The latest from TechCrunch
- NYC Disrupt: Back in Hack
- An Update To My Investment Policy
- eBay Beats The Street; Revenue Up 16 Percent To $2.5B; Net Income Up 12 Percent
- Giftiki Raises $1M From Tim Draper, Others, To Help You Get Better Gifts
| NYC Disrupt: Back in Hack | Top |
| The TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon is back May 21st and 22nd in NYC. Signup now! Our goal is to create and expose opportunities for great developers and startups in New York. We want to help grow the burgeoning NYC tech scene by creating the premier hacking event in the Big Apple. The 24 hour Hackathon will happen the weekend before Disrupt at the gigantic Pier 94 . The Hackathon is free. There will be great food, fast wifi and each presenting team will get tickets to the full conference . Teams will be judged by an audience of tech luminaries. Winners will present on Wednesday, May 25th on the Disrupt main stage. The TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon promises to be one of the best attended hacking events of the year—if you're a developer/hacker/maker this is a do-not-miss opportunity. Last year, GroupMe was born at the Disrupt Hackathon. Will another great startup will emerge from this year’s pack? Will it be yours? If you're curious but have never hacked before, here are some reasons to come: Scratch an itch . There’s so many awesome new technologies out there to explore. Most of developers don't have the opportunity to fit them into our full-time work. What better way to try something than dive in and make it! Network . We can't think of a better place to meet new techies who share your passion. They can help you build something, help you debug something or set the stage for an exciting career change. Demo or die . It's exciting and nerve racking to share an idea with others. Time to get off the couch and find out if that garage project has legs. Get on stage and demo your hack to a roomfull of folks interested in hearing from you. Maybe someone will reach out and help you take it to the next level—it's happened before! Win a prize . There will be a host of prizes. Many of our sponsors will be giving away their own awards. In addition, any team that demos on stage on Sunday will get 2 tickets to the Disrupt Conference. Finally, the judges' favorite hack wins a chance to demo on stage on Wed in front of ,ore than 1,000 conference goers and judges. Grow the NYC tech community . We're really excited to give hackers a platform to do their thing and shine. If you aren't hacking but wanna show your love, please come Sunday, May 22nd at 11am when we kickoff the demos. Everyone is welcome! Signup now! The TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon is being organized by Tarikh Korula and Daniel Raffel on behalf of TechCrunch . Photo credit: Flickr/ eva meszaros | |
| An Update To My Investment Policy | Top |
| Before TechCrunch I was an occasional angel investor, going back to the mid 1990s. I’ve also made investments since TechCrunch, in companies like Dogster, DanceJam, Seesmic and Daylife. Some people have seen this as a conflict of interest, which it of course is. To counter that I’ve always disclosed investments, and try not to cover these startups myself. Occasionally when news is breaking quickly or for other reasons, I will write about the company, but with the appropriate disclosure. In 2009 the accusations of conflicts of interest by our competitors became somewhat distracting, and for a couple of years I discontinued investing in startups completely. That policy has now changed. Over the last several months I have begun investing actively again. We’ve noted these investments in Shawn Fanning’s new startup and in Kevin Rose’s new startup. I have also become a limited partner in two venture funds, Benchmark Capital and SoftTech VC . I am considering investments in a few other venture funds and a couple of startups as well, but have nothing further to announce yet. There’s a period of time with any investment when I know an investment is possible or likely but it can’t be announced yet. During that time I don’t write about the startup at all, because I can’t disclose the investment. When another writer wants to break a story we may have to hold that story, or it becomes a forcing function in announcing sooner. That’s what happened with Yo. MG had the story independently and wanted to run with it. I can’t reasonably ask him to hold the story (THAT would be a conflict of interest in itself), but he can’t publish it here without the disclosure that I’m investing. Which led to the interesting situation where I was the only investor who confirmed on the record. When these investments are complete, in a few months, there’s a very good chance that I’ll be a direct or indirect investor in a lot of the new startups in Silicon Valley, and that will mean that there will be financial conflicts of interests in a lot of my stories. Either because I write about those companies, or write about a competitor, or don’t write about a competitor. The easiest way for me to handle this is to be up front about all of these investments and disclose it in posts, which I’ve done and will continue to do. I think that this will all be fine. I’ll still be very hard on companies I invest in when they deserve it (ask Seesmic founder Loic LeMeur about that sometime), and I will still be quick to high five a company that’s doing well even if I’m not an investor, or if I’m an investor in a competitor. Other tech press will make hay out of this because they don’t like the fact that we are, simply, a lot better than them. That’s fine, but when you read their coverage remember that they’re our direct competitors, even though they won’t “disclose” that particular conflict of interest. Luckily they don’t get to make the rules we operate under. We do, and you, as readers, can choose to accept those rules and read, or not and leave. Maybe now I can get into those Bin38 dinners . You’ll always be able to see my investments on my CrunchBase page as well. | |
| eBay Beats The Street; Revenue Up 16 Percent To $2.5B; Net Income Up 12 Percent | Top |
| eBay just reported first quarter earnings today posting revenue of $2.5 billion, an increase of 16% from the same period of 2010. eBay’s net income on a GAAP basis of $475.9 million, or $0.36 per diluted share, and non-GAAP net income of $619.0 million, or $0.47 per diluted share, representing a 12% increase compared to the same period of 2010. The retail giant narrowly beat analyst expectations , which were 46 cents per share on revenues of $2.48 billion. eBay says that the first quarter increase in earnings was due primarily to sales growth and a lower effective tax rate. PayPal continued to help buoy eBay’s results, net total payment volume growing 28% to $27.4 billion in the first quarter of 2011 compared to the same period of last year, driven primarily by strong 38% year-over-year growth in its Merchant Services business across global markets, increased merchant adoption and greater usage by customers. PayPal now represents 39 percent of eBay’s total revenue. PayPal grew active registered accounts 16% year over year, ending the quarter with 97.7 million and adding approximately one million active accounts per month for the sixth consecutive quarter. eBay also reported that income increased from mobile payments and digital goods, with higher usage of Mobile Express Checkout, PayPal Send Money apps and the newly-launched PayPal for Digital Goods service. eBay President and CEO John Donahoe said this in a statement: In the first quarter, PayPal continued to drive strong growth globally, eBay sharply accelerated growth in the U.S. and we announced several acquisitions that we believe will enhance our leadership and innovation in commerce and payments. The year is off to a strong start. In terms of eBay’s Marketplace business, eBay’s merchandise volume grew at a slightly slower pace than PayPal. Gross merchandise volume excluding vehicles (GMV), increased by 8% year over year to $14.5 billion, GMV in the U.S. increased 10% year over year and international GMV increased 8% year over year, driven by continued strength in Europe and partially offset by weakness in Korea. eBay says the company is on track to double eBay's mobile GMV to $4 billion in 2011. Worldwide, active users increased 5% year over year to 95.9 million, with growth in North America, the U.K., Germany and Australia. For the second quarter of 2011, eBay expects net revenues in the range of $2.55 to $2.65 billion with GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $0.36 to $0.37 and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $0.45 to $0.46. From the earnings call: Donohoe says that in the emerging new retail environment, the company is playing offence when it comes to redefining retail and leading the next generation of payments and commerce. At its current growth rate, PayPal will pass 100 million active users in Q2. He adds that PayPal’s mobile transaction volume will hit $2 billion in 2011. And PayPal merchant services accounts for almost two-thirds of global transaction volume. While, eBay continues to grow in Europe, Asian markets aren’t growing, especially because of competition in Korea. CrunchBase Information eBay Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Giftiki Raises $1M From Tim Draper, Others, To Help You Get Better Gifts | Top |
| Like a Charity:Water plus Kickstarter for everything, collaborative gifting startup Giftiki has raised just under one million in Series A financing, led by investor Tim Draper and including VC firms Crosslink Capital, GoldHill Capital and Transmedia Capital. Elaborating on payment platforms like Venmo and Wepay , Giftiki lets users send small amounts of money as gifts, allowing recipients join a pool in order to gift their friends the more substantial things that they actually want, like the perfect Lanvin ballet slippers or a Frieda and Nellie bracelet , instead of individually buying less expensive (and less treasured) items from Forever 21, for example. I think this is an amazing idea. Like Charity Water, Giftiki leverages social ties and game mechanics to get users to contribute to the gifting process and add more money to the pool (anyone who’s every felt the Charity Water peer pressure knows what I mean here). But the concept expands beyond birthdays to any gifting situation, holidays, graduations, fundraising and weddings and baby showers and it isn’t just for charitable causes. Woo hoo! Says CEO Justin Stanislaw , “There was a big inefficiency in the gifting marketplace. People are receiving unwanted gifts and others don’t know what to buy someone. We wanted to solve the problem and create anengine for collaborative gifting, and in a sense collaborative social commerce.” The Brandery accelerator graduate Giftiki recently moved to San Francisco from Cincinnati and will be using its new funding to hire more engineers like everybody else. iOS and Android apps are currently in development and Giftiki plans on launching in alpha in the next couple of months. CrunchBase Information Giftiki Information provided by CrunchBase | |
CREATE MORE ALERTS:
Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted
Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope
Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more
News - Only the news you want, delivered!
Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more
Weather - Get today's weather conditions
| You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089. |
No comments:
Post a Comment