Tag Archives: venture capital

15 Oct

The SNAP Summit: FailCon is Almost Here!

By Julie Blaustein

Past Panelists Robert Scoble, Nick O’Neill, Justin Smith and Dan Farber

Past Panelists Robert Scoble, Nick O’Neill, Justin Smith and Dan Farber

SNAP Summit: FailCon on Tuesday, October 27th. at the Kabuki Hotel in San Francisco focuses on the Start up failures and the lessons gained. Failures in the start up world are worn with a badge of honor and at this conference you will learn lessons learned from some of the most highly esteemed entrepreneurs around including:

Discussions will include:

•    “Social Web Branding Failures:” how major brand have messed up on the social web, and what techniques should be avoided.
•    “The Future of Failure” from Lane Becker and Thor Muller, founders of GetSatisfaction
•    “How NOT To Build Socially,” featuring the founders of Context Optional, LOLapps, Appssavvy discussing why viral apps don’t always work.
•    “Learning by Doing” with Mark Pincus, founder of Zynga, discussing his experience founding the less popular social network Tribe.net
•    “How Investors Handle Failure,” featuring lead investors Ron Conway, Paul Graham, and David Hornik discussing what they do when their investments fail.
•    “Making and Breaking a Product,” sharing what happens when a good company launches a bad product; how the recover their losses and move on.

You can also check out who will be at the conference. What would a conference be without networking!

There will be Treats for attending the SNAP Summit: FailCon Conference!!!clearlogo

*Special 15% Discount for Bub.blicio.us readers!

*Demo companies have a chance of winning $1k worth of legal services from Cooley.

*You will receive a FREE 1 year subscription to the Fast Company Magazine when you register: Fast-Company-Logo_350x92-tm

What are you waiting for? Its coming up fast. Go register HERE and I will see you at the Kabuki Hotel, Tuesday, October 27th. in San Francisco.

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2 Jun

TheFunded Founder Institute: Microlending for Rich People?

Adeo Ressi, a founding member of TheFunded, is launching a new funding model to spur investment in startups and encourage investors to give up the cash needed for getting these startups up and running. A four-month training program called the Founder Institute, this new incubator is designed to attract investors, according to VentureBeat.

The Founder Institute appears to be a direct response to the poor activity many VC firms were experiencing in the past eight months, after the economy took a turn for the worst. So what’s so enticing about the Founder Institute?
Here’s how it works, according to VentureBeat:

Specifically, the institute asks participating founders to contribute warrants providing the option to purchase 3.5 percent of the company at the time of its first funding. Now the institute is setting aside 10 percent of that warrant pool for investors — the first 20 investors in Founder Institute startups will each get 0.5 percent of the total pool of all companies.

I personally see this particular incubator program as being somewhat akin to several of the incubator programs we saw at the tail end of the dot com boom, just before it crashed. Whether or not this new format appears to be a new way of throwing a bunch of ideas at the wall and seeing which ones stick or a new way of managing one’s downside risk, time will tell.

But the likelihood of enough of the Founder Institute’s startups selling for enough money to earn the investors 10 times their initial investment is a risk they’ve got to be willing to take. So far the Founder’s Institute has about 80 potential investors that may take part in this new program.

That’s a good amount of capital to work with for a four month program. As far as the other details go regarding the Founder Institute, the resources that will be made available to the startups within the four months will need to be focused and readily employed for each startup.
The relationships the investors may have with each startup may also be limited due to the nature of the Founder Institute’s format.

In speaking with several venture capitalists and founders of incubator programs, I’m finding that the incubator approach is gaining a great deal of interest. Should Ressi’snew model work, I’m sure we’ll see more activity for programs that have similar concepts.

25 Nov

Custom Video Pages – Magnify.net – Raise $750K

by Michelle Lentz

Magnify.net is a service that allows you to create your own video channel, showcasing videos from across the Web, as well as your own Webcam captures. Magnify offers a free version and a more in-depth Pro version for content enthusiasts, online communities, and small businesses. Additionally, Magnify offers an Enterprise version for larger corporations.

For most of us though, Free is all we need. The free version allows you to build your channel, capture videos from your webcam, find videos from the more popular video sharing sites, and social networking integration. There is also an ad inventory share of 50/50, which is nice. With the free version, you retain control over your site name, URL, and design (including CSS) and can upload twenty 50-MB files per week.

The startup has raised about $750,000 in Series A1 financing, in addition to $1 million raised earlier this year. According to the Silicon Valley Insider,

Innovation Ventures led the round, and all major investors returned, including RoseTech Ventures, NextStage Capital, Ogden Capital, and individual angel investors. Magnify also took on some debt issued by Vencore.

Magnify’s clients include Taste of Home Magazine, which uses Magnify to power its Web video site. All told, almost 47,000 sites use Magnify, which is on track for 30 million video impressions this month.

Magnify.net has around 10 employees and is based in New York City.

More at CenterNetworks.

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Contact Michelle with your news, apps, and events via email at michelle[at]writetech.net, Twitter, Pownce, or FriendFeed. Visit Michelle at Wine-Girl.net and Write Technology.