AllThingsD » Stanford University

QOTD: Never Mind Your GPA -- When's Your IPO?

John Murrell — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 23:32:05 +0000

The center of gravity at the university appears to have shifted. The school now looks like a giant tech incubator with a football team.

– Nicholas Thompson, in a New Yorker article entitled, “The End of Stanford?”

Old Media Doesn't Get New Media, Chapter 203: The Sheryl Sandberg Attack

Kara Swisher — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 23:26:52 +0000

Take one Silicon Valley exec. Who is rich. Who is a woman. Who seems, on the superficial surface at least, to have it all. Mix with high-profile book she has penned about gender issues in the workplace and a social networking effort to organize around. Sprinkle in some fear, some loathing and a generous dollop of startlingly ignorant assertions about how new media works. Bake in the spotlight for a millisecond.

Voila: Sheryl Sandberg Flambé.

Indeed, at this early point in the marketing game of the well-known Facebook COO’s new book, “Lean In,” the unusual level of vitriol aimed at her is, frankly, is eye-opening. While there is plenty that smart people can disagree with in her tome — after all, this is a very hot-button issue — the fact that it has ratcheted up this far before the March 11 publication date says a lot about a lot of things.

Not the least of which is that the relationship between old media and new media is, in the parlance of the huge Silicon Valley social networking company, complicated.

Consider Jodi Kantor’s New York Times article, titled “A Titan’s How-To on Breaking the Glass Ceiling,” which appeared at the end of last week.

As it was crafted, it immediately went right after Sandberg’s “carefully orchestrated media campaign” — leaving aside the pertinent fact that in this noisy day and age, every big media launch is carefully orchestrated — and then immediately took issue with her effort to start “Lean In Circles”

Oddly described by Kantor, the site is one on “which women can share experiences and follow a Sandberg-crafted curriculum for career success.” Actually, it was a little more complex than that, with major contributions from the highly regarded Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University to this effort.

Then, Kantor uses a sensationally arrogant-sounding Sandberg quote — “I always thought I would run a social movement” — from a recent video interview. As it turns out, though, it’s only a partial lift and almost totally out of context.

In full, it is about how Sandberg thought she would be a do-gooder who would doubtlessly not make much money: “I always thought I would run a social movement, which meant basically work in a nonprofit. I never thought I would work in the corporate sector.”

Then comes my favorite part from the Times piece: “With less than three weeks until launch — which will include a spread in Time magazine and splashy events like a book party at Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s home — organizers cannot say how many more groups may sprout up.”

Hmm. Hmm. They can’t say. Wow. Perhaps that’s because Lean In Circles have not started yet? You know, the service has not opened and therefore no one is using it.

Could Instagram have said how that piles of would use it before it started, especially since its first iteration was a dud? Nope! Could YouTube have known “Oppa Gangnam Style” was going to be a ginormous hit? Nope! Could the New York Times have known that it might have wanted to get ahead of this Internet thing before it decimated their business? Nope!

Here’s the thing — you can’t really fail before you start, but perhaps that’s just a Silicon Valley thing.

Let’s be clear, the “Lean In Circles” might turn out to be a big zero and perhaps Sandberg cannot compel women to use them. It could be an online ghost town. Or it could be very popular.

Who knows? All I am certain of is that it will — as the success of most online products depend on — be about whether people find whatever Sandberg is offering useful.

Also wrong is an account of Lean In essays that Sandberg has requested from some prominent women, which Kantor underscored asks for happy endings. True, but not quite if you read the whole document, which also says in part:

“Leaning in means pushing through the challenges and going down a path with an uncertain outcome. The path often leads to a positive internal result (newfound confidence, strength or determination) and often an external
reward (promotion, raise or goal achieved.) Leaning back means choosing to stay in a known or comfortable situation. This often leads to an internal
realization (desire to grow, change, consider leaning in the next time) and possibly a negative external result (stagnation, missed opportunities, loss of income.)”

After that, like many pieces so far, the article is all about how rich ladies with big houses and nannies should not lecture to other ladies without them. Perhaps that is so in some contexts and there is no question that her own massive success might be Sandberg’s most potent Achilles heel in trying to get her message out.

But in my reading, book as a whole is less grand and tsk-tsk than I expected and more about the plethora of depressing stats about women in the workplace, as well as some advice that has vaunted her to the top.

Lots of high-profile male execs have done this without the same level of anger directed at them. Thus, even though Sandberg is not the bilious and appalling as Donald Trump, she does not get to pontificate in any way that seems like, you know, she’s had some traction in the workplace — the Treasury Department, Google, Facebook — and might have some good tips to share.

Interesting, though it was not the only media account like this, the Times then followed today with one of the more bizarre and hyperactive columns I have seen of late by Maureen Dowd, who never met a pun she did not abuse mercilessly (and I love a good pun!).

“She has a grandiose plan to become the PowerPoint Pied Piper in Prada ankle boots reigniting the women’s revolution — Betty Friedan for the digital age,” Dowd wrote, also using the out-of-context Sandberg quote again to make her obtuse point. “She seems to think she can remedy social paradigms with a new kind of club — a combo gabfest, Oprah session and corporate pep talk. (Where’s the yoga?).”

Unpacking all those disparate images is a task for someone else with more energy than I have, but it becomes less comical when she goes all digital media expert.

“People come to a social movement from the bottom up, not the top down,” wrote Dowd. “Just because digital technology makes connecting possible doesn’t mean you’re actually reaching people.”

Um, no, it does not — and I am not sure who said it did. Although I am certain Sandberg knows more than Dowd about reaching people online and the potential for getting them to act.

Still, it is just a start and Sandberg does not seem to be saying otherwise. And perhaps it is a good thing to debate whether book is pushing women meet goals they perhaps cannot.

Or — maybe, just maybe — it is a little more complicated. In fact, it is a lot more complicated — the issue of women at work is a thorny issue –which is why it will be interesting to see if Sandberg’s book and social network will have an impact or not.

To be clear, I have no idea if it will and neither does anyone else. No one thought Facebook would have a billion users (I definitely did not!).

That answer is to come, of course, after what will doubtlessly be a rollout where the turbulence is just beginning.

“We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in,” wrote Sandberg in her book.

True that. That’s because, as it turns out, leaning in turns out to mean a very bumpy ride for those who do.

TaskRabbit Hires Google's Brown-Philpot in a Renewed Management Expansion (Video)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 16:00:29 +0000

TaskRabbit, the San Francisco-based marketplace for personal projects and services, has hired longtime Google exec Stacy Brown-Philpot as COO.

As both its funding and also competition have increased, the move is another major effort by TaskRabbit to up its management game.

Brown-Philpot certainly fits the bill, having worked at a wide range of jobs at Google for more than a decade. The Detroit native was most recently an entrepreneur in residence at Google Ventures, and has worked on global operations for a wide range of products — including as head of online sales and operations for Google India — and also in high-level finance jobs at the Silicon Valley search giant.

Previous to Google, Brown-Philpot worked at the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm and also in M&A at Goldman Sachs. She attended the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and has an MBA from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.

In other words, a very impressive resume — more impressive, given that she has always been a straightforward and charming exec in my many encounters with her over the years.

Brown-Philpot will be the second time that TaskRabbit founder Leah Busque has tried to expand the company’s top talent base. In June of last year, Busque took back the title of CEO from Hotwire founder Eric Grosse, who had been hired in late 2011.

But in November of 2012, TaskRabbit bought One Jackson, adding Anne Raimondi (pictured above with Brown-Philpot and Busque) as chief revenue officer. And now Brown-Philpot.

The trio has their work cut out for them. Last July, the company garnered another $13 million in funding in a Series C round, led by Founders Fund and including existing investors such as Shasta Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Parters. The startup has raised $38 million in total over its five-year history.

Here’s the video of an interview about the expansion plans that I did late last week with Busque and Brown-Philpot at their SOMA offices in San Francisco:

[ See post to watch video ]

Interview: Corey Ford, CEO of Media Accelerator Matter Ventures

Eric Johnson — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 00:08:24 +0000

You can’t throw a rock in Silicon Valley without hitting a media start-up. But within that field, new and untested business models are the most important link to journalism’s future, said Matter Ventures CEO Corey Ford — and they need a space to grow.

Ford comes to Matter, formerly known as Public Media Accelerator, from Runway, the accelerator inside of Eric Schmidt’s venture capital firm Innovation Endeavors.

Matter (not to be confused with the similarly named long-form journalism start-up) has funding for at least two years from its investors, KQED and the Knight Foundation, each of which put in $1.25 million. A third partner, the Public Radio Exchange (PRX), will act in a more advisory role.

But as Ford recently told AllThingsD in an interview at Matter’s new working space in San Francisco, that doesn’t mean the entrepreneurs who apply to the accelerator between now and January 6 are applying to work for PBS or NPR.

In fact, just the opposite is true — although it’s possible some of the projects that come out of the accelerator could be of interest to public media companies, since Ford took over in April he has placed the focus squarely on sustainable for-profit business models:

AllThingsD: Why change the name from Public Media Accelerator (or Public Media X) to Matter Ventures?

Corey Ford: It’s a fundamental shift that we had to do. I started in April, but we were announced to the world as Public Media Accelerator before then, before we started developing what this is. At Stanford’s D-school (design school, where Ford used to teach), you come up with a problem statement to be “needs-focused and solution-agnostic.” You don’t want to embed the solution in your problem statement.

ATD: You want an abstract goal and a variety of solutions.

Ford: Right. The shift wasn’t because we don’t like public media. I mean, we love it, I used to work in it, and I care deeply about it. But, in order to innovate within this space, you can’t start from an institutional perspective. I know it sounds very Silicon Valley-y, but I think of this as a disruptive playground. It’s about the entrepreneurs.

ATD: So, why “Matter”?

Ford: I needed a name that had a value-based filter, something that created meaningful signals in the ever-increasing noise out there. Something that matters. The other thing about the name is that we are unapologetically about for-profit scalable entrepreneurship. There can be a false dichotomy between mission — “you have to be a non-profit” — and “you have to be money-hungry.” There’s a middle ground.

ATD: So the groups that you accept will all be for-profit entities …

Ford: … seeking a sustainable, scalable business model. What we didn’t want was people building a media property and just having their business model be, “Well, it’s good media, so foundations should fund it.” That’s fine, but there’s already other people doing that.

ATD: This is an overgeneralization on my part, but there are two big camps among media start-ups: aggregators pulling from existing content that’s out there, and those producing new content. Which are you looking for more?

Ford: It’s an open door. The best ideas are gonna be ones that we can’t predict and put out a call for. The whole world is much smarter than we are. We’re a platform to attract entrepreneurs. With that in mind, this could range from participatory platforms to, potentially, B2B-type services for existing media companies.

ATD: So, not necessarily making new journalism …

Ford: … but supporting those that already do. So, for example, if someone could redesign the pledge drive to help them have a deeper relationship with their audience and collect money in some way … Ultimately, at the end of the day, business model innovation is the thing that really needs solving. It’s up to the entrepreneurs to figure it out as they go.

ATD: How will your partnerships (with KQED, the Knight Foundation and PRX) work? Back when this was Public Media X, I had it in my head that this was somehow KQED’s accelerator.

Ford: I’m super-grateful for our partners. But KQED and Knight and any other partner we bring in will never have control over our investments or our entrepreneurs. That’s fundamental to the strategy. KQED can learn by being close to what we’re doing because, by definition, it can’t operate from a disruptive perspective. And if the entrepreneurs are working on something that may be interesting to KQED, they now have an instant audience that they can test it on, if they want to. But you can never cross that disruptive line.

ATD: You still want the entrepreneurs to have freedom.

Ford: Yes. What I say to partners is, “My job is to support entrepreneurs. They could be building something that looks very threatening to you, and if they do, I will be the wind at their backs.” You have two options then. Say, “I’m scared, I don’t want to be close to it,” or do what I think is the smart thing and say, “I want to be close to this because I can learn a lot from it.”

Khosla Ventures Brings In Condoleezza Rice's Firm for Strategic Role

Kara Swisher — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 11:30:50 +0000

In yet another instance of a Silicon Valley venture firm bringing in big government guns to class up the place, Khosla Ventures said that it had signed the international consulting firm run by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to “bring global and domestic insight to Khosla’s portfolio companies, helping them achieve their strategic goals in industries such as technology, energy, security and healthcare.”

In other words, strategery plus!

That will presumably be provided by Rice and her partners at RiceHadleyGates, which has offices in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C., in an undisclosed financial arrangement with Khosla. RiceHadleyGates also includes former National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and former State Department official Anja Manuel.

In an interview yesterday, Manuel said that the goal was to help in areas that VCs might not be as familiar with, from Internet freedom laws in India to the challenges of moving into emerging markets.

“There are a lot of policy issues that entrepreneurs will be facing and we will try to be helpful as they sort through them,” she said. “We love working with innovative companies and want to make their global experience better.”

Khosla partner Samir Kaul said the firm was still figuring out how they will work together, but that Rice’s team would serve as “strategic advisers on an as needed basis.”

“What [RiceHadleyGates] does fits in very well with a lot of our themes as investors in energy and security, for example,” said Kaul. “We want to offer the companies we invest in as much help as possible and this is a real win in that regard.”

It’s certainly a high-profile move, although Khosla has done this before, signing former British Prime Minister Tony Blair on as a strategic adviser in 2010.

In addition, Andreessen Horowitz brought in former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, as well as former D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, to lend its portfolio companies additional expertise.

Rice’s firm certainly has a lot of that, especially related to thorny international issues. Rice, who was once the provost at Stanford University, was also the National Security Adviser in the administration of former President George W. Bush, before moving to the State Department.

Google, Government Reps Warn Against Internet Regulation Summit

Eric Johnson — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 15:30:28 +0000

If you’ve ever found yourself at a panel of academics, you know the drill: Really smart people, differing viewpoints, respectful bickering, free sandwiches, aaaand scene.

That said, at a panel yesterday on the campus of Stanford University’s Law School, the disagreements were actually few and far between.

Three panelists — U.S. Ambassador David Gross, Google policy counsel Patrick Ryan and former Assistant Secretary of Commerce Larry Irving — presented a surprisingly unified argument: An upcoming United Nations conference on Internet regulation is dangerous.

Really, really dangerous. At least for those who like the Internet as-is.

“Is This the End of the Internet?” delved into the World Conference on International Telecommunications, or WCIT, a U.N.-affiliated policy summit starting next week in Dubai. The government representatives in attendance will debate and vote on amendments to a 24-year-old telecom regulations treaty.

Some — but not all — of the proposed amendments could upend the historically laissez-faire regulation of the Internet. This anti-WCIT advocacy video sums up opponents’ nightmare scenario well:

The original 1988 treaty was “a tremendous success for reasons that no one anticipated,” Gross told the Stanford audience. At the time, the focus was still on telephony, which was still state-owned and -run in most countries, although not the U.S.

The liberalizing treaty’s flexibility over commercial relationships, he said, drove international growth and laid the groundwork for today’s widespread global mobile access.

But now, Irving chimed in, “fear is a great driver, and people like to regulate what they fear.” Governments that will be in attendance at the closed-door WCIT summit — including some that currently censor Internet traffic within their own borders — have proposed amendments to the treaty that could make it easier to monitor and control how everyone uses the Web.

In response to this perceived threat, Google launched an anti-regulation campaign online just over a week ago. And it did so under “Take Action,” the same corporate policy banner used to successfully protest the anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA earlier this year.

At first, Google’s Ryan said, he didn’t know why the ITU, the U.N. sub-organization behind WCIT, isn’t more transparent in its efforts. Gross said that past transparency efforts by ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré had been shot down by member governments.

The reason? According to Irving, while Americans generally think of the Internet in positive terms, the people in power in a handful of other countries equate the Web with a loss of control and cultural disruption.

In other words, they see problems like spam and privacy as exempt from public discussion.

Compounding the problem, each country gets one, and only one, vote at WCIT, no matter their differences in Internet usage or how many delegates they send.

For all intents and purposes in the ITU, the U.S. and its 115 delegates (so numbered according to this document obtained by anonymous-leaking Web site WCITleaks) are on a level playing field with China’s 31, Russia’s 45 and Libya’s two.

Nevertheless, Gross said, WCIT 2012 “may be historic,” because it will test the “global political power of the Internet.”

The big question is whether bottom-up efforts from WCIT’s adversaries, both in the crowd online and in the private sector, can put any sort of pressure on the top-down decision-makers.

Average people understand the benefits of the Internet, Irving added, and “regulating the Internet in a stupid way can take a lot of those benefits away, especially for those at the ‘bottom of the pyramid.’”

The danger, Irving added, arises from the fact that so few governments really understand the digital medium. The last time the U.N. looked at the Internet in a major way, at a 2005 summit, most people had never heard of YouTube, Facebook or smartphones, he pointed out.

In other words, it’s safer to avoid regulation of the Internet, because governments will never be able to outpace the speed of evolving technology.

“We’re not regulatory Usain Bolts,” he said.

Via Google’s “Take Action” site, this video goes deeper into what the ITU has done right in the past, and what’s going on now:

The Debut of Yahoo CEO Mayer: "Tailor-Made" for Marissa

Kara Swisher — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 21:07:05 +0000

Yahoo turned in a meh third quarter, which came as no surprise to anyone. But none of it matters, since all eyes were on what new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer would say on the investor call today.

Here we go! It is Mayer’s first outing as a public company CEO. She’s been an exec at Google her whole career and, while she has been a prominent public figure in Silicon Valley, she has never run the whole show herself.

Until today, that is!

2:01 pm: Finally, we are hearing from Mayer, who arrived from Google in July.

She is “thrilled to be at Yahoo” and the first 100 days at the company have been a lot of fun.

She’s apparently been a fan since her undergraduate days at Stanford University.

Finally, she tries to answer the big question: “Why did I in particular come to Yahoo?”

Why, indeed, given she and others at Google have spent those years since college putting Yahoo directly into the ground. (Did you know Yahoo gave Google its first big search break, a deal engineered by Mayer and others?)

But, says Mayer, Yahoo is “tailor-made for me,” ticking off arenas such as “search, mail, advertising, home page.”

It’s what she built her career on, apparently — yes, in kicking Yahoo’s behind — but now she wants to help the troubled Silicon Valley Internet giant “grow and help redefine” itself.

Still, she stresses, trying to buy as much time as possible from investors: “It will take multiple years to get to where I want the company to be.”

2:08 pm: Mayer, of course, touts her Apple iPhone-and-free-food spending to make the life of Yahoos better (and on parity with the rest of the digital sector).

To be fair, given the past two CEOs, anyone who did not come in and kick the employees where it counts was going to get some claps.

Mayer’s goals are “simple,” she says, “to execute fast, attract the best talent and make Yahoo the best place to work.”

She says she has assembled a stellar world class exec team to accomplish that.

2:11 pm: Now we get to meet one of that team and a Yahoo newbie — CFO Ken Goldman (pictured here). It’s his first day.

He repeats the results that Yahoo has already put in its press release, which is why I usually zone out here and focus on superficial stuff.

Like how much he sounds like former and ousted Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson. Eek!

Goldman touts Yahoo’s recent Alibaba Group deal in China (done not by Goldman, but by outgoing — jacked by Mayer, really — CFO Tim Morse) and notes a $765 million credit facility that Yahoo apparently got this month.

That’s more dough to add to Mayer’s ever-growing pile to spend on fixing Yahoo.

2:23 pm: Mayer is back — Goldman is nice enough, but everyone wants to hear from the former Google wunderkind.

She makes an obvious statement: Yahoo has to “grow at the same pace as the market we are in.” Yep. Yahoo’s growth has been practically non-existent, while the industry has seen robust increases for years.

Mayer is now hitting all the high points on what needs to be fixed.

Search, communications, a desperate need to invest in mobile. “Our top priority is a focused, coherent” mobile strategy, she says. It’s everybody and their mother’s top priority in the Internet space, but it’s gotta be said.

So Mayer says it again: “Yahoo will have to be a predominantly mobile company.”

She also name-checks “delighting users,” improving advertising and personalization.

2:27 pm: She also underscores that Yahoo will now hold onto its ad tech business.

“No one wants Yahoo to grow more than the people who work here,” says Mayer, who says she is going back to Yahoo’s roots. “We believe Yahoo’s best days lie ahead … and we intend to win.”

It sounds very good, but Mayer has been relatively unspecific overall.

Now to Q&A to see if she will drill down more.

2:30 pm: The first question is about Mayer’s vision as compared to others.

Apparently, it does not mean a “pivot” into different and new businesses. It does mean improving what Yahoo has done well.

“I don’t think this is a situation where there’s a giant pivot and we go into a completely different business,” Mayer says flatly. In other words, no string of Yahoo diners in the offing.

In addition, Mayer says that Yahoo occupies a unique spot that does not put it into “channel conflict” with other rivals and, presumably, can be a better partners.

Also asked about search versus display, she’ll take both, but found display “more compelling.”

The next question is about international markets and the local ones.

Growth, says Mayer, although Yahoo will be narrowing the offerings to be more compelling.

She refers to the recent closing of Yahoo operations in Korea. “We had a very hard time finding a growth story moving forward,” says Mayer.

As to local, which Mayer worked on at Google right before she left, Yahoo’s efforts are merely “good” and it’s not slated for investment going forward.

The next question is about metrics to judge progress. Yahoo left out user numbers it has usually provided in the past and Mayer is not giving up any data now either.

Instead, she is going to rely on internal data and not use third-party data any longer. (It makes some sense since the numbers have been not so pretty over time.)

2:37 pm: Mayer did not want to go into acquisition strategy, which came in a question about its giant pile of dough.

No billion-dollar buys for her, she claims, so cancel that Tesla order for Foursquare, Dennis Crowley!

Mayer noted that most acquisitions will be smaller scale and under $100 million. She noted she had done about 20 of those in her career at Google.

A question about Microsoft.

While there has been “disappointment,” Mayer says the goal is to work with the software giant. In other words, she’s not calling her old pals at Google quite yet (she hasn’t yet, in fact).

The next question is about mobile, with Mayer noting once again that the company has to be primarily mobile-focused going forward.

She’s going to hire as many mobile peeps as possible, especially via smaller-scale acquisitions.

2:44 pm: Goldman gets a little awkward in noting that his young-adult kids think Yahoo is all happening. Hmm, I suppose since he comes from the deservedly defunct Excite@Home and the successful but security-dull Fortinet, that makes sense.

In fact, getting back the young folks is one of Mayer’s top challenges.

A very good question — these are all good ones on the call — is how Yahoo can compete without a mobile operating system, such as Google Android and Amazon Kindle and Apple iOS.

Mayer notes that Yahoo has compelling content that others do not.

Another question on search and, specifically, on mobile search.

Mayer is unspecific, except to note that Yahoo has the ability to be pertinent and competitive.

She is a little more clear on the issues with the Microsoft Bing search relationship. Mayer does know this stuff well, and it is clear there is some serious low-hanging fruit to be plucked by someone who knows what they are doing.

Mayer knows search, to be sure, so I am thinking she will make some bank here.

A question about “overmonetizing” the Yahoo site — i.e. cluttering it up with icky ad units that drive consumers nuts.

Mayer notes that cutbacks in ads to improve user experience will only be done to increase traffic, which is a dicey proposition as it can also kill revenue.

A question about content and where that us going.

Mayer touts the Olympics programming — hat tip to former interim CEO Ross Levinsohn — as something unique to Yahoo. Interestingly, the media folks at Yahoo are still wary of pro-engineering Mayer.

2:55 pm: Another question about her interest in content and investment focus in ad tech.

“I am very product focused,” says Mayer, who uses the term “low latency,” a term that no media person ever would use as a hallmark of success.

She is much more comfy talking tech and that’s an area she knows better. Still, she says little about possible investments.

Mayer is then asked about goals for growth at Yahoo. She does not just want to grow at industry rate, but beyond that! But she’ll take industry rate for now (actually, that would be a huge accomplishment).

Goldman says little on the stock buyback, using the Alibaba dough, except they are buying.

3:01 pm: There are a lot of questions today for Mayer — which is no surprise — but now they are beginning to repeat.

(Plus, I have LOLcat’s Ben Huh waiting for me in the ATD Global HQ lobby — and you all know how I feel about them cats!)

Ah, the last question: It’s about data and personalization and what’s been lacking at Yahoo in not taking advantage about the pile of data it has about .

Yes, that should happen and it will under the regime of Marissa Mayer.

Mayer ends by noting, “It’s time for Yahoo to execute and bring our results back to growth.”

So it is written, so it shall be done.

Yahoo's Marissa Mayer in Talks to Join Jawbone Board

Kara Swisher — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 18:59:29 +0000

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is considering joining the board of Jawbone, the high-profile wireless gadget maker whose products include the Jambox speaker and the Up personal fitness wristband, according to sources close to the situation.

Mayer has been talking to the San Francisco-based company about becoming a director since before she become the top exec at the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

While the discussions of her becoming a director are in the late stages, sources cautioned it was not yet a done deal and that it still might not happen for a number of reasons.

That said, the move is an interesting one for Mayer and Jawbone.

The former Google exec is well known for her product chops and also her deep interest in tony aesthetics and high-level design — qualities that Jawbone is well known for.

And the addition of Mayer to the board of Jawbone would add someone with experience in scaling businesses from small to large as well as deeper technical expertise.

Mayer has been an active angel investor in start-ups and currently is on the board of Walmart Stores and is also on board of several cultural institutions in San Francisco and New York.

Jawbone has raised about $210 million in funding from such venture firms as Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, as well as Deutsche Telekom, investor Yuri Milner and others.

One interesting note: Mayer and Jawbone CEO and founder Hosain Rahman attended Stanford University at the same time and have remained close friends since then.

Jawbone declined to comment and Mayer never calls me back, although I am still waiting by the phone — wearing my denim Jawbone Icon HD wireless headset, natch — in the vain hope that she might.

Khosla Ventures Backs Computer Vision for Agriculture

Liz Gannes — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Now here’s a fun one: Blue River Technology is an 18-month-old company out of Stanford University that uses computer vision to kill weeds.

The company’s first product is built for lettuce crops. Blue River analyzed nearly one million photographs of lettuce to learn how to recognize the plant. Its prototype device has both a camera and a killing mechanism three inches behind. So when the camera recognizes a plant that’s not supposed to be in a lettuce field, a mechanical knife cuts it out or herbicide sprays down. The idea is that it’s very precise, so it’s cost-effective and minimizes the use of herbicides.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Blue River has just raised $3.1 million in Series A funding led by Khosla Ventures, which also invested in other agriculture tech start-ups such as The Climate Corporation.

Other Blue River backers include Steve Blank and Ulu Ventures.

Facebook's Sandberg Has Penned "Lean In" -- A Book on Women and Leadership -- Set for 2013 Publication

Kara Swisher — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 19:00:33 +0000

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has written a book on challenges facing women in the workplace that is expected to be published next year by Knopf.

Titled “Lean In,” the book is not a memoir, but a “call to action” with a lot of research and data, laced with anecdotes of the experience of one of Silicon Valley’s most high-profile female executives and also many other women.

“I believe that the world would be a better place if half our institutions were run by women, and half our homes were run by men,” said Sandberg in an email to me earlier this week. “The book contains practical advice for women — and the men who want to help them — on how to lean in and close the gap.”

Juggling leadership roles and family has been a central topic of Sandberg’s in numerous speeches she has given in recent years.

Among the key themes she has outlined — most prominently in a TEDTalk in 2010, which is embedded below — is the lack of progress for women in top positions and the loss to society when half the population holds only one-fifth of the top jobs across key industries.

The title comes from her advice in these speeches for women to lean in to their work rather than lean back, as many tend to do for a variety of reasons at key points in their careers.

In the speeches, Sandberg — who worked in a high-ranking job at Google and also did a stint in government at the Treasury Department in the Clinton administration — also advised women not to “leave before you leave” a job.

In one speech, she said:

“So, my heartfelt message is: Don’t leave before you leave. Don’t lean back, lean in. Keep your foot on the gas pedal until the day you have to make a decision. That’s the only way to ensure you even have a decision to make.”

The book’s publication, largely due to Sandberg’s prominence, is likely to reignite a heated debate over the longstanding issue about women and work. That includes in tech, where there are still a paucity of female CEOs, board members and venture capitalists.

Speaking of debate, publishing such a book — or being seen as doing anything not related directly to Facebook’s business — at such a dicey time for the company is sure to attract some negative attention for Sandberg and possibly Facebook.

That’s especially true after its botched public offering, which has been followed by a deep drop in the stock to half its initial IPO price and worries about its core business growth.

To be fair, the ideas in “Lean In” have been developed over many years and Sandberg has long noted that the discussion of these issues is too important to wait.

Sandberg said she finished the book well before Facebook’s recent tumultuous IPO and on her own time.

She added that she would eventually promote it on her own vacation time, too, and that all her profits will go to charities that support women. But Sandberg did not volunteer the advance she got paid for “Lean In.”

Along with that possible (and inevitable) why-aren’t-you-fixing-the-stock criticism, penning such a book might also further encourage persistent rumors that Sandberg will eventually leave Facebook, including to pursue a political office.

Not true, said Sandberg, who said firmly that she plans to stay put at Facebook as the No. 2 exec to co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He has apparently known about the book project since its beginning and has encouraged it.

To complete the book — which is now being edited — Sandberg worked with a full-time writer, Nell Scovell, as well as a researcher, Marianne Cooper.

Scovell, a journalist and longtime television writer in Hollywood, started helping Sandberg with her speeches about two years ago. Cooper is a sociologist at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University and is the author of the forthcoming University of California Press book, “Cut Adrift: Families in Insecure Times.”

Until the book is out, here’s a taste of what Sandberg has had to say so far on women and leadership at both her TEDTalk in December of 2010 and also at a commencement speech at Barnard College last May:

Columbia University Names Sree Sreenivasan Its First Chief Digital Officer

Arik Hesseldahl — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 00:47:53 +0000

If you know anyone in the New York media scene, then you either know Sree, or you know someone who does. And more often than not, you need only mention him by his first name: Once you and another person establish that you both know Sree, you’re already more than halfway to being friends.

For those who don’t know him, Sree — @sree on Twitter — is Sreenath Sreenivasan, who, during the 15 years I’ve known him, has been a hyperconnected, seemingly permanent fixture at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. (Full disclosure: I’m a graduate of the school, and was a student of Sree’s 15 years ago.) Having graduated from the school himself in 1993, he simply never left. Some 19 years later, as a professor, he has taught most subjects in the curriculum at least once, and spent the last seven years holding the title Dean of something or other: Most recently it has been Dean of Student Affairs.

Aside from his academic duties, he always found the time and energy to keep a foot in the media game. When I first met him, he was teaching a full course load and was a regular contributor to the New York Times Business section, and had just wrapped a gig as a freelance producer for “The Nightly Business Report” on PBS. He’s been a tech commentator for New York’s local TV news broadcasts, most recently for WCBS; he blogs on social media for CNET, does his own weekly Web-based call-in show on BlogTalkRadio, and teaches workshops for midcareer professionals of every stripe who are trying to get their heads around how to use Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn productively. He also co-founded the South Asian Journalists Association. And when this tornado named Sree finally stops whirling, he’s always got time for any student. The sign on the door to his office reads: ~~“Yes you can bug me”~~ “Don’t worry, you’re NOT interrupting.”

So it will probably come as a bit of a shock to anyone who has passed through the J-School’s halls during the last two decades that Sree is leaving, though he’s not going far. Today, Columbia appointed him its first Chief Digital Officer. It’s a new academic position in the office of the Provost John Coatsworth (the university’s highest academic officer), focusing on driving online education initiatives.

Columbia, like every other major university in the world, is trying to figure out how best to deliver its courses via the Web. It’s a weighty subject, covered in detail in a session with Stanford University President John Hennessy and Khan Academy’s Salman Khan at D:All Things Digital last month.

If now is the time for digital education to start having the impact that it’s going to have, Sree will be one of the people setting its agenda at Columbia. And yes, most people will still just call him Sree.

The memo announcing Sree’s new job is below:

Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 5:01 PM
Subject: Sree Sreenivasan appointed Chief Digital Officer, Office of the Provost

Dear Colleagues,

I am very pleased to announce that I have appointed Sree Sreenivasan as Columbia University’s first Chief Digital Officer. Sree, who was previously Dean of Student Affairs at Columbia’s School of Journalism, joins the Office of the Provost effective immediately.

Sree’s portfolio will cover a broad range of issues at the intersection of technology, education, and digital media. His primary responsibility will be to lead the development of a coordinated university-wide strategy in response to the quickening pace of change in online education and digital media.

This effort will focus on supporting the innovative and exciting distance learning programs run by the School of Continuing Education, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and other academic units, as well as facilitating efforts by other schools at Columbia that want to develop an online curricular presence. At the same time, this effort aims to make the most effective use of Columbia’s academic and financial resources, and incentivize collaboration and the adoption of effective practices across campus. The goal is to ensure that we deploy new tools and technologies in interactive and distance learning to ensure the richest and most dynamic learning environment possible for Columbia’s students.

Sree will work closely with schools, centers, and academic departments, as well as our existing digital development groups such as Columbia’s Center for New Media Teaching and Learning. In addition to his focus on online education, Sree will provide advisory services and programs to schools, faculty and administrators on digital technology and social media, working closely with our Office of Communications and Public Affairs to highlight areas of University leadership. (The role does not affect our existing information technology operations within the division of Student and Administrative Services.)

Sree has spent 20 years on Morningside Heights: one earning his M.S. at the Journalism School and another 19 as a professor, including seven as a dean. Most recently, he was the Journalism School’s Dean of Student Affairs, supervising admissions, student service/life and career services. All the while, he was an active member of the faculty, teaching digital journalism and social media; he will continue to be on the faculty, occasionally teaching there.

He has partnered with many departments across campus, serving as a sounding board, guest speaker, informal consultant and more. Among the honors Sree has received are being named to several lists of digital- and social-media professors to follow; AdAge’s 25 media people to follow on Twitter; and Newsweek’s list of the 20 most influential South Asians in America.

I am confident that Sree’s experience in academic administration and his widely respected expertise in new media technology make him uniquely well-suited for this challenge.

You can connect with him on Twitter (@sree) or Facebook.com/sreetips or the old-fashioned way, via email.

Please join me in welcoming Sree in his new position.

Sincerely,

John H. Coatsworth
Provost

(Image courtesy of Deidre Schoo)

Sal Khan and John Hennessy on Online Education: The Full D10 Interview (Video)

Kara Swisher — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 17:27:51 +0000

One of the more important of the interviews at the 10th D: All Things Digital conference was the pairing of Khan Academy’s Salman Khan and Stanford University’s President John Hennessy to talk about the state of online education.

And we have a lot to learn, as it turns out, to make digital education really start to have an impact globally.

Hennessy (who runs one of the world’s most influential educational institutions and a huge engine of Silicon Valley growth) and Khan (whose online site teaches thousands of people in math, science and other subjects daily, and has delivered 150 million Web lessons) are the ones who would know.

Here’s the video of the interview that Walt Mossberg did with the pair:

[ See post to watch video ]

Blue Jeans Network, Switzerland of Video Conference Streams, Raises $25 Million

Arik Hesseldahl — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 14:18:27 +0000

Yesterday I had an interesting four-way video conference. I was at home in my apartment in Manhattan using Skype. The other parties were scattered around the country. Two guys were sitting together in an office in Mountain View, Calif., using Polycom video equipment. Two other guys were in their own offices, I’m not sure where, one was on Skype like me, the other was just using a web Browser and his notebook’s Web camera.

If this had been an audio conference call, it wouldn’t readily occur to anyone to think about what every party on the call uses to connect. The phone network just works. Though if you know anything about the history of the telephone, you know that back in the early 1900s, phone networks operated by different companies weren’t always compatible. So sometimes in old photographs of business executives at their desks, you see several phones, each for a different network.

It’s a bit similar with video conferencing today. Generally speaking, if you’re going to use Skype, the other parties to your call have to use it as well. The same thing is generally true, though not entirely, with video gear and services from the numerous players like Polycom and Cisco, to name only two. This interoperability gap tends to discourage the use of video conferencing generally, unless you’re a large company that has invested in a big installation of, say, a Cisco Telepresence Suite, or maybe a Vidyo router.

The reason for my video call was to talk with execs of the start-up Blue Jeans Network, which today announced a $25 million C round of venture capital funding today led by New Enterprise Associates, with prior investors Accel Partners and Norwest Venture Partners also participating. The investment brings its total capital raised to $48 million.

Blue Jeans operates what is essentially a universal video conference exchange, sort of a Switzerland for video streams. The company is a year old and so far has connected a quarter million people in 3,000 cities around the world.

When you call in via Skype the service detects what you’re using, transcodes the video and audio streams live, and serves them up to whoever you’re talking to in the format of the service or application they’re using. It works with a lot of video applications and hardware including Skype, Microsoft Lync (which oddly enough, despite their common owner, aren’t interoperable yet), Cisco and Polycom gear, Google Video chat and pretty much any other combination you can think of. Corporate customers named so far include Facebook, Match.com, Foursquare, Gawker Media and Stanford University.

Co-founder and CEO Krish Ramakrishnan is a former Cisco exec and Accel Entrepreneur in Residence. He was one of the two guys sitting in the Mountain View office using Polycom gear. Back in 2005, he was CEO of Topspin before it was acquired by Cisco. In the room with him was Stu Aaron, chief commercial officer. His last gig was with Bloom Energy, and before that he also worked at Topspin.

How Do Credentials Change as Education Goes Online? Stanford and Khan Academy Respond. (Video)

Liz Gannes — Thu, 31 May 2012 19:57:30 +0000

Stanford President John Hennessy and Khan Academy founder Salman Khan are coming at online education from very different angles — one is an elite institution being shaken up by experiments, the other is a widely loved upstart that’s increasingly being used in traditional schools.

In conversation with Walt Mossberg at D10, Hennessy and Khan talked about the future of the education credential; the opportunities for “flipped classroom”-style education, where class time is spent on collaboration, tutoring and projects; the move away from lectures and toward social media; and the opportunity to provide practical education for kids in a sort of “shadow school district,” as Khan called it, with classes in computer science, statistics and law.

Here’s a highlight reel:

[ See post to watch video ]

Full D10 Conference Coverage

Stanford President John Hennessy and Khan Academy’s Salman Khan Talk Education at D10

Arik Hesseldahl — Thu, 31 May 2012 17:29:14 +0000

We all probably have an opinion on the state of education, but a few in the trenches are coping with its problems and actually trying to fix them. Stanford University President John Hennessy and Salman Khan are two of those people.

The pair took to the stage with Walt Mossberg at D: All Things Digital for a critical session on education. Hennessy runs one of the world’s most influential educational institutions and a huge engine of Silicon Valley growth. First as a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford, and later as an administrator, Hennessy has worked to keep Silicon Valley and the university closer. And even while serving as president of the university, his research into high-performance computing has continued to push the boundaries of conventional understanding.

Appearing with him was Khan, whose efforts at tutoring his cousin in math led to the video tutorials that, once they went viral on YouTube, led to the creation of the eponymous Khan Academy, which is being used to teach thousands of people in math, science and other subjects everyday. So far, it has been used to deliver 150 million Web lessons, and has evolved into the most-used library of videos on the Web.

Khan discussed a feature that is coming to the site this summer which will have students tutoring other students and earning badge rewards — similar, perhaps, to the badges on Foursquare — for helping each other. “It’s great if you can get 1,600 on your SATs or earn a 4.0 GPA,” Khan said. “But the best thing you can show is that you were the best peer tutor,” and had made an investment in other students.

Hennessy talked about Stanford’s experiments with “flipping the classroom.” It first involved shrinking the size of classes and putting interactive versions of classes online. “Lectures on video are just as boring as traditional lectures,” he said. So, every 15 minutes or so during online lectures, a pop-up quiz is injected as an online check to see how well students are paying attention. The experiments also included adding social media elements to allow students to ask questions of each other. “The phenomenal thing we found in the experiment is that questions would be answered very quickly,” Hennessy said. “This ‘learning together’ movement works very well.”

Full D10 Conference Coverage

Cloud-Based Phone Software Start-Up Twilio Taps Former Jive Exec as Its CMO

Arik Hesseldahl — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:30:54 +0000

There’s a certain kind of geek who gets excited about Twilio. Who among software developers wouldn’t jump at the chance of adding voice-calling and text-messaging options to a public-facing application? Companies like eBay unit StubHub, Salesforce.com and Airbnb have used it to create some custom apps that include the use of a phone.

This creates curious opportunities for fun. When Twilio was in the process of raising its most recent funding round — a $17 million series C led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Union Square Ventures — Bessemer partner Byron Deeter created a Twilio-connected number and asked CEO Jeff Lawson to call it. As recounted by VentureBeat, when Lawson called, he heard automated voice messages asking him to press 1 for $5 million, 2 for $10 million and 3 for $15 million.

Hijinks like this say a lot about the culture that surrounds Twilio, but it’s not well known outside the developer community. Addressing that will be job one for Lynda Smith, its new chief marketing officer, who joined the company on April 23.

Smith is joining Twilio from Jive, the social enterprise software concern, where she was senior vice president of marketing until last fall. As CMO, she’ll be responsible for Twilio’s marketing strategy around the world.

“I think the Twilio brand is huge among developers because it gives that community a chance to play with something they haven’t had before,” Smith told me. “But it’s also getting a lot of traction within the telephony industry. … Voice and messaging are still a big part of the worlds that we live in, but they’ve been difficult to bring into new-world software applications because it’s still tied to some old-world things like hardware and protocols.” First priority, she says, is making sure that people outside the developer world know what Twilio is and what they can do with it.

Before Jive, Smith held a number executive slots at Genpact, Nuance, Genesys and Lockheed Martin. She’s a graduate of Simpson College, and has an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School. She’s also on the faculty at Stanford University, where she lectures on global entrepreneurial marketing.

Twilio is definitely on the move: It landed $17 million in that C round late last year, bringing its total capital raised to about $34 million. It also just announced its second conference in San Francisco, in October. Time to get serious about marketing.

Stanford Professors Launch Coursera With $16M From Kleiner Perkins and NEA

Liz Gannes — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 09:00:47 +0000

There seems to be something in the water at Stanford University that’s making faculty members leave their more-than-perfectly-good jobs and go teach online.

Coursera co-founders Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller

Stanford computer science professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng are on leave to launch Coursera, which will offer university classes for free online, in partnership with top schools.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Coursera is backed with $16 million in funding led by John Doerr at Kleiner Perkins and Scott Sandell at NEA. It has no immediate plans to charge for courses or to make money in other ways.

Compared to Udacity, a similar start-up from former Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun that’s creating its own classes, Coursera helps support its university partners in creating their own courses, which are listed under each school’s brand.

Some might doubt that universities would want to share their prized content for free online with a start-up, but Coursera has already signed up Princeton, Stanford, the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania as partners, with a set of classes launching April 23.

Coursera evolved, in part, out of the hugely popular Stanford classes that Ng and Thrun taught last fall on machine learning and artificial intelligence, respectively. Ng’s course had 104,000 people enrolled, with at least 46,000 completing at least one homework assignment. Of those, 23,000 completed a “substantial” amount of the class, and 13,000 received a “statement of accomplishment,” Ng said. He’ll be offering that class again, starting next week.

Koller and Ng are particularly committed to developing pedagogy for this new medium, and have built their own course software and student forums. They describe their philosophy as similar to that of Salman Khan and the Khan Academy, where students are encouraged to take the time to master material at their own pace.

Coursera students help other students — in the fall, the median response time to a question asked on the class forum was 22 minutes — and the system will also learn from the students.

For instance, 2,000 of the 20,000 or so students in Ng’s online class had the exact same wrong solution on one problem set, he said. That’s an opportunity to recognize what’s happening, and to teach those students in that moment.

Koller and Ng have also conceived of an ambitious plan to grade humanities classes with thousands of students enrolled.

Coursera’s content is naturally heavy on computer science — where problem sets are fairly straightforward to grade — but it will also offer poetry, sociology, and medical courses. These classes will be graded crowdsourcing style, with peer assessment and review. Figuring out how to grade masses of assignments on a subjective scale is a machine learning problem, Ng said.

Another ambitious venture-backed college-level online education start-up I recently covered is the Minerva Project, which is planning to launch its own mostly virtual elite university.

Amazon SVP of Worldwide Digital Media Steven Kessel Taking Time Off

Tricia Duryee — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 00:27:42 +0000

Amazon has confirmed to All Things D that Steven Kessel, a 13-year veteran of Amazon’s digital business who was responsible for the company’s original e-reader, is taking time off.

As SVP of Worldwide Digital Media, Kessel oversees the company’s digital strategy, including books, music, video and the Kindle.

“After incredible success leading the Kindle team over the last several years, Steve Kessel decided to take a well-deserved and long-planned-for sabbatical,” said Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener.

Herdener declined to say when Kessel would return, but said that, in the meantime, Dave Limp, who runs the Kindle device business, and Russ Grandinetti, who runs Kindle content, were overseeing the digital business.

Kessel’s absence follows the launch of the Kindle Fire tablet late last year, and comes at a time when Amazon is aggressively pushing into digital content. Just today, founder and CEO Jeff Bezos sent a letter to shareholders, emphasizing how the Kindle is disrupting the book publishing industry.

Some sources I talked to believed that Kessel, 46, was unlikely to return to Amazon and were characterizing his departure as early retirement. Another source pointed to internal documents, which listed Kessel as overseeing Donald Katz, the CEO of Audible, the company’s audiobooks group. However, Amazon’s investor page continues to list Kessel as the SVP of Worldwide digital media, and Herdener said Kessel is not retiring and is not in charge of Audible.

As one of 10 executives who report directly to Bezos, Kessel has worked closely with the visionary founder since 1999. Initially, he served as the VP of U.S. Books, Music, Video and DVD, and then was the VP of digital before landing in his current role.

According to a BusinessWeek article, it was Kessel who conspired with Bezos in 2004 to explore the radical idea of the online retailer making their own hardware.

Over the years, Kessel has been quoted occasionally in press releases, providing updates on how well the Kindle is selling. In October 2010, he said: “It’s still October and we’ve already sold more Kindle devices since launch than we did during the entire fourth quarter of last year—astonishing because the fourth quarter is the busiest time of year on Amazon.”

Amazon has never released specific sales numbers about the Kindle — a secret that has largely stayed under wraps, likely due to the company’s small management team.

Kessel received his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Dartmouth College, and an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

Mike Bloomberg Sings! With Help From Nick Jonas. (Video)

Arik Hesseldahl — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 19:30:56 +0000

The text message was rather urgent. “Get in your tux and get your butt down to the Hilton right now. I’ve got an open seat at my table.”

Quick as a wink, I got in my tux and hailed a cab for midtown Manhattan. That message from a friend who shall not be named was how I ended up crashing the 2012 Inner Circle Show, an annual New York ritual where members of the city’s press corps put on an impressive musical roast of the local, regional and national political elite since 1922. It’s a big black-tie affair, and an invite is not easy to get.

The highlight of the night is always the Mayor’s Rebuttal. Last year, Mayor Mike Bloomberg flew around the stage as Spider-Man, taking advantage of the infamous buzz that plagued that Broadway show back then.

As you’ve probably figured out, Mayor Mike doesn’t do anything small. Being the 20th-richest person the world — worth some $22 billion via his majority ownership of the financial data and media company that bears his name — has its perks. One of them is the ability to hire the cast of a hit Broadway show to help make you look good on stage. (Full disclosure: I worked for that company for about a year before taking this job.)

This year, Bloomberg hired what must have been the majority of the cast of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” including its current headliner, Nick Jonas, a.k.a. “the cute Jonas Brother,” and also longtime Hollywood actor Beau Bridges.

Naturally, there were a lot of references to local political chatter. In the skit, Bloomberg bans coffee at City Hall — a reference to his administration’s war on nasty food ingredients like trans fats and salt — touching off a drama among city employees. He also quizzes the presidents of Cornell and Stanford University on their knowledge of New York — a quiz Stanford fails, prompting her to walk out. It’s a reference to a real-world competition between the two to develop a technology hub on Roosevelt Island, and yes, Stanford really did walk away. And of course there were plenty of references to Lady Gaga, whom Bloomberg famously kissed on New Year’s Eve.

Below is a six-minute highlight reel of Bloomberg’s production, which ran a good 30 minutes or more. The fun lasted well into the wee hours this morning. Hilton security guards shut down a crowded after-party in a penthouse suite at about 2:30 am. (I crashed that, too, again with the help of the friend who shall not be named.) One wonders if Bloomberg can be coaxed into a reprise when he hits the stage at our D10 conference in May. We can at least hope!

Exclusive: Yahoo Labs Head Raghavan Departing to Google

Kara Swisher — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 21:40:27 +0000

Prabhakar Raghavan, the well-respected head of Yahoo’s Labs unit and also recently its head of strategy, is leaving the company to take a job at Google.

The departure comes ahead of what will be very deep cuts in his division, which is in charge of long-term research at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, said sources, and is spread all over the country. More researchers at Yahoo — which is a very well-respected group — are also expected to go too and will be the subject of fervent recruiting interest by companies such as Google and Facebook.

Yahoo confirmed the move after I made an inquiry about it this morning.

In a statement, the company said:

“Yahoo! thanks Prabhakar Raghavan for his dedication and contributions to Yahoo! for the past 7 years. We wish him well in his next endeavor. Ash Munshi, CTO, will assume leadership for Y! Labs.”

It is unclear what Raghavan’s new role at Google is.

But, as head of Yahoo Labs, Raghavan’s research arena has been extensive, encompassing everything from data mining to algorithms to search.

He is also a consulting professor of computer science at Stanford University. According to his bio, Raghavan has “co-authored two textbooks, on randomized algorithms and on information retrieval.”

The Berkeley PhD had been CTO at Verity and had held a number of jobs at IBM Research.

More to the point, he was very well respected within the company, which seems to be curtailing its commitment to research as it attempts to turn itself around under the new leadership of CEO Scott Thompson.

Raghavan had been made head of strategy under former CEO Carol Bartz, who was fired.

He has been at Yahoo seven years.

End of an Era: Google's Very First Employee, Craig Silverstein -- Technically, No. 3 -- Leaving

Kara Swisher — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:01:58 +0000

Google’s very first employee, Craig Silverstein, is leaving the company to join the high-profile online learning phenom, Khan Academy.

News of the departure first appeared yesterday in a line in a newsletter on education-tech entrepreneurship EdSurge, and the search giant confirmed the departure to me.

[UPDATE: Here's a statement from a Google spokesperson -- and not CEO Larry Page (classy and appreciative of others as ever!, Larry!) -- on Silverstein's leaving: "Craig's been with Google since the early days. He was instrumental in the development of search and made numerous contributions to Google over the years. We wish him all the best at the Khan Academy and know that he will do great things to help them promote education around the world."]

Silverstein, who was actually Google’s No. 3 employee — that would be after its pair of founders, Page and Sergey Brin — has had a variety of technology jobs at the company over the years since it was founded in 1998.

But his first — helping them build the famed and lucrative search engine itself — was perhaps his most important. An experienced techie, Silverstein worked with Brin and Page on Google, from their dorm rooms as Ph.D. students at Stanford University, to their garage days, to the giant and diversified behemoth it is today, with tens of thousands of employees.

Currently, he has been working on a variety of projects, including mentoring engineers.

Having spent some time with him over the years, I can tell you that he’s a lovely and adorkable guy, whose infectious enthusiasm and joy of tech has always embodied what I always refer to as “Good Google” (as opposed to, well, you know).

Silverstein will simply be a developer at Khan Academy’s Mountain View, Calif., offices, but I have emails for more details in to all parties.

Speaking of party — IMHO, Larry and Sergey should throw him a really nice one. Really nice — it’s well-deserved.

Here is Silverstein’s cute goodbye email to staff that I obtained (natch!):

[I couldn't possibly remember everyone who I should be sending this mail to, so please feel free to spread the word to anyone I missed!]

It is with decidedly mixed feelings that I announce, after more than 13 years, that I’m leaving Google. My last day will be Feb 10. I’ll be joining the Khan Academy as a developer.

Some of you thought this day would never come (as one person once put it: “Will you die at Google?”), and it was an extremely difficult choice. I am as passionate about Google’s mission now as I’ve ever been, and as proud of the work we’re doing to achieve it. While a lot has changed at Google over the years, I think we’ve done a remarkable job of staying true to our core mission of making the world a better place by making information more accessible and useful. I am looking forward to pursuing that same mission, though in a slightly different way, at Khan.

I’m extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to work with such smart, passionate, and interesting people — not just a few, either, but (almost :-) ) everyone I worked with. I’m grateful not just that I had so many co-workers I could respect, but even more that I had so many that I could count as friends. I will miss that most of all, and I hope you will continue to be in touch. I also accept lunch invitations!

When I write my massive 4-volume autobiography, “Craig Silverstein: the Man Behind the Legend,” I will devote an entire volume to my years at Google. I can’t emphasize enough how meaningful my time at Google has been, and how meaningful all of you have been to it. I mean it literally when I say: all the best,

craig

And here’s the video of a speech Silverstein gave at the University of North Carolina in 2008, about Google’s origins:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Columbia J-School and Stanford Eng Nab $30M Joint Gift for Media Innovation From Helen Gurley Brown

Kara Swisher — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:00:41 +0000

In an unusual gift, Helen Gurley Brown has given Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and Stanford University’s School of Engineering $30 million to create a bi-coastal Institute of Media Innovation.

Said the schools in a joint press release about the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation, “it is designed to encourage and support new endeavors with the potential to inform and entertain in transformative ways. It will recognize the increasingly important connection between journalism and technology, bringing the best from the East and West Coasts.”

Each university will get $12 million, with the additional $6 million to build a “state-of-the-art, high-tech newsroom” at Columbia’s famous J-School in upper Manhattan in New York.

(Full disclosure: I went to graduate school there, but we used typewriters way back then.)

Among the advisors to the project is well-known Silicon Valley exec Bill Campbell.

The move will be interesting as a collaborative venture between the East and West coasts, although it is unclear what it might yield.

Interestingly, last week, Harvard University announced an on-campus venture fund with New Enterprise Associates to better compete with the enticements of California.

Great content needs useable technology. Sharing a language is where the magic happens,” said Gurley Brown in a statement. “It’s time for two great American institutions on the East and West Coasts to build a bridge.”

Here’s the official press release on the Brown gift:

COLUMBIA JOURNALISM SCHOOL AND STANFORD SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING ANNOUNCE JOINT $30 MILLION GIFT FROM DAVID AND HELEN GURLEY BROWN

Gift Establishes First of Its Kind Bi-Coastal Institute for Media Innovation — Bringing Together the Best in West Coast Technology with East Coast Content

NEW YORK and PALO ALTO, Calif., January 30, 2012, 1:00 p.m. ET – Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and Stanford University’s School of Engineering today announced a $30 million gift from longtime Cosmopolitan magazine editor and author Helen Gurley Brown to establish the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation.

The Institute and the collaboration between the two schools is groundbreaking in that it is designed to encourage and support new endeavors with the potential to inform and entertain in transformative ways. It will recognize the increasingly important connection between journalism and technology, bringing the best from the East and West Coasts.

The Institute, the first of its kind, is inspired by the memory of Ms. Brown’s late husband, David Brown, a graduate of both Stanford University and the Columbia School of Journalism. Brown, who along with partners Richard Zanuck and Steven Spielberg created such classic American films as Driving Miss Daisy, The Verdict and Jaws, was also a former journalist, publisher and, late in his career, a stage producer whose credits included the musicals Sweet Smell of Success and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

Of the total gift, each school will receive $12 million for Institute activities. The gift to Columbia’s Journalism School, the largest in its history, will endow a professorship whose holder will be the Institute’s East Coast director. The gift to Stanford’s Engineering School will similarly endow the position of the West Coast director. An additional $6 million will go to Columbia which will also pay for the construction of a highly visible signature space at the eastern end of the J-School’s landmark building, featuring a state-of-the-art high-tech newsroom.

The funding of the Institute will support graduate and postgraduate fellowships, both at Stanford and Columbia, and competitively awarded “Magic Grants,” intended to seed the most innovative and promising ideas for future development conceived of by Brown Fellows.

Commenting on the announcement, Helen Gurley Brown said, “David and I have long supported and encouraged bright young people to follow their passions and to create original content. Great content needs useable technology. Sharing a language is where the magic happens. It’s time for two great American institutions on the East and West Coasts to build a bridge.”

The east-west collaboration of the two schools will enable students at both institutions to build upon their ideas with professors and innovators at both universities. At both locations there will be a strong emphasis on executing new ideas and demonstrating products and prototypes. The
Institute will establish ongoing links to business leaders and media companies to bring its innovations to market.

“New York City, as the major center for the television, music, print media and advertising, is profoundly affected by rapidly evolving digital technology,” said Stanford engineering professor Bernd Girod, who will serve as the Institute’s founding director until Columbia appoints his East Coast counterpart. “The Brown Institute will bring together creative innovators skilled in production and delivery of news and entertainment with the entrepreneurial researchers at Stanford working in multimedia technology.”

“This gift from David and Helen Gurley Brown is truly transformative for the school,” said Nicholas Lemann, Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. “As we enter our Centennial year, the Browns’ generosity will enable us to explore new and exciting realms of leadership in our field. We are thrilled to have this opportunity to collaborate with Stanford Engineering.”

“Stanford brings to this partnership its exceptional research and teaching, a history of transformative technology innovation and a tradition of multidisciplinary collaboration,” said Stanford University President John Hennessy. “We are excited about the opportunity to partner with Columbia University’s truly outstanding School of Journalism, and look forward to combining the expertise of New York and Silicon Valley at a critical point in the evolution of media.”

Stanford Engineering has a storied history of achievement and entrepreneurship. Its faculty and graduates have founded such iconic companies as Google, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems and Yahoo! and contributed to such groundbreaking technologies as lasers, global positioning, magnetic resonance imaging, digital sound synthesis and modern web-search algorithms.

“Under Dean Nick Lemann, Columbia Journalism School is building on its tradition of leadership by developing innovative teaching and research addressing the future of a fast-changing news media,” said Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger, a First Amendment scholar who has written extensively about press freedom. “We are deeply appreciative of Helen Gurley Brown’s vision in honoring her late husband by bringing together his two alma maters to develop the next generation of digital journalism. We look forward to working with Stanford in seeking new ways for technology and creativity to enhance a robust free press in our society.”

The Institute will have a distinguished board of advisors including leaders from technology, venture capital and media including, among others, Frank A. Bennack, Jr., CEO of Hearst Corporation; Bill Campbell, Chairman of the Board at Intuit and an Apple Inc. board member; and Eve Burton, Vice President and General Counsel of Hearst Corporation.

Helen Gurley Brown, who turns 90 in February, is one of the world’s most popular and influential editors. She led Cosmopolitan magazine from 1965 to 1996 and authored many books, including the 1962 bestseller, Sex and the Single Girl. Her impact on popular culture and society has reached around the globe, largely due to the three-plus decades when she put her personal stamp on Cosmopolitan in a way that has rarely been replicated. Under her reign, Cosmopolitan became the go-to magazine for women worldwide and remains the best selling young women’s magazine around the world today with 64 editions, in 35 languages and more than 80 countries.

“As both CEO of Hearst Corporation and advisor to the Brown Institute, today marks a very special day for education, journalism and technology,” said Bennack. “I’m very proud of David’s legacy and Helen, who understood the power of community, in particular, and its importance to women, long before social media had a name.”

(Photo credit: Hearst Corp.)

Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen Talks About Giving 2.0

Kara Swisher — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 23:31:36 +0000

There are a lot of things to like about Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, who works by day as a lecturer focusing on strategic philanthropy at Stanford University, and also is the founder and chairman of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society and the founder of SV2, the Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund.

But my recent favorite was when — before being interviewed with her husband, well-known tech legend and now powerful VC Marc Andreessen, about her new book, “Giving 2.0: Transform Your Giving and Our World,” at a big fancy dinner honoring them — she called the Netscape creator her “trophy husband.”

That was what you might call a good one.

Actually, there are a lot more weighty, serious good ones to take note of in the book, which was recently released, in which Arrillaga-Andreessen tries to find new ways to think about giving.

Interestingly, given her spouse, the answers are not all about digital solutions, and do not require being a gazillionaire geek, either.

Here’s a video interview I did with Arrillaga-Andreessen — who hails from a prominent Silicon Valley family, and was inspired by her parents to focus on philanthropy — talking about the book, and where the sector is going:

[ See post to watch video ]

Steve Jobs Memorial Held

Jessica E. Vascellaro and Ian Sherr — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 05:48:45 +0000

STANFORD, Calif. — Hundreds of Silicon Valley’s elite streamed into Stanford University’s Memorial Church on Sunday evening for a service commemorating Apple Inc.’s late co-founder Steve Jobs.

Guests, many of whom were wearing black, arrived amid intense security with guards stationed near the main gate of the university’s campus.

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Steve Jobs Memorial Service to Be Held Sunday

Jessica E. Vascellaro — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 23:11:59 +0000

Apple Inc. has invited some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names to a memorial service for Steve Jobs Sunday, Oct. 16, according to a copy of the invitation and several invitees.

The event will be held at Stanford University’s campus Sunday evening, according to the invitation. It follows a small private funeral held for the Apple co-founder and chief executive last week.

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