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Friday, February 7, 2014
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While the whole of Silicon Valley got sucked into the vortex of insecurity and ego called Secret this week, something cooler (or colder) happened on the other side of the world today.


Up in the city of Oulu, Finland by the Arctic Circle, the local tech community held a small startup pitch contest today.


The rules?


There was no time limit, but you had to do it from inside a bear-sized ice hole, which the organizers cut from a nearby frozen lake.


Oh, and no diving or wet suits allowed.


“You might feel like you can’t breathe. Relax, that’s only normal and harmless. It will pass,” warned the invite.


Twenty-six companies took the plunge. The winners included Laturi, which makes tools for companies offering corporate fitness programs, Tosibox, which sells a plug-and-play device for remote access and mobile app developer Minus Degree Mobile.


I didn’t watch the whole thing, but at the beginning, a guy in a polar bear suit rides in triumphantly upon a bicycle.


At 33:00, there is a half-naked man playing a violin from within the ice hole. Then there appears to be some kind of strange folk dance performance at around 1:47:00 or so.


Enjoy! (I secretly hope this gives the TC events team some more ideas for the Disrupt Battlefield competition.)


toosa on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free




9:23 AM

While the whole of Silicon Valley got sucked into the vortex of insecurity and ego called Secret this week, something cooler (or colder) ha...

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sendwithus

Sendwithus aims to bring optimization and A/B testing to marketers and anyone else sending out targeted promotional emails.


The company, which is part of the current class of Y Combinator-incubated startups, was founded by Matt Harris and Brad Van Vugt. Harris told me that Sendwithus emerged from the pair’s work as developers, when they found themselves repeatedly having to change a bunch of email templates and wanting to test different variants but finding that there was no real technology in place to do so. (Larger companies will usually build their own systems for this, he said.)


So Sendwithus created a website where customers can select from pre-made email templates or upload their own, log in to their preferred email provider, and then set up A/B tests and drip campaigns. Customers also have access to analytics showing how variants and campaigns are performing.


Harris said Sendwithus is focused on “transactional emails” (i.e., the emails that are sent to specific users at specific times, usually to accomplish a specific task) as opposed to newsletters or other broad campaigns. The simple act of managing all the different templates and automatically sending the right one out at the right time is important to the company’s customers, he added.


Plus, those templates are dynamic, and not just in the sense of filling in your name at the right spot. For example, Harris said that whenever one company using Sendwithus sends a lost password email, it checks to see whether the person receiving the email is a free or paid customer. If they’re free, the company add a short “upgrade to our paid plan” message at the end of the email.


sendwithus ab test


As I mentioned, Sendwithus integrates with existing email delivery services, including SendGrid, Mandrill, Mailgun, and Amazon Simple Email Service. I asked Harris if he might find himself competing with those services down the line, and he didn’t sound too worried, because he said, “Email deliverability is a really hard problem that they’re solving, and we’re solving another hard problem.”


Founded 11 months ago, Sendwithus already processes more than 1 million emails a day, he added, and its customers include 8tracks, uSell, SuperRewards and App.net. Pricing starts at $19 a month.





8:23 AM

Sendwithus aims to bring optimization and A/B testing to marketers and anyone else sending out targeted promotional emails. The company, wh...

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apple-store

You can feel Carl Icahn’s presence in Tim Cook’s recent announcement to the Wall Street Journal — Apple just repurchased the equivalent of $14 billion in Apple shares as part of its massive share buyback program. At today’s market capitalization, it represents just over 3 percent of the company.


As a reminder, activist investor Carl Icahn recently lobbied on Twitter, saying that Apple wasn’t going far enough when it comes to its share buyback program.



Despite an all-time high in sales with more than 50 million iPhones sold, Apple reported mixed results for Q1 2014. Revenue was below the street’s expectations, while profit was above. But with $13.1 billion in profit, the company still manages to generate a lot of cash.


In fact, the company’s cash on hand increased to $158.8 billion. It remains a great strategic asset for Apple, but shareholders expect to get some of it back.


Apple started looking at handing out dividends a few years ago. And because shares were trading below the company’s expectations, it started repurchasing shares.


When it comes to share buyback programs, it is a great vote of confidence for a company’s stock. On the one hand, it means that Apple doesn’t think that it should invest its cash on hand any other way. In other words, Tim Cook thinks that Apple shares are the best financial investment for Apple’s own money. On the other hand, it reduces the number of outstanding shares. Existing investors will own a bigger chunk of Apple.


Over the past 12 months, the company has repurchased the equivalent of $40 billion in shares, out of its current $60 billion buyback program. For now, there is no word on another potential buyback program to keep buying shares at the same pace.


But a bigger question remains. In January, Google acquired Nest for $3.2 billion. What if Apple had used some of its money to buy Nest instead?


Many former Apple engineers worked for the smart thermostat company, including Nest founder and CEO Tony Fadell who was a founding member of the iPhone development team. Letting his team go and work for Google isn’t a smart decision: TechCrunch has learned that Nest will become Google’s core hardware group.


Over the past 15 months, Apple has bought 21 companies for less than $1 billion each. Tim Cook’s announcement regarding the share buyback program will reassure current and future shareholders. But the next important step for the company will be to prove everyone that it can pull the trigger when it comes to large acquisitions that make sense.


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7:54 AM

You can feel Carl Icahn’s presence in Tim Cook’s recent announcement to the Wall Street Journal — Apple just repurchased the equivalent of ...

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unnamed (5)

In 2012, after five generations of iPhone, Apple switched up the size of their flagship smartphone. Rather than sporting a 3.5-inch display, as it had for five years, the iPhone 5 had a 4-inch display making it longer, thinner and lighter than any generation before it.


This year, it’s entirely possible that the same shift will occur, with reports suggesting that Apple is working on two separate models, a 4.7-inch version and an XL 5.5-inch version.


Wondering what that might look like?


So is designer Federico Ciccarese, who has put together these concept designs for larger screened iPhones with metal frames.


Take a look:


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Of course, there’s no guarantee that Apple’s iPhones will look anything like this. They may very well keep the flat back design language of current models, rather than Ciccarese’s curve (which is likely in homage to the much-beloved iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS).


Plus, the edge-to-edge display is a bit of a stretch.


But rumor season for the iPhone has only begun — now is the time to dream big.





6:53 AM

In 2012, after five generations of iPhone, Apple switched up the size of their flagship smartphone. Rather than sporting a 3.5-inch display,...

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OVH

French hosting company OVH just updated its product offering for its Dropbox-like service called HubiC. Now, you get 25GB of storage for free, 100GB for $1.35 per month (€1), and you can opt for a whopping 10TB plan for $13.50 per month (€10).


Launched two years ago, HubiC has slowly but surely evolved into a full-fledged Dropbox alternative. It now provides a sync client on the desktop, mobile apps and an API. But it lacks mainstream appeal.


HubiC remains a newcomer, and when it comes to file hosting services nowadays, every big company has one. Microsoft has SkyDrive, Google has Google Drive, etc.


Dropbox has a powerful lock-in effect as well. Your files and photos are already on the service, you may have shared folders with other Dropbox users, and many apps now use the Dropbox API.


To differentiate itself, HubiC bets on its prices. The company doesn’t rely on Amazon S3 like Dropbox, it has its own server infrastructure and multiple data centers — the service probably has less operating costs.


TechCrunch Disrupt finalist Bitcasa is another service that tried to attract users by promising big accounts. For $9.99 a month, you were supposed to get infinite storage. But in November, the company had to change its plans. For $10 a month, you now get 1TB of storage, and the unlimited plan now costs $99 per month.


It’s not clear whether HubiC will be able to maintain the 10TB plan in the long run, but you can cancel any time. And maybe the NSA doesn’t know about HubiC yet.





6:39 AM

French hosting company OVH just updated its product offering for its Dropbox-like service called HubiC . Now, you get 25GB of storage for f...

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bitcoin vault

Today in bitcoin ephemera I present this interesting bet between VC Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz and Felix Salmon, noted bitcoin curmudgeon. Ben has invested in multiple bitcoin startups while Felix has a really cool name and is a well-known economics writer.


The bet is simple: in January, 2019 the folks at Planet Money on NPR will poll a sample of of Americans. “If 10 percent or more say they have used bitcoin to buy something in the past month, Ben wins. If it’s fewer than 10 percent, Felix wins,” Planet Money host Jacob Goldstein wrote.


The winner gets a pair of alpaca socks, the first item ever paid for in bitcoins.


Salmon believes that Bitcoin’s volatility and rise to prominence makes users think they’ll make more money by sitting on the currency rather than spending it. He brings up the example of the original pair of Alpaca socks bought for bitcoin – that person is probably upset he sold all those bitcoins for some socks. While the original sock purchase is lost in the veil of time, it should be noted that someone paid 10,000 BTC for a pizza in 2009. That pizza would be worth $7,280,000 today.


The potential for profit from sitting on the currency, then, will discourage growth argues Salmon. Horowitz is far more bullish, expecting bitcoin to become the de facto payment mechanism for the Internet by 2019.


“There’s no way that bitcoin is going to be a common payment mechanism in five years’ time. It probably will not even exist. It’s just going to be a vague memory,” grumbled Salmon.


How would I bet? I think Salmon is right, to a degree. I think what we know as bitcoin will be subsumed by the general Internet, and recreated a way to trade value that has little to do with bitcoin as it exists today. Bitcoin is too wasteful, too slow, and still in its beta stag. Just as Windows 3.1 is distant memory in this era of Windows 8.1 so will this early bitcoin be immensely different from bitcoin in half a decade. I’m not BTC bull but I’m not a bear, either. The world needs bitcoin, just not in its current form.





6:23 AM

Today in bitcoin ephemera I present this interesting bet between VC Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz and Felix Salmon , noted bitcoin c...

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There are two words I try to avoid connecting: "greatest" and "challenge." Clearly I've failed. I try to avoid this phrase because it reeks of hyperbole -- and yet here I am, typing it out in association with Apple's utterly mythical "iWatch." Still, the more I look ahead, the more I realize that Apple's greatest challenge might be convincing a world that it can produce an iWatch that matters. Consider the abandonment of the watch. As cellphones became more and more ubiquitous, users realized that they told time very well.


5:10 AM

There are two words I try to avoid connecting: "greatest" and "challenge." Clearly I've failed. I try to avoid thi...

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