2 posts and columns on Ariel Poler

Blippy Opens to Public and Scores High-Profile Investors–Including Twitter's Evan Williams–For the Twitter of $$

in News on January 14, 2010 at 6:00 am PT

Blippy, a start-up that lets users broadcast their credit card transactions online, will open itself up to the public today and announce a slate of high-profile Silicon Valley investors. The size of the investment–$1.6 million–is actually not so large as the names on its funding roster. They include: Sequoia Capital, Charles River Ventures, well-known angel investor Ron Conway, Twitter CEO and co-founder Evan Williams, and a trio of splashy entrepreneurs: Jason Calacanis, James Hong and Ariel Poler.

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words–So What Does a Big Smile in a Layoff Story Mean?

in News on October 27, 2008 at 9:42 am PT

Happy days aren’t here again, it seems. Still, I am not quite sure what to make of his big, happy smile on Seesmic founder Loïc Le Meur’s face, which went with a story in the New York Times about start-ups cutting costs. In fact, the whole Seesmic crew is grinning awfully hard, putting a very game face on recent layoffs that cut the staff at the video blog service by more than a third.