Saturday, April 21, 2012

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Online Video vs. Music – Different Game, Same Rules Top
netflixNetflix — the poster child for premium Internet video services — was birthed by iTunes and other online music services before it. Yes, movies and music are fundamentally different forms of media. Apart from the obvious, in the online world, music tracks can be unbundled from albums (movies can't), and the number of movies produced in any given year represents a small fraction of the total volume of recorded music (and these differences directly impact business models). Nevertheless, despite these differences, three ingredients that have proven to be essential for the success of any online music service apply equally to the premium online video world. This trilogy represents the "Sacred Tenets of Online Media" that apply to any service provider. Apple was the first to get it right in the online music world with iTunes. Who will first get it right at massive scale for online video? Netflix may have the lead, but the game is still early. So, game on.
 
Convertible Note Seed Financings: Econ 101 for Founders Top
economics for dummiesThis is the second part of a three-part primer on convertible note seed financings. Part 1, entitled "Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Convertible Note Seed Financings (But Were Afraid To Ask)," addressed certain basic questions, such as (i) what is a convertible note? (ii) why are convertible notes issued instead of shares of common or preferred stock? and (iii) what are the advantages of issuing convertible notes? This part will address the economics of a convertible note seed financing and the three key economic terms: (i) the conversion discount, (ii) the conversion valuation cap and (iii) the interest rate. Part 3 will cover certain special issues, such as (i) what happens if the startup is acquired prior to the note's conversion to equity? and (ii) what happens if the maturity date is reached prior to the note's conversion to equity?
 
The Rise of Smart Mobile Services (Not Apps!) Top
iphone-appsA new generation of Smart Mobile Services is coming. We don't need to wait for Google Glasses to build the next generation of world-changing consumer services. Many of the enabling features for these services exist in our smartphones today. What do I mean by a Service versus an App? Well, most mobile app developers have built their user experiences to look a lot like a desktop application jammed on a phone. I open up the app when I need something. I open up Outlook on my desktop to check email (I am on Gmail, but work with me here), and I open up my Yelp app on my iPhone when I need a restaurant recommendation. Same, same.
 
Twitter and LinkedIn Manage Tasks With Asana, New API Means Robots Can Too Top
Asana LogoWhat could be a better endorsement of your product's quality than having some of the hottest companies in tech relying on it? Launched in November, task management software Asana is already being used by Twitter, Uber, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Rdio, NationBuilder, and Airbnb. This week, Asana released a REST API to let customers build custom interfaces and in-roads to its productivity tool. A few examples of what you could build include a desktop app for viewing assigned tasks, or a dashboard for monitoring your team's current projects. At an event to celebrate the startup's progress on Thursday night, co-founder (and Facebook co-founder) Dustin Moskovitz and advisors like Ron Conway watched proudly as Asana's other co-founder Justin Rosenstein delivered a rousing speech. "In just five months, customers have created 10 million tasks. Even more impressively, they've completed 4 million of them."
 
Startups: Time For Another One-Sentence Pitch Competition With The Founder Institute Top
adeo ressiLast December, TechCrunch worked with Adeo Ressi from The Founder Institute to host a competition for one-sentence pitches. It's been a few months — so we're doing it again. Distilling your startup idea into a single sentence can be a big challenge, but it's crucial for communicating what you're doing to the outside world. (While there are certainly exceptions, I've found that it's a big warning sign when founders can't succinctly communicate what they do.) Here's the basic formula: ""My company, _(insert name of company)_, is developing _(a defined offering)_ to help _(a defined audience)_ _(solve a problem)_ with _(secret sauce)_".
 
Gillmor Gang: Scoble's Magic Penny Top
Gillmor Gang test patternThe Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor — drunk on power and app-pacified to the max, a pathetic unanimity in search of an argument, a raised eyebrow less than a real opinion... You get the idea; Keith Teare's stellar Techcrunch post of last Sunday on Google's earning call click problem seemed like a great place to continue a comment argument with @kevinmarks. But lo and behold, it's not Web or Apps but both. HTML5 may turn out to be the least relevant part of this refactoring of the world around mobile. Hindsight or HipSwitch or Turncoat, the names don't matter but the services do. Some people (like me) will do anything to avoid searching for an answer, and apps are just what I am looking for: touch and tap services orchestrated via push notification and intelligent predictive caching. Or not.
 
NY Tech Day: "Justify Your Startup's Existence In 20 Seconds" Top
Screen shot 2012-04-21 at 11.39.56 AMThe tech scene in NY is growing at such a rapid pace it kind of blows my mind. New York Tech Day was a glowing example of that growth, with 160 startups pitching and over 3,500 attendees. We couldn't help but attend ourselves, and what we saw was more than exciting.
 
Real-Time Research: iOS Dominates Over Android When It Comes To Usage, Says Chitika Top
chitika pie chartAndroid, by most accounts, is proving to be the most popular smartphone platform when it comes to devices getting sold today -- partly due to the sheer variety of devices and price points that are out there. But a new research tool that tracks usage in real-time shows that when it comes to usage, consumers, in the U.S. at least, are far more active on Apple's devices than on any other. The numbers come from the ad network Chitika, which notes that in the last 24 hours, iOS devices, covering the iPhone, iPad and iPod models, accounted for just under 68 percent of all usage on its network. Android, meanwhile, accounted for just under 28 percent. And other platforms were less than five percent of all activity. But there have been periods in the last few days when Android accounted for as little as 19 percent of traffic (on April 19, as it happens).
 
Ticl Her Fancy With Romantic Gift Service Ticlr Top
TiclrWhen you ask someone on a date, maybe you are a gentleman that likes to offer some flowers to make it official. This is where Ticlr, a startup showcased at DEMO Spring 2012, comes into play. You can send a date idea for a nice dinner at a French restaurant with yes/no answer options. If the recipient agrees, some flowers will be sent to his or her home. This is called "tickling" and can be used in many different scenarios. Ticlr is creating another way to send gifts that claims to be easier, less stressful and more creative. Gifts can be both personal gestures (I'll cook a nice romantic dinner) and paid gifts such as gift cards, a donation to a charity or an object from one of its partners. It fosters spontaneous gift-giving because of the inexpensive personal gesture option — a new take on gift coupons — and the motivational aspect of conditional gifts.
 
Voldemort's Got Nothing On Jeff Bezos Top
voldemortE-books. Again. Amazon and the DOJ vs. Apple and "The Big Six." The future of reading. A breathtakingly stupid David Carr piece in the New York Times, which thankfully someone else took down paragraph-by-paragraph, so I don't have to. Elsewhere, an awesome quote which I want to cheer with the force of a million choirs of angels:
I am completely unmoved by the argument that if Amazon forces traditional publishers to sell books at lower costs, then the publishers will go away and we won't have books anymore. Hogwash. The publishers built for a printed books world may go away, but their digital native versions will replace them.
Yes, it's time to trot out that obligatory William Gibson quote again:
"A middleman's business is to make himself a necessary evil." -- Neuromancer
There's certainly more than enough evil to go around here: Evil But Smart, represented by Amazon and its oppressive Kindle monoculture, vs. Evil And Flailingly Inept, aka Publishing's Big Six.
 
Why Search? Let LaunchGram Bring New Product Info To You Top
lg1Last week at the 10x Xelerator, Andy Sparks impelled LaunchGram.com into motion and lazy people all over the world rejoiced (or they will...eventually). This new service, in the words of Sparks, "aggregates pre-release demand signals for products coming soon." The way it works is that consumers can create an account at LaunchGram's website and subscribe to news about imminently launching products of interest 
(the iPhone 5 for example). Once users subscribe, they can receive "LaunchGrams" via email with curated updates about product release date, pre-order availability, photos and video. (LaunchGram does the dirty work here by scouring the web for the most up to date information about listed products). The same information that shows up in emails can also be viewed on product-specific pages at the main website.
 
From Russia With Money: How KupiVIP Is Riding The Middle Class Wave Top
photo-2From a slow start in the aftermath of the Soviet Union, Russia is now Europe's biggest internet market with 53 million users (compared to number-two Germany at 51 million), and figures from GP Bullhound and comScore indicate that it is also growing the fastest, at 14 percent (other European countries are at less than six percent it says). On top of that, a growing base of middle class consumers -- 15 million today, expected to double to 30 million in the next five years in an e-commerce market that is projected to be worth $40 billion -- has translated into a veritable boom in the rise of tech companies. But not all of that growth means big money just yet. KupiVIP, the Russian flash-sales site, is on track to make $200 million in net sales this year, on revenues of $300 million. Oskar Hartmann (pictured), KupiVIP's young and bullish CEO and co-founder, who I met while on a tour of Moscow's tech scene this week, believes the company will be making $1 billion in sales annually within the next five years -- pretty modest by the standards of Amazon, a company to which KupiVIP is compared, which had revenues of over $48 billion in 2011, but still making KupiVIP one to watch in the years ahead as it gears up for an IPO, possibly in the next two years. A story that Hartmann tells gives an insight into some of the trials and tribulations of building a startup in a country like Russia:
 
Facebook Shareholders: What Do You Do After You Make a Zillion Dollars Top
02-Ferrari-250-Testa-RossaIn the dot-com boom I lost $15 million cash. Yes, I am an idiot. You know what happens when you lose that kind of cash? When you go to zero? You lose your libido. You don't want to have sex ever again. And even Viagra won't help. I lost my house. I lost my family. I lost all my fake friends. I was sick all the time. When I passed people on the street who were laughing I was definitely sure they were laughing at me. $15 million cash. One million a week in the summer of 2000. I could've saved lives with that money.Instead every night I would lie on the floor and try to mentally force my body to die. [See, "What It Feels Like to Be Rich"] So now I will save some lives. You Facebook shareholders are about to make a lot of money. One friend of mine made one of the most common features on Facebook we use every day. He's going to make $15 million. So my message is to him but the rest of you can listen in on the conversation.
 
If Financing is Marriage, is M&A Death? Top
cypress hillNot a week goes by where I don't get an email that goes like this: "I wanted to reconnect, as I've recently left [the company that bought my startup].  Long story, but suffice it to say their executives and I did not share the same vision for the future." Let's face it, although there have been some smashing successes, more often than not, Mergers & Acquisitions fail.  If you didn't know any better, you'd think that selling your company amounted to a kiss of death, when it ought to be closer to a rebirth and the start of something… better.  Indeed, while raising money from investors feels like marriage, M&A sure feels like death.
 
The Power Of AngelList Revealed In Its New Look: 978 Deals, 48 Acquisitions Top
Screen shot 2012-04-20 at 9.32.41 PMHaving found traction (in 2011, 500 startups and 2,500 investors joined the community, with a total of 12,500 introductions resulting), AngelList is now on a mission to capitalize on its position and become a more advanced resource for early-stage companies. (See its experimentation with a new pitch deck format.) Today, AngelList added some cool new features to its homepage (sign out if you're logged in), which offers the startup a more effective way to show off what it's been able to accomplish and gives all visitors a better way to break down the information they want to see.
 
Flush With Funding, Video Chat Service Tango Has Social Network Ambitions Top
Tango logoVideo chat service Tango is moving in a new direction, and this week, the company closed a round of $40 million in Series C funding which will help it get there. Today, many think of Tango's service as an up-and-coming Skype competitor, as it, too, is about real-time communication, specifically video calling, between users. But the comparison to Skype may no longer be apt. Tango is working towards becoming a more social service - something more akin to the micro social network Path, in fact. On the roadmap are several new social features, some of which make sense for a phone replacement utility (like text messaging), others which seem more like a shift to a social network (like exchanging photos).
 
A Mid-Career Switch: From Massachusetts State Trooper to iOS Developer-To-The-Rescue Top
before-after-2After writing about Lovestagram, the app that Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger's girlfriend made for him as a Valentine's Day present, we didn't think we could find a cuter story. But we totally did. Smoopa, a mobile commerce app I wrote about yesterday, is also the by-product of a little love story. Derek Langton, who served as a Massachusetts state trooper for 18 years, picked up programming over the last year and a half to change his career and prove his ex-Googler husband and Smoopa's co-founder, Mendel Chuang wrong. "When you have an economy like the one we have now and when you're trying to change career paths, it's not easy," Langton said. "But it comes down to motivation. It's like losing weight. People try and fail. But when you see that it's a lifestyle change and you make it part of who you are, you can be successful."
 
Got Pot? Leafly Can Help Top
Screen shot 2012-04-20 at 1.39.52 PMDuring my daily combing of tech news feeds/breaks to learn more about the wide world of drugs, I stumbled upon this interesting little service called Leafly. Essentially, you hop on over to Leafly.com to do one of two things: find local dispensaries or explore various strains of the Mary Jane. But the set-up is quite nice, and with Marijuana legalization becoming a matter of when and not if, it could become a pretty huge part of the medicinal marijuana industry. The industry rivaled that of Viagra revenue in 2011 at around $1.7 billion, and is expected to reach $8.9 billion in 2016, according to a March 2011 See Change Strategy Report. So, what could essentially become the Yelp of gooey greenery is exciting to come across.
 
PicPlz Founder Dalton Caldwell: All This Gossip About The Instagram Sale Is 'A Waste Of Time' Top
11403v4-max-250x250Apparently lots of people are still talking about Instagram's sale to Facebook (last week seems like ages ago to those of us in the attention-deficit-disordered world of blogging, but I guess a $1 billion pricetag will tend to keep tongues wagging for a while.) The latest Instagram/Facebook detail the chattering classes are seizing on? Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz's position in the deal, which is smaller than it would have been had the firm not decided to ultimately place ultimately opted to place more of its money and support behind PicPlz, a competing mobile photo sharing app. Well at least one person has had enough of the snark: PicPlz co-founder Dalton Caldwell.
 
Facebook Updates Android App: 1.9 Adds Photos, Message Sharing From Home Screen Top
Android 1.9 Facebook messengerFacebook has released an update to its Android app today that should give users of the social network on Android devices a more integrated and instant experience -- and takes Facebook another step closer to making its mobile app experience more like the one people have when using the social network on the web. Specifically, the new version lets users share photos and messages direct from the home screen of their devices, and it includes several features that had been in the standalone Messenger app.
 

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