Disillusionment of an Entrepreneur

Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Prerna Gupta, who is CEO of Khush (now part of Smule), whose music apps,like Songify and LaDiDa, have been used to create over 200 million songs worldwide. You can follow her @prernagupta.

When I became an entrepreneur at the age of twenty-three, I began in earnest, as do all entrepreneurs, chasing a dream. My dream was clear. I would build a consumer technology company that reached ten million people and sell the company for millions of dollars, before the age of thirty. Then, as the dream went, I would retire to an oceanfront house on a warm Pacific beach and learn how to surf.

I recently had the fortune of celebrating a year in which I saw that lofty goal fulfilled. My company’s iPhone apps had over ten million downloads, and a competitor paid a large sum of money to acquire what we had built, just a week before my thirtieth birthday. Dream had become reality.

I took a trip soon after to a secluded surf beach on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua. Sandy-bottom beach break. White sand. House so close to water that the sound of crashing waves made it hard to sleep. This was it. I had made it.

Yet, as I sat dangling my feet off a seven-foot surfboard, missing wave after perfect wave, I saw an unmistakable truth. I was terrible at surfing, and all I really cared about anymore was launching another hit app. Far from retiring, I found myself more in the thrall of ambition than ever before.

Having risked my career in order to escape, at all costs, the Great American Rat Race, this was disconcerting to me. My entrepreneurial intentions had, after all, been pure at the outset. I was drawn to entrepreneurship by the lure of freedom: control of my time, the ability to work on my own creations, no boss, and, of course, the potential for independent wealth. But the purpose of the money was never to buy fancy cars and houses, or to be richer than my peers. I viewed the money simply as a lifelong guarantee of these freedoms. When I had enough wealth to live modestly for the rest of my life without working another day, I would quit. I would stop chasing the dream. And yet here I am, still slaving away. How could this be? I am not one of those miserable over-achieving types who are satisfied with nothing less than better-than-everyone-else. Really. I’m not.

Am I?

You see, a funny thing seems to have happened just before I reached the ten million users mark. That goal of mine nefariously shifted by just a bit, a decimal point to be precise. I have a new goal now. It’s 100 million.

This is the disillusionment of the entrepreneur. There is no such thing as success. It is a moving target. A mirage. By the time you attain what you thought was your wildest dream, reality has moved on and left your dreams in the dust. And the desire for success grows stronger still.

I do not like being enslaved, by anything. There are times when I can feel ambition, that greatest of American virtues, imposing its power over me. There are times when I succumb, for a short while. But to allow myself to be driven by ambition alone would be the ultimate failure. I strive for happiness. Not happiness when I am sixty, but happiness now, and tomorrow, and the day after. And although ambition and happiness can coexist, I have found that the first much more readily thrives without the other.  I understand this now, as I understood it at twenty-three, and my values are unchanged. What can then explain the control ambition has over me today?

Many who run in entrepreneurial circles would say that my dream was insufficient in the first place. Indeed, Silicon Valley frowns upon such middling goals as selling one’s company for mere millions. We should aim for billions, we are told, or not aim at all. I am loath to admit that I have let that over-achiever’s ethos influence my own thinking, but I suppose it is at least partially true.

That’s not the only reason though. While my values have not changed, what has changed is this: work is more fun than it used to be when I was twenty-three. Work actually makes me happy. I always enjoyed entrepreneurship, even though I had many setbacks and failures along the way, but it is infinitely more fun now that I have had some tangible success. This is the real reason I continue. Success builds upon itself, and in so doing, makes the journey more fun. That is not to say I won’t still have failures, in abundance; I am certain I will. Yet underlying the day-to-day failures is the knowledge that I can never truly fail again, because if success does not exist, neither does failure. I am finally free. I am free of the fear of failure. Perhaps that was my dream all along.

I’ll still learn how to surf one day, as soon as I reach that 100 million.

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Posted in: Disillusionment,Entrepreneur

Microsoft Makes $300M Investment In New Barnes & Noble Subsidiary To Battle With Amazon And Apple In E-books

Ingrid is a reporter for TechCrunch, joining February 2012, based out of London. She comes from paidContent.org, where she was a staff writer, and has in the past also written freelance regularly for other publications such as the Financial Times. Ingrid covers mobile, digital media, advertising and the spaces where these intersect. When it comes to work, she feels most... ? Learn More

Barnes & Noble has found a new, major partner in its fight to get an edge over Amazon and Apple in the market for e-books and the devices being used to consume them: it is teaming up with Microsoft in what the two are calling a strategic partnership, name yet to be determined.

It will come in the form of a new subsidiary of B&N that will include all of its Nook business as well as its educational College business. Microsoft is making a $300 million investment in the subsidiary, valuing the company at $1.7 billion in exchange for around 17.6 percent equity in the subsidiary.

The news leaves the door open for B&N to eventually spin these off into a separate business altogether — or even sell them to Microsoft. And it leaves a load of questions about what B&N will do next with the Nook, which is currently built on a forked version of Google’s Android platform.

The new company, referred to for the moment as Newco, will contain B&N’s digital business, as well as its College division. While Microsoft will take 17.6 percent, B&N will own 82.4 percent of the venture.

This is a key way of getting more content on to the Microsoft platform — specifically e-books content to ensure that its Windows 8 tablets will be able to compete not only against the best-selling iPad but also the Kindle Fire from Amazon, along with the rest of the company’s e-readers. The Kindle Fire has stolen a march among Android tablet makers and part of the compelling offer is not only the low price ($199) but also the fact that it contains so much content, including seamless access to all of Amazon’s e-book offerings.

This is also a progression — a very big one — of the funding etudes that Microsoft has been making to developers to make sure they are making apps for Windows Phone. It’s a way of getting more content on its two mobile platforms — which, it can be argued, may have come too late to the market. The first product to come out of the door of Newco? A Nook application for Windows 8, the companies say.

And given that education has been one of Apple’s bigger pushes this year, and the obvious and close links between education and e-reading, it’s not too surprising to see that B&N has also put its College division into this subsidiary.

Microsoft, too, has been courting the education market — inking its biggest-ever cloud-services deal in the education sector earlier this month. Nevertheless the pair have a long road ahead of them. In January, Apple noted that there were already 20,000 educational apps for iOS and that there were already 1.5 million devices deployed in schools, numbers that will inevitably have grown in the last 4-5 months with the launch of the new iPad and numerous initiatives to spread the tablet in the educational sector.

And there is a legal twist to the deal, too: the two companies say they have definitely sorted out their patent litigation now: “Moving forward, Barnes & Noble and Newco will have a royalty-bearing license under Microsoft’s patents for its NOOK eReader and Tablet products,” the two write in the release below. If Microsoft doesn’t use this as an opportunity of possibly persuading B&N to swap over to Windows 8 for a version of the Nook, it will also give it a very interesting inroad into developing more for Android.

As for B&N and the future of these products… this deal looks like it could potentially pave the way for B&N to spin off this business into its own standalone operation, if not into the waiting arms of Microsoft itself — long speculated to be looking at ways of gaining a stronger foothold in the area of mobile devices to better implement its bigger strategy. The idea of a subsidiary was something that B&N had first floated back in January, when it noted that it was weighing up how best to separate its digital business to “maximize shareholder value.”

There are many more questions — such as what this could mean for the company’s broader strategy for growing the market for the Nook (international being a key push that the company has yet to make, apart from some baby steps); and how well, exactly, those products are doing for the company: IDC puts the Nook’s share of the tablet market at just 3.5 percent.

The company is holding a conference call on the deal later today and we’ll update as we learn more.

Full press release below.

New York, NY and Redmond, WA (April 30, 2012) – Barnes & Noble Inc. (NYSE: BKS) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) today announced the formation of a strategic partnership in a new Barnes & Noble subsidiary, which will build upon the history of strong innovation in digital reading technologies from both companies. The partnership will accelerate the transition to e-reading, which is revolutionizing the way people consume, create, share and enjoy digital content.

The new subsidiary, referred to in this release as Newco, will bring together the digital and College businesses of Barnes & Noble. Microsoft will make a $300 million investment in Newco at a post-money valuation of $1.7 billion in exchange for an approximately 17.6% equity stake. Barnes & Noble will own approximately 82.4% of the new subsidiary, which will have an ongoing relationship with the company’s retail stores. Barnes & Noble has not yet decided on the name of Newco.

One of the first benefits for customers will be a NOOK application for Windows 8, which will extend the reach of Barnes & Noble’s digital bookstore by providing one of the world’s largest digital catalogues of e-Books, magazines and newspapers to hundreds of millions of Windows customers in the U.S. and internationally.

The inclusion of Barnes & Noble’s College business is an important component of Newco’s strategic vision. Through the newly formed Newco, Barnes & Noble’s industry leading NOOK Study software will provide students and educators the preeminent technology platform for the distribution and management of digital education materials in the market.

“The formation of Newco and our relationship with Microsoft are important parts of our strategy to capitalize on the rapid growth of the NOOK business, and to solidify our position as a leader in the exploding market for digital content in the consumer and education segments,” said William Lynch, CEO of Barnes & Noble. “Microsoft’s investment in Newco, and our exciting collaboration to bring world-class digital reading technologies and content to the Windows platform and its hundreds of millions of users, will allow us to significantly expand the business.”

“The shift to digital is putting the world’s libraries and newsstands in the palm of every person’s hand, and is the beginning of a journey that will impact how people read, interact with, and enjoy new forms of content,” said Andy Lees, President at Microsoft. “Our complementary assets will accelerate e-reading innovation across a broad range of Windows devices, enabling people to not just read stories, but to be part of them. We’re at the cusp of a revolution in reading.”

Barnes & Noble and Microsoft have settled their patent litigation, and moving forward, Barnes & Noble and Newco will have a royalty-bearing license under Microsoft’s patents for its NOOK eReader and Tablet products. This paves the way for both companies to collaborate and reach a broader set of customers.

Newco,

On January 5, Barnes & Noble announced that it was exploring the strategic separation of its digital business in order to maximize shareholder value. Barnes & Noble is actively engaged in the formation of Newco, which will include Barnes & Noble’s digital and College businesses. The company intends to explore all alternatives for how a strategic separation of Newco may occur. There can be no assurance that the review will result in a strategic separation or the creation of a stand-alone public company, and there is no set timetable for this review. Barnes & Noble does not intend to comment further regarding the review unless and until a decision is made.

Additional information will be contained in a Current Report on Form 8-K to be filed by Barnes & Noble.

Barnes & Noble and Microsoft will host an investor call and webcast beginning at 8:30 A.M. ET on Monday, April 30, 2012. To join the webcast, please visit: www.barnesandnobleinc.com/webcasts.

Barnes & Noble, Inc. is a bookseller. Its principal business is the sale of trade books (generally hardcover and paperback consumer titles, excluding educational textbooks and specialized religious titles), mass-market paperbacks (such as mystery, romance, science fiction and other fiction), children’s books, bargain books, magazines, gift, cafe products and services, music and movies direct to customers. As of January 31, 2009, the Company operated 778 bookstores and a Website. Of the 778 bookstores, 726 operate under the Barnes &...

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Microsoft, founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, is a veteran software company, best known for its Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software. Starting in 1980 Microsoft formed a partnership with IBM allowing Microsoft to sell its software package with the computers IBM manufactured. Microsoft is widely used by professionals worldwide and largely dominates the American corporate market. Additionally, the company has ventured into hardware with consumer products such as the Zune and...

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The nook is an electronic book reader produced by Barnes & Noble and runs on the Android platform. The nook will compete with the Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, and other readers. It is said to include Wi-Fi and AT&T 3G wireless connectivity, a six inch E Ink display, and a separate, smaller color touchscreen that serves as the primary input device. The device will also have a MicroSD slot for extra storage. The nook has a user replaceable battery...

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Posted in: Amazon,Apple,Barnes,Battle,Ebooks,Investment,Makes,Microsoft,Noble,Subsidiary

Brit Morin Engages $1.25M From Marissa Mayer, Aileen Lee, Founders Fund And More To Launch Her First App, Weduary

Alexia Tsotsis works for TechCrunch as a writer. She attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA, majoring in Writing and Art, and moved to New York City shortly after graduation to work in the Media industry. After four years of living in New York and attending courses at New York University, she returned to Los Angeles... ? Learn More

Brit Morin, the Martha Stewart of tech, is today announcing a $1.25 million seed round for her technology and content company Brit. The list of investors is actually pretty sympatico with “the next generation of lifestyle” branding of Brit & Co, with fashion-heavy Index Ventures, tech fashionista Marissa Mayer, KCPB’s Aileen Lee, Tina Sharkey and Seth Goldstein, Kevin Colleran, Annabel Teal, General Catalyst Partners, Founders Fund Angel and DMGT all going in.

In addition to the funding the company is also launching its first app, Weduary, which lets tech-savvy couples build their own attractive and dynamic wedding websites. The Facebook app, which users can try for free, lets prospective brides and grooms build a custom wedding website in four steps, leveraging the Facebook social graph to make it easy to import photos from Facebook, invite guests, coordinate registry details and other event RSVPs.

In addition to logistic planning, the app allows guests to build personal pages using their Facebook profiles and encourages them to connect with other guests through common interests. The app monetizes by offering premium features, right now custom URLs are $15 and premium themes are at $20.

The concept for app originally developed after Morin and her husband (Path founder Dave Morin) had friends keep asking to borrow the code used in planning their own ”Pixel Cowboy”-themed wedding this summer. Disappointed with the general aesthetic hideousness of the website creators already available, Morin decided to build her own.

Morin tells me that while TheKnot.com, MyWedding.com, and WeddingWire.com all let users create wedding sites, Weduary is at an advantage due to its novel Facebook integration, “We are combining the social power of Facebook groups with beautiful themes, plenty of customization options, and other premium features for brides and guests alike.”

An iPhone version of Weduary is coming soon, and Morin tells me that she wants to add more themes and more robust social features to the app’s existing offerings. And while this is the first Brit app to launch, it won’t be the last, as the tech style maven is also looking into other verticals like Home, Style, Food, and Health for her next trick.

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Posted in: Aileen,Engages,First,Founders,Launch,Marissa,Mayer,Morin,Weduary

Zillow, Mum On $45M RentJuice Rumor, Launches First Dedicated Rental App, On Android

Ingrid is a reporter for TechCrunch, joining February 2012, based out of London. She comes from paidContent.org, where she was a staff writer, and has in the past also written freelance regularly for other publications such as the Financial Times. Ingrid covers mobile, digital media, advertising and the spaces where these intersect. When it comes to work, she feels most... ? Learn More

Zillow, according to one report, may be closing in on a deal to buy rental marketing software maker RentJuice for $45 million, but in the meantime the online property portal is focusing on the rental market in another way: by launching its first dedicated rentals app — a free app for Android devices.

Zillow Rentals is the latest development in Zillow’s strategy for mobile, which — now numbering at 10 apps — has become a huge part of its business: on weekends, a full 40 percent of all of Zillow’s traffic — 32 million uniques in March — comes from mobile devices, and in the same month 155 million homes on Zillow were viewed from mobile devices: that works out to 57 homes per second, the company tells me.

And although users are able to view some rental information on the original app, the new, dedicated app gives a speedier and more streamlined experience for the fast, high-volume property viewing that characterizes the average would-be renter, says Jeremy Wacksman, VP of marketing at Zillow.

Wacksman says Zillow opted for Android first over iPhone for the launch because its Android users “tend to skew younger, and we felt this group of earlier adopters could benefit from an app developed specifically with renters in mind.” He says the company will extend it to other platforms in the “near future.” Other apps from Zillow work on iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire, Windows Phone and BlackBerry platforms.

Zillow is partly launching this rental app — and in general getting more focused on the rental space because activity in that segment is on the rise. At the moment, some 70 percent of markets tracked in the Zillow Rental Index showed increases in annual home value. In contrast, only 14 percent of markets tracked in the Zillow Home Value Index (for house sale prices) went up in price.

The new app will have several features that are unique to it. Among them will be the ability to view Rent “Zestimates” — the company’s proprietary rental price estimates on some 100 million properties in the U.S.

The app also lets users compare selected rental properties on a side-by-side list and to narrow searches by geography by drawing boundaries around neighborhoods. It also integrates with Android voice search to find homes in a specific area. People can also browse based on the age of the rental posting, to find those that have just been listed versus those that have been on the market for longer or have already been viewed (and may therefore be a waste of time to visit). Users can also get push notifications for when homes that match their search criteria get posted. There is also the ability to contact owners or landlords through the app.

Zillow has added in a few elements to its property portal that have set it apart from many others in the same field: in addition to list prices, it compiles a list of data around price valuations and recent renovations among other things; and it has inked big deals with other portals like Yahoo and some 180 newspapers to extend its reach.

Wacksman says that Zillow is still seeing “tremendous” growth from its activities in the U.S. so it is continuing to stay focused here rather than expand internationally.

Zillow, Inc. founded and operates Zillow.com – a leading online real estate marketplace dedicated to helping homeowners, buyers, sellers, renters, real estate agents, mortgage professionals, landlords, and property managers find and share vital information about homes, real estate, and mortgages. Zilow, Inc. also operates Zillow Mortgage Marketplace and Zillow Mobile. Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink started Zillow in early 2005, and Zillow.com launched in early 2006 with data and information on millions of U.S. homes. Zillow’s goal is to help...

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Posted in: Android,Dedicated,First,Launches,Rental,RentJuice,Rumor,Zillow

Australian Price Gouging Inquiry Targets Apple, Microsoft And Others

Getting a new laptop or buying a new license for an operating system is often cheaper in the U.S. than in most other countries. Europeans, for example, are used to paying a hefty premium for Apple products and the situation is similar in Australia, where the cheapest MacBook Air currently costs about 15% more than in the United States. Now, however, the Australian government is starting a parliamentary inquiry into these pricing schemes. According to Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald, the politicians behind this inquiry hope that calling these companies out publicly will result in prices dropping.

The final details of this inquiry are still being finalized, says the Sydney Morning Herald, but the committee that will oversee the proceedings plans to invite “all the big computer and software companies including Apple and Microsoft.” The committee will also look at the price differences in eBooks and games in different markets.

Ed Husic, a member of the Australian Parliament and a member of the committee that has been asking for this investigation for the last year or so, argues that “small to medium-sized businesses might pay over $10,000 more on software compared to overseas counterparts.”

The standard argument for higher prices in these markets is that local taxes and the cost of setting up overseas operations increase cost, which are then passed on to local consumers. According to a report by Australia’s Productivity Commission, however, “these excuses, in most cases are not persuasive, especially in the case of downloaded music, software and videos, for example, where the costs of delivery to the customer are practically zero and uniform around the world.”

[Image credit: Sydney Morning Herald]

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Posted in: Apple,Australian,Gouging,Inquiry,Microsoft,Others,Price,Targets

LG To Pull Away From Windows Phone’s Loving Embrace, Refocus On Android

Jordan Crook studied English Literature at New York University before entering the tech space. Prior to joining TechCrunch, Crook dabbled in mobile marketing and mobile apps as well as doing device reviews for MobileMarketer and MobileBurn. Crook is fascinated with alternative energy production and greentech. She is now a writer for CrunchGear. ? Learn More

Sure, Windows Phone is still but a baby alongside Android and iOS, but the platform shows promise. Woz likes it. And the fact that it’s backed by hardware partners like Samsung and Nokia says good things, as well.

But it would seem that LG, coming off of a few quarters in the red, has decided to back away from the platform.

LG reportedly told the Korea Herald that the company would be focusing on Android handsets going forward, since “the total unit of Windows Phone sold in the global market is not a meaningful figure.”

Of course, the platform is way late to the game and shouldn’t necessarily be expected to come in and change the mobile landscape overnight. Yet, the fact that Nokia has put so much of its weight behind the OS should say something about the potential of the platform, as well as the huge differences between the companies.

Both LG and Nokia have had a rough past year. Nokia saw its lowest market share in 14 years, in fact, but despite the fact that change is scary and risky, it’s better to take a chance on something new when you’re down and out than to repeat the same formula.

The Nokia Lumia 900 doesn’t really compete very well on paper, but Windows Phone is its saving grace. The OS is engaging and different, and that can go a long way in a world where iOS and Android have been dominating for so long.

LG, on the other hand, has decided to go back to its original plan, even though a fresh new OS on a few solid pieces of hardware could be the beginning of a refreshed LG.

It’s too early to tell if Windows Phone will be the third mobile ecosystem, but Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam has faith in it, and so do I.

[via WP Central]

The LG Group is South Korea’s third largest conglomerate that produces electronics, chemicals, and telecommunications products and operates subsidiaries like LG Electronics, LG Telecom, Zenith Electronics and LG Chem in over 80 countries.

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Windows Phone 7 is the successor of the Windows Mobile 6.5 mobile operating system in development by Microsoft, scheduled for release by October 2010. Microsoft’s goal is to create a compelling and predictable user experience by redesigning the user interface, disallowing partners to modify or replace it, integrating the operating system with other services, and strictly controlling the hardware it runs on.

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Posted in: Android,Embrace,Loving,Phones,Refocus,Windows

McCann Invests $4M In Israeli Incubator ‘thetime’

Roi Carthy is the Managing Partner at Initial Capital. Previously, Roi has worked at companies such as Soluto, Zend Technologies and 888.com. Roi has been covering the Israeli startup scene for TechCrunch since 2007. Born in Israel, Roi has spent many years abroad living in both the US (Boston, Olivet, DC) and in Europe (Budapest, Zurich). Today, Roi works... ? Learn More

With a $4M investment, McCann Worldgroup has bought a 15% stake in Israeli incubator ‘thetime‘.

This move isn’t a particularly surprising considering ‘thetime’ was founded by Ilan Shiloah, who for the past 10 years has been chairman of McCann Erickson Israel. ‘thetime’ was also co-founded by angel investor, Nir Tarlovsky. Uri Weinheber, previously of Lab One, acts as the incubator’s CEO.

A Chief Scientist licensed incubator, the stated objective of the ‘thetime’ is new media investments (although this seems not to be a hard constraint). The current portfolio consists of 30 startups, including Tawkon & SohoOS.

This is of course great news for the Israeli startup ecosystem, which over the past couple of years has seen a substantial increase in early-stage investment outfits and accelerators.

thetime is an investment company focusing on young innovative technology startups in the areas of Telecom, Internet, Media and Entertainment (T.I.M.E.).

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Posted in: Incubator,Invests,Israeli,McCann,thetime

I, For One, Welcome Our Remote-Controlled Robotic Fire-Breathing Dragon Overlords

Biggs is the East Cost Editor of TechCrunch. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at... ? Learn More

A bit of silly for your Monday morning: this is a flying, RC-controlled robotic dragon that actually breathes fire and sounds like a monstrous squeal demon as it takes off. The Dragon took a year to build and won Best In Show at the Toledo RC event, Weak Signals.

A modeler named Rick Hamel built the dragon and painted over 600 airbrushed scales on its plastic carapace. Sadly, he did not use it to cover his private parts after hatching it in a funeral pyre a la the Khaleesi

via Hobbymedia

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Posted in: Dragon,FireBreathing,Overlords,RemoteControlled,Robotic,Welcome

Rovio: Angry Birds Space Downloaded 50 Million Times In 35 Days

Matt is currently working as a writer for TechCrunch. Matt Burns is a family man first and attempts to be a writer second. Born and raised in the heart of the automotive world, only cars eclipse his love of gadgets. He previously wrote for Engadget and EngadgetHD before moving into the party house that is TechCrunch. He learned the retail... ? Learn More

Rovio to Houston. The Mighty Eagle as landed. Big time.

Rovio just took to Twitter to announce that its latest Angry Birds installment, Angry Birds Space, was downloaded 50 million times in 35 days. As the company brags, that makes Angry Birds Space the fastest growing mobile game in history. People clearly cannot get enough of flinging upset birds at moderately evil (or perhaps, misunderstood) pigs.

Angry Birds Space launched on March 22 with much fanfare. Rovio had been on a sort of media tour, hyping the gaming to astronomical levels. And for good reason. It had been a full year since a new Angry Birds game hit. Angry Birds Rio launched on March 22, 2011. Rovio had to hype not only the new title, but also the franchise. But, 35 short days later, Angry Birds Space hit the record books, shattering previous benchmarks.

Rovio isn’t going to wait another year this time around. In an interview with TechCrunch Mr. Angry Bird himself, Peter Vesterbacka, promised four new games yet to come this year.

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Posted in: Angry,Birds,Downloaded,Million,Rovio,Space,Times

Wrapp Brings Social, Mobile Gifting Service To The U.S.; Partners With The Gap, H&M And Others

Leena Rao currently works as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... ? Learn More

Wrapp, a social gifting service backed by Greylock Partners and Atomico, is crossing the pond with the U.S. launch of its mobile gift card and retail app. Wrapp, which was available previously only in the UK, Norway, Sweden and Japan, Wrapp is actually launching today with a number of U.S. retailers including Fab, Gap, H&M, Sephora, The Wall Street Journal, Wayfair, and others.
As we’ve reported in the past, Wrapp was co-founded by Rebtel and SendIt founder Hjalmar Winbladh, Spotify founding CTO Andreas Ehn, and lets friends give, receive and redeem digital gift cards using mobile devices, and allows friends to contribute to gifts given by mutual friends. With Wrapp, which offers iPhone, Android and web apps, you sign in via your Facebook account, and you can then tap the Celebration tab on the app, browse your friends or major events, and select the person you want to send a gift card to. All available gift card offers for that friend are automatically listed.
You can then select the retailer and the gift card offer you want, write your celebration greeting, select a delivery date, enter payment details (if you’re contributing extra funds to a free gift card), and send the gift. Your friend will be notified and celebrated through Facebook and the Wrapp application. Merchants can actually specify the amounts they’d like to offer via the service, and target specific demographics of users with gift card options, which is something other online social gifting options don’t allow.
To collect a gift card you click on the link sent to you in email, text message (SMS) or on your Facebook wall, which lets the user automatically download the Wrapp app. To use the card, you select the card you want to redeem, and then show the resulting barcode to the cashier, which then gets scanned to complete the transaction.
For merchants and in-store retailers, says founder Winbladh, Wrapp is an ideal way to connect with potential customers because it not only allows them to target specific users by demographics, but also provides a valuable form of advertising.
Winbladh says that while he’s always been bullish on mobile, in 2008, he started observing the increased pressure on brick and mortar retailers and was thinking through the ways that retailers can drive people in stores. He and his co-founders sought out to reinvent the gift card market to help drive traffic for retailers. He believes the gift card, which has gone through little innovation to date, can be made social, viral and mobile.
“Friend to friend marketing is best way to drive sales in retail market,” he explains. “Not only is Wrapp a innovative, social way for consumers to gift, but it’s also a performance tool for big retailers.”
And the service seems to be gaining traction amongst both consumers and retailers. Participating merchants report that each sale averages four to six times the value of the free gift card they let Wrapp users give to their friends.
In December alone, Wrapp users used the service to buy 250,000 gift cards. And the app went viral in the country, with 2 percent of all Facebook users in Sweden downloading the app. After three months live in Sweden, one percent of the Swedish population had interacted with Wrapp. During the last four months more than 165,000 people have given their Facebook friends over 1.4 million free gift cards that could be redeemed in stores operated by nearly 60 major retailers in Europe.
A launch in the U.S. could be a turning point for the company. As board member and Greylock partner Reid Hoffman tells us, for the vast majority of Internet companies, the degree with which they succeed is determined by how well you an do in the U.S. But he believes Wrapp is in a perfect position to potentially reach critical mass, and create a network between retailers and consumers at a high volume. “Retailers know that they need to move towards retail 2.0; and Wrapp provides this valued experience,” Hoffman tells me. And because of the upswing in consumer use of smartphones and social network, Wrapp is in a prime position to gain traction amongst shoppers.
There are other players trying to shake up the gift card market with mobile technologies, including recently launched Karma. But what’s compelling about Wrapp is the win for retailers in helping drive traffic in-store and being able to target certain user based upon social and demographic data provided by Facebook.
What’s next for Wrapp? We’ll be seeing a number of more big-name U.S. merchants announced in the next few months, says Winbladh. We’re told that more than 15 additional U.S. merchants are now scheduled to start using Wrapp in the coming months. And we’ll see the company expand to other countries as well.

Wrapp is a social gifting service for celebrating friends’ occasions with free and paid gifts from attractive brands. Wrapp allows friends to contribute to gifts, and makes it fun and easy to give, receive and redeem using mobile devices and the web. Founded in the first half of 2011 by a group of serial entrepreneurs, Wrapp is based in Stockholm and Silicon Valley.
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Posted in: Brings,Gifting,Mobile,Others,Partners,Service,Social,Wrapp

Greylock Deepens Enterprise Experience, Adds Former BladeLogic CEO And BMC President As Venture Partner

Leena Rao currently works as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... ? Learn More

Greylock Partners has been long focused on two distinct areas when it comes to venture investments—consumer and enterprise. The last consumer partner hire the firm made was former CEO of Mozilla, John Lilly. And today, the firm is deepening its experience in its enterprise practice with the addition of Dev Ittycheria as Venture Partner in Greylock’s Silicon Valley office.

At Greylock, Ittycheria will be focusing on investing in enterprise software companies, with a focus on cloud-based services and enabling IT infrastructure. Ittycheria is a long-time enterprise veteran with a history of not only founding successful startups, but also helping lead established companies towards revenue growth. He co-founded BladeLogic, which he led through a successful IPO and eventually a sale to BMC Software in 2008 for $900 million.

Following the acquisition, Ittycheria was the President of BMC Software where he led BMC’s $1.4 billion enterprise service management business with more than 4,000 employees in over 25 countries. Prior to BladeLogic, he founded early cloud computing pioneer Applica, which merged with Breakaway Solutions (Breakaway went public in the late 1990s). He also had a brief role as Entrepreneur-In-Residence in Bessemer Venture Partners.

More recently, Ittycheria has been a startup investor and board member at several companies including Bazaarvoice, AthenaHealth and application management company AppDynamics (where Greylock is a founding investor). It was actually through his recent work with AppDynamics that he grew closer to Greylock partner Asheem Chandna, who also serves on the company’s board. Chandna tells us he felt that Ittycheria’s experience advising enterprise companies and leading his own ventures would fit perfectly with Greylock’s venture strategy.

Ittycheria, who has already started actively helping a number of Greylock companies think through and refine their go-to-market and distribution strategies, tells us jokingly that after having started, built and scaled two companies, he has lots of scar tissue, and enjoys helping advising other enterprise companies navigate through these waters. He explains, “I chose Greylock because they have amazing track record in both enterprise and consumer…It’s a great cultural fit.”

With the addition of Ittycheria, Greylock’s senior investing team in enterprise now includes six professionals, says Chandna.

Ittycheria explains that particularly interested in investing in companies enabling cloud servers and underlying management and IT infrastructure, including storage, big data, enterprise mobility, and security.

He adds that he believes that IT buying behavior has changed significantly since his days at BladeLogic. “Companies are realizing there’s not a lot of innovation coming out large incumbents in the enterprise. Today, because of the disruptive technologies coming out of startups, customers are much more open to working to smaller, innovative companies.” Because of this trend, he believes it’s a “great time to be en enterprise investor.”

Greylock partners with entrepreneurs to help them build market-leading businesses. Over the past 45 years the firm has worked with hundreds of companies, 150 of which have gone on to IPOs and 100 of which have gone on to profitable M&A events. Such companies include Ascend Communications, CheckFree, CipherTrust, Constant Contact, Continental Cable, Decru, Data Domain, DoubleClick, Farecast, Internet Security Systems, Ikanos, Legato, Media Metrix, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Openwave, Open Market, OutlookSoft, Polyserve, Red Hat, RightNow Technologies, Success Factors, Tellabs,...

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Posted in: BladeLogic,Deepens,Enterprise,Experience,Former,Greylock,Partner,President,Venture

Ski Lift Retailer Liftopia Goes White Label, Lets Resorts Add E-Commerce To Their Own Sites

Sarah currently works as a writer for TechCrunch, after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to becoming a professional blogger, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software. ? Learn More

Liftopia, the startup offering consumers discounts on ski tickets and other snow-related activities, is today launching a new e-commerce platform for the ticket sellers themselves called “Cloud Store by Liftopia.” The service will be offered for free to any mountain resort for use on their own websites (including mobile), starting first in North America, then followed by resorts in Europe. Once up-and-running, Cloud Store allows the resort to sell tickets using variable pricing – similar to how airline tickets, hotel stays and car rentals are sold today.

The idea behind the new system is to give the resorts more control over their ticket prices on a daily basis – and it’s a timely launch, given one of the worst ski seasons in recent history. On bad days, resorts can offer deep discounts to entice skiers to head out. On good days, the discounts (if any) may not be as low.

Liftopia says it has been piloting the program with 15 resorts in North America, including Park City, Utah, Whiteface, Crystal Mountain (Mich.), Mad River Glen, and Bretton Woods. The participating resorts grew their Liftopia revenue by as much as 12x year-over-year, the company is now reporting.

For example, the first pilot resort, a small regional resort, sold more than $240,000 in season passes during October, before there was any snowfall. Another generated $25,000 in net revenue on the first day of implementation, and made more than $11,000 in daily net revenue before the season’s end. A small New England resort sold $15,000 worth of lift tickets in the first two hours following an email blast which pointed users to the Cloud Store system.

The system is powered by the same technology that Liftopia already uses to sell lift tickets online, but is designed for integration into the resort’s own websites using their own branding. In addition, it offers mobile integration, social integration and social sharing tools, support for product merchandising, and, of course, data and analytics to help the resort determine demand and adjust pricing accordingly.

Although the system itself is available for free, Liftopia takes a cut of the tickets sold through the service. The company doesn’t disclose how much, but it’s a sliding revenue share, based on volume.

Liftopia raised $1.3 million in October from First Round Capital, Dave Morin, Chris Sacca, Erik Blanchford and Sam Shank, bringing its total funding to nearly $3 million.

Update: Liftopia doesn’t think it’s fair to call this a white label system, because although it’s built on top of the same tech and lets the resorts do custom branding, the system offers a “more robust suite of tools and analytics” than Liftopia.com did. 

Liftopia is a complete online ski marketplace, offering the largest source of discount ski lift tickets online with added deals on rentals, lessons, dining and other mountain-related activities and products. With deals at more than 150 resorts across North America, Liftopia offers skiers and snowboarders the ability to buy date-specific lift tickets and other on-mountain activities online and in advance for up to 80% off the ticket window prices. Liftopia takes the hassle out of planning a ski trip...

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Posted in: ECommerce,Label,Liftopia,Resorts,Retailer,Sites,Their,White

Marketplace For Customized Goods CustomMade Raises $4M From Google Ventures And Others

Leena Rao currently works as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... ? Learn More

CustomMade , an online marketplace that connects shoppers with artisans to make customized goods, has raised $4 million in funding co-led by Google Ventures and Schooner Capital. Existing investors Launch Capital, Nextview Ventures, Andrew McCollum and First Round Capital all participated in the round. This brings CustomMade’s total funding to $8 million.

CustomMade allows customers who want to make custom products like jewelry and furniture post project proposals. The startup has built a community of makers that can browse through customer project requests and assign themselves to ones they are suited to. Makers can sign up for and build profiles on the site, which allows customers to browse through their portfolios.

Currently, the site has over 3,000 artisans and are seeing $500,000 worth of project requests per week. An average project receives three bids and is completed for $1,000. And transaction volume is growing at 50 percent each month.

The site aims to differentiate itself from artisan marketplace for homemade goods, Etsy, by focusing exclusively on items that have are customized or personalized. For example, you could have a piece of jewelry replicated, or a piece of furniture custom designed and created. And CustomMade’s price point is higher than Etsy.

Co-founder Seth Rosen explains that the site been around since 1996, but he and co-founder Mike Salguero bought CustomMade in 2009, and for the first two years, focused on adding high-quality makers and artisans to the platform.

“CustomMade as a platform is creating a fundamentally different retail paradigm,” said Google Ventures partner Rich Miner. “The model of giving consumers the ability to access, select and create custom work as an affordable and fun alternative to shopping at a retail store is a large opportunity and one that we are excited about as we continue to work with CustomMade.”

The new funding will be used to expand the site’s technology infrastructure.

CustomMade is a marketplace for the world’s professional craftsmen and creators. Here, you can custom make or customize anything you are looking for - from a unique bed to a one-of-a-kind wedding ring. Browse, discover, and request anything you might want custom made. Need something built on demand or simply want something unique? Connect with our craftsmen, describe your ideas, and bring your creation to life. Get exactly what you want, the way you...

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Posted in: Customized,CustomMade,Goods,Google,Marketplace,Others,Raises,Ventures

Disillusionment of an Entrepreneur

Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Prerna Gupta, who is CEO of Khush (now part of Smule), whose music apps, like Songify and LaDiDa, have been used to create over 200 million songs worldwide. You can follow her @prernagupta.

When I became an entrepreneur at the age of twenty-three, I began in earnest, as do all entrepreneurs, chasing a dream. My dream was clear. I would build a consumer technology company that reached ten million people and sell the company for millions of dollars, before the age of thirty. Then, as the dream went, I would retire to an oceanfront house on a warm Pacific beach and learn how to surf.

I recently had the fortune of celebrating a year in which I saw that lofty goal fulfilled. My company’s iPhone apps had over ten million downloads, and a competitor paid a large sum of money to acquire what we had built, just a week before my thirtieth birthday. Dream had become reality.

I took a trip soon after to a secluded surf beach on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua. Sandy-bottom beach break. White sand. House so close to water that the sound of crashing waves made it hard to sleep. This was it. I had made it.

Yet, as I sat dangling my feet off a seven-foot surfboard, missing wave after perfect wave, I saw an unmistakable truth. I was terrible at surfing, and all I really cared about anymore was launching another hit app. Far from retiring, I found myself more in the thrall of ambition than ever before.

Having risked my career in order to escape, at all costs, the Great American Rat Race, this was disconcerting to me. My entrepreneurial intentions had, after all, been pure at the outset. I was drawn to entrepreneurship by the lure of freedom: control of my time, the ability to work on my own creations, no boss, and, of course, the potential for independent wealth. But the purpose of the money was never to buy fancy cars and houses, or to be richer than my peers. I viewed the money simply as a lifelong guarantee of these freedoms. When I had enough wealth to live modestly for the rest of my life without working another day, I would quit. I would stop chasing the dream. And yet here I am, still slaving away. How could this be? I am not one of those miserable over-achieving types who are satisfied with nothing less than better-than-everyone-else. Really. I’m not.

Am I?

You see, a funny thing seems to have happened just before I reached the ten million users mark. That goal of mine nefariously shifted by just a bit, a decimal point to be precise. I have a new goal now. It’s 100 million.

This is the disillusionment of the entrepreneur. There is no such thing as success. It is a moving target. A mirage. By the time you attain what you thought was your wildest dream, reality has moved on and left your dreams in the dust. And the desire for success grows stronger still.

I do not like being enslaved, by anything. There are times when I can feel ambition, that greatest of American virtues, imposing its power over me. There are times when I succumb, for a short while. But to allow myself to be driven by ambition alone would be the ultimate failure. I strive for happiness. Not happiness when I am sixty, but happiness now, and tomorrow, and the day after. And although ambition and happiness can coexist, I have found that the first much more readily thrives without the other.  I understand this now, as I understood it at twenty-three, and my values are unchanged. What can then explain the control ambition has over me today?

Many who run in entrepreneurial circles would say that my dream was insufficient in the first place. Indeed, Silicon Valley frowns upon such middling goals as selling one’s company for mere millions. We should aim for billions, we are told, or not aim at all. I am loath to admit that I have let that over-achiever’s ethos influence my own thinking, but I suppose it is at least partially true.

That’s not the only reason though. While my values have not changed, what has changed is this: work is more fun than it used to be when I was twenty-three. Work actually makes me happy. I always enjoyed entrepreneurship, even though I had many setbacks and failures along the way, but it is infinitely more fun now that I have had some tangible success. This is the real reason I continue. Success builds upon itself, and in so doing, makes the journey more fun. That is not to say I won’t still have failures, in abundance; I am certain I will. Yet underlying the day-to-day failures is the knowledge that I can never truly fail again, because if success does not exist, neither does failure. I am finally free. I am free of the fear of failure. Perhaps that was my dream all along.

I’ll still learn how to surf one day, as soon as I reach that 100 million.

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Posted in: Disillusionment,Entrepreneur

Hardware Start-Ups: Join Us In Hardware Alley At TechCrunch Disrupt NY

Biggs is the East Cost Editor of TechCrunch. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at... ? Learn More

TechCrunch Disrupt is all about start-ups but we often give short shrift to hardware-based companies. Well, that’s about to change because we’re now running Hardware Alley, a one day exhibition of some of the coolest hardware start-ups in NY and beyond.

Running a Kickstarter project? Building a better mousetrap? Creating something cool out of scrap metal and wires? Register as a Hardware Alley exhibitor. You’ll get admission on the last day of Disrupt, May 23, a table to show off your goods, and access to some of the most interesting people (and most interesting VCs) in the world. We’d love to have you.

Email Matt Burns (matt@techcrunch.com) with the subject of “I Want To Be In Hardware Alley” for more pricing and more information. He also likes cats gifs. There is a limited amount of space so hit him up quickly.

TechCrunch will provide a 24? round cocktail height table, linens, signage, 3 amps of power and WiFi internet connectivity to Hardware Alley companies.Hardware Alley attendees set up at 7AM on Wednesday May 23rd.LOCATION: Pier 94 in Midtown Manhattan755 12th Avenue(W 55th Street & 12th)New York, NY 10019

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Posted in: Alley,Disrupt,Hardware,StartUps,TechCrunch

The Seven Forces Disrupting Venture Capital

Currently, operations @votizen / Advisor to @gumroad, @dygestnews, and @rexly, where I worked previously. Please visit www.semilshah.com for more information ? Learn More

Editor’s Note: TechCrunch columnist Semil Shah currently works at Votizen and is based in Palo Alto. You can follow him on Twitter @semil

For the past few years, I have read over what seems like hundreds of blogs and thousands of tweets that either directly claim or indirectly hint at a disruption of traditional venture capital. For some, the factors relate to the economy, that limited partners and institutional investors were reviewing their investment approaches. For others, it seemed as if there was too much money in the asset class, that there was too much money chasing too few real opportunities. There seemed to be a long laundry list of why venture capital was undergoing this shift, but never any thread that could lay out all the factors and synthesize just how each factor contributed to shift, until now…

(Note: 1. Since “venture capital” is applied to many different industries with vastly different economic structures, this post will focus on software startups. 2. I am not going to list examples below because there are too many and I don’t want to exclude any particular companies.)

First, we have Amazon: It’s cheap to build, host, test, and optimize software. Amazon Web Services, for instance, reduce operational costs for young companies, directly impacting a startups’ burn rate. Whereas in the past a not insignificant part of an investment may be allocated to hosting, Amazon’s innovation has helped entrepreneurs better manage costs and dampened the need for venture capital investors to help out early with operational expenses.

Secondly, Angel Investors: Once a products gets to some proof of concept, an entrepreneur can raise seed funding from an incredibly wide range of sources. Those that are either connected or lucky can solicit checks from family, friends, former bosses and colleagues, or they join incubators (more on this below), or reach out to relatively obscure or more well-known angel investors, all the way up to small institutional funds, what some people refer to as “Super Angels” or “MicroVCs,” or websites dedicated to pairing investors with investment opportunities (more on this below). The flood of early-stage capital has triggered some venture capital firms to also invest in the seed stage, where they have to compete directly with smaller funds or vehicles, though a small handful of firms have resisted and focused on Series A-style investments.

Third, we have AngelList: Simply one of the most disruptive forces to the venture industry, the folks behind AngelList have created extremely useful social software that pairs investors with investment opportunities. For angel investors, AngelList provides an asynchronous way to scout, monitor, track, and communicate with potential investment; for startups, the system provides an opportunity for them to network, build reputation and good signals, and connects them to a wider range of potential funders. The disruption AngelList provides to venture capital is that the system could theoretically be used for larger Series A and B fundings, and in some cases, probably has. It remains to be seen if it can scale across to this level, but given how much it has accomplished in a few years, it’s not out of the question.

Fourth, we have Kickstarter and crowdfunding: For some particular startups that aren’t able to secure seed funds, either from angels, super angels, angel-focused software, or venture capitalists that make seed investments, they can leverage crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter to tap into an even wider pool of available funds. And now with the JOBS Act, which will allow for crowdfunding of certain startups in certain situations, new companies can now raise small amounts of money from many different people, just as a political candidate may use small online donations from a large base to raise funds.

Fifth, there’s Y Combinator: While there seems to be an incubator popping up weekly nowadays, the system, network, and brand built by the partners at Y Combinator has, in a relatively short period of time, captured significant power in the early-stage ecosystem by attracting, vetting, and training technical entrepreneurs on the ins and outs of how to start technology companies. Each class in Y Combinator prepares for their Demo Day, and each company has the option to accept $150,000 in convertible debt — and not just from anyone (more on this below). Having this cash on hand affords these companies a bit more time and runway should they need it, and gives them some negotiating leverage when talking to larger investors who are keen to invest, sometimes resulting in higher valuations that venture capitalists have to compete against.

Sixth, is “New” Venture Capital: The money given to these YC companies isn’t just normal money — it’s in part from a new style of venture capital pioneered by firms like Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z) and DST. While DST has made big bets and partnered with YC, A16Z has also raised large funds with a relatively small partnership, choosing instead to challenge the traditional venture capital personnel structure by operationalizing services across functional areas such as business development, recruiting, public relations, and sales. For a founder, the services offered in this model are attractive, and this has motivated some other venture capital firms to change their own structures in an effort to provide more services to their companies. Additionally, the A16Z investment thesis, which seems to be designed around a belief that this is a particularly unique period of opportunity for transformation both on the web and in mobile and that a small share of winners in these categories will produce outsized returns. As a result, they seem to be willing to pay higher prices, which either forces traditional venture to compete or wait for the next thing.

And, finally, seventh are secondary markets: Now that early-stage shareholders (investors, founders, employees) of certain companies can sell their shares on these secondary markets, such as SecondMarket or SharesPost, they are able to access liquidity much earlier in the past. On the flip side, larger venture capital funds that may have missed out on the next big thing because the new company was incubated, or crowdfunded, or funded via a social network or small or large angel investors may have a chance to own a piece of the entity through these markets. In some cases, venture capital firms have been quite opportunistic to buy and sell shares of larger web companies in a short period of time, making a quick flip and marketing to the world that they, too, have invested in a particular company. While these markets provide venture capital with access, they also have to compete with a larger number of  firms for these deals, a factor that could drive up prices and thereby affect returns.

All of these forces combined, and each individually in their own way, have altered the landscape for traditional venture capital in software. It is on average significantly more difficult to for traditional firms to find early-stage opportunities because there is more competition for those investments, and once a company does breakout and require more institutional funding, the prices for those rounds may not look like they have in the past. Some of this is reflective of the competitive forces that set market prices for private companies, or, depending on where you sit, is simply the new price to pay in order to own a piece of these coveted assets.

And while we’re able to analyze what has happened so far, I have no clue what the next few years will hold. Will the next big breakout originate from an incubator, will it be funded by software platforms, or will it be discovered by a small set of angels and venture capitalists, as it has for so many years to date? In the great race to find incredible talent before others, and the great race to own shares in private companies, there are more questions here than answers, but there’s no denying that it will be fascinating to see unfold.

Photo Credit: Slack Pics / Creative Commons Flickr

AngelList is a community of startups and investors who make fund-raising efficient. Started by the dudes who do Venture Hacks. Meet the startups and investors. As of March 22 2011, approximately 275 startups and 417 investors have raised money and invested via AngelList.

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SecondMarket is the leading marketplace for alternative investments. It has become the online destination for building your investor network, discovering interesting investment opportunities, and transacting in assets such as private venture-backed companies and private community banks, fixed income products, public equity and bankruptcy claims. SecondMarket simplifies secondary market activity by connecting buyers and sellers and providing world-class market and operations expertise. Since 2004, SecondMarket has brought together more than 100,000 individuals and institutions and completed billions of dollars in...

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SharesPost is the next generation solution for the private capital markets. The company uses innovative technology to efficiently connect individual institutional and angels investors with high quality private investment opportunities. For more information, please visit www.sharespost.com.

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Andreessen Horowitz is a $950 million venture capital firm that was launched on July 6, 2009. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz are the general partners of the firm.

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Y Combinator is a venture fund which focuses on seed investments to startup companies. It offers financing as well as business consulting along with other opportunities to 2-4 person companies looking to take an idea to a product. Y Combinator looks for companies with “good” ideas over companies with experience and a business model. The company made its first investments in Summer 2005. Y Combinator selects companies to finance and consult with twice a year. They are located in...

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Since early 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has provided companies of all sizes with an infrastructure web services platform in the cloud. With AWS you can requisition compute power, storage, and other services–gaining access to a suite of elastic IT infrastructure services as your business demands them. With AWS you have the flexibility to choose whichever development platform or programming model makes the most sense for the problems you’re trying to solve. You pay only for what you use,...

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Every week, tens of thousands of people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, games, fashion, food, publishing, and other creative fields. Since its launch on April 28th, 2009, more than one and a quarter million people have pledged $130 million to projects by creators who always maintain full ownership and complete creative control of their work.

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Posted in: Capital,Disrupting,Forces,Seven,Venture

How Much Revenue Does It Take To Be A $1B Public Company?

Editor’s note: Patrick Moran is an executive at New Relic, a SaaS web app performance company with over 21,000 active customers. Follow him on Twitter @patrickmoran.

With all the chatter about Billion dollar valuations — like Instagram, Evernote, Splunk —  combined with recent S1 filings and IPOs, the topic of tech company valuation is coming to the forefront of people’s minds. Specifically related to the software industry, the growing number of SaaS IPO candidates of late is signaling an important shift in the way that enterprise software is built and sold. It also indicates that the subscription business model is here to stay. What does this shift towards a subscription economy means for startups, investors and the IPO landscape?

First of all – get Instagram out of your mind. The price it sold for is not relevant to us mere mortals who are building B2B software businesses. For all good, non-bubble reasons, SaaS companies need tens of millions in revenue, high growth, and solid business fundamentals. What you may notice though, is that revenue may be lower than what we’ve become accustomed to during the last few years of IPO drought.

Recurring Revenue is ‘worth more’ and is more predictable

For the last several years, the magic revenue number for going public was around $100M – but that seems to be changing. It appears that the market will be more tolerant of sub-$100M as long as the company’s metrics are healthy, and that the revenue that they do have is 1) growing and 2) recurring. With the recurring revenue that SaaS business models have, investors can better predict growth and model what trajectory the business is on. This makes them favorable bets.

Looking at recent S1 filings, you can see this in action:  Jive Software filed its S1 with a revenue run rate of about $60M last summer. Eloqua filed with about $60M in revenue. ServiceNow looks more traditional with about $92M in 2011 revenue (filed earlier this month). Bizarre Voice filed in August with about $64M in revenue. When Yelp filed (sort of a SaaS play!) – it had $58.38M (first nine months of 2011). All of these companies had accumulated losses, and most of them were still losing money at the time of filing. That does not mean they are not good business models – with subscription businesses, the upfront investment in customer acquisition is relatively high, but the return from the customer takes a little bit longer than the old software licensing model (lifetime value is spread across the life of contract with SaaS, not upfront).

A different kind of Billion dollar club

What’s interesting and important to note, is that each of the above companies could all be worth north of $1 billion after their IPO debuts. Jive is already there, as is Yelp and Bazaar Voice has a $1B market cap. Other valuation conversations regarding SaaS have focused on companies like Taleo that sold to Oracle for $1.9B (6.5 times trailing 12-month sales) and SuccessFactors getting scooped for $3.4B (with 350M in revenue). While TechCrunch mostly writes about the private companies that make the billion valuation club – these companies have done it in the public market – in some ways even harder than what Twitter and others have done with VC valuations.

The Future of Business Software is SaaS, Subscriptions, and Pay-as-you-go

SaaS and Subscription Models are the future of software. Period. And according to Ben Horrowitz of Andreeson Horowitz, software is eating the world. So technically, SaaS is the future of the world. TechCrunch readers may already be over this hump, but the titans of enterprise software (Oracle, Microsoft, CA, IBM) are still clinging on to the licensing models of yesteryear – but they’ll be disrupted soon enough. Meanwhile, the financial markets are just starting to understand how to value the new business models of the Subscription Economy.

Easy to pay & stay, easy to go

Because revenue from each customer is recognized monthly, it takes a lot of customers to grow to sizable, IPO-ready rates. The old method of recognizing revenue from a big license deal doesn’t work with SaaS companies. Accountants won’t allow it. That means even if you get a big 2-year contract, you can only recognize it one month at a time. Early SaaS companies complained about this, but now we know that recurring, predictable revenue rocks! There a couple of useful metrics to understand here:

Good: The Lifetime Value Effect

The good thing about SaaS revenue? It’s recurring. If your product is well received, it grows. More seats, more servers – whatever your model is – your average revenue grows from each account. A good SaaS company will measure and share its growth per account – a rate of 20% more signals a healthy model.

Bad: Churn can kill you, or at least your market cap

If you are building a SaaS business, churn is your enemy. Most public SaaS companies report their monthly churn rate, either as a percentage of revenue or actual customers gained/lost. These rates depend on the type of business – 2% monthly churn is in the “tolerable range” according to many experts.

Bookings, ARR & other early indicators – In private companies, we have insight into quarterly new bookings – as does the management team at public SaaS companies. These bookings paint a picture of what’s to come, and provides visibility into future, predictable revenue growth. When you run your SaaS business by the numbers and understand your LTV (lifetime value) and Churn, you learn to love the benefits of the SaaS subscription revenue waterfall.

High Upfront Sales & Marketing expenses – On the surface, S&M expenses look high.  But early on, as you’re building your subscription revenue base, you need to invest in these disciplines. Once you understand your lifetime value, you know how much you can spend to acquire the customer and most investors in private firms push you to push that to the max – and take those losses early so you can enjoy larger profits later.

Even if you are not the next Instagram, you can still achieve the billion dollar club status. The conventional metrics of bookings, revenue, licensing don’t apply to the new crop of SaaS IPOs getting ready to take flight. The new metrics are LTV, Churn, Customer Satisfaction, and Growth-oriented pricing. While these models tend to look expensive early on (high marketing, product development costs), the smart companies know that building a base early will pay dividends (perhaps literally) thanks to predictable, repeatable, growing subscription revenue. You just need to know what to look for.

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Posted in: Company,Public,Revenue

Zillow, Mum On $45M RentJuice Rumor, Launches First Dedicated Rental App, On Android

Ingrid is a reporter for TechCrunch, joining February 2012, based out of London. She comes from paidContent.org, where she was a staff writer, and has in the past also written freelance regularly for other publications such as the Financial Times. Ingrid covers mobile, digital media, advertising and the spaces where these intersect. When it comes to work, she feels most... ? Learn More

Zillow, according to one report, may be closing in on a deal to buy rental marketing software maker RentJuice for $45 million, but in the meantime the online property portal is focusing on the rental market in another way: by launching its first dedicated rentals app — a free app for Android devices.

Zillow Rentals is the latest development in Zillow’s strategy for mobile, which — now numbering at 10 apps — has become a huge part of its business: on weekends, a full 40 percent of all of Zillow’s traffic — 32 million uniques in March — comes from mobile devices, and in the same month 155 million homes on Zillow were viewed from mobile devices: that works out to 57 homes per second, the company tells me.

And although users are able to view some rental information on the original app, the new, dedicated app gives a speedier and more streamlined experience for the fast, high-volume property viewing that characterizes the average would-be renter, says Jeremy Wacksman, VP of marketing at Zillow.

Wacksman says Zillow opted for Android first over iPhone for the launch because its Android users “tend to skew younger, and we felt this group of earlier adopters could benefit from an app developed specifically with renters in mind.” He says the company will extend it to other platforms in the “near future.” Other apps from Zillow work on iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire, Windows Phone and Blackberry platforms.

Zillow is partly launching this rental app — and in general getting more focused on the rental space because activity in that segment is on the rise. At the moment, some 70 percent of markets tracked in the Zillow Rental Index showed increases in annual home value. In contrast, only 14 percent of markets tracked in the Zillow Home Value Index (for house sale prices) went up in price.

The new app will have several features that are unique to it. Among them will be the ability to view Rent “Zestimates” — the company’s proprietary rental price estimates on some 100 million properties in the U.S.

The app also lets users compare selected rental properties on a side-by-side list and to narrow searches by geography by drawing boundaries around neighborhoods. It also integrates with Android voice search to find homes in a specific area. People can also browse based on the age of the rental posting, to find those that have just been listed versus those that have been on the market for longer or have already been viewed (and may therefore be a waste of time to visit). Users can also get push notifications for when homes that match your search criteria get posted. There is also the ability to contact owners or landlords through the app.

Zillow has added in a few elements to its property portal that have set it apart from many others in the same field: in addition to list prices, it compiles a list of data around price valuations and recent renovations among other things; and it has inked big deals with other portals like Yahoo and some 180 newspapers to extend its reach.

Wacksman says that Zillow is still seeing “tremendous” growth from its activities in the U.S. so it is continuing to stay focused here rather than expand internationally.

Zillow, Inc. founded and operates Zillow.com – a leading online real estate marketplace dedicated to helping homeowners, buyers, sellers, renters, real estate agents, mortgage professionals, landlords, and property managers find and share vital information about homes, real estate, and mortgages. Zilow, Inc. also operates Zillow Mortgage Marketplace and Zillow Mobile. Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink started Zillow in early 2005, and Zillow.com launched in early 2006 with data and information on millions of U.S. homes. Zillow’s goal is to help...

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Posted in: Android,Dedicated,First,Launches,Rental,RentJuice,Rumor,Zillow

Lane Becker On How To ‘Plan Serendipity’ In Tech And Business [TCTV]

Colleen Taylor is based in San Francisco where she is a reporter for TechCrunch TV. Previously she worked for GigaOM, where she reported on startups and Silicon Valley. Earlier, Colleen reported for Mergermarket, an online newswire and subsidiary of the Financial Times focused on M&A. Before that, she was a contributing editor for Electronic News, the semiconductor industry trade newsletter. Colleen... ? Learn More

Lane Becker has been a familiar figure in the Silicon Valley tech scene for years, as the co-founder of startups such as Adaptive Path and Get Satisfaction, an advisor at early-stage venture capital firm Freestyle Capital, and a generally good guy to know.

Yesterday, Becker added “New York Times Bestselling Author” to his list of descriptors, when the book “Get Lucky: How to Put Planned Serendipity to Work for You and Your Business” which he wrote with his Get Satisfaction co-founder Thor Muller debuted at the number six spot on the NYT’s best seller list for hardcover advice and miscellaneous books (which is generally where business books are ranked.) It is also holding the number three spot on the Wall Street Journal’s hardcover business best seller list.

So we were very pleased to have Lane Becker drop by the TechCrunch TV studio this week for an interview. Watch the video above to hear about what “planned serendipity” really is (you can’t plan to win the lottery, alas), how Steve Jobs literally architected good luck into Pixar and Apple, how luck plays into Amazon’s current status as a tech product hit factory, and how even rank-and-file employees can “storm the gates” to make their companies more open to success.

Want more “Get Lucky” stuff? Becker’s co-author Muller wrote a guest post for TechCrunch which you can find right here.

Lane Becker is co-founder and President of Get Satisfaction, a web startup dedicated to fostering new methods of communication and collaboration between companies and their customers. Lane is a co-founder of Adaptive Path and currently sits on the Board of Directors. Adaptive Path is a user experience strategy, research, and design consultancy, known for, among other things, coining the technology terms “blog” and “ajax.” While with Adaptive Path, Lane ran the consulting business and, as the creator of the New...

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Posted in: Becker,Business,Serendipity

How Tablets Are Transforming Business Intelligence

Editor’s note: Mitch Lazar is CEO of Taptu. He Founded CNN and Cartoon Network Mobile. He was a former journalist at CNN and one of the co-founders of CNN.com. Prior to joining Taptu, Mitch headed Yahoo! Mobile Europe.

Staying on top of your game and understanding the competitive landscape is essential to winning in the modern business world. A huge component to staying ahead of the curve is keeping a close eye on competitors in your market, which entails maintaining a watchful eye on industry news. Some companies turn to expensive news monitoring services to keep track of their respective industry, but in reality there are more viable options. Emerging tablet news and information services like Flipboard, Pulse and others are proving an incredible companion to business and consulting executives in staying current with industry changes occurring around them.

Jeff Cavins, CEO of Fuzebox, recently wrote in Business Insider that the explosive uptake of tablet computers is fueling the growth of what he called the new “iPad economy.” Cavins said: “The iPad is shifting the way businesses function, changing how executives interact and transforming the economics of today’s business operations.”

The iPad economy is a growing reality across the globe, and businesses are turning to enterprise apps to help them succeed. Simple RSS readers are used to condense multiple streams of content from a variety of sources into single channels, granting users access to diverse content all in one place. Some applications have further simplified news aggregation by using innovative search technology that goes beyond the function of RSS readers to deliver richer streams of highly targeted information to business users – a critical asset to businesses large and small.

Better Search and Filtering Offers Essential Time Savings

Improved search and filtering techniques make it simple and easy for a business to set up a Web-monitoring service. Google News and Google Alerts were an early step in the right direction, but anyone who monitors news on a daily basis knows that these services don’t always give you the news you want when you need it.

As users continue to adopt tablets as a primary reading outlet, there is a huge opportunity to create real-time, targeted news experiences. Apps like Zite, which was bought by CNN in 2011, aim to learn about users’ interests through the stories they read, and provide related content based on those preferences. News-reader apps give users the power to create their own streams of content based on keywords to offer analysis of the topic across any genre of content, keeping them constantly updated in the ever-changing world of business.

Recently we have seen innovative companies like Wavii launch to further personalize the way users get their news, and as this vertical continues to mature, we should see more sophisticated technologies making their way onto tablets.

By utilizing apps that filter and search, tablets are changing the way news is channeled and consumed. Best of all, once streams are set up, they can be shared business-wide or between colleagues so the wheel never has to be re-invented.

Gesture Based Information Consumption Increases Efficiency

Touting efficiency, news-readers give users the opportunity to scan hundreds of articles in a few moments and immediately delve deeper into the most interesting content. News-reading services do all the heavy lifting by aggregating the stories that match your interests, giving you more time to spend reading the news you care about rather than searching for it. The same way Evernote helps you save your daily thoughts and ideas all in one spot, news-readers concisely track what’s going on in every field that interests you.

Beyond increasing efficiency, news-readers also allow for easy sharing of any stories of interest with your community of colleagues or friends. Every blog and news site has its own way to share stories you enjoy with friends, but they are not always convenient for users. Tablet apps make sharing simple, while still driving traffic back to the original source.

Bookmarking Makes for Easier Follow Up

When browsing a vast number of stories every day, it’s often hard to keep track of the important ones, or to flag them down once you’ve flipped past. Easy in-app bookmarking tools such as Pocket or Instapaper make for a better overall experience because returning to a piece of interesting news is simple. Creating your own playlist through bookmarks is intuitive, as is sharing that list with colleagues, which is an asset for group collaboration.

Apps are abundant, but the ones with the potential to make a difference to the business world are those that improve productivity, efficiency and knowledge sharing. Discovering and utilizing these gems in a marketplace that has become a sea of apps is a difficult task. Apps like news readers set themselves apart by providing essential tools for businesses and adding value to help them win in their respective vertical.

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Posted in: Business,Intelligence,Tablets,Transforming

Wrapp Brings Social, Mobile Gifting Service To The U.S.; Partners With The Gap, H&M And Others

Leena Rao currently works as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... ? Learn More

Wrapp, a social gifting service backed by Greylock Partners and Atomico, is crossing the pond with the U.S. launch of its mobile gift card and retail app. Wrapp, which was available previously only in the UK, Norway, Sweden and Japan, Wrapp is actually launching today with a number of U.S. retailers including Fab, Gap, H&M, Sephora, The Wall Street Journal, Wayfair, and others.

As we’ve reported in the past, Wrapp was co-founded by Rebtel and SendIt founder Hjalmar Winbladh, Spotify founding CTO Andreas Ehn, and lets friends give, receive and redeem digital gift cards using mobile devices, and allows friends to contribute to gifts given by mutual friends. With Wrapp, which offers iPhone, Android and web apps, you sign in via your Facebook account, and you can then tap the Celebration tab on the app, browse your friends or major events, and select the person you want to send a gift card to. All available gift card offers for that friend are automatically listed.

You can then select the retailer and the gift card offer you want, write your celebration greeting, select a delivery date, enter payment details (if you’re contributing extra funds to a free gift card), and send the gift. Your friend will be notified and celebrated through Facebook and the Wrapp application. Merchants can actually specify the amounts they’d like to offer via the service, and target specific demographics of users with gift card options, which is something other online social gifting options don’t allow.

To collect a gift card you click on the link sent to you in email, text message (SMS) or on your Facebook wall, which lets the user automatically download the Wrapp app. To use the card, you select the card you want to redeem, and then show the resulting barcode to the cashier, which then gets scanned to complete the transaction.

For merchants and in-store retailers, says founder Winbladh, Wrapp is an ideal way to connect with potential customers because it not only allows them to target specific users by demograhics, but also provides a valuable form of advertising.

Winbladh says that while he’s always been bullish on mobile, in 2008, he started observing the increased pressure on brick and mortar retailers and was thinking through the ways that retailers can drive people in stores. He and his co-founders sought out to reinvent the gift card market to help drive traffic for retailers. He believes the gift card, which has gone through little innovation to date, can be made social, viral and mobile.

“Friend to friend marketing is best way to drive sales in retail market,” he explains. “Not only is Wrapp a innovative, social way for consumers to gift, but it’s also a performance tool for big retailers.”

And the service seems to be gaining traction amongst both consumers and retailers. Participating merchants report that each sale averages four to six times the value of the free gift card they let Wrapp users give to their friends.

In December alone, Wrapp users used the service to buy 250,000 gift cards. And the app went viral in the country, with 2 percent of all Facebook users in Sweden downloading the app. After three months live in Sweden, one percent of the Swedish population had interacted with Wrapp. During the last four months more than 165,000 people have given their Facebook friends over 1.4 million free gift cards that could be redeemed in stores operated by nearly 60 major retailers in Europe.

A launch in the U.S. could be a turning point for the company. As board member and Greylock partner Reid Hoffman tells us, for the vast majority of internet companies, the degree with which they succeed is determined by how well you an do in the U.S. But he believes Wrapp is in a perfect position to potentially reach critical mass, and create a network between retailers and consumers at a high volume. “Retailer know that they need to move towards retail 2.0; and Wrapp provides this valued experience,” Hoffman tells me. And because of the upswing in consumer use of smartphones and social network, Wrapp is in a prime position to gain traction amongst shoppers.

There are other players trying to shake up the gift card market with mobile technologies, including recently launched Karma. But what’s compelling about Wrapp is the win for retailers in helping drive traffic in-store and being able to target certain user based upon social and demographic data provided by Facebook.

What’s next for Wrapp? We’ll be seeing a number of more big-name U.S. merchants announced in the next few months, says Winbladh. We’re told that more than 15 additional U.S. merchants are now scheduled to start using Wrapp in the coming months. And we’ll see the company expand to other countries as well.

Wrapp is a social gifting service for celebrating friends’ occasions with free and paid gifts from attractive brands. Wrapp allows friends to contribute to gifts, and makes it fun and easy to give, receive and redeem using mobile devices and the web. Founded in the first half of 2011 by a group of serial entrepreneurs, Wrapp is based in Stockholm and Silicon Valley.

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Posted in: Brings,Gifting,Mobile,Others,Partners,Service,Social,Wrapp

McCann Invests $4M in Israeli Incubator ‘thetime’

Roi Carthy is the Managing Partner at Initial Capital. Previously, Roi has worked at companies such as Soluto, Zend Technologies and 888.com. Roi has been covering the Israeli startup scene for TechCrunch since 2007. Born in Israel, Roi has spent many years abroad living in both the US (Boston, Olivet, DC) and in Europe (Budapest, Zurich). Today, Roi works... ? Learn More

With a $4M investment, McCann Worldgroup has bought a 15% stake in Israeli incubator ‘thetime‘.

This move isn’t a particularly surprising considering ‘thetime’ was founded by Ilan Shiloah, who for the past 10 years has been chairman of McCann Erickson Israel. ‘thetime’ was also co-founded by angel investor, Nir Tarlovsky. Uri Weinheber, previously of Lab One, acts as the incubator’s CEO.

A Chief Scientist licensed incubator, the stated objective of the ‘thetime’ is new media investments (although this seems not to be a hard constraint). The current its portfolio consists of 30 startups, including Tawkon & SohoOS.

This is of course great news for the Israeli startup ecosystem, which over the past couple of years has seen a substantial increase in early-stage investment outfits and accelerators.

thetime is an investment company focusing on young innovative technology startups in the areas of Telecom, Internet, Media and Entertainment (T.I.M.E.).

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Posted in: Incubator,Invests,Israeli,McCann,thetime