Startup News Archives - Page 6 of 53

The Mount Rushmore of Tech Entrepreneurs

If you follow the NBA or watch ESPN at all (not me, my co-founder) then you know the airwaves and Twitterverse have been flooded with talk of the NBA’s “Mount Rushmore.” Lebron James started the debate when he proclaimed that he will be “on that Mountain” in his exclusive interview with NBA TV. Any list of the greatest will cause debate and ruffle some feathers, like James did with NBA legend Bill Russell.

Blah blah blah. Y’all know I only knew that stuff because of Nick, right? You learn a lot from your cofounders.

Anyway, it got us thinking. Who would be on tech’s Mt. Rushmore–Mt. Techmore, if you will. There will undoubtedly be some debate, but we like a little healthy arguing.

Here’s what we think:

On Mt. Techmore, Steve Jobs takes a prominent spot. Doesn’t he look like he was actually chiseled into that mountain?

Jobs is already the idol of tech. We all quote him like Scripture, and like a politician with Reagan, everyone wants to believe they’re aligned with the Jobs mentality. His company is also the largest tech company in the world, with a $489.76 billion market cap and $159.97 billion in top line revenue in 2013.

rsz_incontentad2

Bill Gates sits next to Jobs, and he’s another tech luminary you can hardly argue with. Say what you will about Microsoft (and poor Bill not being able to install Windows 8), but he is still the second richest man in the world.

That company he built, the one we all love to hate? Top line revenue of $73.75 billion in 2013 and a market cap of $302.32 billion. If only the rest of us were unsexy like that.

And, finally, the Google founders. Larry Page and Sergey Brin have arguably built the most influential company of our century. Google has changed the way we do the Internet, and the products they roll out, from Gmail to Android, are becoming a daily habit for most of us. The company had revenue of $49.96 billion in 2013 and the hockey stick growth chart we’re all chasing.

And Page and Brin themselves? Worth $23 billion and $22.8 billion respectively. Not bad for two guys whose motto was, “Don’t be evil.”

Every culture has their own idols and heroes, and tech is no different. Without the contributions of the men on Mt. Techmore, the world would be a different place. There are others, of course. For instance, a certain Harvard dropout whose name rhymes with “duckerberg.”

What do you think? Who would be on your Mt. Techmore?

All financial info sourced here.

Forget Software. VC’s Turn Their Eyes Toward the Food Industry

Yesterday Hampton Creek Foods announced a Series B round of $23 million, led by Horizons Ventures and including previous investors Khosla Ventures and Collaborative Fund as well as several individual investors.

Hampton Creek is looking for alternative, plant-based solutions to meat and meat products. Eggs, for example, are one target for a new, plant-based alternative from Hampton Creek.

Let’s forget for a moment that we’re still talking about processed food, which have been proven to be harmful to the American diet. I get that with the growing global population, we already have unsustainable methods of growing and raising our food. Something has to be done about this problem.

What’s interesting about this story is not the growth of processed food. (Okay, well not interesting for our purposes.)

Rather, it’s interesting to see to such traditionally tech-focused VC firms throwing money at a decidedly expensive, potentially unscalable venture. The whole thing about tech startups is that the cost to entry and scaling is so much lower, which allows for great returns for these investors.

According to CB Insights, that’s a growing trend. In 2013 funding deals to food companies (note: not web/mobile-based food apps or platforms) hit $146 million. This was a 123% increase from their earliest data from 2009.

Investments in food and beverage companies include everything from food tech, like Hampton Creek, to retail outlets, like the recently IPO’d Potbelly Sandwich Shops.

Khosla Ventures is a large backer of early stage food startups. Founder Vinod Khosla had this to say a couple of years ago about investing in food startups:

“As part of our sustainability effort, we’re doing a lot of investing in food.”

“Saving the world” and “sustainability” are awesome goals to shoot for. Without a doubt the pace at which we live life is fast, and it’s hard for the planet to keep up.

We’ve seen this song and dance before in the shape of cleantech. It’s not that cleantech was ever a bad idea. Few thoughtful people will say we need to continue to strip the planet of its natural resources without replenishing them.

But, no amount of knowing it’s a good idea makes development inexpensive. Or makes the outcome profitable at a level to please LPs.

How to Be Productive During a Traffic Jam–Future Edition

From Fast Company

What’s the office of the future? For Regus, which operates close to 2,000 business centers globally, it isn’t one where workers stand, walk, or even squat. No, it envisions NibzNotes29 a world in which people are sitting–in a self-driving office, that is.

On Monday, the company gave a sneak peek at an autonomous concept car, one where the two fronts seats swivel backwards to create a meeting space for four people. In partnership with Rinspeed, a creative studio focusing on the automotive industry, Regus unveiled the XchangE, which will be shown at the Geneva Motor Show in March. In addition to the swiveling chairs, the car’s infotainment system will let workers connect to their office and create presentations. Yes, traffic jams will become a lot more productive.

Warning: Unpaid Internships May Mean You’re Missing the Top Talent

unpaidintern

As the lawsuits against unpaid internships pile up, it’s becoming even more necessary to innovate the way we look for talent. It’s almost impossible to compete with the Googles and Facebooks of the world when you’re a startup. Often the best you can offer is pizza and some equity.

But there are some companies out there getting creative with how they find new employees.

Hacking Your Way to a Job

A couple of weeks ago, we reported on GlobalHack, the quarterly hackathon held in St. Louis.

At GlobalHack 1, teams competed to develop an algorithm for TopOPPS, a new startup by Jim Eberlin. The winning team was awarded $50,000 in exchange for the work they did, and Eberlin was so impressed with the second place team, he threw in an extra $10,000 for them.

But, he didn’t stop there.

After the event, Eberlin invited 18 of the engineers who competed to a private dinner, at which he held impromptu formal interviews. Five of those engineers now work full time for TopOPPS, and more hires are in the works.

“I call it Interviewing 3.0,” Eberlin said. “I spoke to each of them for about 10 minutes and narrowed our talent search down to the people who would make the best fit for TopOPPS.”

Beside the engineers Eberlin discovered at the hackathon, the press from the event has brought TopOPPS attention from developers all over the country, and many have applied separately to work for the company.

“Recruits” Provide Cheap Labor in Exchange for Job Opps

Another take on the recruitment front comes from Gawker media, the parent company of the infamous Valleywag.

It’s well known that paying writers a full time wage with the current economics of digital media is difficult. If The Atlantic can’t afford it, newer media outlets certainly can’t.

Gawker’s solution comes in the form of their new Recruits program. In the program, a writer is granted a short term contract, a small stipend, and their own blog. Each writer is judged on their amount of traffic they bring in, with the potential for a full time gig at Gawker.

I’m no fan of Gawker, and of course the Recruits program undoubtedly has something to do with a lawsuit from several unpaid interns. But considering the economics of online media, it isn’t a bad idea. It’s essentially a more formalized system of freelancing, which is what keeps most media sites in content.

The Future of Hiring

Of course, hiring isn’t the only reason to have unpaid internships, but it is common to bring interns into a full time job if they do great work.

However, shift is happening in the way we identify and recruit top talent. Much like the need for a college degree, unpaid internships are slowly losing popularity.

Companies–especially startups–would do well to look to TopOPPS and Gawker for inspiration on ways to innovate the talent search.

Do We Even Notice the Latest Hacking Announcements?

kickstarter

From Kickstarter

On Wednesday night, law enforcement officials contacted Kickstarter and alerted us that hackers had sought and gained unauthorized access to some of our customers’ NibzNotes27 data. Upon learning this, we immediately closed the security breach and began strengthening security measures throughout the Kickstarter system.

No credit card data of any kind was accessed by hackers. There is no evidence of unauthorized activity of any kind on all but two Kickstarter user accounts.

While no credit card data was accessed, some information about our customers was. Accessed information included usernames, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and encrypted passwords. Actual passwords were not revealed, however it is possible for a malicious person with enough computing power to guess and crack an encrypted password, particularly a weak or obvious one.

Apple’s Potential Acquisitions Show a Tech Company Growing To New Heights

From SFGate

Adrian Perica is a very busy man. Over the past 18 months, the mergers and acquisitions chief at Apple has been scouring the globe looking for deals, snatching up everything from search engines and data analytics to mapping software and motion tracking chips.

Such a buying spree has ignited fierce speculation in tech circles and on Wall Street about Apple’s future ambitions, especially as smartphone and tablet sales start to slow. Most of that speculation has centered on wearable technology or perhaps a souped-up upgrade of Apple TV.

But Apple is thinking bigger. Much bigger.

A source tells The Chronicle that Perica met with Tesla CEO Elon Musk in Cupertino last spring around the same time analysts suggested Apple acquire the electric car giant.

Is Google Living Up to Its “Don’t Be Evil” Motto?

From Lifehacker

“Don’t be evil” has been Google’s unofficial motto for a long time, but in recent years it’s questionable whether they’ve lived up to the slogan. So we asked you what you
thought

. Here are your best arguments.

Not Evil: As a Big Company, They’re Always Going to Offend Someone

One thing many of you pointed out is that Google’s come under more scrutiny about the evil banner because they’ve gotten a lot bigger since they made that original motto. Our own Andy Orin put it well:

As a company’s size and influence grows and their decisions affect millions of people, it can be a mistake to characterize them as evil because they did something you didn’t like. They are a profit-driven business of course, and not an altruistic NGO working plainly for world betterment, and so everything they do is tied to making a buck. Anyway, as far as evil corporations go, Google is not very evil!

Anonymous is The New Black. But Is It Working for Us?

Like everyone else in the tech world, we’ve been wasting hours on Secret in the last week. The new app is taking over, and with the breakout success comes the money. And the jobs.

I saw this secret posted a few days ago, and it sparked some discussion between Nick and me. Y’all know how I feel about women-only things. It’s a little more nuanced than this particular secret, but I get where she’s coming from.

After a few minutes, we moved on and got back to work. But, the “secret” stayed stuck in my head.

I kept wanting to go back to the thread and reach out to the poster. I kept thinking I should leave her this link. Or maybe this one. Or, maybe I could just say, “I totally get it.”

There was some solidarity from other people in that thread. Of course, it had also devolved into an expletive-filled bitchfest, as most threads on Secret seem to. Because apparently anonymity comes without the expectation of basic human kindness.

But, I guess my point is that there was no way to truly connect with someone who shared my opinion on a hot topic–a fairly unpopular opinion that few people are willing to shout from the Twitter rooftops.

Anonymity on the web is nothing new, of course. If anything the last 10 years of Facebook and claiming your real identity is the new thing. Thanks to Facebook we use the web to connect with friends and family and build our reputations and careers. All things that require connecting our online and offline identities.

I understand the allure of Secret and other anonymous gossip apps. They take our need to share every.single.thought and include even those deepest, darkest thoughts we’re most afraid of sharing. That’s cathartic and narcissistic all at the same time. Add in the almost-voyeuristic delight that these secrets are coming from people we know (or probably know), and it’s no wonder Secret has taken over the tech world.

And there’s probably a place for both anonymity and openness. After all, we have Facebook and Twitter, and we all know that everything we see on there is true and not at all fake as we all try to manage our “brands.”

Still, I’m a little sad to have the missed the opportunity to connect with someone who shares both my experiences and my opinion. While a couple of the comments were supportive, a large number just reinforced why that woman probably doesn’t want to share her “secret” with the world.

Just Say No to Surveillance: The Day We Fight Back

daywefightback

Two years ago the largest Internet protest in history shut down upcoming regulations SOPA/PIPA. When 115,000 websites blacked out their pages, legislators took notice and removed support for the bills that would have vastly limited a free and open Internet.

Thanks to last year’s NSA revelations, people all over the world are realizing an even more imminent threat: surveillance.

It doesn’t take much digging to find evidence of current and potential government spying in our digital world. Just check the front page of Techmeme most days. Our webcams are compromised. Our computer’s microphones are hacked. And let’s not even get started on our phones.

But what can ya do? Silicon Valley has provided the technology. The government is more than willing to use it to their benefit. How can people really fight this?

“Since the first revelations last summer, hundreds of thousands of Internet users have come together online and offline to protest the NSA’s unconstitutional surveillance programs.” Josh Levy of Free Press said in a statement. “These programs attack our basic rights to connect and communicate in private, and strike at the foundations of democracy itself. Only a broad movement of activists, organizations and companies can convince Washington to restore these rights.”

Today, several Internet companies are attempting to do just that, including Nibletz. We join with others in our industry in urging you to contact your legislators and ask them to support the USA FREEDOM ACT.

It’s not just online, though. There are live events all over the world protesting the NSA policy of mass surveillance.

The Day We Fight Back is being held partially in honor of Aaron Swartz, the cofounder of Reddit who took his own life last January. Swartz was a driving force behind the SOPA/PIPA protests, and many of the organizers are calling on his memory to remind people of the importance of fighting surveillance.

“Today the greatest threat to a free Internet, and broader free society, is the National Security Agency’s mass spying regime. If Aaron were alive he’d be on the front lines, fighting back against these practices that undermine our ability to engage with each other as genuinely free human beings,” said Aaron’s Demand Progess cofounder David Segal.

Many people defend the NSA surveillance program by saying that it is protecting Americans from more acts of terrorism. But how much freedom are willing to give up in order to remain safe?

Benjamin Franklin famously said, “They who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Today is The Day We Fight Back.

42 European Investors You Really Need to Know

Last month we posted 32 Most Influential Investors of 2013 (Outside Silicon Valley). And you loved it! It was easily one of the most popular posts of the month.

But, within hours of publication, we started getting the question: What about Europe?

It was a hand to forehead moment for us. OF COURSE we should’ve included investors from Europe (and other parts of the globe, too). We’re the voice of startups everywhere else, after all. Not “the voice of startups only in America.”

Doh.

Needless to say, we set about to right our wrong. Below is our list of top European investors, and man is it a doozy! I hope we’ve more than atoned for our sins here, y’all.

What about India, you ask? Or Asia? Or Australia? If you have a suggestion for a must-include investor from one of those regions, shoot us an email (startups@nibletz.com), and we’ll get right to work on our next list.

But, for now:

42 Top European Investors

Alexander von Frankenberg–High-Tech Grunderfonds, Managing Partner, Germany
Andrin Bachman–Piton Capital, Partner, England
Anne Glover–Amadeus Capital, CEO/Cofounder, England
Christian Leybold @leybold—e.ventures, General Partner, Germany
David Mott @davidmott—Oxford Capital, Partner/Cofounder, England
Dimitry Chikhachev @dchikachev—Runa Capital, Cofounder/Managing Partner, Russia
Eileen Burbridge @eileentso—Passion Capital, Partner, England
Eric Archambeau–Wellington Partners, General Partner, England, Notable Investment: Hailo
Gianluca Dettori @dgiluz—dPixel, Chairman, Italy
Hendrik Brandis–Early Bird, Partner/Cofounder Germany, Notable Investment: RapidMiner
Jari Mieskonen–Conor Venture Partners, Managing Partner, Sweden
Jeremie Berrebi @jberrebi—Kima Ventures, Cofounder, France/Israel, Notable Investment: Rapportive
Jimmy Fussing Nielsen–Sunstone Capital, Managing Partner, Denmark, Notable Investment: Prezi
John Waddell–Archangels, CEO, Scotland
Julie Meyer @juliemariemeyer—Ariadne Capital, Chairman/CEO, England, Notable Investments: Monitise, Quill, Matternet
Kevin Comolli @kevincomolli—Accel Capital, Partner, England, Notable Investments: Atlassian, Etsy, Supercell
Klaus Hommel–Angel investor, Notable Investments: Spotify, Facebook, Fab.com, Airbnb, Skype
Kolja Hebenstreit @kolja—Team Europe Ventures, Cofounder/Managing Partner, Germany
Marc Simoncini @marcsimoncini—Jaina Capital, CEO/Founder, France
Mark Farmer–Eden Ventures, Partner/Cofounder, England, Notable Investment: Zemanta
Mark Tluszcz @marktluszcz—Mangrove Capital Partners, CEO/Founder, Luxemburg, Notable Investments: Skype, Wix
Neil Rimer @narimer—Index Ventures, Partner/Cofounder, Switzerland, Notable Investments: Last.fm, Supercell
Nenand Marovac–DN Capital, Founder/CEO/Managing Partner, England, Notable Investments: Shazam
Niklas Zennstrom–Atomico, CEO/Founding Partner, England, Cofounder Skype, Notable Investments: Skype, Fab, and Jawbone
Norman Fiore–Dawn Capital, Managing Partner, England
Ondrej Bartos @obartos—Credo Ventures, Partner, Czech Republic
Paul Heydon @pheydon—London Venture Partners, General Partner, England, Notable Investments: Supercell
Pawel Chudzinski @chawel—Point Nine Capital, Cofounder/Managing Partner, Germany
Philippe Collombel @pcollombel—Partech Ventures, Co-Managing Partner, France, Notable Investments: Scoop.it
Rob Kniaz @robk—Hoxton Ventures, Founding Partner, England
Robert Bonanzinga @bonanzinga—Balderton Capital, Partner, England, Notable Investment: Sketchfab
Rodrigo Sepulveda @rodrig0–angel, France
Roman Huber–Bayern Kapital, Managing Partner, Bavaria
Sean Seton-Rogers @setonrog—PROfounders Capital, England, Notable Investments: TweetDeck
Sherry Coutou @scoutou–angel, England
Sitar Teli @sitar—Connect Ventures, Managing Partner, England
Stephen Chandler @sc_chandler—Notion Capital, Managing Partner, England
Sven Achter–Holtzbrinck Ventures, General Partner, Germany
Tellef Thorleifsson–Northzone Ventures, Cofounder, Norway, Notable Investment: Spotify
Timo Ahopelto @timomj—Lifeline Ventures, Finland
Ulla Brockenhuus-Schack–Seed Capital, Managing Partner, Denmark
Yaron Valler @yvaller—Hasso Plattner Ventures, Managing Partner, Germany

How One Person Can Make All the Difference

websummit

From Mark Suster

I wrote this on my flight home from f.ounders & web summit in Dublin, Ireland late last year. I think I was too hung over to finish it, hit publish and move on. So here is NibzNotes19 attempt two now that the alcohol is mostly out of me.

Scenes from my counter-top on my last night in Dublin. I recently returned from a 5-day visit to Ireland, my first time back in 10 years and the start of what I hope will be a more regular travel schedule there. Between 1995-2002 I visited often – especially since I founded my first company there.

My trip was scheduled around the annual Web Summit and the f.ounders conference, both of which have become the hottest must-attend event in Europe and rivaling any great conference in the US.

The roster of speakers was vast and just off the top of my head it included the founders of DropBox, Box, WordPress, EverNote, TrueCar, HootSuite, Charity Water, DataSift, Indiegogo, Huddle, oDesk (and many others) plus the usual cast of characters such as Robert Scoble, Gary Vaynerchuk, Dave McClure, Ben Huh, Shak, Shervin and many others. There were senior members from Facebook and Google.

Oh, and of course Bono popped by for a little while.

Flappy Bird Leaves Us Wanting More

From Tech Crunch

Yesterday, the developer behind Flappy Bird said he would be removing the remarkably/mysteriously successful game from the App Store in just 22 hours.

Sure enough, the game appears to be gone. And in its spot on the #1 spot on the iOS leaderboard? A Flappy Birds clone.

Flappy Bird’s developer, Dong Nguyen of Vietnam, suggested that the many pressures of success had become overwhelming. NibzNotes18

He later followed up to clarify that the game was not being removed for legal reasons, nor would he sell Flappy Birds to someone else.

According to an interview with The Verge last week, Dong Nguyen disclosed that the game was making upwards of $50K per day in ad revenue.

Many internet commenters had suggested that the tweet was something of a ploy to bump downloads up even higher; that Dong would have a “last minute change of heart” after the tweet lead to a surge of downloads and further secured the game its #1 spot. Given that the game is seemingly gone from both the iOS and Android stores (with a million clones left in its wake), that doesn’t appear to be the case.

GlobalHack Makes Its First Winners $50k Richer

Last weekend St. Louis-based GlobalHack hosted the first of its quarterly hackathons. The winning team walked away with $50,000 from TopOPPS, which received the code and IP from the weekend project in return.

TopOPPS is the new company of Jim Eberlin, who also founded companies like Host Analytics and Gainsight. The weekend marked the public launch of TopOPPS, and the project the teams worked on will help the company move forward.

Why would a successful CEO choose a hackathon to launch a new product? Eberlin said he saw it as “an opportunity to have hundreds of the nation’s best developers working on your product non-stop for 48 hours, is priceless. In one weekend, we saw more innovative ideas and had access to more tech talent then most companies see in a year.”

Cofounder of LockerDome and GlobalHack Gabe Lozano agreed, noting that the event drew 200 designers, developers, and business professionals from all over the country. In fact, Eberlin was so impressed with the quality of work produced over the weekend, he awarded a surprise $10,000 check to the second place team.

The winning team was composed of Washington University students. They were, obviously, excited about the win.

“Absolutely incredible,” team member Eric Elias said of the experience. “I was fortunate to work with such an exceptional team and compete against so many talented people.”

GlobalHack has 3 more hackathons planned for 2014, with the sponsoring companies for future events yet to be announced. The nonprofit plans to award more than $1 million in prize money over the year.

Interested? Check out the GlobalHack website to keep up to date on all events.

4 New Speakers Announced for #EETN

We’re counting down the days (and watching the tickets go!) for Everywhere Else Tennessee. We’re planning some awesome parties, a few amazing panels, and I have mentioned how spectacular the venue is? Seriously, y’all, old wood, open spaces in downtown Memphis. It’s so beautiful I’m hoping they let me live there.

In the meantime, we have a few more speakers to announce. We’re so excited about these guys and what they’ll bring to the #EETN attendees. Angel investors, developers, and entrepreneurs, they all have unique insights and advice for founders everywhere else. Check ’em out:

benyoskovitz Ben Yoskovitz is the author of the popular Instigator Blog. He’s also a founding partner at Year One Labs, VP of Product at GoInstant, and co-author of the book Lean Analytics. He sold his first company Standout Jobs in 2010.

Jared Steffes is a lifetime entrepreneur living in Chicago. His current startup, Furywing, is creating electronic gambling entertainment for people who grew up with video games. (No more slot machines!) Jared’s talk at Everywhere Else Cincinnati was so loved, we knew we had to bring him back. And, we hear he has a few surprises up his sleeve…

Nicholas Holland is the CEO of Populr.me, a recent 500 Startups graduate. Before Populr.me he founded CentreSource Interactive Agency in Nashville, TN, and has spent most of his life in the Nashville area. Besides building companies, he’s passionate about building the Nashville ecosystem. I wonder what words he picked up from Dave McClure during 500 Startups.

Kuty Shalev has spent the last twelve years as CEO & Founder of Clevertech. Headquartered in NYC with a global team, Clevertech is a lean startup design and development organization that works with entrepreneurs and enterprises to help launch minimum viable products (MVP) in 30-90 days. Client projects have been featured in the New York Times, VentureBeat, Bloomberg News, Mashable and many other media outlets.

We’re just getting started, y’all. We’ll have more speaker announcements coming soon. Buy your tickets before they sell out!

If you’re a startup that has raised less than $2 million, apply to win a booth at our Startup Avenue. Selected startups will also get 2 free tickets to the conference. The best companies will get a chance to pitch our investor panel and win the title of Heavyweight Champion of Everywhere Else.

And, we still have a few sponsorship opportunities available. Get in touch and let us help you be involved in the everywhere else movement.