A federal judge released a scathing report on Lehman's collapse that raps executives, auditor Ernst & Young and banks for lapses that sparked bankruptcy.
The White House's yearlong effort to rewrite financial regulations risked running aground after Sen. Dodd broke off bipartisan negotiations and announced plans to push ahead without GOP support.
The union representing British Airways cabin crew announced that strikes will take place later this month after the U.K. airline and union leaders failed to reach a last-minute deal on changes to working practices.
UBS has stepped up its lobbying efforts for a U.S.-Swiss tax deal over confidential bank data, urging parliamentary representatives to vote for the passage of the deal.
Pfizer ended a Phase III trial for its experimental lung-cancer drug and said two studies of its advanced breast-cancer drug failed to meet their primary endpoints.
Roche said its Avastin product didn't live up to expectations in a late-stage prostate cancer study, dealing a blow to the drug's prospects of becoming a universal cancer treatment.
Apart from good karma--especially given the recent tragedies in Haitiand Chile--working for a charity will also offer good career prospects in 2010. According recent findings from Professionals for Nonprofits, most plan to hire new employees this year, and the overwhelming
majority will raise staff salaries (or hold them steady).
Fittingly, fundraisers and financiers are the most in-demand. The data, which came from more than 1,200 organizations in New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., reveals that pay for fundraising jobs rose by 10% last year, while pay for senior-level finance jobs rose 7%. (Both numbers are expected to increase.) At charities with more than $50 million in yearly donations, the latter positions pay anywhere from $160,000to $200,000.
So, where should you apply? Safe bets include educational groups, hospitals, and
charities that work with homeless people or AIDS patients--program areas that received increased government funding. However, it'd be best to avoid small social-services or arts groups, both of which "seem to have the toughest time," says Gayle Brandel, president of Professional for Nonprofits.
Below, some location-specific data (takeaway: move to D.C.):
In New York, 37% of organizations expect their staff salaries to remain the same in 2010, while 55% expect to raise workers' pay. Only 5% expect to cut salaries. In Washington, 27% of groups expect salaries to stay
steady, while 65% expect to offer raises. Only 2% expect
to make pay cuts. Among the New Jersey groups, 36% expect to hold the line on
salaries this year, while 54% expect to give raises. Only 3% are forecasting salary cuts.
If you think that Doritos has gone down the same road that Cheetos did, with its supersized snack--the kind of thing you'd need to buy an extra seat for should you be popping one of these on a flight--you're wrong. They've just come up with a nifty little viral video that compares their triangular chips to an iPad, and the video includes a whole bunch of wide-eyed, evangelical Apple employee-alikes--particularly fetching is the faux-Limey Jon Ive lookalike in tight black T-shirt.
[youtube AgqnOqfehJE]
"The old-flavor model is obsolete, welcome to Spice 2.0," drones the Senior VP for Doritos Worldwide Marketing. Best bit, however, is the kicker at the end. A Doritos Genius, who's a dead ringer for Donnie Wahlberg, tells us we can make an appointment online to talk about the Doritos Tablet. "It'll be a couple of weeks from now, but it's still an appointment."
Converse are the lo-fi sneakers that everyone loves--precisely because of their can't change, won't change-ness. And now, with a little help from Takahiro Miyashita, designer of now-extant, but-still-cult Japanese label Number (N)ine, they've gone through a serious jhuzz-up. The laces are off-center, there's some crazy lace/felt upper stuff going on--actually super-shaggy suede--and there's a rather twinkly little gold star on the back end.
In fact, just about the only thing that hasn't changed is the All-Star signage on the back, and the plimsoll-line stripe running round the bottom. They're available from tomorrow at some seriously high-end stores--10 Corso Como, Colette, Dover St Market, Wood Wood and Aloha Rag, for starters--and will cost $140 per pair.
One has to admit, however, that side-lacing shoes don't always work. Above left, see the Piltdown Man version, from Top Man, and Above right, the 101-Uses-For-A-Dead-Slanket, available in Target stores right now.
The spat between Google and the Chinese government has been rumbling along for weeks, but just now it's been elevated to "fist fight" status: The inevitable strongly-worded Chinese warning about "consequences" has arrived.
The warning came today from the Minister of Industry and IT, Li Yizhong, who was speaking to reporters at the annual National People's Congress meeting. Li was, of course, diplomatic about the matter and noted that the government does actually support Google in its efforts to "expand is business and market share in China."
But then the gloves came off: "If [Google] violates Chinese laws it would be unfriendly and irresponsible and [it] will definitely be responsible for the consequences." This is the most direct threat yet toward the global search engine giant, and highlights that the Chinese government is not going to budge one millimeter from its official legal position. If Google, for whatever reason, decides to stop censoring its search results which it currently does to comply with the strict Dark Ages-style active censorship laws the Chinese demand, then China will simply snip off access to Google, and really won't care about the matter.
Basically, this seems to be the start of the Chinese lock-down. It comes after months of posturing which started with Google's (and others) accusations of serious hacking attempts from China, possibly with state complicity, and which has recently got confusing over whether or not Google and China are in direct dialog. Google may well have threatened to withdraw from China, after first uncensoring its search engine...but as of yet it appears to have made no active moves to enact the threats. And maybe that's the point--it's been being inscrutable, and waiting for exactly this new Chinese posturing.
And this almost makes it seem like Google's behaving with the same diplomatic grace and guile of a real nation. Which is amusing, given the slightly fudged and hands-off handling the actual U.S. government is exhibiting in its dealings with this case--demonstrated neatly by a new official State Department report that condemns China's "numerous and serious" rights abuses, but which is merely a paper threat. Does Google have more direct impact on human rights and freedoms in China than the Obama Administration? That's a scary thought. We'll all have to see what the next plays are in the Google-China battle to find out.
Apple's history of eliminating apps that compete with its own is as old as the App Store itself. So why, exactly, does Barnes & Noble think they can get away with submitting its eReader app for the iPad?
From browsers to music players to email, Apple firmly removes any app that could conceivably compete with its own first-party apps. And with the iPad staking its claim as the ebook reader to beat, Apple is opening up its own iBooks bookstore. Yet Barnes & Noble, makers of the competing Nook and its similarly competing B&N eReader store, announced that they'll be bringing a custom version of the store to the iPad at launch. What?
The B&N eReader app is already available in the App Store for iPhone and iPod Touch, complete with its own micropayment system for buying books, but then, Apple doesn't have its own bookstore for that platform. Why would Barnes & Noble make this announcement, knowing full well that traditional Apple would smack it down immediately in the approval process?
Because Apple might just let it go. The result of Barnes & Noble's app (and Amazon's, for that matter) appearing in the app store would just further serve to place the iPad head and shoulders above the Nook and Kindle in capability. Both B&N and Amazon have huge, rich ebook stores--likely bigger than iBooks will be at launch--and if the iPad has access to them, it takes away one more reason to go with a competitor. It's not the only reason; the Nook's and Kindle's e-ink screen is still easier on the eyes than the iPad's LCD, but it's still one step toward making other ebook readers obsolete. Either way, Apple wins.
Microsoft, which is invested in the Smart Grid with its own Microsoft Hohm energy monitoring app, recently surveyed about 200 utilities to get some insight on how fast smart meters and other Smart Grid developments are being rolled out. The answer? Not even close to as fast as you think or hope.
The survey found that only 8% of the utilities are actively using Smart Grid tech and equipment, only 37% are even working on related projects, and more than half have done exactly nothing. The reasons are actually incredibly complicated, as you might expect from a shakeup of this size in an industry as massive as the energy industry.
The standard explanation from those not affiliated with the utilities is that the change is difficult, expensive, and would result in smarter energy consumers--and thus less revenue from thoughtless energy use for the utilities. So why would the utilities even bother? But utilities see it differently, blaming onerous government regulation and the high level of difficulty involved in adopting the new system. Besides, the utilities claim, they do want to encourage smart meters: they'd eliminate the cost of meter readers and data gathered would better equip the utilities to avoid costly blackouts.
The situation gets even more complicated when you try to examine further, as this New York Times article does with a specific area (New York City), company (Con Ed), and program (an hourly pricing plan in certain large buildings). There, you can see that the problems are widespread, with problems from consumers, utilities, and government. The story involves third party energy services companies (ESCOs) that essentially read the meters and predict prices for landlords, state tax advantages for ESCO contracts, a utility lukewarm on the whole idea in the first place, arcane and possibly corrupt meetings to set energy prices, and sheer laziness on the part of landlords to bother studying an hourly system and adjusting energy use appropriately.
It is, in short, a complete mess. And while there's been much discussion of adopting a smart grid, the survey and the Times article show the truth: it's not happening as fast as we think, and it's going to be a rat's nest to sort out.
Okay, Apple fanatics, publishing hopefuls, and reckless early adopters: tomorrow is your day. Start warming up your refresh finger (mine's the right middle finger--it's like I'm saying "screw you! Work this time!" with every furious refresh), because Apple's iPad, in both Wi-Fi and 3G configurations, is allowing pre-orders starting tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. EST (5:30 a.m. PST). You can pre-order either online at Apple's site or through any of their individual stores over the phone--if you're seriously pre-ordering this thing, the latter option is probably your best bet to get your new iPhone XXL into your greasy hands as soon as possible. The Wi-Fi version will ship (or be available for pickup) on launch day, April 3rd, while the 3G version won't launch until an undetermined day in "late April." Best of luck to all you crazies!
Daily news of note from our most Innovative Companies, including HP, Microsoft, Spotify, and Intel.
HP: The Palo Alto-based computer giant has launched its first corporate advertising campaign in a half-decade, and they've pulled in favors, from Dr. Dre to Annie Leibovitz. The $40 million Let's Do Amazing ad-campaign is aimed at expanding the scope of HP's brand, which is normally associated with printer technology. We recommend the Dre clip, which shows the megastar producer pumping out beats with Rhys Darby, the manager from New Zealand's fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo
acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo, Flight of the Conchords. Still, Darby and Dre are no match for Jay-Z, who starred in an HP ad four years ago.
[youtube fsE0g-8CDQo]
Microsoft: Speaking of marketing campaigns, Microsoft has started a contest to find the best viral video for its Office 2010 release. To get a shot at the $10,000 prize, all you have to do submit a short video that creatively shows how Office products have helped your business. Rumor has it that OK Go, fresh from ditching EMI, is working on another rendition of "This Too Shall Pass," this time with ex-Microsoft employee, Clippy.
Spotify: The popular cloud-based music service just updated their catalogue, adding about 300,000 new tracks ready for listening. When is Spotify coming to the U.S. again?
Intel: It's always good for businesses to know their customers, but Intel's latest viral marketing campaign is targeting quite the unexpected demographic: the slovenly and unemployed. In promoting their 2010 Core processor series, Intel is going after "man-taskers," male users that multi-task to the extreme, alt-tabbing between basketball games, more basketball games, and nacho dip, all while their girlfriends presumably are at work. Check out the man-tasker rap below to see what I'm talking about, and head here for Intel's quiz to find out if you have what it takes to be an alpha-male user--the questions have a promising start ("Have you ever put the remote control in the freezer while cooking dinner because you are not able to multi-task?") but then degrade into generic questions ("Do you multi-task?"), which a man-tasker like myself has no time for. So how about it Fast Company readers? Are you man-taskers?
This month, Western-meets-Samurai Anime game Red Steel 2 takes a giant leap forward in translating players' movements into epic on-screen swordfights. Creative director Jason Vandenberghe gives us an inside look at the making of an action game with detailed motion controls and shares his enthusiasm for PlayStation Move and Microsoft's Project Natal.
Kevin Ohannessian: Tell me about Red Steel 2.
Jason Vandenberghe: Red Steel 2 is a first-person sword and gun-slinging action game, with the Wii Motion Plus required. We have broken through the first-person swordfighting barrier and have created what I affectionately call a first-person brawler. The game is played fast and furious at a close range. We started over with the franchise, the setting and the world; a new hero, a new look, a new style. It has more of a graphic novel look this time, in a world more fitting for swordfighting gameplay.
How is making a game with such detailed motion control different than a typical game?
It's revolutionary. We are one of a small group that can say that. Are you familiar with the "Wii Waggle"? The style of gameplay that's become common in many of the games--you can't play Red Steel that way. You have to treat the Wiimote like a sword, like you are holding a katana. The goal we had was to give you the sensation that the Wiimote you are swinging is a blade and when you make contact with your enemies you're really cleaving them. With the Wii Motion Plus, we can do it. It lets us take a first-person shooter, Red Steel, and turn it into a first-person fighter, Red Steel 2. We have been able to finally satisfy the promise of swordfighting on the Wii.
Wii Motion Plus at its core is a gyroscope. It tells us at all times what position the Wiimote is in, what angle is space the Wiimote is pointing. This turns out to be very useful for a few key things. Imagine your Wiimote is a sword and you are going to whack some dude with it. What's the first thing you do? Generally the first thing you do is pull back for the swing, you ready the swing. Well, if you holding the Wiimote like a sword that means the Wiimote isn't pointing at the sensor bar. Without the Motion Plus, the Wii has no idea where it is. With the Wii Motion Plus we know all throughout: drawing back for the swing, the moment you begin to accelerate, and we know that you're doing that and we know what direction you're moving; we can calculate the arc of your swing.
Without the Wii Motion Plus you swing the Wiimote and a half-second later it goes "Boom" on screen. With the Wii Motion Plus it's simultaneous; there's no lag. The difference between that half-second of lag is the difference between frustration and immersion. It's the key difference. And that why you haven't seen this kind of gameplay prior to the existence of the Wii Motion Plus, because it is not satisfying without it.
When making action-based motion control games, players' actual physical capabilities become more of an issue.
This is the core issue with human interface. We solved it in a whole bunch of ways, through experimentation and play testing. We looked for as many problems as we can find and looked for clever solutions to them. In Red Steel we have different difficulty modes. What we demand of the player, in terms of challenge and thinking, shifts. We found that humans are not as equally accurate with the blade. Almost everyone can be fast, which I was surprised by. You can ask people to swing that thing pretty quickly and they will go ahead and do it. It's the accuracy that's the issue. The thing that is really hard for people is understanding that there is someone next to them, knowing how to block and parry, how to respond to someone that is attacking them--these are the things we found that are really challenging to be in an action-style of play.
We found that really clear tutorials, we have these lessons in the game when you learn to do the actual motions, everyone seems to get that. If you are an Easy-level player, you are going to have to think about only one enemy at a time, even if you are surrounded. And the number of times you have to parry or block accurately is less. We scale down the type of skills we ask the player to do and let them focus on Conan-ing their way through the game. Everyone can do that; that's a human ability, to run in and start swinging. It's doing it with accuracy and grace that is the hard part.
When you are playing on a higher difficulty, you really have to focus on the motion, and you got to be moving--being surrounded is really dangerous. Combat in the real world--this is what we are discovering--if you get surrounded, you are screwed; it doesn't matter how skilled you are. In our game you really need to think about that: thinking about isolating your foe, diving in and then stunning them so they can't attack, taking advantage of that opening, and then getting the hell out of there. The game on Ninja difficulty is pretty challenging. But you know what? Our game is kind of like Guitar Hero, in that by the time you get down with Normal, you are ready for Ninja. It's a learnable skill; it's been a really fascinating study for us.
It's thrilling; I'm very, very excited. I've been wanting to make a swordfighting game my entire career; I've pitched a swordfighting game at every studio I've worked at. And now that I've made one, my primary ambition in life is to make another one. I really want to keeping doing it--the technology is just going to keep getting better and better. I learned a huge amount about what it takes to do this--the human interface part is the hard part. We overcame a lot of those challenges with Red Steel 2. I want to keep going.
As far as what's going to happen with Red Steel, Red Steel 2 is Wii exclusive and always will be. As for the future, we are all waiting to see what happens when the game comes out: is it well received, did we do our job, is it a good thing, is there a demand--do people want to play this way? I want to play this way--but I need facts and statistics to back me up. Do me a favor and buy a million and a half copies. And tell your friends to buy a million and a half copies. And their friends too.
If you have been carrying around a swordfighting fantasy, if you were a kid that wished they were a samurai or a pirate and swinging a stick around in the backyard, you have to try this game. Pick it up and give it a chance; it's a lot of fun. It's something that the industry has been missing.
Ubisoft's Red Steel 2 for the Wii will be released March 23.
Have you seen Logorama, the movie comprised entirely of animated logos, that just won the Oscar for best animated short film? It's an excellent representation of the technicolor tapestry of branding that our world has become. Whether that's a good or bad thing depends on your point of view.
[youtube p10UE3O8s24]
But what would the world be like if there were no more brands to
differentiate products, inspire us, or give us a good feeling about a
company or product we've never tried before? I'm one who thinks it would be bad for brands to meld together into a homogenized mess, and I see that starting to happen in places. At the rate things are going, someday soon all brands will look like Walmart 's Great Value label.
Why is this happening? It's partly because value is in great demand now, with unemployment still in double digits throughout parts of the country. It's also because retailers are putting pressure on manufacturers to differentiate their brands inside their stores, so that a brand doesn't look and act the same in one store chain as it does in another. If brands fold to this pressure, they become diluted and change what they really stand for. This erodes brand equity with consumers and eventually, retailers decide they don't need certain brands anymore and can easily outsource the product cheaper themselves to increase their margins. So now those manufacturers are out, and jobs are lost. And so is the brand.
Walmart 's newly-redesigned Great Value products
Private label brands grew at twice the rate of national brands over the last decade, according to a Saatchi & Saatchi X and POPAI study. Retailers like Walmart, Target and Costco are narrowing consumer selections everyday. Walmart recently took out Glad and Hefty storage bags to give more space to their Great Value brand. They then brought Hefty back, once the company agreed to manufacture Great Value bags for Walmart.
That sort of manipulation will continue to happen unless brand managers, strategists, designers and manufacturers stand up to big-box retailers and reinforce the naturally differentiating attributes of their brands. They must build their brands so the retailer depends on them and the manufacturer, like the good old days.
Private label cereal at Publix, in-house branding that's won design awards
Over the last 100 years, brands have played an important role in our society. The danger of private labels taking over the national branding landscape is the loss of meaning and value in the brands we love, prefer and recognize. Not only do our favorite brands help us distinguish product attributes, they inspire and motivate us, and give us a sense of individualism and choice. People who buy computers and products from Apple, for instance, usually believe earnestly in the company's position of thinking and being different.
If price is the only thing we as consumers are driven by, then sure, just make all the brands the same, Big Brother. But understand that what starts at retail can mushroom to other industries. Soon, we could all end up buying gas from one brand of gas station. Bank at one brand of bank. Wear clothes from one clothing company because they're all alike anyway. Reminds me of old photos I've seen. Doesn't it, comrade?
Jamey Boiter is a nationally
recognized brand strategist and practitioner. As BOLTgroup's brand
principal, he oversees all brand innovation and graphic design teams.
He has received numerous awards, ADDYs, and citations for his work in
brand development, packaging, and corporate identity, including
award-winning projects for AirDye, Lowe's, IZOD, Nat Nast, G.H. Bass,
Marc Ecko, and Forté Cashmere. Jamey has been involved in strategic
brand development and design management programs with world-class
brands such as Kobalt Tools, Ryobi, Coca-Cola, Kraft, IZOD, and
Phillips-Van Heusen, and has been a featured speaker at national
conferences and college campuses on the subject of brand strategy,
innovation and development.
Editor's Note: This guest post was written and reported by Steven Rosenbaum, the CEO of Magnify.net.
Today, the world of music, film, and the internet converges on Austin, Texas for what is fast becoming one of the key the places to launch new software products. For the folks at AOL, South By Southwest?know also as SXSW?will be a debutant party for AOL?s new Seed form of journalism..
AOL has it's hopes pinned on that fact that SXSW will be the perfect place to both introduce the new Seed content machine to a large audience and test the concept of mixing freelance and pro-journalists to create a huge amount of original content. Seed has been operational for a few months now, but SXSW will be it coming out party, according to former New York Times writer Saul Hansell who is now the Program Director of Seed.More
Wait! Stop. Before you hand over Apple your credit card and pre-order the iPad, you may want to check out the other touchscreen options available now and in the near future. The iPad isn't the only game in town. Sure, it might have a fancy-pants interface, but each of the follow seven tablets win the hardware fight, which is just as important to a lot of consumers.
Of course the hardware only tells part of the story. The iPad has a leg up on all of these options because of the user-friendly iPhone interface, but it's not like you're dropping $600+ on a tablet for your parents, right?More
I'm a sucker. It's true. As much you guys think we rail against Apple, we're like abused puppies, slinking back to our master's hard ankles, shivering and awaiting praise. Why did I pre-order the iPad? Well, first I'm a gadget blogger. Second there is no certainty that mother Apple will grace us with an early review unit so I want to hedge our bets. Third? I want to see where computing is headed.
Bear with me here. Apple is not the bringer of fire to a benighted world. Far from it. In my recent writing I've been struck by a few parallels with Steve Jobs to Abraham Louis Breguet, a French watchmaker who lived in the 18th century. He was a mechanical genius, to be sure, but he was also a salesman. While the rest of the benighted world was sloshing around in an admixture of feces and mud in the streets of Paris and telling the time by whether the pikemen were stabbing them for being out after curfew, Breguet was selling watches that would not be out of place on the wrist (had they had straps) of a whale in Las Vegas. He invented secret anti-counterfeiting measures but made them part of the allure and not part of a DRM scheme. He designed elegant and beautiful watches in an age of rococo designs but wasn't above creating a "subscription" watch for the masses who wanted to own a piece of the good life without paying an exorbitant sum of money. Other watchmakers were making commodities and following Breguet's lead. That's what's happening here.More
Recently, startup Cc: Betty, a nifty service that organized and managed group email threads, decided to rebrand and relaunch its service. The new product, Threadbox, was going to be streamlined and tweaked to appeal to workspace users.
Today, Threadbox is officially launching in private beta, as a more collaborative and user-friendly service. Essentially, the site aims to combine email, IM, and collaboration tools into one platform. Instead of focusing on email like Cc:Betty, Threadbox centers around collaboration in the workplace. The service organizes and logs every type of communications with clients, allows users to share documents and images, and record decisions and feedback. The new service also has the ability to serve as a project management tool, allowing users to share and track requirements and specs, then track and follow team members from start to finish.
More
Kwedit, the innovative and suddenly controversial payments platform for virtual goods, is releasing some early data.
The service lets users promise to pay later in lieu of a direct credit card payment when they want virtual currency for social games like Farmville. It's not a legally binding promise, but users have an incentive to pay amounts owed because that allows them to get more virtual currency through the service. Users can pay by, among other methods, mailing in cash or paying at a 7-11.
When the product first launched they had no idea what percentage of promises would be repaid. Anything at all is incremental revenue to game publishers, and since the stuff they're selling has no marginal cost (virtual currency), it's all upside. But after nearly two months of being live, they say the repayment rate is 25.9% If you're a credit company that would put you out of business. More
We've talked a lot this week about the so-called "Location War" brewing at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas starting tomorrow. That war will happen, but actually, there are likely to be a lot of winners because a few of the location-based services should be able to leverage the exposure to gain usage after the conference. Those with real bloodlust should probably be watching another war: AT&T versus everyone in Austin on their network.
AT&T's struggles to stay up last year are well-documented. CNN recently ran a piece about how AT&T hopes to avoid a similar fate this year. But actually, "struggles" is way too kind of a word. If you were at SXSW last year and happened to be on AT&T's network ? like, say, if you had an iPhone, like many festival-goers did ? it was an absolute nightmare. You couldn't make a call. You couldn't send a text. Data? Ha. At a few points early on I seriously wondered if I had forgotten to pay my bill and AT&T had simply shut my phone off ? except that it was happening to everyone.
AT&T has a funny word for the failure, they like to say it is "unprecedented." As in, the usage of its network was at levels previously unseen, as a strong percentage of the over 10,000 festival goers (just the interactive part) were using iPhones. Well guess what? Word is that is year, there will be some 15,000 people there for the interactive part. As Samual L. Jackson's character, Mr. Arnold, says in Jurassic Park, "Hold on to your butts."More
Zimbalam, the digital music distributor from Believe Digital, launches in the US today.
The service lets artists submit and distribute their music through 25 of the most popular music platforms, including Apple's iTunes and Spotify, in addition to "several hundred additional stores worldwide". This makes Zimbalam the largest music distribution network as measured by number of stores and geographic reach, says the Paris-based company.
To distribute their music via Zimbalam's network, artists are charged a simple annual fee ($29.99 in year one then $19.98 per year after for an EP or album) and then once the fee is recouped, get to keep 100% of royalties - after, of course, whatever commission is taken by each store. Additionally, following year one, artists won't be charged by Zimbalam if they don't make enough sales to cover the annual fee.More
The official Foursquare account just sent out a tweet letting everyone know that today is already the service's biggest day ever. This is interesting since it's actually the day before the SXSW conference kicks off in Austin, Texas.
According to the tweet, Foursquare broke 275,000 check-ins (the previous record, set last Friday) for the day "hours ago." This means they're very likely well past 300,000 now and perhaps even higher. To put that in some perspective, just a month ago, Foursquare set a record with 1.2 million check-ins for the entire week. And that was double was it was the month prior. At today's rate, Foursquare would be doing well over 2 million check-ins a week.More
There are no shortage of location-based services launching this week at SXSW in Austin, Texas. Many of them allow you to "check-in" places to let others know you are there. So how do you differentiate between then and decide which to use? Well, here's one good way.
CauseWorld, is a free iPhone and Android app that lets you check-in places, but it has an added real-world bonus: big brands give money to charity when you do so. And this week at SXSW, CauseWorld is teaming up with TechCrunch to offer double point (which they aptly call "karma") when you check in to one of over 50 venues around Austin (I'll paste the full list at the bottom of the post), including the Austin Convention Center (where SXSW is held).More
Back in November of last year, the location-based social event service Hot Potato launched at our Realtime CrunchUp. Today, they've taken what was a solid service, and made it a lot better with a number of upgrades.
First and foremost, there is a new iPhone application that just went live in the App Store. With a completely revamped user interface, the app makes it easier than ever to find and participate in events. Perhaps more importantly, it makes it really easy to create new events ? and notably, the service has the nicest third-party Foursquare integration I've ever seen. When you click on the button to create an event, you can still manually enter a location, but if you happen to be around the venue, you can simply pick it from Foursquare's list of venues with the click of a button. This drastically simplifies the event creation process since the venue metadata is already there.More
Having been to Paris, I can tell you that it’s a city you won’t be able to fully fathom in a week or a month — it takes a lifetime to see all the city has to offer. This was before, of course, this amazing 26-gigapixel panorama of Paris was created; it won’t replace actually visiting Paris, but with all of its amazing details, it gets pretty darn close.
Paris 26 Gigapixels is a stitching of 2,346 photos, which add up to a high-resolution panoramic view of Paris. When we say high-resolution, we mean it; the end result is a 26-gigapixel (354,159×75,570 px) interactive photo. You can move around by clicking anywhere on the image and moving your mouse, and you can zoom with your mouse wheel (alternatively, you can use the arrows and +/- keys on the keyboard).
It’s easy to get lost in this huge panorama, so Paris 26 Gigapixels features quick tours of 20 of Paris’ most impressive monuments, together with some textual information about them.
The entire project, created by Martin Loyer, Arnaud Frich and Kolor, is available in English and French; there’s also a special HD view (highly recommended), activated via an icon in the upper right portion of the page, which requires installation of an additional plugin.
Oh, and one more thing; this is one of those times when you’d want to switch to full-screen browser mode.
Update: The Apple Store is back up, and yes, you can now pre-order the iPad. We haven’t seen any other significant changes in the Store.
It’s finally here; the moment where the iPad actually comes into some sort of contact with the market. As we announced before, iPad pre-orders begin at 5:30 a.m. PT (in about 1:30 hours), and the Apple Store is currently down, indicating that pre-order forms will be available when it comes back up (and possibly something more — you never know.)
Of course, users won’t actually be able to fondle the device until April 3, but (besides giving fans and enthusiasts a chance to be one of the first people to own an iPad), this moment is exciting because from now on, Apple (and, hopefully, the media) will have some idea how well this thing actually sells.
Although the iPad has created an enormous hype, one mustn’t forget that the jury is still out on whether it’ll be a huge success or a complete flop. It’s not only a new device, it’s a new type of device, and we’re eager to see what kind of ripples it’ll do to the IT market.
What do you do when you first fire up your browser? Most likely, you log into various sites that require a username and password: Facebook, Gmail, Twitter and the like. For me, personally, it’s quite a chore, as I need to log into more than 10 different services before I start doing anything.
Now, Mozilla sets out to alleviate this issue with a new Firefox plugin called Account Manager. It currently doesn’t do much; it recognizes that you’ve signed into a website and displays an icon that says that yes, you’re indeed signed up under that username. However, Mozilla has ambitious plans for online identity management from within a browser. From its blog post:
“Your Web browser, as your most trusted relationship in your life online, has nearly perfect knowledge of everything you do on the Web. We envision a world where your browser will play an even more active and critical role in helping you control and shape your online experience. To realize this vision, we need to increase the browser?s understanding of your online identity and provide a platform for building new capabilities that securely take advantage of this rich, dynamic set of data that represents the digital ‘you.’”
The account manager is available as an early, experimental alpha version, and it works only with Yahoo, Facebook and Google, as well as some of Mozilla’s sites that require login, such as Bugzilla. Hopefully, in the future we’ll see features that really make switching between different user accounts and sharing content on various social networks easier and more streamlined.
On November 19, 2006, Nintendo launched its fifth home console to the world. The Nintendo Wii was both ridiculed and praised for its unique controller system — the Wiimote — which detects movements in three dimensions.
Three and a half years later, the Wii has dominated the market, shattered sales records, and put its two main rivals, Microsoft and Sony, on the defensive. Both companies are responding with motion-based controllers of their own, though.
Microsoft has generated some big buzz with the revelation of Project Natal, a new camera-based system that requires no controller, just the movement of your body to function. And yesterday, Sony officially announced PlayStation Move, a controller setup that utilizes a camera and a remote-like controller to interact with the screen.
Here’s the question we have for all of you gamers. Which next-generation controller system excites you more: Microsoft’s Natal or Sony’s Move?
Our poll for this week’s Web Faceoff ends on Sunday, March 14, at 12:00 p.m. PT. Let us know your choice, and don’t forget to leave your opinion in the comments!
Fresh off having the most popular music video in YouTube/Vevo?s history (?Bad Romance? with 140 million views and counting), Lady Gaga?s latest ? ?Telephone? ? featuring Beyonce, has made its debut on the Web.
The video is choc-full-o Lady Gaga shock value, and at more than nine minutes in length, could probably classify as a short film. Dating site PlentyOfFish somehow managed to get prominent placement (fast forward to 4:27 if you’d rather skip the rest of it).
Early indications are that ?Telephone? will be every bit as popular as recent Gaga hits, with the song, its participants, and even a string from its URL already dominating trending topics on Twitter ahead of its official premiere on E! later this evening. It also briefly took Vevo — YouTube and the record labels new music video website — offline.
Here’s the embed for what could be the latest member of the 100 million view club (“Just Dance” also recently broke the milestone):
Update: It looks like someone might have jumped the gun at YouTube/Vevo, as the video seems to be going back and forth between private and public. Here’s a few images we were able to grab while we had it open:
Update #2: Vevo now tells us the video will be back at midnight ET.
Apple fanatics will be able to place their iPad orders at 5:30 AM Pacific time (8:30 Eastern) tomorrow, Friday, March 12th. The pre-orders will be available through Apple.com, and are expected to ship in the United States next month ? April 3rd to be precise.
Let’s assume you’re the sort of person who wants an iPad; if so, you can still wait for the launch date and pick up an iPad at your local Apple store (or at Best Buy a little bit after launch). However, there’s a possibility that it will sell out and you’ll be left hanging. If this scenario worries you, you’ll want to place your order online to be sure you get one before your friends and colleagues. You know, if you’re into that kind of one-upmanship.
But if you’re the sort of person who thinks the device is more hype than substance, you can go ahead and sleep in tomorrow.
Are you going to be up bright and early for the iPad pre-order? Let us know in the comments.
If you’re a gamer, you might have heard about yesterday’s news about the PlayStation Move, Sony’s answer to the Wii Remote and Microsoft’s upcoming Project Natal motion controller. In a demonstration yesterday, the company showed off the device, which utilizes remote-like controllers and the PlayStation Eye camera to capture your movements and turn them into actions on the screen.
We’ve seen plenty of screenshots and heard a lot about the controller’s capabilities, but we wanted to find out for ourselves whether it really could make the PlayStation more competitive with its counterparts. That’s why I decided to take the system for a test drive here at the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, California.
Did it live up to expectations? Could it challenge Nintendo and Microsoft in gaming? I’ve got some thoughts on the matter:
PlayStation Move: Sony Played It Safe
First, a little bit about the PlayStation Move: it is a two-part control system. First are the handheld controllers, which act essentially as Wiimotes. The main controller comes with a lighted color ball on the top though — this is an essential component for the second part of the Move: the PlayStation Eye camera, which tracks your movements on screen. Combined, you get a controller system.
When I held the remote-like device in my hands and actually got to play with it, I immediately became aware of two things: its accuracy and its augmented reality features. It feels just a little more precise than a Wiimote with the MotionPlus controller. Because it uses the camera rather than the senor bar that the Wii utilizes, it can more accurately catch your motions. It also translates them onto the screen with your face on the TV.
I was impressed with the augmented reality aspect of the PlayStation Move more, though. The lighted ball on my controller turned first into a paintbrush, and then a fly swatter. It didn’t have the lag that a lot of other systems deal with, which made the experience enjoyable.
Is it that much better than the Wii, though? To be honest, I think the answer to that question depends on how developers use the PlayStation Eye camera to enhance their games. If they focus on the controllers, then it’s just a fancy Wiimote. If it focuses on bringing you into the game via the camera, then there are some real possibilities.
In the end though, Microsoft’s Project Natal is still going to garner the attention and the hype, as it is a bolder step into motion control. Sony essentially played it safe with the Move, while Microsoft’s implementing an all-or-nothing strategy with Natal.
If you’re one of those folks who responded to news of the Eclipse trailer today with a disgusted, “No thanks,” you really won’t want to watch this.
Super Twilight fan and YouTube star NuttyMadam3575 recorded her reaction to the Eclipse trailer, unloading it to the Internet to the joy of many a video site. She did the same thing with the New Moon trailer, apparently, and garnered half a million hits.
If you have an extra six minutes or so (and some high-quality ear plugs), you could take a peek at her new video… or not. But now you totally are, because I told you not to. #reversepsychology
Amybeth Hale is a Talent Attraction Manager with AT&T?s Interactive Staffing team. She uses social technology to help drive awareness of job opportunities as well as interact with candidates. Connect with her on Twitter at @researchgoddess.
As conference season is upon us (including SXSW, of course), I began thinking about all the things one might need to survive and stay connected with a busy schedule of travel and networking. Personally, I’m headed to San Diego to attend both SourceCon and the ERE Spring Expo.
Then I remembered that I’m the proud owner of an iPhone, and that almost everything I’ll need to make it through is easily accessible and at the tip of my fingers. Here are some of the apps which I believe will help you navigate, stay connected, and meet new friends when you attend a conference.
If you’re the ultimate procrastinator and you haven’t yet booked a hotel, even on arrival at the conference, the Priceline Hotel Negotiator app is for you. It pairs a great deal-finder with some comic relief in the form of William Shatner, the Priceline Negotiator. Just load up this app and shake — you’ll get a chuckle and some sweet hotel deals within a radius of your current location.
So you’ve booked a hotel, but the room doesn’t offer complimentary WiFi (grr!). This app will use your location to find some local spots that offer free WiFi access. You can tailor your results from as near as 0.1 mile away, to as far as 40 miles. You can also filter results by categories such as libraries, cafes, airports, and hotels. You could probably couple this app with the Priceline app to make sure you don’t book a hotel room without WiFi in the first place.
Let’s say you’re in a city you’ve never visited before, and you want to find some cool stuff to check out. Sure, you could use Yelp, but where’s the augmented reality fun in that? My former co-worker Tim Sears created this app, and it’s a neat way to find anything from ATMs, to gas stations, to hospitals, to movie theaters. Better yet, you can also check out who else is tweeting around you locally, who is sharing Flickr images, and learn about local attractions via Wikipedia and Bing search functionality. Note, this app works best with the iPhone 3GS.
Foursquare is a great way to see who else is hanging out at the same locations as you, and the gaming element of earning badges for check-ins is just plain fun. You earn points for checking in to multiple places in one day and for being adventurous and going to new places. You can see what your friends have been up to, leave tips and to-do items for other travelers, and tweet out your locations so that others know what’s going on. At any social media-minded conference, there’s sure to be a lot of location-based networking to be done through Foursquare.
Gowalla is very similar to Foursquare in terms of location-based social networking, though I personally like Gowalla’s graphic layout better. Gowalla also allows the creation of user-generated “trips” that you can take, like the SEC Football Stadium Trip, or the Austin BBQ Bonanza (for those headed to SXSW). Again, you can see where your friends have been and also see who else is hanging out at your current check-in location. It’s a great way to meet and make new friends at a conference.
I fully intend to take a ton of pictures at both conferences I’m attending. Though I do intend to bring a fairly nice (and very large) digital camera, there’s no greater instant gratification than snapping a photo on your iPhone and sharing it with the world. The TwitPic app lets you do this in four simple steps: Choose a picture from either your camera or a photo album; Write a comment; Log into your Twitter account, and; Send away!
You want to share a really fun moment from the conference, but a still photo simply won’t do it justice. Or perhaps you want to share a little taste of a presentation, or do a live interview with another attendee. This app lets you stream live video from your iPhone directly through your Ustream channel. You can set it up to automatically tweet when you are live, as well as take instant polls from viewers. It’s an easy way to share some live moments with those who could not be there.
This one’s a no-brainer. Who doesn’t have the Facebook app on their iPhone? Use it to keep up with your friends back home and share updates about your trip. Made a new contact at the conference? Just search for them in the app and add them as a Facebook friend.
I’ve only recently been introduced to Brizzly, but I really love it. For those of us who manage multiple Twitter accounts, this is a great alternative to trying to navigate the mobile version of CoTweet (which currently does not have an iPhone app). With Brizzly, you can connect to up to five Twitter accounts, as well as Facebook, and keep on top of everything. You can also save searches and upload photos. The only functionality I miss is the column layout from TweetDeck, but Brizzly certainly gets the job done.
Tip: Create your Brizzly account on a computer before you download the app, as it makes for quicker set-up on the iPhone.
Glympse is a really cool app that lets you share your location with others. But it’s more than just a geo-tagger — it shares your ongoing location. Basically, you can create and share your own “breadcrumb trail.” You can set it so that people will be able to access your location and follow your movements from within five minutes, and up to four hours. This is a great way to share which sessions you’re in with fellow conference-goers so they can easily find you.
Like a good blogger, I plan to push some content to my readers while I’m at the conferences. Now I can do that right on my iPhone. This app works with both .com and self-hosted WordPress blogs. You can moderate comments as well as add and edit your posts from this app. It’s a nice little travel tool for bloggers who may not always have access to laptops or WiFi.
You want to stay connected with your fellow conference-goers, but you a) Forgot to bring enough business cards, or b) Decided to “go green” and skip the paper cards all together. BeamME lets you e-mail, text, or tweet all of your contact information to someone instantly. BeamME users can easily reciprocate and shoot their information right back. Plus, your contact info arrives in a manner which can be downloaded in a nice, tidy vCard format.
Cost: Free
Do you have any other favorite apps that would be great for conferences? Add them in the comments below!
LivingSocial, once one of the top Facebook app developers but is now focused on online daily deals, has raised a warchest of $25 million from investors in a Series B funding round.
LivingSocial, based out of Washington, D.C., is the creator of the Visual Bookshelf, Pick Your 5, and Polls Facebook applications, all of which were popular during the Facebook app development gold rush that occurred in 2007 and 2008. Since then though, the company has shifted its focus on the lucrative market of daily deals — one dominated by Groupon, which garnered over 2 million U.S. visitors last month alone. Essentially the website promotes one big deal per city per day, mostly via a daily email newsletter.
To compete with its bigger competitor, LivingSocial has assembled a $25 million warchest from U.S. Venture Partners, Grotech Ventures, and Revolution, LLC (owned by former AOL CEO Steve Case). The company says it will use the funds to expand its LivingSocial Deals platform into more cities, starting today — Denver, Raleigh Durham, San Diego, and Chicago are all now get daily deals. The latter is interesting because Chicago is the home turf of Groupon.
The daily deals market may not be all that sexy, but it has proven to be profitable and popular. It makes sense that more companies want a piece of the pie that Groupon currently dominates. With $25 million, LivingSocial is now on par with the $30 million Groupon recently raised. A daily deals war looks to be brewing.
25 San Fransisco entrepreneurs were picked to get on a bus, drive to Austin, and conceive and launch 6 tech startups, all in 48 hours, in time for a launch party at South by Southwest.
No, that's not a reality show pitch. And no, we didn't just make it up.
This is a real life contest currently underway, called the Startup Bus. The startups will be judged by "a panel of mentors from Austin-based incubator The Capital Factory and Australian headquartered eStrategyGroup", and the winning idea's team will be mentored by angel investor Naval Ravikant.
This is obviously much more of a gimmick than a sensible way to go about founding a company, but as gimmicks go, this one has a lot of charm.
The Startup Bus launch party is in just 11 hours. If you want to watch the creation process live, we've embedded their live stream below. (They are broadcasting intermittently, and just went on hiatus moments ago. Check back in to watch them in action):
From the New York Times: New York used to be a second-string city when it came to coffee. No longer.
Over the last two years, more than 40 new cafes and coffee bars have joined a small, dedicated group of establishments where coffee making is treated like an art, or at least a high form of craft.
Yesterday I wrote a post about how much capital your startup should raise. In that post I was talking about how it is a bad strategy to be underfunded. In general when capital is available take it (provided it’s on the right conditions and from the best people from whom you can raise). It’s also bad to raise too much, too early. If you’re interested in that topic I cover it in the article linked previously.
I made a diversion in the article that I shouldn’t have taken. I talked about the Silicon Valley memo that has been circulated for the past couple of years that says you should “fail fast.” What I said was:
“I’ve even heard people repeat this bullsh*t Silicon Valley mantra about “failing fast” which is horse puckey. The line goes like this, “well at least you know early that your business isn’t going to work and you didn’t have to waste 2 years and $1 million trying to bang your head against a wall.” That is so self centered it winds me up. Tell that to the person who wrote you the $50,000 of their hard earned money and entrusted you to try your best. Fail fast? How does your brother-in-law feel about that?
And how do you think the next person who’s thinking about writing you a check going to feel about that sort of cavalier attitude with their money? Fail fast = quit and give up easy = spaghetti against the wall = no clear strategy going into your business = no ability / willingness to try and pivot as market conditions change = easy way out = today’s management mantra that will be laughed at in 10 years. Who started this meme? I say define a strategy, test it up front and pivot if you’re not getting the traction you had expected. Fail fast on your own dime.”
Obviously when a meme like “fail fast” forms and conventional wisdom builds in support of it you’re likely to get attacked for saying, “the emperor has no clothes.” But I just said it. Naked. I shouldn’t have covered it in the last post because I should have stayed focused on the topic of how much money to raise. Here’s an example of one comment I received,
“So you think it’s better to plan and build for years without testing it on the market and then make a big splash release and hope for the best?”
Nice logic, hey? If I say “fail fast” isn’t the right strategy then it must be a long, slow release process, right? I’m not attacking anybody’s religious beliefs. I’m trying to enter the debate with what I found to be a very destruction guiding principle that young people have started to believe. The following highlights what I do believe and why fail fast is wrong:
What is the right way to build a startup?
Define a market problem that you believe you can solve
Research this market by doing market sizing, looking at existing products, talking to customers and deciding how you will make money
Validate that you can make money before starting. This means looking at what your buyer pays for similar products now, what the history of other people who have tried to monetize in this way have experienced, what your costs to acquire customers will be and what you believe you can make over the customers’ lifetimes. These are all assumptions – nothing more. I believe passionately that if you don’t do a financial model you shouldn’t spend any time or money building a product. You want to talk about the ultimate “fail fast” – how about if you fail before you’ve spent any money building product because you validate there isn’t a big enough market or you can’t make money?
If you believe there is a market then build a prototype product that you can show customers, investors and potential employees.
From there build the MVP (minimum viable product). I believe in launching with a small set of features and learning from the market before you spend too much money building out a feature rich product or before you put serious capital to work.
If you validate that there’s a market then go for it! If you don’t believe that your product is resonating then pivot and find one!
Why fail fast is wrong, irresponsible, unethical and heartless:
I’ve read all of the fail fast, fail cheap articles. I’ve heard the insufferable speeches at conferences. I understand that many people argue that “fail fast” just means launch products and learn from customers. Fine. Then let’s call this “launch and learn” as well as “adjust and pivot” when adoption doesn’t happen.
The problem is that when you brand something that will be interpreting differently by people who weren’t part of the zeitgeist when the memo went out about what “fail fast” meant then we educate the next generation of entrepreneurs to do things the wrong way
Worse still I’ve actually heard the following from somebody that is reputable and whom I actually like, who has raised $1 million, “we don’t want to raise $3 million to get to the next round. Either this thing has legs and will grow fast and we’ll raise at a very large price or we’re going to ‘fail fast’ .” Me, “What? Really? What about the money you raised? Aren’t you worried about that?” Him, “Well, what do you want us to do, stick around for 3 years trying to build something that we know isn’t working?” I can’t make this stuff up. People think that way these days. It’s wrong. It’s immoral. It’s irresponsible. That’s hard earned money you’ve raised, not house money at a casino that you get to put on lucky number 16 and see if it comes up.
As Reece Pacheco appropriate said in his comment to yesterday’s post, “Know who else you shouldn’t fail fast with? Paying customers. My business has a bunch of them, and a lot more users who really depend on our service. They’re relying on us. Failing fast may be an out for our bootstrapped lives, but it’s not an option.” Think about that. People gave you money to use your service. And they’ve invested their time and trust in you. Failing fast is to disrespect the very customers who placed their trust in you.
We have taught a generation of young entrepreneurs that “failing fast” is ok. It’s quick and easy. It’s a way out so that you can focus on your next big business idea. Why waste your time on this one? Don’t get me wrong – failure is OK in my book. I’d rather you try something that doesn’t work and learn from it then to never have tried before. I personally think that second-time entrepreneurs are better because, as I’ve written, “good judgment comes from experience, but experience comes from bad judgment.”
But my message to young folks – if you take somebody’s money you have a responsibility. I raised too much money at my first company and regretted it. Long after the Dot Con 1.0 party was over and I knew that I personally wasn’t going to make as much as I thought I would – I stuck around. I felt a moral obligation to spend this money that I had raised responsibly. The market changed totally so my assumptions were all off. Goldman Sachs had told me we would IPO in a year. That wasn’t going to happen. But I signed up for making the company work and sometimes that commitment trumps your current economic incentives. Not forever – but for a period of time. Taking money = obligation and commitment to try your best to make a return.
How should you deal with a business that isn’t working? I’m not talking about when your product isn’t working, but your company. When you know that you don’t have a future.
Get your cost base as low as you can as quickly as you can
Communicate early to investors that you don’t think the business can be successful. Make sure you say you haven’t given up and that you’ll stay to help find a way to find the best possible outcome for the company. But that you don’t want to raise any more hard earned money if you’re convinced that new money won’t have a good return
Consider whether there are any buyers for the company. If not, are there buyers of the intellectual property?
In the worst case scenario is there a “face saving” exit for $1 somewhere? This will save everybody from the time, expense and risks of a bankruptcy
Remember that legally the order of payments (I’m not a lawyer, double check with a bankruptcy lawyer) is employees, creditors, equity holders
Better that you handle things until the bitter end and preserve your most valuable asset – your reputation
There is nothing wrong with saying respectfully to investors, “if I can find a buyer for this asset would you be willing for me to take a very small piece of the purchase price so that I can incentivize my team to stay together through this difficult period?
If the company needs a very small amount of money to get through this shut down period make you should ask your investors for it. Make sure to tell them that it is for a shut down and/or attempt to recover value for the assets. Tell them you’ll only ask once. Only ask once.
Make sure your employees know what is going on. You have an ethical responsibility not to surprise them. MAKE SURE that you pay all of their expense reports that are outstanding. In the dark days of shut downs I’ve seen many junior members get burned. This is wrong.
So can somebody with better branding skills than I have please come up with the new term that we can all use for what we all know we want to see – customer development, MVP, rapid iteration, pivot and learn.
Suppose there is a pre-profitable company that is raising venture financing. Simple, classical economic models would predict that although there might be multiple VCs interested in investing, at the end of the financing process the valuation will rise to the clearing price where the demand for the company’s stock equals the supply (amount being issued).
Actual venture financings work nothing like this simple model would predict. In practice, the equilibrium states for venture financings are: 1) significantly oversubscribed at too low a valuation, or 2) significantly undersubscribed at too high a valuation.
Why do venture markets function this way? Pricing in any market is a function of the information available to investors. In the public stock markets, for example, the primary information inputs are “hard metrics” like company financials, industry dynamics, and general economic conditions. What makes venture pricing special is that there are so few hard metrics to rely on, hence one of the primary valuation inputs is what other investors think about the company.
This investor signaling has a huge effect on venture financing dynamics. If Sequoia wants to invest, so will every other investor. If Sequoia gave you seed money before but now doesn’t want to follow on, you’re probably dead.
Part of this is the so-called herd mentality for which VC’s often get ridiculed. But a lot of it is very rational. When you invest in early-stage companies you are forced to rely on very little information. Maybe you’ve used the product and spent a dozen hours with management, but that’s often about it. The signals from other investors who have access to information you don’t is an extremely valuable input.
Smart entrepreneurs manage the investor signaling effect by following rules like:
- Don’t take seed money from big VCs – It doesn’t matter if the big VC invests under a different name or merely provides space and mentoring. If a big VC has any involvement with your company at the seed stage, their posture toward the next round has such strong signaling power that they can kill you and/or control the pricing of the round.
- Don’t try to be clever and get an auction going (and don’t shop your term sheet). If you do, once the price gets to the point where only one investor remains, that investor will look left and right and see no one there and might get cold feet and leave you with no deal at all. Save the auction for when you get acquired or IPO.
- Don’t be perceived as being “on the market” too long. Once you’ve pitched your first investor, the clock starts ticking. Word gets around quickly that you are out raising money. After a month or two, if you don’t have strong interest, you risk being perceived as damaged goods.
- If you get a great investor to lead a follow-on round, expect your existing investors to want to invest pro-rata or more, even if they previously indicated otherwise. This often creates complicated situations because the new investor usually has minimum ownership thresholds (15-20%) and combining this with pro-rata for existing investors usually means raising far more money than the company needs.
Lastly, be very careful not to try to stimulate investor interest by overstating the interest of other investors. It’s a very small community and seed investors talk to each other all the time. If you are perceived to be overstating interest, you can lose credibility very quickly.
Chris Dixon is Cofounder of Hunch. He's also an investor in early-stage technology companies, including Skype (acquired by eBay), Postini (acquired by Google), Flarion (acquired by Qualcomm), Gracenote (acquired by Sony), P.A. Semi (acquired by Apple), Celtel (IPO), BladeLogic (acquired by BMC), TrialPay, Gerson Lehrman Group, ScanScout, OMGPOP, BillShrink, Oddcast, Panjiva, Knewton, and a handful of other startups that are still in stealth mode.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In India, thousands of consumers are going from tweeting to bubbling.
A hot new social-networking service dubbed Bubbly, which is essentially a voice-based Twitter, is quickly gaining popularity among Indians. And thanks to Bollywood celebs being early adopters, Bubbly is growing virally and with virtually zero marketing spend.
Bubbly is the brainchild of 5-year-old mobile and social app firm Bubble Motion, which is based in Silicon Valley and Singapore. Its first product was BubbleTalk, a person-to-person voice-messaging service that, instead of SMS, sends mobile audio messages and has about 100 million users now.
According to Bubble Motion's CEO Tom Clayton, after devoting time to BubbleTalk and other mobile voice-messaging services, "along came the social-media boom and we started to play with a lot of social-media applications." That led to the idea of audio messages going not just to one person, but to a much larger audience of followers.
In rolling out Bubbly, Mr. Clayton plans to skip North America and Europe and focus on fast-growing, mobile-savvy markets such as India, Japan and Brazil.
Here's how Bubbly works: Anyone can sign up to follow a friend, family member or favorite celebrity or brand. Posting messages and following is free, and once a new message has been recorded and sent o
Most messages are less than 30 seconds long, and there is currently a cap of one minute.
Bubbly's business model is based on its revenue-sharing partnerships with telecoms. In India, that includes two giants, Reliance Communications and Bharti Airtel.
To post on Bubbly, a user dials a short code, like *7, records a message and hangs up. To listen, tap in another code, like *2. It works on any handheld device, and messages can be posted to Bubbly while still withholding phone numbers for privacy.
Bubbly hasn't launched officially, but the service saw an estimated 500,000 users in about four weeks after some of Bollywood's biggest stars started using it, including Aamir Khan and Kareena Kapoor, who were talking about it ahead of the premiere of their hit film "Three Idiots" (which recently swept India's Filmfare Awards). "It's personal and it's easier for a celeb" to connect with their fans using Bubbly rather than a web-based service in which an agent or PR firm might be writing messages, said Mr. Clayton.
Media networks in India are showing signs of interest too; the first major media brand to sign on there is the BBC, which is experimenting with the service as a way of disseminating breaking news (listen to audio clip below, in Hindi). And other networks are in talks to potentially follow suit.
In a country where many have access to cellphones but far fewer to the web, this type of mobile blogging service seems to make sense. By some estimates, India has the fastest-growing population of mobile phone users in the world as cellphone operators add millions of new customers each month. By 2012, India may have 650 million cellphone users.
To use Bubbly for brand engagement and promotion, a celebrity spokesperson could record messages about brands or send a "bubble" from the set of a forthcoming movie to build buzz. Brands themselves can also bubble short radio-like ads over cellphones, although it's up to users to opt in.
Bubbly has been beta-tested in places such as Egypt, where BMW bubbled a promotion to visitors to a retail location, and Citigroup used it to send out ads and Vodafone to deliver the latest ringtone.
But Mr. Clayton said Bubbly is targeting five major global markets -- India, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Brazil -- because they all offer large, mobile-savvy populations whose telecoms and cellphone users are "also open to cool, new innovative stuff." A web component may have a role in the launch of Bubbly in Japan, but in most markets the focus will remain on a mobile-only version of Bubbly for now.
And while the mobile operators Bubbly partners with might tout the service in their own ad campaigns, traditional advertising isn't on Bubble Motion's agenda anytime soon. Part of the company's goal, and the mission of its VP-marketing and product management, David Still, is to "grow to hundreds of millions of users through viral and word-of-mouth marketing with very little, if any, marketing spend," said Mr. Clayton. "In each country we have a different strategy, but a lot of it is around entertainment and sports [celebrities]."
SecondMarket is a New York City based startup that operates markets for various types of illiquid assets.
Last spring, SecondMarket added private company stock to the list of assets it trades. And by a huge margin, the most-traded company in that market is Facebook.
That's not to say that buying in to a private company is easy, exactly. For starters, you need to be an accredited investor. You also need to be willing to spend some cash (or band together with other investors) -- the smallest Facebook transaction in SecondMarket's history was for $50,000. The median sale on the private company market is $1.2 million.
SecondMarket makes trading these assets far easier than it otherwise would be, but these are still low volume, inefficient exchanges. Second Market calls its procedure a "hybrid model". Buyers and sellers can submit their orders much as they would on a conventional trading platform, and in theory, the markets could clear automatically. But as a practical matter, there are generally wide bid-ask spreads. SecondMarket uses the bids and offers to determine possible matches and then hits the phones to make deals actually happen.
The goal is to make the markets as automated as possible. In the meantime, SecondMarket is already a powerful tool. And anyone with the money and the desire can buy in to the most promising startups.
A startup called PeekYou has hired former AOL director of search engine marketing Eric Ludwig to be its president and COO. In side news, Eric now has a really sweet head shot, pictured here.
PeekYou describes itself as a "free people-search engine, whose database contains public records and internet data for over 230 million people, and is growing every day."
On the hire, PeekYou founder Michael Hussey blurbed, "Eric will play an instrumental role in bringing to market new applications for PeekYou and we are thrilled to have him on board."
"Eric’s track record speaks for itself. Our company is gaining a unique and exceptional leader with invaluable experience in operations, direct marketing, and search."
Yesterday, Gawker Media truncated its RSS feeds, and former Gawker editorial honcho Lockhart Steele immediately tweeted that “the only thing that excited me about Gawker’s RSS truncation was picturing @felixsalmon’s head explode when he heard the news”. I’m well known as a vocal defender of full RSS feeds, largely because of a 1,500-word blog entry I wrote on the subject back in October 2007. And so I asked Gawker’s owner, Nick Denton, what he was doing.
Nick pointed me to a comment he left at Lifehacker saying that “this was a commercial decision”, and also this one:
Gawker Media is an ad-supported company. RSS ads have never realized their potential. At the same time we sell plenty of ads on our website. So, yes, it is in our interest for people to click through if enticed by an excerpt.
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Walmart 's newly-redesigned Great Value products
Private label cereal at Publix, in-house branding that's won design awards
Editor's Note: This guest post was written and reported by Steven Rosenbaum, the CEO of 
Wait! Stop. Before you hand over Apple your credit card and
I'm a sucker. It's true. As much you guys think we rail against 
Recently, startup 
We've talked a lot this week about the so-called "
The official Foursquare account just sent out a 
There are no shortage of 
Back in November of last year, the location-based social event service 
Suppose there is a pre-profitable company that is raising venture financing. Simple, classical economic models would predict that although there might be multiple VCs interested in investing, at the end of the financing process the valuation will rise to the clearing price where the demand for the company’s stock equals the supply (amount being issued).
From Reuters:
