avc — I was on the panel of judges yesterday at TechCrunch Disrupt to select the top startup of the conference. The finalists were a very impressive group: gTar, OpenGarden, UberConference, Ark, Babelverse and Sunglass. The winner was UberConference. gTar came in a close second. Both of those companies are impressive and I support the wisdom of the judges: Fred Wilson,...
feld — Man does Eric Norlin know how to put on a conference. And, as a bonus, he’s got an awesome soundtrack and mindblowing trailer for the Glue Conference that Fake Grimlock would love. Here’s a taste of what’s saturating my brain. Shit My Could Evangelist Says, Just Not to the CSO by Chris Hoff, Juniper...
avc — The Internet is an amazing place. Last weekend an email arrived in my inbox with the subject line "Hello From MIT". That got me to open it. Turns out it was from Sep Kamvar, a faculty member at the MIT Media Lab, and before that the Stanford computer science department....
feld — Chris Moody, president and COO of Gnip, is back with a guest post in his Moody on Management series. Following are Chris’ thoughts on negotiating compensation with a prospective employee. Enjoy and comment freely! In my last post, I provided a few tips for job candidates when interviewing at a startup. ...
theequitykicker — Pinterest is an awe inspiring example of how much can be achieved with minimal investment in tech and people these days. As most of you will know, the enablers are cloud computing and open source software. What is interesting in this case is the power of those enablers. I just read...
avc — The new media world has its pros and cons. The pros are that I've got a blog to set the record straight and that everybody is recording everything. The negatives are that bloggers don't feel compelled to write accurate headlines and twitter can amplify the inaccuracies when those headlines get...
feld — I judged Lean Startup Machine Boulder yesterday afternoon. I had a blast and thought the program was really impressive. I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into and usually protect my weekends pretty aggressively from stuff like this so I can spend time with Amy and recover / catch up...
theequitykicker — Google is currently rolling out a new feature called ‘Knowledge Graph’ which will enhance our search experience by intelligently guessing what information we are looking for and putting it at the top of the results page. In other words they will be serving information not links. The picture above was...
avc — Kicking off our series on People, I am going to talk about the importance of culture and fit in the hiring process. What I have to say on this topic is mostly aimed at companies that are going from five employees to five hundred employees, but I do believe it...
feld — If you are a developer, I encourage you to carve out an hour and watch TechStars CEO David Cohen’s presentation at RailsConf 2012 (30 minute presentation and outstanding 30 minutes of Q&A). He starts out with the assertion that “developers are the new investors” - how could you not be...
allensblog.typepad — I've noticed recently that, when you ask an email correspondent for their contact information (those who don't include it in their e-signature), what one gets is different today than a few years ago. Today, one gets: one or more email addresses, cell phone #, Twitter handle, various URL's to information on...
feld — Today’s post is a guest post from my friend Nicholas Napp. We first met five years ago and while I’ve never invested in anything he’s done, I’ve tried to be helpful along the way. Nick is currently running a company called MoveableCode and has a great Kickstarter campaign going for his...
avc — Two years ago Steve and Jared spent a couple days hacking at the Disrupt Hackathon and ended up with GroupMe which went on to great success and an eventual sale to Skype. For the past 24 hours, developers have been busy hacking away at Pier 94 trying to do the same....
avc — This weekend finds NYC in between Internet Week (which I largely missed because of my London trip) and Disrupt NYC (which I will be at on and off this coming week). So the development of NYC as a startup hub is very much on my mind. And so I thought...
feld — I’ve been writing about boards of directors some lately – both changing my behavior as well as thinking out loud as I explore reinventing how boards work for the book “Startup Boards” that I’m working on with Mahendra Ramsinghani. All fit in the context of continuous communications as I believe...
avc — A few weeks ago, Twitter released a new # Discover tab on its web app. I do not believe the feature has made its way into the android app yet. At least I don't think I have it in my android app. But I really like the new # Discover tab....
thegongshow.tumblr — I stopped by a library (the Boston Public Library at Copley) on my way to work this morning. Some observations: A library smells like a library. I had forgotten that smell. Papery, but not like money smell or photocopier paper smell… it’s different. 90% of the people I saw there were sitting...
theequitykicker — Facebook is picking up a lot of criticism as it heads into its IPO. In particular there are questions over its continued growth and the effectiveness of its advertising formats, largely on the back of General Motors saying its Facebook ads haven’t been paying off. And to top that an...
avc — I've been in London all week. When I arrived at Heathrow I bought a data only SIM in the vending machine in baggage claim. My friend Simon suggested I set up a new Skype account and get a UK SkypeIn number. I did that and I have been operating without a voice connection....
foundrygroup — Today Mocavo announced that Foundry has led a Series A investment in the business. Since launching in March of 2011, Mocavo has worked to create a genealogy search platform that provides users with the best tools available to find information on their ancestors. And while the genealogy is a large...
beyondvc — Lately questions about Intellectual Property or IP have been cropping up left and right. Eliot Durbin (my partner at BOLDstart Ventures) and I had a long discussion this morning in preparation for his panel today about IP and patents. Last week, we met with a company and when we asked...
sethlevine — It’s funny how things have a way of working out. I wrote recently of our experience with SEOMoz – from initial meeting a few years ago to finally investing in them earlier this month. Today we announced our investment in Mocavo - a genealogy search platform that provides users with the...
continuations — We are about to go on a trip to China and I couldn’t be more excited. I have never been to Asia before and am looking forward to the experience. China in particular has held my fascination since taking Roderick MacFarquhar’s amazing course on the Cultural Revolution in college. And now...
theequitykicker — Regular readers will know that I’m a fan of open systems and have been following the battle between Android and Apple’s iOS with interest. For a long time I have thought that the most likely outcome is that Android becomes the dominant player with Apple remaining important with a significant...
avc — With all the talk of massive amounts of cash sloshing around the web/mobile startup ecosystem (including things I've said recently), you would think that nobody bootstraps anymore. But that is not true at all. Last week my partner Albert blogged about our most recent investment in Behance. Behance was bootstrapped for...