The Two Most Important Startups in the World


By Jason Calacanis

The two most important startups in the world: AngelList and Kickstarter.

They're more important than Facebook, Twitter and Apple. Heck, they're more important than Pinterest! ( ← zing! pow! )

These two projects have been hated, dissed and dismissed for much of their existence, but soon folks will see just how disruptively awesome they are.

In the early years, having your vision hated by most people, but absolutely loved by a few is -- of course -- the surest sign you're going to change the world. Conversely, projects that are loved by everyone early are sure to have absolutely modest outcomes. Even Google had doubters. "Why do we need a new search engine?" they said. Others saw the actual, better results behind the goofy name.
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10 International Startup Scholarships

[ The Tonchidot team demos its Domo app at LAUNCH '11. ]

The LAUNCH Festival is doing so well we want to get more folks involved from outside the USA.

Great ideas and startups can come from anywhere today, and we're particularly interested in bringing more startups from Israel, Korea, Japan, China and South America (and of course beyond!) to the LAUNCH Festival DEMO Pit in San Francisco March 7 & 8.

LAUNCH will pick up the entire cost (except your travel) to ensure we have a truly international event. Yes, we'll even pay for your booth (table, chairs, electricity, wifi and space).

You just have to get your team there.

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DOUBLE Boom! LAUNCH Hits $369k in Prizes Thanks to MailChimp's $100k!

2011/12 Creative Mornings with Ben Chestnut from CreativeMornings/Atlanta on Vimeo.


Ben Chestnut, the founder of the wildly successful MailChimp, has agreed to invest $100k in one of the 10 winning companies at the LAUNCH Festival on March 7th and 8th.

Total prize money is now, gulp, $369k.

This prize will work similarly to the Charles River Ventures $100k prize we announced yesterday: Ben will pick one of the 10 award winners at the LAUNCH Festival and either give them a convertible note without a discount or cap (similar to the notes provided to Y Combinator companies), or simply invest in their next round.

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Boom! LAUNCH Hits $269k in Prizes Thanks to Charles River Ventures


The LAUNCH Festival taking place March 7 & 8 has now made history: over a quarter of a million dollars in prizes!

Charles River Ventures is putting up a $100k investment in one of the 10 award winners at the LAUNCH Festival, bringing the total prize money to over a quarter of a million ($269k to be exact).

The investment will be in the form of a convertible note without a discount or cap (similar to the notes provided to Y Combinator companies), and be for a whopping $100k. Most importantly it comes with my good friend George Zachary as an advisor (he's aces).  
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Whoa, LAUNCH Prize Money Hits $169k!

[ The Room 77 team accepts the "Best in Show" award at LAUNCH '11 from LAUNCH founder Jason Calacanis (left) and Adeo Ressi of the Founder Institute (third from left). Photo (cc) Kenneth Yeung - www.snapfoc.us ]

The LAUNCH Festival is just over 30 days away and it's on fire!

Venture51, a seed- and early-stage venture fund that loves design-driven technical teams, has agreed to invest $51k in the winner of the "Best in Show" award in LAUNCH's 1.0 competition.*

LAUNCH is taking place on March 7th and 8th in San Francisco if you've been hiding under a rock. Right before SXSW.

This generous investment brings the total value of prizes at the LAUNCH Festival to a record $169k, as TechStars previously agreed -- for the first time in their history -- to accept one of the LAUNCH companies into their program.

[ More after the jump. ]

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Watch TWiST with Jawbone Founder and CEO Hosain Rahman Today at 1pm PT


Today on This Week in Startups, Jason Calacanis sat down with Jawbone founder and CEO Hosain Rahman. 

Jawbone manufactures premium Bluetooth headsets, wireless portable speakers, like the popular JAMBOX that launched in August 2011, and other products that support the mobile lifestyle. Back in December, Jawbone raised $40M, bringing the company's total to $210M raised. Investors seem to be most excited about...
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Watch TWiST News Roundtable with Adeo Ressi and Ryan Block Live at 1pm PT

[ Adeo Ressi and Ryan Block. ]

Today on This Week in Startups, tune in for a special News Roundtable live from CNET in San Francisco with Adeo Ressi of the Founder Institute, gdgt co-founder Ryan Block and Erik Lanigan, journalist and former This Week in Tech host, who will read the news. 

Adeo is the founding member of TheFunded, an online community of 17K CEOs, and runs the Founder Institute mentoring program that helps entrepreneurs in 30 cities worldwide. 

Ryan helped start consumer electronics and personal technology Q&A site gdgt in 2008 shortly after...
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We Need to Empower Hollywood--Not Kill Hollywood




By Jason Calacanis

The fabulously successful incubator Y Combinator released its 9th RFS last week with a bizarre title.

RFS is short for "requests for startups," as in, "We would love to accept startups in this genre for our next class and give them a huge pile of cash from Yuri Milner and Ron Conway -- two of the biggest names in the Valley."

And what did Y Combinator request?

More mobile social? More education 2.0 startups? More core technology?

Nope.

They asked for companies that will "Kill Hollywood."  

Facepalm.
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WOW: TechStars to Accept a LAUNCH Festival Startup!

 

TechStars is the most established multicity accelerator with the best leaders everywhere it operates -- Boulder, Seattle, Boston, New York and Texas -- and clearly one of the best things to happen for startups in a long, long time.

We're huge fans of David Cohen and his team which includes Andy Sack in Seattle, David Tisch in NYC, Katie Rae in Boston, Nicole Glaros in Boulder and Jason Seats in Texas, and the awesome startups they've guided to massive success in the past five years.

We're thrilled to announce that TechStars will accept one of the 40 companies at the LAUNCH Festival in San Francisco March 7 & 8!

You read that right: a LAUNCH company will ...

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Watch TWiST News Roundtable with Cyan Banister and Erik Lanigan Live at 1pm


Today on This Week in Startups, tune in for a special News Roundtable live from CNET in San Francisco with Cyan Banister of Zivity, and Erik Lanigan, journalist and former This Week in Tech host.

Cyan is the founder and CEO of Zivity, a subscription and voting based artist-fan interaction platform for models, photographers and artists. She is also a confirmed judge at the upcoming LAUNCH Festival in March.

Erik, formerly of TWiT, left the company in December after "wrongful termination...and subsequent...
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Demo Pit Tables @ LAUNCH


[ GreenGoose was in the Demo Pit at LAUNCH '11 when a Grand Jury member selected it to present at the end of day one. While on stage, founder Brian Krejcarek had a number of people commit to invest a total of $100K (more here and here). ]

This year at the LAUNCH Festival we're trying to get as many amazing startups involved as possible. This means 40 killer brand-new startups and products on stage as part of our 1.0 and 2.0 competitions (read more here to understand the difference).

Additionally, on each of the two days, our Grand Jury will select a couple of companies from the Demo Pit area to come on stage and show their products.
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Chill Gets More Social but Ditches Live Rooms Feature

Chill just launched a new version to make watching videos more social and provide an easier way to find the content you want. Even though the live rooms -- the feature that let you watch videos with friends -- is gone, Chill now offers more discovery options and sharing capabilities like comments, reposts and thoughts. 

The new homepage is now a grid of videos shared by friends and the new popular section shows you what's "cool" at the moment in the Chill community. 

"More and more, the things that are important to us -- music, images, interests -- are being networked," Chill Director of Growth Andrew Skotzko tells LAUNCH. "Why hasn't video been? It's the richest medium of expression we have, but for whatever reason the social tools in video are still pretty weak. Sure, the vast majority of video sharing happens on Facebook & Twitter, but neither of those sites are optimized for consuming video—they're pretty noisy platforms."

While Chill's focus is no longer on watching videos with friends, Andrew says they will still...

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Watch TWiST #224 with Box Co-founder Aaron Levie at 1pm PT

[ Box Co-founder Aaron Levie. ]

Today on This Week in Startups at 1pm PT, Jason sat down at Waze headquarters in Palo Alto to speak with Box's co-founder Aaron Levie.

Levie, at just 27 years old, has seen his company grow from startup to major player in the cloud storage space, raising a series D round of venture funding for $81M in 2011. Levie created Box.net as a project while studying at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.

Listen in as Jason and Aaron talk scaling...
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Watch TWiST News Roundtable with Sean Percival and James Altucher Live at 1pm PT



Today on This Week in Startups, Sean Percival, Entrepreneur in Residence at the incubator Science, and writer and entrepreneur James Altucher will join Host Jason Calacanis for the News Roundtable live at 1pm PT.

Before joining Science in Nov. 2011, Sean served as vice president of online marketing at Myspace for nearly two years and previously worked at Mahalo as a content manager.

James Altucher is a contributing writer for The Wall Street Journal, Managing Partner at Formula Capital and author of seven books. His most recent book, How to Be The Luckiest Person Alive, describes...
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LAUNCH Festival Judges and Grand Jury Members: Robert Scoble, Tony Hsieh, Tony Conrad and More

[ Row 1: Robert Scoble, Tony Hsieh, Tony Conrad, Jennifer Lum. Row 2: Don Dodge, Greg Tseng, Chamath Palihapitiya, Thomas Korte. Row 3: Jay Levy, Cyan Banister, Bill Warner, Adeo Ressi. ]

By Jason Calacanis

Man, I'm the luckiest guy on the planet!

Over the past two weeks almost everyone I've asked to join me as a judge or Grand Jury member at the LAUNCH event has said yes!

This is my fifth year hosting the LAUNCH Festival (the first three we called it TechCrunch50), and I'm thrilled to announce the following judges/speakers are on now on board...
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The Only Two Questions Founders Need to Answer


By Jason Calacanis

Every day a couple of dozen folks email me asking me to tell them what I think of their products.

When I have the time, or interest, to respond I generally ask myself a battery of questions:

a. Is the logo iconic?
b. Could you tell me the domain name over the phone once and have me type it in correctly?
c. Is it clear within 10 seconds what the purpose of this product or service is? Does it matter if it is clear?
d. Is the design world-class?

Those are tactical questions that let me know the person has skills. Everyone can pass those tests with a couple of months of hard work.

My two brutal questions, which you can't simply pass with a couple of months of hard work, are how recommendable and unforgettable your product is.

Here is how I ask them:

1. Would I recommend this product?
2. Will I remember this product next month and next year?

If you run an amazing product like...
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Comcast Brings Live TV Streaming to Tablets but Requires New AnyPlay Device


Comcast is starting to roll out AnyPlay, a device that makes it possible to watch live television on Internet-connected devices like the iPad and eventually, the Motorola Xoom.

For now, AnyPlay is only available to Xfinity HD Triple Play customers in Denver and Nashville but will eventually be available in other markets. In order to live stream all of the channels you subscribe to, with the exception of On Demand programming, you must download the existing Xfinity TV app.

"Here's how it works...the AnyPlay device works the same as any other set top box in the home, but instead of delivering the incoming channel lineup to a television, AnyPlay delivers the lineup to the Wi-Fi router on the home network," Comcast SVP of Video Product Development Mark Hess writes in a press release. "The router then...
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