AllThingsD » Los Angeles

Talenthouse Brings in Nokia, Adidas and Coca-Cola to Sponsor Engagement Platform

Kara Swisher — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:00:17 +0000

Los Angeles-based Talenthouse, a global creative collaboration community with two million members, said that it was launching an “engagement” platform with Adidas’s eyewear, Coca-Cola’s Vitaminwater and Nokia to allow its members to be paired with the mega-brands and be sponsored by them. Talenthouse said that artists will get paid based on engagements that their project and their content generates for those brands, which will in turn be able to “integrate their message directly into the artists’ projects & portfolios and become part of all peer to peer social media conversation.”

Greycroft Adds New Los Angeles Partner: Mark Terbeek

Kara Swisher — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 12:30:17 +0000

Mark Terbeek is joining Greycroft Partners as a new venture partner in its Los Angeles office. He joins Dana Settle there, and will focus on online video. Terbeek comes to Greycroft from MK Capital, where his investments have included Machinima, ZEFR and Kontiki. Previous to that, he was co-founder of Jamcracker, an early software-as-a-service startup.

The Science of Investing: Hearst's New Venture Arm in $30 Million Funding Deal With Los Angeles Tech Studio

Kara Swisher — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 02:40:05 +0000

Hearst Ventures, the investment arm of media giant Hearst Corporation, said it was making a minority equity investment in Science, the Los Angeles area tech “studio.”

Privately held Hearst is the sole investor in the new funding, although the company declined to reveal financial terms of the investment.

But sources with awareness of the deal said it was close to $30 million for a stake above 20 percent.

Somewhat akin to a startup accelerator, Science is attempting to quickly create and scale a number of promising companies in a variety of areas, and has launched 13 so far.

Among the Santa Monica, Calif., tech studio’s recent efforts: Dollar Shave Club, a subscription-based products company aimed at men; Ellie, which sells high-end activewear for women; and Wittlebee, a clothes club for kids.

Hearst Ventures is operated by Hearst’s Entertainment and Syndication unit, which is run by Scott Sassa and George Kliavkoff. Kliavkoff will join Science’s board of directors.

“It’s clear to us that, while we have these brands that resonate with consumers, we think there are some learnings we can get from these guys that are hard to get in a big company,” said Sassa. “Being able to be nimble with insight and guidance is important for us.”

Kliavkoff also noted that this was a way to get immediate ownership in a range of promising companies. “We are writing one check and will have an immediate stake in more than a dozen great startups,” he said. “[Science] has been very thoughtful in starting companies in smart areas.”

In a statement, Hearst CEO Frank Bennack said: “Hearst is continually looking for smart investments that bring value and intelligence to the company — our investment in Science does both. We’re excited to partner with Science to continue its trajectory of success, gain meaningful industry knowledge and utilize Science’s platforms for current and future Hearst investments.”

Though quieter than most, Hearst Ventures have made many successful investments over 15 years, including in Netscape and Broadcast.com. More recently, it has funded such companies as Brightcove and Pandora, as well as HootSuite and BuzzFeed.

Science was founded in late 2011 — with $10 million funding from big-name investors including Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures, Rustic Canyon Partners and White Star Capital. Its CEO is well-regarded entrepreneur Mike Jones, who was most recently CEO of Myspace. Prior to Myspace, he had started and sold Userplane to AOL in 2006. In addition, well-known entrepreneur Peter Pham is chief business officer at Science.

“I am very proud of work that the Science team has accomplished since launching,” said Jones, in a quick interview tonight (short enough so that his wife would not get angry at me for ruining Valentine’s Day). “I am extremely excited about opportunities for Science companies going forward.”

More to come, but here is the very clever viral video that Dollar Shave Club did on its launch:

Rubicon Project Adds Two Top Execs, as Ad Tech Company Moves Toward IPO

Kara Swisher — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 17:30:24 +0000

The Los Angeles-based Rubicon Project has hired two execs to fill top spots at the digital advertising company, in what looks like preparations for an eventual public offering.

Greg Raifman, the founder, chairman and CEO of Dragon Media, will become president, reporting to Rubicon CEO and co-founder Frank Addante. And SocialVibe CEO Todd Tappin will take over in the role of COO/CFO, reporting to Raifman.

Founded in 2007 and armed with more than $50 million in funding, Rubicon is one of the larger real-time bidding platforms that allows automated buying and selling of global online ads.

“Greg and Todd are extremely intelligent and capable executives who have guided significant, publicly traded companies,” said Addante in a statement. “Both Greg and Todd have great relationships within our industry as well as on Wall Street. Their presence will enable me to focus on our overall vision and product strategy so we can take best advantage of the opportunities we see.”

Tappin is replacing Brian Barnum, who will leave the company, along with Chief Revenue Officer Nick Hulse. The pair only arrived less than two years ago, presumably to also help professionalize the organization.

In addition to the other exec moves, general counsel Victoria Von Szeliski will add the title of EVP of culture and business affairs and will also be adding 100 employees this year via organic growth and acquisition.

Rubicon said Raifman — who recently served as the executive chairman of video ad-serving company LiveRail, as well as being founding and running ad-serving pioneer Mediaplex — will “manage the day-to-day operations of the Rubicon Project as he ramps the company’s buy-side automation initiatives.”

Tappin will be in charge of Rubicon’s operating and financial plan and also lead mergers and acquisitions for the company. Before running SocialVibe, a video real-time buying startup, he was founding CFO of Overture and helped sell the search automation company to Yahoo many years ago.

The exec roundelay — a not entirely uncommon thing for Rubicon over the years — is apparently part of a larger bid to eventually IPO the company. Rubicon had also been in recent preliminary discussions with several larger companies — Yahoo and Adobe — about being acquired. The ad tech space has heated up of late, with a range of startups, such as AppNexus, Pubmatic, Turn and others, looking to gain ground, get funding or sell out.

But with a large price tag and some strong growth over the last year, along with becoming profitable, Rubicon appears to now be aiming to remain independent. Over the last few years, the company has grown its business significantly — according to comScore, Rubicon Project reached 214.2 million monthly unique users.

Whether that is enough to keep up with powerful rivals such as Google is, of course, the big question, especially as the way publishers and marketers interact with the online ad market is changing quickly.

OpenX Raises $22.5 Million in Round Led by Samsung Venture Unit

Kara Swisher — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 12:00:22 +0000

OpenX Software said it had raised $22.5 million in a Series E funding round, with Samsung Venture Investment Corporation as lead investor.

All told, the Los Angeles-based online advertising technology company has raised $70 million. Along with Samsung, existing investors — Accel Partners, Index
Ventures, SAP Ventures, Mitsui & Co. Global Investment, Inc. and Presidio Ventures — were also part of the new round.

“We have been building the company to continue to grow,” said OpenX CEO Tim Cadogan, who noted that the company had doubled its size and revenue in the last year. The company now has 260 employees.

He said that OpenX had a partnership with Samsung that it evolved into a financial arrangement to bring the Korean electronics giant “a little closer to the company.”

Cadogan said the new funding would be used for acquisitions and other expansion, especially into mobile, as it competes with rivals such as search giant Google.

“We are building a truly viable revenue program that goes across screens,” he said, pointing to two recent strategic acquisitions — LiftDNA and JumpTime.

Samsung’s Brannon Lacey said the company invested in OpenX because it was pioneering in the space. “As an investor, it is a fragmented market and there will be consolidation,” he said. “And OpenX is best positioned for that.”

OpenX said that it had grown its transactions from one trillion to four trillion from 2011 to 2012.

Small Is Beautiful: Greycroft Partners Raises $175 Million in Third Fund

Kara Swisher — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 11:54:29 +0000

Greycroft Partners has closed a $175 million fund, its third since it began investing in consumer Internet and media companies in mid-2000.

In a press release, the New York- and Los Angeles-based venture firm said the fund was oversubscribed. But general partner Alan Patricof noted that Greycroft capped the amount and kept it small compared to other VCs, in order to maintain its focus on investing in early-stage capital-efficient start-ups.

“It’s always been our philosophy not to overfund the companies we invest in,” Patricof said in an interview. “It’s sometimes been hard in an environment where there is a lot of money available to entrepreneurs, but we are looking for start-ups that understand that it’s important to maintain the right balance of funding.”

The concept of a small fund is important to Greycroft, which has only three general partners and three venture partners, said general partner Dana Settle. The firm typically invests from $500,000 to $5 million, with more of a focus on online media, mobile and video, and also has a small seed fund.

“I think we are very hands-on helping our companies, but you don’t have to always do that in the traditional way most VCs do,” Settle said. “We want to maintain focus on giving our companies the right kind of advice, and let the entrepreneur take the lead.”

In fact, Patricof and Settle stressed, Greycroft does not often take board seats on the start-ups it invests in, and typically invests with other VCs in syndicates, which sometimes means the firm has less equity.

So far, Greycroft maintains that its system has worked. Its first fund of $75 million was raised in 2006 and has invested in 34 companies, with 11 sold and 130 percent of committed capital returned to partners; its second fund of $131 million, in 2010, put investments in 32 companies, several with valuations over $100 million.

Patricof noted that “the sale of our companies is usually our goal,” rather than an IPO event.

Exits include Vizu, acquired by Nielsen Holdings, Huffington Post (AOL), Babble (Walt Disney) and Buddy Media (Salesforce.com). More recent investments include Klout, Pulse and Maker Studios.

Most previous Greycroft investors have re-upped in the latest fund, the firm said, including J.P. Morgan, BlackRock Private Equity Partners, Fairview Capital and Invesco Private Capital. It also added new investors including Hall Capital, Hamilton Lane, Greenspring Associates and Cambridge Associates.

Yahoo Is Among Those Mulling a TVGuide.com Bid for About $20 Million

Kara Swisher — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 01:36:56 +0000

According to sources close to the situation, Yahoo is among the companies taking a serious gander at TVGuide.com, the online entertainment listings, video and news site and mobile app.

Earlier today, Deadline Hollywood reported that its owner, Lionsgate, was in “advanced negotiations” to sell the site for about $20 million to one strategic bidder.

That’s the approximate price, my sources said too, who noted that Yahoo is only kicking the tires to determine if the site would add to its online media efforts and that such a deal is not in a final state.

But TVGuide.com is right in the wheelhouse of Yahoo’s acquisition efforts under CEO Marissa Mayer. She said the Silicon Valley Internet giant was looking at smaller purchases to round out its product line, especially in the mobile area.

Thus, its M&A point person, Jackie Reses, has been looking at “everything in the world,” according to numerous sources, across a large spectrum of arenas. TVGuide.com is in the media space, obviously — another she’s looked at is Los Angeles-based Maker Studios.

Hollywood studio Lionsgate last reported that TVGuide.com has upward of 24 million unique monthly visitors, and also has almost seven million mobile app users.

Lionsgate bought the site and television network in 2009, which also is owned in part by J.P. Morgan’s One Equity Partners.

NYC Late-Night Hosts' Audience-Free Monologues, Courtesy of Sandy

Kara Swisher — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 11:11:13 +0000

Hurricane Sandy’s impact was widespread and damaging all over the East Coast, much of it devastating.

But on a late-night comedy level, of course, it provided fodder. While Jimmy Kimmel — who usually does his “Live” out of Los Angeles — had to cancel a week’s worth of shows planned for Brooklyn, other hosts used the storm as a prop.

Here’s both Jimmy Fallon of “Late Night” and David Letterman of “Late Show,” doing their monologues in front of no one, because it was not safe to bring in audiences (although as a joke, Fallon had one dude named “Bucket Hat Guy”).

Here are the videos:

Back to School: Summer Ends as Tech Giants Get Ready for a Device Rumble

Kara Swisher — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 20:10:41 +0000

Welcome back, class of 2013. Time to fire up your devices for the jam-packed fall.

As in, tech launches, of course, which is the lifeblood of the ADD-afflicted digital industry.

Perhaps prompted by Apple’s annual fall-event stylings — more on that below, of course — this week is already packed with events (all of which will be exhaustively covered by the crack team here at AllThingsD).

That includes two different smartphone unveiling events tomorrow by Motorola Mobility (a.k.a. Google) and Nokia (kinda a.k.a. Microsoft).

Amazon will take the whole next day for itself with the rollout of new Kindle formations, including what is expected to be a larger version, in the Los Angeles area.

Nintendo is up the following week on September 13, with an invite noting it will unveil how its “Wii U will change the future of gaming and entertainment” — is that all? — at an event in New York.

Today, HTC sent out an invite for a September 19 event in New York “to see what’s next.” It’s another mobile device is my guess!

And, a month later, Microsoft is the outlier of the group, with its own Windows 8 debut on October 26.

Of course, this is all due to the event Apple announced today for September 12 to introduce the iPhone 5, a fact that the tech giant was not even bothering to hide in its invite with a big 5 in the shadow of the 12.

Those clever imps at Apple are probably snickering away today at their Cupertino, Calif., HQ to see if we can figure it all out.

(We did, but are still parsing the symbols to find the location of the Holy Grail, too.)

So, as usual, Apple is at the center of the action, which others have smartly glommed onto (also as usual).

Thus, going forward forever more — and to get ahead in the consumer mindset before the holiday buying season — everyone will be required in the post-Labor Day time frame to hawk their latest goods.

Pity the poor consumers, perhaps, but get ready anyway, as there will be a pop quiz.

Speaking of back to school, here is my fave version from the under-appreciated movie musical “Grease 2”:

Gaming the Clouds: Here Are the D Demos of Otoy (Still Standing) and OnLive (Who Knows?)

Kara Swisher — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 14:27:55 +0000

At our D: All Things Digital conferences, we’ve taken an interest in the cloud, including showing off two of the leading game streaming services — Otoy and OnLive.

(That’s OnLive founder and CEO Steve Perlman in the photo, demoing the service at D: Dive Into Mobile in 2010.)

Earlier today, in an epic fail of communication by Perlman, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based OnLive drastically reformed itself — mysteriously laying off its staff and then saying a new company had bought the pioneering start-up’s assets and could be hiring an unknown number of employees who had just been dinged.

Said OnLive, in perhaps one of the most ridonkulous statements I have ever seen:

“We can now confirm that the assets of OnLive, Inc. have been acquired into a newly formed company and is backed by substantial funding, and which will continue to operate the OnLive Game and Desktop services, as well as support all of OnLive’s apps and devices, as well as game, productivity and enterprise partnerships. The new company is hiring a large percentage of OnLive, Inc.’s staff across all departments and plans to continue to hire substantially more people, including additional OnLive employees. All previously announced products and services, including those in the works, will continue and there is no expected interruption of any OnLive services. We apologize that we were unable to comment on this transaction until it completed and were limited to reporting on news related to OnLive’s businesses. Now that the transaction is complete, we are able to make this statement.”

Forgive us if we can’t begin to understand the pointless machinations that went on.

On the other side of the coin is Otoy, an innovative Los Angeles-based software provider, which demoed its cloud-based 3-D rendering service called Octane Reader at D10 this summer, along with its game-streaming offering.

Otoy was founded in 2008 by Jules Urbach, Alissa Grainger and Malcolm Taylor — and they seem to be doing just fine as an independent start-up in the space.

Here’s the Otoy demo, as well as the two times OnLive came to D:

Otoy at D10 in 2012:

[ See post to watch video ]

OnLive at D8 in summer of 2010:

[ See post to watch video ]

OnLive at D: Dive Into Mobile in late 2010

[ See post to watch video ]

Game Over! The Best of E3 in Photos.

Lauren Goode — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 15:00:10 +0000

Gamers, geeks and partygoers joined forces this week at the annual E3 videogame conference in downtown Los Angeles.

We here at AllThingsD aren’t the most hardcore of gamers, but my colleague Tricia Duryee and I were there in full force to hear about Microsoft Xbox’s SmartGlass app, Sony’s new game titles, and Nintendo’s nod toward the “holiday season” for the release of its upcoming Wii U console. We also roamed the floors of the Los Angeles Convention Center to capture the best images from the event.

So, it may be game over for now, but for your viewing pleasure:

RELATED POSTS:

Nintendo Holds Back the Goods on Wii U Launch Date

Nintendo Reveals a Wii Bit More About the Wii U

From Sony, More Games and More Cross-Platform Play

Ubisoft Prepping Eight Wii U Titles, Including Exclusives Like Zombi U

EA Building Up Its Facebook Empire — This Time With SimCity Social

Ear-Splitting, Eyeball-Peeling Demos From EA

Microsoft Calls Dibs on New Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 for Xbox

Microsoft Doubling Down on Video and Music for the Xbox

Microsoft Unloads the Latest for Xbox: Shooters, Sports and Songs

Nintendo’s Wii U Embraces Social Networking (Video)

E3 Interview: EA’s Riccitiello Promises to Make “Eyeballs Peel”

Former CEO Thompson Might Be Gone, But Internal Investigation Into ResuMess Still a Hot Potato at Yahoo

Kara Swisher — Tue, 22 May 2012 16:03:16 +0000

While former Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson fades from the tech scene — besides getting jacked from the top job at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, he’s also just come off two tech boards he had served on — the investigation over his hiring and how a fake computer science degree got into the company’s regulatory filings continues.

While the quick-fire controversy burned Thompson, as well as now former Yahoo director Patti Hart, the special committee of independent board members is still at work trying to figure out how such a mess was made in the first place.

And, more importantly, who knew what when and told whom.

At the time the committee was announced, Yahoo said it would “conduct a thorough review of CEO Scott Thompson’s academic credentials, as well as the facts and circumstances related to the review and disclosure of those credentials in connection with Thompson’s appointment as CEO.”

The special committee is chaired by Yahoo’s new Chairman Fred Amoroso and includes John Hayes and Thomas McInerney, two independent directors who joined the board in April.

Yahoo also hired independent counsel Terry Bird of the law firm Bird, Marella, Boxer, Wolpert, Nessim, Drooks and Licenberg in Los Angeles to handle the inquiry.

The company also noted at the time that “the special committee and the entire Board appreciate the urgency of the situation and the special committee will therefore conduct the review in an independent, thorough and expeditious manner. The Board intends to make the appropriate disclosures to shareholders promptly upon completion of the review.”

Gripped by urgency myself, I have grown weary waiting by the phone for some official answers, which sources said will not be forthcoming for some time.

But since I am the most curious of cats — uh-oh! — I started dialing around on my own to find out what’s what.

And, according to sources — especially since Thompson has settled with Yahoo and will not get severance due to the academic falsehood — the big focus is now centering on if the company’s staff screwed up the background check of his academic credentials, thus allowing it to get into its official filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and also on Yahoo’s corporate Web site.

When Thompson was hired from eBay, where he was president of its PayPal payments division, the online commerce company had the correct bio information in its SEC filings, although not on its Web site or in its PR materials.

The question is: Did someone from Yahoo simply rely on Web bios and not check eBay filings and did anyone ever re-check Thompson’s college records? (Note: It took me 15 minutes flat to find out he did not have such a degree at Stonehill College in the Boston area.)

If lazy checking was the case, it spells rank incompetence on the part of staffers, as well as Hart, who headed the search after Yahoo fired its previous CEO Carol Bartz last fall.

A much more troubling line of inquiry taking place is aimed at the possibility that someone at Yahoo did discover the discrepancy in Thompson’s resume and either did not report it up the chain of command or did and it was either lost or ignored or, well, worse.

While this certainly ain’t Watergate, such a situation would be very hard for Yahoo to explain away as easily to shareholders, especially potentially litigious ones. As it is always said, the coverup can often be more damaging than the crime itself.

And, if it is determined by the special committee that certain employees knew of Thompson’s resume inaccuracy, it will most certainly result in dismissals of Yahoo employees.

The focus on the committee — which truly cannot sweep this under the rug, if it occurred in this much more serious scenario — is most obviously the legal department of Yahoo, which is responsible for making certain filings are accurate.

Also under scrutiny is the quickness of the hiring of Thompson.

Among the questions is how much vetting was done and whether adequate questions about him were asked among a variety of possible sources.

When he was picked in January, Thompson was a dark-horse candidate for many, including some Yahoo board members.

In fact, he was not on the initial headhunting lists prepared by outside talent search firm Heidrick & Struggles.

That’s because Heidrick had placed Thompson at eBay in mid-2000 and could not then recommend him to Yahoo. As it turned out, Thompson took it upon himself to cold email Yahoo board member and Intuit CEO Brad Smith about the job, who then passed Thompson’s interest to Hart.

Heidrick had no involvement in the checking of Thompson, although he later blamed the firm in a public meeting with Yahoo employees for putting the error in his bio in the first place from when he was hired at eBay. Heidrick quickly called the accusation “verifiably not true” in a memo to its own employees.

Sources said that meant that the firm had a resume that Thompson had submitted to it that also contained the error.

But the central mystery of how that mistake appeared on his bio will likely remain just that without further explanation from Thompson.

In a radio interview in 2009, he did not correct a specific question about the twin degrees he appeared to have held and seemed to even agree with the show’s host, Moira Gunn, about them.

Later, she told me in a video interview that Thompson had clearly indicated to her in the prep for that interview that he indeed had a computer science degree.

Still, it is still not clear — and may never be — who put the faux computer science credential on his resume in the first place.

So, with all apologies to Winston Churchill: It might remain a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

You Can Handle the Truth: Aaron Sorkin to Appear Onstage at D10

Kara Swisher — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:30:44 +0000

Add another speaker to the stellar list for the 10th D: All Things Digital conference, which is taking place in a little more than a month: Aaron Sorkin.

For those who have followed the long and award-filled career of the well-known playwright and Hollywood writer, it’s an astonishing litany of success — from “A Few Good Men” to “The West Wing” to “Moneyball” — filled with more unusually clever lines than anyone has ever penned.

But, most famously for tech, Sorkin also wrote the screenplay (and also won an Academy Award) for “The Social Network,” about the rise of Facebook and its unusual co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The film caused a lot of controversy in Silicon Valley over its depiction of Zuckerberg as an evil genius of sorts, of course, but few can argue that it was not a corker of a movie.

We are excited to talk to Sorkin about that experience, as well as his take on the state of entertainment in the digital age. He’s about to debut a new HBO show in June called “The Newsroom,” set behind the scenes at a cable news show. It deals with the massive changes roiling through the media industry and it begins, natch, with a viral video.

Sorkin is also set to make his Broadway debut as a librettist for the upcoming musical “Houdini.” And he’s also working on another new movie, based on a book about the downfall of Sen. John Edwards, which he’ll adapt, produce and direct.

Sorkin will be joined at D10 — which will be held in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., just south of Los Angeles, at the end of May — by a litany of major players in tech and media, including: Apple CEO Tim Cook, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz and many more.

And we still have more speakers to come, but until then, here’s the famous line from “The Social Network” — something about a billion dollars:

L.A. Stories: Scarfing Up Big Media at Gobbler (Video)

Kara Swisher — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 19:31:58 +0000

Another very interesting company I stumbled across in a funky building in Hollywood on my recent trip to Los Angeles is Gobbler, which bills itself as a “high-speed file transfer & backup for pro audio.”

In other words, a hopped-up version of Dropbox’s media-in-the-cloud efforts for cool music folks.

Armed with just over $3 million from angel investors like Sky Dayton, David Goldberg and others, the start-up is aiming to help media creators who need a lot more firepower, including backing up, transferring and organizing hefty music, video and photo files.

CEO Chris Kantrowitz knows whereof he speaks, as a designer of big music shows, including Coachella, the annual festival which takes place this weekend and next. He co-founded Gobbler with his sister, former Myspace exec Jamie Kantrowitz.

Here he is in a video interview with me talking about the future focus of the company, as well as where cloud storage is headed — Kantrowitz is one hep dude, so listen up:

[ See post to watch video ]

More D10 Speakers: Ellison, Meeker, Myhrvold, Along With Pixar and Visa!

Kara Swisher — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 21:49:26 +0000

A month ago, I posted an initial list of speakers for the 10th D: All Things Digital conference.

After a decade, the event — which is held in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., just south of Los Angeles, at the end of May — has attracted another amazing group of speakers, including: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; serial entrepreneur Sean Parker, who will appear with Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek; Zynga founder and CEO Mark Pincus; Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz; LinkedIn Chairman and VC Reid Hoffman, who will appear with the social business site’s CEO Jeff Weiner; and Skype CEO Tony Bates.

Now, here’s another group of stellar speakers we’ve added to the programming lineup (and there are still even more big names to come in the weeks ahead): Oracle CEO Larry Ellison; former tech analyst superstar and now VC Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins; Intellectual Ventures’ Nathan Myhrvold; Pixar co-founder and Disney animation head Dr. Ed Catmull; and Visa President John Partridge.

Larry Ellison, CEO and founder of the enterprise giant Oracle, needs little introduction, as one of tech’s highest profile figures and a true Silicon Valley icon. Frankly, I think the short bio that’s on Oracle’s Web site says it all: “Larry Ellison has been CEO of Oracle Corporation since he founded the company in 1977. He also races sailboats, flies planes, and plays tennis and guitar.” There will be a lot to talk about with the voluble and always entertaining exec — who appeared at the D conference once before many years ago — from the current state of the tech industry to insights to where it’s all going. (In addition, Ellison has agreed to appear on a panel we are doing as a tribute to his close friend, Apple’s former CEO Steve Jobs.)

Another well-known tech figure is Meeker, who is now a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, having joined the storied venture capital firm in early 2011. She focuses there on investments in its digital practice and via KP’s Digital Growth Fund, working with companies such as Spotify, Jawbone and One King’s Lane. But Meeker is perhaps best known for her long stint — 1991 to 2010 — as a star Internet research analyst at Morgan Stanley, where she brought many of the Internet’s great companies to the attention of Wall Street and beyond. She also wrote a series of groundbreaking reports on the landscape. That includes her annual “State of the Internet,” which Meeker will debut this year at the conference in an extended demo of her always riveting Internet trends presentation.

Nathan Myhrvold is also a tech legend, having worked for 14 years as chief strategist and CTO of Microsoft. But, instead of retiring, the avid inventor decided to focus on patents, founding and leading a controversial company called Intellectual Ventures, which buys them up and licenses them out (or sues if it doesn’t sell). With all the mishegas around patents right now, it’s a good time to have Myhrvold back to explain it all and perhaps to take some of the blame for the explosion in intellectual property lawsuits. (Myhrvold also co-authored a cookbook, “Modernist Cuisine,” so we hope we will also get some sort of futuristic cooking demo. Perhaps, Patently Delicious Flan?)

Speaking of tasty, the animation from Pixar over the years has been just that and it’s been one of Disney’s greatest acquisitions. Given how much Pixar has contributed to animation technology, we are glad to finally get Dr. Ed Catmull onstage. As co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios and president of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, he will discuss where entertainment and technology are intersecting and where they are not. Catmull is a geek’s geek in the industry — having also founded the computer graphics laboratory at the New York Institute of Technology, the computer division of Lucasfilm, as well as Pixar, which he did with chief creative officer John Lasseter. Get ready to talk about image compositing, motion blur, subdivision surfaces, cloth simulation and rendering techniques, texture mapping and the z-buffer. Also, Catmull’s five Academy Awards.

Lastly, it is perfect timing for bringing on John Partridge, president of Visa. With swirling issues around online identity theft, digital privacy, the future of money and the rise of upstart competitors such as Square, Partridge has his hands full at the credit card giant. One of the most neglected arenas in tech, the way we manage payments is perhaps the biggest story of the next era, especially as it relates to mobile and the rise of smartphones as all-purpose devices.

L.A. Stories: What's the Frequency for Web Video Discovery? (Video)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 16:04:19 +0000

Earlier this year, Peter Kafka wrote an update about Los Angeles-based Frequency, which is essentially a social TV Guide for online video.

I stopped by Frequency’s HQ — on a recent visit there to check out SoCal start-ups — to chat with its founder and CEO, Blair Harrison, who created and sold iFilm to Viacom several years ago, and to talk about how the Web video hub is doing, even in the face of a range of video-recommending competitors. That includes big-dog Google, which is both a rival and a partner via YouTube and its niche channels.

But, with a slick interface, which Harrison has compared to Flipboard for online video, Frequency is an interesting effort. Here’s the interview I did with him:

[ See post to watch video ]

Viral Video: Let the Hipster Games Begin!

Kara Swisher — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 07:16:26 +0000

I meant to post this last week — a very clever spoof on the hit movie “The Hunger Games.”

This version: “The Hipster Games,” with ironic young people from five districts — Portland, Austin, Brooklyn, Oakland and Silverlake in Los Angeles — fighting to the death for that old Talking Heads vinyl record album.

Enjoy:

L.A. Stories: Mike Jones and Peter Pham Talk About the Science of Tech Studios (Video)

Kara Swisher — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 20:27:00 +0000

While swanning about Los Angeles last week, I paid a visit to a number of interesting techies, including Mike Jones and Peter Pham, who recently founded Science.

While there are a lot of incubators and accelerators out there fiddling with start-ups, the pair of well-known entrepreneurs are calling this venture a “technology studio.”

By that, they mean that Science will do a lot more, from coming up with in-house ideas to investing some of their $10 million in backing to advising on how Silicon Valley should look at investments in Southern California to even taking on restructuring of larger entities.

Science investors include Rustic Canyon, White Star Capital, the Social+Capital Partnership and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures, and it also has relationships with private equity firms for the bigger stuff.

The focus of Science, as the pair discusses below in a video interview, will be in three arenas: The intersection of content and commerce, social and mobile, and location.

As longtime entrepreneurs and Internet execs, Jones and Pham know those arenas, both the pluses and the minuses.

Jones tried his best (and, like others, failed) with the Myspace revival and also founded and sold Specific Media, Userplane and Tsavo Media.

Pham was recently helming the high-profile and controversial Color photo-sharing start-up in Silicon Valley and did stints at both BillShrink and Photobucket (a former News Corp. property, as was Myspace. News Corp. owns this Web site.).

Here’s my chat with them about their sun-dappled dreams of SoCal tech hegemony via their Santa Monica, Calif., HQ:

[ See post to watch video ]

Another Science Start-Up, Wittlebee, Gets $2.5 Million in Funding for Kids' Clothes Club

Kara Swisher — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 16:00:30 +0000

Wittlebee, a monthly kids’ clothing club that was incubated at Los Angeles area “technology studio” Science, has gotten $2.5 million in funding.

Much like another Science start-up, Dollar Shave Club, Wittlebee ships a custom box of high-quality kids’ clothes to members.

The seed round of funding was led by Rincon, with participation from SoftTech, Google Ventures, Matt Coffin, Crosslink, and Morado.

Wittlebee’s CEO and founder Sean Percival said the money would be used to create a private-label clothing line.

Wittlebee uses stay-at-home parents, who have used the site, as customer service reps. The start-up sends a new order of children’s apparel each month, including onesies, t-shirts, leggings, socks and pants, upping the sizes as the kid grows.

In other words, kind of like a never-ending online Gap.

Here’s the official press release on Wittlebee’s funding:

Wittlebee Raises $2.5 Million Seed Funding Lead By Rincon

Children’s clothing membership service to begin manufacturing private label designs to keep up with growing customer demand

Los Angeles, CA. April 4, 2012 — Wittlebee (www.Wittlebee.com), the affordable children’s clothing monthly membership service backed by technology studio Science Inc., today announces the company raised $2.5 million in seed funding leady by Rincon, with participation from SoftTech, Google Ventures, Matt Coffin, CrossLink, and Morado. Jim Andelman, co-founder and General Partner at Rincon, joins Wittlebee’s board alongside Michael Jones, founder and CEO of Science, and Sean Percival, Wittlebee’s founder and CEO.

Since launching less than two months ago, Wittlebee has experienced accelerated growth, in part because of Science’s track record of quickly scaling ecommerce businesses. The company will use the new investment to build out its executive team and user acquisitions.

Upon joining Wittlebee, customers are connected to a team of mom stylists who work with families to compose boxes of high-quality children’s clothing to meet individual children’s needs. Active kids in warm climates like Miami may receive appropriate t-shirts, shorts and socks whereas infants in Albany receive long-sleeve onesies and cozy pajamas.

“Wittlebee’s recent growth has been tremendous,” said Percival. “Our customer feedback is overwhelmingly positive; we are speaking to an audience of 20,000 highly engaged moms across social media who tell us they’re delighted we’re saving them time and money for all their children’s clothing needs. We plan to use Rincon’s investment to create Wittlebee’s private label clothing line that will truly showcase our commitment to high-quality practical children’s apparel.”

In the coming months, customers will receive a selection of parents’ favorite well-known brands in addition to Wittlebee’s private label. Manufactured both locally in Los Angeles and abroad, the new line represents customers’ wish-list of kids’ must-haves, from high-quality soft fabrics, to a wide color palate, to unique graphic designs. After months of research and testing apparel options through Wittlebee’s social networks, the resulting Wittlebee bespoke label will be a timeless array of apparel basics to carry kids through seasons, activities and all their lifestyle needs.

“For every investment decision we make, we care most about customer value proposition, team, and business model,” said Jim Andelman, Managing Partner at Rincon. “We’ve been tremendously impressed by parents’ positive response to Wittlebee’s offering: they love the selections, they save money and you can’t beat the convenience of clothes showing up right to your door. The e-commerce space is exploding in LA, and we’re very excited to be at the forefront with Wittlebee.”

For more on Wittlebee, please visit www.Wittlebee.com.

L.A. Stories: HipSwap Tries to Take the Creepy out of Craigslist (Video)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 17:56:24 +0000

Last week, I visited Los Angeles to get a gander at some of the many digital companies that are doing some interesting things down south of Silicon Valley.

First stop: HipSwap, a community-based marketplace that is now in 14 U.S. cities after initial tests in Los Angeles and New York City.

Its goal is to de-creep the experience — because no matter how it’s done online, local buying and selling still has a lot of glitches. Using a visual approach (think Pinterest), with hipster social hooks (think Airbnb) and focusing on location (hmm, perhaps think Foursquare), complete with delivery in some cities, HipSwap is hoping to differentiate itself from big players in the space, such as Craigslist and eBay.

The app-heavy HipSwap allows anyone with stuff, including boutique merchants with quirky stuff to move, to quickly snap photos of items, price them and then — presumably — sell. Payment is made via PayPal or credit card, with HipSwap in between the buyer and seller, to ease the transaction’s typical awkwardness.

Because it is local, the items are varied, from trendy baby strollers to funky furniture to antique sewing machines. And, because it is in the L.A. area, HipSwap is also pushing celebrity fare, with a charitable “Shop My Closet” marketplace and video series, which recently included Kyle Richards from “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”

The Santa Monica, Calif. start-up recently closed $1.1 million seed funding from a number of prominent investors, such as Founders Fund, Greycroft Partners, as well as former Microsoft exec — and early Pinterest angel — Hank Vigil and Mahalo President Jason Rapp.

Here’s a video interview I did with co-founder and CEO Rob Kramer about the interesting retail concept:

[ See post to watch video ]

Viral Video: The ParkMe Dudes Booting Austin

Kara Swisher — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 07:31:04 +0000

ParkMe is an app that AllThingsD writer Ina Fried wrote was “the best (and worst) marketing gimmick in Austin” at the SXSW Interactive festival last week.

Simply put, the Los Angeles-area start-up used fake tickets and boots to get the word out about their app, which recommends the “cheapest and closest parking around you.”

Yes, boots in Texas. Heh.

Here is a video ParkMe did about the effort:

Here Come the First D10 Speakers: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Entrepreneur Sean Parker, Zynga’s Mark Pincus and More on the Red Hot Seat

Kara Swisher — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 18:40:29 +0000

Even though our D: All Things Digital conference always sells out well in advance every year without our announcing even one single speaker (like this one, too), it’s the action on stage that truly matters.

And in 2012 — which also happens to be the 10th anniversary of the confab of tech and media titans — it’s already shaping up to be another fantastic event in terms of programming, with a lineup of onstage appearances that is sure to make some news.

There are many more very big names to come, but Walt Mossberg and I are pleased to introduce the first group of interviewees, which will give you a glimpse into the firepower we expect at D10 in late May. It is again being held in Rancho Palos Verdes, just south of Los Angeles.

The initial speakers we have confirmed so far include: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; serial entrepreneur Sean Parker, who will appear with Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek; Zynga founder and CEO Mark Pincus; Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz; LinkedIn Chairman and VC Reid Hoffman, who will appear with LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner; and Skype CEO Tony Bates.

It’s hard to imagine someone we have wanted to have onstage more than Michael Bloomberg, a man of many talents and interests. He’s known worldwide as the 108th Mayor of the City of New York. First elected in November 2001 (and again in 2005 and 2009), he is also one of the most compelling politicians in the U.S. today.

But Bloomberg is also a pioneer in terms of the business of digital news and information technology, having built a huge and groundbreaking media company and information service. Bloomberg (the company) has 310,000 subscribers to its financial news and information service, and more than 15,000 employees worldwide.

There will be a lot to talk about with him, from the upcoming presidential election to the state of our government to the future of innovation, news and technology.

Also sure to be voluble is Sean Parker, the legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has been on the cutting edge of innumerable important digital trends of the recent decade. In 1999, Parker co-founded Napster, the controversial and industry-changing music service, at the age of 19.

He followed up with early contact information service Plaxo, and then shifted over to his critical involvement as founding president of Facebook in its early days as a start-up, an experience which was dramatized in the movie “The Social Network.” Parker continued to found and also invest in companies, from Causes to Spotify to his most recent, Airtime, a social video company that he is doing with his Napster co-founder Shawn Fanning.

Parker will be appearing onstage with Daniel Ek, another serial entrepreneur and technologist, who started his first company in 1997 at the age of 14. The Swedish native later co-founded online music phenom Spotify in 2006, with Martin Lorentzon.

The former CTO of Stardoll and founder of Advertigo leads a company that is changing the way music is delivered and consumed by fans, against a backdrop of intense change in the industry, succeeding even as a plethora of other services have stumbled.

Also a groundbreaker is Zynga CEO and founder Mark Pincus, yet another serial entrepreneur, whose latest effort in the online gaming arena has finally resulted in his biggest success. It recently went public, and now has a nearly $10 billion market cap.

Before founding Zynga in 2007, Pincus had already started three other companies: Push start-up Freeloader in 1995; automated tech-support company Support.com after that; and early social networking site Tribe.net in 2003.

(I met Pincus when he was at Freeloader in Washington, D.C., while writing a profile of him for the Washington Post, so I have enjoyed tracking his progress since then.)

Pincus is also an avid angel investor, with early stakes in Napster, Brightmail, Twitter and Facebook.

Reid Hoffman was another early investor in Facebook, along with many of Web 2.0’s most successful ventures. Well-known in Silicon Valley as an entrepreneur and VC, and recently dubbed the “start-up whisperer” by the New York Times (although I am not sure exactly what that means), he’s also chairman of LinkedIn, the business-networking service that also recently went public (at a $10 billion valuation, too).

He’ll appear with LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, who started out life in Hollywood, but soon made his way to Silicon Valley as a top exec at Yahoo. After running its media division, Weiner spent a short time at venture firms before going operational again at LinkedIn.

What it takes to build and maintain momentum as tech companies move into more mature stages, as well as how the social networking space evolves, are among the many topics on tap for the pair.

The evolution of a start-up phenom — in this case, Internet telephony service Skype — will be among the topics covered by Tony Bates, who is now a president at Microsoft, which bought it last year.

As such, he is responsible, says the software giant in its description of his job, “for overseeing the company’s direction, strategy and overall mission to become a global communications service that will eventually reach billions of users.”

That’s a tall order for Bates, who came to Skype from a top job at Cisco. Bates has deep roots (or maybe, routing?) in the guts of the Internet, having done backbone-engineering strategy for Internet MCI. The U.K. native also holds nine patents.

Lastly, given all the activity we expect will happen between government regulatory agencies and tech companies over the next few years, we felt it was key to bring in FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. He has been at the FTC as a commissioner since 2004, but was given the top job by President Barack Obama in 2009.

Among his priorities, according to his bio, is “promoting competition and innovation in the technology sector through law enforcement and policy initiatives; and protecting consumers’ privacy — especially while they are using the Internet.”

Uh-oh!

Leibowitz knows from regulation, having served as the Democratic chief counsel and staff director for the U.S. Senate Antitrust Subcommittee from 1997 to 2000, where he focused on competition policy and telecommunications matters, as well as a similar stint at the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism and Technology before that.

There will be a lot more speakers to come, of course. But, so far, we think D10 is off and running fast.

CEO Tim Cadogan Talks About OpenX's First Profitable Quarter and Where Ad Tech Is Going Next (Video)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:00:03 +0000

OpenX, the online digital advertising upstart, announced this morning that it had reached profitability for the first time, as well as “exceeding an annualized revenue run rate of more than $100M” in its fourth quarter.

It’s certainly a milestone for the Los Angeles-based start-up, which competes with a little company called Google. OpenX has raised almost $51 million in funding since 2007, the latest round being $20 million last year.

CEO Tim Cadogan — a former Yahoo ad exec who arrived at OpenX in 2008 — talked about all this, and about where the online display market online is headed, in a video interview with me last week.

Here’s the chat, and the official press release from OpenX, too:

[ See post to watch video ]

OPENX ANNOUNCES FIRST FULL QUARTER OF PROFITABILITY

Leading provider of digital advertising technology achieves annual run rate exceeding $100M

LOS ANGELES, February 13, 2012 – OpenX Technologies, Inc. (OpenX), one of the world’s leading providers of digital advertising technology, today announced it achieved a profitable fourth quarter as well as exceeding an annualized revenue run rate of more than $100M. The company also announced that it expects to continue its record of profitability during 2012 with continued robust growth across all areas of the company’s business.

2011 was a year of extraordinary success for OpenX during which the company served more than one trillion ad impressions and now handles more than 200 billion ad transactions per month. OpenX Market, the company’s unique ad exchange platform, saw a particularly strong year-over-year rate of growth of nearly 700%. This massive growth in OpenX Market is due to a growing number of publishers and advertisers recognizing the precision and strength of ad exchanges with the quality of both buy-side and sell-side customers that OpenX attracts. The company also continues to operate and manage key global partnerships, including OpenX Market Japan, a partnership with cyber communications inc. (“cci”), a subsidiary of Dentsu Inc.

The company’s advertising technology services, which include OpenX Enterprise, achieved a Q4 year-over-year growth rate of 100% compared with the same period in 2010, due to the acceleration of OpenX Enterprise, the company’s Software as a Service ad serving platform. OpenX has made significant progress over the last year in terms of both product adoption and revenue, proving its paradigm-shifting revenue serving capabilities are not only capable of driving revenue for publishers but can also do so at scale.

“2011 was a breakthrough year for OpenX with huge growth in global adoption of OpenX Enterprise and the phenomenal expansion of OpenX Market,” said Tim Cadogan, chief executive officer, OpenX. “Providing a comprehensive revenue serving solution for publishers to make them more money is the heart of what we are building and we are clearly demonstrating that we are able to do this at massive, global scale. The quality of the OpenX team and the growth levels we’re seeing put us in an incredibly strong position for 2012.”

With the launch in early 2011 of OpenX Enterprise, the Company offered the online advertising market the first true total revenue serving platform to make publishers more money. Since OpenX Enterprise combines an ad server with an ad exchange, it enables publishers to manage exclusive, guaranteed, non-guaranteed and real-time revenue sources all in one unified platform. As a result, for the first time publishers can maximize yield across all their ad revenue channels in real-time in one place.

Adoption of OpenX by major publishers, advertisers and partners has grown rapidly and is now used by thousands of customers across the world, including Groupon, cci, TheStreet.com, Turn, Invite Media, MediaMath, and [x+1].

“Reaching profitability is an important milestone in OpenX’s story,” said Rick Gombos, chief financial officer, OpenX. “What’s even more important is that we have achieved profitability by any measure of financial performance — EBITDA, cash flow and net income.”

Former Color Co-Founder Peter Pham Heads to Former Myspace CEO's L.A. Tech Studio (Video)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:00:54 +0000

Well-known tech entrepreneur Peter Pham will be joining the Los Angeles-based start-ups lab that was just launched by former Myspace CEO Mike Jones.

Pham, who was recently helming the high-profile and controversial Color photo-sharing start-up in Silicon Valley, will be moving south again to join Jones at the Santa Monica, Calif.-based “technology studio,” called Science.

As Liz Gannes reported last week, the goal — with $10 million in funding and private equity partners at the ready for more — is to “incubate ideas in-house, invest in other people’s start-ups, advise Silicon Valley companies on breaking into Hollywood, and maybe even look into reworking later-stage Internet companies like Yahoo.”

Pham and Jones will aim at three verticals: The intersection of content and commerce, social systems, and mobile and location.

That’s an area that Pham knows well, with stints at both BillShrink and Photobucket (also a former News Corp. property, as was MySpace), as well as active angel investing.

In an interview yesterday, Pham said he hopes to bridge the Silicon Valley-L.A. delta more, since there is an increasing amount of promising tech taking place there, too.

“There is a lot going on in L.A., and a lot of tech talent that still sometimes get less attention up in Silicon Valley,” said Pham. “I hope to be part of bringing the communities a little closer together.”

In addition, he said that the focus of Science would not necessarily be on online entertainment start-ups, as might be expected, given the proximity to Hollywood.

“We really want to shine a light on the innovation taking place in Los Angeles beyond the obvious,” said Pham.

It’s a good idea, given how navel-gazing Northern California geeks can be.

Also in the L.A. start-up scene of late is a new accelerator called Start Engine, which debuted recently with a focus on mentorship on 120 start-ups per year.

You can see Pham featured in this video that Gannes did about Color:

[ See post to watch video ]

And here’s the official press release about Pham joining Science:

Peter Pham press release.FINAL11-21-11

Google's High-Profile Los Angeles Deal Faces Criticism

John Letzing — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 22:18:36 +0000

Google Inc. has been unable to provide more than a third of Los Angeles city employees with its Apps software because of security concerns, highlighting difficulties the search giant faces as it tries to create revenue streams outside of its core business.

On Wednesday, Los Angeles City Council member Dennis Zine filed a motion requesting a status report on Google’s contract with the city. Google and Computer Sciences Corp., its partner implementing Apps, have been unable to meet the security requirements of the city’s police department, Mr. Zine wrote in the motion.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »