Don’t be Fooled. This SOPA Opera Has Just Begun…
In the aftermath of the Jan 18th internet blackout, as prominent supporters of SOPA and PIPA started withdrawing support, the internet collectively breathed a sigh of relief and prepared for the mandatory victory jigs and pats-on-the-back.
Two days later, the FBI shut-down MegaUpload.
Internet, we are too heady and drunk from our SOPA victory to actually realize what is happening around us. The repeal of SOPA is not our moment of comeuppance; it is the beginning of a paradigm shift in the way our governments work and how power is shared in civil society. SOPA will be back – in another shape or form. It’ll come back bigger, stronger, with more pervasive power and greater perversions of power. To lay back with a false sense of security following this little victory would be our greatest mistake.
Dicks and Assholes: The Difference a Word Can Make, (Or How I Landed on the First Page of Hacker News)
Last night was my moment of glory: a spot on the first page of Hacker News.
The link in question was this: SEO for Dicks. In the short space of half a dozen hours, this site received 9000+ unique visitors, giving me my best traffic day ever.
But this wasn’t the first time I’d submitted that link to HN. No, I’d tried it before, on the 13th of January, only to get a paltry 38 pageviews. It was submitted around mid-afternoon on a regular workday (well, it was a Friday), the same as yesterday.
Funding Roundup 1.18.2012
- “Try before you buy” subscription service for gadgets, ybuy, raised a $750,000 seed round and exited private beta. Described by the founders as “Netflix+Shoedazzle” for gadgets, the service lets anyone try out a gadget for a month for a flat fee of $24.95/month. [Via TechCrunch]
- Social search app, CliqSearch, just closed a $840,000 round of angel funding. The Philadelphia based company offers a social search product that lets users search for local businesses based on recommendations from friends. [Via TechCrunch]
Funding Roundup 1.17.2012–AppDynamics Raises $20M, Trigger $1M and Constellation Pharma’s Massive $95M Round
- Based out of San Francisco, CA, Trigger provides a cross-platform mobile development framework for developers. It just raised $1M in seed funding from a cache of investors, including Paul Graham, SV Angel, 500 Startups, Russ Siegelman, among others. [Via FinSMEs]
- AppDynamics, an application performance management solutions provider, raised a $20M Series C round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Including previous rounds, the company has now raised a total of $36.5M in funding. [Via TechCrunch]
Caught in the Act Again: Google Contractors ‘Sacked’ After Vandalizing OpenStreetMap
The bad week for Google PR refuses to end. A few days after Google’s Mocality misadventure in Kenya, Google contractors have been found to be vandalizing OpenStreetMap (OSM) by removing vital information from the system and altering important data, TheVerge reports.
The Google contractors were based out of India and shared the same IP Address as the team that stole data from Mocality’s database. A Google spokesperson confirmed the vandalism and sacked the two contractors involved in the act. The spokesperson was very particular in emphasizing that the culprits were Google contractors and not Google employees.
Ten Great Startup Offices
Stuffy suites and even stuffier cubicles: you’ll find none of these in a typical startup office. More than a few founders I know started their companies to crash their way out of cubicle hell with quirky, quixotic offices that embody their startup’s philosophy. A great startup office can not only boost productivity and employee morale, but also work as an excellent recruitment tool. From conference rooms named with names pulled from Batman comics to vast reading nooks and hangout zones, you’ll find them all in these ten startup offices.
A Dangerous Infographic
A new inforgraphic by HR Block (embedded below) titled “The New Generation of Tech Millionaires Under 30” highlights 9 entrepreneurs who made their millions before hitting 30.
It’s a very dangerous infographic. It’s dangerous because it perpetuates a myth of entrepreneurship that celebrates youth and inexperience, lauds the risk-taking dropout, and essentially, propagates an idea of entrepreneurship that finds little room for older, more experienced founders. According to this myth, the only successful entrepreneurs are business prodigies who started their first enterprise in their teens, worked their way to a million dollars before they could legally buy alcohol, and dropped out of school because, well, fuck school.
Ex-Cruncher Sarah Lacy Launches PandoDaily with $2.5M in Funding. I Smell Competition
It's a horrible joke, I know.
One of my favorite TechCrunch exiles, Sarah Lacy, is off to no good: she’s just started a news blog about startups and technology, PandoDaily.com, in direct competition with this glorious and magnificent enterprise.
And while this blog runs on caffeine, nachos, Google Reader, hope and prayer, Sarah Lacy has landed a healthy $2.5M in funding from the Valley’s elite: Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Tony Hseih, among others. Plus, she gets the services of fellow ex-Crunchers Michael Arrington, M.G. Siegler, and Paul Carr as guest columnists.
Other marquee writers sharing the spotlight with Lacy will be Andy Meek (formerly of The Daily Beast) and Farhad Manjoo (of Slate and Fast Company).
Funding Roundup: Qualvu’s $1.85M Series B, Gidsy’s $1.2M Seed Funding, and PandoDaily’s $2.5M Round
- Qualvu, a qualitative research company based out of Lakewood, CO, raised a $1.85M in Series B funding from Tango and High Country Venture. [via: Qualvu]
- Based out of Berlin, Gidsy is an ‘experience’ marketplace where people can discover and book tours and activities across the world. The company just raised $1.2M in seed funding. Backers include Sunstone Capital, Index Ventures, and Ashton Kutcher, among others. [via: Gidsy]
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