Startup One Stop

Good morning, All,

First off, ur next SOS Breakfast with an Investor will be September 18^th – it’s a Thursday this time, and our guest investor will be the one and only Jeanne Sullivan, who’s back from her world travels and making one of her first appearance since her return, at our breakfast. Register here and hope to see you there!

Last week, celebrities were hacked and nude photos were posted online and shared, it seems (that link is not to the photos, in case you were wondering and hadn’t yet checked). Ok, you’re a celebrity. You probably know very little about technology, or rather, to use an analogy and to quote the late Joan Rivers, ‘Grandchildren can be so f---ing annoying. How many times can you go, 'And the cow goes moo and the pig goes oink'? It's like talking to a supermodel." Not generally the sharpest tools in the shed, and while Apple can certainly share part of the blame for its lax iCloud security, most people use weak passwords. Read More...

Good morning, All,

The quote is a stage direction from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale.

You know it’s a quiet week when one of the ‘top’ stories is that Elon Musk Promises Tesla Owners Better Placed Cup Holders, Maybe. And that something’s slightly amok when two Tesla owners take out a full-page ad in the Palo Alto Daily News, the cup holders being one of the suggestions for improvement. At least we’re focused on the big stuff. Read More...

Good morning, All,

So, if you’re an innovator – and happen to live in Silicon Valley – arrogance is pretty much mandatory, according to this article: Arrogance Is Good: In Defense of Silicon Valley. Arrogance leads to innovation. (Insert Steve Jobs mention/‘Here’s to the crazy ones’ ad reference here.)

Back in the 80s there was a group of young actors dubbed the Brat Pack. They were famous, for a hot minute, but none had what you might call an exceptional career. They were mostly known for their partying and their heavy recreational drug use. And where are they now, indeed? Read More...

Good morning, All,

Our guest is very active investor Mike Edelhart, who spends ½ his time on the West Coast and isn’t readily accessible to the masses. Here’s your rare chance for a one-on-one, and maybe get his perspective on the startup scene on both coasts. It’ll be a good one and hope you can make it! Breakfast is included, of course, and we always leave time for networking. Register here.   (There will also be press there, so try to behave.)

Tech is something of anomaly among industries. Not only because it crosses so many of them, but also because it is so all-embracing and impacts so many facets of our lives. Sometimes, whether we like it/consent, or not. It took a long time before the Industrial Age really took hold and changed the world. Apple and Microsoft came along in the mid ‘70s, but home computers were far from ubiquitous until at least 20 years later. The web didn’t really hit the zeitgeist in any significant way until the mid ‘90s. It being 2014, and since we live in so-called Internet time, it’s a somewhat maturing industry. Or should at least start showing signs of some maturity. Read More...

Good morning, All,

We’ve gotten feedback that you all found out about it too late – so this is your head’s up, up front and personal – don’t say we didn’t flag it. Our guest is very active investor Mike Edelhart, who spends ½ his time on the West Coast and isn’t readily accessible to the masses. Here’s your rare chance for a one-on-one, and maybe get his perspective on the startup scene on both coasts. It’ll be a good one and hope you can make it! Breakfast is included, of course, and we always leave time for networking. Register here.

A few weeks ago, we found out that Facebook was engaged in a clandestine study to find out if emotions are contagious on social networks. Of course, it’s always our theory that the first shot across the bow is more or less the red herring to see how far they can push the line and get away with. Were there serious repercussions? Would you have remembered that little exercise, had we not reminded you? Read More...

Good morning, All,

Can we not call it the Internet of Thing? How about the Internet of Devices, or if we’re married to IoT, let’s be more specific and just call it the Internet of Tracking. Think that you’re going to sit this IoT out for a while? Or that it’s still a ways off? Have a smartphone? Welcome aboard! And speaking of smart phones, in case you missed it, Apple left a backdoor on every iOS device.

No, we’re not going the paranoid route/NSA/possible governmental next steps in the name of ‘security,’ yea, even in a world where a TSA agent doesn’t know that the District of Columbia is part of the US. But security and our personal information are always of concern to us, especially in a world where networks are not secure – and more and more of the devices of our everyday lives are being connected. Read More...

Good morning, All,

In case you’ve been on a desert island or in a coma, welcome back, and yes, an app called Yo that was developed in half an hour or so, raised $1 million. Oh, wait, that was last week’s news and update – make that $1.5 million. We know what you’re thinking:

Y? Read More...

Good morning, All,

First, our next Breakfast with an Angel is tomorrow morning. You can register here. . Tech is an industry that loves its catch phrases and paradigms of the day. “We’re disrupting (INSERT VERTICAL HERE)” or “We’re the Airbnb/Uber of (INSERT VERTICAL HERE).” All well and good, but and like it or not, Airbnb and Uber quietly changed something. They did more than just herald what we’re now misnaming the sharing economy. It’s more than that: they disrupted, they fixed, they make money, and they empower people. Which was always the promise of tech. They raised the bar. And they wrote the blueprint for the possibilities of tech. They built a better mousetrap.

Uber didn’t really disrupt taxis. It disrupted car services – that’s the model, if you think about it. But they built a better mousetrap, and by extension, and disrupted taxis all over the world. Mistakes were made – and addressed. UberX rocks our world. Read More...

Good morning, All,

Simple math. Let’s give basic post pubescents millions – if not billion – of dollars, fawning accolades in the press, not to mention from billionaire investors and so-called business leaders. You think all of this might go to their heads and they might get the idea that they’re not only bullet-proof, but endowed with powers beyond those of mere mortals and –shudder – above the law? They may get older, but they don’t seem to outgrow it.

First, we had the reports of Facebook manipulating a small percentage of its users for data collection. ‘Small’ for Facebook is nearly 700,000 people. Not much less than the population of Alaska. The story has changed a few times
– has been altered/updated, but it’s pretty much FB standard practice to act first, offer a weak apology later. (Facebook COO tells users she deliberately tried to upset: “We never meant to upset you”. For the record, ‘she’ is that arbiter of appropriate behavior – Sheryl ‘Lean In’ Sandberg). Read More...

Good morning, All,

Two things happened last week to which attention must be paid. Aereo lost their right to exist, because, well, that’s the way court wanted it, since they pretty much ignored the facts and made their decision based on, that’s the way they wanted it. Aereo offered an “alternative to the bundle” that consumers are forced to accept from cable providers. (Why the Supreme Court just set TV innovation back a decade. The Supreme Court’s decision to kill Aereo was bad from a legal point of view — and downright horrible from a policy and innovation perspective.) The company ceased providing access to broadcast television as of this past Saturday. We’re reminded of Napster, which was also shut down by the courts in the Web 1.0 days and note to self and heads up to the broadcasters: even with napster gone, the music labels still failed to seize technology, thinking that it would just go away and leave them alone, and that given the court’s decision, it was game over and life as usual. Didn’t happen. Au contraire.

Google also held their i/o developer conference this past week, and here’s Everything You Need to Know. We’ll bottom line it: Android is “becoming contextually aware, flowing from place to place with you, and taking advantage of any input you throw at it—be it your voice aimed at a device on your wrist, a button on your steering wheel, your mouse on your laptop, or a gaming control on your TV.” They’re taking over your home, your car – they’re already at the office – and all sorts of other devices you may own now, or in the near future. (Does Nest remind anyone else of HAL – and just waiting for that little red eyeball to be enabled…) Let’s not forget what Google Everywhere really means. The cloud part of the announcement was interrupted by a protestor who chanted “wake the fuck up, you’re all working for a totalitarian company that builds robots that kill people.” Our question is: with Google in every aspect of our lives and waking moments, how are they different from the NSA, except that we opt in? Knowingly and completely? Read More...