Gawker: valleywag, startup

Hey you, yakking on the phone! Get a booth!

Nick Douglas — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 15:08:20 EDT

Does anyone have Cell Phone Plague (known to historians as "the Yak Death") worse than Silicon Valley? (Okay, probably Seoul, but the Koreans will always beat us.) The VCs and sales guys chatting it up on the street — as well as the ad kids calling Mom — should take a hint when "portable phone booth" art projects start popping up.

The Portable Cell Phone Booth (embedded vid), pictured above, ups the chance of yelling "Buy! Sell! Buy! Sell!" by 90%.

CellBooth is a toteable fabric curtain with a weirdly serious writeup: "Ultimately, I desired to recreate the illusion of privacy and stillness afforded by oldschool, 4-walled phone booths, but also to update the booth as a portable object that would fit into a modern life."

But the most telling: Not only is a company selling cell booths for restaurants, but last fall it earned a Wired News story. Shoving public cell talkers into a little wooden box is no longer just a dream.

The Portable Cellphone Booth [cowboygirlproductions]
CellBooth [Jenny Chowdhury]
C.P. Booth LLC [Official site]
Booths Silence Cell-Phone Boors [Wired News]

Leapfrog Ventures: Silicon Valley is happy and healthy

ndouglas — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 21:52:46 EST

Gripping results from Leapfrog Ventures' survey of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Among its findings:

Almost forty percent of surveyed startuppers ("start-uppers" but best pronounced "star-tuppers") didn't feel bullish, didn't feel bearish, and felt more like a cup of coffee and a bagel, please.
Most startuppers felt bullish, but even more felt the other startuppers felt bullish, from which we can extrapolate that almost all startuppers think that other startuppers think the other other startuppers feel bullish. Or to paraphrase, they think they think they think the market's rising.
The number of VCs less hot than George Zachary outnumber the VCs hotter than George Zachary 14 to 1.
Leapfrog's logo doesn't scale well.
The three co-founding Leapfrog directors have a combined 35 years of "successful venture investment" and 40 years of "operating experience," which doesn't mean that someone had a shitty five years, but it's fun to assume that anyway.
Six months is now a benchmark era for measurable progress, by which standards Google is made of poor people.
A venture capital firm asking capital-seeking startuppers whether the money's flowing will not get biased answers at all.

Survey of Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs Reveals Increased Confidence in Startup Venture Landscape [Business Wire]

Party with imeem at SXSW

ndouglas — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 12:43:43 EST

One SXSW party invite stands out today — social IM site imeem (or, properly, "imeem!" but that sounds like a Broadway show) is ending ~~SXSW Interactive~~ SXSW Film (what the hell, imeem?) and kicking off the Austin fest's music leg with a big Tuesday-night party. And they booked a little band named Sleater-Kinney.

How is imeem paying for these things? This isn't the first big bash that imeem's thrown; they held a big party at Macworld and regularly throw events in San Francisco.

But whoever's going to these isn't calling imeem back the morning after; word is, the company's running out of cash fast, with no one stepping up to buy. Why would they? It's more fun to watch the IM startups fight it out — like a cage match full of skinny featherweights.

After the jump, imeem's invitation. Get a few imeem-sponsored drinks in yourself and ask them who's paying the bills.

Remainders: Daily Candy tastes like flipmeat

ndouglas — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 02:46:55 EST

Another online media company's for sale. "Daily Candy could fetch more than $100 million, people familiar with the matter say." But Chris Coulter asks, "WHAT? More Pittmanish Accounting. Like who greps faux 'urbane email newsletters' anymore..." [WSJ]
Suggested World of Warcraft nicknames other than "the new golf:" "the new eavesdropping at Buck's," "the new schmoozing at launch parties," or "the new overzealous mountain-biking." [PC Mag, CNet]
"Googlepark: The Spaghetti Code" does up Google, Microsoft, Vint Cerf and Scoble all South Park style. Scares the hell out of me. [Channel9]
Podbridge, another startup, plans to fill podcasts with ads. The CEO says, "As a user, you notice nothing." Except, you know, THE ADVERTISEMENT. Or, hell, maybe the user doesn't notice the ad, which makes for one odd business plan. [SiliconBeat]
Google's "call the advertiser" feature starts a trend more insidious than clickfraud: bored kids crank-calling Adwords buyers. [Om Malik]

Man-boy startup love

ndouglas — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 14:04:34 EST

More young entrepreneurs in the Merc this week, which writes that VCs are "prowling everywhere for young talent and brains." Zombie undertones aside, the startup scene looks a lot like the dating scene. One VC says that he meets start-uppers at bars and clubs. A Gen-X YouTube co-founder comments on two-month relationships filled with "fervor" and "risk."

Thing is, these VCs and the executives they bring on board are mostly 40ish, 50ish. With that age gap and the TIME photo of Larry, Sergey, and the babysitter? Looks like cradle-robbing is the new black.

VCs backing 'magic' of youth [Mercury News]
Can we trust Google with our secrets? [TIME cover]

Craigslist guessing: Startupper stuck in sexless marriage

ndouglas — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 20:51:12 EST

A "VERY successful" businessman with a flipped startup under his belt seeks a "one-woman relationship" — not counting his wife, of course.

The downtown San Jose resident hasn't, uh, seeded her capital fund in twenty years. He stays with her for the kids, but for the last few years he's been sneaking out every week to meet a special someone.

Now that someone's gone, and a lucky lady can step in for a "discrete, honest" affair — presumably just honest in the moments they're not being discreet.

In the comments or e-mail, guess which successful software exec needs extramarital love. Read the ad before it's taken down.

Sexless marriage? [Craigslist, South Bay]

Alberto Savoia, the man who left Google: a translation

ndouglas — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 18:37:32 EST

Alberto Savoia left Google two years before the IPO to found software testing company, Agitar. Three funding rounds into his startup, Savoia is telling the press he has no regrets about the decision. Savvy readers won't take him literally. He's speaking a Valleyspeak dialect called Ex-Googlish. To make the Mercury's story more readable, here's a phrase-by-phrase translation.

Ex-Googlish	English
It was a great risk.	I could have been a millionaire!
In Italy, we have a saying: Fate helps the fools and the brave.	I could have been a millionaire!
Google's a great company.	I could have been a millionaire!
But my passion is not selling ads on the Net.	I could have been a millionaire!
"I think it's a good lesson for the kids." (Alberto's wife Allessandra)	He could have been a millionaire!

No regrets for ex-Google exec [Mercury News]
The man who walked away from Google [Inside Google]

Startup Idea #59: dot-com IKEA assembly

ndouglas — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 15:09:41 EST

Community site publisher Bryght happened to get a web-geek IKEA installer at their Vancouver office. This guy explains how he built his site, AssembleNow.com, in twenty-five minutes and got his first customer in a half hour. What a quick startup time. Granted, a furniture assembly gig isn't prime VC material, but someone should bring this guy to the Valley, where every client is an office full of Web 2.0 guys too lazy to build a bookcase.

Bubble 2.0: The best ideas are those that failed

ndouglas — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 15:13:33 EST

Whatever "Web 2.0" is supposed to mean, it comes down to one thing: Every business plan from the first dot-com bubble is back. Wired Magazine found a Mayfield VC who's perfecting the art of refurbished ideas. Allen Morgan went so far as to hire a 24-year-old to flip through old magazines for business ideas.

Morgan's researcher, Ankur Luthra, reads through a stack of Red Herring, Industry Standard, and Wired issues and slaps post-it notes on stories of now-dead dot-coms. It's either opportunistic plundering of a ruined past or a brilliant shortcut past brainstorming — or both.

Would You Buy a Used Dotcom from this Man? [Wired Magazine]

The fast and the obnoxious

ndouglas — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 17:32:56 EST

Every mogul is allowed a little fun — Sergey and Larry can refit a 767, as long as they promise to fly it to Africa on a charitable mission. But one startup is renting sports cars for its executives to celebrate a $5.3 million funding round.

Silicon Valley CEO Max Seybold sits in the passenger seat of a slate-blue 1972 Ferrari 365 GTC/4 and laughs as Edward Holl kicks the V-12 engine up to 4,000 rpms and blows past a Corolla at double the posted speed limit.
"Now we have success so why can t we enjoy it?" he shouts over the roar.

As tempting as it is to reply, "Because you're an asshole," isn't it refreshing to see someone just spending a bit of cash? Come on, is Jeff Bezos really doing everyone a favor by launching a spaceship? Is Google going to end hunger with a jet? These guys would be so relaxed after a spin in a Porsche.

Silicon Valley: Still No. 1 [Red Herring]