Frank Addante, the Los Angeles tech entrepreneur, has helpfully consolidated pretty much every terrible office idea and Web 2.0 startup cliché into one place: This video tour of his online ad company, Rubicon Project.
The most amusing thing about fameballs is when they don't realize their balls have stopped rolling. Such is bulldog entrepreneur Jason Calacanis's lot, as he desperately tries to pose as MySpace's next CEO.
The gang of webheads sent by the State Department to Iraq is doing what webheads do: blogging, Twittering, and posting photos in real time. This must be giving their government minders fits.
Call it the final wave of the American invasion: A passel of tech executives from Google, YouTube, Twitter, and others, squired by a Wired feature writer, are touring Iraq.
New York City is too broke to install a fancy $14 million bus-tracking system. Who will come to the rescue? Internet entrepreneur John Geraci — if he can overcome his wandering attention span.
The nation is in crisis, our economy on the brink. And yet President Change is spending time with a group of technowastrels whose sole noteworthy accomplishment has been to spend other people's money.
In the runup to today's vote, we've gotten three separate pitches for new websites which mash together Twitter messages and election results. Three's a trend. But what's the story? Twitter's hot, and the election's hot, so these wantrepreneurs figure that putting them together will land their startup some VC funding.…
Darren Lee, the creator of online ad-network startup AdExcel, wants everyone to know that he needs money, badly. How badly? So badly that he is soliciting reporters for investments. Darren, here's a hint: Journalists are among the Valley's worst-paid professionals. We doubt any of our impoverished colleagues will take…
Only Tinseltown can match Silicon Valley in turning self-delusion into marketable products. We've always admired Frank Addante, the CEO and founder of an L.A.-based online-advertising startup, the Rubicon Project, for embodying the worst of both worlds — and thereby maximizing his commercial potential. Want to catch…
Young Southlander Calley Nye has done the flack thing as a social media marketer, has done the hack thing in a brief stint at TechCrunch is now doing the cofounder thing with Dashbuzz, which promises to make it easier for you to promote yourself or your products online. In other words, she's had an "entrepreneurial…
When NYU Ph.D. student Hubert (Hung-Hsien) Chang wasn't busy inventing Google or visiting Disneyland and signing up for Google-related groups on Facebook, he was coming up with lots of crazy ideas. Cross-platform programming language Java? Chang. Open-source office productivity software OpenOffice? Chang. The…
ConnectU cofounders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss lost control of ConnectU, their also-ran social network, in the settlement of a lawsuit with Facebook CEO mark Zuckerberg. And they finished last in their Olympic rowing final. But they just got some good news! A short film the pair executive-produced (read: paid for)…
Sure, it's just a bunch of disgruntled kids at legendary San Francisco after-work bar House of Shields slinging tech slang and calling into question the reductionism ideal for deal making in the Valley. But few of the ideas presented at interface designer Eris Stassi and author Paul Carr's hastily assembled "Smack My…
We know that Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis likes to feed his pinup bulldogs Taurus and Fondue burgers from In-n-Out and Pinkberry froyo (to keep their coats glossy and brains brand-aware, we're assuming). Little did we know that he's also eating his own dog food. In a monstrous essay sent via telegraph email titled …
New York wantrepreneurs preparing for a night of rejection and glazed looks can relax — tonight's New York Tech Meetup is canceled due to a power outage at IAC. "We tried to find a replacement venue for tonight, but couldn't find anything for all 400 of us at this late notice," reads a memo sent to all invitees. The…
It's been just a little over a year since Julia Allison touched down in Silicon Valley, strutting past the hand-stampers at an arts fundraiser and informing anyone who would listen that she was looking for a boyfriend to help her with her website. It hasn't exactly paid off. The so-soft-it-hurts launch of her new…
Weary of the ad-supported world of Web 2.0? Outside the echo chamber of Silicon Valley, there are software developers who write code that won't change the world, but that customers will pay real, five-figure license fees for — enough to sustain a growing, private business. It's all about finding a market that works…
The problem with "17 mistakes startups make," is that the guy behind them, John Osher didn't make that many. He started Dr. John's SpinBrush and sold it to Proctor & Gamble for $475 million. Jonathan Tang, who writes "Diary of a Failed Startup," not only founded a company, GameClay, he actually failed because of his…
A reader writes to us concerned that the apocalypse is nigh. Why so scared? Because wantrepreneur Julia Allison (who was not fired from Star magazine) and cranky RSS guru Dave Winer are now link lovers. What sparked this show of mutual affection? Winer's treatise on how he created the first, true "un-conference"…
In 1999 John Osher started Dr. John's SpinBrush to sell a $5 electric toothbrush. In 2001, he sold the company to Procter & Gamble for $475 million. Here are his "17 mistakes start-ups make" in 100 words.
