AllThingsD » Dave McClure

JOBS Act Could Kickstart Both Entrepreneurs and Equity Ownership

Beth Callaghan — Wed, 09 May 2012 21:25:07 +0000

Crowdfunding site Kickstarter turned three this week, and one of its projects — the Pebble watch — has famously raised $7 million against a $100K goal with a little over two weeks to go.

Considering that the new JOBS Act makes crowdfunding even easier, what sorts of things do you see coming out of the grass roots?

NetPlenish Stocks Shelves With $1.9 Million in Funding for Shopping App

Tricia Duryee — Thu, 03 May 2012 13:00:17 +0000

NetPlenish, a mobile-shopping app that finds the best price on everyday items like toothpaste and toilet paper, has raised $1.9 million in seed funding. Investors include Dave McClure’s 500 Startups, Gold Hill Capital, BHV Capital, TEEC Angel Fund, Ludlow Ventures and other angels. The Ventura, Calif.-based company’s app is available starting today on iPhone and Android.

Video Ads + App Ads = Vungle, a Freshly Minted Start-Up With a Big Pile of Cash

Peter Kafka — Wed, 02 May 2012 15:00:22 +0000

The video-ad business is growing quickly. Mobile ads, even more so.

And if you combine the two? You get Vungle, a barely hatched start-up that just raised a $2 million seed round.

Vungle’s pitch is straightforward: They help app developers make video promo reels for their stuff, and turn them into “in-app” ads (you can see a sample below). There are a whole lot of ways to buy in-app advertising for other apps already — it’s a big chunk of the mobile ad business right now — but the Vungle guys argue that they make it easy. And that unlike iAd, AdMob, Millenial, etc., it’s all they do.

Fair enough. No way to really tell now, as the company is only in “alpha,” with a handful of paying customers that include Path, the buzzy next-gen social network, and Pocket Games, a game developer. A more open beta comes this summer.

At least as interesting as the pitch is the backstory, which has co-founders Zain Jeffer, 24, and Jack Smith, 23, leaving London on a whim to join the AngelPad start-up factory last fall, then finding themselves in a whirlwind round of financing. For instance, they pitched Crosslink’s David Silverman at his home on a weekend, and got a commitment a day later.

Multimillion dollar seed rounds would have been unheard of a couple years ago. Now they’re increasingly commonplace (here’s one for $4.2 million), at least for a certain class of incubator-blessed start-ups. And they’re part of the reason that you’re hearing lots of bubble talk right now.

For the record, the Vungle guys say they had no intention of raising so much out of the gate. But “as soon as you tell people you don’t want money, that’s when they want to give you money,” Smith says. Among those chipping in: Google Ventures, AOL Ventures, Ron Conway, Dave McClure, Charles Hudson, Maynard Webb, Scott McNealy and Tim Draper.

Zozi Gets Cozy With Celebrities to Separate Itself From the Groupon Clones

Tricia Duryee — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:00:42 +0000

After slogging it out for two years in the daily deals business, and facing competition from Groupon and hundreds of clones, Zozi believes it has started to find its niche.

Rather than focusing on extreme discounts, the San Francisco company has decided to offer extreme adventures.

Today, it is launching Zozi Guru, which sells high-end adventures taught and organized by professional athletes.

For example, you can go skiing with Olympic gold-medal skier Jonny Moseley, or go running with barefoot runner Eric Orton, or learn to kayak with Tao Berman, a three-time world-record holder for extreme whitewater kayaking.

Unlike typical daily deals, these offers are full price, and the merchants and celebrities involved will surely make money, which is in steep contrast to lots of sites that blast emails out to a list of subscribers on a daily basis.

“We don’t want to be a deals site. You won’t hear us use the word ‘deal.’ It’s all about experiences. We try to offer the best prices, but it’s about the adventure and exploration component,” said TJ Sassani, Zozi’s CEO and founder.

That hasn’t always been the case for Zozi.

It started off as a daily deals site, selling international trips in 2008. But Sassani said the opportunity wasn’t as big as the company had hoped, and Zozi shifted to local adventures. Intially, it used the Groupon model to grow membership, but now that it has some scale, it is shifting to full price.

Typical offers on the site range from bungee-jumping sessions to kiteboarding lessons, but Sassani said the business won’t ever reach Groupon’s scale. He said he definitely doesn’t aspire to have an initial public offering; however, he does believe that it could be a $1 billion to $2 billion opportunity.

So far, Zozi has signed up close to one million subscribers and is in 20 cities, up from only one market in 2010. It has just started moving into Canada, and other locations are coming soon.

“Groupon is much more like Wal-Mart, where they offer low-cost, low-quality items to discount seekers,” Sassani said. “But our average purchase price ($60) is more than double Groupon’s, and we target someone who would shop at REI. It’s a sophisticated customer, who is less price-sensitive.”

To help with the rollout of Zozi Guru, the company raised a small undisclosed inside round with investors last week. Previously, it had raised $10 million from Dave McClure’s 500 Startups, Launch Capital, ZIG Capital and others.

This week, Zozi is launching the new service with six celebrity athletes, but Sassani said the company has signed deals with 20 to 30 people, who will do a combination of 100 programs over the next year.

Sticking with its goal of offering premium experiences, the programs start at $1,000, and can go as high as $10,000, depending on the celebrity’s status and the event, which could include luxurious accommodations — one example might be a five-night visit to Hawaii, where you would learn how to surf from a professional, and stay at the Four Seasons.

Want to Lunch Like Larry or Snack Like Sergey? Kitchit Launches the NetJets for Personal Chefs. (Video)

Drake Martinet — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 16:01:42 +0000

Imagine lifting the silver lid on a carefully prepared, elegantly plated and perfectly seasoned culinary masterpiece, only to realize … your dog is pawing at your leg, begging for a bite.

That experience, or something like it, is precisely what the new start-up Kitchit is trying to bring to its users’ homes.

Launching today, in invite-only beta, the Web service allows anyone with a credit card to book a top-tier chef to prepare the meal at their next dinner party.

The company, which was part of Stanford’s StartX incubator program, just finished raising a seed round of funding. The value of the round is undisclosed, but it counts super-angel Dave McClure among the early investors.

The three founders — CEO Brendan Marshall, CTO George Tang and Chief of Product Ian Ferguson — came together months ago to build a business around the idea of “democratizing fine dining,” said Marshall.

Buzzwords aside, Kitchit is opening up what was a previously gray market of transactions made by foodie insiders — or people who happened to have the connections necessary to find chefs who were looking to make extra money cooking outside the confines of their primary jobs at high-end restaurants.

With Kitchit, even a fish-stick aficionado can arrange for such a meal.

It’s the exact same kind of hidden economy that companies like Airbnb have built a business on disrupting.

But what does this new opportunity mean for the user/eater?

Potential diners visit Kitchit.com and pick from a stable of preapproved chefs — about 40 at last count — who will prepare their haute cuisine in the client’s home for any number of guests.

Kitchit takes care of billing, scheduling and making the connection with the chef, taking a cut of the payment.

The end result, said Ferguson, is “a five-star meal cooked for you and your guests in your home, for less than you would pay in a restaurant.”

And while the prices fluctuate with the cost of ingredients and demands of individual chefs, Ferguson’s math does seem to hold, even if it doesn’t promise an enormous bargain.

He explained that the average per-plate cost of a Kitchit dinner party is somewhere between $50 and $100.

Still, being able to eat at home and drink wine without a restaurant’s precious liquor markup must mean some savings, right?

While it’s tempting to draw an immediate correlation between Kitchit and a company such as Airbnb, CEO Marshall insisted the two were after different markets.

“We’re really more like NetJets for now,” he said.

Beyond the initial focus on high-end dining, Kitchit faces some sobering costs of scaling that Airbnb doesn’t.

For one, the cost of onboarding new chefs is high.

Ferguson noted that many chefs “don’t do a great job of writing their own bios, and few have enough high-quality photos of dishes they’ve prepared — but that’s also exactly why Kitchit can succeed.”

Kitchit, in a sense, has to serve two masters, at least according to Ferguson.

“Our chefs need to see value in using Kitchit, as well,” he said. “It has to make their lives easier, and make it possible for them to make extra money more reliably than other methods.”

And while the eating public never sees it, Kitchit provides a management interface and a host of other services to chefs who book events using the platform.

Kitchit has also started negotiating bulk deals on certain expensive ingredients, such as caviar, so that it can drive the cost of dinner parties down further.

As for what’s next, its founders said the company will spend its time and money growing the stable of chefs and expanding to other markets.

That’s in addition to plenty of “delicious business development meetings,” said Ferguson.

The trio of well-fed founders recently sat down for a fairly lengthy video chat about the launch of Kitchit and the difficulties of building a tech business that sells such an analog service:

[ See post to watch video ]

Battling Angel Investors Agree to Kiss, Make Up and Fund Communications Start-Ups Together

Liz Gannes — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:16:34 +0000

Dave McClure and Ron Conway, the two investors most publicly associated with last year’s “AngelGate” scandal over power struggles between seed-stage investors, have set aside their differences to invest in the second round of the Twilio Fund, dedicated to start-ups built on top of the Twilio communications platform.

The new Twilio Fund consists of $125,000 from McClure’s 500 Startups and another $125,000 from Conway’s SV Angel. Chosen start-ups get at least $10,000 each, according to McClure.

Highlights from the last batch included WorkersNow, Proven and FastCall411, McClure said.

McClure said he and Conway — who has been called “the godfather of Silicon Valley” — have worked on a few investments together lately, and joked, “It’s OK to kiss the ring every now and again.”

500 Startups' Next Class Leaves the Nest (Plus, a Full List of the Companies)

Drake Martinet — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 23:24:23 +0000

Dave McClure’s seed fund, start-up accelerator and incubator — 500 Startups — hatched another class of companies into the world on Tuesday.

Some from the seed funding program and others from the accelerator, 27 companies presented to a packed house at 500 Startups’ HQ in downtown Mountain View, Calif.

This class was heavy on consumer services products, focusing on things like shopping and product discovery. A surprisingly large number of food- and restaurant-related services also demoed. And, of course, it wouldn’t be an incubator demo day without at least a few companies building services for tech companies.

McClure emceed the whole session, noting that 500 Startups had invested in 175 companies to date and plans to continue a focus on adding international start-ups to its ranks.

Below is the list of companies and products announced. The list is complete, thanks to a lack of “off the record” conditions such those imposed at Y Combinator Demo Days.

Tout
http://www.toutapp.com
Email response templates and tracking.

VidCaster
http://www.vidcaster.com
Make a video site on your own domain.

Daily Aisle
http://www.dailyaisle.com
Expedia for wedding vendors.

AppGrooves
http://www.appgrooves.com
iOS app discovery platform.

Loku
http://www.loku.com
Big data for local.

Kibin
http://www.kibin.com
“The easiest way to get feedback and editing on your writing.”

OVIA
http://www.oviahr.com
Video interviewing service for recruiting.

BugHerd
http://www.bugherd.com
Visual bug tracker for the Web.

Skipola
http://www.skipola.com
Easy mobile apps for restaurants.

LaunchBit
http://www.launchbit.com
Ad network for email.

Tinfoil Security
http://www.tinfoilsecurity.com
Protecting Web sites from outside hackers.

Culture Kitchen SF
http://www.culturekitchensf.com
“Ethnic cooking classes taught by the grandmas you wish you had.”

Storytree
http://www.storytree.com
Capture and share family stories.

DailyGobble
http://www.dailygobble.com
One-to-one marketing for restaurants through receipt digitization.

Vayable
http://www.vayable.com
Social marketplace for experiences.

Singboard
http://www.singboard.com
YouTube meets karaoke. AllThingsD‘s Liz Gannes wrote about them here.

Chirpme
http://www.chirpme.com
Connecting people through single dates.

From.us
http://www.from.us
Crowdsourced gift selection and purchasing.

Welcu
http://www.welcu.com
Managing unique high-end events.

Console
http://www.console.fm
“Awesome music with no hassle.”

Zerply
http://www.zerply.com
“Professional networking done right.”

WillCall
http://www.getwillcall.com
HotelTonight for live music and theater.

Manpacks
http://www.manpacks.com
Purchasing help for men’s accessories.

Snapette
http://www.snapette.com
Location-based fashion discovery and sharing.

CardinalBlue
http://www.cardinalblue.com
Makers of Pic Collage, a Top 10 photo app.

CoderBuddy
http://www.coderbuddy.com
Next-generation ODesk meets Heroku.

CraftCoffee
http://www.craftcoffee.com
Mobile apps for small business.

Meet 500 Startups: The New Class

Liz Gannes — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 16:00:22 +0000

Start-up accelerator 500 Startups today unveiled the 21 early-stage companies it has funded and brought in-house for mentorship this summer. Founding partner Dave McClure and newly promoted partner Christine Tsai gave us a peek at the list. They are particularly proud that 20 percent of the founders in the class are women and 30 percent are from outside the U.S.

Descriptions are from 500 Startups:

AppGrooves is an iOS app that recommends iPhone and iPad apps. We fill the gap between Apple’s App Store and modern advanced EC sites such as Amazon and Netflix.
BugHerd: Log and discuss bugs within your own website with BugHerd, the world’s simplest bug tracker for web designers and developers.
Cardinal Blue is building a better way for people to work together in real-time using photos and chat.
Culture Kitchen connects lower-income immigrant women skilled in cooking authentic, ethnic cuisines with food lovers who want to learn this craft and the story behind food.
DailyAisle is the easiest place for brides to search and book their wedding vendors.
HelloWorld: Simple profiles for developers.
Kibin: Your momma won’t tell you that you’re writing sucks, but Kibin users will give you unbiased feedback on essays, resumes, or breakup notes.
LaunchBit builds tools to help new web entrepreneurs do customer development.
LaunchRock: We launch stuff, mostly companies and products but occasionally iPods in rockets.
Ovia is using the power of video to provide a more human approach to finding the best talent and making the hiring process more effective, because recruitment is all about finding the right people, not just the best resume.
Scoopola is the HotelTonight for live music and theater.
Snapette: Discover and share great fashion products from around the corner or around the world conveniently on your phone.
StoryTree brings families and loved ones closer together by capturing and sharing the stories that matter.
ToutApp is canned responses on steroids with analytics.
Vayable is a marketplace for things to do on vacation.
VidCaster is an easy way to create a video site on your own domain.
Volta is an A/B testing framework for live, outbound phone calls.
vvall helps you complete your memories by collecting moments captured by friends.
Welcu: Complete control of your event planning: Efficient, effective and white label.
Zerply is a non-corporate LinkedIn, built for the generation who has grown up with the web.

Here’s our story on the first 500 Startups class.

500 Startups Sends 22 of Them Into the World

Liz Gannes — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 00:30:14 +0000

500 Startups–Dave McClure’s seed fund, accelerator program, communal office and yes, he dares call it an “incubator”–today held its first open house to show off 22 young companies.

In attendance were many of the same angelic faces that showed up to Y Combinator’s Demo Day two weeks ago and AngelPad’s Demo Day last week.

500 Startups’ tone is more whimsical than the earnest hacker vibe of its peers; McClure, known as much for his swearing as his investing, encouraged attendees to heckle presenters, and presenters to roll with the hiccups in their presentation slides, and they did.

500 Startups participants told me that their group as a whole is more focused on consumers and less focused on advertising business models than other young start-ups.

But they are not all that unique of snowflakes: for instance, Spoondate sounds just like Grubwithus in Y Combinator’s most recent class. Not to say that helping users make new friends by arranging dinner dates at restaurants–as both companies do–is a bad idea.

In chats with participating companies, the infographic building and sharing tool Visual.ly was mentioned multiple times as one of the most promising companies in the bunch. Others that got shout-outs included MotionMath (movement-based learning games), Ninua (social news apps with 1.7 million users already), ReadyForZero (credit card debt management) and SpeakerGram (speaking engagement management tools).

Here’s the list of the 500 Startups accelerator company pitches:

InternMatch connects students with amazing internships.

Spoondate is the easiest way to meet and eat with someone wherever you go.

Punchd http://getpunchd.com: We put loyalty cards on your smartphone. Businesses get analytics & a way to recognize, reward, contact their regular customers directly.

Funny line from co-founder Reed Morse: “Punchd is a hyper-local real-time deal platform…in your pants. That sounds like a lot of buzzword bullshit, but think about it.”

Rewardli is a social commerce platform that lets small businesses pool their buying power to get cash back and discounts on their purchases.

Visual.ly is 2 things; a platform for exploring, sharing, and promoting great visualizations. And a service that connects dataviz pros, to advertisers & publishers looking for compelling content.

Wednesdays: Get connected IRL. Wednesdays makes it easy to coordinate face-to-face lunches with colleagues, interest groups, and friends.

YongoPal is mobile photo-sharing for English learning and cultural exploration.

Ninua connects readers and writers through social news exploration. Largest Facebook news app. New mobile app. 1.7M active users and growing.

Crowdrally is making videos social.

Co-founder Evan Kuo put on quite a show. His company previously built a fan page product, he said, but, “About six weeks ago Facebook tried to C&D our asses. They said you can’t monetize the stream. If we can’t monetize it, we can’t monetize it.” So now Crowdrally is building a communal remote control tool to play videos on a TV screen from a laptop or mobile device. Kuo challenged attendees to give him a million bucks so he can walk away from his existing acquisition offers.

Baydin is building the future of email.

SpeakerGram is the easiest way to book and manage speaking engagements.

955 Dreams is a new media publishing company focused on the Music and Education verticals.

500 Startups also offered a list of companies it has seed-funded, some of whom presented at the event.

Tokyo-based startup myGengo is the Mechanical Turk for translation: A platform and API for human translation at huge scale.

Ginzametrics makes website optimization for search and social media simple, fast and super-scalable.

Saygent is the world’s smartest voice response & analysis SaaS for superior customer insights

Volta is an A/B testing framework for live, outbound phone calls.

Too much email? AwayFind puts an end to constant email interruptions, only notifying you with messages that matter NOW — via mobile/SMS/etc.

Social Stork bottles the social activity of new moms and gives advice, community, and contextual introductions to the perfect baby products along the journey.

Evoz connects busy moms to their babies from ANYWHERE and delivers personalized parenting content and services based on their baby’s data.

WorkersNow is an online staffing platform that is changing the way blue-collar workers are hired.

Motion Math creates learning games for mobile, turning math’s stumbling blocks into delightful game experiences.

ReadyForZero is online financial software that tracks your credit card debt, and helps you make and follow a plan to eliminate it.

CapLinked Wants To Make Deal Opportunities Go Social

Tomio Geron — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 13:00:57 +0000

Picture this: LinkedIn-meets-Salesforce, for potential start-up financing opportunities.

That’s the vision for CapLinked Inc., a new start-up that wants to be the go-to place for setting up and closing deals, as well as managing portfolio companies after the close.

The company has raised $525,000 in angel funding from Peter Thiel, Dave McClure’s 500 Startups; Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of Palantir Technologies; Aman Verjee, chief financial officer at Sonos; and David Anderson, managing partner of 7th Rig. CapLinked previously raised about $400,000 in a financing from individuals in 2010.

CapLinked co-founder and Chief Executive Eric Jackson is a former vice president of marketing at PayPal Inc. and knows investors Thiel, McClure, Lonsdale and Verjee, all formerly of PayPal.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

500 Startups Unveils Start-Up Accelerator Program

Liz Gannes — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 17:00:31 +0000

500 Startups, the angel fund led by the voluble marketer Dave McClure, is taking the wraps off its start-up accelerator program, which is already hosting 11 participants in Mountain View, Calif., and is focused on helping them with design and distribution.

(“Start-up accelerator” is the trendy iteration of “start-up incubator,” connoting a short-term program where participants gather and have some kind of curriculum, in the model of Y Combinator.)

500 Startups is led by McClure and former YouTube and Google product manager Christine Tsai. The existing class will hold a “demo day” for investors in the first week of April. The accelerator has no formal application process, but accepts new participants through referrals, including those who have already participated in a different start-up accelerator or already have outside investments.

In addition to ongoing events and the support of an extensive mentor network, participating start-ups get $25,000 to $100,000 in exchange for five percent of equity. That’s more money than elsewhere, but not as much as the $150,000 Yuri Milner and SV Angel are now offering to all Y Combinator participants.

Below are descriptions of the first 11 start-ups from 500 Startups’ jokey press release:

InternMatch
? InternMatch’s mission is to help college students discover amazing internships.
? Founded by: Andrew Maguire, Nathan Parcells, and Kyle Wilkinson
? Hails from: Seattle, WA
? Fun facts: Andrew Maguire spent countless hours during his college years playing speed chess on the streets of NYC, instead of studying for class. Nathan Parcells once spent 3 months on a 50 foot boat sailing to the Arctic Circle with his uncle. When he’s not coding to the break of dawn, Kyle Wilkinson plays guitar in punk band Shoot the Hostage.

Baydin
? Baydin’s mission is to facilitate purposeful communication. Right now, we’re building a personal trainer for your email, and let me tell you, Sue Sylvester’s got nothing on The Email Game.
? Founded by: Alexander Moore, Mike Chin, and Aye Moah
? Location: We started in Boston. Our team hails from Alabama, Connecticut, and Burma.
? Fun facts: For the times when there’s no saving it and email gets out of hand, we also make the Drunkerator (http://drunkerator.appspot.com), a hackathon project that lets you generate a drinking game for any reason. Take off your thinking hats and put on your drinking hats!

955 Dreams
? 955 Dream makes magical experiences on mobile devices.
? Founded by: Kiran Bellubbi and Kyle Oba
? Location: Mountain View, CA
? Fun facts: Both Kyle and Kiran have babies. Babies rule. And we have as many dogs in our office as humans. Dogs rule.
? Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKphAh701Js

YongoPal
? YongoPal is focused on conversational English education for university students in Asia. Rather than creating a new learning method or providing tools for helping students prepare for specific exams, YongoPal focuses on boosting language competency through peer relationships — matching students of English in Asia with their peers at top-tier American universities for live online conversation practice and cultural exchange.
? Founded by: Darien Brown, Daron Hall, and Brian Suchland
? Hails from: Seattle, WA
? Fun fact: The YongoPal founders, Darien Brown, Daron Hall and Brian Suchland, currently share a two bedroom apartment with two university students from Korea. A no-kimchi-in-the-fridge policy is strictly enforced.

Spoondate
? Spoondate is a dating website that allows food-loving singles to meet and go on
awesome food dates with like-minded eaters.
? Founded by: Raissa Nebie and Van Nguyen
? Hails from: San Francisco. Raissa is from Abidjan, Ivory Coast via New York City. Van is from Delaware
? Fun facts: Raissa is a banker turned chef and has cooked a meal in over 10 countries across 4 continents. Van won first place at two “game jams” (where nerds build computer games in less than 48 hours).

Ninua
? Ninua collects the world’s stories, delivers them across platforms, and connects people around them.
? Founded by: Waleed Abdulla
? Hails from: Mountain View, CA
? Fun fact: Ninua’s main product, NetworkedBlogs, started as a weekend hackathon project to learn how to build an app on the Facebook platform. Its name at the time was “Blogs I Read”.

Crowdrally
? Crowdrally’s mission is to provide social influencers with organic digital
endorsements, so they can get paid without selling out.
? Founded by: Evan Kuo and Andy Chen
? Hails from: We are Berkeley and Stanford students born and raised in the heart of silicon valley.
? Fun fact: Evan has an absolutely terrible sense of direction and once engineered a GPS enabled tactile feedback belt to communicate realtime orientation through a ring of vibrational cellphone motors. Andy previously started an online marketplace for professional chefs to indulge his demanding eating habits.

Rewardli
? Rewardli lets business owners use leverage their social graph in new and interesting ways. Stay tuned for more.
? Founded by: George Favvas
? Hails from: Montreal, Quebec. O Canada!
? Fun fact: George sealed the deal by recording himself giving his Keynote presentation outside in snowy -10 degree weather. He had calculated that it took about 15 minutes for his fingers to freeze, which was a good incentive to keep his presentation nice and tight.

Wednesdays
? Stay in touch with friends and colleagues. Over lunch. On Wednesdays. For an invite to the beta, email an old friend with whom you’d like to stay in better touch and copy lunch@wednesdays.com.
? Founded by: Andy Chen
? Hails from: Silicon Valley
? Fun fact: The Wednesdays founders were inspired by a Scientific American article which said that lunches and other social support activities are important to staying healthy and happy, and ultimately increase survival by 50%.

[Super Secret Startup]
? Stew Langille, former VP of marketing at Mint.com, is starting a new media
company. More to be unveiled soon!

SpeakerGram
? SpeakerGram wants to connect people with a story to tell with an audience that
wants to hear them.
? Founded by: Sam Rosen
? Hails from: The concrete jungle… New York City!
? Fun fact: Sam Rosen is an amateur competitive eater. His personal bests include
a medium Papa John’s pizza in 2:24 and 45 BBQ wings in 8 minutes.

I/O Ventures Returns to Train Second Class of Start-Ups

Liz Gannes — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 18:14:49 +0000

With a swarm of start-up accelerators in the mold of Y Combinator all hitting the tech scene last year, it’s inevitable that some will fall by the wayside. But I/O Ventures, based in San Francisco’s Mission District, will be back for another season, co-founder Paul Bragiel tells NetworkEffect.

Bragiel bragged that of the six I/O Ventures companies from last year, one has been acquired (Facebook fan page creator Damntheradio by FanBridge), one is in late-stage acquisition talks (online video monetization platform SocialVision), three have raised funding of at least $400,000 from investors such as Max Levchin and Dave McClure, and the last (experience marketplace Skyara) is closing a funding round.

While I/O Ventures will continue to run with a curriculum quite similar to other start-up programs–soliciting young folks who have an idea but not much else, for a few months of intensive mentorship and events, followed by a “Demo Day” for investors–it has a few characteristics that set it apart. Mainly, the program is located in a building owned by its founders in the happening Mission District, home to a newly opened cafe called The Summit, which has become a bustling space for techie meetings and laptop sessions.

Bragiel said he expects to accept five to six companies once more, rather than swelling to a larger class, as Y Combinator has done. The program pays $25,000 and waives rent in exchange for eight percent of a start-up’s common stock. This year’s edition will include more events and more hand-holding around the initial company formation process, Bragiel said.

I/O Ventures continues to be funded by its four founding partners: Bragiel (who recently sold his forum company, Lefora), as well as BitTorrent co-founder Ashwin Navin, HotorNot co-founder Jim Young and Myspace co-founder Aber Whitcomb. It will accept applications through Feb. 15, with the sessions starting March 1.

955 Dreams Jazzes Up iPad With Interactive Music History App

Liz Gannes — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 14:00:22 +0000

The tablet interface can’t help but make your brain think of the future of books dancing across the screen. A little startup called 955 Dreams is bringing some of that imagination into reality today with the release of its History of Jazz iPad app.

History of Jazz has whimsical, tactile navigation, with animated chronological browsing rather than the standard pagination of an ebook. The app includes integrations such as iTunes music purchasing, playing videos and songs over household speakers through Apple AirPlay, and showing Wikipedia bios and YouTube videos. It also offers a “screensaver mode” that turns the iPad into a sort of History of Jazz coffee table book.

While the folks at 955 Dreams are clearly passionate about the subject matter of jazz, what they’ve really done is created a custom music-oriented interface for existing online content. The price for this design, curation and integrations is $9.99 at launch.

955 Dreams plans to release other music apps as well as early education titles. Members of the team–which only has three employees and seed funding from 500 Startups and Mitch Kapor– had in the past released apps such as “Mario Batali Cooks” for the iPhone with a previous company called High Five Labs.

But 955 Dreams will face competition from the likes of further along startups and existing publishers such as Inkling, which is overhauling existing textbooks for the iPad, and has deep partnerships with publishers, lots of funding, and close ties to Apple. 955 Dreams Co-founder and CEO Kiran Bellubbi said a more apt competitor might be Callaway Digital Arts, the iFund-backed startup that made the innovative iPad apps Martha Stewart Bakes Cookies and Miss Spider’s Tea Party.

The app currently doesn’t include social features, but Bellubbi said a later version will include ways for users to share their jazz collections and vote on the top 100 jazz records of all time.

Here’s a video from 955 Dreams demonstrating how the History of Jazz app works:

BoomTown Decodes Ron Conway's Super Angel Super Fit (So You Don't Have To)!

Kara Swisher — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 09:57:54 +0000

Ah, there’s nothing like a manly hissy fit amongst a passel of white dudes in Silicon Valley to open the fall television viewing season!

In this latest episode of “Glee,” a group of Super Angel Cheerios–who apparently like a good bottle of Kistler or two–plot to stop the entrepreneur kids from getting to the valuations they’ve been working so hard to inflate.

Dave “Sue Sylvester” McClure uses his bullhorn blog to call foul about a not-naming-names-but-still-really-mad-as-hell story of collusion by that creepy kid from the school newspaper who wants to blackmail Rachel into a date.

Well, that got the gleek club’s teacher, Mr. Ron Conway, mighty irked, and so he wrote an email–which was somehow, in some way “leaked”–to express his various, sundry and decidedly complex feelings.

Thus, the need for a thorough decoding:

Ron wrote: Subject: Super Angels Gathering

Translation: I myself am a Super Duper Angel and therefore am not at all hurt that I was not invited to the fancy wine restaurant called Bin 38, which I would so enjoy.

Not. At. All.

Sigh. I love a good Kistler chard.

Was Sacca there?

Ron wrote: I want to share my views on the two gatherings you had in June and this week and what they represent in my opinion.

So that I would not be influenced by any outside inputs I am writing this without sharing my thoughts with anyone including David Lee and the other SV Angel Partners.

I want to clarify once and for all my total disagreement with your values and motives for being investors.

Translation: I was not there, but this does not stop me from completely going all Judge Judy–indicting, trying and convicting you, and despite the fact that one of my own partners was at the faux-controversial dinner.

I do this with a sense of righteous indignation that shall endear me to the entrepreneurs I would so dearly love to steal right out from under you.

Ron wrote: I have stated consistently for year that I invest because I love helping entrepenuers and watching them learn and succeed.

I am honored that entrepenuers share their crystal ball views of the future of innovation and technology with us and respect the guts it takes to start a company.

Translation: Here’s where I spread it on thick.

Just a small town geek
Livin’ in a lonely world
He took the midnight train goin’ anywhere (actually Palo Alto).

Just a city boy
Born and raised in a very nice crib in San Francisco.
He took the midnight limo goin’ anywhere (except not to Bin 38).

Some Supers in a smoky room
A smell of wine and cheap perfume
For a smile they can collude all night
It goes on and on and on and on.

Ron wrote: At SV Angel we try to reciprocate by adding value any way we can.

I think that actions speak louder than words and SV Angel has always been a friend of entrepenuers and we focus our business to help entrepenuers achieve success.

Translation: I might not be able to spell “entrepreneur,” and perhaps an SV Angel partner was present and accounted for at this dinner, but please instead focus on my jazz hands that are telling a tale of entrepreneurial adoration.

Ron wrote: The world of startups would be a better place if you spent less time complaining about deal structures, terms, vc’s, and valuations etc and the cars you drive, and just helped entrepenuers build their companies.

Translation: I have never complained about such things, except in the video below, in which I do.

Particularly about Porches. Um, Porsches.

Ron wrote: The Free Enterprise system is very efficient…why not let the marketplace demands decide on these issues, its worked for many many years. These startups are binary…they succeed or fail so why waste time on deal structures, terms, vc’s, and valuations etc and just help entrepenuers build their companies.

Translation: From this moment out, there will be no more convoluted term sheets from me. I am just going to leave a barrel full of money by the door of my “entrepeneur”-paid-for-it apartment and any nerd can grab a handful or two.

Ron wrote: In my opinion your motives are driven by self serving factors around ego satisfaction and “making a buck”.

My motives and values are very different.

Translation: To paraphrase a line from the upcoming movie about Facebook–which is one of my investments, in case I did not mention it:

Making a buck isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Making a billion bucks!

Ron wrote: They are so different I want to be up front with you and recognize this and disengage from any involvement with you. I will not be a hypocrite.

I am tired of seeing you and engaging in idle chit chat and not sharing my true feelings.

I think you have a different value set and lets agree to disagree and not have to even engage in any idle chit chat or discussion of any sort….ever.

Translation: Super Duper Angels are from Venus, Super Angels are from Mars.

Ron wrote: Furhermore, I regret David Lee was involved in the gatherings. I am sure he does too.

We talked about the first dinner and I encouraged him to write the email above and withdraw…I know he was uncomfortable with both gatherings…where no one was there to speak up for the interests of the entrepenuers.

Translation: David Lee, my partner, was very uncomfortable at the gathering. Which is why he went twice.

Two times, to make sure he was completely regretful.

One. Then two. He felt just awful.

To be fair, the wine was superb.

Ron wrote: By now you are rolling your eyes and saying “Ron’s a ___________(fill in the blank)…and who is he to pass judgement…..

We are all entitled to our opinions.

‘
Translation: How about this fill-in-the-blank: Ron’s a little old to be throwing mud pies at the other investors in a digital sandbox.

We are all entitled to our opinions.

Ron wrote: I am just being honest and transparent….the way most of the entrepenuers I invest are…

I wish the Angel community could have the same integrity and values of the entrepenuer community, but unfortunately I now believe that is hopeless and your actions prove that.

What do you think the entrepenuers you have funded are thinking right now.

Translation: Does this sound like pandering to the cheap seats, while also engaging in some not-so-subtle self-aggrandizement? Perish the thought!

But here’s what I hope they are thinking–let’s all dump the Super Angels and go back to Silicon Valley’s original Sugar Daddy Ron.

Ron wrote: This is despicable and embarrassing for the tech community in my opinion.

Can you learn from this ?

Translation: Oh, dear–here’s the part where Mr. Schuester sums up what all the kids learned this week, perhaps via a poignant song. I hope it’s not from “Cats.”

Ron wrote: Please keep this confidential even though I know that will be hard since two of you let your egos take over and show Arrington how important you are by telling him you were headed to a “secret” angel gathering.

Translation: Yes, don’t leak this by any means. Not by email, which works perfectly if you use your personal Gmail account.

I also have no idea how every investment strategy deck I do somehow reaches TechCrunch in its entirety.

It’s a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a Gmail–you know, in case you did not know, I was a very early investor in Google (GOOG).

Ron wrote: Dave McCLure…pls try not to blog about this and cause silicon valley more embarrassment with your unprofessional classless writings

Translation: Yes, Dave, leave the unprofessional classless writings to the professionals. Like BoomTown!

Ron wrote: Note: I did not include those who were at the gatherings who I don’t know well enough to form an opinion around their motives or values.

Translation: You’re next if you keep messing with my Super Duper Angel investing business.

Don’t stop believin’ that.

And here’s Ron unplugged:

"Super Angel" Aydin Senkut Talks About VCs, Start-Ups and Shaking Up Tech Investing

Kara Swisher — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 14:11:12 +0000

While in Vancouver last week, BoomTown got some time to chat with Aydin Senkut about his recent announcement of a new $40 million investment fund, which is part of a “super angel” trend in Silicon Valley.

In many ways, the concept of a super angel was pioneered by well-known tech investor Ron Conway, whom Senkut mentions in the video interview I did with him, below.

But now the market is getting very crowded, with a $30 million fund being raised by Dave McClure just one of many similar efforts by others, from Chris Sacca to Michael Dearing to Conway himself, again.

Apparently, according to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal, these super angels have some kind of mysterioso “magnetic” effort–which means entrepreneurs like them and other investors pay mind.

Also, they compete with VCs, which–IMHO–simply means more VCs of different shapes and sizes. Oh joy!

In all seriousness, via Felicis Ventures, Senkut has been a serious regular-size angel investor for many years, since he left a post at Google (GOOG), with wins that include Mint, which sold to Intuit (INTU), and the Google-acquired Aardvark.

Here’s my chat with Senkut, which touches on all these topics and more:

[ See post to watch video ]

Comparison Shopping Online Is for Small Businesses Too

Tomio Geron — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:00:26 +0000

Efficient comparison shopping is a major benefit for consumers who purchase products online. A new start-up, TransFS LLC, is seeking to bring similar benefits to small businesses.

TransFS, which stands for Transparent Financial Services, is starting with providing merchants a comparison of credit-card processing companies. To back its business, TransFs raised $510,000 in seed funding from Hyde Park Angels, Dave McClure’s 500Startups and other, unnamed angels.

“It’s really complicated because there are a lot of providers,” said Sean Harper, co-founder and chief executive of TransFS. “No one knows how they stack up with each other with respect to reputation and capabilities and pricing rules, which are always negotiated.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

More Money for iPhone Ads: Medialets Raises $6 Million

Peter Kafka — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 13:00:25 +0000

We don’t know how the mobile ad business will look or how big it will be, but it’s a pretty safe bet to assume it’s going to be a lot bigger than it is now. Which makes investors quite happy to throw money at it.

Latest example: A $6 million B round for Medialets, a two-year-old New York company best known for making “in-app” ads for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone platform, as well as for Google’s (GOOG) Android, etc.

Existing investor Foundry Group, which led a $4 million A round a year ago, leads this one as well. DFJ Gotham is also in again, and new money includes Dave McClure’s 500 Startups incubator and Chris Saridakis, who until recently was Gannett’s (GCI) chief digital officer.

A good chunk of this deal already closed months ago and leaked out via a Series D filing; I assume that new investors have joined the round since then, but I don’t have details.

August 10, 2010: NEW YORK, NY – Medialets, the most widely deployed cross-platform rich media advertising provider for mobile, today announced the closing of a $6 million Series B financing round led by investor Foundry Group, with participation from DFJ Gotham, 500 Startups and Chris Saridakis. Medialets will use the funds to expand the capabilities of its mobile rich media ad platform and supporting tools in order to bring rich media ads to the broadest range of advertisers possible.

“Medialets was founded in 2008 on the understanding that mobile would unleash a powerful engagement opportunity for advertisers,” said Medialets CEO Eric Litman. “Since then, not only has Medialets enabled the industry’s most compelling mobile rich media for premier publishers, agencies and brands, we’ve also built out a one-of-a-kind cross-platform infrastructure that brings greater efficiency and scale to mobile rich media campaigns. This Series B funding allows us to continue to evolve the Medialets’ platform to meet the phenomenal demand for high-value mobile rich media.”

Since its inception in June 2008, Medialets has pioneered the creation, delivery and measurement of the most highly engaging rich media ad formats for mobile. In 2009, Medialets created and served the world’s first rich media ad for mobile apps. Earlier this year Medialets followed up on the release of its Universal SDK for iPhone and iPad with the launch of Android advertising support, making Medialets the first provider of cross-platform rich media ads for mobile apps. More recently, Medialets introduced Medialets Enrichä, a partner program that significantly reduces the complexity of mobile advertising for buyers by enabling them to deliver and measure the same creative campaign on different mobile platforms and across Medialets’ partner ad networks, mediators and ad servers.

“Medialets has set the standard for creative and technological innovation in mobile rich media,” said Seth Levine, Managing Director of Foundry Group, Medialets lead investor. “By providing a scalable platform that uniquely addresses the challenges of mobile for both publishers and brands, Medialets has staked out its position as market leader early in the game and will continue to be a driving force in the rapidly growing mobile advertising market.”

A world-class executive team, assembled within the past year, has spearheaded Medialets’ tremendous growth. Keith Gelles, co-founder of PointRoll, joined Medialets as Chief Technology Officer joined the team in July and Aaron Mittman, a former executive at Panther Express and DoubleClick, joined the team in September as Vice President, Global Sales. More recently, Andrew Eisele, formerly of TargetSpot, joined Medialets as the company’s first Chief Financial Officer. The executive team is supported by an advisory board that includes Greg Tagaris, former CIO DoubleClick, Andy Ellenthal, CEO Peer39, Ari Paparo, VP Digital at Nielsen and former Group Director of Advertiser Products at Google, Shervin Pishevar, Chairman SGN, and Colin Crawford, former CEO MacWorld/PC World.

Meet Someone Who Still Wants to Invest in Start-Ups: Founders Fund's Dave McClure

Peter Kafka — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 23:09:15 +0000

It’s a whole lot harder for the start-ups buzzing around South by Southwest to find someone to back them than it was a year ago. A decimated Dow makes it a lot harder for people to take fliers on even the most promising start-ups.

But there are still investors willing to place some bets, even on the most nascent companies. Via the angel-investing program he’s running for the Founders Fund,
Dave McClure is one of those guys.

Founders is a VC fund run by Valley bigshots like Peter Thiel, most of whom made a lot of money when they sold PayPal to eBay (EBAY) many moons ago. Last year, they brought on McClure to handle smaller investments than they would normally make.

Founders Fund, which already owns a piece of Facebook, has already made bets on the burgeoning Facebook app ecosystem via the “fbFund,” so McClure is particularly interested in those types of companies. Which explains why I found him at the Facebook “Developer Garage”–a Facebook-sponsored mini-convention held on the outskirts of SXSW.

But McClure chatted with me about non-Facebook investments as well, and why it’s easier to find interesting deals now that he isn’t competing with amateur angels who made their money at Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO).

[ See post to watch video ]

Bonus footage: Want to see what I look liked during this interview? I don’t recommend it, because grooming standards got a little relaxed over the weekend. But for diehards, here’s a (sped-up) version of our chat, from a different angle, via The Interwebs, which filmed me filming McClure. Down the rabbit hole we go:

BoomTown as Web CEO: A Titanically Bad Idea

Kara Swisher — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 08:00:03 +0000

Here’s an interview I did with Master of 500 Hats blogger Dave McClure last week, which I am sure to regret at some point.

Mostly because of this odd illustration he also did (that I secretly like way too much).

In it, he asks me what I would do with various big Internet companies if I were the supreme leader.

Not much! Thus, my flourishing career as a backseat driver!

Here’s the video:

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Love–and Being a CEO–Means Always Having to Say You're Sorry

Kara Swisher — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:54:24 +0000

So, Mark Zuckerberg apologized.

Yes, he took too long to do it. Yes, he was dumb to release a product, Beacon, without thinking through the potential privacy implications. Yes, it was a big black eye for the Facebook founder.

But good for him.

While some are arguing that no one but the press and privacy advocates cared about the whole controversy around the ad system that can track your purchases on some external sites and send the information back to your Facebook profile’s news feed, it was only bound to get uglier out there.

So Zuckerberg, as he had before on news feeds, correctly calculated that it was time to eat crow. “I’m not proud of the way we’ve handled this situation and I know we can do better,” he wrote in a blog post today on the topic.

We knew that was coming, didn’t we?

Indeed, there was no benefit in staying stubborn about the feature that might not even be the be-all-and-end-all ad solution the social-networking site needs.

Reaction, of course, is mixed, as to the extent of the apology, the change and its impact.

On one hand, Om Malik of GigaOm, who is calling it Beacon Gate, noted: “I think this is a good move by Zuckerberg and I hope his team learns from it. This is the second time they have tried to test the limits of their community and gotten some flack for it. It would be better if they asked–they are a social community–and being social means listening and talking with each other first, not after the fact.”

On the other, Dave McClure of Master of 500 Hats defends Facebook: “The fact of the matter: Most of this sh– just doesn’t matter to most FB users. It might be a PR screw-up, but as long as the user base doesn’t have a negative reaction, eventually the advertisers won’t give a damn.”

We’ll see about that, of course, because this kind of thing can turn into death by a thousand cuts for a company, if they are not careful and don’t put the right kind of leadership in place with enough judgment to avoid this kind of mess.

More on that–the most critical issue going forward for Facebook–in this space soon.

The Children's Crusade Strikes Back at Not-a-Teenager (aka Really Old Lady) BoomTown

Kara Swisher — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 10:46:57 +0000

The ankle-biters have spoken and it seems that I am completely wrong in my estimation in several recent posts where I wrote that Facebook widgets are–how shall we put it delicately?–exceedingly inane.

Why? Apparently because inane is the goal! Well then, I guess: Mission accomplished!

At an appearance at the Web 2.0 Summit yesterday, a group on a panel called “Facebook as a Platform,” led by Dave McClure, talked about a lot of stuff.

But it seemed to get lively when the discussion turned to my comparison of the boom in third party apps on Facebook to the arrival in my home of a box of shiny plastic toys from China.

I was at home with my own actual 2-year-old playing a rousing game of hit-mama-with-the-foam-finger- and-crack-up-hysterically, when the group–which included Seth Goldstein of SocialMedia, Ali Partovi of iLike, Keith Rabois of Slide and Lance Tokuda of RockYou–declared me humorless.

All because I did not realize that these apps were meant to be silly and more fun than a barrel of monkeys.

Actually, I did know that and, by the way, monkeys are much more fun.

Here was my initial argument:

But, so far, as popular as those apps have become, what [Facebook founder Mark] Zuckerberg and the widget-makers have wrought is mostly silly, useless and time-wasting and the kazillion users of these widgets are pretty much just acting like little children.

“I never thought I would call the often frivolous AOL back in the day–very simply, a Neanderthal version of Facebook–a mature offering in comparison.

“While I will admit when I am not chewing nails that a lot of these apps are somewhat fun, I can’t help but ask myself that lyric from the old Peggy Lee classic: ‘Is that all there is?’

“And if that is all there is, can Facebook really build a viable and long-lasting business on what is essentially a bunch of games that will ultimately become wearying for users? Doesn’t it need more robust apps that actually are useful and relevant and make Facebook the service that Zuckerberg has often told me was a ‘utility’?

“While Facebook–with a cleaner and more strict look and a better navigation–is surely less goofy than rival MySpace for anyone over 12 years old, and its video, photo and email features are nice, the vast majority of its apps are still mostly as dumb as a box of hammers.”

“Kara’s argument is ridiculous,” said Slide’s Rabois, according to a report on Wired.com.

“Why do people watch movies and TV? Because they’re bored or looking for something to do to relieve stress in their lives. Apps are providing entertainment to users.”

Really, Keith? I had no idea, despite the fact that “Gilligan’s Island” was my favorite show for way too many years!

Seriously, I know what he is saying and I agree on the need for some fun on this tragic little spinning globe of ours, except:

1. I would be fine with silly widgets, if there were more serious ones too, well beyond Vampires and SuperPokes and even an app called Pop Ur Zit. All of these have the longevity of a gnat, designed to be faddish and quickly forgotten. And, if you are going to be fun, one might try a little harder to come up with some offerings that are a little less disposable.

In fact, on a recent visit I made to RockYou HQ (post coming Monday), its savvy tech lead noted that there was surely a limit to how much crap people wanted to throw at each other.

2. Entertainment, especially the idiotic kind, will not get you to massive sustained usage that characterizes a true paradigm shift that McClure claimed was happening.

For example, was it all the games that made the personal computer become a ubiquitous device? No, it was serious programs like VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3.

So where are those kind of apps for systems like Facebook, I wonder, as I noted in another post about what to do with a group of 2,500 techies I have gathered on the social-networking site. So far, we have a whole lot of nothing to offer them.

3. Another argument made on the panel was that the blogosphere used to be disdained as goofy only a few years ago and now it is a true media power.

Well, it was never disdained by me and, actually, there were a lot of substantive and important blogs even back then to balance out the fluffier ones. In fact, there were more.

4. As RockYou’s Tokuda said, referring to me: “I believe for her the apps are useless because she’s not a teenage girl.”

This is not a news flash, although I probably am one of the older diehard fans of “Hannah Montana.”

But it is not necessarily true that advertisers will flock to these widgets, just because the kids love it.

Because as much as advertisers want to reach a younger demographic, they also do not want to do it in an environment of frivolous engagement and I doubt there is much appeal to them when people are busy slapping each other digitally or cartoonifying their friends. In addition, advertisers want to reach people who will buy things and few are in that mindset when they are anonymously telling someone else the “honest” truth or being a Human Pet.

I could go on, but will stop there, so the Lollipop Guild can respond in crayon.

But here’s one offer I will take RockYou’s Tokuda up on: A promise he made onstage to build something just for me.

Just some guidance, Lance: No poking, slapping, tickling or zit-picking.

Call me old-fashioned, because I know you will anyway.