Parisoma’s Mixer Series
Each month PariSoma host a Mixer on various topics such as Education, Health, CleanTech, Gaming, and now Social Entrepreneurship! Each Mixer features 15 of the hottest startups demoing their products and vision. PariSoma brings together upwards of 200 attendees, including VC firms, startups, journalists and professionals eager to stay on the cutting-edge of their industry.
There will be food and drinks and a lot of great networking!
Note: As an inhouse mentor to PariSoma, I am able to off our Bubblicious readers a 25% discount off ticket prices with code “Krystyl”. Just click here for more information
Demoers
 | Kiva is a non-profit organization with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. Leveraging the internet and a worldwide network of partners, Kiva lets individuals lend as little as $25 to help create opportunity around the world. |
 | The One Percent Foundation makes philanthropy accessible to Millennials+. We educate, organize, and mobilize young adults to become generous, committed, and strategic philanthropists. Our goal is to empower every young adult to give away at least one percent of their annual income to philanthropy. |
 | embrace is advancing maternal and child health by providing innovative solutions to the world’s most vulnerable populations. |
 | d.light design‘s mission is to deliver safe, reliable and cost-effective renewable energy solutions to the 1.3 billion people without access to reliable grid power. We will begin by replacing every kerosene lantern with clean, safe and bright light. By 2020, we aim to have improved the lives of 100 million individuals. Our products are now being distributed in 40 countries with over 7 million happy customers. |
 | GoodWillion is a charity dating auction. Auction a date with yourself, bid and win a date with someone you like. The money will go to charity. We launched in Belarus as www.maesens.by. Over 17000 active users joined and over $30k were sent to charities in less then 3 months. |
Community Partners
A few months ago, one of the biggest surprises hit the tech community–Mashable, the digital lifestyle publication and is one of the largest websites on the known Internet, was rumored to have sold to news channel giant, CNN. That seems to not have matriculated and for the most part, many of us seemed to have simply not given it a second thought…well until now.
Business Insider is reporting that the deal is still moving forward and two sources have said that the executive team at Mashable is prepping documentation and files to give to CNN’s operating company, Turner. But we’ve heard these wild rumors before so what makes it different this time? Nothing is for sure, but Business Insider is saying that one of their sources “speculates” that the deal is “80% likely to close”. But what makes this update a bit different is that VentureBeat is hearing reports that the sale price will be under the rumored $200 million that was thrown around just three months ago.
Nearly three weeks ago, one of the biggest IPOs in the tech industry, hit the public market and many expected the company to create instant millionaires and be a rousing success. That company, Facebook, had so many people rooting for its success. Unfortunately as we know now, due to some transactional issues that occurred within the NASDAQ system, there were a few trades that didn’t get through, which spoiled the social network’s debut on the public market. On top of that, the overall price of Facebook fell dramatically and now it’s slowly trying to work its way back up to something where people will start to care about it.
Who knows what exactly is the reason for where Facebook is today–it could be a variety of factors including things like there being too much hype about Facebook going public that caused its unfortunate predicament it finds itself. Some might speculate that investors found themselves a bit “put off” at the lack of care given to them by Facebook founder & CEO Mark Zuckerberg during the IPO roadshow, or that Facebook is pursuing opportunities without concern for the shareholders (e.g. purchasing Instagram for $1 billion). Whatever it exactly was, no one will really know.
But if you disregard all of the media hype and speculation, what would be the right reasons for someone to purchase a share of the social network? Is Facebook even worth it? Sure, you have tons of analysts and pundits who hypothesize about Facebook’s worth and a bunch of could have, would have, should have, but is there any factual basis about the company that would lead people to invest their money? Historically, has Facebook become a company that has people jumping out of their seats eager to throw money at or has their actions over the past eight years been shoddy and while many people think Facebook is worth the quick sell, they don’t believe in its viability in the long term? What exactly makes Facebook so much damn better than all of the other social networks and its predecessors that shows its success?
If you’re involved in the business side of your company, chances are that you’re going to have sat in on a conference call with more than two people. We’ve all been there wondering about whether or not the company even has a dial-in number, putting it on a calendar, jotting down notes and figuring out who said what–it seemed that the only thing that the traditional conference call services really care about was highlighting this, but not really any additional services. It was all about connecting people to accomplish a simple phone call, but not really connect them.
UberConference aims to solve this dilemma and help disrupt the boring old phone calls of yesterday that many business-types are accustomed to. The winner of TechCrunch Disrupt New York, this service brings what they call a “whole new visual dimension to audio conference calls”. It appears to want to be more context into your ordinary conference calls in a manner that you’ll derive some more value out of it. Started by Craig Walker, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist with tremendous experience in VoIP technology–he created DialPad in 2001 and co-founded GrandCentral which was acquired by Google in 2007 and became Google Voice–the service puts forth some creative features designed to help you get the most out of your conference call so you won’t have to stress out about its aftermath (e.g. who said what? what did they mean by that? what did he say about that thing?).
If you happen to be in the San Francisco Bay Area over the next several months and at a tech event, you might be able to catch a glimpse at the latest reality television show to be filmed here. Silicon Valley, a new reality show focused on young tech entrepreneurs produced by Randi Zuckerberg, has just begun taping its inaugural season to be debuted on the Bravo television network later this year. Although considered to be a working title, Silicon Valley will center around probably 5-6 main characters living in the Valley trying to make it big with their startups and ideas. Who knows whether the cameras will follow them throughout the city and other locations as they attend investor meetings, parties, conferences, and other social gatherings, but if they do, I’m sure that things will be very well planned in advance.
What is definitely known is that the main cast of characters has moved into a luxurious home in the Castro district of San Francisco affectionately called “The Villa” where they’ll be living and filming most of their exploits and adventures (a la Real World). UPDATE: As Kim Taylor points out in the comments below, “The Villa” is not the homebase for the entire cast–in fact, only Ben Way and Hermione Way live in this home.
There’s space at “The Villa” for co-working and private parties and maybe even other social events. But beware, if you go to one of these events, you’ll probably be in the spotlight along with the cast since it’ll be ground zero for filming for the show.
