Startup

Who says Silicon Valley forgets you if you're over 40?

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--It's nearly 10 a.m. in the City Council chambers here, and 43 people are waiting for their turn to speak.

These are not citizens with civic matters on their minds; divided into two lines that stretch out from either side of the podium in the center of the room, these veterans of Google, Cisco, NASA, Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo, Microsoft, Boeing, Sun, and others, are here looking for a new lease on their professional lives.

One by one, they lean into the microphone to introduce themselves. They mention where they've worked in the past, list their skills, … Read more

Brian Wong mines happiness (Startup Secret 55)

"It is easier to mine happiness than create it."

--Brian Wong, CEO, Kiip

The concept behind Brian Wong's company, Kiip, is, in my estimation, brilliant. Kiip is a mobile game advertising company, but with a unique twist. It doesn't pop ads up while you're in the middle of a game, or nag you while you're waiting for a level to load. Rather, Brian sells advertisers the opportunity to reward players when they have accomplished certain things, and he makes a set of utilities that developers can use to offer up their players' accomplishment moments … Read more

Dave McClure's 500 Startups raising $50M fund

Dave McClure, one of the most active early stage investors in Silicon Valley, is trying to add to his arsenal.

McClure's incubator and seed fund, 500 Startups, revealed today in an SEC filing that it's raising a new fund. The target size for the new fund: $50 million fund. That's not a lot for a VC fund, but for a fund like McClure's it represents a lot of investments. He plows an average of $50,000 into about two startups a week. To date, 500 Startups has made about 260 investments, including Twillio, Hipster and Udemy.… Read more

Startup Secret 54: Build for the 1%

"Everyone in the Valley uses a Mac."

--Stephen Brady, CEO, Found

I was curious why a desktop software maker would launch its first app on the Mac. Despite its vocal supporters, Apple still accounts for only a small percentage of the global computing desktops and laptops.

Stephen Brady, the CEO of the startup Found (see my review, Personal search app Found scans cloud and local data), explained it to me. Mac users are more engaged, he said. They download more stuff. And then there's the Mac App Store, which just takes a lot of the hassle out … Read more

Twitter toilet paper puts tweets where the sun don't shine

Sometimes it's hard to turn the other cheek. That's when it's best to use both cheeks.

Shitter turns Twitter into toilet paper. Startup Collector's Edition will print four rolls of choice throne-room reading material for $35.

If you're the self-deprecating sort, they can be your own tweets. But it's infinitely more amusing to print out those of your least-favorite celebrity. You can choose one or several feeds for your order.

The Shitter rolls can get about four tweets per sheet; that's a lot better than this DIY Twitter toilet paper printer from Germany. Shitter, meanwhile, is printed in the U.S. and ships internationally. … Read more

Startup Secret 53: Seduce like Evernote

"People like to buy. They just don't like being sold to."

--Phil Libin, CEO, Evernote

Phil Libin likes Apple stores. As a nerd and "a huge Apple fanboy," he told me, he finds a stroll through an Apple store soothing. So much so that when he strolls into one, he'll find himself just looking for something to buy. He often leaves with a new case or accessory for a device in his family's fleet of Apple gear.

Evernote's sales model, he says, is based a little on that feeling. Phil wants … Read more

Y Combinator: Disneyland for investors

Y Combinator is one of the most influential organizations in Silicon Valley. But thanks to the incubator's most recent demo day, it has become a Disneyland for investors, where startups are the attractions that VCs and angels are willing to pay to ride.

On Wednesday, YC graduated 65 startups from its program, its largest class yet. The room was wowed by pitch after pitch from companies like Sonalight, 99dresses, Ark and Socialcam. There were plenty of graphs depicting skyrocketing user growth and revenue, and investors (as they typically do at YC demo day) ate it up.

This demo day … Read more

VC: There's no Series A crunch, there's a 'seed glut'

SAN FRANCISCO--An article last fall suggesting investment was getting scarce for early stage startups stirred a major commotion in Silicon Valley. But one of the Valley's most prolific investors said tonight that the real issue is there are simply too many companies getting seed funding.

At the inaugural CNET Community Series event here this evening, Naval Ravikant, the founder and CEO of AngelList, rejected the notion that there is a so-called Series A crunch, saying instead that there is a "seed glut."

During the panel on "Startup Funding: Strategies and Opportunities" hosted by CNET's … Read more

Startup Secret 52: Be pound wise and penny foolish

"Forget about spending money."

--Chance Barnett, CEO, Crowdfunder

So much of a startup CEO's job is raising money, that it stands to reason that the CEO will also spend a lot of time worrying about spending it. Or not spending it.

It can tie you in knots, according the Chance Barnett, the CEO of a crowdfunding portal, Crowdfunder (see Chance on Reporters' Roundtable). But in the early days of a company's existence, what you spend money on, or what deals you make to save it, do not tell the tale. Yes, running out of money … Read more

The sound of crickets: VC offices on Y Combinator Demo Day

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--If you 're an entrepreneur looking for money today on the famous Silicon Valley venture capital row known as Sand Hill Road, yes, that is the sound of crickets you hear.

That's because today is Y Combinator Demo Day, and the lion's share of the biggest tech-oriented VCs in the Valley are packed into one auditorium here, listening to 65 early-stage companies pitch their wares.

The list is a veritable who's who of investors: Ron Conway, Tim Draper, Jeff Clavier, Mike Arrington, Stewart Alsop, and many, many others. And they've got their checkbooks … Read more