Geek News and Musings

Jeff Clavier just finished raising $55 million for his third SoftTech VC fund and after closing it out, stopped by TechCrunch to tape Founder Stories with host Chris Dixon.

In part II of this Founder Stories conversation, Dixon surveys the seed stage landscape and comes away wondering if too many unproven entrepreneurs are running companies with unrealistically high valuations. He believes it gives pause to investors thinking about backing these budding startups.

As a micro-VC, Clavier says he manages this trend by clearly defining what he wants out of any partnership and if there’s not an agreement on the table he wastes no time analyzing the next opportunity. “We want a certain level of ownership and if ever we don’t get the ownership or it is too expensive we’ll just bid farewell.”

The two also discuss signaling risk, which is basically when a major VC invests in a startup during a seed round and doesn’t follow up with more funding. Rightly or wrongly, it signals to other investors to stay away. (If Accel or Greylock isn’t doubling down on the A and B rounds, something must be wrong with the company). Clavier shields his investments from signaling risk by telling outsiders that just because “firm x, y, z [is] on the cap table” it doesn’t mean they are the bellwether, especially if they only put in a token amount as an option to invest later.

Clavier also believes allowing multiple VC’s to fund a seed round sets the stage for “a disaster” and offers advice to founders who are considering bringing on a “brand name” investor. It can be great if there is true commitment, but too often it just raises questions later when they lose interest and drop out of future financing rounds.

Make sure to watch the full video to hear all his insights.

Part I of this interview is here. Episode III is coming up.

Past Founder Stories episodes featuring Mayor Bloomberg, David Karp, Dennis Crowley, Fred Wilson and Alexis Ohanian are here.

Nicko Margolies from the Sunlight Foundation sez, “A new analysis prepared by the Sunlight Foundation shows that wealthy financial sector donors gave $178.2 million in political contributions in 2010, more than ten times what they gave 20 years ago. More than any other industry, individuals from the finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) sector, particularly those in securities and investments, are the key drivers of the overall growth of elite donors, or what Sunlight calls The Political One Percent of the One Percent.

“An analysis of campaign contribution records by the Sunlight Foundation reveals that the number of donors in the FIRE sector giving at least $10,000 (in 2010 dollars) per election cycle to political candidates, parties and independent expenditure groups increased from 1,091 in 1990 to 5,510 in 2010 (a 405% increase). Combined contributions of these elite donors increased even more dramatically, growing by $162.8 million (a 700% increase, controlling for inflation). This project builds on the Political 1% of the 1% that was featured on Boing Boing in December.”

On FIRE: How the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate Sector Drove the Growth of the Political One Percent of the One Percent

(Thanks, Nicko!)

Wisdio, a social QA site like Quora, has decided to up the social QA ante by adding something they’re calling WAR – Wisdio Authority Ratings. These ratings allow folks to recieve answers from authorities on their subject of choice, thereby reducing the number of incorrect answers and, one would hope, increasing the utility of the site.

Founded by Sebastian Zontek, Wisdio aims to help “find the right people to answer questions quickly and reliably,” not unlike many of its competitors. However, the WAR score offers a one-stop shop for folks trying to figure out who to trust and, one would assume, listen to. For example, I can say I’m an expert in Social Media (which I am. I have LOTS of followers on Orkut) but in order to increase my score I need to answer questions about social media. This prevents gadflies from answering questions willy nilly and reduces useless responses.

I’ve yet to find a social QA site that I’d use longer than five minutes but Wisdio is at least trying something a bit different. The company will also attempt to sell content from experts including books, articles, and advice. For example, you could sell your knitting patterns on Wisdio as easily as you could sell your SEO ebook. The goal, then, would be to become the go-to knitting advice person on the site and wait for the huge checks to roll in.

Will Wisdio succeed? I’m generally bearish on these kinds of sites – the Internet is a tumult of voices and rarely, if ever, is the right voice heard at the right time and there are far too many opportunistic “experts” out to game the system – but I’m ready to try anything once and I suspect there are others out there would enjoy Wisdio’s clean interface, WAR rankings, and potential money-making opportunities.

Click to view slideshow.

(Photo above: RFE-RL; below, Ivan Krupchik.)

Authorities in Russia are investigating the legality of a “doll demonstration” demanding “clean elections” in the Siberian city of Barnaul, and looking for the humans responsible.

Russian news agency RIA Novosti reports that Russia's police "[arrest] anyone, young or old, who takes part in an "unsanctioned" opposition rally"—so, some citizens in Barnaul created a protest tableau composed of dolls, instead.

Lego minifigs, South Park (”Team America”?) characters, stuffed dollies, Shreks, gnomes, elves, and Wall-e robots carrying protest placards were placed on an icy ledge in the town’s center on January 7 and 14. This act followed police crackdowns on two protests by normal-sized people back in December. The focus of all the protests, large and small? Political corruption, and the results of Russia’s parliamentary elections.

From RIA Novosti:

Most of the figurines held up little signs affixed to toothpicks with satirical messages on them, such as “146%”, in reference to a southern region where state television inadvertently reported a 146 per cent turnout in recent elections. Other toys held caricatures of the Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, and President Dmitry Medvedev.

The victory of Mr Putin’s United Russia Party in last month’s parliamentary polls, amid allegations of fraud, brought tens of thousands of protesters onto Moscow’s streets. The government seemed to realise it could not take the usual repressive action against the demonstrators in the capital, but in Barnaul authorities “did everything possible” to block protests, Andrei Teslenko, one of the organisers, said.

That’s when the activists set up the toy protests. “The authorities are blocking our constitutional rights to peaceful protests, but they haven’t yet got as far as limiting the rights of toys,” he said.

Photographer Ivan Krupchik has an extensive series of photos up on his LiveJournal (including the Wall-e shot above, and the LEGO detail below in this post).

More: MSNBC News, Radio Free Europe,Independent (UK), UK Guardian.

(thanks, Martin Hodgson)

Your professor says an awful lot of things during class. You can't possibly write it all down, nor should you. To take the best notes (and ace your exams), pay attention to your professor's cues—conscious and subconscious. More »

A PC World editorial by Benj Edwards recounts the history of “copy protection*” for software, and discusses how the cracks-scene, which busted open these software locks, is the only reason the legacy of old software is available today. There’s a persistent story about the persistence of paper and the ephemerality of bits, which goes something like this: “We can still read ancient manuscripts, but we can’t read Letraset Ready, Set, Go! files from the 1980s.” This is only true in a very limited sense: if you can crack the copy-protection on R,S,G! you can run it perfectly well in a little Mac emulator on a modern computer, with lots of headroom to spare (the laptop I’m typing this on being approximately ten bazillion times more powerful than the last machine I used R,S,G! on). The business of software preservation and data longevity is a lot simpler than the story would have you believe** (assuming you don’t care about breaking the law to bust open copy protection and to get old copies of Mac System 6.x to run things on).

It may seem counterintuitive, but piracy has actually saved more software than it has destroyed. Already, pirates have spared tens of thousands of programs from extinction, proving themselves the unintentional stewards of our digital culture.

Software pirates promote data survival through ubiquity and media independence. Like an ant that works as part of a larger system it doesn’t understand, the selfish action of each digital pirate, when taken in aggregate, has created a vast web of redundant data that ensures many digital works will live on…

For a sample slice of what’s at stake when it comes to vanishing software, let’s take a look at the video game industry. The Web’s largest computer and video game database, MobyGames, holds records of about 60,000 games at present. Roughly 23,000 of those titles were originally released on computer systems that used floppy disks or cassette tapes as their primary storage or distribution medium.

23,000 games! If game publishers and copyright law had their way, almost all of those games would be wiped from the face of the earth by media decay over the next 10 years. Many would already be lost.

The article is long and thoughtful, and covers a lot of ground. I highly recommend it.

Why History Needs Software Piracy

(Thanks, Rainman!)

* The term “copy-protection” is pretty misleading. Speaking as a former systems administrator, the way I “protect” my stuff was by making copies — that is, backups. True, these are encrypted, but they’re encrypted to a key that I posses.

** There’s a separate question about media preservation, because old floppies and Zip carts and such are basically shit. But that’s OK, since a modern hard drive can store pretty much all the floppies you ever handled without breaking a sweat. If you have (or had) the presence of mind to move all your data from floppies to your HDD, and if you keep your HDD backed up, you are pretty well-preserved. Much better-preserved than your hardcopy book library, which can’t be backed up offsite without a photocopier, an army of interns and a lot of time, bother, and shipping containers.

Have you ever had the realization that you brought along a tasty instant oatmeal snack but didn’t bring a bowl to make it in? Reddit user Klacky offers up a simple solution: cook it in the packet it comes in. More »

Well, it took some time, but with so much disinformation that was spread online about SOPA and PIPA, we really needed someone to cut through the clutter… and who better than The Onion? They’ve finally done so with their simple SOPA/PIPA explainer that includes some of the finer points of the law that you may have missed if you hadn’t read the bill carefully:

• Music review sites can only allude to a song’s title and content in vague terms
• All pirated material available only at the Commerce Department’s new site, Torrent.gov
• Government will actively encourage people to download only public-domain music, such as Pipey Lester’s “That Cat’s a-Mewing!” or Ukulele Ted’s “Nickel For Your Hat”
• Denies future generations the ability to watch hilarious scene from Dirty Work where Chris Farley yells at the Asian hooker anytime, free of charge, which is a fundamental right of being an American
• Does absolutely nothing to get rid of goddamn Lolcats
• Makes the MPAA and RIAA feel better, which, if you have any shred of a soul, causes pure rage to swell through your very being
• Any person suspected of Photoshopping bill sponsor Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) in an unflattering manner shall be subject to a minimum sentence of two months in prison; sentence will be increased by an additional two months if MS Paint is used
• No longer legal to steal Ryan Gosling’s credit card information

If only they’d shared this info sooner, so much misinformation would have been stopped…

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Somewhere, someone out there is curled in a corner, sobbing because they missed out on the last HP TouchPad sale. Ebay messed up, he says. It wasn’t his fault. He clicked the button but Ebay’s servers crashed. So now he’s alone. Left to sulk in his missed opportunities.

But fear not, friend! I bring you great news from the land of the Internet! Woot finagled another batch of TouchPad tablets! They’re refurbs and priced higher than before, but they’re TouchPads! But you better act quick! Don’t let another chance to own a failed tablet slip between your fingers!

As of this post’s writing Woot has both models listed but the 16GB is already sold out. That leaves just the 32GB available. And at $219 it’s still a fine deal for a 9.7-inch dual-core 32GB tablet that can run Android. Of course only fanboys should apply. A general consumer would likely get more enjoyment out of a Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet. But perhaps you’re a starving coder, betting your future on webOS now that its going open-source — by all means, buy the TouchPad and lets never talk about it again.

Yesterday, Google filed its 10-K with the SEC, revealing the number of acquisitions and money spent on these purchases in the year. As of Q3, Google had spent over $1.4 billion on 55 acquisitions for the year. Google ended 2011 spending $1.9 billion (including cash and stock) on completing 79 acquisitions during the entirety of the year.

Some of the bigger purchases included ITA Software, which was purchased for $676 million in cash. As we know Google is spending $12.5 billion on Motorola (which isn’t included in 2011′s calculations), with a termination fee of $2.5 billion if the deal fails to get regulatory approval. The transaction is currently expected to close in early 2012.

Some of the acquisitions Google made in Q4 2011 include Clever Sense, Katango, and Apture.

In contrast, Google spent just over $1 billion on 48 acquisitions in 2010. And don’t expect Google to be slowing down the acquisition pace anytime soon. In the filing the company says: Acquisitions will also remain an important component of our strategy and use of capital, and we expect our current pace of acquisitions to continue.

In addition, the search giant’s full-time employee headcount grew 33 percent from 24,400 at December 31, 2010 to 32,467 at December 31, 2011.

« Previous entries