April 2012
2 posts
2 tags
I have 404,772 users. Now what? →
pudjam666:
Three months ago I started a social network for musicians called Fandalism. My goal was to build a database of every musician on the planet and give them a place to show their work and meet other musicians.
I launched it without much fanfare by inviting a few friends and posting about it on…
4 tags
Google Drive: 1 More Place to Put It. →
Now that you’ve put your files in every other digital locker service that had a pulse, Google Drive will be offering 5GB for you to have your way with in the near future.
Sidenote: I would have sacrificed my online social identity to Google+ for the rest of my life if Google drive was G’s plan to give everyone a self-driving car. -1 for Google…
March 2012
8 posts
3 tags
Y Combinator's Latest 66 Startups →
Lot’s of cool and nerdy stuff out of Y Combinator’s latest class. I’m particularly in like with Zillabyte, Flutter, FlyPad, Priceonomics, and Exec. The rest are either acquhires in the next 6-12 mos, or flops altogether.
I wasn’t really inspired by the majority of this class. This isn’t to say the rest of the co’s are on a flat trajectory - I’m just not...
3 tags
Svbtle and Obtvse. →
Svbtle is beautiful, and extremely intruiging as a walled garden for vetted bloggers. I think there is room for more of that sort of thing - the exclusive collective. Obtvse is also delightfully minimal, and something I will definitely be messing around with.
As far as any “controversy” goes, I don’t care.
6 tags
Groupon Grabs FeeFighters →
This seems to be, probably, the best case exit scenario for FeeFighters. Their payment processing suggestion service is helpful. Their on payment service seemed reactive. All in all, it’s a good exit for a good company, and a great strategic play for Groupon as they move further in the direction of supporting small businesses (and booking more deals).
5 tags
$0.01 Instagram Prints, MoPho →
Making the digital tangible is always fascinating. MoPho is no stranger to this, as they have offered their app as a way to get your Facebook, Flickr, and Picasa photos printed on paper, canvas, mousepads, etc. MoPho announced Instagram support today, and are kicking things off by offering the first 15,000 Instagram photo prints for a penny.
Get on that.
4 tags
Fab.com By The Numbers - After 9 Months →
Fab’s mobile numbers are of particular note.
betashop:
3 million members, doubling in the first 3 months of 2012 - up from 1.5M on January 1, 2012.
40% of daily visits coming from mobile.
More than 1 million products sold in 9 months.
That’s an average of 111,111 products sold per month.
3 tags
Tiger + Shaq + Arnold = ? →
Courtesy of onwardly at HN, this emerges from the archive. As it turns out, they all held Google stock Pre-IPO.
8 years ago, the GOOG managed an exit. A lot happens in 8 years.
4 tags
Pictorious B.I.G.
1) I wanted to be more creative with the headline, and work in a Notorious B.I.G. reference in some kind of clever way. That would have taken too much time.
2) Semi-ProTip: If you want to find out about cool apps before your friends, check the “release date” tab under the different app categories in the iPhone App Store a few times a week.
And now: Pictorious.
During my weekly...
5 tags
WatchCharlie Rose drills down on Gilt, offering a unique and in-depth look at the state of Gilt, the flash-sale commerce landscape, ecommerce overall, and the state of the NY tech/startup scene.
(And a Ried Hoffman interview on is tossed in at the end gratis.)
January 2012
2 posts
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, discovery 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
2 posts
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
4 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...
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”,...
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...