February 2012
3 posts
“Jason always says he runs Bradford’s company. Fab would not exist with just one...”
– Hypebeast Trade: Bradford Shane Shellhammer – Co-founder/Chief Creative Officer of Fab.com | Hypebeast (via betashop)
3 tags
4 tags
3 Things to do Right Now.
1) Stop reading about how much a few people’s net worth will increase in a few months when Zuck is in NYC ringing the opening bell on Wall St.
2) Subscribe to my newest newsletter FundList, where I break down any notable funding rounds that took place of the course of the week. It comes on Saturdays (so does DealList, but… FundList is better). Also, look forward to a new BetaList...
January 2012
4 posts
2 tags
Goodsie Blog: New Feature: Store Embeds →
A smart/super-appealing move from Goodsie, esp. for you Tumblring/fashionistic purveyors of handmade or vintage goods.
goodsie:
Today we are pleased to release an embed system for Goodsie which makes it easy to integrate a Goodsie storefront into almost any external site, like a Tumblr blog or Wordpress site!
Embed dimensions, product sizes, colors and backgrounds can all be customized to...
3 tags
3 Things.
1) If you read this, and weren’t previously a subscriber to my Best in Beta newsletter, subscribe now! The newsletter is a periodic email highlighting new tech startups and web apps that are in beta testing. If you are a subscriber, you should know that I changed the name to the BetaList so that you don’t get confused when that name is in the subject line instead of Best in Beta. Why...
6 tags
Discovering Art(.sy)
One of the driving forces of the internet has been discovery. Yahoo is credited with being one of the primary discovery engines of the web while it was still in diapers. Discovery evolved from a curated page of links, to search with the invention of the search engine. As the internet evolved into it’s interactive age, discover occurred on a social level, and in the current age of handled...
2 tags
Kickstarter in 2011. →
See previous commentary and statistics.
Of note: It would seem that, with products like Twine, PadPivot, etc. getting so much media attention and widespread praise for the amount of cheddar they were able to raise for their respective projects, the Design category would be the one that grabbed the most cashflow. While it did grab the title for most popular rewards, it was actually the Film...
December 2011
6 posts
1 tag
6 tags
Pinterest is Blowing Up. →
Traffic is up 40x in the past 6 months, according to the latest data from Experian. That’s cool for Pinterest, but I’m not sure I completely get the Pinterest hype.
Maybe it’s because I have been using Fancy for quite a while now. I have to give Pinterest some credit though. They identified one of the things people loved about Tumblr, that is collecting images/inspiration, and...
3 tags
2 tags
3 tags
...and we're back.
I mean I’m back, with you.
I spent a minute or two thinking about deleting TheStartupist, and letting it fall off the face of the earth. And then I decided that I just like following the space too much.
So here’s the plan for the revamped TheStartupist: I’m going to play the part of dj, and spin stories that I find interesting, relevant, and important - along with a short...
October 2011
5 posts
4 tags
Obscura: The Instagram for Censorship
In the case that you, or your mother, have not already shared every last personal detail of your life on the Facebook already, please be informed that it will happen - nudie pics and all.
Released at the end of August and available for both Android and iPhone, the Obscura Cam app, in much the same way as Instagram makes it easy to add visual effects to your photos, allows users to easily obscure...
3 tags
Movenbank: Phase 1.
You may remember my overall negative pre-impression of Movenbank, the self proclaimed next generation bank that is looking to create a revolutionary new bank with no paper, no plastic, and no hidden fees. Well, the startup debuted in alpha mode at the beginning of the month. I received my alpha invite two days ago. Here’s an inside look at phase 1.
It all started with a series of 40...
4 tags
Shopify Adds Stripe Support.
From the Shopify Blog:
…we’re proud to announce support for accepting payments on your Shopify store through Stripe! Stripe handles the full stack of payment processing without requiring you to have a merchant account or gateway; all you need is a bank account with one of their supported banks.
This amounts to a huge win for both current Shopify store owners and those looking to...
2 tags
Kickstarter, 1,000,000 Backers Later...
Last week a woman named Rachel Perrie pledged to a film project called Cargo. At that moment she became the millionth person to have ever backed a Kickstarter project… …Kickstarter backers have now pledged more than $100 million to projects. To put this in some context, the 2011 fiscal year budget for the National Endowment for the Arts is $154 million. At the current pace of more...
3 tags
If This is the Future of Banking, I'm Stashing my...
You know those startups that are going to be a super-huge success because they have a location-based-photo-sharing-social-group-deals-with-private-sales-and-game-mechanics? Yeah. It’s kind of like that.
Betabeat reported on Movenbank, a start that may, in the near future, use your Klout score and other aggregated online social data to issue you a credit line. The “bank”,...
September 2011
1 post
3 tags
Yes, but No: 20 Tired Startup Trends
Business Insider’s Alyson Shontell published a signature SAI slideshow this past week cautioning entrepreneurs to think before they launch their startup, lest it fall within one of the 20 (actually 18 - see reaction number 2 below) over-played startup categories.
While I could probably write 2000 words in response by expressing disagreement with nearly every word contained in the piece, I...
July 2011
1 post
Google+ may be the Fastest to 100,000,000 users,...
Bill Gross, the founder of Idealab whose portfolio includes companies Snap, UberMedia, and Aptera, predicted via Google+ that the fresh-out-the-kitchen social play would be the fastest social network to reach 100,000,000 members. Numbers released by Google during their quarterly earnings call pegged the current membership at about 10,000,000 which is not all that bad for a “limited...