Some housekeeping: as expected, we’re not sending out our newsletter tomorrow in observance of the July 4th holiday. For those who are wondering, we pretty much follow the market holiday schedule for our newsletters. Our web updates will continue, if there is any significant news. Thanks!
Housekeeping: No newsletter Friday
July 2nd, 2009Microsoft loses vomit ad. Hooray!
July 2nd, 2009Well, that’s a relief. Microsoft apparently is dropping its vomit ad, after lots of customers complained. For those who have so far been spared having to watch what has been billed the worst technology ad ever, be thankful. (For the squeamish, it involved a wife.. ummm, vomiting, repeatedly, and graphically, all over a husband after looking at what he had on his laptop. Don’t watch it before/after breakfast/lunch/dinner.)
Overhead: Oh yeah, how many followers do you have?
July 1st, 2009Overheard at one of the local networking groups last night, when I introduced a social media marketer to another, social-media savvy entrepreneur: “Really? How many followers do you have?”
It might have just replaced “Oh, how many uniques do you get a month?” as the first question to ask a fellow entrepreneur…
Thanks to our newest sponsor: Key Information Systems
June 29th, 2009As most of you know, it’s a combination of our premium members and our sponsors who make it possible for us to produce our newsletter and cover Southern California’s technology industry. (Alas, you’ve got to pay for creating Internet content somehow!). So, we’re very grateful to the many sponsors who have stepped up to help us cover Southern California’s growing technology industry, and make it possible for us to exist.
On that note, I’d like to welcome our newest sponsor, Key Information Systems, an IT integration provider with headquarters in Woodland Hills, Newport Beach, Phoenix, and Sausalito.
Please let Key Information Systems–and the rest of our sponsors–know you appreciate their support of our coverage of Southern California’s technology industry!
Roundup: VC “broken”, Userplane in the deadpool, Clear to sell data?
June 29th, 2009Today’s quick roundup of some interesting technology news:
- Is venture capital “broken”? A significant number of VCs apparently think so.
- Is Santa Monica’s Userplane–the startup sold by Mike Jones to AOL–now in the deadpool?
- Is Clear–which used to, until recently, run those express security screening lines at LAX etc.–looking to sell your personal data?
- ParAccel gets $22M
- Featured stealth fundings last week: CyberRain, Red Mango
iPhone teardown
June 26th, 2009This is a bit off topic, but for the geeks in the room, it’s worth following the folks over at iSuppli (in El Segundo) — turned into an analyst firm some time ago, and is now regularly tearing apart new electronic items and figuring out how much they cost, what components they use, etc. Their most recent teardown is of the Apple iPhone 3GS ($178.96 in BOM costs, versus the $199 retail cost).
I used to have a boss (yep, a hardware engineering VP), who whenever anything new and electronic came in the office–be it a piece of networking equipment, a new cell phone, printer, computer, etc. — would pull out the screwdrivers and completely (and I mean, completely) disassemble the thing to figure out what it was made out of. It would get to the point where you’d have to sneak your hardware to the back corner of the lab, so you wouldn’t find it on his desk in pieces…
Free stock audio from AudioMicro
June 24th, 2009Ryan Born, CEO and founder of AudioMicro, which is creating an online marketplace for stock audio clips (for use in online videos, etc.) passes on that he’s giving readers of socalTECH free music downloads if they join the site. He said that readers of socalTECH who want two free download credits (worth $8.99) can join using the code SOCALTECH2.
Born is hoping that his company can gain a good position in the emerging stock audio market, a market which is paralleling the stock photography market in allowing people to more easily download and use audio tracks, sound effects, etc. through royalty-free licenses. His firm is going up against one of the big guys in the market — Getty Images — which just launched its own stock audio service, iStockAudio, earlier this year. His firm is backed by DFJ Frontier.
Two Tech Entrepreneurs Gets E&Y Award
June 24th, 2009Last night, the Los Angeles area Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards were given at the Beverly Hilton, with two technology entrepreneurs are among the winners. Jeff Tinsley, who is CEO of MyLife.com, and Deepak Chopra, of OSI Systems in Hawthorne, were among the winners of the prize, which is one of several in the area which focus on recognizing successful entrepreneurs. The LA portion of the awards moves both Tinsley and Chopra to E&Y’s national awards, which will awarded in Palm Springs in November. Tinsley was also a finalist for the Technology Council’s Technology Industry Awards back in April.
BMI and startup success?
June 19th, 2009Here’s a fascinating one. Jason Calacanis — founder of Santa Monica-based Mahalo (and Internet celebrity)–just pointed out that a user on Mahalo has asked someone to figure out the correlation of BMI (body mass index) of startup founders versus startup outcome.
Sounds to me like the old statistical game of trying to correlate women’s hemlines to the stock indexes…
That said, another local CEO, Jason Nazar, has said earlier this year he went from 165 to 210 as a result of his startup–Calacanis weighed in on the subject himself before he quit regularly blogging.
Anyone want to haul their bathroom scale to the next local startup event and start tallying weights/heights? (Though, I think you might need “pre exit” and “post exit” weights)