And with the conclusion of the last Battlefield Startup presentation, the second day of TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 has come to a close. The day kicked off with a talk between noted New York City venture capitalist Fred Wilson and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, who recently become a VC himself. The two talked Bitcoins and traded VC stories with Wilson giving tips for pitching a venture capitalist. “Leave your backstory at home,” Wilson pleaded. Arrington quickly nodded and agreed. Mike Abbott then took the stage with Mailbox CEO and co-founder, Gentry Underwood. The two talked about the surprising pains in scaling Underwood’s hot iOS email application. It took engineers 24 hours a day for several weeks to keep up with the initial demand. And then Dropbox scooped up the company. Google’s Seth Sternberg, Director of Product Management for Google+, and Ardan Arac, Product Manager at Google, used the Disrupt stage to announce new Google + features. Simply put, Google +’s visibility is now supersized in Google Search. eBay chief John Donahoe explained to Bloomberg’s chief content editor Norm Pearlstine about how the company screens its acquisitions and how he keeps founders from leaving after the acquisition — a trick that many companies fail to execute after buying a startup. Troy Carter is disrupting the music industry from within. And today he spoke with TechCrunch’s Josh Constine about his secrets regarding managing Lady Gaga’s online presence (she doesn’t use Facebook personally), where celebrities go overboard online, and why he thinks terrestrial radio will be the home of the next big disruption. When should an entrepreneur raise money, who should they raise from… and, well, should they even raise? These were some of the questions discussed on a panel with TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis at Disrupt NY 2013, which included participation from Mike Abbott of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Aaref Hilaly of Sequoia Capital, AngelList’s Naval Ravikant, and Box Group’s David Tisch. At TechCrunch Disrupt NY today, VP of Display Advertising Products at Google, Neal Mohan, Facebook Ad Products Director Gokul Rajaram and Twitter Senior Director of Product Revenue Kevin Weil took the stage to talk about the state of digital advertising — and they each had a unique take on the subject. In a chat with TechCrunch’s Leena Rao, representatives from PayPal, Stripe and Gumroad gave thoughts on the currency that has VCs emptying their bank accounts to invest afresh —
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Tag Archives: Disrupt
Paidpiper Launches At Disrupt NY, Letting You Pay For Others’ Purchases In Stores
Paidpiper launched at Disrupt NY today, aiming to make your physical wallet, and presence, less necessary — in a good way.
Paidpiper aims to solve that problem with its consumer-facing app, Ok’d. Using Ok’d, you can walk into a store, snap a picture of a product, and send it to a friend, parent, employer, etc. and ask them to pay for it.
TechCrunch
TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 Begins Now: View The Live Stream Here!
The Hackathon has come and gone, and it’s time for the main event. TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 begins now. If you’ve been a fan of Disrupt in the past, you’re in for a huge treat this beautiful April morning. We’ll be live streaming the entire event from start to finish, with today’s live stream starting at 8:45am ET and ending around 6pm each night. In the morning, we’ll be enjoying fireside chats with the likes of Andreesen Horowitz’s Chris Dixon and Benchmark’s Bill Gurley, along with panels like Content Makes A Comeback. Better yet, Jonah Perreti from BuzzFeed will be giving the keynote for the day. In the afternoon, Battlefield begins. For those of you who are Disrupt virgins, the Startup Battlefield is the shining star of TechCrunch Disrupt. 35 companies from all over the world are handpicked by TechCrunch staff to launch their products and companies on our stage, direct to the world. They’ll have six minutes to present, followed by six minutes of Q&A with tech star judges like Tracy Chou (Pinterest), John Frankel (ff Venture) and Sam Yagan (okCupid). We invite you to follow along on the live stream and tweet with us at #TCdisrupt. Here’s the full agenda for the day: 9:00am -9:05am Opening Remarks by TechCrunch 9:05am – 9:25am Fireside Chat with Chris Dixon (Andreessen Horowitz) 9:25am – 9:50am Fireside Chat with Bill Gurley (Benchmark) 9:50am – 10:10am In Conversation with Chamath Palihapitya (Social+Capital Partnership) 10:10am – 10:35am Keynote: Everyone Is Literally Crazy, by Jonah Peretti (Buzzfeed) 10:35am – 10:55am TBA 10:55am – 11:05am Special Product Announcement 11:05am – 11:20am BREAK 11:20am – 11:45am In Conversation with Kevin Ryan (Gilt Groupe) and Dwight Merriman (10gen) 11:45am – 12:10pm Panel: Content Makes a Comeback 12:10pm – 12:30pm Fireside Chat with John Borthwick 12:30pm – 2:00pm LUNCH 2:00pm – 2:25pm Founders Stories with Mike McCue (Flipboard) Startup Battlefield with Jason Kincaid 2:25pm – 2:30pm How the Startup Battlefield Works 2:30pm – 3:30pm Session One – New Networks Judges: Ime Archibong (Facebook), David Pakman (Venrock), Yossi Vardi (angel investor) 3:30pm – 3:45pm BREAK 3:45pm – 4:45pm Session Two – Online for Offline Judges: Niko Bonatsos (General Catalyst), Tracy Chou (Pinterest), Matt Mazzeo (Lowercase Capital), Ron Palmeri (Mark II Ventures) 4:45pm – 5:00pm BREAK 5:00pm – 6:00pm Session Three – Get Things Done Judges: John Frankel (ff Venture Capital), Hilary Mason (bit.ly), Megan Quinn (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers),
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Rambler Takes Home The Disrupt NY 2013 Hackathon Grand Prize, Learn To Drive And Radical Are Runners Up
The past 24 hours have just flown by for the hundreds of hackers here at the Disrupt NY Hackathon, but the sun is finally up and it’s time to pass judgment on their caffeine-fueled projects. As it turns out, there’s a ton of them here — with 164 registered projects this is our biggest Hackathon yet, and each presenter only had 60 seconds to wow our judges (not to mention the rest of the audience). As you might guess there was no shortage of amazing projects that came together in a single day, but our judges could only choose one team to take home our $ 5,000 grand prize. Anyway, that’s enough out of me — meet our newest Hackathon winner! Winner: Rambler Rambler, created by William Hockey, Zach Perret and Michael Kelly, is a web app that lets users view their credit and debit card transactions on a map. During the dev process, the team tapped the Foursquare API for locations and the Plaid API to access user spending data. Runner-up #1: Learn To Drive Learn To Drive, created by Jared Zoneraich, Jemma Issroff, Kenny Song, and Nicholas Joseph, is an app for the GM vehicle platform that acts as a virtual driving instructor by speaking driving instructions aloud and display driving statistics like miles driven, hours driven, and hours driven at night. Runner-up #2: Radical Radical, created by Sam Saccone, Carl Sednaoui, and Jeff Escalante, allows users to create attractive calendars and embed on webpages with a single line of code. These three teams will also demo their projects on the main Disrupt stage on Wednesday afternoon, but that’s not to say everyone else is going home empty-handed. Hackathon sponsors Appery.io, AT&T, CrunchBase, General Motors, Microsoft Bizspark, Microsoft Skydrive, NewAer, Pearson, Samsung, Twilio, Visa, Wrigley and Yammer have also graciously doled out prizes of their own for the most innovative and interesting uses of their APIs and services. And just who decided the fate of these sleep-deprived hackers? Our panel of judges includes Mahaya CEO Tarikh Korula, Path101 co-founder Charlie O’Donnell, founder/CEO of The Muse Kathryn Minshew, bit.ly chief scientist Hilary Mason, FuturePerfect Ventures founding partner Jalak Jobanputra, and TechStars NYC Managing Director David Tisch.
TechCrunch
The Smell Of Coders In The Morning, Or, 10:30AM At The Disrupt NYC Hackathon [TCTV]
The Disrupt NYC 2013 Hackathon winners were just announced (congratulations, Rambler!) But amidst all the celebration, it’s important to remember that it’s been a very long and largely sleepless 30-hour road to victory for the 164 teams that presented onstage today.
TechCrunch
Saturday Night At The Disrupt NY Hackathon Includes Pizza, Beer, And Dodgeball
It’s after 1am on a Saturday night in Manhattan, and there are still hundreds of people at our Disrupt NY Hackathon. The dedication of the attendees trying to build a cool product in less than 24 hours is both impressive and slightly disturbing.
To capture some of the energy, Drew Olanoff and I took a walk around the venue at around 11pm, as the pizza and beer arrived to give the teams a late-night boost. We watched quick demos of a few cool projects, assessed the quality of the inescapable caffeine, and capped things off with an impromptu game of basement dodgeball.
Meet Some Hackers And Their Promising Projects At The Disrupt NY Hackathon
It’s only been about six hours since our Disrupt NY Hackathon officially began, and we’re starting to see our intrepid hackers hit their stride. Granted, some of them are a little farther along than others — Darrell found one guy who made an Arduino-powered robot for physically testing apps and devices — but there’s still plenty of time to bring some of these wild-eyed designs to fruition. Let’s take a peek at what everyone else is working on, shall we?
TechCrunch
Disrupt NY 2013 Hackathon Team Wants To Build A WebRTC-Based Pandora For Exercise
The Disrupt NY 2013 Hackathon has been underway for a few hours now and we’re already seeing a bunch of cool projects. Team Geem is building what it calls a “Pandora for Exercise.” The service, which will hopefully be ready in time to be demoed tomorrow, will create exercise programs that are tailored for the individual user. The usual exercise DVDs, Geem believes, are just too boring and repetitive, so a web-based exercise service that’s fully customized can help break through that routine. Also, unlike DVDs, Geem could offer users a wider choice of options, so if you want to do some cardio and work on your abs, and also do a bit of yoga, Geem will have you covered. Users, the team tells me, will be able to watch pre-recorded videos, but the cool part of the service is also that it will enable ad-hoc classes that teachers can set up through the service. While I was talking to them, Geem was looking at using TokBox’s OpenTok WebRTC platform for its service. What’s nice about this is that users could also beam their video over to the instructor, so if you just can’t get that crane pose right in your yoga class, the teacher can see what’s wrong and hopefully help you from crashing into the ground in your living room. The team also plans to use the Django framework and possibly build a Roku app to get their service into the living room. It wouldn’t be 2013 if the five-member team, including Mina Azib, Sven Hermann, Livio Dalloro, Alan Johnson, Lauren Dalloro and Guanglei Xiong, wasn’t also thinking about adding some social features to its service. Users, they say, will be able to see what classes their friends are attending and receive notifications when their favorite instructors are about to teach a class (with Facebook being the social backend for the service). Users, of course, will also be able to rate their instructors. Most of the team members currently work for Siemens, and Alan Johnson is working on his own startup, Breakrs, a gamified platform for music discovery, which is currently in beta.
TechCrunch
Draw Something With Strangers On A Train: Disrupt NY 2013 Hackathon Duo Building Visual Ice-Breaker App For Galaxy Note
The Disrupt NY 2013 Hackathon has kicked off and here’s one of the new hack team pairings hoping to claim tomorrow’s prize after a long night of coding. Michal Shaffer, left, from New York and Peter Ma, right from San Francisco — met at the event and are now collaborating on a proximity art app that will be using Samsung’s API and the Galaxy Note plus S Pen to power random collaborative doodling.
TechCrunch
A User’s Guide To Disrupt NY 2013
Disrupt is two days away… and we’ve put together an array of awesomeness with our partners to make your event experience better.
TechCrunch
Limor Fried AKA Ladyada Will Join Us To Talk Hardware On The Disrupt Stage
We often give short shrift to hardware at Disrupt mostly because investors are afraid to look at companies that can’t pivot without trashing 30 days of inventory. No longer. Limor Fried AKA Ladyada will join me on stage to talk about what it takes to build a profitable, cool, and amazingly popular hardware company out of a dorm room.
Goldman Sachs’ Anthony Noto Will Talk Technology Investments At Disrupt NY
There is a marquis name that has appeared on the S-1s of the most high-profile IPOs in the past two years—Goldman Sachs. And joining us at Disrupt NY is the man responsible for many of the investment bank’s bets on technology, Anthony Noto, the global co-head of Goldman Sachs’ global telecommunications, media and technology group.
TechCrunch
Announcing The Agenda For TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013
A big city needs a big tech event, which is why I’m pleased to announce the massive TechCrunch Disrupt NYC 2013 agenda. It’s a schedule chock-full of amazing speakers, great panels, and all the excitement of our Startup Battlefield – in which 30 amazing startups will compete for the Disrupt Cup and a $ 50,000 prize – all played out on the backdrop of the most vibrant metropolis in the world. Who will be there? Gentry Underwood, who recently sold his meteoric company, Mailbox, to Dropbox will be on the stage. Investing partners and pillars of the New York entrepreneurial scene, Kevin Ryan and Dwight Merriman will share their perspectives. Ebay’s John Donahoe will sit down for an in-depth conversation as will Fred Wilson, Roelof Botha, Bill Gurley, Chris Dixon and Ron Conway. Flipboard’s Mike McCue will join us and Ashton Kutcher, will tell us what’s up with A-Grade and share what it’s like to play Steve Jobs on film. We’ll have an exclusive screening of Downloaded, the documentary about Napster, and sit down with the movie’s subjects and creator. Plus, the Taxi And Limousine Commission will take on Hailo and Sidecar in a not-to-be missed discussion. If that’s not enough to make you run, not walk, to Disrupt, there will be hundreds of new companies in Startup Alley, a raft of awesome after parties, and Hardware Alley where we celebrate the best of hardware startups. We’ve got even more surprises to announce as we count down the days to hearing those catchy Disrupt music tracks. Stay tuned. Click here to get your tickets. If you’re interested in sponsorships, please contact our team. AGENDA Monday, April 29th 9:00am -9:05am Opening Remarks by TechCrunch 9:05am – 9:25am Fireside chat with Chris Dixon (Andreessen Horowitz) 9:25am – 9:50am Fireside Chat with Bill Gurley (Benchmark Capital) 9:50am – 10:10am In Conversation with Chamath Palihapitya (Social+Capital Partnership) 10:10am – 10:35am Keynote: Everyone is Literally Crazy, by Jonah Peretti (Buzzfeed) 10:35am – 10:55am In Conversation with Joe Green (FWD) 10:55am – 11:05am Special Product Announcement 11:05am – 11:20am BREAK 11:20am – 11:45am In Conversation with Kevin Ryan (Gilt Groupe) and Dwight Merriman (10gen) 11:45am – 12:10pm Panel: Content Makes a Comeback 12:10pm – 12:30pm Fireside Chat with John Borthwick 12:30pm – 2:00pm LUNCH 2:00pm – 2:25pm Founders Stories with Mike McCue (Flipboard) Startup Battlefield with Jason Kincaid 2:25pm – 2:30pm How the Startup Battlefield Works 2:30pm – 3:30pm Session
TechCrunch
Flipboard’s Mike McCue Talks Mobile Media At Disrupt NY
People want to get their news on their phones, but many publishers are struggling to offer a set of mobile web sites and apps that users truly love. Meanwhile, mobile advertising is currently making much less money than web advertising, which is already a fraction of what print used to bring publishers. Basically, modern publishing is tough. But Mike McCue’s Flipboard is already making a big difference in the industry by helping publications succeed on mobile. Its popular native mobile apps let users read beautifully presented stories from across their favorite sites, then it sells ads on these sites and splits the revenue with publishers. It recently launched a way for anyone to create their own magazines, which has helped lead to a record 53 million registered users today — check out TechCrunch’s weekly edition here for a good example. I’ll be talking with McCue about his plans for the company, where he sees media going on mobile, and how his past experiences as an entrepreneur have shaped his present work. McCue joins our growing list of Disrupt NY speakers that currently includes eBay CEO John Donahoe, Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale, top investor Fred Wilson, and more coming to be announced in the weeks leading up to Disrupt NY. Tickets are currently available here. Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our sponsorship team here sponsors@techcrunch.com. Mike McCue CEO & Co-Founder, Flipboard Longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mike McCue founded Flipboard in early 2010, with former Apple iPhone engineer Evan Doll. Together they set out to build a global service that would let people make all of their news, photos, and videos from across social networks accessible from a single place. In July 2010, they launched Flipboard for iPad, a social magazine that brings people the most informative, entertaining and amazing stories from around the world and from their daily life. With each flip, people can learn about stories and events that take place thousands of miles away or right at home; see life’s great moments in one place; and be inspired by what others share. Today, Flipboard works across iPad, iPhone and Android. In 1999, Mike founded Tellme Networks, one of the world’s largest Internet networks for voice communication. He successfully led the integration of the company’s technology into Microsoft’s infrastructure following its acquisition. Microsoft bought Tellme in 2007 for $ 800 million.
TechCrunch
Hailo, SideCar, And The New York Taxi And Limousine Commission To Discuss The Future Of Transportation At Disrupt NY 2013
In the coming weeks, the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission is expected to enter into its first trial of taxi e-hail apps. That’ll allow startups like Hailo that help users find nearby cabs through their mobile phones, without having to hail them from the street. At the same time, competition is coming from services like SideCar, which enables passengers to find rides from community drivers.
TechCrunch
Disrupt NY Early Sales End Soon, And Come to Disrupt Europe: Berlin In October
Hey folks. This is just a little reminder that early-bird ticket sales for Disrupt NY (April 27 – May 1) and Hackathon end on Thursday April 11. So grab yours today. We’d also like to remind you that TechCrunch Disrupt Europe: Berlin will be held, of course, in Berlin, Germany. This will be TechCrunch’s only conference outside North America this year and we hope to make it as international as possible, bringing startups from all over Europe and the rest of the world together to meet with the cream of Silicon Valley.
TechCrunch
Let’s Hear It For New York – Disrupt NY 2013 Hackathon Tickets Now Available
In mere weeks, the TC juggernaut rolls into New York for Disrupt, and that means we’re going to be giving hackers all over the East Coast (and beyond) an epic platform to show just how amazing their tech scene is.
When it comes to Hackathaons, the N.Y. scene has traditionally put Silicon Valley to shame. Everyone remembers GroupMe, born at Disrupt in 2010, who then went on to kill at SXSW a year later and exit to Skype six months after that. But is it really a surprise that the City That Never Sleeps does so well at Hackathons?
Of course not. And now it’s time to do it all again, with ticket sales for the New York TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon opening today.
TechCrunch
Reminder: Register For Disrupt Hardware Alley
I love hardware. That’s why I want you guys to bring some of the coolest hardware projects imaginable to Disrupt NY this year. That’s why I want you guys in our Hardware Alley.
TechCrunch Giveaway: Nest And Free Ticket To Disrupt NY #TCDisrupt
TechCrunch Disrupt NY is right around the corner! We have already announced many influential speakers, including Kevin Systrom of Instagram, Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital, Ron Conway of SV Angel, Kevin Ryan of Gilt Groupe and will be announcing many more soon. You can view the whole list of speakers and special guests we have announced so far here. Disrupt NY is going to be an amazing show. We are giving away one free ticket to the show that will get you into the full three days of the conference, plus all of the after parties where you can dance and drink the night away with us. We also are going to give away a Nest learning thermostat. The Nest is better than your regular thermostat because it can actually learn your daily schedule, and program itself to change heating and cooling patterns accordingly. It knows when you’re away and when you’re at home, and using it can lower your home’s energy bill by around 20 percent. You can also connect to the Nest remotely via the Nest Mobile app for Android and iPhone and change the temperature even if you’re on a business trip on the other side of the world. This second-generation version is compatible with a lot more home heating and cooling systems, too, and smaller than the first-gen device. Want a shot at winning both? All you have to do is follow the steps below. 1) Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page: 2) Then do one of the following: – Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TCDisrupt hashtag) – Or leave us a comment below telling us what your favorite thing is about New York City The giveaway starts now and ends next Friday at 7:30pm PT. Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will make sure you follow the steps above and choose our winner next Friday. Anyone in the world is eligible. Please note the ticket is for one person only and does not include airfare or hotel. Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our amazing sponsorship team here sponsors@techcrunch.com.
TechCrunch
TechCrunch Giveaway: Free Ticket To Disrupt NY Plus A New GoPro Camera #TCDisrupt
As you know TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 is right around the corner. This April we will be, as they say, taking over the Big Apple. We have already announced a few of our special guests and speakers, including Instagram’s Kevin Systrom, Sequoia Capital’s Roelof Botha, SV Angel’s Ron Conway and David Lee, Thrillist Media Group’s Ben Lerer, Huffington Post’s Ken Lerer, Gilt Groupe’s Kevin Ryan, and Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson. Those are just to name a few. We will have more exciting announcements coming up, so be on the lookout for those. A couple of weeks ago, we gave away a free Disrupt ticket and a free Lytro camera to a lucky winner. Have you heard about GoPro? Well my colleague Kim-Mai Cutler wrote an amazing piece about their new camera. And guess what? We are giving one of those away, too. One lucky winner will receive a free ticket to Disrupt NY, plus the top model of the new GoPro camera — the HERO3 Black Edition, valued at $ 399.99. To win both, all you have to do is follow the steps below. The giveaway will start now and end next Friday, March 1st, at 7:30 pm PT. 1) Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page: 2) Then do one of the following: – Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TCDisrupt hashtag) – Or leave us a comment below telling us what you’re excited to use the camera for Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will make sure you follow the steps above and choose our winner next Friday. Anyone in the world is eligible. Please note the ticket is for one person only and does not include airfare or hotel. Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our amazing sponsorship team here sponsors@techcrunch.com.
TechCrunch
Kevin Ryan, Gilt Groupe Founder And CEO, To Speak At Disrupt NY 2013
With each fleeting moment, we inch closer to Disrupt NY. Today we’re excited to announce that Kevin Ryan will take Disrupt’s stage in late April, joining our ever-growing list of speakers, which so far includes Ben and Ken Lerer, David Lee, and Ron Conway among others.
We just wrote about the rise in company builders, in which seasoned and successful entrepreneurs create studios to innovate, create and help found startups. There’s no better example of this than Kevin Ryan, one of the founders of Gilt and the brains behind AlleyCorp. A serial entrepreneur, Ryan was formerly the CEO of DoubleClick (which was eventually acquired by Google for $ 3 billion).
Fly Your Flag — Let’s See Some European Country Pavilions At Disrupt In New York
This year we want to make it very, very obvious that TechCrunch events are open to all. In the past we’ve had startups appear from everywhere from Tokyo to Russia to Ghana, Africa. And this year we want to see a great turn-out from Europe, so we’re specifically inviting European startups to Disrupt NYC held on April 29-May 1. After-all, there’s a growing European startup scene in New York, so this is very much the right time. You can apply for the upcoming Battlefield competition at Disrupt New York and also apply to be part of the ‘pavilions’ in Startup Alley, our demo area for newly launched startups. Please apply to be part of the Startup Alley here. Apply for the Battlefield here. Get a taster for the Alley in the above video.
TechCrunch
Disrupt NYC To Feature Indian, Brazilian And Israeli Pavilions
If Battlefield is the soul Disrupt, Startup Alley is the ever-beating heart. It’s a wild marketplace where startups gather on the showfloor to demo their creations. And this year, at Disrupt NYC held on April 29-May 1, there will be pavilions dedicated to Indian, Brazilian and Israeli startups.
TechCrunch
Reminder: The New York Disrupt Pitch-Off/Meetup Is On Tuesday
It’s been a few months since our last NYC meet-up and, in an effort to find some of the best startups in New York for Disrupt this year, we’re planning a 60-second pitch-off competition. The winner will get free tickets and a spot in Startup Alley at the event. One runner-up gets two free tickets to the event. Disrupt NY is being held on April 27 – May 1, 2013 in Manhattan.
NanoSatisfi Raises $1.2M To Disrupt The Aerospace Industry With Small, Affordable Satellites
For years, Peter Platzer was pretty close to a stereotypical rocket scientist on Wall Street — he was trained as a high-energy physicist, but he spent most of his professional career in finance. But he told me he’s always had an interest in space exploration, and now he’s working on an aerospace startup called NanoSatisfi, which just raised $ 1.2 million in seed funding.
Platzer said he avoided the industry in the past because it was slow and government-dominated, with little innovation. It took an enormous amount of time and money to launch satellites, which meant that the technology on those satellites lagged behind what was available on the ground.
TechCrunch
Facebook Is Primed To Disrupt Online Dating
Editor’s Note: Brian Bowman is founder and CEO of LikeIt.com, a fun way to discover people, places, and things.
The responsibility of dating sites should be to facilitate great first dates. Unfortunately, the dating industry has chosen to protect its charge-to-communicate business model instead of give consumers access to information to make an educated decision about a potential date: Is my date a real person? Who do we know in common and what mutual interests do we share?
TechCrunch
Startup Battlefield Applications Are Open For TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013
It’s time! Startup Battlefield Applications are now open for TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013. Disrupt NY will take place on April 29th through May 1st at our new venue, the Manhattan Center. Last year, UberConference was the breakout star of the New York Battlefield companies and walked away with $ 50,000, the coveted Disrupt Cup, and more press and headlines than they could have ever imagined. Join the ranks of previous Battlefield companies like Mint, Yammer, Dropbox, Fitbit and more.
Lightbank Looks Beyond Chicago As It Aims To Disrupt The Venture Capital Industry
There’s a lot of talk about disruption in the venture capital world. We’ve discussed at length the shift that many VCs are making from simply writing a check to serving as a hands-on, end-to-end service driven by seasoned operators and former founders.
Chicago-based Lightbank, the VC firm started by Groupon seed investors Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell, have a similar approach but with one major difference: the firm’s fund, which is around $ 200 million, is composed of mainly Keywell and Lefkofsky’s personal money, not that of LPs (NEA has put a small amount in the firm, but is not considered an L.P.).
TechCrunch
TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing Finalist 8 Securities Raises $3M, Set To Launch In Japan
Stock trading portal 8 Securities, a TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing 2011 finalist, just announced that it will launch in Japan next month. The Hong Kong-based startup hopes to tap into the Japanese market, which it estimates has over 16 million online investors. It also closed a $ 3 million funding round last week, with all eight private investors from its initial round of $ 8 million returning.
TechCrunch
Disrupt Battlefield Finalist Expect Labs Locks Up $2.4M In Funding For Its Real-Time Conversation Analyzer
Well, it looks like Tim Tuttle is doing pretty well for himself. His last company, the video search platform Truveo, was acquired by AOL in early 2006 for an undisclosed (but reportedly hefty) sum, and now his latest venture has just gotten a considerable financial shot in the arm.
Expect Labs, a TechCrunch Disrupt SF Battlefield startup that Tuttle co-founded with Moninder Jheeta, announced earlier today that it has locked up a $ 2.4 million investment from KPG Ventures, Google Ventures, and Greylock Partners (among others).
TechCrunch
Disrupt Battlefield Finalist Zumper Reveals It Raised $1M Seed Round From Greylock, Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz, Others
Zumper, the San Francisco-based startup that’s assisting apartment hunters find the most ideal abode, announced today that it closed a $ 1 million seed round. The announcement comes two weeks after launching into a public beta at SF Disrupt.
The round, which closed in May, included Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock, CrunchFund, NEA, Dawn Capital, The Experiment Fund, and the DeWilde family trust.
TechCrunch
CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince On Beating Disrupt Battlefield Nerves And Avoiding Site Meltdowns
CloudFlare launched almost exactly two years ago at the first TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. It was an incredible experience for us, and we owe a significant amount of our success to the stage Disrupt provided us. Since then, we’ve rolled out 23 data centers (one per month since launch), added more than half a million customers’ websites, and powered nearly half a trillion page views through the CloudFlare network. It’s been quite a two years.
TechCrunch
Iterations: My Disrupt Takeaways In Three Words: Enterprise, Celebrity, And Khosla
As a long-time contributor to TechCrunch, I again had the privilege of hanging out backstage and seeing the TechCrunch team put on what was, in my mind, the best Disrupt conference I’ve been to. In addition to having a really good time, the content generated both on stage, during the battlefield, and backstage with TCTV was astounding, a great place to reconnect with friends, and a special setting to monitor the pulse of Silicon Valley in this moment in time.
In that spirit, as I’ve done for the past conferences, I wanted to reflect on the key themes I observed during Disrupt. As a disclaimer, please note this isn’t an objective summary of the three days, but rather reflections seen through my own lens. I’m also not going to discuss the excellent Battlefield companies, as they were well-covered this week and the quality of pitches in the finals were very good. A few days after the event, these three themes continue to ring in my mind.
TechCrunch
TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2012 Day 3 Video Highlights (TCTV)
In the last of our three part series of video highlights from Disrupt SF, we focus on Wednesday when YourMechanic won the Startup Battlefield competition.
Earlier in the day, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick explained how he goes up against regulators trying to block his disruptive business model. Yammer CEO David Sacks was asked whether his company was ever in serious acquisition talks with Salesforce or Twitter before it was sold to Microsoft for $ 1.2 billion. And Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures explained why he doesn’t like to refer to himself as a venture capitalist, preferring to be called a mentor instead.
TechCrunch
TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2012 Day 2 Video Highlights (TCTV)
Continuing our look back at the SF Disrupt conference video highlights, Tuesday featured the standing-room only interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In his first interview since the IPO, he called his stock performance disappointing and talked about his biggest mistake. Investors focused on the positive comments, including progress in the mobile business, and Facebook’s market value soared $ 6.785 billion after the speech. It might be the first nearly $ 7 billion interview.
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TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2012 Day 1 Video Highlights (TCTV)
Want to catch up on some of our Disrupt conference highlights that you might have missed? This weekend, we’ll be posting videos from each day of Disrupt.
Monday’s agenda featured a keynote from Twitter and Square Co-Founder Jack Dorsey telling the audience he “never wanted to be an entrepreneur.” Ben Horowitz, of Andreessen Horowitz warned about how IPOs can change a company. We also heard from Greylock partner and LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman, Path’s Co-Founder Dave Morin, Newark’s Mayor Cory Booker and The Honest Company Founders Jessica Alba, Brian Lee plus many other founders and tech leaders.
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How To Disrupt Petty Inconveniences
Depending on who you ask, Jack Dorsey started off the latest Disrupt on either a very controversial or a very non-controversial note. “We need revolution, not disruption,” he said, words that would be easy to characterize as platitudes if he were not working hard at uprooting a few global institutions. Even so, the sentiment did not entirely match the tone of the conference that was to follow.
Whether you want to call it a bubble or not, it’s not controversial to say that there are millions upon millions of dollars going to ideas, services, and sites that will be dead or irrelevant in a year or two. The metaphor of the Cambrian explosion has been employed, of course. Tellingly, the Wikipedia article for it reads “most organisms were simple, composed of individual cells occasionally organized into colonies.” What a marvelously apt description of the creatures I saw on display this week!
A great number of the startups (a word that is beginning to lose all meaning, by the way) that I saw were aimed at solving problems so trifling that the first objective of many pitches was to alert the audience that they exist. Is this healthy? Yes and no.
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Open Garden, A TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield Finalist, Raises $2M Seed Round
Open Garden, a Disrupt New York 2012 Battlefield finalist, just announced that it has raised a $ 2 million seed round from a group of leading technology industry angel investors. The service, which allows Android, PC and Mac users to securely and seamlessly connect their phones, tablets and computers in order to share their wireless data connections with others, has been downloaded over 250,000 times.
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Spinlister Makes It Into Disrupt Battlefield With It’s ‘Airbnb For Bikes’
Peer-to-peer bike rental service Spinlister was chosen by the audience from amongst the Startup Alley companies today to pitch on stage as part of the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield in San Francisco this week.
There are over 100 million bikes in the US and over a billion on the planet. But most bikes are not used daily, meaning there’s plenty of opportunity to meet demand. Normal bike rental from a store costs about $ 16 a day. On Spinlister you can rent a bike from $ 5 a day up to about $ 100 for a really nice bike. They are now in 275 cities in 40 countries with over 2,000 bikes listed.
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Startup Alley Day 1: The Ectoplasmic Goo Of Innovation Oozes Out At Disrupt
Instruments on iPads and Minority Report-style gesture applications. Yes the variety of startups exuded like an ectoplasmic goo from Startup Alley today, where the atmosphere was electric with people pitching their companies to the passing VCs, investors, and journalists.
There’s nothing like running around with a microphone and a camera crew to get these people on video, so that’s just what we did today. Enjoy.
The companies we spoke to were:
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Meet The Disrupt SF 2012 Hackathon Winners: Livebolt Takes Grand Prize, Auctopus And HeatData Are Runners Up
The night has been a long one for our intrepid crew of hackers, and all their arduous, caffeine-fueled work has led to this moment. A stunning 147 teams have taken the stage here at Disrupt SF to deliver their fast and furious one-minute pitches — that’s more than we’ve ever had before. Still, only three teams will get the chance to demo their projects on-stage once Disrupt kicks off proper, and only one will claim the $ 5,000 grand prize.
Well without further ado, here is your Disrupt Hackathon winner and the two runner-ups!
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Live From The TechCrunch Disrupt SF Hackathon Finals!
A mere 24 hours ago an eclectic group of coders gathered outside of The Concourse at San Francisco Design Center intent on hacking together the next great app. And now after a sleepless night these groups are ready to show off their creation on massive the TechCrunch Disrupt stage.
Join us live as these apps, services and hardware hacks are displayed for the first time. Each group gets 60 short seconds to show off their work and win over the judges. Best of luck to everyone!
The presentations will start promptly at 11:00 PDT.
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Meet The Disrupt SF 2012 Hackathon Hackers
Every Disrupt we like to walk around the hall and meet with the uber-cool hackers who have dedicated their lives to making cool stuff in less than a day. We cornered five hackers and asked them what they were working on, what their biggest problem has been so far, and who would they consider a hacker hero. Their answers appear below, uncensored, unadulterated, and completely candid.
Getting Into The Groove: A Few Hours In At The Disrupt SF 2012 Hackathon [TCTV]
As this is being published, it’s just after midnight at the Disrupt SF 2012 Hackathon, and programmers are elbows deep into their projects (or perhaps in the middle of a well-deserved nap) with a very limited amount of time left to finish them off and polish them up for on-stage presentations Sunday. It may be hard for those bleary-eyed hackers to believe, but it was only hours ago on Saturday afternoon that they were just setting out on this journey, relatively bright-eyed and bushy tailed.
The video embedded above, shot and edited by TCTV’s John Murillo several hours into the Hackathon at around 4:30pm Pacific Time, might serve as a bit of a reminder to the Hackathon’s participants of that halcyon time in the mid-afternoon, when daylight still graced the skies and everything seemed possible.
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The Disrupt SF 2012 Hackathon Is On Like Donkey Kong
It’s that time of year again. Pencils are being sharpened, school buses are making their rounds, and hackers are coding to their little hearts’ desire. The Disrupt SF Hackathon has officially commenced, with over 400 hackers in attendance and over 35 different API sponsors, including AT&T, Nokia, Loku and Ford.
Each hacker and/or team gets 24 hours to develop and product, hacking through the night until noon tomorrow. You can be assured that Red Bull and beer will be a sizeable part of these coders’ nutritional equation.
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Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Is Going To Keep Up The Disruption At Disrupt SF
You might have heard of Uber and its quest to transform the way we transport ourselves from one place to another. You might have also heard that the company has faced some challenges along the way, challenges to which it didn’t and still doesn’t flinch.
You also also might have heard that the company now faces some stiff competition, and is making adjustments accordingly. Disrupt! (We love that word.)
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Why You Should Come To The Disrupt SF Hackathon
Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Bryan Schreier (@schreier), Dropbox’s board member and partner at Sequoia Capital. Sequoia is an investor in Dropbox, Evernote, Stripe, Tumblr, Instagram and Airbnb and a TechCrunch Disrupt Partner.
Everyone follows the mainstage events at Disrupt, and with good reason. Who can forget Heather Harde recovering the missing check for Mint at TechCrunch 40, David Sacks and Yammer winning TechCrunch 50, pretty much every Arrington interview, and most of all, the many impressive founders who’ve marched their companies across the Battlefield over the years. My favorite moment was watching Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi introduce Dropbox to the TechCrunch community back in 2008. It was a powerful springboard and well worth the time we invested preparing.
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Wolfram Alpha Makes CrunchBase Data Computable Just In Time For Disrupt SF
Wolfram Alpha just announced a useful new feature if you plan to follow Disrupt San Francisco closely. It has added CrunchBase data to its computational engine. You can now learn more about a specific startup, compare them or do any other computation with other Wolfram Alpha data.
Adding CrunchBase to its data sources is part of Wolfram Alpha’s ongoing effort to make everything computable. Usually, scientific data comes first, but the company announced personal analytics report for Facebook in August and now CrunchBase integration.
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From A Disrupt Win To $13M In Funding, Getaround Tells All
Peer-to-Peer car sharing service, Getaround, is making waves in the crowded sharing economy market, signing up over 10,000 cars in the last year. Before Getaround raised $ 13.9 million from VCs, such as Shervin Pishevar and Marissa Mayer, the startup was shot to Silicon Valley fame after winning TechCrunch Disrupt’s battlefield competition in 2011.
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Mexico Is Happening At TechCrunch Disrupt
With the focus of many in the startup community shifting towards emerging markets, Mexico is a prime target for VCs looking to support a new group of entrepreneurs. Ideally situated a quick flight away from Silicon Valley lies a growing community of entrepreneurs eager to get involved. With the Mexican Pavilion set to storm TechCrunch Disrupt, here’s what you need to know about the Mexican startup ecosystem.
Mexico’s economy is growing 40% faster than Brazil’s, over twice as fast as the United States, and is already the world’s 14th largest economy (on a GDP based scale). With an ever growing professional middle class, the market is well poised for innovative companies…
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