Alastair Goldfisher
When he’s not making investments as managing director of Mayfield, Raj Kapoor can be seen whooping it up as the frontman of CoverFlow, a band that includes Tim Chang, principal of Norwest Venture Partners, on bass, as well as two Facebook employees–Prashant Fuloria (guitar) and Ethan Beard (guitar)–and Philip Kaplan (drums) from Blippy. The band […]
Sure, it helps to have friends. But you just don’t call ‘em up and ask for funding.
“It’s not that easy,” says Steve Larsen, co-founder and CEO and Menlo Park, Calif.-based PhoneTell.
The company (f.k.a. CallSpark) launched on Monday at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York and released a new app for Android smartphones that helps users identify and manage incoming calls. Versions for other platforms are in the works.
I wasn’t expecting a tech entrepreneur responsible for cloud computing collaboration technology to talk fondly about an old-fashioned, dial-up modem and the screeching sound it makes when connecting, but such was the case yesterday when I chatted with Andy McLoughlin. McLoughlin is co-founder and global VP of biz dev at Huddle, a London-based developer of […]
On Monday, San Jose, Calif.-based Infineta Systems came out of stealth mode to announce that it has raised $15 million in its first round of institutional venture capital.
That amount of cheddar can support a lot of growth. Last week, I met co-founder and CEO Raj Kanaya, who said that the funding will help boost its sales and marketing team in advance of a product roll out later this year.
The company currently employs 20, most of who are focused on product development. He said among the challenges he faces in running a startup is finding and recruiting the best talent available.
“We have to complete against Facebook, AdMob and other new, large companies that pay well,” Kanaya says. “Our employees know that they may have left some initial cash on the table, but it matters to our engineers that they’re working on something important that’s going to make a huge difference in relieving Internet data center traffic.”
Mara Segal doesn’t like the “K” word, which in her line of work refers to kiosks.
What about a vending machine? Retail on demand? Auto shops?
“I’m not sure. The nomenclature hasn’t been determined yet,” says Segal, CEO and founder of San Francisco-based Utique. “But what I do know is that the need for convenience is propelling the growth of these kinds of sales. All we need is an electrical outlet and foot traffic, and we can open a store.”
While it seems that most startups these days focus on some kind of mobile app, Utique has created technology that it hopes will change the face of retail.
Utique has patented the technology behind the machine seen above, which in this example sells beauty products, such as mascara and lip balm, and even mink eyelashes (for $160).
SkyFire Labs Inc. CEO Jeffrey Glueck met me earlier this week to show off the latest version of his company's Web browser for mobile devices, which was released today for the Android.
Glueck came armed with a Nexus phone and several other devices. But unlike the dolt at Apple (you know the guy, Gray Powell), Glueck didn’t leave any phone behind.
I was interested in meeting Glueck (pictured here) for several reasons. His company is venture-backed, having raised $17.8 million in Series A and B rounds from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Matrix Partners and Trinity Partners, with the most recent infusion coming late last year.
You might know of Ancestry.com for recently linking President Barack Obama with investor Warren Buffet. It’s also in the spotlight, thanks to NBC’s “Who Do You Think You Are” program. However, a decade ago, the company, which provides an online genealogy research and family publishing service, was looked at as just another dot-com and many […]
David Hayden didn’t call his app an SMS-killer. But he may as well have. Hayden is chairman and CEO of San Francisco-based Pana.ma, which has made a voice messaging service, originally for the iPhone (and now iPad), that is expected to be available on the Android and BlackBerry phones beginning on Thursday. The app allows […]
It’s been just over three months since the Haitian earthquake. But Lukas Biewald, CEO and founder of CrowdFlower, says that he remains inspired by the collaborative impact of Mission 4636, a text messaging relief effort involving the startup CrowdFlower and other organizations and which proved to be a central part of the efforts following the […]
In the more than three years since the term “cloud computing” was coined at the first Cloud Expo, VCs have backed a range of companies that have developed virtualized computing resources to deliver software and information on-demand. And it appears to be an investment opportunity that is growing. The Sand Hill Group, a software consulting […]