The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Europe Gets Another Fund As Ariadne Slaps Down $32m
- When It Comes To Founding Successful Startups, Old Guys Rule
- Facebook Investor Bets On Two Horses As Vkontakte.ru Plans To Go Global
- Bwin To Buy Italian Online Gambling Site Gioco Digitale For An Estimated €95 Million
- Life Recorders May Be This Century’s Wrist Watch
- Will China’s Best Coders Flock to Kai-Fu Lee’s New Incubator?
- Losing Its Religion: The New York Times Compromises
- Breaking: Spotify Goes Live On iPhone And Android
- HaveASec: A Survey Platform Optimized For Mobile Devices
- How Much Does An iPhone User Spend On Apps? $80
- BloggersBase Is A Discovery Engine For The Blogosphere
| Europe Gets Another Fund As Ariadne Slaps Down $32m Posted: 07 Sep 2009 08:59 AM PDT
The latter has just announced a brand-new $32 million (£20m) fund, the Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs Fund, that aims to invest in early-stage companies. But that may be jumping the gun. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| When It Comes To Founding Successful Startups, Old Guys Rule Posted: 07 Sep 2009 07:41 AM PDT
Editor’s note: This guest post is written by Vivek Wadhwa, an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Executive in Residence at Duke University. Last week, he wrote about the need to lift restrictions on H1-B visas. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa. I’ve got a message for all the Silicon Valley venture capitalists who think a CEO is over the hill after age 40. Old guys rule. And they are far more likely to be the founder of a successful technology company than most of you understand. How do I know this? Research that my team conducted, based on a survey of 549 entrepreneurs in high-growth industries, showed that the average founder of a high-growth company launched his venture at age 40. We also learned that these founders are likely to be married and have two or more kids. They typically have six to ten years of work experience and real-world ideas. They simply got tired of working for others and wanted to rise above their middle-class heritage. These clearly aren't the talented 20-somethings who have "great passion" minus the "distractions like families and children…that get in the way of business" which Sequoia Venture's Michael Moritz raves about (also in this Building 43 video). Or the "very low paid" young entrepreneurs who, according to Google's Eric Schmidt, make "all the right things happen" by "working themselves to death". But these are the companies which Silicon Valley VC's seem to flock to. And maybe that's one reason why the failure rates of VC investments are so high. I have a few theories about why VC's favor the young. First, VC's tend to travel in herds. For the last decade, the herd has been all about the Internet. And Internet startups require a lot less sophistication and coordination than, say, a telecom gear startup, an enterprise software startup, or a biotech startup. Everything from the product development processes to sales processes are far more complex for these types of products. I also think that in its Web 2.0 infatuation, Silicon Valley has probably funded a huge number of companies that are really features and not companies. It’s very easy to build a feature and call yourself a CEO. It’s much harder to actually grow a company, something that, according to my research, old guys appear to be better at. Secondly, and this is speculation but I have some personal experience in this area. Younger CEOs are probably easier to push around. Wet-behind the ears and inexperienced, young CEOs are probably far more likely to sign onerous term sheets out of sheer gratitude for getting funded. Old guys know better than to sign a term-sheet loaded with a nasty double-trigger option acceleration that would consign the founders to indentured servitude for years after a liquidity event. Lastly, it could be that VC's share Schmidt's stated belief that young entrepreneurs don't like the hassles of running big companies so they'll let VC's bring in adult management. I don't know if this is the reality, but I do know that the old guys are different. A paper by my team, which the Kauffman Foundation will publish this month, finds that only about a quarter of the (old) founders of the venture backed companies we surveyed ranked the advice of their investors as really important. (Nearly all valued the money, though). So VC's may be just going where they think they're most wanted or where they can most easily have their way. Can young guys start and run good companies? Absolutely. Larry and Sergey have done quite well, thank you. But a sheepskin that’s still wet is hardly any indication of superior leadership capabilities. Word to the wise. Discount the old guys at your own peril. I am a living example of the “old guys rule more than you think” reality. I launched my second company at age 39. I built a solid enterprise software company and was no spring chicken fresh out of Stanford with an MBA or CS degree in tow. And I know I'm not in the minority. Photo credit: Flickr/Dru Bloomfield. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Facebook Investor Bets On Two Horses As Vkontakte.ru Plans To Go Global Posted: 07 Sep 2009 06:14 AM PDT
The report mentions that the company has recently acquired the domain name vk.com for an undisclosed amount and plans to use it to brand and market Vkontakte.ru in 12 unnamed languages, starting October this year. Notably, Vkontakte.ru is backed by Digital Sky Technologies (DST), the same investor who recently took a 1.96 percent stake in Facebook for $200 million – giving the company a $10 billion valuation – and soon after offered to purchase up to $100 million of common stock from current and former Facebook employees. Now the other high-profile portfolio company of the Moscow-based investment firm, Vkontakte.ru, is going head to head with the Palo Alto-based social networking giant in multiple languages. Of course, it’s not that extraordinary for investors to hedge some of their bets on multiple companies operating on the same market, but it reminded me of something that was said during the video interview Michael did with Mark Zuckerberg and DST founder and CEO Yuri Milner after the $200 million dollar investment. When asked if he had an active account on Facebook, Milner responded that he spends more time on Russian social networks (in fact, Russians are avid social networkers compared to the rest of the world) but sees no reason why people wouldn’t just use two social networks synchronously more in the future. I’m sure he said that knowing that Vkontakte.ru would soon be expanding internationally, and I daresay there was some wishful thinking involved there too. Vkontakte.ru claims to have attracted over 42 million registered users and comScore pegs the number of unique visitors to exceed 14 million per month. When we last modeled the value of social networking sites around the world, Vkontakte.ru came in 17th at a hypothetical $234 million. The company was already competing with Facebook in Russia, Ukraine, Poland and other Eastern European markets, but will be expanding to support more languages and countries starting next October. (Thanks to Andrei Taraschuk for the tip)
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Bwin To Buy Italian Online Gambling Site Gioco Digitale For An Estimated €95 Million Posted: 07 Sep 2009 03:53 AM PDT  Shares in Austrian provider of online gaming entertainment bwin Interactive Entertainment soared in early trading this morning after the company confirmed that it was in the final stages of acquiring Gioco Digitale, one of Italy's oldest online gaming sites. According to the announcement, the boards of both companies and its shareholders have agreed on principle terms for the acquisition of 100% of Gioco Digitale, but did state that although the acquisition was progressing, there could be no certainty that a final binding agreement on the transaction will be reached. Details on deal size have not been disclosed yet at this point. Daniel Stewart & Company analyst James Hollins told Reuters that he estimated the purchase price to be around 100 million euros ($143 million), and expected the deal to boost bwin's earnings. Italian media estimate Gioco Digitale to be purchased for in between 90 and 95 million Euros.TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Life Recorders May Be This Century’s Wrist Watch Posted: 06 Sep 2009 10:30 PM PDT
Imagine an entire lifetime recorded and searchable. Imagine if you could scroll and search through the lives of your ancestors. Would you wear that device? I think I would. I can imagine that advances in hardware and batteries will soon make these as small as you like. And I can see them becoming as ubiquitous as wrist watches were in the last century. I see them becoming customized fashion statements. Privacy disaster? You betcha. But ten years ago we would have been horrified by what we nonchalantly share on Facebook and Twitter every day. I always imagine what a family in the 70s would think about all of their photo albums being posted on computers and available for the entire world to see. They’d be horrified, they couldn’t even imagine it. Heck, a life recorder is less of a privacy abandonment step forward than we’ve already taken with the Internet and electronic surveillance in general. A Business Week article talks about a ten year old Microsoft project called SenseCam (more here) that is just such a device. It’s clunky today and doesn’t do most of the things I mentioned in the first paragraph above. But a true life recorder that isn’t a fashion tragedy isn’t that far away. In fact I’ve already spoken with one startup that has been working on a device like this for over a year now, and may go to market with it in 2010. The hardware is actually not the biggest challenge. How it will be stored, transcribed, indexed and protected online is. It’s a massive amount of data that only a few companies (Microsoft, Google, Amazon) are equipped to really handle anytime soon. But these devices are coming. And you have to decide if you’ll be one of the first or one of the last to use one. Will you wear one? I will. Let us know in the poll below. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Will China’s Best Coders Flock to Kai-Fu Lee’s New Incubator? Posted: 06 Sep 2009 07:30 PM PDT
Incubators have certainly had mixed records in the U.S. Idealab flamed out in the Internet bust along with some of its once-brightest companies. Even incubators that spawn successes– like Max Levchin's MRL Ventures that spawned Slide and Yelp or Evan Williams' Obvious that was an early home to Twitter—frequently dissolve once a hot idea is found. Y Combinator and TechStars have been lauded as launch pads for the Web 2.0 generation, but it’s too early to tell if any truly huge home runs will emerge from them. But in China, things are different and Lee sees a much greater need for something like Innovation Works. He says the country is at an inflection point in entrepreneurship, thanks to cultural changes encouraging people to be more risk adverse, huge market opportunities in mobile, ecommerce and cloud computing and billions of later stage venture capital in the country. The trouble is there's a dearth of angel capital and early stage coaching, Lee says. In other words, smart would-be entrepreneurs need both a push and a helping hand. "In terms of maturity start-ups and companies in China are 15 years or more behind the Valley, but it won't take that long to catch up," Lee says. Indeed, Lee says this new company is playing a transitional role in China—one that may not be needed in another ten years. The $115 million investment funds came from WI Harper Group, YouTube founder Steve Chen, Foxconn Technology Group, Legend Group and New Oriental Education & Technology Group. Chinese market opportunities are certainly there, and we've written before about the $20 billion in capital chasing Chinese high-growth ideas. So the biggest gamble in Lee's analysis is whether or not that culture of risk taking is indeed changing in China. The question isn't whether he'll find 100-150 kids to employ, it's whether he'll be able to pull the best ones. In the past, it was a no-brainer that the smartest kids would go to Google, Microsoft or another big multinational because of the prestige and the comparatively outsized paycheck, Lee said. Indeed, he enjoyed those magnets as a vice president of Microsoft and head of Google China. With the new venture, Lee doesn't expect the bulk of people he's hired in the past would come work for him now, nor does he necessarily want them to. "Employees from the multinationals are good at working on global problems, but they're not necessarily entrepreneurial or scrappy because they're not in a Darwinian environment," Lee said in an interview earlier this weekend. "I'm not going to offer Google salaries. If a smart engineer trusts me, he should come join me. We'll do an idea and if it fails, we'll do the next idea." Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Losing Its Religion: The New York Times Compromises Posted: 06 Sep 2009 06:51 PM PDT
The venerable and vulnerable newspaper finally starts talking about the “Pogue Problem” out loud to its readers. For years David Pogue has covered Apple (and other tech companies). And for years he has been authoring books on Apple products. He doesn’t get paid by Apple for the books, but his bias is clear and he has been accused to conflicts of interest more than once by other mainstream media. Dan Lyons has a very funny take on the whole story which is worth reading. If you have any doubt about Pogue’s opinion of Apple, this should clear it up. We actually celebrate this kind of behavior, as long as it’s disclosed to readers. But the New York Times has a different standard, and Pogue’s reporting is a clear violation of their Policy on Ethics in Journalism, in my opinion:
The NY Times generally self-regulates. If you’re too close to a source, you need to “step back” and evaluate your writing and “must be especially wary of showing partiality.” Of course, we think it’s best to show your partiality instead of hiding it, tell readers your relationships and then let them decide. Pogue’s bias is obvious, and we have no issue with it. But we do take issue with the NY Times preaching about ethics when they continue to engage in the same behavior, sans disclosure. The NY Times ethics policy also says “When we first use facts originally reported by another news organization, we attribute them.” But in our experience that isn’t always the case. The one thing the NY Times has is its brand and its people. They aren’t first to stories but they generally get things right. Trying to hide conflicts of interest hurts that brand, particularly when they hide, hypocritically, behind an ethics statement that prohibits the behavior they’re hiding. It’s far better to keep everything in the open. Transparency is what’s important, not appearances. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Breaking: Spotify Goes Live On iPhone And Android Posted: 06 Sep 2009 04:39 PM PDT
The mobile apps will allow you to play the entire Spotify catalogue and the 'offline mode' caches playlists so they can be played… when you are offline, like on a plane. Spotify has set up a special mobile section with more details. The launch of this mobile version now fires the starting gun on their US launch plans. A large number of record labels have actually invested in the Swedish-born, London-based startup, which is now valued at €170 million, or about $242 million, with a post money valuation of around €200 million. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| HaveASec: A Survey Platform Optimized For Mobile Devices Posted: 06 Sep 2009 04:21 PM PDT
HaveASec made its debut last year, and was part of Stanford’s special class on iPhone applications. Co-founder Romain David says that the company grew out of a need to give mobile developers more insight as to why people were using their apps, the demographics of their users, and what they could do to improve their applications. In the pre-iPhone era of developing, carriers were the gatekeepers for key information like demographics and often left developers in the dark. David says that soon after the iPhone SDK was released he and the company’s two other founders began building a polling platform optimized for the iPhone that would help ameliorate this problem. iPhone developers have two ways to integrate a HaveASec poll into their applications: they can either add a link somewhere to the app, which kicks the user to a web-based survey, or they can use the HaveASec SDK to embed their custom polls within their app (the latter is more desirable for developers that want to keep their users engaged). There’s also a standalone HaveASec iPhone application, but this seems primarily geared toward casual users who want to conduct a poll with other members of the HaveASec community, rather than a professional survey. So far, 3,000 surveys have been created and have received over 200,000 responses. Finally, while the service was built with iPhone developers in mind, there are plenty of other possible use cases for it. The company notes that a research group has been using HaveASec to collect feedback from customers at a fast food restaurant, and doctors are deploying the service to help evaluate what their patients’ experiences. HaveASec is free to try out (though you’ll be limited to collecting only 100 survey responses), and offers two premium packages for professional users depending on how many surveys you’ll be conducting, priced at $50/month for a premium package and $500/yr for the ‘Ultimate’ (you can see a full list of the features here. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| How Much Does An iPhone User Spend On Apps? $80 Posted: 06 Sep 2009 11:30 AM PDT
After looking at the reports, it’s interesting to note that 15,000+ applications have been installed through these 1,200 users. Through the 15,000+ applications overall, each user has about 65 applications installed per device. The average amount of money spent per device is $80, which after thinking about how many iPhone users are there, that’s about $400,000,000+ that Apple has made from paid applications, without taking their 30%. The average price of an iPhone app is $1.56, which seems about right according to AdMob data. One really interesting note is that only 15,000+ apps are really installed (out of 65,000+) which makes people think about all the failed iPhone apps. AppsFire was co-founded by TechCrunch France founder Ouriel Ohayon and is based in Israel. You’ll find the entire report below. Appsfire : App Store market real data insights View more presentations from Ouriel Ohayon. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| BloggersBase Is A Discovery Engine For The Blogosphere Posted: 06 Sep 2009 11:09 AM PDT  There are millions of blogs on the web and making sense of all of this user generated content can be a challenge. Israeli startup BloggerBase hopes to solve this problem by offering a competition-based discovery platform that aggregates content from bloggers for readers to sift through via topic or subject matter. BloggersBase is made up of multi-authored blogs that cover a variety of popular topics. Writers submit their content to the blog and then the posts are read and rates by readers. Readers can rate content on professionalism, presentation, value and writing style. As a blog post gets high ratings, it rises to the top of the page. Each blogger has a profile where the writer is rated. with the number of posts and popularity. BloggersBase is hoping to monetize its platform by offering a premium user generated content discovery and delivery platform for media companies to help sift through and organize citizen journalist’s content. For example, The Jerusalem Post is using BloggerBase’s technology to power a UGC submission contest. In theory, the idea of BloggersBase, especially when it comes to its white label offering, is attractive. There is definitely a need for a mechanism by which you can sift through the millions of blogs in the blogosphere. But the most significant challenge for BloggersBase is the ability to consistently attract the notice of blogs and readers. Without compelling content, the site won’t draw engaged readers. Of course, with the popularity of media companies incorporating UGC into their news platforms, such as CNN’s iReport, BloggersBase could provide media companies with an alternative way to sort through content. Funded by Israeli entrepreneur Yossi Vardi and VoiP pioneer Jeff Pulver, BloggersBase faces competition from Digg, Helium, and Newsvine. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
It looks at first glance like Michael Birch and Brent Hoberman’s 
Russian social network 
Imagine a small device that you wear on a necklace that takes photos every few seconds of whatever is around you, and records sound all day long. It has GPS and the ability to wirelessly upload the data to the cloud, where everything is date/time and geo stamped and the sound files are automatically transcribed and indexed. Photos of people, of course, would be automatically identified and tagged as well.
Two things that would end hypocrisy and make the world a better place: Priests should be allowed to get married, and the New York Times should update its 
Streaming music service 
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