Sunday, April 22, 2012

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Tips For Flacks From A Former Hack Top
nick gonzalezThere are two kinds of stories: great ones and the ones that have to be pitched. This article isn't about great stories. I have a lot of fond memories from TechCrunch -- being there when the YouTube acquisition broke, covering the rise of Y Combinator, and generally speaking to people a recent college grad had no right chatting with, let alone interrogating about their company. However, getting pitched wasn't one of them. Pitching the press is a lot like trying to close any other business deal -- sans the excitement of any money changing hands. In fact, "selling" a pitch means creating more work for the writer, who has to dig into the details of your pitch and craft a story.
 
The 10 Biggest Mistakes Made With Amazon Web Services Top
amazon web servicesAmazon Web Services (AWS) provides an excellent cloud infrastructure solution for both early stage startups and enterprises. The good news is that AWS is a pay-per-use service, provides universal access to state-of-the-art computing resources, and scales with the growing needs of a business. The bad news – AWS can be very hard for early stage companies to onboard, while enterprises usually spend too much time with 'busy work' to optimize AWS and keep costs under control. We launched a private beta of 'KnowYourCloud Analytics' a tool that helps AWS users to get to the bottom of their AWS cloud. By gathering data streams from multiple compute resources and crunching this data with its state-of-the-art analytics engine, Newvem enables AWS users to discover potential cost savings, identify security vulnerabilities and gain more control over availability.
 
More Anti-Trust Woes Ahead For Apple? Top
tim cookWhen John D. Rockefeller was told about the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to break up Standard Oil, the founding titan turned to his golfing partner and said, "Father Lennon, have you some money?"  The priest first said, "No," but then asked, "Why?" Rockefeller replied, "Buy Standard Oil."  It was good advice. Being subjected to stern anti-trust regulation was proof that Rockefeller had indeed built the most valuable private company in the world — one that would ultimately be even more valuable broken into parts. This week, the Justice Department announced new monopolist targets as it slapped Apple and five of the largest book publishers with an antitrust lawsuit. Attorney General Eric Holder accuses the companies of price collusion in connection with e-books. Already, three of the five publishers investigated, the Hachette Book Group, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins, have agreed to a settlement that is likely to overturn the their "agency" pricing model. Macmillan and Penguin Group USA, also named in the suit, have not yet settled.
 
Microsoft Israel's Best & Brightest on Parade at ThinkNext Tel-Aviv Top
ThinkNextSlowly but surely, Microsoft Israel is making itself more and more relevant for the local startup community. In fact, we recently covered its latest major push, the Windows Azure Accelerator. Then there's the annual ThinkNext conference which has become one of the local tech community's staple events. The more interesting portion of the event (in my opinion at least) is the demo area, where startups chosen by the the local Microsofties showcase their goods. So unless you happen to be at the event in the port of Tel-Aviv this afternoon, here's what you're missing out:
 
Dollars, Sense, And 40 Billion Facebook Credits Top
facebook creditsRoughly 16 billion Facebook Credits were distributed and consumed in 2011. In 2012, I predict that the use of Facebook Credits will soar by three times to over 40 billion Credits spent on virtual goods, digital goods and more. The growth will be fueled by new digital content available on Facebook, use of Facebook Credits to reward brand loyalty and better marketing of a social currency that is still in its infancy. The following chart shows the growth of Facebook Credits revenue reported by Facebook from 2009 to 2011.
 
How Niche Content Sites Can Build And Keep Audiences Top
audiencen Sept. 2007, I was on a well-deserved holiday, having spent an excruciating 11 months with a startup where 80-hour weeks were normal. I was the Chief Technology Officer and in my short tenure, I had gained new clients, setup the company infrastructure and trained a few interns. On the morning I came back from holiday, my office was packed up, and the bosses were in it to hand my stuff to me. They kicked me out of the door without so much as a thank you. I went through the various stages of depression, and then realized that I had to come up with an action plan quickly to pay for the massive mortgage and the new baby. With nothing more than an idea in mind, my wife and I started CraftGossip.com, a niche blog network covering everything that your grandma would be proud of, sewing, knitting, crochet. We also covered some new age favorites like indie crafts, edible crafts and home and garden. We decided to cover news related to the craft world (I explain later why we decided to start this site and not something else).
 
Take Credit For The Jobs You Create With SmartRecruiters' "Got Jobs?" Campaign Top
smartrecruitersThanks to an election year and a high employment rate, jobs seem to be dominating the headlines even more than usual. Now SmartRecruiters, a hiring startup recently backed by the Mayfield Fund, is trying to tap into that interest — and maybe do some good in the process — with a campaign it's calling "Got Jobs?" The company says that its technology is can help small- and medium-sized businesses, in particular, cast a wider net as they try to fill open positions. Rather than just posting their job listings to a few sites like Craigslist and Monster, SmartRecruiters customers can post to to more than 100 job boards, including LinkedIn and Careerbuilder, then track applications and feedback. And SmartRecruiters is free to use. (It takes a percentage of the fee when you post to a paid job board or buy background checks from third-party vendor.)
 
Quora Is Raising At A $400M Valuation, With D'Angelo Putting In His Own Money Top
Screen Shot 2012-04-21 at 7.24.05 PMIt's really beautiful outside. Like so beautiful if San Francisco is like this more often it will become really expensive to live here. Also, Quora is raising money according to the multiple people in the past week. From what I've heard, the startup wants to raise between $30 to $50 million in its Series B, at a $400 million valuation -- an amount which strangely enough seems modest in light of the billion dollar rounds being thrown about willy nilly.
 
Seven Gmail Add-ons That Make Email Suck Less Top
gmail logoI think it says a lot about the current state of email that we have so many startups trying to change the way we do it. Gmail has been a key player for many years now. With features like threaded messages and filters, they've kept ahead of the game; but the feeling still seems pretty unanimous. Email sucks! Someone has got to burst this bubble and, when they do, they are going to make a mint. I don't know, this legendary "empty inbox", if it does exist, still evades me, have you ever seen one? What happens when when there are zero emails? A win screen? Now there's an idea... But while we're waiting for the next big disruption, there are services that can make the experience a little better. This is a list of Gmail add-on services that are at the top of the game right now.
 
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.
 

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