Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Y! Alert: TechCrunch

Yahoo! Alerts
My Alerts

The latest from TechCrunch

Square Co-Founder Jim McKelvey Backs The LinkedIn For Athletes LockerDome Top
lockerdome-1LockerDome, a social sports community, has raised $750,000 in funding. Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Square invested in the startup and is joining LockerDome's Board of Directors. LockerDome is a social networking site for sports and aims to help athletes create a sports persona and profile. LockerDome works with youth sports programs across the U.S. to launch private team and league networks and serves as a private social network where their athletes, coaches, and parents can create profiles, upload media, and gain national exposure.
 
Seismic Games Launches Social Gaming Studio, Raises $2M From DFJ Frontier Top
seismicExclusive - Seismic Games, a Los Angeles-based social games studio, is coming out of the woodwork today, announcing that it is set to debut its first game in the first quarter of 2012. The startup has secured $2 million in Series A funding led by DFJ Frontier and former VC and entrepreneur turned writer Tom Matlack. About a dozen other angel investors, with "deep ties" to the entertainment industry, also chipped in.
 
Daily Crunch: Compartment Top
1512Here are some of yesterday’s Gadgets posts: Miss Your Cat? Now Fluffy Can Send You Tweets All Day Long Nokia Ace (Lumia 900) Specs Trickle Out The Swift Rise And Sad Fall Of The Asus Transformer Prime Android Tablet India's Low-Cost Aakash Tablet Pre-Orders Hit 1.4 Million The Cord-On-Board iPhone Case Hides A Charging Cable Inside
 
Details Matter Top
watch detailThe Lean Startup mantra tells entrepreneurs to get a basic version of your product out there to test the waters, and then build the real product afterwards with the knowledge you gain from this early customer feedback. You iterate with live customers instead of on your design board because this is how you learn to build a better product faster. Lean Startup author Eric Ries recommends failing quietly with as few customers as possible on your way to creating a great product. But is that even possible anymore? As it becomes easier and easier to create products and launch startups, one way to stand out is to craft something really extraordinary—whether that is a mobile app, a website, or a digital device. Founders who sweat the details before their product launches are gaining a leg up on those who just push code out the door onto the unsuspecting masses.
 
Marine Solar Cells Make The Most Of Sun And Waves Top
MSC medium shot from aboveIn an unusual hybrid, British industrial designer Phil Pauley created Marine Solar Cells that harness energy from both the sun and water. The web of energy generators capture energy off-shore, using a combination of floating photovoltaics and natural buoyancy displacement. Thanks to the reflective nature of water, the solar component's efficiency is up to 20% greater than it would be land-locked.
 
HP Unveils Two New Desktop PCs: The Omni All-In-One And The HPE h9 Phoenix Top
Omni 27_Ultrabooks are all the rage for 2012, and we'll probably see quite a few of them at CES next week. But there are still some of us who prefer a more robust computing experience, which is why HP has today announced the Omni 27-inch all-in-one and the Pavilion HPE h9 Phoenix, the most powerful Pavilion model to date.
 
'Menu And Hours,' For When You're Too Hungry To Scroll Through A Million Yelp Reviews Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-03 at 8.47.36 PMI've heard like a billion people complain about this recently so here goes: When you're starving you don't want to read through thousands of Yelp reviews on your phone or download a random PDF from a terrible restaurant website that's so slow-load it's indecipherable. You just want to know where a restaurant is, what it has to eat, and whether or not it's open. 'Menu and Hours' is a Kickstarter project designed just to give you just the menu, hours, contact info and location of local eateries -- the antidote to unnavigable mobile restaurant websites and TMI foodie services like Urbanspoon. Brilliant, right?
 
CallidusCloud Acquires Marketing Automation SaaS LeadFormix For $9 Million Cash Top
CallidusCloud Acquires LeadFormixSales effectiveness cloud SaaS company Callidus Software Inc today announced its acquisition of LeadFormix, a B2B cloud-based lead intelligence SaaS. LeadFormix lets B2B vendors turn anonymous visits to their websites into qualified leads by identifying potential customers and reporting their intent. This solution will join the Callidus multi-tenant SaaS sales performance and effectiveness solutions that help companies hire better sales people, close deals, and incentivize sales performance.
 
CrunchBase Reveals: The Average Successful Startup Raises $25.3 Million, Sells For $196.8 Million Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-03 at 7.08.34 PMMost investments fail but the few successful ones more than make all the money back -- or so startup investors hope. But what sort of returns do these profitable exits bring in? According to a new analysis of all the exits listed in CrunchBase, the average successful company has raised $25.3 million, and sold for $196.8 million, for investor profits of 676% (if you assume the investors own 100% of the company, which they normally don't). Meanwhile, IPO-bound companies generated lower percentage returns, but made a lot more money per exit. The average one raised $580.3 million while private, then went public with a market cap of $2.3 billion on its first day of public trading for 303% profit on investment. Mouse over the dots below for more details.
 
Virtual Currency and Pay Per View 2.0: World Series Of Beer Pong To Stream On Facebook Top
World Series Of Beer Pong Stream By MilyoniIn Facebook's early days the company planned a national beer pong tournament, but then cancelled it out of fear it would promote underage drinking. Tomorrow, that dream will be revived in a new way when social video and ecommerce company Milyoni streams The World Series of Beer Pong through its Facebook app. For 50 Facebook Credits/$5 PayPal pre-sale or 70/$7 once the games begin, viewers can tune in to all the boozy action from doubles to rebuttals. The stream could demonstrate whether live sports could work as Facebook pay-per-view programming.
 
Holo Promise: Google Moves To Ensure UI Integrity On All Android 4.0 Devices Top
icsheaderGoogle has posted a bit of new info to the Android Developers blog that is probably less of a big deal than people are making it into, but still worth looking at. The post details a requirement that all manufacturers include in their Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) devices the default Holo theme. They don't have to use the theme, they just have to have the data composing it on the phone. This is less a blow aimed at third-party UIs and more a general integrity check that ensures apps and services will have the choice to provide a consistent face to the user across many devices.
 
On The Day Of The Iowa Caucus, Barack Obama Joins Instagram Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-03 at 5.21.01 PMThe game is on. The Iowa Caucus (important because it kicks off voting and is viewed as an indicator of which Presidential candidates have a chance at winning the Republican nomination) results started pouring in around 7pm CST tonight. So far it looks like it will be a three-way race between Ron Paul, Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney, according to analysts and preliminary polls.
 
Vizify Raises $1.2 Million To Help You Make A Great First Impression Online Top
Screen shot 2012-01-03 at 7.45.13 PMVizify, a social tool for creating a great first impression online and a recent grad of TechStars' Seattle accelerator program, is announcing today that it has raised $1.2 million in seed funding from a group of entrepreneurs and investors, which includes Picnik Founder Jonathan Sposato, Founder and Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Tim Draper, Bill McAleer of Voyager Capital, and Co-founder of Feedburner Matt Shobe, among others. Vizify is also a member of the inaugural class of the Portland Seed Fund, a seed fund and 90-day accelerator program that invests $25,000 in six to eight Oregonian companies every six months.
 
December Brings $1M In Sales To Bandcamp Top
headerThe question of how music will be distributed in a year, five years, or ten years, is an open one. The landscape has been altered so drastically over the last ten years that the only thing that seems sure is that major changes will continue to come. Bandcamp hopes to be part of those changes, and they're showing healthy growth: the site pulled in a million dollars in sales just in December. Not, of course, much of a challenge to the sudden empire of iTunes and the inverted economics of streaming services of Spotify — but the Bandcamp approach to the distribution question is building legitimacy.
 
The Cord-On-Board iPhone Case Hides A Charging Cable Inside Top
CASEINITY CORD-ON-BOARDAfter a decade of iPods, Apple's little white charging cable seem to be pretty much everywhere these days. Open a random drawer, there one will sit. Ask a pack of strangers, "Hey — anyone got an iPhone cable?" and half a dozen will be thrown your way. At this point, it's almost hard to not be within reach of one... until you actually need one. Then the damned things seemingly don't exist. Looking to make sure no iThing owner is ever caught out-and-about without a charging cable in tow is the Cord-On-Board, a (rather cleverly named) shock-resistant iPhone case with a 9.5" charging cable tucked inside.
 
Another Data Play: The Next Big Sound Raises $6.5 Million From IA Ventures And Foundry Top
NextBigSoundWe are only one working day into 2012, and already two data startups announced funding rounds. Klout confirmed its Series C, and now social music data gatherer, Next Big Sound, is set to announce a $6.5 million Series A.  The TechStars startup (Class of 2009) just got backing from IA Ventures and Foundry Group. It will also be opening an office in New York City (it is headquartered in Boulder, CO).
 
Keep The Spark Alive With BeCouply's Epic Date Night Subscription Service Top
BeCouply LogoImagine a candlelit dinner, a private art gallery tour, and round-trip black car service for you and your significant other. Now imagine how nice it'd be if you didn't have to plan any of that awesome date. BeCouply is a new subscription service for couples where each month they get a unique, all-inclusive date set up for them. It's like ShoeDazzle for romantic experiences. With pre-seed funding from Mitch Kapor, BeCouply Dates launches today in San Francisco with plans to expand to more cities and a mobile date idea app soon.
 
Speaking Of… Pink with Jesse Draper (TCTV) Top
SpeakingOfDraperThis week's guest on Speaking Of is no stranger to the world of television. She's Jesse Draper, creator and host of online talk show, "The Valley Girl Show." The show profiles entrepreneurs and businesspeople, but in a format not often seen in Silicon Valley: on a pink-themed set, Draper draws her guests out of their shells in fun, light-hearted interviews that focus less on numbers and more on what the guests are like outside of their work lives. A Silicon Valley native, Draper grew up around entrepreneurs. Her inspiration for The Valley Girl Show came from watching her father's friends – her heroes – being grilled in television interviews, and noticing that no one was talking about the fun, creative sides of these entrepreneurs. She set out to create an entertaining business talk show, decided to play off of the stereotypical Southern California "valley girl" persona, and ran with the pink.
 
Codecademy's CodeYear Attracts 100,000 Aspiring Programmers In 48 Hours Top
codeyearlogoTalk about starting your year off on the right foot. Two days ago, Codecademy — a startup that's looking to bring programming to the masses — launched a nifty initiative called Code Year. It's pretty straightforward: sign up, and each week you'll receive some programming lessons in your email inbox. And apparently, there are a lot of people who want to learn how to code. Code Year just had its 100,000th user sign up — a remarkable milestone given that the site has only been up for 48 hours. And that number continues to grow at a rapid pace.
 
Kleiner Leads Klout's Latest "$30 Million" Funding Round Top
API Billionaire's ClubKlout's reputation is growing among investors. The startup, which provides a social credit score for more than 100 million public profiles across various social networks, raised C round of financing of around $30 million. Business Insider was the first to report the funding. The company declined to disclose the exact amount it raised, but we've confirmed that $30 million is close to the correct amount. Kleiner partner Chi-Hua Chien, who has been a board observer since Kleiner led Klout's $8.5 million B round last January, is now a full board member, along with another Kleiner partner, Bing Gordon, Mayfield's Allen Morgan, and CEO Joe Fernandez.
 

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.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)