Random Post

Wednesday, February 12, 2014
no image
Screen Shot 2014-02-12 at 10.36.48 AM

Fwd.us, the advocacy group initially backed by tech luminaries like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, is adding a new paid membership model. The move is a bid to attract broader support from regular tech industry workers and people living in cities like New York and San Francisco who care about immigration reform and political issues affecting knowledge workers.


At $35 a year, members will get invited to speaker events with Silicon Valley business leaders and other policy experts. The first set of talks includes one on “The Future of the Middle class and the American Dream in the 21st Century,” with venture capitalist and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and MIT academic Andrew McAfee. McAfee recently published “Race Against the Machine,” a book about how technological advances are leaving the average U.S. worker behind.


Fwd.us president Joe Green said the new program wasn’t about raising money.


“In my last company, we sold SAAS software. It’s valuable to have the customer to pay you directly. Then in the Obama campaign, while we had extremely wealthy donors, we also used the phrase — owning a piece of the campaign. Lots of people donated $25 or $50,” Green said. “I think there’s real value in having folks who have a real stake and buy-in behind the organization.”


Last year, Fwd.us made some stumbles when it bankrolled conservative TV ads supporting projects like the Keystone XL pipeline. That prompted certain high-profile members like Elon Musk to withdraw their support.


Green said that organization has been running hackathons and has kept its entire legislative focus on immigration reform.


“We started this organization to be one that is very pragmatic politically. You need to work on both lines of the aisle. We knew that when you try and get something done in politics, not everyone agrees. Not everyone agrees with the tactics we pursued,” Green said. “But we launched quickly and had ads up by April. Since then, we’ve focused on communication and listening. Now we’re building a network out in Silicon Valley, New York, Boston, Chicago, Austin and in tech hubs around the country.”





11:08 AM

Fwd.us, the advocacy group initially backed by tech luminaries like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, is adding a new paid membership model . ...

Read more »
Posted by at 11:08 AM 0 comments
Labels:
no image
disney

The Walt Disney Company is getting into the startup incubator business with the launch of a new program called the Disney Accelerator.


Disney says it’s looking for 10 “early-stage companies with innovative consumer media and entertainment product ideas.” Those startups will receive a $120,000 investment and mentorship from the tech and entertainment industry, as well as from leaders in various Disney divisions (including Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, ESPN, and Walt Disney Imagineering), not to mention Disney CEO Bob Iger.


The company describes the program as “powered by Techstars.” (Other companies that have partnered with Techstars for their own startup accelerators include Barclays, Microsoft, and Sprint.) Kevin Mayer, Disney’s executive vice president of corporate development, told me via email that the organizations are “working hand in hand,” with Techstars bringing its accelerator experience and Disney offering its executives, intellectual property, and other resources.


I asked Mayer whether the Disney Accelerator’s goals are primarily financial or strategic, and he said, “This is about identifying and mentoring start-ups with innovative ideas that could help transform the media and entertainment business.” He also pointed to Disney’s history of “firsts.”


“By way of example, in 1928, Disney launched the first cartoon with fully synchronized sound,” Mayer said. “In 1932 it premiered the first full-color cartoon. In 1937 came the first animated feature film and in 1955 the first modern theme park was opened. We have also been leaders in entertainment technology development with inventions like the multiplane camera, audio-animatronics, circle-vision 360° and Fantasound. I see Disney Accelerator as an extension of this legacy and a new way of bringing together the creative energies of the media/entertainment and start-up communities to inspire innovation.”


A more recent sign of Disney’s interest in the tech world was its appointment of Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square (he’s chairman at the former company and CEO at the latter), to its board of directors, where he joined Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and former Sybase CEO John S. Chen.


The accelerator will be based in Los Angeles. Applications are due by April 16, with the program scheduled to begin on June 30 and an investor demo day planned for September.





10:09 AM

The Walt Disney Company is getting into the startup incubator business with the launch of a new program called the Disney Accelerator . Disn...

Read more »
Posted by at 10:09 AM 0 comments
Labels:
no image
Screen Shot 2014-02-12 at 9.23.33 AM

Here’s what a top mobile game developer can make in a single year: $892 million off two games across Android and iOS.


That’s what Finnish developer Supercell said on a call last that night that it earned last year. Although Supercell is privately held, it still has to report earnings once a year in accordance with Finnish law. The company sold slightly over half of itself to Japanese carrier Softbank and game maker Gung-Ho last year for $1.53 billion.


Their lofty valuation came from explosive earnings from two games: Clash of Clans and Hay Day. Those two titles helped the game maker go from earning $101 million in revenue in 2012 to nearly nine times as much the following year.


Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization worked out to be $464 million. That’s about $3.4 million in EBITDA per employee at Supercell’s headcount of 138 people. The company is planning on releasing a third title, Boom Beach, next month.


Surprisingly though, the earnings aren’t that much higher than the annualized runrate the company reported back in the first quarter of last year, when it said it earned $179 million in first quarter revenue. (That would have worked out to slightly over $700 million per year, and that’s before Supercell launched the Android versions of its games.)


There’s one other interesting thing from the call too.


What’s different from an American company’s earnings call and a Finnish one?


Supercell Ilkka Paananen had to stress how much the company paid in taxes. (Imagine if Apple or Google did that.)


Because of the company’s huge exit last year, Supercell has had to manage domestic press relations in a sensitive way before a country that prides itself on its socioeconomic equality. Paananen said Supercell paid $345 million in taxes to the government, including corporate tax, income tax and taxes related to the sale.


On top of that, Paananen said Supercell was not using any international financial maneuvering to avoid paying taxes to the Finnish government. This is in contrast to companies like Apple, which have used subsidiaries in countries like Ireland, the Netherlands and Caribbean to avoid billions of dollars in income taxes. In a New York Times piece in 2012, a former Treasury Department economist told the newspaper that Apple’s federal tax bill would have likely been $2.4 billion higher if it hadn’t used these accounting techniques.


“We don’t use any tax optimization,” Paananen said. “We’ve gotten so much from this community here. Helsinki is the best place to set up your company, especially if you’re a games company.”





10:09 AM

Here’s what a top mobile game developer can make in a single year: $892 million off two games across Android and iOS. That’s what Finnish de...

Read more »
Posted by at 10:09 AM 0 comments
Labels:
no image
While the U.S. and France haven't exactly been chums of late when it comes to tech, the two countries are teaming up for a new mission to explore Mars. The plan is to send an unmanned lander to Mars to study the interior of the planet. The mission will launch in 2016, with the lander touching down six months later. At least that's the plan: Two years ago, NASA pulled out of a European partnership to send a probe and lander to Mars. France and the U.S. have had plenty of digital disagreements of late.


9:39 AM

While the U.S. and France haven't exactly been chums of late when it comes to tech, the two countries are teaming up for a new mission...

Read more »
Posted by at 9:39 AM 0 comments
Labels:
no image
Asus_B-108_black_from Sandbox

When you think ChromeOS, chances are the first thing that comes to mind are Chromebooks. Since 2012, though, Google and its hardware partners have also been quietly selling its Chromeboxes, the desktop equivalents of the ChromeOS laptops. Now that Chromebooks seem to have found their place, with very solid sales according to the latest data, the company is starting to put the Chromebox concept back into the spotlight and positioning it as a platform that goes beyond traditional desktop computing.


At the Digital Signage Expo in Las Vegas today, for example, Google is highlighting how Chromeboxes can power – you guessed it – digital signage. Making this work is pretty straightforward and goes a bit beyond the traditional kiosk mode Google has long enabled on ChromeOS. Developers can set ChromeOS up to run any Chrome App the moment the device starts.


This means a signage company could just hook a Chromebox up to a screen (or billboard on the side of the road – assuming billboards use standard graphics inputs) and run ads or power the menu screens in a fast-food store. Want to make these ads interactive? Just use a touchscreen. Many of these signage companies currently use proprietary systems and as the occasional blue screen of death clearly shows, some even still use old versions of Windows to run them.


This was possible before, but it’s only now that Google is actually focusing on these use cases.


photo (12)All it takes to enable this mode is a few extra lines of code. The install, updates, new code and any changes to the app can then be managed remotely from the Chromebook management console. Some schools that have deployed Chromebooks already use this feature for switching between the regular ChromeOS mode and apps for testing their students.


Last week, Google also unveiled its Chromebox for Meetings, which basically uses this same system but to run a video-conferencing platform in the background.


Until now, the only Chromeboxes available were Samsung’s models starting at $329. The Chromebox for Meetings, however, is made by Dell, and both HP and ASUS are about to launch their own versions soon. At CES, LG also unveiled a ChromeOS-based desktop, but this one is an all-in-one with a 21-inch display.


The Chromebox hardware has now also moved beyond basic Celeron processors and offers Core i7 CPUs and relatively high-powered graphics, which enable developers to run complex apps right on the desktop. With the help of Native Client, developers can even run games and apps that need high-end graphics on these devices.


With Chromebox for Meetings on the market and a round of fresh ChromeOS hardware about to hit stores, it makes sense for Google to start homing in on new use cases for this hardware. At just $180 for a basic Asus Chromebox, after all, the hardware is pretty affordable. But what will sell the system is likely the fact that they are easy to manage remotely and very unlikely to crash, and that it’s pretty easy to find developers who can write the kind of web apps that will run on them.


Google is clearly starting to position the Chromebox as a platform. I wouldn’t be surprised if the company decided to launch more nice products based on this platform in the future. There is no reason, for example, a Chromebox with the right interface couldn’t make a good device for powering the big screen in your living room, for example.





8:39 AM

When you think ChromeOS, chances are the first thing that comes to mind are Chromebooks. Since 2012, though, Google and its hardware partner...

Read more »
Posted by at 8:39 AM 0 comments
Labels:
no image
Screenshot 2014-02-12 05.52.52

As crowdfunding swings into the mainstream, the folks at betaworks are dreaming up new and creative ways to leverage the power of the masses. A new venture called Alphaworks takes the traditional crowd-funding model, as made famous by Kickstarter and Indiegogo, and offers equity to backers instead of a product.


Here’s how it works:


Alphaworks will start out with three “sponsors,” (betaworks, SV Angel, and Lerer Ventures) who will structure venture deals as they normally would. But instead of gobbling up all those shares on their own, a chunk of the round will be left open.


This is where it gets interesting.


Let’s use See.Me, the pilot venture deal for Alphaworks, as an example. See.Me has an active user base of designers, photographers, filmmakers and creators who can share their work and earn money from it on See.Me’s platform. For now, See.Me generates revenue by taking a 5 percent transaction fee on tips and donations made from user to user, but eventually the company will get into postcard creation and distribution. After that, See.Me’s printing efforts will extend into T-shirts. (Wearables, FTW!)


The company is raising a $1.25 million Series B from betaworks, Founder Collective, OATV, Box Group, and potentially accredited investors on the brand new Alphaworks platform.


Of the $1.25 million, $1.1M has already been committed by the above investors, while $150K worth of shares has been left open to Alphaworks backers purchasing equity. A small number of shares will be reserved for non-investor types who are active on the See.Me platform, and will be offered in the form of a grant.


See.Me is using the Alphaworks site, the betaworks site, and its own website to promote the initiative.


For community-based products, like marketplaces, games, and social networks, this is the first time crowdfunding has been a viable way to raise capital.


“What excites me most is the potential for Alphaworks to be used by non-tech companies,” said See.Me founder William Etunde. “The local coffee shop or book store or band can stay alive and grow because they’re owned by their community and fans, and that’s something really special.”


Of course, there are obstacles.


“We’ll have the same challenge that a lot of platforms and services have in the earliest stage which is tracking your most passionate and best users, because they’re the basis of a community,” said SVAngel’s David Lee.


Though the JOBS act has opened up lanes for this type of financing, the law still requires that only accredited investors can purchase equity. To give you some perspective, Nick Chirls (who heads up investments at betaworks) has been closing deals for a few years now, but isn’t technically an accredited investor.


But betaworks expects legislation to change very soon, opening up the opportunity to purchase equity to even more people.


“It actually makes sense that only accredited investors would be allowed to by securities,” said Ken Lerer. “When it comes to investments, people should only move forward with both eyes wide open, and be able to afford the possibility that they might lose their money. As a person, and not as a professional investor, I would never want to have people invest in something when they can’t afford to lose the money.”


Alphaworks was built to simplify the legalese and complexities of trading securities officially, so that investors don’t need to worry about the fine print. They simply choose the number of shares they’re interested in, and pay through ACH.


betaworks, Lerer Ventures and SVAngel have invested $1.5 million in Alphaworks.


“Philosophically this is so consistent with what we do at betaworks,” said John Borthwick. “We are all users, and we love the businesses we build and invest in. With Alphaworks, we can open other users up to being owners.”





6:25 AM

As crowdfunding swings into the mainstream, the folks at betaworks are dreaming up new and creative ways to leverage the power of the masse...

Read more »
Posted by at 6:25 AM 0 comments
Labels:
no image
Hailo-Exec-Team

On-demand taxi startup Hailo is ready to ramp up scaling and expanding its service into new markets, both in the U.S. and internationally. To do that, it’s bolstering its senior management team by bringing on former Ubiquisys CFO Fraser Park and has promoted former Starbucks exec Tom Barr to co-CEO.


Hailo is one of the growing number of on-demand for-hire car services that is spreading around the world, providing some competition to companies like Uber and Lyft. But unlike those startups, who work with black car companies and independent contractors, Hailo provides a way for passengers to hire taxis via its mobile app.


Since being launched in November 2011, the company has expanded into a dozen major markets in five countries around the world. Service is available in London, Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Barcelona, and Madrid in Europe; Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, New York City, Toronto, Montreal, and Washington, D.C. in North America; and Tokyo and Osaka in Asia.


But Hailo has big plans to expand into even more markets over the coming year. To help provide some finance and operational support, the company hired Park as its new CFO.


Park had last served as CFO of femtocell manufacturer Ubiquisys, which sold to Cisco for $310 million in March of last year. Prior to that, the company had raised a $19 million round of funding from investors that included 5CCG / Sallfort Privatbank and NTT DoCoMo venture arm Mobile Internet Capital. Prior to that, he had also held finance roles at Psion, Tandberg Television, ViaNetworks, and RiverSoft.


The hiring of Park isn’t the only big move Hailo has made to solidify its team ahead of expansion: It’s also promoted US President & COO Tom Barr to Co-CEO, as he will be splitting the title with founder Jay Bregman.


Barr joined the company around the same time that it raised $30 million from Union Square Ventures, KDDI, and others. As the VP of Global Coffee at Starbucks, Barr oversaw more than $1 billion in revenue at the company. When he was hired, the idea was that he would take on more responsibility as time went on, eventually taking on more of the operational responsibilities as the company grew into new markets.


With the new title, Barr will be handling most of the day-to-day operations. Bregman, meanwhile, will Chairman and Co-CEO working on strategy and future vision for the company, as well as some skunkworks projects to help redefine the product, Barr told me.


The goal is to get Hailo in as many new markets as possible by the end of the year. That means targeting 50 markets in about a dozen countries around the world, according to Barr.


Of course, in many of those markets, Hailo will be launching behind one or more other for-hire services. Uber is live in about 70 cities worldwide, while Lyft is in another 20 markets in the U.S., with international plans ramping up this year. And, of course, there’s competition from others, like Gett and Rocket Internet’s Easy Taxi, in various places around the globe.





6:10 AM

On-demand taxi startup Hailo is ready to ramp up scaling and expanding its service into new markets, both in the U.S. and internationally. ...

Read more »
Posted by at 6:10 AM 0 comments
Labels:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)
 
Google Analytics Alternative