start-ups

TechCrunch50 kicks off: Let the games begin

SAN FRANCISCO--The fall season has officially begun. Starting Monday morning, the annual TechCrunch50 conference took over the San Francisco Design Center for two days of start-up pitches and presentations; the conference's angle, as co-hosts Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis reiterated, is that all 50 companies on the roster are completely new and launching for the first time.

Start-ups presenting at the conference, which were chosen through a behind-the-scenes elimination process, were grouped into categories. The first of the day was "Youth & Games," with an array of kid-focused and entertainment start-ups.

The day had already begun with … Read more

CNET News Daily Podcast: Charting the rise and fall of a music start-up

CNET News reporter Greg Sandoval joins the podcast to talk about his multipart series on the once-promising music start-up SpiralFrog, which folded last year as a result of factors including inexperienced and divided leadership, wild spending, and strategic missteps. He talks about what lessons the saga might hold for other start-ups.

That, plus other headlines of the day on Tuesday's CNET News Daily Podcast.

Today's stories:

Chevy Volt to pull 230 mpg in city

Apple adds antiglare to 15-inch MacBook Pro

PayPal targets students, parents with debit cards

MLB beefs up Roku's rotation

Inside the short, troubled life of a music start-up… Read more

Useful start-up utility

StartUp Organizer is an easy-to-use utility that lets users review and customize the programs they have set to run when they start their computers. The program's multiple features and intuitive interface make it a great choice.

The program's interface really couldn't be simpler. A list of programs that are set to run on start-up is the first thing users see, and users can easily enable or disable programs by checking or unchecking the boxes next to each one. Of course, users can also make this change in the Windows System Configuration Utility--StartUp Organizer even contains a link … Read more

You, too, can flip a start-up (if you've got 7 years)

Those who joined the technology industry in the 1990s can be forgiven for believing that dramatic wealth for paltry effort is the norm.

For everyone else, it's worth being reminded of something that Trevor Loy, a partner with venture capital firm Flywheel Ventures, said in recent congressional testimony:

We expect to hold a typical venture capital investment for 5-10 years, often longer and, since the technology bubble burst, rarely much less.

Unfortunately, Loy is not alone. In fact, as Tim McAdam and Jim Tybur of Trinity Ventures told me over breakfast Thursday morning, 20 years of National Venture Capital Association data (PDF) … Read more

How a kids video start-up stays afloat

Totlol developer Ron Ilan had enough.

It had been just over a year since he launched his site of community-vetted YouTube videos--where kids can watch Elmo, cutesy animal videos, or "Big Comfy Couch" without the accidental off-color search mishap. And, despite its popularity, he couldn't find a way to make it sustainable or survivable without adverse impacts.

So, earlier this month, at two in the morning, he wrote a long explanatory note to Totlol's users that ended with, "I'm closing Totlol down. Life goes on." Then he went to sleep.

"I woke … Read more

What happens to data when a Web start-up dies?

One of the greatest stumbling blocks that a start-up Web service company has to get over is customers' fear that the company will die and take their data with it. Manufacturers of traditional software can go belly-up without it immediately affecting a product's utility. And if General Motors went out of business tomorrow (I know, shocking), its cars would still be drivable. But Web services are different. When your cloud app goes under for the last time, it sinks customers, too.

In the best of the bad cases, when a Web service goes offline, the company in question is … Read more

Next09: The seven rules of the chief meaning officer

Credit: next09

I just came back from the next09 conference in Hamburg, one of Europe's leading digital/creative/marketing forums that stands out in the conference circuit because of its unique German-international focus (bilingual program, 80 percent international attendees, many international speakers). This year's theme was "Share Economy," and the 1,300 attendees comprised of European VCs and angel investors, Web 2.0 entrepreneurs, media, creative agencies, and executives from German corporations (from BMW to Deutsche Bank to Deutsche Telekom).

In talking to many German attendees, my impression was that the German creative community shows no … Read more

Launch Pad at Web 2.0 Expo: Crawlers in the sky

The mini-Demo conference at the Web 2.0 Expo is the Launch Pad, where five start-up companies pitched to a small panel of experts (Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb, Matt Marshall of VentureBeat, and Anand Iyer of Microsoft) and a moderate audience spread out across a very large hall. Of the five pitches, I found four very smart (read the summaries to figure out which one didn't get my nod) and of those, one appeared to be a genuinely new idea. That would be the first company in this run-down. (The audience, though, liked Nitobi the best.)

80legs is building … Read more

Web 2.0 Expo: Don't worry, be app-y

roundup The annual conference of Web innovators may be smaller than last year's. But it's still a place for big ideas, with a focus on mobile apps and solid business plans. Get the latest news about products and lectures here.

Featured stories Web 2.0 Expo 2009: Downsized, but not out Fewer people, fewer presenters heading to San Francisco Web 2.0 confab. But it could have been much worse. (Posted in Webware by Rafe Needleman) March 30, 2009 9:20 PM PDT O'Reilly: The Web is still learning, but it can teach, too The kickoff keynote … Read more

Y Combinator plans to fund more start-ups

Y Combinator on Monday announced that it has raised a $2 million venture fund with the aid of Sequoia Capital and angel investors.

In making the announcement, Y Combinator noted that it plans to increase the number of start-ups it funds to 60 a year, up from 40.

For Web services and software start-ups, that may bode well. Y Combinator focuses its investments on those two sectors and funds companies that are in their early stages.

As it notes, one unusual twist to this venture firm is its reliance on the strength of entrepreneurs' ideas, rather than on their business … Read more