When it comes to the road to success in Silicon Valley, Eric Migicovsky was definitely on the right path. His idea for creating a watch that can display messages from your smartphone was embraced by Y Combinator, the prestigious business...
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Courtesy Pebble Technology
Pebble's new watch is supposed to display messages from your smartphone.
Rejected By VCs, Pebble Watch Raises $3.8M on Kickstarter
Photograph by David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
Zynga faces the challenge of keeping the entrepreneurs it brings aboard from leaving.
Zynga’s Acquired Founders: Where Are They Now?
As Zynga uses part of its $1.8 billion to acquire popular mobile apps and the key talent behind them, one challenge it faces is keeping the entrepreneurs it brings aboard. “The most important component of a deal is the human...
Read more »How Voting Power Changes, And What Google’s New Plan Does
Google is proposing a new stock structure that it says will help founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, along with Chairman Eric Schmidt, preserve their outsized influence over key company decisions. The triumvirate wants to protect their two-thirds voting power,...
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Photograph by Pando Hall
Yammer is buying a piece of the document storage and collaboration market with its acquisition of OneDrum.
Yammer Takes on Dropbox, Box With Acquisition of OneDrum
Yammer Inc., a social network for businesses, is buying its own piece of the document storage and collaboration market, becoming the latest contender to challenge Box Inc. and Dropbox Inc. Yammer has acquired OneDrum, a 10-person U.K. startup that lets...
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Photograph by Vibhu Norby/Everyme
Everyme CEO Oliver Cameron (left) with staff members Omid Mikhchi, Maurycy Wojtowicz and Cortland Klein.
China’s Giant Tencent Placing Bets on Small Silicon Valley Startups
The allure of Silicon Valley has aroused China’s largest Internet company to begin investing in some of America’s smallest ones. Tencent Holdings has funded about a half dozen young startups, many of them from prestigious business incubator Y Combinator, hoping...
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Photography by Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo
In this April 7, 2011 photo, CEO Kevin Systrom, at left, works alongside engineer Shayne Sweeney at Instagram in San Francisco.
$1B for Instagram? For Zuckerberg, That’s Just the Price for Popularity
One thing we know about Mark Zuckerberg is that he’s a big fan of eyeballs. That would explain the $1 billion the Facebook CEO just shelled out for Instagram, which is currently more popular on Apple and Google devices than...
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Courtesy Instagram via Bloomberg
Kevin Systrom, right, and Mike Krieger are the founders of Instagram.
Building a Billion-Dollar Business? Yeah, There’s an App Store for That
While Silicon Valley is asking what today’s Instagram news says about Facebook, a more apt question may be: What does it say about Apple? Until last week, Instagram was an application built exclusively for the iPhone. Even so, in less...
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Photograph by Ramin Talaie/Bloomberg
Frank Quattrone (seen here at a conference in 2010) sparked a debate yesterday about who's to blame for the underwriting "duopoly."
In IPO ‘Duopoly,’ VCs Blame the CEOs Who Blame the VCs
It’s no secret in Silicon Valley that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs get the hottest IPOs. From LinkedIn, Groupon and Zynga last year to Yelp and Facebook this year, it’s been a two-horse race. The irony is that startups and...
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Zite Chief Executive Mark Johnson said the agreements are a sign that publishers see value in aggregation technology.
News Reader App Zite Offers Olive Branch to Web Publishers
A year ago, online news aggregator Zite received a cease-and-desist notice from major publishers including Gannett, Time, The Washington Post and Dow Jones. Zite’s app for the iPad was taking content from around the Web, stripping away the ads and...
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Courtesy of SugarCRM
SugarCRM Moves Closer to IPO With $33 Million Financing Round
With the IPO window open for business software makers, SugarCRM inched closer to going public in what may be its last private financing round. The Cupertino, California-based company said today that New Enterprise Associates, Silicon Valley Bank and Gold Hill...
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