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Infinity Ventures Summit In Sapporo: Demos From 14 Japanese Startups
May 29, 11:46AM
Earlier this week, I took part in Infinity Ventures Summit (IVS) Spring 2011 in Sapporo [this and many of the following links are in Japanese], a two-day, invitation-only event that takes place twice a year in Japan. IVS attracted over 400 people from the domestic and international web industry this time and is organized by VC firm Infinity Venture Partners (which just raised US$41 million for their IVP Fund II). Apart from panel discussions and presentations, some hours of the program gave a total of 14 Japanese start-ups the chance to present their services onstage. Here's a rundown of all companies that participated at the IVS launchpad this time.
Unbound Launches Its Kickstarter-Byliner Hybrid For Celebrity Authors
May 29, 10:17AM
Thanks to Kickstarter, the idea of crowd-funding a creative project is nothing new. Post- Cory Doctorow, the notion that an established author might convince his fans to pay upfront for a special edition of an as-yet unpublished book is hardly earth-shattering. And, following the launch of Byliner, even the launch of a digital-only publishing house isn't really news. And yet, by combining all of the best elements of those three examples, UK-based Unbound hopes to create something very remarkable indeed.
Greylock Partners Launches $160 Million Tech Fund For Europe And Israel
May 29, 7:14AM
Well known US VC house Greylock Partners is launching a brand new $160 million fund aimed at internet technology companies, with the fund being deployed between Europe and Israel. Greylock is best known for its stakes in Facebook, Groupon and LinkedIn and European investments including Wonga. Greylock's move will be a shot in the arm for European tech companies looking for more options when raising financing. We understand the fund will be run from London by Laurel Bowden, a Partner, and will cover investments from early stage and beyond. 
What Makes A Startup Successful? Blackbox Report Aims To Map The Startup Genome
May 29, 1:44AM
Generally speaking, the odds are stacked heavily against the average startup. The rate of failure among entrepreneurs and startups is startlingly high -- it comes with the territory. Otherwise, entrepreneurs wouldn't be pirates. But, what if there were a way to reduce that failure rate by cracking the formula of startup success? No easy feat to map the double helix of startups, but entrepreneurs are risk-takers by nature, so four of these ambitious international entrepreneurs came together to found the Startup Genome Report, a report that is part of a larger project that dives into the very anatomy of what makes Silicon Valley startups successful -- or not.
Cliqset Founder Takes On Personal Publishing And Social Conversations With Stealthy Startup Glow
May 28, 8:22PM
As we heard last fall, Cliqset, a FriendFeed like social aggregation platform, was shut down by its founders, Darren Bounds and Charlie Cauthen. Cliqset, which launched in 2009, was a high-powered social syndication and aggregation service, with the ability to post and syndicate content on Cliqset, Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz and 80 other sites and networks. You can read our prior coverage of Cliqset here. As Louis Gray wrote last November, the startup was one of the first networks to implement Pubsubhubbub for real-time updates, and Salmon for cross-network comment posting. But despite these technologies, the service couldn't attract an active number of users and landed in the deadpool. It looks like Bounds is on to his next project—Glow. Bounds writes that Glow is his "personal attempt at building a social network that doesn't sacrifice simplicity, features or user-experience in an effort to promote decentralization, user privacy and data ownership." The site, which is in stealth mode for now, will combine personal publishing ans social conversation.
(Founder Stories) Gilt's Kevin Ryan—It Is All In The Presentation (TCTV)
May 28, 8:21PM
Chris Dixon wraps his Founder Stories interview with Gilt Groupe's CEO and Founder, Kevin Ryan by discussing the early sales strategy of Gilt - a strategy that was designed to build customer and brand loyalty, but not the bottom line, at least initially. Revisiting the launch period around four years ago, Ryan says, "we were going to make $4,000 for us on a sale and I spent $7,000 on the photo shoot, and you would say that is not a good business model, but what happened was the brands loved it, the customers loved it ... and so now we sell $100,000, $200,000, $300,000 .... on a sale."
Oren Jacob, CTO of Pixar, joins August Capital as EIR
May 28, 7:33PM
August Capital recently announced that Oren Jacob, CTO of Pixar has joined as their newest entrepreneur in residence. After a few weeks on the job, I got a chance to interview Oren and ask him how his new gig was going. In short, he has new-found respect for venture capitalists and button down shirts. Oren had no idea how many meetings back to back were in store for him and how hard it can be to put on a fresh face and high level of excitement for each pitch. However challenges like that - and a bad case of entrepreneurial itch - were exactly why he decided to leave Pixar. 
Disrupt NYC: The Final Battle (Video)
May 28, 6:00PM
After 30 startups launching on stage at Disrupt NYC, it all culminated in the final battle between six finalists: Getaround, BillGuard, Sonar, Do@, ccLoop, and InvoiceASAP. What made this final battle so fascinating to watch was not only the quality of the startups, but the quality of the judges: Fred Wilson, Ron Conway, Marisa Mayer, Roelof Botha, and Josh Kopelman. We put together the entire final battle in the embedded video player above. Each demo is a separate video, and you can skip around by hovering over the video and hitting the channel button once it starts to play. Individual videos for all of Disrupt can also be found here. And below are links to our original writeups for each company with videos showing their first demos that got them to the final round.
Gillmor Gang 5.28.11 (TCTV)
May 28, 5:00PM
This week's Gillmor Gang comes at the end of travel — to New York for TechCrunch Disrupt and Las Vegas for the Forrester Analyst Forum. Disrupt continues to gather a head of steam, with the social effects of an emerging app ecosystem now being built out across the media and the enterprise. Although it seems still to be at the early stages with Twitter heading off a second front from Bill Gross, outbidding UberWhatever to buy Tweetdeck serves mostly to define the shape of the acquisition market as a hedge against IPOdom. Although the noise has died down about the Microsoft/Skype deal, enterprise analysts are tripping over themselves to handicap Steve Ballmer's job tenure. George Colony produced a Wave chart with Apple all alone upend to the right, Salesforce.com owning the next space, and as one senior analyst put it, only imaginary companies on the horizon to compete with us. I say us because apparently there are still a few who don't know I work for Marc Benioff. And Microsoft was well down and to the left in the view Colony calls the AppInternet. What we talk about today on the Gang may have something to with all this.
Is There A Peak Age for Entrepreneurship?
May 28, 4:09PM
Editor's note: Adeo Ressi, is the founder of The Founder Institute and TheFunded.com In this guest post he argues against ageism when it comes to to entrepreneurs. Ressi is 39. The recent articles proclaiming that 25 is the peak age for entrepreneurship deserve a considered and factual response. The demographic and racial profiling that has plagued venture capital and tech entrepreneurship has a new friend—ageism. This has to stop.
What It Was Like To Launch At Disrupt NYC
May 28, 1:37PM
There are many local, regional and global startup competitions that startups can compete in. I'm a big believer in the value of these startup competitions for two big reasons—they are a great forcing function to ship your product and refine your ability to pitch your business. Even if you have no plans to raise money, you will have to pitch your business to achieve your goals. My startup (Avado) is a Patient Relationship Management platform for health and wellness providers such as doctors, physical therapists, nurse practitioners, health coaches, physician assistants and personal trainers. We decided to pursue the opportunity to compete in the TechCrunch Disrupt startup competition. Each startup competition has its own selection process. In the case of TechCrunch Disrupt, a triumvirate of Erick Schonfeld (Co-editor of TechCrunch), Heather Harde (CEO) and Michael Arrington (Founder) evaluates the companies after they have winnowed down the first list of companies. My understanding is that two out of the three of them need to greenlight a company to be a finalist. During the course of the TechCrunch Disrupt event, Michael referred a couple times to Erick Schonfeld veto'ing a company. It wasn't clear whether that was a joke or not, but he appeared to be serious.
DryerBro iPhone App Notifies You When Your Laundry's Done
May 28, 5:59AM
The people who have brought you It'sthisforthat have created another way to make your life just a little bit easier and funnier. Meet DryerBro, an app that uses an accelerometer to let you know when you're laundry's done. DryerBro allows you to put your iPhone or iTouch on your laundry machine and it will text you and the remaining members of your household when your laundry's done. I'm thinking this is going to be HUGE. I mean Facebook took off at colleges right? 
Facebook Still Has No iPad App But They're Building A Desktop Software Team?!
May 28, 5:25AM
Facebook has no iPad app. It's ridiculous. Their iPhone app is the most downloaded app in the history of apps. And third-party iPad apps (many of which aim to trick users) constantly dominate the top 10 lists for both free and paid apps. And yet, Facebook doesn't seem to care at all about the device. Because they're all about HTML5, right? Well, someone might want to tell the Seattle office that. On the jobs page for the relatively new Seattle Facebook office, one of the openings is for "Software Engineer, Desktop Software". Desktop software. Desktop. Before the damn iPad. Hey Facebook, 1986 called, they want their strategic vision back.
Disrupt Hack Baitr Skewers Viral Launch Pages
May 28, 3:48AM
While Baitr didn't win the TC Disrupt Hackathon, it did win the minds and hearts of those in attendance who had a tendency towards black humor. Baitr, a Launchrock-type viral launch page that does nothing but visualize your email falling into the abyss, isn't at all useful. But it is funny. Says creator Peter Watts, "Launchrock is good for entrepreneurialism but it's also bad [for users] because you sign up for these services, and then you never hear back from them." Watts hopes that his hack will encourage startups to do something more productive with their beta sign up page.
LinkedIn Halo Effect? Facebook Shares Surge To New High In SharesPost
May 28, 2:54AM
Facebook shares on private secondary markets like SecondMarket and SharesPost spiked briefly in March to $34 - an $85 billion valuation. But they settled down to around $31.50 after that and have mostly stayed around that level since then. But something caused the shares to surge past that old record to a solid $35 per share in this week's auction. Our guess is that newly public LinkedIn's somewhat impressive P/E ratio of 2,500 may have something to do with it. $35 per share values Facebook at roughly $87.5 billion. Which is a steal compared to the way the public markets are valuing LinkedIn.
The Ultimate Guide To Disrupt NYC 2011
May 28, 1:08AM
The latest Disrupt has wrapped, but given the volume of news it created and the rate at which posts were pushing each other off the front page, you could be forgiven for missing a few items or videos here and there. Don't worry, though: we've got the highlights of the show collected right here. Actually, that's not entirely true. We still have a ton of backstage talks and other footage we're editing and processing, so expect more Disrupt content over the next week as we post these candid interviews with CEOs and Battlefield competitors. In the meantime, enjoy this central repository of all things Disrupt NYC 2011.
After Surging Past Angry Birds, The Heist Now Selling An App A Second
May 28, 12:10AM
For as long as I can remember, there has been one app that has constantly held the top paid app spot in Apple's App Store: Angry Birds. Sure, other apps surge to the top briefly. But Angry Birds always comes flying right back. But a new app appears to be bucking that trend. Today is day 3 of The Heist's reign, and sales are quickening. As The Loop noted after a partial day 1, The Heist saw download numbers just over 25,000. This was already enough to overtake Angry Birds. But what's really remarkable are the day two numbers. There were 89,798 downloads of The Heist on day two. Again, that's for a paid app ($0.99).
Munch On Me Is A Groupon For Food, Done Right
May 27, 8:54PM
Munchonme is a daily deals site for food. But wait, before you click away to a slideshow about hot coders, Munchonme has got some features that might just reroute you from relying on the big G and coming back to its sweet sweet embrace. First of all Munchonme focuses on giving discounts on specific dishes, instead of onanything in the entire restaurant. Any business who's been a victim of the Groupon effect knows why this is important, namely because restaurants can prepare for the onslaught in advance, overloading on the inventory they expect will sell out.
Accoya Uses Chemistry Trick To Detoxify Exterior Wood Treatment Process
May 27, 8:12PM
Most options for wood used in decks, outdoor furniture and siding are rarely entirely earth friendly, since they are often treated with heavy metals or toxic chemicals, or logged from unsustainable forests. One company is innovating in the space by altering the chemistry of the wood itself to make it weather and decay resistant. 
Welcome To The Future: Polymer Vision Demos SVGA Rollable Screen
May 27, 7:26PM
This 6-inch screen displays black and white e-ink text and images at 800x600 pixels and can roll around a tube the circumference of a dime. If this isn't the future of print, I don't know what is. Designed and manufactured by Polymer Vision, the screen can be rolled and unrolled 25,000 times. The question, obviously, is why would you need a rollable display? Well, as ereaders become ubiquitous the need for them to be almost indestructible. I could see a day when kids get their own ereaders for the nursery a la the Diamond Age. Interestingly, Polymer Vision isn't the company of note when you think of e-ink displays so either they will license this technology or they could start taking more and more market shares from leaders like Eink.
Data Tracking Startup Mixpanel Raises $1.25 Million From Sequoia, Rabois, Levchin, And Birch
May 27, 7:02PM
When it comes to building a web startup, the devil's often in the details. And keeping track of those details — be it how far users get in your signup process, or how often they're clicking a certain button — can be a real pain. Mixpanel is a startup that's looking to solve that problem by giving sites an easy-to-integrate analytics solution. And today it's announcing that it's raised another $1.25 million from an all star roster of investors, with new investors including Sequoia Capital (Jim Goetz and Roelof Botha) and Keith Rabois. That's in addition to existing investors Max Levchin and Michael Birch, who are themselves experts at tracking viral data. The company previously participated in Y Combinator and raised $500k from Birch and Levchin in Feburary 2010. Unlike traditional analytics services that focus on page views and uniques, Mixpanel is all about on-page actions: how many times users are activating a feature, how far in a flow they're getting, and so on. All of this is tracked in real-time.
Charlie Cheever Explains The Difference Between Quora And Wikipedia
May 27, 6:24PM
Quora co-founder Charlie Cheever not only doesn't want to sell his hot start-up but – as he told me backstage earlier this week at Disrupt – he even has an explicit non-goal of not selling the company. Non-goals or not, Cheever has a lot to smile about. Traffic is up to record levels at Quora and the site continues to be a paragon of innovation in the social space. In this interview he explains the difference between Quora and Wikipedia, and we get into many other orthogonal discussions as well. But I wonder if Cheever is tempting fate by having such an explicit non-goal. After all, he'll look 'a right Charlie' if Quora gets snapped up in the frenzy of acquisitions that will probably mark the post LinkedIn-IPO social marketplace.
A Bit More On WWDC, The Mythical iPhone "4S", and iOS 5
May 27, 5:52PM
With WWDC quickly approaching, the rumor mills are heating up with what we should expect at Apple's annual conference known for big announcements. We've learned a little bit more that speaks to what to expect — including a couple of big, widely-requested things. First of all, a lot of sites seem to be working themselves into a tizzy about the so-called "iPhone 4S". While it has already been widely reported that there will not be any major hardware announcements at WWDC this year, people seem to be letting their imaginations get the best of them anyway. This site, for example, notes that Apple is pushing for British journalists to fly out for WWDC. And today, there's a report about Australian journalists getting the same message. Both conclude this must be for the "iPhone 4S".
In Front Of Its IPO, Kayak Reports Growth In Revenue But Income Down
May 27, 4:35PM
Late last year, travel search engine Kayak filed for an IPO, aiming to raise $50 million. The company just released a new version of its S-1 today, with updated financials. The company will list its stock on the NASDAQ under the symbol "KYAK." For the three months ending March 31 of this year, Kayak generated $53 million in revenue, which is up 43 percent from the same period in 2010. Net income for the quarter came in at $8.2 million representing 266 percent growth from the same period last year. 
Google Responds To PayPal Lawsuit: People Have The Right To Seek Better Jobs
May 27, 4:14PM
Yesterday, PayPal filed a lawsuit against Google and two of its executives for stealing trade secrets. The lawsuit came on the same day that Google announced its mobile wallet plans involving Android phones with NFC chips. The two executives, Osama Bedier and Stephanie Tilenius, previously worked at PayPal. In fact, Bedier was in charge of negotiating a deal with Google on behalf of PayPal for inclusion of PayPal as a payment mechanism in Android phones. The deal fell through and Google hired away Bedier instead, who then helped build Google's own mobile wallet product. At least that is PayPal's side of the story. Last night, I asked Google for a comment. It took them a while, but a spokesperson just emailed me the following statement:
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