Startup

'Free-mium,' self-funded models set to gain traction

Sooner or later, I will put all my 2009 predictions together, but in the meantime, I've come up with two business trends that I think we'll see next year:

Web start-ups will move to premium services and subscriptions Self-funding will rule for "ecosystem" plays

Ad-supported sites will move to a "free-mium" approach or die by the end of the year. Free-mium and paid services will become the norm next year, as advertising wanes and companies realize that ad-supported business models were not that great to begin with. Even Digg, with all its traffic, has little to show for the advertising model. … Read more

Why Europe is no land of brilliant start-ups

American tech entrepreneurs would rather answer e-mails in the middle of the night than have sex. It is the reverse for Europeans.

At least that seems to be the conclusion of a very stimulating post by the splendidly populist Andrew Keen.

Mr. Keen, who, I am led to understand by the excellent Owen Thomas of Valleywag, is rather enthusiastic for the poor not to have Internet access, relayed a very interesting discussion between Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and Loic LeMeur, the CEO of Seesmic, a video social-networking company.

Apparently, there is a general lamentation in Europe that it has originated … Read more

Working overtime for venture capital funding

Editor's note: This is part of a series of stories about the recession's effect on the tech industry.

Entrepreneur Treb Ryan remembers in vivid detail the day the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted nearly 700 points and dropped below 9,000 for the first time in years.

He was visiting a major computer maker on that day, October 9, waiting to meet with a potential investor about funding his start-up OpSource.

"I was about a half an hour early for the appointment and was sitting in the lobby, where they have a big screen TV," recalled … Read more

Small is beautiful for green-tech newbies

Les Fritzemeier heads up a tiny solar-energy start-up that most people have never heard of, Wakonda Technologies. But rather than worry about being steamrolled by the sliding economy, he feels like he's in a great spot.

"In a lot of respects, the best time to start a company is in the middle of a recession, assuming you've got money," he said. "Our target is to go to market when most people expect the economy to turn around."

Without a doubt, the recession and lower oil prices are hurting many companies in clean tech, a … Read more

HomeAway opens door to $250 million funding round

Vacation home rental site HomeAway announced Tuesday it received a substantial $250 million fourth round of funding.

HomeAway, which has raised $405 million to date in private equity, received its latest round from lead investor Technology Crossover Ventures, along with existing investors Institutional Venture Partners and Redpoint Ventures.

HomeAway's $250 million third round represents the largest U.S. venture stake for an Internet company over the past eight years, according to Venture Source.

Companies that tend to raise sizable venture rounds in excess of $100 million tend to be in capital intensive industries, such as networking company Santera Systems … Read more

Guy Kawasaki's Reality Check

Guy Kawasaki, the oracle of technology startups, is publishing a new book, Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition. It's a robust collection (450 pages) of posts from his blog, "How to Change the World." If you are seeking to change the world, especially in this economy, Guy's advice will be very worthwhile and entertaining. Check out the BNET video below with some tips from Guy:

Start-ups in a funding crisis? So here's a proposal

With the elections behind us, Wall Street's bears returned to form by dumping stocks in a big way on Wednesday and Thursday. Out in San Francisco, another tech conference devoted to all things Web 2.0-ish got under way amid dread about the future. And Cisco's John Chambers cast a further pall when he warned that a sales slowdown has spread from the U.S. to Europe, Asia, and the emerging markets.

On the surface, none of this is encouraging news for the near-term prospects of start-ups, which are the lifeblood of the tech business. So it … Read more

Gala honors clean-tech start-ups

It's pretty difficult to find free money these days. With the economy ailing and venture capital money as scare as a Republican sighting in Silicon Valley, it's pretty remarkable that the Clean Tech Open is offering $100,000 prize packages to six clean-tech start-ups.

To be clear, the founders and CEOs of these companies had to work a bit for their money. Forty-three finalists were selected across six categories and put through a mini-business school course load on how to run a company, how to raise money, and how to get a product out of the laboratory and … Read more

Mayfield Fund, Forrester CEO weigh in on tech economy

Call it the elephant approach to sizing up the health of tech.

In two separate reports released Monday, Forrester Research CEO George Colony and Mayfield Fund weighed in on where they believe tech is headed in this challenging climate.

Colony, who took hold of the proverbial elephant's trunk, noted in his CounterIntuitive blog that the current recession will likely result in a tech spending slowdown, but nothing near the levels seen in the post-bubble-burst era of 2001 to 2003.

He noted CEOs and CIOs are indicating they plan to "change their way" out of the current economic … Read more