Startups

Imagine a floating city of entrepreneurs; a veritable Googleplex of the sea. That's the vision behind Blueseed, a San Francisco startup.

The company plans to deploy a cruise ship 12 nautical miles from Silicon Valley -- in international waters -- and convert it into a metropolis of floating offices so foreign workers can launch their companies without obtaining work visas.

Despite a number of bills currently in Congress that aim to expand immigrant work visas, "there is no entrepreneurial visa," says co-founder Max Marty. "I think that's a terrible problem."

The answer, according to … Read more

Has it come to this? Do we need corporate CRM tools to manage our individual relationships?

The startup Cloze has launched a utility that scores every relationship you have with your e-mail contacts, based on when and how you communicate with people. The scores look like Klout numbers, but they're personal to you. Cloze uses those scores to rank your people, flagging the top-scorers for followup when you don't respond to their messages. Creepy? Maybe. But fairly handy.

Cloze was designed as a work tool. Founders Dan Foody and Alex Cote said they wanted to create … Read more

Uber, a company that lets people request private car service in select cities, is trying to appeal to a less-affluent customers by using non-luxury, hybrid vehicles, according to a new report.

According to Uber, which spoke with The New York Times in a story published yesterday, the hybrid service will kick off in San Francisco and New York on Wednesday. The cars will cost customers 10 percent to 25 percent more than a standard taxi fare between two locations. According to the Times, its premium service typically costs customers between 40 percent and 100 percent more.

Uber is one of … Read more

Choosing the right market opportunity will make or break a startup. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs choose to tackle markets that are over-saturated, not realizing their mistake until it's too late.

I've listened to thousands of pitches from thousands of startup founders. Most of the time, these pitches don't stand up to my scrutiny for one reason or another. Some don't have differentiating features while others simply don't tackle big enough market opportunities.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks that trips up most entrepreneurs though is their lack of market and competitive research. They come up with … Read more

Institutional Venture Partners has secured $1 billion for a new investment fund.

The company broke the news to TechCrunch earlier today, telling the startup blog that it's calling the fund IVP XIV. The $1 billion raised is the largest fund the company has ever had and brings its total committed capital to $4 billion.

"Essentially it's going to be the same strategy," IVP General Partner Jules Maltz told TechCrunch in an interview. "We're a late-stage firm, we're very focused. We only do tech investing. We don't do China, we don't do … Read more

"Mithril" is a metal in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," said to be stronger than steel but much lighter in weight. It's malleable, doesn't tarnish and extremely rare.

PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel hopes some of the invented metal's properties are imbued on his new venture capital firm of the same name, announcing this morning that the San Francisco-based company is seeking growth-stage technology companies in which to invest.

"Technology holds solutions to most of the world's most pressing challenges, from resource scarcity to disease," Thiel … Read more

What do you get when you stick a bunch of geeks from all around the world in an hardware-focused incubator program for 111 days?

Well, you still get robots (which are pretty cool), but with the HAXLR8R hardware-related accelerator program, you also get young people who are excited about nearly every facet of life.

The program's demo day in San Francisco on Monday night highlighted several new products that consumers can literally get their hands on. This included some products you would expect from really smart people interested in hardware like:

Bilibot, a robotic platform designed to make affordable … Read more

What do you get when you stick a bunch of geeks from all around the world in an hardware-focused incubator program for 111 days?

Well, you still get robots (which are pretty cool), but with the HAXLR8R hardware-related accelerator program, you also get young people who are excited about nearly every facet of life.

The program's demo day in San Francisco on Monday night highlighted several new products that consumers can literally get their hands on. This included some products you would expect from really smart people interested in hardware like:

Bilibot, a robotic platform designed to make affordable … Read more

Bret Taylor, who has been Facebook's very public CTO for three years, today announced that he's leaving the social-networking giant to start a company. He didn't say what his next venture will be.

This is a big loss for Facebook and comes less than a month after the company went public. While Facebook stock rose more than 6 percent today, to close at $30.01, it's still 21 percent below its offering price of $38 a share. The news about Taylor, first reported by AllThingsD, came out after the market closed.

Naturally, Taylor turned to Facebook to tell the world … Read more