Joost, a much-vaunted online video startup, today announced that it will offer a white-label video hosting platform, thus entering a crowded market littered with the carcasses of other failed video hosts. The company is also losing its famous chief executive, Mike Volpi, whom it’s replacing with Matt Zelesko, the current vice president of engineering. And […]
Tweet This

Click here to read more from Startups

LogMeIn, a Woburn, Mass.-based company that is going public has priced at $16 a share, according to The Wall Street Journal. LogMeIn will start trading tomorrow under the ticker, LOGM. With 6.7 million shares on sale, LogMeIn raised a total of $107.2 million. That’s on the the higher end of the range, showing that there […]
Tweet This

Click here to read more from Startups

Sense Networks, a location-based services company headquartered in New York, said today it’s raised an undisclosed amount of money from investors led by Intel Capital. Citing a gag order from Intel, CEO Greg Skibiski not only wouldn’t say how much the round was for, he wouldn’t disclose who the other investors were. Such an attempt […]
Tweet This

Click here to read more from Startups

The almost moribund market for technology initial public offerings might make a comeback if Woburn, Mass.-based software maker LogMeIn has a successful debut on the public market. The company is looking to raise $107.2 million, and the deal will be priced this coming Tuesday. The company is offering a total of 6.7 million shares […]
Tweet This

Click here to read more from Startups

One of the key concepts at the core of traditional marketing is the 80-20 rule — that some 80 percent of the effects (or in this case, profits) are the result of 20 percent of the causes (here, customers). Indeed, if you’re able to target just a small group of people in order to successfully […]
Tweet This

Click here to read more from Startups

Ooma, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup that specializes in VoIP hardware and complimentary voice services, has raised a total of $18.3 million in new funding — of which $3.5 million came as a bridge loan from the investors. TechCrunch had previously reported that the company raised $14 million in the new round, which was led […]
Tweet This

Click here to read more from Startups

It was one of those logical ideas that couldn’t go wrong. Tightened security at the airports meant that one had to spend extra hours at the airport going through the security checks. It was something that wasn’t convenient for for busy executives who didn’t want to waste hours standing around in the security lines. From that […]
Tweet This

Click here to read more from Startups

Gigle Semiconductor said today that consumer device maker Belkin is using its chip in an adapter that allows for home networking of up to 1Gbps using a home’s power line infrastructure. Such speeds are a huge boost for power line networking. A consumer buys the adapter, plugs it into an electrical outlet, and then can […]
Tweet This

Click here to read more from Startups

During World War II, the Allies brought significant quantities of food, medicine and other supplies to previously isolated islands in the Pacific. Natives of these islands were distraught when the Allies left and the cargo vanished, and in noting the events that had occurred prior to its arrival assumed they had caused the cargo to […]
Tweet This

Click here to read more from Startups

Austin is among the places that people are flocking to in the recession, according to BusinessWeek. Other magazines have given Austin (and all of Texas) similar praise, mostly because it’s so darn cheap to live here. But I don’t want to lie to y’all — Austin may not be the best place to build […]
Tweet This

Click here to read more from Startups

Balancing the interests of investors and entrepreneurs is an ongoing topic of discussion in Silicon Valley. But while numerous efforts to create new types of investment classes aimed at removing this imbalance (for examples, see the Founders Fund, Adeo Ressi’s The Funded and the newly launched SharesPost) have recently emerged, they fail to […]
Tweet This

Click here to read more from Startups

While there are plenty of 20-something, ramen-eating entrepreneurs coding into the wee hours of the morning, the demographic with the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity consists of those between the ages of 55 and 64, according to a study released today by the The Kauffman Foundation. The study found that folks in the 20-34 age […]
Tweet This

Click here to read more from Startups

The recent lawsuit filed last month by Tesla founder Martin Eberhard alleging the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, is trying to appropriate the legacy of being the electric car startup’s founder, might be the equivalent of Silicon Valley’s version of the McDonald’s coffee lawsuit, but it raises some interesting questions: What does it mean to […]

Click here to read more from Startups

This past Friday, Facebook started issuing vanity URLs to its 200 million plus community. It was a big change for the social networking company that has so far used unique numerical identifications to identify its members.
Not any more — now you can go to Facebook.com/OmMalik and friend me. (I am It was such a […]

Click here to read more from Startups

Offerpal Media, a Fremont, Calif.-based startup that links virtual currency from social games to real-world marketing deals, is suing startup Kickflip, alleging breach of contract, misappropriation of trade secrets and unlawful business practices, among other claims, according to court documents. Kickflip, headquartered in San Jose, Calif., is the creator of social games payment engine […]

Click here to read more from Startups

Since Dell keeps telling folks it wants to buy some companies, we’ve written out a list that Michael Dell should consult as he expands his eponymous empire. Second-hand sources quoted in the Wall Street Journal today said that the company was seeking deals in data storage and tech services. The article also noted that Dell […]

Click here to read more from Startups

Yesterday we heard from Harvard Business School researchers that only 10 percent of Twitter users are generating almost 90 percent of the content. Today, HubSpot, a Cambridge, MA-based start-up has released a study that not only backs-up the findings of the HBS study, but also offers more granular information about the Twittersphere.
The company crunched the […]

Click here to read more from Startups

After a period of “looking inward,” venture firms are ready to start putting money to work during the second half of this year, according to Terry McGuire. The co-founder and managing general partner at Polaris Venture Partners spoke on a conference call today detailing the state of the global venture capital industry — a state […]

Click here to read more from Startups

I woke up this morning, checked the news and realized that I didn’t get the “today we think Twitter is dead” memo. Last week, Twitter was on the cover of Time magazine, deemed to be a life defining technology. Today, Twitter is making gloomy headlines.

Compete.com says Twitter’s growth flattened in May 2009, […]

Click here to read more from Startups

Vyatta , a Belmont, Calif.-based company that makes open source routing platform has raised $10 million in Series C funding led by Citrix Systems. Previous investors Comcast Interactive Capital, Panorama Capital and ArrowPath Venture Partners also invested in this round of funding. The company had previously raised a total of $18.5 million in funding.
The investment […]

Click here to read more from Startups

In 1964, Justice Potter Stewart, who was having difficulty explaining what exactly he meant by “hard-core” pornography, famously said, “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced…but I know it when I see it.” When entrepreneurs ask investors what they’re looking for in a startup, the response they get […]

Click here to read more from Startups

Rajeev Motwani, one of the savviest angel investors in Silicon Valley, a Stanford professor and most importantly a close and personal friend passed away earlier today.
It is hard for me to write this post — this morning the news of Steve Jobs’ improving health put me in a good mood. My day is ending with […]

Click here to read more from Startups

Chris Albrecht over on NewTeeVee has a video interview with Boxee CEO Avner Ronen thought of Hulu’s recent launch of its desktop app. He also talks about the new TV-friendly browser YouTube launched this week. Also check out my post about why Hulu doesn’t quite much care about Boxee.

Click here to read more from Startups

Shozu, a mobile software company that has so far made money by selling advertising on its services, has decided to change models. Shozu software allows mobile users to upload photos and videos captured by mobile phone cameras to various online services such as Flickr and social networks.
It has been particularly successful on the iPhone platform. […]

Click here to read more from Startups

Xsigo today said it’s raised an undisclosed amount of venture capital from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Greylock Partners, Khosla Ventures and North Bridge Venture Partners to support sales of its I/O virtualization appliance. Several filings submitted to the California Department of Securities show that back in April, the San Jose, Calif.-based startup had raised […]

Click here to read more from Startups

“Hadoop is going to find potential markets in any industry where there are large data sets that need complex analysis,” Mike Olsen, chief executive officer and one of the four co-founders of Cloudera, the startup that’s commercializing the open-source software framework Hadoop, told me earlier today. I spoke with Olsen after the Burlingame, Calif.-based company […]

Click here to read more from Startups

Cloudera, a Burlingame, Calif.-based startup that is building commercial services around open-source software framework Hadoop, has closed $6 million in Series B funding, bringing the total raised by the company to $11 million. The latest round of funding was led by Greylock Partners. Current investor Accel Partners also participated in this round. Cloudera’s other investors […]

Click here to read more from Startups

The Kindle DX uses E-Ink technology
Prime View International, a Taiwanese company that makes an e-readers display part, said today it would purchase E-Ink, a company that provides the digital ink technology in the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader, for $215 million. The two companies have been partners in developing the Sony and Amazon e-reader products, […]

Click here to read more from Startups

It was almost five years ago when I first learned about Raza Microelectronics (RMI), which was started by former AMD (and Nexgen) executive Atiq Raza. Raza took three projects from his incubator company, Raza Foundries, and merged them to form RMI. From there, RMI went on to buy Sandcraft, a microprocessor startup, and to […]

Click here to read more from Startups

Newly launched Nextstop is aiming to be a sort of Yelp for travelers, drawing on a community of users who recommend things to do around the world and in their own hometowns. Founded by a pair of former Google product managers, the service seems useful enough, if you’re looking for vegetarian restaurants in Denver, towns […]

Click here to read more from Startups

Even as times get tough for pioneering startups building semiconductors and computing equipment, the chip industry needs to maintain its biodiversity, says Matt Reilly, a co-founder of the recently shuttered SiCortex. I wrote yesterday about the green supercomputing company selling its assets, and Reilly left an excellent comment taking me to task for calling the […]

Click here to read more from Startups

Hulu, the popular television content aggregator backed by major Hollywood companies, today launched a desktop application that can only be used on PCs. Of course, we wouldn’t expect the company to do it any other way — after all, if it ran on set-top boxes, it would dry up the lucrative money stream that flows […]

Click here to read more from Startups

The jury’s still out as to whether technology M&A activity will pick up in the coming weeks, but here’s one deal that’s just been completed: Interactive voice recognition systems developer Voxeo has acquired instant messaging agent platform developer IMified for an undisclosed amount. The deal allows Orlando, Fla.-based Voxeo to build more sophisticated automated […]

Click here to read more from Startups

Facebook today confirmed that it has received a $200 million investment from Digital Sky Technologies, valuing the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company at $10 billion, significantly less than it was in 2007 after an investment made by Microsoft valued it at $15 billion. In a conference call discussing today’s news, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg blamed […]

Click here to read more from Startups

As CDNs try to evade commodification, they’re looking outward to bring more value-added services to their clients. To that end, Limelight Networks today announced its first-ever acquisition: dynamic video and audio ad insertion startup Kiptronic, which to date had raised $9 million in funding. Dan Rayburn reports that the value of the deal is […]

Click here to read more from Startups

Yesterday we reported that targeted ad firm NebuAd bit the dust, but it appears that its Insight technology platform has risen again in the UK as part of a company called InsightReady. Folks from a publication called Clickz called the phone number for NebuAd’s UK office and reached Tony Evans, a former commercial director at […]

Click here to read more from Startups

The National Venture Capital Association launched a job listings service today to track open positions at venture-backed startups. The new site, called StartupHire.com, currently lists 10,000 openings, with 37 percent of them in California. For a select few, this may be a good source of information, but it’s primarily a convenient way to […]

Click here to read more from Startups

NebuAd, the company that planned to enable Internet Service Providers to offer behavioral advertising based on a person’s web surfing history, has shut its doors, according to MediaPost, which cites court documents. The controversial service, which is akin to Phorm in the UK, had conducted advertising trials with several U.S. ISP including Cable One and […]

Click here to read more from Startups

Kara Swisher reported earlier today that Tellme founder Mike McCue is leaving Microsoft at the end of June 2009. His Tellme co-founder, Angus Davis, is leaving the company as well. He sent out an email to his friends and family, shortly after announcing the news to the Tellme team. I’ve covered the speech-recognition company from […]

Click here to read more from Startups

Oracle today said it would buy Virtual Iron, a startup that has built a suite of virtualization software based on the Xen hypervisor. Terms of the deal were undisclosed, but Virtual Iron has raised more than $65 million in venture capital. The company’s products compete against VMWare, Microsoft’s Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer. But it’s odd […]

Click here to read more from Startups

Earlier this week my colleague Kevin Tofel asked what would happen if Cloud Engines, the company behind Pogoplug, went out of business. To address such concerns, Cloud Engines has done two things: it promised to put its software in open source in case of bankruptcy and raised fresh venture funding from Ryan McIntyre at The […]

Click here to read more from Startups

The best way to describe Blerp, now in open beta, is a social network that looks like it’s swallowed the entire web. Once you create an account and log in, the network is represented in a frame around your browser display, so every web site is viewed within it. Blerpers can add comments and […]

Click here to read more from Startups

Meraki, the wireless access point maker, today sent out emails informing its customers than it’s launching two enterprise access points that can be managed via the web (Meraki, in an attempt to hop on the cloud buzzwagon, calls this a cloud controller). That means Meraki is going to compete with folks like Cisco, Juniper […]

Click here to read more from Startups

Meraki, the wireless access point maker, today sent out emails informing its customers than it’s launching two enterprise access points that can be managed via the web (Meraki, in an attempt to hop on the cloud buzzwagon, calls this a cloud controller). That means Meraki is going to compete with folks like Cisco, Juniper […]

Click here to read more from Startups

Microsoft said Friday that more than 12,000 startups have joined its BizSpark initiative, a six-month-old effort aimed at fostering new software companies by providing applications and support. The disclosure comes on the heels of a speech earlier this week from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at Stanford University, in which he talked up startup opportunities […]

Click here to read more from Startups

Earlier today, news emerged that Warner Music Group had taken a $33 million writedown on its investments in startups Lala ($20 million) and Imeem ($15 million). What that means is that Warner music is giving up on these ad-supported digital music startups and moving on. This comes as no surprise to us: Rags Gupta […]

Click here to read more from Startups

WonderHill, a casual gaming startup that was spun out of Ooga Labs, has raised $7 million in Series A financing from Charles River Ventures and Shasta Ventures. The company views itself as a competitor to casual game leaders Zynga, Playfish and Pogo. WonderHill is led by James Currier (CEO) and Stan Chudnovsky (CTO), […]

Click here to read more from Startups

Qualcomm Ventures, the strategic capital arm of the wireless chip powerhouse, has unveiled its QPrize competition, which will award up to $550,000 to four startups from around the world. The competition is open to startups with business plans related to wireless technology in areas that include consumer and cleantech. Qualcomm Ventures will select four […]

Click here to read more from Startups

Tokbox, a San Francisco-based start-up that offers browser-based video chat has lost its CEO Nick Triantos. He was been replaced by Ian Small. We had heard about this change and Tokbox confirmed that to me. Small’s bio hasn’t been added to the Tokbox’s website just yet. Triantos had replaced co-founder Serge Fauget in […]

Click here to read more from Startups

This past weekend, while walking around San Francisco’s Union Square shopping area, I decided to stop by at one of my favorite stores — Thomas Pink — to see if they had any exciting, new shirts worth buying. While shopping options remained tame, I did get into a discussion with one of the salespeople, who […]

Click here to read more from Startups