5 min read · 18 May 2010
2 min read · 14 May 2010
Earlier this year, we began shining a light on some of the unknown stars who are major value to some of Silicon Valley’s most promising companies. One of those stars is Chris Waterson, senior software architect at Pixazza, which turns static images into profit centers for publishers. Last year, the company raised $5.75 million from Google Ventures, Ron Conway, August Capital and CMEA Capital. A visitor to OK Magazine’s website, for example, might hover a mouse over a photo of Brad Pitt wearing shades, prompting the appearance of a little window. Within it, the visitor is presented with similar, less-expensive sunglass options from a list of vendors with which Pixazza works. If the fan buys a pair, Pixazza and the publisher receive a commission from the vendor. If a sale doesn’t occur, the two still share advertising revenue. Waterson helped launched Pixazza just two years ago, but the 40-year-old is no stranger to Silicon Valley startups. Waterson was also one of the earliest engineers at LiveOps, where he architected much of the crowdsourcing system; before that, he was a chief scientist at Netscape and a primary architect of the Mozilla browser.
6 min read · 14 May 2010
Benchmark’s Bill Gurley is an exceedingly busy guy. He’s a dad, he’s a sought-after speaker, and he’s on the boards of 11 companies, including Zillow, Nanosolar and online video guide startup Clicker. Gurley also still posts a thought piece at least once a month at his widely read blog, Above the Crowd. In short, it's hard to get Gurley on the phone. But today, as he drove to the airport for yet another meeting, he made time to talk about Facebook's direction, Digital Sky Technologies, and angel investors among other things. Get a transcript after the jump...
6 min read · 13 May 2010
Politico’s Mike Allen reports that Facebook has just launched a “Congress on Facebook” page that will “highlight the innovative uses of Facebook by members of Congress, list members' official pages, and communicate news and information about Facebook and Congress," according to the page. An existing page called “Facebook and Government” already shines a light on the way that government departments are using the social network, as well as to disseminate news and information of interest to agencies.
3 min read · 13 May 2010
1 min read · 11 May 2010
2 min read · 11 May 2010
1 min read · 10 May 2010
Earlier this year, law firm DLA Piper sent an email to hundreds of senior executives and advisers to the tech industry. It asked seven questions, including whether changes in the M&A and IPO markets have permanently altered the VC industry (or should), what they anticipate IPO volume to look like through the rest of this year and their general outlook. The survey results are here. Some of the more interesting points on cloud computing include: 56% of respondents believe cloud computing will be pervasive for organizations of all sizes within the next three to five years. Another 33% percent think those deployments could happen faster if not for reliability concerns. And 22% think cloud computing will remain attractive to consumers and small to midsize businesses, rather than to the Fortune 500. (Fyi, respondents could provide multiple responses, which is why the percentages don’t add up to 100.)
2 min read · 10 May 2010
4 min read · 10 May 2010
