5 posts and columns on Joi Ito

News Byte

Lanyrd Raises $1.4M to Help People Get More Value From Conferences

in Social on September 6, 2011 at 10:32 am PT

Lanyrd, the surprisingly useful “social conference directory,” has closed seed funding, it announced today. Some $1.4 million in funding came primarily from U.K. investors Index Seed and PROfounders, as well as angels like Joi Ito, Esther Dyson and Joshua Schachter.

Kickstarter Fesses Up: The Crowdsourced Funding Start-Up Has Funding, Too

in Media on March 17, 2011 at 6:47 pm PT

About $10 million in funding, it turns out. From some pretty high-profile folks, too: Union Square Ventures, Betaworks and lots of angels you’ve heard of. For some reason, the company hasn’t talked about them before. But that’s over now, courtesy of a Wired profile.

Path: The Social App That's Not Viral (By Design)

in Social on November 14, 2010 at 9:00 pm PT

While there are many interesting photo-sharing apps out these days, Dave Morin and Path are the most convincing about there being a larger idea behind what they’re doing. San Francisco-based Path is stubbornly focused on close personal connections–a.k.a. real friends.

The "Billionaires' Dinner" at TED: Readjusted for the 2009 Econalyspe

in News on February 9, 2009 at 2:13 am PT

Many years ago in the midst of the Web 1.0 boom, when working as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, BoomTown redubbed an annual dinner that book agent John Brockman threw at the TED conference. It was jokingly called the “Millionaires’ Dinner,” but I renamed it the “Billionaires’ Dinner.” That was due to the frothy fortunes that had been made at the time by the Internet pioneers, from Amazon to AOL to eBay. Get it?!? Well, despite the economic meltdown, there were still a lot of billionaires in attendance at Brockman’s most recent dinner last Thursday in Long Beach. But he recounted to me that the proceedings were a lot more focused on the serious times we are in, as was the whole digerati-packed conference held last week.