Category Archives: Startup

Interview With Bill Gurley: The Guy Who Backed OpenTable, Yelp, GrubHub, Twitter, Zillow And Uber

What do OpenTable, Yelp, GrubHub, Twitter, Zillow, and Uber have in common? Bill Gurley, and of course his firm Benchmark.

In my opinion, Bill’s at the top of the top venture capitalists today. With a deep background in engineering, capital markets, and venture (not to mention basketball), he’s got all the bases covered when he talks to entrepreneurs about building great companies that will be successful for decades – not just years.

I was pleased that he was willing to answer some of the questions that most fascinate me about his biography and how he advises the companies he backs.

His answers follow below:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2014/08/26/interview-with-bill-gurley-the-guy-who-backed-opentable-yelp-grubhub-twitter-zillow-and-uber/

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This Guy Is Launching 12 Startups in 12 Months

Can’t get enough of that animated GIF where Oprah unleashes a swarm of bees on her studio audience? Or the one where some guy gets hit in the face by a trashcan? You’re in luck. Soon, a new startup called Gifbook will sell you some flip books that recreate your favorite animated GIFs, so that you can enjoy them even when away from your computer. Three books will set you back just $25.

That may sound like a gag from Silicon Valley, the spot-on TV parody of the tech world, but Gifbook is a honest-to-goodness internet service. It was founded byPieter Levels—a 28-year-old Dutch programmer, designer, and entrepreneur—and it’s just one of several unexpected online services Levels has unleashed on the world.

Levels is on a quest to launch 12 “startups” in just 12 months, and he’s a third of the way home now. One, called Play My Inbox, gathers all the music it finds in your e-mail inbox into a single playlist. Another, called Go Fucking Do It, gives you a new way to set personal goals. Basically, if you don’t reach your goal, you have to cough up some cash to Levels. Gifbook, due to launch by the end of the month, is his fifth creation.

LEVELS REPRESENTS EVERYTHING THAT’S RIGHT ABOUT THE STATE OF THE TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY—OR EVERYTHING THAT’S WRONG.

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  • 72
    Whenever the tech bubble question comes up, as it does with regularity, it sparks a debate about the definition of a bubble, or what qualifies as overvaluation. When I hear this debate, I focus less on the word “bubble” and more on the word “we.” Are we talking about the…
    Tags: valley, silicon, personal, tech, technology, success, startup

WhatsApp becomes most popular messaging app with 600 million users

WhatsApp CEO and founder Jan Koum tweeted that the popular messaging app user-base has now been increased to 600 million. Earlier in April, it was announced that WhatsApp had 500 million active users. 

Surprisingly, the instant messaging space has been growing by leaps and bounds. It is worth noting that WhatsApp had 200 million users in August 2013. By January 2014, the number surged to 430 million in January 2014. Apart from WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, Line, and Hike are o .. 

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Klarna is like an iceberg because consumers only see about a tenth of what it does

Ready to check out online? Just enter your email address and a postal code to complete the purchase. The bill will be in the mail.

That is the simple option offered to shoppers on 45,000 e-commerce sites using Klarna, a fast-growing online payments service start-up run from a newly refurbished downtown office here.

Enter a few bits of information and your online shopping generates a flurry of activity at the company. In seconds, Klarna analyzes reams of credit sources and online purchasing data to determine whether it will assume the liability for your purchase.

If you are a returning Klarna user, buying during regular working hours or shipping to your usual address, an email and postal code are probably enough. Klarna may even let you pay for the goods up to two weeks after they have arrived in the mail.

But if you are buying at odd hours or sending goods to a previously unused location, expect greater scrutiny. That includes Klarna asking you to pay upfront with a credit card.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/technology/klarna-an-online-payment-system-popular-in-europe-eyes-global-expansion.html

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Who bought, funded or exited the most Bay Area startups?

Orginal post here  : http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/08/15/who-bought-or-funded-the-most-bay-rea-startups.html?page=all

The venture investor that has backed the most startups in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco area in the past five years is 500 Startups.

But the one with the most exits of companies it has backed is Sequoia Capital, and the company that has bought the most local startups isn’t Yahoo or Facebook — both of whom have been on an acqui-hiring tear recently. It’s Google.

That is according to a report from investment database research firm CB Insights, whose rundown we posted yesterday on the 20 local startups that have raised the most cash without exiting yet.

The ranking of top investors didn’t include Y Combinator and other accelerators that don’t have a separate venture investing wing.

The top two on the list — 500 Startups and SV Angel — get in at the earliest stage of the companies they back. But most of the top investors there blend early and later stage funding. SV Angel, in fact, is a frequent co-investor in 500 Startups and backer of many Y Combinator companies, as well.

The top 10 (in the number of unique companies they have backed since 2009) are:

1. 500 Startups — 222.

2. SV Angel — 197.

3. Andreessen Horowitz — 157.

4. New Enterprise Associates — 123.

5. Google Ventures — 118.

6. Sequoia Capital — 111.

7. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers — 102.

8. Greylock Partners — 102.

9. Intel Capital — 92.

10. Accel Partners — 90.

When it comes to middle and later rounds, Intel Capital, New Enterprise Associates and Sequoia Capital were the most active.

In terms of the investors with the most exits, CB Insights ranks Sequoia on top with 54 of its local portfolio companies bought or doing an IPO in the past five years. Big names on that list include WhatsApp, Palo Alto Networks and Instagram.

Here is the top 10 ranking of investors with the most exits:

1. Sequoia Capital — 54.

2. Intel Capital — 49.

3. Accel Partners — 47.

4. Felicis Ventures — 42.

5. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers — 37.

6. New Enterprise Associates — 37.

7. SV Angel — 36.

8. Lightspeed Venture Partners — 35.

9. Foundation Capital — 35.

10. Benchmark Capital — 35.

As noted earlier, Yahoo and Facebook have done the most acquisitions in the past year or so. But CB Insights reports that Google has been the big buyer over the past five years with Waze and AdMob being two of the most prominent deals.

Here is that top 10 ranking, with the number of deals done by each.

1. Google — 37.

2. Facebook — 30.

3. Yahoo — 28.

4. Twitter — 18.

5. Oracle — 15.

6. Apple — 15.

7. Cisco Systems — 14.

8. IBM — 13.

9. VMware — 11.

10. Salesforce — 11.

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Uber’s Brilliant Strategy to Make Itself Too Big to Ban

The question of how Uber would spend its billion-dollar investment was never really much of a riddle. More rides in more places has always been the plan.

But with its ten-figure cushion, the San Francisco-based ride-hailing startup can be more cunning about how it tries to get huge. Uber wants to grow as quickly it can, and right now, it’s chasing that goal by undercutting the competition on price—even if it loses money in the process. This isn’t a novel approach among tech startups, for which profits aren’t valued nearly as much as popularity. But for Uber, playing in the new realm of the so-called sharing economy, the stakes are higher, since so many entrenched interests are trying to regulate it out of existence. With not just success but survival on the line, Uber has even more incentive to expand as rapidly as possible. If it gets big enough quickly enough, the political price could become too high for any elected official who tries to pull Uber to the curb.

Yesterday, Uber announced it was lowering UberX fares by 20 percent in New York City, claiming the cuts would make its cheapest service cheaper than a regular yellow taxi. That follows a 25 percent decrease in the San Francisco Bay Areaannounced last week, and a similar drop in Los Angeles UberX prices revealed earlier last month. The company says UberX drivers in California (though apparently not in New York) will still get paid their standard 80 percent portion of what the fare would have been before the discount. As Forbes‘ Ellen Huet points out, the arrangement means a San Francisco ride that once cost $15 will now cost passengers $11.25, but the driver still gets paid $12.

http://www.wired.com/2014/07/ubers-brilliant-strategy-to-make-itself-too-big-to-ban

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Mobile-Only Bank Osper Raises $10M To Aim At UK Youth Market

Osper, a new UK startup, has come up with an innovative way to create a banking service than can be used by children, combining prepaid debit cards and smartphone apps controlled by both them and their parents. The approach could potentially reach a market underserved by most banks, but which may also be embraced by parents keen to educate their children early on about how to manage money.

The startup has also announced it’s closed a $10m (£6m) funding round, led by London’sIndex Ventures (which has backed SoundCloud and Etsy among others). Previously Osper had raised a seed round of £800,000 in June last year as an alumni of the Techstars Londonaccelerator. The cash will be used by founder Alick Varma to launch the service out of beta, roll out in the UK and eventually expand abroad. It’s also enrolled the backing of major UK TV celebrity, Davina Mccall.

Other investors include Horizons Ventures (Li Ka-Shing’s venture capital arm – investor in Spotify, Facebook and Skype); Peter Jackson (CEO of Travelex), and Darren Shapland (ex-Chairman of Sainsbury’s Bank); as well as the entrepreneurs behind businesses including Streetcar, Lastminute.com, Jawbone, SoundCloud, Skyscanner and Funding Circle.

http://techcrunch.com/

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Klarna is the next big thing in Internet payments

PayPal revolutionized the way we buy things online, but Klarna is the next big thing in Internet payments, according to famed venture capitalist Michael Moritz.

Moritz made early investments in Google (GOOGL, Tech30), LinkedIn (LNKD, Tech30),Yahoo (YHOO, Tech30) and eBay’s (EBAY, Tech30) PayPal. His firm, Sequoia Capital, has been investing millions in Klarna over the past few years. He is impressed with how the Swedish company’s technology makes online transactions easier, cutting out passwords and the traditionally slow registration process.

“We’ve invested in payments for a good long time and had started doing that in the 1990s,” Moritz told CNNMoney. “We had been an early investor in PayPal. But that was a long time ago. That was almost 15 years ago now. And the world moves on and changes, particularly with the advent of mobile computing … there’s a vast new landscape to conquer.”

http://money.cnn.com/

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10 Movies Every Entrepreneur Needs to Watch

No one ever said being an entrepreneur would be easy. A million obstacles seem to stand in the way each and every day. The naysayers and budget woes can be enough for the average person to start waving the white flag.

But you are not an average person: You’re an entrepreneur. That means that even when times are tough, you’re still going to march forward.

Yet when this whole entrepreneur thing becomes overwhelming, take a break and look for some much needed motivation. And what better way to find inspiration than watching movies?

Whether it’s a heartwarming adventure, irreverent comedy or thought-provoking documentary, a film can inspire and motivate a weary business owner.

With that in mind, here are 10 movies that every entrepreneur needs to watch:  http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/234538

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The rise of the ‘Uberized economy’ and what it means for business

The world of labor is changing. Through laptops and mobile devices, a new world of services is becoming more accessible. The platforms enabling such services are also providing new homes for a rising entrepreneurial class of worker who is no longer being defined by the cubical. It’s becoming clear, that in a not too distant future, our companies and corporations will be built on virtual networks vs marble lobbies.

While we have seen an explosion of “Uberized” labor marketplaces that make things like grocery delivery and home cleaning a mobile click away, labor marketplaces are quickly moving in more sophisticated directions.

While the oDesks of the world have defined “virtual labor” for the past decade, a new generation of virtual labor marketplaces is rising – even in the most old-school industries – and unlocking highly skilled services in a whole new way.

Our vision of the future is that these vertical marketplaces will make even the most white-collar professions accessible to every individual and business, and will provide new homes for highly skilled individuals where the traditional corporate life is no longer a fit or an option.

http://thenextweb.com/

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