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Be the Muhammad Ali of innovation

by Bambi Francisco , January 6, 2009 | Comments (0)

Stay nimble on your feet and dance around to see what's around you, both punches and opportunities

Harald Neidhardt, CMO and co-Founder of Smaato, has had two decades of experience in the marketing industry. With his mobile advertising startup, Neidhardt is looking to put his online marketing know-how to work. Here are his lessons learned about marketing and how he's applying it to the mobile world. BF: What are the lessons you've learned? HN: Well, I think first of all ...

Is there scale to an Appssavvy?

by Bambi Francisco , January 4, 2009 | Comments (0)

Google's Marissa Mayer helps us evaluate the social media business of Appssavvy

Facebook sues Power.com

by Bambi Francisco , January 2, 2009 | Comments (2)

Apparently, Power wasn't in compliance with other social networks

Recently, I interviewed Steve Vachani, CEO and founder of Power.com, a one-stop-shop social network where users can access their profiles from Facebook, hi5, Orkut and MySpace. I kept asking Vachani if Power.com was in compliance with the other social networks since his service allows for access and mashups of the services. Vachani insisted that he was in compliance.Apparently, Facebook didn't ...

2008 was an ugly year for venture capitalists

by Bambi Francisco , January 2, 2009 | Comments (0)

Exits hit $24.1 billion down 58% from 2007

Venture capitalists are probably glad 2008 is over as liquidity events were hard to come by during the toughest economic times in recent history.Overall, U.S. venture-backed companies generated $24.1 billion in liquidity through IPOs and M&As in 2008, down 58% from the $57.6 billion in liquidity produced in 2007, resulting in the worst year since the post-tech-bust doldrums of 2003, ...

Halsey Minor's 8020 mag shutters its doors

by Bambi Francisco , January 2, 2009 | Comments (0)

Fresh signs of turmoil hitting Internet sites in 2009

User-generated magazine publisher and Internet site, 8020 Media was a promising venture backed by Halsey Minor, founder of CNet Networks. Launched in 2006, it had a seemingly good community-generated business model that leveraged the Web. It was comprised of sourcing photographs from the community and allowing users to select winning photos that would be would be published in a magazine. ...

Lessons learned highlights 2008

by Bambi Francisco , December 31, 2008 | Comments (0)

Surviving the downturn; making tough decisions; how to be great

We’ve built a great library of “lessons learned and advice’ for entrepreneurs from top VCs to successful entrepreneurs. Not surprisingly, this year we had many lessons on surviving the cash crunch…We hope you enjoy this compilation of some of the words of wisdom regarding how to survive the downturn.We start with Brian Ascher, partner at Venrock Capital. One of the ...

Ooyala founders: Sprint in the same direction

by Bambi Francisco , December 30, 2008 | Comments (0)

Lepe brothers and Sean Knapp share team hug and advice to entrepreneurs

What happens when you bring together two brothers and a dorm mate, who are fiercely competitive runners and former Googlers and Stanford students? You get a pretty good founding team. “We went through numerous business models in the first few months," said Sean Knapp, one of the founders of Ooyala, a two-year-old video advertising and delivery platform. "But the important ...

VatorNews interview highlights in 2008

by Bambi Francisco , December 29, 2008 | Comments (0)

Founders of Slide, FriendFeed, Twitter, hi5, RockYou and more sit down with VatorNews

In 2008, VatorNews was fortunate to interview some of the hottest entrepreneurs and movers and shakers in Silicon Valley. From Slide founder and CEO Max Levchin to FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit to Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey. VatorNews tries to give you the voices of those who're making a big, big, big difference, to those helping to innovate. ...

Interview with Power.com CEO Steve Vachani

by Bambi Francisco , December 26, 2008 | Comments (6)

CEO and founder talks about why his site is social network central

Five years ago, I was a writer explaining tirelessly what a social network was to my audience, who at the time barely understood MySpace and had yet to learn about Facebook. Today, thousands of social networks have bloomed, resulting in a need, it seems, for one social network to manage them all. Power.com is what I'd call that uber social ...

Vator Box highlights in 2008

by Bambi Francisco , December 24, 2008 | Comments (0)

Esther Dyson, Google's Marissa Mayer, Venrock Brian Ascher, Guy Kawasaki, and more

In 2008, we launched a show called Vator Box, our poor version of Siskel & Ebert meets American Idol. It's the show where we invite guest hosts to evaluate startups based on their Vator video pitch and company profile. We've provided analysis for over 50 companies since the start of this year. At times, we even got the analysis just ...

Google's Homer gift - the Android phone

by Bambi Francisco , December 23, 2008 | Comments (0)

	It's not a bad bonus; it's just not cash Google, whose share price has been slashed by more than half this year - along with most other stocks, has decided to go lean on the Christmas bonuses. This Christmas, Googlers will receive a $179.99 T-Mobile phone, running on the Android operating system. Now, that may sound like a nice gift, if you worked at a small startup. But some ...
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Sumner Redstone - Biggest media loser 2008

by Bambi Francisco , December 22, 2008 | Comments (0)

Silicon Alley Insider puts Viacom's Sumner Redstone on top of loser list

From layoffs, to a bankruptcy filing to share prices cut in half, it's been a tough year for big media companies.So, who's the biggest loser of all the titans of media in 2008? The Tribune newspaper, with $13 billion in debt, filed for bankruptcy earlier this month. With that big implosion, you'd think that real estate mogul Sam Zell, who ...

Viewdle reviewed by Google's Marissa Mayer

by Bambi Francisco , December 22, 2008 | Comments (0)

Search expert joins Vator Box team to evaluate the facial-recognition technology startup

Viewdle, which recently won the Le Web pitch competition in early December, was in the spotlight for this week's Vator Box. Viewdle is a facial-recognition technology startup that was founded in 2006. Who better to evaluate technology to help us find things across the Web in an automated fashion than Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of search experience. Overall, Mayer, Ezra ...

Socialmedian sells to Xing for $7.5 million

by Bambi Francisco , December 19, 2008 | Comments (3)

Personalized news aggregator gets snapped up in successful exit

How do you take under $1 million and turn it into $4 million in a year? Ask Jason Goldberg, founder of socialmedian. European social network, Xing, is buying socialmedian, a personalized news aggregation site, for $7.5 million, about $4 million cash upfront and $3.5 million in an earn out. Liquid Scenarios, our sponsor for Vator Box, predicted the acquisition amount ...

Ooyala founders share their grand vision

by Bambi Francisco , December 19, 2008 | Comments (0)

Video delivery and advertising platform wants to serve soup-to-nuts to the head-to-tail

Back in 2006, I wrote about Brightcove, a rising star in the video platform business. Two years later, online behavior has changed, technology has improved dramatically, business models have iterated, and, of course, newcomers are trying to redefine what former newcomers tried to do not so long ago. Today, Ooyala is that seemingly rising star in the video delivery and ...

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Bambi Francisco
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Vator, Inc. (Owner)

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