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Notes on Leadership: Be Like Steve Jobs, . . . And Bill Campbell, And Andy Grove

Editor’s note: When venture capitalists invest in early stage startups, more than anything else they are investing in the founders of the company and their ability to lead their employees through the most improbable set of circumstances to take an idea from a germ to a real and profitable business. In this guest post, [...]

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Sun, March 14 2010 » Uncategorized » No Comments

Twitter Launches A Site So You Can Stalk Twitter Employees AT SXSW

While a lot of the smaller startups like Foursquare and Gowalla are getting much of the buzz at SXSW, Twitter isn’t sitting idly on the location sidelines. Sure, they launched location integration on their site a few days ago, but they’ve also apparently set up a sub-site totally around location for SXSW. But here’s the [...]

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Sun, March 14 2010 » Uncategorized » No Comments

doubleTwist’s iTunes Alternative (That Works With Android) Adds Podcast Support

Over the last six months, doubleTwist, the iTunes alternative that lets you manage your music, videos, and photos, has really been stepping up its game. In October the company integrated an Amazon-powered MP3 store, allowing users to download and sync their music directly with any of hundreds of compatible devices, much as they would with the [...]

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Wed, March 10 2010 » Uncategorized » No Comments

Chomp Closes In On 300,000 Users, Launches App Review Site And Chomp Connect

When Chomp launched eight weeks ago in the iTunes store, it launched as an app for reviewing other iPhone apps. The app shows you a stream of realtime reviews, which you can filter by everyone or just your Facebook freinds. The app is showing some traction and should hit 300,000 active monthly [...]

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Tue, March 9 2010 » Uncategorized » No Comments

Allmyapps Updates Its iTunes-for-apps, Get Some Beta Invites

I first learned of Allmyapps at Le Web ‘09 when the company’s CEO Thibauld Favre, and co-Founder Aranaud Coulondre, grabbed my attention and enticed me into a demo. I nearly missed my flight. Allmyapps, a small but ambitious startup based in France, aims to become the “iTunes for software applications” as Thibauld puts [...]

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Tue, March 9 2010 » Uncategorized » No Comments

The AOL Executive Shuffle Continues: Entertainment Chief Mike Rich Departs

There’s been a lot of churn in AOL’s executive and employee ranks since Tim Armstrong became CEO. The latest exec to head for the door is 9-year veteran Mike Rich, who is the senior VP in charge of AOL Entertainment (which includes AOL Music, Moviefone, and AOL Television). He joins a growing list [...]

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Thu, March 4 2010 » Uncategorized » No Comments

Y Combinator To Startups: “We think the iPad is meant to be a Windows killer”

Last August, we wrote about Y Combinator’s latest idea: RFS, or, Requests for Startups. Basically, this allows the incubator to lead entrepreneurs in a certain direction based on trends they think will be hot. Y Combinator then selects the best ideas based around these guidelines to fund. The latest RFS (number 6), throws down a [...]

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Tue, March 2 2010 » Uncategorized » No Comments

Brightkite: 2 Million Users And A Lot Of Local Promo Interest

Yesterday, I wrote that location was going to be this year’s Twitter at SXSW. Today, my inbox exploded.
It seems that just about every company, advertiser, and even plenty of users associated with the location space emailed me with pitches, ideas, thoughts, etc. To say that space is red-hot right now, is putting it mildly. One [...]

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Sat, February 27 2010 » Uncategorized » No Comments

Twitter Strikes Deal To Bring Free SMS Tweets To Haiti

Following the disastrous earthquake in Haiti earlier this year, a number of web companies have been setting up special programs to try and do their part to help. Twitter has been one of the most active, as the company has made great use of its social graph to get the word out on how to [...]

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Mon, February 22 2010 » Uncategorized » No Comments

Reply.com Files For $60 Million IPO

Local cost-per-click marketplace Reply.com wants to raise $60 million in an initial public offering. The company filed its offering statement with the SEC this morning.
Reply.com is a cost-per-click ad network which targets ads for local businesses. Its strategy is to gather more information from consumers who click on their ads by inserting a [...]

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Mon, February 22 2010 » Uncategorized » No Comments