including Sequoia’s Michael Goguen, are bullish on the activity in infrastructure, it’s too soon to say how it will pan out. Read more »
Not too long ago, getting a great new enterprise software tool into the hands of actual businesses was a daunting task that required a lot more than a cool product. It required a huge sales team and a strategy. Enter the cloud. Read more »
Here in the United States,cloud computing has allowed emerging companies to build much faster and much cheaper.But in Latin America, the development of the cloud has been nothing short of transformative. And developments are moving rapidly. Read more »
Amazon CTO Werner Vogels declared stacks a thing of the past during his “state of the cloud” address at GigaOm’s Structure event in San Francisco. Vogels said that the cloud today is about building applications by bringing different services together. Read more »
More than 80 percent of venture capitalists surveyed for the 2011 Global Venture Capital Survey said current IPO activity levels in their home countries are still too low to support the health of the market. Read more »
DealsGoRound, a secondary marketplace where users can buy and sell daily deals, is launching a digital wallet service. Now deal addicts the world over can manage their deals all in one place, and receive an alert when a deal is about to expire. Read more »
For GILD, recruiting is more than a pile of resumes or a referral from a friend. The startup is trying to turn hiring into a science, and is gaining a following among programmers from San Francisco to Katmandu. Read more »
Just because it works in the United States, doesn’t mean it will work in China. It’s a lesson some of our biggest tech brands have learned the hard way. And as Groupon attempts expands east, critics say its already making the same mistakes. Read more »
Starting today, diners at all 370 of the U.K.’s Pizza Express restaurants will be able to use the chain’s iPhone app to pay for their meals at the table via PayPal in “less than a minute.” No wait-staff intervention needed. Read more »
Descuento Libre is a daily deal site catering to Latinos in the United States. While Groupon emphasis new adventures, this year-old site is staking a claim with family-friendly activities and household goods and services and a different model for attracting businesses. Read more »
E-commerce is, like, so 2010. These days, all the cool businesses are on to “F-commerce.” And developers are seeing an opportunity to cash in as well. In Austin, veteran web developer Steve Golab has pivoted his entire business to capitalize on Facebook. Read more »
The Chinese tech scene is dominated by a small group of entrepreneurs who paid their dues in Silicon Valley before returning to create successful startups. But “returnees” are also laying the foundation for a startup culture that will allow grassroots entrepreneurs to flourish. Read more »
Venture capitalists are feeling increasingly bullish despite all the bubble talk, according to a new survey from industry analysts at Fenwick & West. Meanwhile, angel investors continue to make their way up the food chain as internet and software companies become ever easier to invest in. Read more »
Like oil and vinegar, marketing and IT just don’t mix well. But as social media flourishes and marketers try to use it to their advantage, its time to bridge the gap. Big data, cheap processing and social media are changing the advertising and marketing landscape. Read more »
Since 1965, hard-core Grateful Dead fans have been camping out in America’s open fields and fairgrounds. Now, San Francisco startup Tripping is helping the band add community-service projects to the jam sessions as a way of expanding its peer-to-peer travel service. Read more »
While Groupon clones have saturated the consumer space, the enterprise sector has barely been tapped. GroupPrice offers daily deals for small business owners and is pursuing an agressive expansion strategy to be known as “Groupon for businesses.” Read more »
Here on the internet, just because you build it, it doesn’t mean anyone will actually come. Or click on a link. Or leave a comment. Or become a Facebook fan.YouSendIt co-founder Ranjith Kumaran wants to change all that with his loyalty-marketing startup, PunchTab. Read more »
The biggest difference between the simply good VCs and the absolutely fabulous ones lies in how each group assesses startups. According to the research in the Startup Genome Project, those tried-and-true metrics may be sending VCs down a less-profitable path. Read more »
Why do bad startups happen to good people? Released today by seed accelerator Blackbox, the Startup Genome Report is a comprehensive map of the factor’s beyond luck, talent and money that make Silicon Valley startups successful. Read more »
Here’s a phrase PayPal might want to keep in mind as it wages a civil battle against two former executives who defected to Google. Location, location, location. When it comes to employment breach of contract and trade-secret cases, California is a hard state to win in. Read more »
Long before there was a Y Combinator or a 500 Startups, there was SRI International — an old school, non-profit research and development organization that’s been incubating since before incubating was cool. Read more »
Airbnb has added Ashton Kutcher — comedic heartthrob, coveted angel investor and Twitter-master extraordinaire — to its team of investors, the San Francisco based startup announced in its blog this evening. Read more »
Be it defusing car bombs or programming old people’s VCR’s (so their displays finally stops blinking 12:00), the grabby little Taurus has the makings of a real renaissance robot. Read more »
Once upon a time, in the year 2007, Dropbox consisted of two engineers coding in their boxers out of a shared apartment in North Beach. To co-founder and CEO Drew Houston, launching a successful company, “looked like a never-ending trail up Mount Doom.” Read more »
Not two years after introducing the world to its little mobile credit card reader, Square is looking to write the obituary for the modern cash register–along with every location-based, daily deal and mobile payment app in existence with its new Square Register and Card Case. Read more »
Alexander the Great set his own warships ablaze just to send the message there was no turning back. Two thousand years later, SCVNGR founder Seth Priebatsch doesn’t want to take over the world — he just wants to “build game layers” on top of it. Read more »
No one knows what the future– and the NYSE–have in store for LinkedIn following its debut. But venture capitalists like Benchmark Capital’s Bill Gurley believe the $9 billion IPO will finally trigger the end of Silicon Valley’s long-running apathy toward IPO’s–aka, “The Zuckerberg Effect.” Read more »
At a panel on angel funding, several prominent VCs seemed to agree that early-stage investing is more art than science. But they had very different approaches to what they looked for in startups: anything from a lean executive team to just the tiniest bit of cash. Read more »
Boticca.com, an online marketplace connecting high-fashion,independent jewelry and accessories designers with fashonistas looking for hand-crafted Czech crystal collar necklaces and gold-foil-and-pearl jellyfish rings, has received $2.5 million in funding. The Series A round comes from both international and Silcon Valley investors. Read more »
Randy Shoup, the architectural guru credited with scaling eBay, tweeted Monday evening that he has left the online auction giant to co-found a new consumer-focused e-commerce startup, Shopilly.com. He and another former eBay exec are keeping their plans under wraps for now. Read more »
Floodgate Capital managing partner Mike Maples Jr. really doesn’t want to fund your Groupon clone, your Facebook game or your check-in app. He doesn’t want a piece of your photo sharing company either. The early stage investor shared his philosophy during Tiecon 2011. Read more »
Chromebooks, according to Rajen Sheth, are like a house that remodels itself. With automatically updating software and web-based applications, the Chromebook helps reduce the need for hands-on IT departments — and reduce costs. Read more »
So far, at Google I/O we learned that “Android is Everywhere.” Google is coming to your home. And now Chrome wants to run your notebook.It all begs the question– is there anywhere Google wont go? Read more »
Chrome now has 160 million users in 41 countries worldwide. That’s more than double the 70 million users reported at last year’s conference. In addition to new features in the Chrome API, Google also announced a special web version of Angry Birds for Chrome. Read more »
While not always recognized for their fuzzy personalities and breezy conversational skills, most programmers do want to work well alongside other human beings. Why else did so many spend a precious hour of Google I/O time at “Social Skills for Geeks?” Read more »
Innobell founder Shai Magzimof is one of the hottest young entrepreneurs to emerge from Tel Aviv’s burgeoning tech sector this year. But the 20-year-old developer needs to strike it big in the Silicon Valley or he’ll be heading home in army fatigues. Read more »
