Well-known tech investor Chris Dixon, speaking in New York, shared some thoughts on virtual currency and where the innovation and the economy are going. Here's a short summary.…
Read MoreResearch
The rise of mobile apps and the decline of the open web — a threat or an over-reaction?
Venture investor Chris Dixon of Andreessen Horowitz and others say they are concerned that the increasing use of mobile apps means less investment in the open web, and that this could have a negative effect on innovation. But is that true?…
Read MoreA $25 million bet on Bitcoin: is this really the “tipping point?”
Bitcoin got a huge financial and symbolic boost this week with news of the biggest ever investment into a bitcoin business called Coinbase. But for the currency to last, it has to show that it can find a use beyond speculation, and that Bitcoin's guardians can help it become a consumer product.…
Read MoreHow much did Adobe pay for Behance?
Earlier this morning, Adobe Systems, the San Jose-based creative software giant announced that it was buying New York City-based design-oriented community, Behance. Since then, many have been wondering how much did Adobe shell out? Now we have the answer.…
Read MoreIn conversation with Bill Gurley, Benchmark Capital [Video]
In this wide ranging interview, Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital talks about what founders need to know about their investors, what it takes to be a venture capitalist and what are the big opportunities in today's world.…
Read MoreNew York loses tech guru Chris Dixon to Silicon Valley and Andreessen
Chris Dixon, who founded SiteAdvisor and Hunch and invested through Founder Collective, is heading west to join Andreessen Horowitz as its seventh partner. Dixon said he will continue to invest in New York startups and will keep his apartment.…
Read MoreJack Dorsey and Twitter: Can you have a part-time product visionary?
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was brought back into the company last year to be its chief product visionary, but his role appears to have been dramatically reduced. So who is Twitter's product visionary now, and what does that mean for the future of the service?…
Read MoreCreative portfolio showcase Behance gets $6.5M from USV, Jeff Bezos
After bootstrapping itself for more than five years, New York City-based Behance, an online destination for creative galleries and portfolios, has finally turned to outside funding, securing a $6.5 million investment from Union Square Ventures and a host of investors including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.…
Read MoreThe VC industry is broken. So now what?
The investment team at the Kauffman Foundation believes the venture capital industry is broken and they -- or rather investors in VC funds -- are partially to blame. The report condemns venture firms for being to big, not delivering returns and not adjusting to the times.…
Read MoreEBay puts down roots in NYC with data-focused tech center
EBay is putting down roots in New York and has bought up a 35,000 square foot space. The retailer is announcing that it has purchased an entire floor in the Flat Iron district where it will house 200 people in a new technology center of excellence.…
Read MoreIf it looks like a bubble and it feels like a bubble…
With deals like Facebook's $1 billion acquisition of the relatively tiny startup Instagram, some argue we are in another tech-stock bubble. But others in the venture industry say that while there is some froth in parts of the startup ecosystem, there are few signs of 1990s-style mania.…
Read MoreSocial apps & doing the right thing
For the past week or so, the Internet has been abuzz with news of mobile apps uploading iPhone address books without asking us. The controversy highlights the fact that social and web apps need to have the moral imperative to do the right thing.…
Read MoreSarah Lacy’s PandoDaily launches with $2.5 million in funding
Sarah Lacy, a book author and a veteran journalist (and most recently with TechCrunch) is launching PandoDaily, a daily technology news blog focused on startups and the startup ecosystem. The company is being funded by a $2.5 million investment from Silicon Valley elite.…
Read MoreWhy Color Is More Than “Yet Another Photo-Sharing App”
Much of last week’s buzz surrounding the launch of Color was justifiably skeptical about whether the world really needs another mobile photo-sharing app. But two components of Color’s vision – implicit networks and place/time tagging – extend far beyond photo-sharing, and make Color worth watching as a potential indicator of social media and data-mining trends.…
Read MoreHow Online Startups can Build Audiences on the Cheap
Last week, two prominent investors declared in blog posts that key marketing tactics favored by consumer startups were no longer viable. There’s no more free lunch, they said, you can’t build an audience off of search engine optimization or Facebook anymore. The truth is, there never was any free lunch, and no single marketing tactic – by itself – is ever enough.…
Read MoreHunch Co-founder Releases Twitter-YouTube Mashup
This is cool: Forage.com generates YouTube music video playlists based on the people you follow on Twitter. The site is a mashup cooked up by Chris Dixon, the co-founder of Hunch, and it demonstrates how Hunch uses its own data sets to predict new taste preferences.…
Read MoreToday in Social
There’s another debate brewing today, in addition to the one over Facebook Comments and “authenticity” (see curated Link). It’s about the viability…
Read MoreToday in Social
I imagine this thoughtful piece by Hunch founder Chris Dixon is aimed equally at Twitter and Apple. (Although using the words “Apple”…
Read MoreChris Dixon to VCs: Act More Like Startups
Hunch.com co-founder and angel investor Chris Dixon has some advice for big venture capital firms: Try to think more like, and behave more like, the startup companies you invest in. That includes cutting down on excessive management fees and not tweeting about your golf game.…
Read MoreThe New Reality of the Twitter Ecosystem
In the last two months, a controversy has broken out between the startup of the moment, Twitter, and its ecosystem. Some of…
Read MoreVideo: Angel Investor Chris Dixon on Startups & Why the VC Model Is Broken
Chris Dixon is outspoken. He says difficult things. And he pulls no punches in our interview, in which he talks about the rise of super angels and micro VCs, his transition to investor from entrepreneur and how most VCs don’t know what they’re doing.…
Read MoreOpen vs. Closed: What Does Open Really Mean?
The launch of Facebook's open graph protocol is fueling the debate over whether it is better to be open vs. closed. But the ultimate answer may be that it depends. Being open can benefit a company in some ways, while being closed is better in others.…
Read MoreWhy We Need an Open "Like" Standard
Facebook wants to extend its social graph throughout the web, via social plugins and a billion "Like" buttons, but not everyone is convinced that this is a good thing. The "Open Like" project is an attempt at an alternative, with an open standard that deserves support.…
Read MoreDo Location Apps Need to Show Users the Money?
Location-based services such as Foursquare have become so popular that rumors have been swirling the company might be acquired for $100 million. But angel investor and startup advisor Dave McClure says such services will have to show users the money in order to achieve mass appeal.…
Read More