Connie Loizos
It’s often said that imitation is the highest form of flattery, and nowhere has the old adage been proven more abundantly than through the many companies to counterfeit Apple’s innovative and elegant designs over the years. Apple clones have shown a unique brand of determination, considering that the company has almost always moved swiftly and […]
“Funny how much emotion you can feel about a stranger. And yet every phone call I make, every time I’m on my computer, he’s part of it.” The words belong to writer Susan Orlean, writing yesterday about famed entrepreneur Steve Jobs. But one imagines that millions of people experienced the same, queer feeling, following the […]
In news that is sure to devastate Apple fans and shareholders alike, Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple, communicated to Apple’s board and employees that he has resigned as CEO. The company has named Tim Cook — the company’s longtime COO and an employee of Apple since 1998 — its new chief executive. From […]
Most tech observers are well aware that New York’s startup scene has an energetic cheerleader in its mayor, Michael Bloomberg. Among his most recent declarations: naming April 16 of this year “Foursquare Day" in New York City and more recently calling for “immediate immigration reform” that would include a new visa for entrepreneurs with investors ready to back them.
Yet Bloomberg’s biggest industry initiative is a competition that will award one university with roughly 10 acres of New York City real estate and up to $100 million at the end of this year. The idea? To create what he hopes will be a talent-attracting, jobs-creating applied sciences and engineering school.
The big question, of course, is who will get his administration's blessing -- a regional institution like Cornell, which is among roughly 27 schools that have submitted a proposal to the city’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC), or engineering giant Stanford, which has been making it very plain that it wants to get the nod.
Stewart Butterfield has it made. He’s famous for cofounding the popular photo-sharing service Flickr in 2004. He lives comfortably in Vancouver, having sold Flickr to Yahoo for a reported $35 million in 2005. And investors including Accel Partners and Andreessen Horowitz have thrown $17.2 million behind his two-year-old game company, Tiny Speck, even though the […]
As longtime readers know, we occasionally like to check in with Sherwood Partners in Palo Alto, long known to industry insiders as “the undertaker” because its primary role is to efficiently shutter companies. Sherwood made a killing in the aftermath of the Internet bubble, closing down roughly 180 startups. At the time, the company itself […]
Since the fall of 2008, LPs haven’t shown much appetite for stakes in either venture capital or buyout firms. It’s hard to blame them. Having overdosed on both earlier in the decade, they paid dearly for it once the global economic crisis struck, their public market holdings shriveled, and they were caught with a superabundance […]
It’s easy to appreciate the logic of the modern-day temp agency TaskRabbit. Through its Web platform, the three-year-old San Francisco-based company connects the unemployed or underemployed with busy people who can afford some extra help – to pick up dry cleaning, say, or assemble furniture. In fact, TaskRabbit was able to raise a $5 million Series A in […]
“My name is Matthew Epstein, and I want to work for you, Google. Bad.” So begins a video starring a faux-mustachioed, 24-year-old named Matthew Epstein, in an effort he’d hoped would capture the search giant’s attention but that has managed to do considerably more. Not only did thousands of Silicon Valley decision-makers read about his extreme […]
The rental agency Airbnb issued a lengthy public apology yesterday afternoon, following days of dreadful press spawned by the story of “EJ,” a customer whose home was ransacked by someone who’d rented it through Airbnb. In the letter, CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky (pictured) stated that the company had “really screwed things up” in not […]