Sat.Aug 17, 2013 - Fri.Aug 23, 2013

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The Perils of Shiny New Objects

Both Sides of the Table

'I have a saying that I employ as a powerful metaphor at every startup with whom I work – “beware of shiny new objects.” It is one of the easiest pieces of advice to give as it is almost always valuable if entrepreneurs follow it as a guideline. Yet sadly most startups have “shiny object” obsessions. In today’s uber-connected, social media, everything-is-public, people tell you there’s killing it with these new features, investor & mentor whiplash &#

Course 368
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Radical.FM Takes On Music Streaming For iOS

socalTECH

'A Los Angeles startup has launched itself into the streaming music fray today on iOS, saying it has debuted an iOS version of Radical.FM , a new music streaming service offering up a catalog of 25 million songs--and including such artists as The Beatles, AC/DC, and Bob Seger. The Venice, California startup, led by Thomas McAlevey, said it differentiates itself from the current crop of streaming music services by offering up a human algorithm, rare online tracks, and "pay-what-you-can" music str

Startup 223
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Stealth Mode Is Bull$hit

InfoChachkie

'A version of this article previously appeared in Inc. A Wantrepreneur is a well-intentioned person who wants to be an entrepreneur. They enjoy discussing their startup ideas and revel in the positive social status afforded entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, they lack the skills, personality and risk profile to successfully start and operate a business. Not surprisingly, wantrepreneurs enjoy operating in perpetual stealth mode.

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Growth requires a different kind of capital.

Berkonomics

'Growing companies usually require more working capital during their periods of rapid growth. In past insights we have calculated the amount of additional capital needed for a business as it grows, and the additional capital required is often surprisingly large. In this insight, we need to speak of the sources of working capital and the implications to the future financial health of the choices made when selecting one financial resource.

Capital 153
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Can You Ask for Office Rent Relief? How to Manage Your Lease During COVID-19

Office leases are one of companies’ largest expenses, and if your whole team is working from home with no clear end in sight, you may be wondering what to do about your lease.

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10 Keys to Managing the Business After the Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

'Entrepreneurs often have formidable technical expertise, key to developing a new product or service, but a great naïveté in management skills. They run into difficulty when their business reaches the $1-2 million annual sales range, or their employee count exceeds 5-10. It’s here that entrepreneurs must shift their thinking from tactical and operational, to strategic and managerial.

Startup 109
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Friday Infographic: LA Accelerators and Incubators

socalTECH

'Confused about the myriad of incubators and accelerators in the Los Angeles area? A new infographic, released this week, has summarized some of the local startup incubators and accelerators in Los Angeles, plus detailed some of the terms of their investments in companies. We''ve reprinted it below. The infographic was created by local high tech video production creative and strategy, and content syndication company 4WT Media , along with partner Fresh Development.

Incubator 222

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Asking Questions Is a Powerful – and Constructive – Form of Communication

Frank Addante

'About a month ago, I e-mailed our employees and asked them to participate in a company survey. It wasn’t a perfectly formed survey, but these were questions that I constantly ask myself. I wanted the team to think about, and ask, the same questions I ask myself. Some of this was to gauge how aligned we are in that thinking; and some of it was for me to understand where we aren’t aligned, and how to communicate or explain why we may be making decisions, or why we’re not.

Journal 94
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10 Steps to a Memorable Website for Your Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

'Smart people only visit and buy from credible and memorable websites. In the past, if your startup had a website presence, the company was credible by definition. In today’s world, a website is necessary but not sufficient for credibility. Dreamers and gamblers have found out that if the website isn’t validated as credible, it’s probably a scam, and everyone loses.

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Flywheel: Arming LA's Taxicab Drivers In The Ridesharing Fight

socalTECH

'There''s been a war brewing in Los Angeles, between a trio of ride services-- Lyft , Uber , Sidecar -- and the city''s taxi drivers--over a new generation of Internet-enabled and smartphone-friendly, connected rideshare services, versus what has been an old, opaque, and phone-driven taxi establishment. There''s been plenty of debate over how to handle the new services, and arguments for and against both ridesharing services and the taxis.

Startup 210
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ParkMe Launches Real-Time Parking In San Francisco [Infographic]

Tech Zulu Event

'Motorists in San Francisco will from today have access to real-time availability of garage and street parking with ParkMe’s launch in the city, a move that will save their time and money by easily finding the closest and cheapest parking. ParkMe is working with 290 garages and lots in San Francisco , and has a partnership with ABM Parking Services, which operates multiple facilities throughout the Bay Area to alleviate parking frustration in San Francisco.

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Advertising Automation Goes Well Beyond RTB

Frank Addante

'I spent a few days in New York last week with members of the press and industry influencers and realized that RTB is getting a lot of attention. But RTB isn’t the only thing that matters when it comes to advertising automation. There’s also static bids, programmatic guarantee, and direct order automation. RTB is less than half of the total automated advertising market.

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7 Steps to Productive Business Use of Social Media

Startup Professionals Musings

'Most startups, and many big businesses, still don’t have a clue on how to use social media productively for marketing their business. They randomly churn for hours a day on a couple of their favorite social media platforms, with little thought given to goals, objectives, or metrics; and ultimately give up and fall back to traditional marketing approaches.

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Jim Henson's Fraggle Rock Debuts On Hulu

socalTECH

'Are you (or your kids) a fan of Fraggle Rock , the series from Jim Henson? Los Angeles-based Hulu has added a big new library of family friendly entertainment to its Hulu Kids section today, with a deal with Jim Henson Family to show Fraggle Rock and ten other related series. Hulu said the series will be available commercial-free on Hulu Plus, with consecutive, episodes of each show showing up on the ad-supported version of Hulu on a rolling basis.

Hulu 207
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Pixicle Raising $38,000 To Take Photos To The Big Screen Wirelessly & Introduce GPS Photo Printing

Tech Zulu Event

'Pixicle, a photo sharing device that makes it easy for users to view photos with their friends and family on the big screen instead of the frustrating smartphone screen passed around the room has raised $10K of its $38K Indiegogo goal to make photo viewing less strenuous. Speaking to TechZulu, Norman Lai CEO and co-founder of Pixicle TV, a British Columbia-based startup says the team wants to connect iPhone or Android smartphone users to any TV via a free app and WiFi so that they start viewi

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A New Project Incubator For New Innovations

Frank Addante

'Last week, we rolled out nine initiatives as part of our strategy that balances innovation and scale. Every initiative has a clear owner and dedicated teams; and each one is fully aligned and has the same goals. We have four major initiatives and the rest are going into the Rubicon Project Incubator, where projects will be managed like a start-up. We don’t expect all of the incubator’s innovations to work.

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How To Become an Extraordinary Entrepreneur Leader

Startup Professionals Musings

'In building successful businesses, I find that creating a new and innovative product or service is usually the easy part. The hard part is providing the leadership required to align and motivate all the constituents and players – from engineers, to investors, vendors, and ultimately customers. Great entrepreneurs are not just idea people and then managers, they are extraordinary leaders.

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Surf Air Links Up With Snack, Beverage Companies

socalTECH

'Flying between Los Angeles and Silicon Valley, and have the nibbles? Los Angeles-based all-you-can-fly, membership-based airline Surf Air said today that it has linked up with a number of snack and beverage brands, as part of its service, and will be featuring those brands as part of its flights. Surf Air said it has inked deals with Baking Tins Desserts, Burst Foods, IZZE Sparkling Juice, KIND Healthy Snacks, nekter, Paso Almonds, popchips, and Waiakea water.

Company 200
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9+ Studio Giving $110K in Funding For Game Developers To Shift To Consumer, Big Data & Wearable Computing Startups

Tech Zulu Event

'Silicon Valley’s 9+, an accelerator founded by serial entrepreneur and company builder Peter Relan is investing $110,000 into game developers to quit developing games and shift to consumer, mobile, Big Data and wearable apps. $110,000 to quit developing games for wearable apps. According to Relan, “Let’s change the app ecosystem and move away from the app assembly line.

Startup 79
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Hyper-Speed, Hyper-Scale Advertising Automation Requires Hyper-Fast Hardware

Frank Addante

'Advertising is following similar trends that we’ve seen in the financial industry, where trades are now executed in nanoseconds. Years ago, we could process ad transactions in 1-2 seconds. Last year, it was 300 milliseconds. Now, it’s 30 milliseconds. Next year, it may be 3 milliseconds. And we’re not too far away from it being nanoseconds and microseconds.

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Entrepreneurs Need to Harness the Power of Frequency

Startup Professionals Musings

'Most of the young entrepreneurs I know are classic proof of the old adage that people tend to overestimate what they can do in a short period, and underestimate what they can do over a long period. They become frustrated when they are unable to build their startup in a weekend, and give up way too soon when the path to real success seems to be interminable.

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TigerText Claims Record Growth In First Half

socalTECH

'Santa Monica-based TigerText , the developer of the enterprise, secure messaging apps, claims it had "record growth" in the first half of the year. The company did not disclose any financials, but said it quadrupled the number of paid users of its products. TigerText offers up its software to enterprise and healthcare companies, who need a way to send secure messages via mobile devices, but can''t use things like SMS and text messaging due to regulatory requirements.

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Menlo Ventures Karl Mehta Launches CodeForIndia.Org To Empower Citizens In India

Tech Zulu Event

'Silicon Valley-based entrepreneur and VC, Karl Mehta has launched Code For India (CFI) to empower the country’s citizens to actively participate in improving their communities. Themed “Think Local, Hack Global”, Code For India is based in Mountain View, CA and Bangalore, India and expects to inspire millions of techies to volunteer their time and talent to give back to their communities and to the developing world.

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The Best Pasadena Tech Company You’ve Never Heard Of

Steve Reich

'Why are there great tech companies in Pasadena that no one has heard of? Sometimes the answer is that the team is too busy building a great company to worry about generating press outside their own industry. One example is Bluebeam. They are revolutionizing the Architecture, Engineering and Construction industries by eliminating the need for hard copy blueprints.

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7 Key Startup Principles for Keeping Up With Change

Startup Professionals Musings

'Every entrepreneur’s first priority should be the alignment of interests across the range of constituents required for success – partners, investors, customers, vendors, and employees. The best are ones quickest and most willing to do the realignment on a continuous basis these days, as the market changes, customer interests change, and you learn from experience.

Startup 94
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JumpStartFund Takes On Crowdfunding, Advice For Research Startups

socalTECH

'A new, Los Angeles area startup launched this morning, hoping to use the power of the crowd to help take ideas to launch. JumpStartFund , which is based in El Segundo, opened up its service this morning to help use the wisdom of the crowd to move ideas, patents, and research from individuals, federal research labs, universities, and research organizations to the market.

Research 193
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Amazon.com’s New Art Marketplace Wants To Make Original Art Accessible To Everyone

Tech Zulu Event

'Amazon.com’s new Amazon Art , is stocking over 40,000 works of fine art from over 150 prestigious galleries and dealers located around the country, including Paddle8, Holden Luntz and McLoughlin Gallery, Modernbook and Catherine Person. The pieces are selected from over 4,500 artists, making Amazon Art one of the largest online collections of original and limited edition artwork for purchase directly from galleries and dealers worldwide.

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Bedloo Takes On Social Voting

socalTECH

'A new, Los Angeles startup, Bedloo , said this morning that it has launched a new social voting service, which lets users collect feedback from other users. The new social voting service revolves around voting on images, video, and audio files. According to the startup, it is a "voting app and website on steroids", and is aimed at encouraging interaction with friends and family via social media.

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Insights: The Perils of Shiny New Objects

socalTECH

'For this afternoon''s Insights and Opinions section, we''re sharing a recent blog post from Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures. Mark writes about The Perils of Shiny New Objects. I have a saying that I employ as a powerful metaphor at every startup with whom I work - "beware of shiny new objects.". It is one of the easiest pieces of advice to give as it is almost always valuable if entrepreneurs follow it as a guideline.

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Monoprice Acquisition By Blucora Completes

socalTECH

'The acquisition of Rancho Cucamonga-based Monoprice , a developer of its own line of branded consumer electronics and accessories, has completed, Blucora announced Thursday afternoon, in a deal that had been announced earlier this month. The deal was worth $180M in cash. According to Blucora, it expects Monoprice to deliver revenues in the range of $36.5 million to $37.5 million in the third quarter of 2013.

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The Trade Desk Launches New Software

socalTECH

'Ventura-based The Trade Desk , the real-time bidding and advertising company led by industry veteran Jeff Green, has launched a new version of its platform, the company said this week. The Trade Desk said its new Data Management Platform (DMP) platform includes new features, a new user interface, and integration with other platforms. The Trade Desk''s software is used to manage display, social, and video advertising campaigns.

Software 180
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SHIFT Aims At Social Advertising Analytics

socalTECH

'Santa Monica-based advertising analytics startup SHIFT launched a new product Wednesday, aimed at helping marketers analyze social advertising campaigns. The startup, led by James Borow, said its new product, SHIFT Media Analyzer, is aimed at helping marketers with in-depth analysis of their paid social campaigns. Pricing on the new service was not announced.

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Everbridge Adds Severe Weather Alerts

socalTECH

'Wildfire? Tornado? Hurricane? Glendale-based Everbridge , which provides cloud-based emergency alert systems, said this morning that it is adding severe weather alerts to its service, in a deal with weather content provider Weather Decision Technologies (WDT). Everbridge said that it now provides severe weather alerts--information on such things as lightning, tornadoes, thunderstorms, hail, ice, snow, extreme temperatures, high winds, flash floods, and flooding--as part of its service.

Glendale 173
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Maker Studios Buying Blip

socalTECH

'Los Angeles-based YouTube network Maker Studios has agreed to buy Blip , according to reports today. Blip operates an online, video site focused on webseries. Financial details of the acquisition have not been announced. Blip was venture backed by Ambient Sound Investment, Bain Capital, and Lauder Partners. News of the sale first came via AllthingsD.

News 168
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Beats Electronics Buys Back Shares From HTC

socalTECH

'Los Angeles-based Beats Audio and smartphone maker HTC are in a deal where Beats will buy back 25% of its total shares from HTC, giving Beats a 75% ownership, in a move which pushes the two farther apart. According to the two, they move is a "realignment" of a business agreement, and that HTC will remain the largest outside shareholder in Beats, with approximately 25% of the company.

Mobile 164
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ShoeDazzle Acquisition By JustFab? Not So Dazzling

socalTECH

'That acquisition by JustFab of fellow fashion startup ShoeDazzle yesterday? Not so dazzling. The acquisition valued ShoeDazzle at only around $30M, a huge drop in the company''s value, compared with a $240M valuation back in 2011, according to Dow Jones. The report--quoting early ShoeDazzle investor Jeremy Liew, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners--also said that only one investor--Crosscut Ventures--actually saw any return from the acquisition.

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ParkMe Extends Real-Time Parking To San Francisco

socalTECH

'Los Angeles-based mobile parking app developer ParkMe , which is backed by Fontinalis Partners, IDG Ventures and Angeleno Group., is continuing to extend out its mobile software, saying that it has now added real time parking information in San Francisco. ParkMe said that it will provide real-time availability of garage and street parking in the Bay Area city, and is now covering a total of 290 garages and lots in San Francisco.

Mobile 164