entrepreneurship

Longtime Facebook employee Dave Morin announced on his personal blog Friday that he's leaving the company and will be starting up a new endeavor with original Napster creator Shawn Fanning.

At Facebook, which Morin joined late in 2006 following a marketing gig at Apple, he served as "senior platform manager." He became one of the company's most high-profile representatives when it launched its developer platform in 2007 and then Facebook Connect in 2008.

His departure is not surprising. While Morin, now 29 and recently engaged to a Googler, had been extremely prominent at Facebook for quite … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--That was quick.

The hardcore optimism was back, and so were the open-bar parties, at the annual Web 2.0 Summit event this week--where a ticket price of over $4,000 for the three-day O'Reilly Media and TechWeb event hadn't fazed the sold-out crowd. Just about every big player on the Web had a high-profile executive speaking (well, except for Yahoo, because CEO Carol Bartz cancelled her Wednesday keynote, citing the flu), and the mood was clear: Economic recovery is on its way, and we're going to be ready.

Are we really past last year'… Read more

Eric Schmidt, I blame you.

Right as you announce that you're holding your third-quarter earnings call from atop a treasure chest made of sustainably-harvested teak filled with $22 billion in gold doubloons (okay, so maybe I'm being a bit imaginative there), a smattering of prominent folks in the dot-com industry start coming out of the woodwork with ideas that would've sounded absolutely ludicrous a few months ago. Namely, they're getting into the booze business.

Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams are launching a wine label for charity, it was revealed on Thursday. Then, on Friday, … Read more

Twitter’s “suggested users” list is a Who’s Who of Twitter celebrities, featuring the likes of Al Gore, Lance Armstrong, Ashton Kutcher, John McCain, Martha Stewart, and others with millions of followers. The New York Times claimed that a spot on the list would guarantee 500,000 additional followers and reported that social media guru Jason Calacanis had offered $250,000 to be listed.

Last Friday, Twitter did something remarkable. It added a number of well-known social entrepreneurs and innovators to this list, among them Social Edge, Skoll Foundation, Kiva, Matt Flannery (Kiva co-founder), Acumen Fund, Jacqueline Novogratz (Acumen … Read more

With the market for initial public offerings in a deep freeze and a dwindling number of potential buyers, start-ups have fewer opportunities to exit and retire to Costa Rica.

This is worrisome to entrepreneurs, but if anything, it should be of even greater concern to the venture capitalists that fund them, a point made by TechFlash's John Cook. Venture capital firms simply aren't structured to invest efficiently in this market.

VCs raised billions of dollars during technology's boom, and it's unclear where they can now profitably invest those dollars. IBM, Oracle, Cisco Systems, and Microsoft can … Read more

The Social Capital Markets (SOCAP) Conference, a landmark gathering of top business and government leaders creating market-based solutions for social impact, is taking place September 1-3, at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center.

SOCAP brings together a unique mix of the world’s leading social innovators--traditional investors, impact investors, social entrepreneurs, philanthropists, new media, NGO’s and non-profits, wealth managers, development agencies, venture capitalists, MBA students, and other groups interested in the growing opportunities of social capital--who are catalysts of change across the globe.

Last year’s conference gathered more than 650 leading global investors and entrepreneurs from 26 countries. … Read more

Whether you're creating the next Facebook or you have a patent on three-tiered umbrellas, you're an entrepreneur. But finding funding for your idea, getting some advice, or even just talking to people in your same situation can be difficult. Social networks designed specifically for entrepreneurs aim to help you achieve your goals. Check them out.

Cofoundr To sign up for Cofoundr, you'll need to input a work or school e-mail address. That's annoying, considering many people have ideas that they've yet to start, but it's not a deal-breaker.

Once you do sign up for the site, you can immediately input all your personal information, including where you're from, what the focus of your business is, and more. Based on those responses, Cofoundr will match you with other entrepreneurs in your area. If you want to share your idea to see if investors will give you some much-needed capital, Cofoundr's Ideas page will help you out. But perhaps Cofoundr's best feature is its member-search option, which allows you to find people based on their expertise. Whether you're looking for a venture capitalist or strategy executive, the site will provide it. It's a nice service.

Entrepreneur Connect Entrepreneur.com's Entrepreneur Connect is a fine way to connect with other business owners. But unlike many of the apps in this roundup, Entrepreneur's service provides access to a wider array of companies.

When you first get to Entrepreneur Connect, you'll find that you don't need to waste your time registering. Instead, you can jump right in and start networking with other entrepreneurs. The site's "Make Connections" feature is especially useful. You can input certain criteria you're looking for in a connection and it will find people matching those items. The site also has some active groups for every industry represented in the social network. Entrepreneur Connect is a neat service. Try it out.… Read more

Way back in February, the Web's elite were all abuzz over the "Twestivals," a series of events around the world that were organized online to benefit Charity Water, an otherwise small nonprofit organization that funds the construction of wells in developing countries. They ranged from small in-home gatherings to massive nightclub bashes, but there was one general, common hook: spread the word, donate, and tweet about it.

Months later, with Twitter practically bursting at the seams, is this strategy still sustainable?

One part fundraiser and one part publicity blitz, the big-picture hook of "Twestival" was … Read more

Those who joined the technology industry in the 1990s can be forgiven for believing that dramatic wealth for paltry effort is the norm.

For everyone else, it's worth being reminded of something that Trevor Loy, a partner with venture capital firm Flywheel Ventures, said in recent congressional testimony:

We expect to hold a typical venture capital investment for 5-10 years, often longer and, since the technology bubble burst, rarely much less.

Unfortunately, Loy is not alone. In fact, as Tim McAdam and Jim Tybur of Trinity Ventures told me over breakfast Thursday morning, 20 years of National Venture Capital Association data (PDF) … Read more