Tag archive: Silicon Valley

Newsweek’s Dan Lyons took aim and fired at CrunchFund yesterday, exposing unresolved issues about journalism, ethics and the nature of influence in the Silicon Valley tech world. In an inflammatory blog post, Hit men, click whores, and paid apologists: Welcome to the Silicon Cesspool, Lyons waged war on the early stage venture capital firm founded by TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington and MG Siegler, and critiqued former tech bloggers who use their… Read More

Everything moves faster in the tech scene, and new startups are a dime a dozen. But every year there are a few new companies that manage to make it out of the early hype phase and transition into legitimate businesses, leaving their mark on the industry. This year we saw a handful of innovative ideas that deserve some serious recognition, running the gamut from programming school solutions to everybody's favorite filter application.… Read More

If the venture capital community has anything to do with it, this time next year, you’ll be monitoring your blood pressure with your iPhone, recruiting helpers from the Web to help around the house, and automatically receiving coupons for free coffee at your destination the next time you board a train. In Silicon Valley, entrepreneurship is the engine that is driving jobs creation and stimulating economic growth. We are in the midst of a… Read More

According to an article on CNET posted earlier today, Sergio Calderón plans to bring a lawsuit against Apple for the search of his San Francisco home during July 2011. Apple employees entered and conducted a search within Calderón's home to look for a lost prototype of an unreleased iPhone. According to Calderón, six people searched through his home and car as well as on his computer to check for recently connected devices. He was told… Read More

A Silicon Valley startup named Blueseed  is looking to tackle the current regulatory and immigration policy in the United States, by creating a high-tech visa-free floating vessel in the contiguous zone 12 nautical miles off the coast of California. Blueseed has recently announced that they've secured financial backing from PayPal founder and billionaire Peter Thiel, who has shown great interest in similar Seasteading projects in the… Read More

According to Michael Ellsberg, we’ve been lied to. The Education of Millionaires: It’s Not What You Think and It’s Not Too Late author believes that the graduate-high-school-go-to college-graduate-college-get-successful-career arrangement has become so antiquated it’s dangerous. “Most of our current thoughts about education were formed during our parents’ generation, who went to college in the 50s and 60s. And our economy, America, was… Read More

Facebook’s CEO and COO, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, appeared on Charlie Rose last night to discuss the social network’s evolution and their respective leadership roles. While we’ve all heard Facebook’s mission statement and professions of connecting the world time and time again, both executives were surprisingly candid about a number of subjects. Facebook’s potential IPO “We’ve made this implicit promise to our investors and to our… Read More

500 Startups Demo Day is in full swing. The San Francisco startup incubator, founded by legendary angel investor David McClure (who has backed Mint and Twilio), is now on day two of pitches galore and already we may have ourselves a few winners. There’s insurmountable hype and rampant speculation that can’t help but follow these bright-eyed startups, so staying realistic about a company’s potential can be challenging. That said, a few standouts… Read More

The money continues to fly at the Internet’s darlings. Twitter announced on its blog today that it has received “a significant round of funding led by the venture firm DST Global, with the participation of several of our existing investors.” The amount and the conditions of the deal have not been specified, but a report in early July by the New York Times said Twitter was in the process of negotiating a $400 million round that valued the company… Read More

Robert Metcalfe is an intriguing character. He holds several university degrees, writes a nationally syndicated tech column, has for several years run a 400-acre farm in Maine, and in 1979 cofounded a little Silicon Valley business called 3Com. And one other thing – along with good buddy David Boggs, he invented Ethernet. That's right. Invented. Ethernet.

Love him or hate him (and odds are you fall somewhere in between), TechCrunch founder and co-editor Michael Arrington is an important and very, very loud voice in the world of tech media. He’s counted among the Internet’s most elite and no matter how self-righteous he can be, Arrington is nothing if not influential. And the man just can’t avoid controversy and has had to defend his position as both an investor in and writer about Silicon Valley… Read More

These days, many tech junkies and stock watchers will tell you that the multi-billion dollar valuations of companies like Facebook, LinkedIn and Groupon prove there's a new technology bubble currently being filled with the hot air of speculators and investors hoping to get rich on the “next big thing” out of Silicon Valley. But that's just not so — at least according to superstar venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. During… Read More

The latest innovation to come out of Silicon Valley's minds is…a grilled cheese sandwich? Or rather, a faster, more efficient way to buy a grilled cheese. Flip founder Jonathan Kaplan's newest project straight out of stealth mode, THE MELT, lets you remotely order a grilled cheese from a computer or phone from the website. There also may be an app in the works. Smartphone users receive a QR code when they order that can be… Read More

Proposed legislation in California is seeking to give parents increased access to their children’s social networking accounts while simultaneously requiring sites like Facebook to seriously alter their privacy settings. SB 242, or the Social Networking Privacy Act, spearheaded by Senator Ellen Corbett, would require social sites to fundamentally reformat how they operate and share information. “You shouldn’t have to sign in and give up your… Read More