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Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Honey, I Shrunk the Start-Ups, Part II

Glenn Kelman

A few comments about Dave McClure’s Sunday post encouraging entrepreneurs under 30 to sell at the earliest opportunity, from someone who was a founder under 30.

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Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Facebook-Focused Start-Ups Pitch Wares to VCs

Jessica E. Vascellaro

About two dozen companies building applications on Facebook went fishing for cash from Silicon Valley investors on Tuesday.

The companies, ranging from music discovery software to mobile virtual worlds, have all received a small amount of funding from Facebook’s fbFund, a $10 million seed fund that Facebook and two of its backers–Accel Partners and Founders Fund–dole out annually.

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Friday, August 21, 2009

Restless Workers in Silicon Valley Seek Ways to Cash In Early

Pui-Wing Tam and Jessica E. Vascellaro

As Silicon Valley’s stock-driven wealth machine sputters in the recession, technology start-ups are exploring new ways for employees to tap their holdings.

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Friday, July 24, 2009

Benchmark Is Optimistic About IPOs

Pui-Wing Tam

Silicon Valley venture capitalists–who invest in startups with the aim of profiting later when those companies go public or are sold–have found it tough to produce returns recently.

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Friday, June 12, 2009

More Ways to Sell Out of Your Startup Stock

Pui-Wing Tam

Startup executives and employees haven’t had it easy cashing out of their private company stock since the IPO and M&A markets, which typically provide “liquidity” and a route to riches, have been relatively moribund in recent years. Spotting an opportunity, several companies have sprung up in recent months to try and provide startups with new avenues to liquidity.

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Friday, April 3, 2009

Web 2.0 Expo: An “American Idol” for Start-Ups

Marisa Taylor

During the “Launch Pad” session, five start-ups took a grilling from developers, journalists and venture capitalists, then faced a crowd vote at the Web 2.0 Expo’s version of “American Idol.”

As attendees texted their votes, moderator John Battelle, founder of Federated Media Publishing, jokingly asked: “Want to have a dance-off?”

None were necessary. The techies in attendance were starry-eyed for all things mobile, picking Nitobi’s PhoneGap, an open-source tool for building mobile apps, as the People’s Choice winner. Life-tracking site zeaLOG was a close second.

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Friday, January 30, 2009

Warning: Dependence on Facebook, Twitter Could Be Hazardous to Your Business

Mark Glaser

You’ve probably heard how much the microblogging service Twitter can help your business, or that being on social-networking site Facebook can boost your company’s profile. But what you might not have considered is the potential danger in over-relying on these start-ups that could go out of business, get bought out, or close your account if you aren’t familiar with their Terms of Service.

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Thursday, January 22, 2009

Innovation Doesn’t Take a Vacation in an Economic Downturn

David Hornik

By the end of 2008, venture capital had been officially declared dead. Start-ups were laying people off so fast that even TechCrunch couldn’t manage to keep up. University endowments and foundations, the source of the “capital” in venture capital, were hemorrhaging so badly from their public company investments that many long-time believers in “alternative assets” declared a moratorium on venture capital. And the IPO market was a distant memory. Good times!

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Wednesday, December 31, 2008

The Future of Social Search (Or Why Google Should Buy Facebook)

Eric Schonfeld

If you could search your friends’ thoughts, interests, and activities, would that be a better search experience? In many cases, it would be. Searching for restaurants, books, or movies, would turn up recommendations from people you actually know.

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Monday, December 1, 2008

The Other Half of “Artists Ship”

Paul Graham

One of the differences between big companies and start-ups is that big companies tend to have developed procedures to protect themselves against mistakes. A start-up walks like a toddler, bashing into things and falling over all the time. A big company is more deliberate.

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Monday, October 27, 2008

For Tech, a Tale of Two Downturns

Jon Fortt

It would seem we’ve got all the makings of a tech shipwreck.
In the past few days, Xerox, Yahoo and eBay each announced plans to cut thousands of jobs. Esteemed Silicon Valley VC firm Sequoia Capital is warning entrepreneurs that it’s time to batten down the hatches because the good times are over.

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Friday, August 22, 2008

SocialMedian Discovers a Totally New Way to Use Twitter for Business

Svetlana Gladkova

We have already seen tons of things people do on Twitter to help their business–marketing people selling staff, community managers engaging in various activities with their users, startups providing technical support, bloggers hunting for scoops and promoting their articles.

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