Charles Delancray sur Twitter : "The rise of the "horses" - "er…#unicorns" #startups cc @erikbryn @pmarca @ValaAfshar @vangeest. Uk.businessinsider. This week, messaging startup Kik became the latest privately held tech company to join the "unicorn" club of companies worth more than $1 billion. These days, that's hardly news. At this chart from Statista shows, the number of unicorns has almost tripled since the beginning of 2014. Investors and entrepreneurs love to argue whether this indicates another tech bubble like we saw in 1999 and 2000, but the amount of money flowing into tech companies is less than half of what it was in 1999. The difference: companies are staying private a lot longer, so the only way investors can capture a big chunk of their rise in value is by investing in late stage funding rounds, leading to huge valuations.
Statista. Aria Widyanto sur Twitter : "German-Indonesian team of GIZ and HYVE at #GEGarage tonight. #innovation #startup #entrepreneurship. A Product Is A Tool For Helping. These are the key ingredients that make an edtech ecosystem thrive. Over the past few years, I have had the privilege of observing and participating in education and technology ecosystems all around the world. Whether I am travelling from, to, or currently in any given city, I am frequently asked, “What do you think of the startup scene there? Are there even any edtech entrepreneurs?” This led me to wonder, what exactly makes an edtech ecosystem possible? From Silicon Valley to New York, Hong Kong, Beijing, Manila, Tokyo, Australia and beyond; where in the world are we most likely to find the next innovative technology solutions for education? Indeed, just as a painter cannot create a masterpiece with a canvas, paint and brushes, a technology entrepreneur cannot meaningfully transform education without a few key ingredients. 1.
This means there should be both an existing startup ecosystem, and a mechanism by which digital natives are spending time in traditional education environments. 2. 3. Just like artists, education entrepreneurs are everywhere. Rick Janse Kok sur Twitter : "Be the first to check out the best overview of the Dutch startup ecosystem @StartupDelta .org... Talent Garden Spain sur Twitter : "@AlexOsterwalder giving few advices to succeed in your startup #entrepreneurs #startups...
No Team? No Idea? No Problem! This VC Will Fund Your Startup Anyway. Jay Samit sur Twitter : "With a formal education you can make a living. With a self-education, you can make a fortune. #startup #entrepreneur. GrowthHackers sur Twitter : "How #Startups Are Changing Marketing As We Know It. STARTUP TIPS: HINDARI KEBANGKRUTAN SEDINI MUNGKIN | Blog Crazy Hackerz. Shopify vs. Magento: How Switching Increased Sales by 41%
MakeDoNia - Berawal Dari Warung Bistik Hingga Menjadi Makerspace | TeknoJurnal. Mark Cuban is absolutely convinced we are in a tech bubble, and it’s worse than the last one. This post has been updated. Fast growing startups with debatable finances have been effortlessly raising billions of dollars at stratospheric valuations. Big tech companies are sinking cash into risky industries they have no expertise in. And the Nasdaq recently climbed above the 5,000 mark for the first time since 2000. Are we back in tech bubble territory? One person who thinks so is Mark Cuban. In a blog post last night the Dallas Mavericks owner, who has credibility on bubbles since he made a fortune selling his startup right at the peak of the last one, says the bubble we are in now is even worse than the tech bubble and bust of 2000/1.
Why? Because the only thing worse than a market with collapsing valuations is a market with no valuations and no liquidity. But Cuban actually sees this dynamic as a problem. Cuban has “absolutely” no doubt that most of these investors are underwater (i.e their investments are worth less than what they paid for them). It is an interesting argument. DIY or DIE: The $0 to $100K Startup Challenge. AlleyNYC Co-Working Space Raises $16 Million. AlleyNYC, a co-working space founded 2012, has raised $16 million in funding led by Vandewater Capital Holdings, with participation from Entrepreneur Media. AlleyNYC was started by Jason Saltzman and Nsi Obotetukudo who wanted to create more than a room full of desks. They wanted to create a community, where entrepreneurs were constantly bringing value to each other. They have since grown the Alley to nearly 200 members with over 50 early stage companies calling the co-working space their home.
With the new financing, AlleyNYC is expanding to a second space in Chelsea with 40,000 square feet. The current space, in Midtown Manhattan, has around 16,000 square feet. “The additional capital and the space in Chelsea, we will scale the number of companies at the Alley to more than 110 with around 600 to 800 members,” said Saltzman. Saltzman calls this expansion ‘Alley 2.0′, wherein he envisions a number of added services that will come with an Alley membership. Meet the Beijing Startup Competitors | The Challenge Cup. Tesla Would Cry About these IC Designs. TL;DR: IC design costs too much.
There’s no version control in IC design, you can’t fork someone’s design, and the cost of failure is abnormally high. There’s no feedback loop for electronics commercialization. The cost of failure is too high. One company, Efabless, is fixing it all. The Reality for many IC designers. Academic and independent projects go to the graveyard. A backlog of potential innovation and very real potential. Depending on where you go in the world, the “results” are stored in drawers, boxes, and some form of electronic storage on dusty computers. Commercializing dead designs via additional development or enabling the original designers to build their idea with free resources is worth the effort.
Source (Gartner) The Four Causes of Graveyard IC Designs ‘Experts’ – who believe they can predict future demand of IC’s when in fact they have no clue about the future. Why it matters: How many chip designs are useful? How many of these chip designs are useful? Another chance… Accel Partners sur Twitter : "New on the blog: "The Vexing Issue of the Bubble in #Startup Land" | by @fdestin – The Vexing Issue of the Bubble in Startup Land — Our blog. Ah, valuation bubbles! Black tulips! The topic perennially divides the so-called “Valley Visionaries” from those who yield to the “true gods” of cash-flow and profits. How, they lament, could a company like Snapchat turn down an offer from Facebook in November and be valued at a cool $10 billion when it has no revenue?
They shake their head in disbelief when they see a three-year-old startup valued as much as a good old telecommunications company. Slamming zero-revenue companies happens every single time a large, zero-revenue company emerges. It’s also myopic to say Instagram cannot possibly be worth $1 billion, because it’s the wrong way of looking at the problem. In an age where we build on top of platforms like cloud and mobile, where everything from customer acquisition to payments is essentially frictionless, the progression of valuations is completely nonlinear. To the outside world it may look like bubble investing but top VC investors are not stupid.
Can Benefit Corporations Work? In recent years, Warby Parker has become the eyeglass-maker of choice for hipsters. In a recent GQ taxonomy of the different varieties of nerd, all but one of the nerds were wearing a pair of Warby Parkers. The company’s approach—selling stylish specs at affordable prices—seems obvious, but, in an industry where brand-name glasses cost two or three hundred dollars a pair, it counts as revolutionary.
The company has a similarly unconventional approach to its corporate identity. Soon after starting Warby, the founders made it a “B corporation.” There are now more than a thousand B corps in the U.S., including Patagonia, Etsy, and Seventh Generation. Why would any company tie its hands this way? Being a B corp also insulates a company against pressure from investors. In today’s fiercely competitive business environment, one might assume that a company that thinks altruistically is doomed to failure. It’s easy to be skeptical of the mushy rhetoric surrounding B corps. Ash5_ : REPOST this picture on INSTAGRAM... Maker Pro Newsletter. “Work on something where you are the user.” From the editors of MAKE magazine, the Maker Pro Newsletter is about the impact of makers on business and technology.
Our coverage includes hardware startups, new products, incubators, and innovators, along with technology and market trends. Please send items to us at makerpro@makermedia.com. Click here to subscribe to this newsletter. Are you a Maker Pro? Briefly * Hasbro and 3D Systems agreed to co-develop and commercialize play printers and platforms later this year, which gives us an excuse to display an image of Optimus Prime (above), who looks like a good platform for 3D-printed modifications. * The Hasbro deal must be part of a much bigger initiative, because a few days later 3D Systems purchased Digital Playspace, a “digital play platform that connects brands, retailers and consumers to 3D printable play activities. . ” * Harvard researchers are working on termite-inspired robot construction teams. The WunderBar project.
Features The Unlace. Untitled. This Is What Really Happens When a Startup Fails. Three weeks ago, the Canvas team had returned from winter holidays, hunkering back into work at the company's Union Square office in New York City. Just weeks earlier, the company--seven people, including its 26-year-old founder, Chris Poole--had a major success in launching its first iPhone app, called DrawQuest.
It took off in the iTunes store, exceeding expectations vastly. Revenue was growing, and three-quarters of a million people downloaded DrawQuest. It was encouraging. But it wasn't enough. "One of our investors came to me and said, 'I think we might want to be honest with ourselves here. On Tuesday, Poole announced Canvas was shutting down. Most startups fail. The case of Canvas gives you a rare glimpse into what happens when a startup runs out of money and shuts down.
By "business side of things," he means something universal to every company: revenue. "It was pretty obvious to me that we would have had to knock it out of the park in order to raise capital. Next, employees. Startups: What are the early symptoms that a startup is going to fail? Umair Haque // Bubblegeneration: Deal Note: Twitter's Nonexistent Business Model (Or, How to Invest in Media)
USV invests in Twitter. I was going to write a long post about what you should take away from this investment, and what makes Fred and Brad particularly astute media investors - but Paul K already wrote pretty much hit the nail on the head :) This approach - an almost disturbing lack of interest in the business plan/model/etc - is something all of today's great media investors have. But I think the reasons are different than those Paul outlines (better info gives investors more ammo to reject investments with). When an industry requires total economic reinvention - new assets, capabilities, revenue streams, market space, the whole nine yards - it's futile to stick to the sterile nostrums of a printed "business plan".
This should be intuitive. Now, this isn't to say that you should descend into irrational exuberance, and forget about value creation and value capture altogether. More simple - as I put it in my talks - at the edge, business models happen. Jeremy is a very intelligent guy. Distributing 3DP Parts — and Vitamins — With Passion. Meetiboy : Hardware controller dengan... Jakarta Startup Weekend. We Found The Future Of Loyalty & Rewards At Southland. Loyalty and rewards, loyalty and rewards, loyalty and rewards. It’s like a broken record. Everyone thinks they’ve stumbled onto the next big thing with loyalty and rewards. But maybe Nashville-based startup Facedeals actually has. Facedeals uses a 100% opt-in facial recognition platform that is non-obtrusive to facilitate in person loyalty and rewards in a very passive way. Users simply sign up for a Facedeals account using Facebook, and the magic starts. The backend software in Facedeals already knows what that user likes and doesn’t like and their habits when patronizing a Facedeals establishment.
In that 60 Minutes piece, McMullen and Stahl walked into a participating merchant, and as they were getting ready to decide what to order, Stahl was delivered a deal to purchase a Ceasar Salad and get a free Diet Coke. The secret to this relevance is that when users opt-in to Facedeals and let the service see their Facebook page, it builds a profile based on things they’ve liked.. Meetiboy : Banner "olshop"... SentioSearch.com: A Social Network that Connects Decision-Makers with Mentors who will Give them the Best Chance to Make Good Decisions and Minimize Regret. Mark Cuban Leads $1 Million Dollar Round For Florida Startup LinguaSys. Mark Cuban (photo: JD Lasica flickr) Florida startup LinguaSys is the latest startup to graduate out of the Technology Business Incubator at the Research Park at Florida Atlantic University (TBI).
The company provides translation and multilingual text analytics to businesses and government. They’re also the latest startup to catch the investment eye of billionaire Shark Tank investor and the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban. Cuban has reportedly led a seed round of funding of $1 million dollars that will allow the company to expand into their own offices in Boca Raton. The TBI is an exceptional facility, and we are proud to have launched our business there,” LinguaSys CEO Brian Garr said in a news release.
“It provided us with a stimulating work environment and a variety of resources which helped us to be successful.” The company was founded in 2010 by three founders that have over 30 years of combined experience in the human language technology space. The Producism Manifesto: A New Game For A New Economy (Version 1.0) | Simple Book Production. A Book Is a Start-up: Lessons from Leanpub, Net Minds, and Other Publishing Hustlers. The world of digital publishing start-ups brings to mind blogging in its nascent stages. The guiding principle seems to be: if anyone can scribble on the Internet’s wall, anyone can become an author, and any text can become a book. Online, a book’s form warps into something more malleable, and fired-up digital publishers are trying to figure out how to turn that into a business—even if it means a proliferation of books that might as well have been blog posts.
“A book is a startup,” declared Peter Armstrong in a speech about his serialized book company, Leanpub. “I said it in 2010, and I’ll say it again.” Armstrong had on Steve Jobs couture—a long-sleeved black shirt and blue jeans—as he addressed a packed audience in New York at the Tools of Change conference, three days of workshops about the future of books, specialized breakout sessions, and an e-reading exhibition called the “Digital Petting Zoo.” Sanders founded Net Minds about a year ago. Illustration by Otto Saglow. Setting Up Your Founding Team: Why a Strong Partnership Is Essential to Future Success. All Markets Are Not Created Equal: 10 Factors To Consider When Evaluating Digital Marketplaces. November 13, 2012: November 13, 2012: Since Benchmark’s investment in Ebay 15 years ago, we have been fascinated by online marketplaces.
Entrepreneurs accurately recognize that the connective tissue of the Internet provides an opportunity to link the players in a particular market, reducing friction in both the buying and selling experience. The arrival of the smartphone amplifies these opportunities, as the Internet’s connective tissue now extends deeper and deeper into an industry with the participants connected to the marketplace 24×7 – whether they are in the office, at home, or out in the field. It is a special experience to see an entrepreneur go from a PowerPoint describing a new marketplace opportunity to having established an online hub at the epicenter of a particular industry.
Following our investment in Ebay, we have been fortunate enough to invest in several companies that link consumers and suppliers through a successful online marketplace. How To Structure A Marketplace. Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post by Simon Rothman of Greylock Partners. Rothman is particularly passionate about Marketplace technology (Etsy, Kickstarter, Airbnb, etc) and how to garner success in that category. Marketplaces are endemic to the consumer web: Largely popularized by eBay, we’ve recently seen quite a few variations on the theme, like young guns Etsy, oDesk, Airbnb, and Kickstarter. Old or new, the two elements that bind all marketplaces are network effects (a good thing) and the chicken-and-egg problem (not such a good thing). Obviously, marketplaces are tough to build. But they’re even harder to kill — And they can be incredibly durable and profitable once they reach liquidity. But that’s the hard part. Despite the difficulties, there’s a tried and true way to structure a marketplace, one that hopefully ends in success.
The first marketplace to reach liquidity wins. Liquidity isn’t the most important thing. Until you reach liquidity, you’re vulnerable. Welcome to MTGW Poll | MTGW Poll. 10 Action Items to Keep Angel Investors Hovering. Mark Cuban: What Entrepreneurs Need to Know Before Starting a Business. Louisville Startup: Kodable Teaching Kids 5 And Up How To Code. Startup Professionals Musings. "Something Ventured" Set to Air in January: Silicon Valley's First VCs - Kara Swisher - Media. Positive Leadership: Charisma. Kamcord Gets Backing from Top Investors to Record Mobile Game Play - Tricia Duryee - Commerce. Focused On Women, Pretty Penny Finds Coupons For Online Shoppers. Why the Founder Who Doesn't Code Is Still Essential. Richard Branson on Smiling as a Competitive Advantage.
“Say No To Passion” by @LUNNOtheband. BitCasa Cloud Storage. FACEBOOK FALLOUT: Y-Combinator's Paul Graham Just Emailed Portfolio Companies Warning Of 'Bad Times' In Silicon Valley. Yourstartups. Miles Davis, Startup King. #StartupLokal Meetup v.14: Running a Successful Community on eEvent. Think Local.