AllThingsD » incubator

Making Sure the Next Zuckerberg or Gates Stays Put at Harvard

Kara Swisher — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:40:11 +0000

Earlier today, Harvard University and New Enterprise Associates announced the Experiment Fund, aimed at making sure that future Mark Zuckerbergs and Bill Gates can stay on campus and innovate without having to head West.

The irony of the pair of legendary entrepreneurs dropping out — decades apart — of the even more legendary university to start two of tech most significant companies, Facebook and Microsoft.

No longer, apparently.

The early-stage incubator, which will award funding to four to six start-ups in amounts from $250,000 to $500,000. It will focus on seed ventures in the Cambridge, Mass. area around Harvard, which includes many other schools such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Experiment Fund came from an idea born Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, which involved NEA. Today, SEAS Dean Cherry Murray hosted an event that unveiled the initiative.

But, while faculty members will advise for the fund, Harvard has no financial stake.

In an interview NEA’s Patrick Chung said the intent was to enable talented students to “build a company here in Boston rather than have to go elsewhere.”

NEA will have full-time staffers working on the fund, investing in a wide range of companies. It has already backed a health app company, as well as a live Internet television offering.

“There has been an envy of the left coast, certainly,” said Chung. “Now, these talented engineers don’t have to leave when they reach the boundaries of the university where the ideas are formed.”

Added Chung: “They can walk right out of class and into a place that can make those start-ups real.”

In other words, let’s hope the third time’s a charm.

Here’s the map of exactly where the Experiment Fund is and official press release:

XFund press release

The Three Ventureers: Andreessen Horowitz Joining Conway and Milner in Y Combinator Start Fund

Kara Swisher — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 21:30:53 +0000

Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz said today that it was joining well-known investors Ron Conway and DST Global’s Yuri Milner in the Y Combinator Start Fund, which gives $150,000 to each start-up in its semi-annual group.

Andreessen Horowitz will be investing $50,000 of the total in each entrepreneurial effort, starting with the next “class” of up to five dozen companies later this month in the well-regarded incubator.

The money comes in the form of convertible debt, which is a loan that can convert if a start-up raises a funding round. Start-ups can refuse the money, although most do not.

“I can’t tell you how impressed we have been with the quality of the start-ups that Y Combinator has had,” said Marc Andreessen in an interview with me this afternoon. “[Co-founders Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston] have become the consigliere to a whole new generation of entrepreneurs.”

Indeed. Y Combinator assembles these start-ups twice a year, giving them about $15,000 to work on their idea, but — more importantly — providing a lot of support and entree to powerful investors in Silicon Valley. Its efforts have been critical to the beginnings of many successful companies, such as Reddit, Loopt and Scribd.

“So many of the high quality seed deals have been coming from Y Combinator and we wanted to be close to all those companies,” said Andreessen. “It’s a great view of what’s coming next from the very best start-ups.”

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 ]

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.

AngelPad Gets VC Firms to Commit $100K to All Its Start-Ups

Liz Gannes — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 18:31:41 +0000

AngelPad, a San Francisco-based start-up incubator led by former Googlers, will now offer all participating start-ups $120,000 — its usual $20,000, plus a convertible note for a hundred grand from two “large well-known Silicon Valley VC firms” that it’s not naming.

The funding is intended to alleviate founder stress and encourage faster product progress, said AngelPad’s Thomas Korte. Competing program Y Combinator has a similar deal to give participating companies $150,000 from DST investor Yuri Milner and Ron Conway’s SV Angel, the so-called “Start Fund.”

Korte said the AngelPad money is not the same: “It’s different. It’s a real investment from a VC firm, rather than just plain capital or quote-unquote free money.”

Korte acknowledged that having funding from the get-go will put more pressure on the companies in his program to make a return for their investors. “It’s probably more of a sense of responsibility,” he said.

AngelPad is two weeks away from starting its third class of 15 start-ups, but has left one spot open for a company that may be enticed by this new funding offer, Korte said.

Korte declined to specify which VCs are putting up the money, but said they focus on investments in B2B, mobile and e-commerce, like AngelPad.

Though AngelPad has a close relationship with Google Ventures, a spokeswoman for Google Ventures said that the firm was not one of the two participants in the new funding program.

Tandem Entrepreneurs Opens the Anti-Y Combinator

Drake Martinet — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 17:46:35 +0000

In Silicon Valley, where yacht-sized start-up incubators attract the most attention, Tandem Entrepreneurs is building a Jet Ski.

The four-year-old mini venture firm said its strategy runs counter to the Y Combinator-led trend of maximum number of companies and minimum investment dollars.

Tandem plans to select eight start-up eggs — in this case from the mobile arena — put them in one basket, and watch them carefully.

Tandem co-founder Doug Renert said he hears from start-up founders who complain that they don’t get enough hands-on time with the network of advisers at other incubators.

Calling out the elephant in the room, Renert said, “At [Y Combinator], those companies get three months in [the incubator], and get shot out, to figure it all out.”

Tandem may take issue with the big orange incubator’s tactics, but there aren’t too many people saying the model is badly flawed. Y Combinator did, after all, just spread to larger digs and is currently hosting its largest class ever.

So what is Tandem’s better deal?

Renert explained that in exchange for the standard convertible note and 10 percent of the common stock, companies in Tandem’s next class would receive “$200K, to start, and six months in our new incubator space.” Which, he added with zeal, is a snazzy little Victorian home in the Peninsula.

Tandem calls its model “muscle capital,” which seems to mean its advisers will be far more active and participatory than just offering the occasional coffee date. Renert gave an example from a previous class, in which Tandem’s staff acted as the business end of a mobile gaming start-up so the founders could focus on software development.

At the very least, Tandem’s founders should be able to provide a voice of experience for navigating the recently bubble-icious tech scene; two of Tandem’s partners co-founded Webvan, which vies with Pets.com for first place in the category of “most iconic collapse of tech bubble 1.0.”

Tandem’s test, bubble not withstanding, will be to see if it can leverage the extra “muscle” and capital to make “smaller” more profitable.

After all, the only difference between “small” and “exclusive” is smashing success.

You Say You Had a Revolution: What Does It Take to Build a Start-Up in Egypt?

Drake Martinet — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 22:06:20 +0000

What does it take to build disruptive businesses in the midst of a revolution? As it turns out, it requires a culturally uncommon aversion to risk.

Amr Ramadan, Ziad Aly and Haytham El-Fadeel all hail from Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt — places recently in the international spotlight for news of political disruption.

In that time, though, these three have built high-tech businesses bucking the Egyptian trope of an antiquity-based economy.

Ramadan started Vimov, which developed Weather HD, the top selling weather app for Apple’s iPad. Aly is CEO of ALZWAD, a mobile content platform for feature phones in the Middle East, and El-Fadeel has built Kngine, a Wolfram Alpha-like infosearch service.

The trio recently did a quick tech tour of the U.S. entrepreneurial hotspots — Manhattan and Silicon Valley — on a trip led by Ahmed El Alfi.

Alfi is CEO of Sawari Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm invested in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA is the shorthand for the area).

So, I sat down with the group during the Silicon Valley leg of their tour to pick their brains on the realities of building businesses amidst so much political disruption.

U.S. pundits have been banging away, asserting that the revolution was really fomented by an overabundance of young, educated and unemployed Egyptians.

I asked the trio if those same circumstances might make for a good start-up culture.

Aly agreed that there had been a change since the revolution and he now sees a necessary boldness among founders that wasn’t there before.

“I saw an idea last week that’s a platform around where people can go out — similar to Yelp. The founder came up with the idea and a prototype,” he said. “Before [the revolution] you would never have seen this.”

Even though conditions were right for digital disruption, Ramadan explained that cultural attitudes about risk of failure remain even after the government has turned over.

Because while a failed start-up or two in Silicon Valley can be a mark of experience for an entrepreneur, he observed that in Egypt prior failures just mean you have a history of failing.

But he did acknowledge that things are very much in flux.

“Before [the revolution], the way to get ahead was find a government job and stay off the radar; now that doesn’t seem to be as much the case,” he added. “I think more young people are willing to look at a start-up and say ‘Why not?’”

Alfi, the venture capitalist who arranged the trip and who is invested in companies in the MENA region, said that enough money isn’t really an issue — smart money is.

“It’s the Middle East, there’s plenty of money around,” he said. “What we lack are enough experienced people to help guide these companies.”

The lack of “smart” investment is complicated by what Ramadan described as Egypt’s cash economy. Because there isn’t a large community of investors taking risks on tech start-ups, Egyptian companies have to turn a profit from day one.

“The idea of losing money for a couple of years … is not something common in Egypt,” he said. “Even the concept of credit is not really there.”

In other words, profit from day one in Egypt is the only way to pay for day two.

“So, a country with a decent crop of engineers and a fresh start seemed to me like a reasonable place to develop a start-up community, especially one that could build products for the Middle East, based around cultural norms that foreign companies might have difficulty designing for,” he added.

Aly, whose mobile content delivery platform is targeted only at Middle Eastern users, believes that the combination of pervasive 3G and 4G phone service and an uptick in social media interest post revolution are good signs for companies entering his market.

“Mobile is the primary [and, often, only] Internet device, as opposed to more mature markets,” he said. “Even the iPhone, until recently, had to be connected to iTunes.”

All three men noted that Twitter and Facebook were the social media platforms of the masses in Egypt, but Aly added a footnote to the popular (and much debated) news narrative about the Egyptian revolution and social media.

Rather than heavy social media usage facilitating a revolution, the opposite seems to be happening.

During the revolution, Twitter was the only way to get reliable information even if not everyone was on it,” he said. “Since the revolution we are seeing much more interest than before.”

The group did acknowledge the difficulties they face building operations in such a politically and socially dynamic region.

But most of their worries echoed the kinds of refrains one might hear from Silicon Valley companies: Difficulties attracting developers, trouble finding good advice and learning the lessons of surviving rapid growth seem to be at the top of everyone’s list — regardless of geography.

But the combo of education, mobile device use and social media adoption in Egypt seems like fertile enough ground for start-ups, at least to Alfi, who will launch an incubator there this year.

He thinks what the region needs most are a few good home runs for investors.

Referencing one such exit, Leslie Jump, Alfi’s colleague at Sawari Ventures, added: “We need a success story. Like the ICQ deal was for Israel, a high-profile exit would bring interest in investing in Egypt.”

Geoff Ralston Talks About Education Incubator, Imagine K12

Kara Swisher — Mon, 23 May 2011 13:01:57 +0000

Last week, I met up with Geoff Ralston, an Internet exec whom I have known for a dog’s age–from his stint in the early days at Yahoo and later at music service Lala, which was sold to Apple in 2009.

These days, instead of heading to another company or starting one, Ralston has joined with Tim Brady and Alan Louie to launch Imagine K12, an education incubator.

Based on Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator, the aim of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based Imagine K12 is to help education-focused start-ups with a little money and a lot of entrepreneurial encouragement.

After sifting through a pile of applications for slots, Ralston and his partners picked the first “class” of start-ups, who will begin work on June 2.

Here’s a video interview I did with Ralston talking about it all:

[ See post to watch video ]

Bill Gross's UberMedia Raises $17.5 Million From Accel, Index and Steve Case

Kara Swisher — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 17:04:37 +0000

UberMedia, which just bought TweetDeck for $30 million in equity last week, has raised $17.5 million, in a round led by Accel Partners.

The valuation for the Pasadena, Calif., start-up founded by well-known entrepreneur Bill Gross (pictured here)–which was actually struck some month ago–is $40 million.

Accel’s Jim Breyer will join the board of UberMedia, maker of social media reading and posting tools, which is currently largely aimed at the Twitter ecosystem.

“We are hoping to work very closely with Twitter, which is certainly our goal, as well as other social media platforms like Facebook,” said Breyer in an interview with BoomTown this morning, answering a question about previous tensions between Twitter and UberMedia. “There will be a lot of efforts to monetize Twitter and there is no silver bullet.”

Index Ventures and Steve Case’s Revolution Ventures also participated in the round.

The company did not reveal the amount raised, nor the valuation for UberMedia.

But many like him are trying to find a way to monetize the huge microblogging platform–including Twitter–and take advantage of its enormous scale.

Gross founded the start-up last spring.

Armed with $3.5 million in venture funding from a group of leading investors, including Index, Revolution, betaworks, First Round Capital and angel investors such as Mahalo’s Jason Calacanis and BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis.

Started in Gross’s Idealab start-up incubator and called TweetUp (and then PostUp), it was initially cast as a keyword-based bidding marketplace akin to Overture/Goto.com, the first paid search system he created a decade ago.

TweetUp also offered an organic search service to surface the best tweets. This put it at odds on several fronts with Twitter, which began to aggressively move to take over key parts of its business that had largely been left to third-party developers.

That still remains UberMedia’s essential goal, and Breyer hopes that the new investment will show Twitter that UberMedia hopes to work in harmony with it, as other developers have done successfully with Facebook. (Accel and Breyer himself are big investors in the social networking giant, so he should know.)

“Like Twitter, we want to drive the customer experience,” he said, pointing out successes such as the Zynga gaming service. “This is a lot like Facebook several years ago and cooperation worked out well for everyone.”

Here’s the official press release:

Accel Partners Leads Investment Round in UberMedia, Jim Breyer Joins Board of Directors

PASADENA, Calif.–February 14, 2011–UberMedia, the leading independent provider of applications for reading and posting to Twitter and other social media platforms, today announced that it completed a financing round led by Jim Breyer of Accel Ventures. Existing investors Steve Case of Revolution Ventures and Danny Rimer of Index Ventures also participated.

“At UberMedia, our goal is to enhance the Twitter experience with functionality in our clients and to be the best partner with Twitter in growing and enhancing their ecosystem,” said Bill Gross, Founder and CEO. “In particular, the addition of Jim Breyer to our board will really enable us to succeed at this mission. His experience on the boards of Wal-Mart, Facebook, Marvel Entertainment, Dell and so many other high-profile consumer brands will be particularly helpful.”

“We’ve been watching closely Bill’s efforts at UberMedia to build upon the ground-breaking communications platform created by Twitter,” said Jim Breyer of Accel Partners. “We see a tremendous business in the kinds of innovations in user experience being developed at UberMedia. The result of these efforts will be an expansion in the number and variety of people engaged with Twitter as well as a method for advertisers to reach consumers in highly targeted and relevant ways.”

And here are two video interview I did with Gross last April when the company was founded:

[ See post to watch video ]

TweetDeck Finds a Home, and $30 Million, at UberMedia

Peter Kafka — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 04:02:48 +0000

UberMedia, the holding company that specializes in Twitter-based start-ups, has added its highest-profile company to date: TweetDeck, the biggest Twitter application not owned by Twitter itself.

UberMedia, run by Internet pioneer Bill Gross, will pay $30 million in cash and stock for the London-based company, which has raised less than $5 million from investors in the last two years.

The deal, first reported by TechCrunch, isn’t done yet, but it’s pretty far along, with signed term sheets, etc. All of TweetDeck’s investors will take a portion of their payout in UberMedia equity, I’m told.

Both Gross and TweetDeck founder Iain Dodsworth (pictured here) have been trying to build businesses within the Twitter ecosystem, though it’s never been clear how Twitter felt about that.

Gross, in particular, has had an uneasy relationship with Twitter: Last year, an earlier incarnation of his company tried to launch an “AdSense for Tweets” product at the same time that Twitter launched its own Google-like ad product, and that didn’t go well.

The two companies have other things in common as well. TweetDeck has been shepherded along by Betaworks, the New York-based holding company/platform/incubator that also specializes in the Twittersphere. And Betaworks is also an investor in…UberMedia.

Here’s an interview I conducted with Dodsworth last April, when the Twittersphere was particularly confused about the prospects of Twitter apps, like TweetDeck, that weren’t owned by Twitter itself. Looks like this one turned out just fine.

[ See post to watch video ]

WakeMate Finally Ships–Will You Sleep Better Now That It's Watching You?

Voices — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 21:58:02 +0000

Let’s get this out of the way right now–WakeMate co-founder Arun Gupta said the start-up is finally shipping all pre-orders of the long-awaited sleep tracking gadget.

Gupta said, “Our goal is to fill all pre-orders by Christmas.”

And I can even verify that the unit exists, since I have been using one for a week now.

So why all the skepticism?

Because WakeMate–which began as an idea for a smart alarm clock back in 2006 and graduated out of the Y Combinator incubator in summer of 2009–has had more than a few delays in delivering product.

To be fair, the tiny company might have bit off a fair amount to chew. WakeMate chose a solution to the sleep-tracking problem that required it to build original hardware, a main Web application, as well as apps for Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry.

Thus, Gupta describes the first version of its product as “really, a public beta.”

And, WakeMate is indeed a little rough around the edges.

For example, the unit itself–with its semi-exposed electronics and shrink-tube wrapper–looks a little more like something hacked together on top of one of the mini DIY Arduino boards than it does a finished consumer electronics device.

But if you have any experience programming microcontrollers, you might appreciate the sort of sophistication that goes into coordinating this sleepy symphony of data gathering.

(Pardon us for a minute, while I get a little über-geeky and explain how the WakeMate wristband works. If this doesn’t concern you, feel free to fast-forward a few paragraphs to get to Gupta’s predictions for WakeMate’s future.)

When you flick the small switch on the WakeMate wristband, just prior to going to sleep, the device connects via Bluetooth to your iOS, Android or BlackBerry device.

You then open the WakeMate app and enter a 20-minute window during which you’d like to be woken.

The app talks to the wristband and transmits that time information. Then, both app and device enter a sort of low-power state. At this stage, the WakeMate becomes little more than a data logger.

There is a fairly standard, solid-state, three-axis accelerometer on board, much like the one that allows you to “shake to shuffle” your iPhone.

WakeMate then spits out three fields of data–X,Y and Z axis readings–40 times per second, which are stored in its flash memory all night.

That means an eight-hour sleep cycle will produce about 3.5 million unique data points, not including metadata.

The onboard clock–for the computer, not for human time-telling–waits until your pre-selected 20-minute window and then figures out, based on frequency and severity of wrist movement, when you are closest to being awake on your own.

When that moment comes, it wakes the Bluetooth connection, connects to the phone, sounds the alarm and starts uploading the data it collected all night directly to the phone and immediately sends the information to WakeMate’s servers.

And, not to worry, if the WakeMate dies mid-sleep, the phone knows to sound the alarm anyway.

It is quite a concert that needs to be played flawlessly for connectivity and battery life to remain intact.

Impressive data tricks aside, the world in which WakeMate was conceived looked a little different from the one into which it has been born, and that means a different set of competitive realities.

When WakeMate left Y Combinator, the world of iOS device-connected movement sensors was limited to the Nike Fit, which links running performance via a shoe-attached device.

It was also a world without Fitbit, another popular activity and health tracker.

And, unlike now, there were no sleep apps claiming to do what WakeMate does.

But now, even with all the new rivals, Gupta believes WakeMate still has the edge.

He explained: “In the early days of sleep-tracking studies, doctors decided to monitor non-dominant wrist movement as part of the data collected to determine sleep state. That continues today, so there is a ton of research that has been collected over the years on correlating wrist movement with sleep cycle.”

He added that WakeMate has built an algorithm that fits the data collected by its wristband to these medically relevant sleep-cycle models and spits out graphs mapping your sleep states, your waking moments and even times when you were in deepest sleep.

“All the competing tools out there aren’t at all based on any kind of accepted research–no one is studying pillow movement or waistband movement or anything,” Gupta said. “But we know how you are sleeping when you move your wrist.”

The major questions facing WakeMate as a company revolve around what one might expect from a start-up with such a complex beta product.

Gupta said it will focus on innovating and revising its wristband, as well as doing more interesting things with the data it will collect.

“On the macro level, we’re really doing the biggest sleep study that has ever been done,” he said. “We’ll be able to tell you how people are sleeping in San Francisco versus New York, based on seasons and all kinds of things.”

Gupta added that while he doesn’t know what the next step is, WakeMate is prototyping ideas where it could correlate sleep data with other metrics about health, occupation and stress to provide a more complete tool set.

But as more companies work on the problem of digitizing the analog data of human life, the harder questions to answer are really in front of the consumer.

Gupta said he doesn’t know what a world would look like if a health insurance company could access your sleep data, or when information about your apparent insomnia is grabbed by some hacker.

What WakeMate hopes for, he said, is a world where more people have access to the kind of medical data collection that has previously only been collectable by trained technicians in controlled settings.

But more data is better, as far as WakeMate is concerned–it is hoping that its vision puts its products at the center of an all-day biometric data collection future.

For the Person Who Has It All, Skyara Sells New Stuff to Experience (Video)

Drake Martinet — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 18:10:31 +0000

Does tea with Silicon Valley venture capitalist Ron Conway and 1990s rap legend MC Hammer sound too legit? What about spending the day harvesting crabs under the Golden Gate Bridge? Or maybe a hands-on coffee-crafting session with an expert barista?

Skyara, a buzzy little start-up has created a marketplace for people to sell experiences to folks who are looking to do something other than the same old thing.

“It’s sort of like Airbnb for experiences,” co-founder Dennis Liu explained, referencing another buzzy start-up.

He continued: “It’s one part Etsy, some Expedia and a little of Groupon built on top of our own robust scheduling platform.”

In practice, users log in and are asked if they want to purchase or provide a service. The providers are taken through a process of describing their offering, providing images, setting up times and providing enough personal info so the Skyara team can contact them and verify they are legit. Skyara takes a 12 percent fee on the transaction on the seller’s side.

The purchasers can currently browse or search through about 200 different experiences, ranging from a boudoir photography session (Skyara checked–the photographer is well known in the arena) to the less understandable half-hour of punching dozens of plastic inflatable clowns that someone has collected in an apartment.

But according to Liu, the service has an almost three percent conversion rate from visit to actual sale on their Web site, including all the diluting traffic it gets from outside of the San Francisco area, Skyara’s only market so far.

He said that about 10 percent of all visitors do something valuable on the site, whether that’s offering a service, buying one, telling Skyara where they live and that they’d like to have the service there or signing up for updates.

An interesting wrinkle has emerged in the last few days, as Skyara has partnered with the ongoing UCSF Children’s Hospital charity challenge. This is where the current deal to meet Conway and Hammer came from–which you may enter to win by donating to the UCSF challenge. It brings the “experience sales” idea right back to its ancestral home–charity auctions.

Skyara came together as the brainchild of Liu and Jonathan Wu, former classmates at the University of Pennsylvania, who had moved to New York for jobs as business consultants.

They originally conceived of it as an Expedia for outdoor activities and brought on Steven Ou, the third co-founder, to help them build out the scheduling platform.

The trio was accepted into the i/o Ventures incubator this past March and decided to pivot into Skyara’s current “experience marketplace” model shortly before its first public demo in late September.

“It was like two weeks of fighting, but we decided to pivot because we’d all spent several weeks cold-calling outdoor activity businesses and it was really slow,” Liu said.

Wu, who now heads business development, explained that the founders were concerned that they were going to have an “Open Table” problem, referring to the restaurant reservation service.

“We didn’t want it to take 10 years to have it be really useful,” said Wu.

The whole team agrees that their growth model will be all about expanding into new markets, the first of which will be New York and Chicago. Skyara plans to raise capital to expand early next year.

Besides new markets, the company is adding tools to help people come up with ideas for experiences to offer, and to boost the community aspect of the experience, building a little more of Etsy’s users-as-both-buyers-and-sellers model to its service.

Said Liu: “I’ve met some incredible people on these experiences, and that should be a part of it.”

We spoke with the fresh-faced Skyara trio at Park Chow restaurant in San Francisco. Here’s the video:

[ See post to watch video ]

Gmail Creator Leaves Facebook for Y Combinator

Liz Gannes — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 18:59:46 +0000

Paul Buchheit, the well-respected developer and angel investor, is moving on from Facebook, which had acquired him along with FriendFeed, the start-up he co-founded and funded.

Paul Buchheit

Buchheit has joined Mountain View, Calif.-based Y Combinator as a partner, a move that wasn’t altogether unexpected as he had been closely affiliated with the start-up incubator program. As an angel investor, Buchheit is the all-time leader for total YC companies backed. By the time the last three-month YC session had ended with a public Demo Day presentation to potential investors, Buchheit had already funded five of the 36 companies.

Buchheit is most famous for his work at Google, where he created Gmail, built the first prototype of AdSense and came up with the motto “Don’t be evil.”

Today is Buchheit’s last day at Facebook, where he had not held a particularly public-facing role. That’s in contrast to his FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor, who quickly rose through the ranks at Facebook and was named CTO in June. FriendFeed had been acquired for $50 million in August 2009.

In a blog post announcing the move, Y Combinator partner Paul Graham said of Buchheit, “He’s a good friend as well as one of the world’s best hackers; for years we’ve considered him an honorary YC partner.” Within the Y Combinator community, Graham is known as “PG” and Buchheit as “PB.”

Harjeet Taggar

Y Combinator also named Harjeet Taggar a partner today. This was an internal promotion for Taggar, who had joined the program in February to do business development. Previously, he had founded Auctomatic, which participated in the Y Combinator winter class in 2007, and was sold to Live Current Media in 2008 for $5 million.

Y Combinator partner Jessica Livingston said that the new expanded team of six partners should allow the program to invest in more companies. YC classes have grown significantly over time; the first session had only eight companies.

AngelPad, an Incubator for Entrepreneurs With Credentials

Liz Gannes — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 19:12:20 +0000

AngelPad, the new incubator created by former Googlers, held its first end-of-session Demo Day last night at its office on a dead-end alley in San Francisco’s SOMA district. It was a familiar format for those who have been to Y Combinator and TechStars Demo Days, and indeed just about every one of the hundred or so investors in the room is a frequent presence at those events.

Thomas Korte

AngelPad is captained by the amiable and energetic former Google product evangelist Thomas Korte, who brought in many of the eight participating start-ups from his personal connections. They included somewhat typical tech start-up fare: A couple of Web curation tools (Curated.by and Snip.ly), a get-together planning app (RollCall) and a simpler interface for selling your stuff online (EggCartel). There was also a user-generated outdoors site (AllTrails) and an app that tracks the energy consumption of computers and other devices (Hug Energy).

Probably the most notable difference between AngelPad and other incubators is the level of high-profile experience most of its founders already have. At least half seemed to have worked on product and engineering at Google, and others come from established companies like Microsoft, Yelp, Playdom and RockYou.

(Also, is it just me, or does the name AngelPad scream for a reality show that would be sort of like “Real World” mashed with “Top Chef” about Silicon Valley start-ups?)

After the demos, I asked MoPub founder Jim Payne, who managed product for Google Maps Premier and AdMob metrics, what he and his co-founders thought the AngelPad differentiator is. He said, “As compared to Y Combinator?” I said, “First of all, as compared to doing this outside an incubator.”

Payne replied that he “wouldn’t and couldn’t” have started his company without an incubator, and that taking that route would be forcibly sitting yourself and your start-up “out in the weeds.”

MoPub is a mobile ad server, and will soon announce its first round of funding, said Payne. He and other AngelPad participants said they liked the small size of the program and the more free-form curriculum as compared to more established incubators.

Sean Plaice of Hug Energy at AngelPad's first Demo Day

Bill Tai of Charles River Ventures, who had been chatting with Payne when I walked up, bid him goodbye with the admonition to let Tai get in on the MoPub round. Tai told me that he thought MoPub and Adku were the most interesting of the AngelPad eight. Adku wants to help e-commerce sites optimize what products they are featuring using real-time data mining about what’s relevant to a visitor’s location and demographic.

Tai said he agreed that founders in the first AngelPad class do have more experience, particularly at large companies. But he added that’s not necessarily always an asset. “At Y Combinator there may be a higher probability of a breakout idea,” Tai said, “because less-experienced people don’t have context.”

Bit.ly URL Shortener Raises $10 Million

Peter Kafka — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 20:24:33 +0000

Bit.ly, the start-up you’ve probably used recently to send someone a shorter version of a Web address, has raised another round of funding. The service, spun out of the Betaworks incubator, says that the RRE VC fund led the $10 million round, and that partner Eric Wiesen will join the company’s board.

Bit.ly has now raised about $14 million in a couple of years, but so far has only a nascent revenue stream: About 4,000 different companies have white label versions of Bit.ly’s URL shortener (the New York Times, for instance, uses Bit.ly to create addresses like this: http://nyti.ms/bm8lk2). But only some of them pay for that service, at a rate of $1,000 a month.

The real business, which Betaworks CEO John Borthwick says the company will begin to build out with its new money, is turning Bit.ly’s data set into money.

People clicked on six billion Bit.ly links last month, Borthwick says. And he imagines that all sorts of folks, from Google (GOOG) on down, would be willing to pay to license the data.

It’s worth noting that Yahoo (YHOO), among others, has been doing some tire-kicking around the service–maybe more, depending on whose story you’d like to listen to.

Other investors in this round include OATV, Mitch Kapor, Founders Fund, SV Angel, Joshua Stylman, Peter Hershberg and David Shen. The New York Times (NYT), as I have previously written, picked up a piece of Bit.ly this summer as partial payment for its work in in News.me, a yet-to-be-launched social news service for Apple’s (AAPL) iPad.

Seven Places to Start a Tech Company in New York City

Alexander Hotz — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 15:40:09 +0000

Like many entrepreneurs, Andres Blank, the COO and co-founder of Pixable, a business that lets Facebook users print photo books of their Facebook pictures, started running his company out of his apartment. During the day the space was adequate, but the workday came to an awkward halt when his girlfriend came home from work.

“When she wasn’t there it was an office,” Blank said. “But when she was there it was more like a home, which made it harder for us to have all-nighters.”

Startups often begin in a bedroom, basement or garage, but those lucky enough to expand often need office space to accommodate that growth. Fortunately for Blank and his co-founders, Pixable managed to secure a spot at NYU Poly Varick Street, a city-funded incubator for tech startups. Along with affordable rent, the Varick Street incubator gave Pixable a rich environment in which to develop ideas.

As New York City’s tech scene continues to blossom, a host of locations like Varick Street have sprung up to support fledgling companies. Typically these spaces are open to any entrepreneur willing to pay, but some are more selective.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

PepsiCo Unveils Winners Of New Start-Up Incubator Program

Ty McMahan — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 19:59:35 +0000

PepsiCo Corp. (PEP) set out in June to find 10 relatively unheard of start-ups to put it on the cutting edge of digital media and social marketing.

Now the company has announced the winners of the inaugural PepsiCo10, an incubator program that matches technology, media and communications entrepreneurs with PepsiCo brands for pilot programs set to launch in the coming months. PepsiCo is working with the companies to tailor its marketing message to their technologies.

PepsiCo partnered with venture capital firm Highland Capital Partners to pick the companies from among 500 applicants.

“This could be a company-maker if you’re a young company,” Highland Senior Vice President Michael Gaiss said.

Gaiss said Highland has already met with several of the companies selected. No investments have been made, but conversations are ongoing, he said.

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With Own Incubator On Hold, Facebook Befriends Y Combinator

Tomio Geron — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:15:27 +0000

Facebook Inc. is partnering with incubator Y Combinator in a deal that will give start-ups that join the program a range of Facebook resources and expertise–and incentives to use Facebook’s technology.

Facebook says it will support Y Combinator companies with resources for products, technology and design, whether for new websites or Facebook applications.

Y Combinator companies will also get early access to Facebook technologies such as Facebook Credits, the virtual currency and payment service the company recently developed, and Facebook’s Instant Personalization service for third-party websites that use Facebook Connect, among other new features.

Y Combinator will publish a request for applications for its next incubator session, which will happen in Winter 2011. That program will include “social startups” that Facebook could assist.

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Exclusive Video: Bill Gross Talks About TweetUp and Gives a Tour of Idealab

Kara Swisher — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 04:01:33 +0000

Bill Gross is widely considered the man responsible for the invention of paid search advertising, which heralded such Web powerhouses as Google (GOOG).

Now, in a can-lightning-strike-twice effort and armed with $3.5 million in venture funding from a group of leading investors, the well-known entrepreneur has decided to monetize Twitter on his own.

Thus, Gross has just launched a public beta of TweetUp, a keyword-based bidding marketplace akin to the innovative Overture/Goto.com he created a decade ago.

Gross will be the CEO of TweetUp, which will also offer an organic search service to surface the best tweets from the microblogging site.

Coincidentally, Twitter is now aggressively moving to take over key parts of its ecosystem, which has largely been left to third-party developers. It is also expected to announce some kind of advertising system of its own this week.

Tweet fight, anyone?

Here are two video interviews I did with Gross last week at his Idealab offices in Pasadena, Calif. The first is an interview about TweetUp and the second, below it, a tour of the well-known incubator where he came up with his latest scheme:

[ See post to watch video ]

Paid Search Inventor Bill Gross Moves to Monetize Tweets With TweetUp–And Without Twitter (Plus Screenshots)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 04:00:45 +0000

Just as Twitter finally prepares to announce its plans to make money–after what has seemed an eternity–the man responsible for the invention of paid search is beating the microblogging site to the potentially profitable punch, and without its involvement.

Armed with $3.5 million in venture funding from a group of leading investors, well-known entrepreneur Bill Gross is launching a public beta of TweetUp, a keyword-based bidding marketplace akin to Overture/Goto.com, the first paid search system he created a decade ago.

Gross will be the CEO of TweetUp, which will also offer an organic search service to surface the best tweets, a move that seems to put it in competition with Twitter’s own search service.

This comes just as Twitter is aggressively moving to take over key parts of its ecosystem, which has largely been left to third-party developers.

TweetUp could now give these developers a chance to make money on Twitter without relying on Twitter.

TweetUp is backed by Index Ventures, betaworks, Revolution LLC, First Round Capital and other investors, including Mahalo’s Jason Calacanis and BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis.

And TweetUp has struck a number of distribution deals with well-known Twitter search clients and Web sites–such as Seesmic, Answers.com and others–and will pay them half its revenue.

Gross has been working on the service since February at his Idealab start-up incubator in Pasadena, Calif.

He said he got the idea after he was struck by how hard it was to sort through good tweets from the TED conference, as well as how quickly a substantive tweet he posted, which was related to the global climate change event, disappeared as more recent ones replaced it in real time.

Said TweetUp in a press release about its system:

“In addition to an algorithm that combines a variety of factors to determine relevance, tweeters can bid on keywords in a competitive marketplace very similar to what now occurs at Internet search engines. This sophisticated combination of factors pushes the best tweets to the top of the results of users’ searches, allowing them to find the most compelling tweeters, and it enables serious tweeters to expand their following quickly and cost-effectively. TweetUp search will work alongside Twitter’s traditional search to provide a richer array of results.”

Twitter is also making several moves to monetize itself of late, with most observers expecting an advertising system to be announced soon.

The company has also been adding tools, which puts it in direct conflict with outside developers. On Friday, for example, Twitter announced it was purchasing Tweetie, maker of a popular Apple (AAPL) iPhone client for the messaging service.

The start-up has traditionally relied on third-party developers to build apps for the service, much as Facebook did at its start.

But Twitter management and key investors have recently been signaling that the company would be taking over key aspects of its business. This has caused tensions, obviously, in the wider Twitter ecosystem.

Thus, it will be interesting to watch how Twitter reacts to what Gross is doing with TweetUp.

(BoomTown also did an exclusive video with Gross about it all, which is posted here, as well as a tour of Idealab.)

Here are a few screenshots of TweetUp (click on images to make larger):

TweetUp Client

Answers.com

Business Insider

Business Insider Search #1

Business Insider Search #2

And here’s the official press release from TweetUp:

TweetUp Establishes Twitter Marketplace Where the Best Tweeters Rise to the Top

Unique Combination of a Relevance Algorithm and Bidding System Increases Number of Followers and Improves the Quality of Twitter Searches

PASADENA, CA–APRIL 12, 2010–TweetUp, Inc., announced today a new Twitter marketplace designed to showcase the world’s best tweeters and enable them to grow a highly targeted following. TweetUp is a new patent-pending platform that combines the popularity, relevance and influence of tweets and tweeters with a bid-based marketplace. Major partners, including leading Twitter search clients and top web sites, will display the results, enabling users to easily find the best tweets and tweeters in the world.

TweetUp was founded by Bill Gross at Idealab, where he also devised the first model for paid internet search, Overture/Goto.com, over a decade ago. TweetUp is backed by Index Ventures (investor in Skype, last.fm, Myheritage and Playfish), betaworks (investor in Twitter, TweetDeck, Bit.ly), Revolution LLC (founded by Steve Case, investor in Zipcar, LivingSocial, Everyday Health), First Round Capital (investor in Mint.com, StumbleUpon, CoTweet), Jason Calacanis (founder of Mahalo) and Jeff Jarvis (founder of BuzzMachine).

“Twitter has such tremendous potential as a real-time information network far beyond what has been realized to date,” said Bill Gross, Founder and CEO of TweetUp. “For most people, though, 80% or more of the tweets that fly by them when they’re searching for something are useless noise. For serious tweeters, the task of attracting interested and relevant followers is equally daunting. TweetUp will change all of that.”

TweetUp has addressed the needs of both users and tweeters in a single search mechanism. In addition to an algorithm that combines a variety of factors to determine relevance, tweeters can bid on keywords in a competitive marketplace very similar to what now occurs at Internet search engines. This sophisticated combination of factors pushes the best tweets to the top of the results of users’ searches, allowing them to find the most compelling tweeters, and it enables serious tweeters to expand their following quickly and cost-effectively. TweetUp search will work alongside Twitter’s traditional search to provide a richer array of results.

Danny Rimer, a partner with Index Ventures, TweetUp’s lead investor, said, “TweetUp is an opportunity to bring real-time information to the entire Web, and to do it in a way that creates value for everyone concerned. We feel that TweetUp can dramatically improve both the utility and ubiquity of Twitter, and in doing so build a monetization mechanism for real-time search that rivals that of traditional Internet search.”

TweetUp’s search results will be available to hundreds of millions of individuals through revenue-sharing distribution agreements with leading Twitter clients, including one of the leading multi-platform clients, Seesmic, one of the leading Android clients, Twidroid, the leading source of tweets, TwitterFeed, and the leading social media authority and influence ranking system, Klout, as well as popular web sites including BusinessInsider.com, Answers.com, and PopURLs.

Together, these clients and web sites will bring TweetUp search results to more than 40 million unique users per month and serve more than half a billion impressions per month.

“Increasingly, people looking for answers want more than just black and white facts, but also real-time insights relating to the issues surrounding their questions,” said
Bob Rosenschein, Answers.com CEO. “We are at the forefront of meeting that demand, and partnering with TweetUp is an exciting new way to add value to the
Answers.com user community.”

“I have been sharing in social networks and blogs for ten years and realized the power of having a true community,” said Loic Le Meur, CEO of Seesmic. “This is why
I was immediately attracted to working with Tweetup. People who are serious about sharing and having a community around themselves are also often those who have the most interesting ideas to contribute.”

“We believe that the impact of the real-time web, and of Twitter in particular, has only just begun,” explains John Borthwick of betaworks, a major investor in TweetUp, as well as in TweetDeck and Bit.ly. “Because TweetUp will be accessed on mainstream websites across the world, Twitter will be introduced to hundreds of millions of new people. Furthermore, these new users will experience thoughtful tweets, in context, targeted to them according to their areas of interest, and delivered from serious tweeters who care about building a passionate audience.”

“When we created AOL 25 years ago, we believed in the power of community and built a significant company around it,” said Steve Case, AOL co-founder and founder
of Revolution LLC. “Twitter is proving the power of community continues to thrive, and I am excited to be backing Bill Gross and TweetUp as they innovate in the social
media space by making Twitter more useful to a mainstream audience.”

With today’s announcement, TweetUp launches a public beta period in which tweeters can open an account and begin adding search keywords to their profile. For the first 1000 who sign up, the company is providing a $100 in credits to allow tweeters to see how TweetUp’s network can improve their standing in search resultsand attract more followers.

Bringing Y Combinator's Incubator Model to India

Tomio Geron — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:00:23 +0000

What works in the U.S. can work here, too–it’s a tenet held by many entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in India and other emerging regions of innovation. While not everything should be duplicated, one small Indian firm believes it can apply the model employed by Y Combinator, a Mountain View, Calif.-based business accelerator and seed fund.

Founded in 2007, Morpheus holds four-month business accelerator programs where it works with 20 very early-stage companies, taking a four to eight percent equity stake in exchange for advice, mentoring and business connections.

Now the firm, made up of three partners with entrepreneurial experience, will also invest capital in these start-up companies, the same way that Y Combinator does. The firm has raised a small fund of about $250,000 from unnamed high-net-worth individuals for the next two incubator sessions and will seek to add on further funding.

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The Start Project Gets Start-Up Stars as Advisers, Including Stone, Sacca, Mullenweg

Kara Swisher — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 21:57:00 +0000

A new Silicon Valley business incubator called The Start Project has recruited a high-profile group of entrepreneurs as advisers, which it announced today on its Web site.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, former Google (GOOG) exec and angel investor Chris Sacca, as well as Whiskey Media’s Mike Tatum and Jeffries & Co. Managing Director David Liu, have all agreed to help the company’s start-ups before and during their creation.

The Start Project is the brainchild of serial entrepreneurs Narendra Rocherolle of 83 Degrees, who co-founded a range of companies, and Josh Felser of Spinner and Crackle.

Polaris Venture Partners is also involved, lending office space in San Francisco and possible investments in whatever innovative ideas bubble up, with a first-look option.

“We can do a lot of stuff, such as pairing a CEO with an adviser with an amazing track record,” said Rocherolle in an interview with BoomTown. “It’s kind of a Justice League for start-ups.”

The Start Project’s description of itself on its Web site reads:

“The start project is a collaborative effort to bring great ideas to market. While the founders have a history of successful exits (over half a billion dollars), they are now focused on the initial stages of business creation including: idea generation, software development, product vision, team building, and investment.”

Google's Checkbook Opens Up Again, This Time for Collaboration Start-Up AppJet

Peter Kafka — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 21:37:10 +0000

Google, which has bought five companies in five months, just made it an even half-dozen: The company has snapped up AppJet, an online collaboration start-up run by veterans of the search giant. That’s CEO Aaron Iba on the right, in a photo presumably taken after the deal closed.

Google hasn’t even acknowledged the purchase yet–AppJet announced it on its blog–but when it does, I don’t expect to see a purchase price. AppJet, which hatched out of the Y Combinator incubator a couple years ago, has raised a reported $700,000 in angel funding, which means that whatever price Google (GOOG) paid won’t be material enough to require a disclosure.

AppJet says it will be working on Google’s Wave platform/product/whatever it is, which so far seems to be popular in concept but baffling in execution. Just below is an AppJet-produced video explaining its EtherPad word processing program, which allows for real-time collaboration.

[Aaron Iba photo via AppJet investor Seth Goldstein]

Hot Potato Is Ready to Eat: Do Twitter, Facebook Users Want Another Real-Time Chatter Service?

Peter Kafka — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:25:03 +0000

Last month I told you about Hot Potato, one of the buzziest start-ups in the very buzzy “real time” sector. Now you can check out the service yourself. But not really.

The New York-based service opened its doors last week, but it won’t really kick into gear until Apple (AAPL) signs off on its iPhone app, and that’s taking a bit longer than the company expected. Founder Justin Shaffer still thinks he’ll be up and running on Apple’s platform in a few days, but until then, you can check out this video interview I shot with him yesterday, where you can get a sense of how the app will work.

[ See post to watch video ]

Or if you’re impatient, here it is in a nutshell: The service is supposed to let users converse in real-time about “events”–whether a football game, business conference or maybe even a really good house party.

You can already do that on Twitter and Facebook, but the pitch is that Hot Potato will help “curate” the chatter, so you will end up talking to both your friends and interesting people you don’t know–and that’s something Twitter and Facebook don’t do well right now.

If it works, there are some obvious advertising/sponsorship opportunities available for the service: The NFL could sponsor chatter about its games, for instance. Or someone who isn’t related to the football league could sponsor chatter about the games–since this is user-generated content in its purest form, Hot Potato isn’t required to get the go-ahead from anyone before it creates a conversational stream.

In any case, Hot Potato now has a pile of money to help it figure this stuff out. Last week, the company closed its first funding round of $1.4 million (I had originally reported that it was raising “about $1 million”), and in addition to VC backers First Round Capital and RRE Ventures, the start-up has an array of high-profile angel investors who have pitched in.

Here’s the roster: Super-angel investor Ron Conway; real-time start-up incubator Betaworks; Huffington Post co-founder Ken Lerer and his son Ben Lerer, who runs Thrillist; New York Observer owner Jared Kushner and his brother, Josh Kushner; ZelnickMedia’s Strauss Zelnick; Hunch and Founder Collective co-founder Chris Dixon; About.com co-founder Scott Kurnit; Facebook executive (and Apple vet) Dave Morin; Boxee’s Zach Klein; angel investor Allen Morgan; and entrepreneurs and investors Scott and Cyan Banister.

To Kai-Fu Lee, Thanks for Everything

John Paczkowski — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 07:00:57 +0000

Kai-Fu Lee’s uneventful departure from Google to start a Beijing incubator really belies the spectacle that attended the beginning of his tenure at the search giant.

Lee’s train-hopping from Microsoft (MSFT) to Google (GOOG) back in 2005 touched off a five-month pitched battle marked by all manner of inanities. Among them was this account of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s now-infamous alleged chair-tossing tantrum told by former Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Mark Lucovsky:

Prior to joining Google, I set up a meeting on or about November 11, 2004 with Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer to discuss my planned departure…At some point in the conversation, Mr. Ballmer said: “Just tell me it’s not Google.” I told him it was Google.

At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: “F–king Eric Schmidt is a f–king p–sy. I’m going to f–king bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I’m going to f–king kill Google.”

Thereafter, Mr. Ballmer resumed trying to persuade me to stay…Among other things, Mr. Ballmer told me that “Google’s not a real company. It’s a house of cards.”

And there were others as well. Certainly, the sourcing of some of Microsoft’s legal docs was amusing. As I wrote at the time:

Kai-Fu Lee may be a top-drawer research engineer, but his understanding of the mechanics of Microsoft’s desktop environment leaves a bit to be desired. Turns out Microsoft recovered Lee’s employment contract with Google, which figures prominently in its suit against the search leader (see “And, if you’re beaten by Microsoft thugs, our generous health plan will cover you”), from the “recycle bin” of one of Lee’s computers. Odd that Lee would choose to browse offers from his employer’s rivals on his work computer. Odder still that having done so, he would neglect to scrub them with a secure erase program. Clearly, he must have been a bit lightheaded after learning of Google’s promise to allow his stock options in the company to vest even if he was unable to start work for a year.

Then there was Lee’s testimony about a meeting with Bill Gates, during which the Microsoft chairman blew his top, shouting that the Chinese people and the Chinese government had “f—ked” Microsoft.

And, finally, there were the videotaped depositions, like one from Ballmer that included this great bit:

Ballmer: “Kai-Fu had a–a distinct commitment and responsibility on behalf of the company for being the senior executive here in Redmond, with responsibility for godfathering, shepherding all of our R&D activities in China. It’s a structure we also use for India. We have a senior executive with knowledge of India be the R&D godfather for India, encourage work to go there, shepherd, and–and mentor people in the area. Kai-Fu had that broad, important responsibility for China.”

Deposing lawyer: “This term, ‘godfather’–is that an official title within the Microsoft organization?”

Hard to believe Kai-Fu Lee’s tenure at Google China ended with such a whimper, although there are many quiet rumblings of trouble he had with Google’s top execs in Silicon Valley, given the bang it began with.

But it did. And here endeth the history lesson.