WLITF: Speculation, Investigation & Hacktivism

This Vine video of TV coverage of the Boston Marathon has been tweeted over 40k times.


[ WLITF = We Live in the Future ]

Checking Twitter is a mixed bag.

One day you open it to find out Kobe’s season is over or that your favorite TV show got picked up by Netflix. Another day a startup you love was either sold or shut down. Sadly, like many of us, you might check your stream and find out that an old friend killed himself.  

Yesterday was the worst of these experiences: a terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon.

Or was it a terrorist attack?

Perhaps it was a gas explosion?

Or maybe two gas explosions?

Is that possible to have two gas lines explode? Wait, could this be another 9/11 or 7/7?

If it is, who is responsible?

The speculation starts in our minds the moment the shock fades -- and boy does our shock fade quickly these days. As a society, we process instantly, be it terrorist attacks or viral videos.

We move from ‘shock and retweet’ to ‘reply and incendiary post’ in minutes or hours, and then we get meta: with one side telling the other to shut up and that reactions are not right, not wanted or somehow inappropriate.

'Now is not the time to speculate!' is the rallying cry.

We all process so fast: one minute we’re in shock and the next we are criticizing each other’s reactions to shocking events.

Perhaps we should be more forgiving of news anchors and to each other in moments of stress, fear and outrage?

No one can put their foot in their mouth when it’s closed, but the quickest path to resolution is our words.

Should we speak or shut up?

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How to Raise Money in 2013

by @Jason Calacanis

Every few years—at least for the past 20 that I’ve been in the technology space—I’ve witnessed a change in how startups go about getting funding from investors.

In the mid ’90s, the best way to build a pitch was to collect a couple of MBAs and build a kick-ass business plan, a slick PowerPoint deck and, of course, a killer business model in Excel. (Back then, people spent more time building their business plans than founders spend on the first versions of companies I see on today’s AngelList!)  

Ten years ago, the best practice was finding an emerging market and building the category killer in it. Basically, you paired a large vertical (healthcare, sports, kids, plastics) with a buzzword (blogging, photo sharing, social, e-commerce) and put a “for” between them. For example: “blogging for sports,” “photo sharing for kids,” or “social for healthcare.”

Today? People are obsessed with the “lean startup” genre of businesses that reinvent—basically optimize—traditional activities like hailing a taxi or booking a hotel room.

If you came into a room with a VC 10 years ago and said you were building any of the following businesses, you probably would have been quickly dismissed:

1. Hail a taxi

2. Back up your files

3. A message board for employees

Yet those businesses—Uber, Dropbox and Yammer—are three of the hottest startups. (Full disclosure: I’m an investor in Uber, and while I didn’t invest in Dropbox and Yammer, they did debut at my conference.)

So, how does one get an investment for an idea that seems obvious? Very simple: Understand what angel investors and VCs are looking for and give it to them. Investors have pattern recognition, and they are driven by four Fs: fortune, fame, fear and fun.
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Should You Pay $250k to Go to College?


I was talking with my brother recently about higher education. We both struggled our way through school, barely able to afford our approximate $40k in tuition and expenses over the four years (he at a state school, me at Fordham University).

Now his son has been accepted to a bunch of amazing schools, and we discussed a $250k four-year bill. Yep, 20 years after we graduated, the same set of schools cost 6x+ as much.

Which leads to the question parents are faced with today:

Is college worth the money?


The answer?
===================
No, it’s not enough value for the money.

In my estimation college is worth it if you have a ton of money and don’t care about ROI, or if you can pay less than $50k-$75k and get a job with starting pay of $50k or more (generally technical, trade or finance work).

At $100k-$250k, it’s simply foolish.  
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All LAUNCH Festival 2013 Winners and Investment Prizes

Everything you need to know to catch up on LAUNCH Festival 2013 is here.

Something we need to add? Email team@launch.co

LAUNCH Festival 2013 Overall Winners 

Additional Winners

Investment Prizes**
We had a number of folks promise to put up investment prizes. And they are coming through on their promises!

Did we miss you on this list? Email team@launch.co.

** All investment prizes are still pending due diligence.

 

 

Launched! AdStage, Ryse, HomeDine.in, MyCuteFriend, Planeto, Circl & Flyer.io

AdStage builds tools to help advertisers advertise across multiple networks in search and social. (!!!!) 

Ryse is an ecosystem for brands and agencies to engage with emerging media, platforms and technologies via an app, marketplace and network.

HomeDine.in connects people over home-cooked meals.

MyCuteFriend mobile app for dating in which women curate men

Planeto creates fun trivia games and knowledge platforms for a worldwide audience.

Circl Allows brick-and-mortar SMBs already using email/social to see if those messages are bringing people into their stores.  

Flyer.io Simplifies the process of creating and sharing real estate flyers.

LAUNCHED! Quick Posture, Stream Nation, Lexity, Brainpickin', Revolve & Boxbee

Alumni Pivot (Alltuition): Brilliant - assesses teens via problem sets and challenges, identifies the best and brightest. 
Quick Posture is an accurate and inexpensive assessment of postural alignment, movement patterns and balance. 
Stream Nation is cloud storage that streams your movie and video collections on all your devices and lets you share them with your friends. 

Lexity 2.0 = Online store owner gets a text/alert on mobile device that customer is about to purchase something (owner sets trigger). At same time, Lexity sends customer automatic response owner has written for this occasion ("Happy to see you're interested in our standing desk! Can I answer any questions?") and gives customer opportunity to text back or speak to store owner right then/there. 
Brainpickin Tool that enables anyone to create their personalised e-learning website, customise it, upload courses, sell them or offer them for free - all in a complete social environment
Revolve Robotics is developing KUBI, a desktop tablet stand that helps people who use video calling look around and physically interact with others remotely through simple web-based motion controls.
Boxbee Effortlessly store your stuff & pay only for the space you use.

Launched! Synata, Zillabyte, Gablit, Sightly, Knowyo & CitySourced

Synata search for the enterprise that uses PageRank-style algorithm. Searches cloud-based data, e.g., from Dropbox, Box.net, Google Drive, Salesforce, ZenDesk and eventually other services

Gablit enables you to spend less time searching for things to do, and more time sharing and doing the things you love.

Sightly is a faster, more engaging way to connect businesses with customers

Knowyo makes it easy and fun to remember the names and faces of people you know.

CitySourced is a best-of-breed, enterprise civic engagement platform.

Launched! Whiplash, Povio, Blurbity Hubskip & triptease...

Round 2

Whiplash Zappos-level order delivery for any webstore. "Pioneering fulfillment as a service." 

Povio Povio is a new form of persistent communication that uses photos as a medium.

Blurbity News aggregation that uses algorithm to pull most salient part out of a post (not just the headline)

Hubskip We take away all the complexity of buying an airline ticket and won't surprise you with any hidden fees. 

triptease Makes travel reviews beautiful and highly shareable by giving users templates and gorgeous photos of destinations. 

Instarad.io - Turn your phone into a broadcast radio station.

Launched!

 


In case you missed 'em: 

Round 1  

Instabridge | Instabridge is creating the world’s largest Wi-Fi network by leveraging trust and the social graph.

Fanamana | Words with Friends meets professional sports, i.e. live fantasy gaming. Pick a real player of a real game to join your game.

VuePlus | We provide a platform that enables YOU to sell YOUR physical and digital products directly over YOUR videos - turning views into revenue.

CubeSensors | CubeSensors are beautiful, small devices for indoor environment monitoring. (Sound, scent and more.) $250 / 2 cubes.

Open Garden | The 2.0 = mesh network built seamlesly among all people who have the application.

Jawfish | Real-Time, Multiplayer Tournament games for mobile and web. Stop playing with yourself.

 

LAUNCH!

We're here. You're here. Ready to LAUNCH?  

 

 

[Last night's super-awesome LAUNCH Founders & Funders Dinner @ Yank Sing.]

LAUNCH Hackathon Grand Prize now at $75,000!

Launch Hackathon

I promised you the best hackathon ever a few months back. Only 5 days until the LAUNCH & AngelHack teams deliver on that promise.

Amazing food, massage therapists and HUGE prizes.

I’m thrilled to announce that the Hackathon Grand Prize is now at an unbelievable $75k!

Dharmesh Shah from Hubspot/OnStartups and I kicked this thing off by each putting up $25k as an investment prize (or $10k cash). Now, the worldwide leader in web security, Barracuda Networks [ http://barracudanetworks.com ] has matched our commitment with an additional $25k investment or $10k cash prize! We officially have the largest Hackathon prize ever!

Who wants to make it $100k? ;-) Email: partners@launch.co.

There’s still time to apply and register for the Hackathon, but we’re filling up fast. Registration closes on Thursday, Feb 28 at 11:59pm PST or when we hit 450 participants. Apply here: http://launchhackathon.com/register.

This is only the start. We have awesome partners offering prizes as well. See the full list below.

Reminder: The LAUNCH Hackathon with AngelHack begins this Saturday, March 2nd at 12pm at the San Francisco Design Center Concourse (635 8th St). Coding ends on Monday, March 4th at 1:00pm. Hackathon finals begins at 6:00pm on Monday (3/4), with the top 12 finalists presenting to the public beginning at 8:00pm. For more info: http://launchhackathon.com.

** All Hackathon Partners & Prizes **

For the most up to date prize info: http://launchhackathon.com/prizes

Grand Prize

Amazon AWS

  • Grand Prize winner receives $2.5k in Amazon AWS Credit
  • Next 4 runners-up receive $1k in Amazon AWS Credit

Barracuda Networks

  • Top 5 Hackathon finalists will receive a package of free security products (free web filtering, firewalls, etc).

FilePicker
Project must use FilePicker to be eligible to win: 

  • iPad Mini

Firebase
Project must utilize Firebase to be eligible to win:

  • iPad

MediaTemple

  • Grand prize winner receives lifetime free hosting - up to 2gb (dv), (gs), or (ve)
  • Next 4 runners up receive 1 year free hosting - up to 2gb (dv), (gs), or (ve)
  • All participants receive 1GB (dv), (ve), or (gs) for 1 month

Microsoft
Best use of Windows 8:

  • 1st Place - $3k
  • 2nd Place - $2k
  • 3rd Place - $1k

NewAer
Project must utilize the NewAer Proximity Platform to be eligible to win:

  • $2k in Apple gift cards. ($500 each for a team of 4)

Plantronics
Project must utilize the Plantronics Spokes SDK to be eligible to win:

  • $1k
  • Opportunity to demo at the Plantronics Demo Pit table for the LAUNCH Festival
  • Voyager Legend UC headsets for all winning team members.

Samsung Developers
Project must utilize the S Pen SDK or AllShare Framework to be eligible to win:

  • Samsung Galaxy Notes or up to $1k (4 team members maximum, 1 device or $250 per team member)

SAP

  • TBD

Tokbox
Project must utilize Tokbox to be eligible to win:

Yammer
Project must utilize Yammer Platform to be eligible to win:

  • 4 Jamboxes

The Coming 'Experetail' Boom


[ Nespresso Boutique in San Francisco - photo via Yelp ]


Retail is fracked.

It's so obvious to those of us with Amazon Prime accounts, Zappos on our iPhones and Fab.com bookmarked.

Marc Andreessen said all retail will be gone, and that's not as earth-shattering a prediction as it seems.

If you can save time or money you're probably going to do it -- if you can do both? Game over.

I haven't had to pick up coffee, razors, deodorant, shoes or shirts in a couple of years.

The only time we go shopping any more is for perishables or an 'emergency run' as we call it. I'm guessing if you're on this list, you're like us.

However, I took my daughter to the Disney Store last month, and we had a blast looking at everything. Her favorites were the mirrors from Snow White and the video jukebox. She didn't want to buy anything, even after I gave her multiple choices of her favorite characters. I bought a Peter Pan playset out of guilt for the mouse company. Sympathy buy since we were there for an hour playing with stuff.

She had enough of an experience that she didn't need to purchase anything.

I find myself doing that as well at shoe stores, the Apple store or Saks. In fact, I looked for a new wallet at Saks, and they were so overpriced ($100?!), that I pulled up the top wallets on Amazon while in the store and ranked them by popularity. They were all $10-$25. I bought three of the top 10 for < $50. I have two backup wallets now in my valet. I'm done for the next 10 years -- at least.

Everything will come crashing down and Amazon will win it all -- it's certain -- what then?

In other words, working backwards from Sequoia's 'Why now?', what founder with what product would answer 'because retail is dead and everyone orders online!'

The answer?

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The 2nd Annual LAUNCH Education & Kids Conference Set for June 26 & 27!


We're excited to announce the 2nd annual LAUNCH Education & Kids conference, June 26 & 27, 2013 at Microsoft's campus in Mountain View. In addition, this year we’ve partnered with Pearson for a bigger and better 2nd year of the conference!

We want to make sure we get as many awesome teachers and administrators involved as possible this year, so if you'd like to attend or know someone who should, please leave your email here.

Check http://launchedu.co/ for updates.

Last year, we showcased 30 edtech startups targeting everyone from preschoolers to adult learners, parents to school administrators, plus we had inspiring talks from Marshall Tuck of the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools and Atari founder & BrainRush founder Nolan Bushnell. Watch these keynotes on 'This Week in Startups.'

Highlights from the 2012 event:
/blog/live-blogging-launch-education-kids-day-one.html
/blog/live-blogging-launch-education-kids-day-two.html

Support LAUNCH Education & Kids by sponsoring lunch ($15k), dinner ($20k), breakfast ($10k) or coffee ($7.5k)... all come with an exhibition table. Or just an exhibition table ($3k). Email partners@launch.co for more info.

Catch Ev Williams and Chamath Palihapitiya at the LAUNCH Festival, Plus over $300k in Investment Prizes!



It's just 17 days till LAUNCH Festival 2013 (#Launch2013) at the San Francisco Design Center, March 4-6 -- eek! @Jason and Tyler rehearsed with 25 of the 35 selected companies this week at Sequoia, now we just need to choose the final 15 startups for the stage from hundreds of applicants. If you applied, you'll hear from us by Friday, Feb 15.

Other awesome news to share with you:

1) Fireside chats with Ev Williams and Chamath Palihapitiya

We are honored that Ev (co-founder of Twitter, CEO at The Obvious Corporation) and Chamath (former FB exec & partner, The Social + Capital Partnership) will sit down with Jason for fireside chats!

You can catch Chamath at 9:15am on March 4, and Ev right after lunch on March 5.

Their bios are at http://festival.launch.co/keynotes.html

2) Wow, more than $300k in investment prizes!

Once again, a number of angel investors and funds have earmarked investments for LAUNCH Festival startups. These investments will be announced on stage, and of course are pending post-conference due diligence and paperwork.

 * Altimeter Capital (http://www.altimetercapital.com/) - $125k
 * TechStars (http://www.techstars.com/) - $118k
 * Attractor (http://www.attractor.com/) - $25k
 * Persefon (http://www.persefon.com) - $25k
 * Steve Chen (https://twitter.com/a5steve) - $25k

If you're interested in putting up a prize of $25k or more, please contact partners@launch.co.
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That Was Interesting

Wow.

Now I know why so many intelligent, considered and honest folks told me to not blog about race.

Over the last 24 hours I've been savaged by folks calling me clueless, "the problem" and a  racist.

I've also had 100+ emails from minorities telling me I was 100% right and that they were happy I had joined the discussion.

In other words, the feedback has been polarized -- but not along racial lines. Some of the most brutal commentary has come from white males in the media business. Some of the most supportive emails have come from African Americans, Latinos, Indians and Asian-Americans.

Man did I try to write a balanced piece. I really did. I've never had so many folks tell me I got it so right and so wrong at the same time.

My friend Anil Dash pointed out to me why some responded so passionately: my experience and views do not give enough focus to the fact that many people have actually experienced horrible bias in their lives.

He says I'm denying folks their own experience.

I never intended to deny anyone's individual experience. Sorry if that's the way it came across.

My main premise is that we're shifting from a world in which race drives people's behavior to a "post-race" world. Not that there is no racism or that we have reached the post-race world.

I also was super clear that I was only speaking only about the tech industry and tech blogs -- not all of society. I'm an expert on the former and a neophyte on the later.
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Doing the Right Things



‘When he came, in the game, he made his own lane
Now all I need is y'all to pronounce my name’
-- Mr. West

I’m a white guy so I’m not allowed to talk about race.

At least that’s what they tell me.

Don’t talk about it because it’s a zero-sum game -- and you’ll lose. White guys get all the breaks, and as such we can’t contribute to the discourse.

But I believe we’re on the precipice of a post-race world, and many of us took the leap long ago. We have mixed-race families, diverse startups and we -- gasp! -- select our music based on how it sounds, not the ethnicity of the performer.

We don’t have hatred in our hearts for people, except maybe for inefficient people. Oh yeah, and for the people who build bad products -- we have a lot of hate for them!

Sadly, we live in a world where race still is an issue because some folks haven’t made the leap. Those folks are old and dying in many, perhaps most, cases.
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Should We Talk about the Fact That Jody Sherman Didn't Just Die, But That He Killed Himself?

A very popular founder named Jody Sherman died this week. He was the founder of Ecomom, and had a wonderful reputation for being relentlessly positive, driven and fun.

We weren't close friends, but we were friends. I've received dozens of emails from him over the past two years, and he was on my podcast once. We had a 100 friends in common, as he was a human router who left an impression.  

But he didn't just die, he killed himself.

And it seems like folks are not ready to talk about that issue just yet. Which I can understand. My friend Sarah Lacy wrote a couple of days ago that she didn't want to speculate on his cause of death, nor draw any conclusions to another founder, Aaron Swartz, and his tragic suicide.

I don't want to draw any conclusions either, but I immediately thought of Aaron. Then I thought of Diaspora's co-founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy. They died at ages 26 and 22, respectively, and Jody was 47. All far too young.

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