techcrunch

SAN FRANCISCO--Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that in order to take his company where he wants it to go, he knows that he needs to help prospective -- and current -- employees "make a bunch of money."

Facebook's mission has been to build a great service and to put that mission in front of profit margins, Zuckerberg told a packed audience at TechCrunch Disrupt today (see CNET's live blog). The idea, he said, is that building a great service and a great company go hand in hand. And getting great employees to help with that mission … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--As a serial entrepreneur, Digg founder Kevin Rose no doubt had a lot of people telling him how to grow his businesses. But the best advice he ever got was to get rid of employees that don't fit.

At TechCrunch Disrupt today, Rose -- who also co-founded Revision3, Pownce, and Milk, and who is now an investment partner at Google Ventures -- told interviewer Colleen Taylor that Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey gave him the best business suggestion he ever got: "Edit your team."

Dorsey told him, Rose said, "'You're just going to … Read more

Mark Zuckerberg, who has been all-but-silent since Facebook's May IPO, will sit down for a live interview this afternoon at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco.

Admittedly, he'll be speaking to a friendly crowd of startup founders and hard-core techies -- it's much harder to imagine him appearing at, say, a Goldman Sachs conference -- but he'll surely be grilled on an array of topics. TechCrunch founder-turned-venture-investor Michael Arrington will conduct the interview.

Let's hope Zuckerberg is frank. For sure, he'll continue to talk about how Facebook is built of the long haul and that … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- When Twitter cut off the connection to LinkedIn in July, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman said he assumed there would be a backlash.

Instead, the reaction was the opposite.

LinkedIn feeds "got much better," said LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who was interviewed by Michael Arrington at Techcrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. "...because it was so, 'I'm having a latte, at a 49ers game,' ...where LinkedIn is primarily about business."

Twitter, which has been cutting off some third-developers, shut out LinkedIn so that that people's tweets no longer show up on their LinkedIn … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- Venture Capitalist Ben Horowitz, half of the powerful Andreessen Horowitz duo, talked about how a lousy performing IPO -- are you listening, Mark Zuckerberg? -- can be a wrenching experience.

"The biggest pressure is on the employees who go home and someone in their family says, 'I read in the paper that you guys are bunch of idiots'," said Horowitz, who was interviewed at Techcrunch Disrupt by Silicon Valley veteran Bill Campbell. "It's a really hard thing to take."

Horowitz was talking about his experience as CEO of LoudCloud, a 1990s-era company … Read more

Former TechCrunch reporter Sarah Lacy launched a tech news site today called PandoDaily that is geared toward documenting every startup that pops up in Silicon Valley and beyond.

Lacy, who has covered tech for more than 15 years, says she quit TechCrunch in November because its AOL buyout was affecting the site's content.

In a manifesto called "Why I Started PandoDaily," which Lacy wrote and published on the news site, she said that her goal is to not sell PandoDaily. "Selling is not success to me. If I wind up selling, I've failed in some … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Hewlett-Packard is going through a lot of changes as it searches for a new CEO and digests Palm's Web OS, but don't expect it to follow Apple's lead.

"Emulating Apple is not part of our strategy," said HP's Todd Bradley, executive vice president in charge of the company's consumer products division, at TechCrunch Disrupt 2010. Bradley was being asked about whether or not its purchase of Palm's WebOS earlier this year was done in hopes of creating a portfolio of portable devices with unique packages of hardware and software, much like … Read more

The JooJoo Internet tablet, nee CrunchPad, has been delayed due to a manufacturing issue, Fusion Garage said Friday. The $499 touch-screen device was supposed to be delivered to consumers at the end of this month. But due to an issue that "centers on fine tuning the touch sensitivity of the capacitive screen," according to the manufacturer, it's now expected to be sent March 25.

Preorder customers will get a free JooJoo accessory to compensate for the delay, Fusion Garage added.

The 12.1-inch JooJoo started off as a mobile device envisioned by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington. It … Read more

Once again, rival start-up conferences TechCrunch 50 and Demo are being held this year on the same days, September 13 to 15. The September Demo conference is also moving from its traditional Southern California resort location to a venue closer to the entrepreneurs and venture capitalists it serves, in Santa Clara, Calif. (Demo also has another conference in March, in Palm Desert, Calif.)

Verbal sparring between the two event organizers has started. After IDG and VentureBeat, who partnered to produce Demo, announced their September dates, Jason Calacanis, who with with Michael Arrington produces the TechCrunch 50 event, said on Twitter, &… Read more