May 3rd, 2009

Office Tour: Foodzie

Posted by Andrew Mager @ 3:54 pm

Categories: Commentary, Office Tour, Startup

Tags: Food, Financial, Microsoft Office, Food & Beverage, Financial Accounting, Manufacturing, Finance, Andrew Mager

San Francisco-based startup Foodzie sells delicious, artisan-grown food items.

Their founders, Nik Bauman (25), Emily Olson (24), and Rob LaFave (26), were just named best young tech entrepreneurs for 2009 in BusinessWeek.

This week, they invited me over for a grilled cheese tasting, and I was amazed at how comfortable their space was to live, work, and even cook and eat in.

Their third-floor SOMA loft space has quite a sweet space, discretely patrolled by Bentley, the Foodzie guard dog:

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January 9th, 2009

The Crunchies 2009

Posted by Andrew Mager @ 7:33 pm

Categories: Conference, Fun, Live blog, Startup, Technology

Tags: Seat, Andrew Mager

The Oscars of Tech. That’s how I explain it to my mother.

7:23 p.m. Arrived just a little late, but got great seats.

Sitting next to MC Hammer:

7:42 p.m. Om Malik announces best application of service to Google Reader. Marissa Mayer accepts the Crunchie.

7:45 p.m. Steve Gillmor announces the best technology innovation or achievement. Live Mesh carries it home.

“When we are in an environment with technological and environmental change, you have to focus on these new huge constraints, but also new opportunities for destruction or rebirth.”
-Ray Ozzie, Microsoft

8:00 p.m. Github wins best bootstrapped startup.

GoodGuide wins Most Likely To Make The World a Better Place:

Amazon Web Services wins best enterprise app.

8:08 p.m. Ritchter Scales perform

8:12 p.m. Paul Graham from Y Combinator speaks with Eric from TechCrunch:

8:18 p.m. e-buddy wins the best international product. It’s like a meebo.

Project Frog wins best Clean Tech.

Marissa Mayer speaks for a moment.

Then the mobile phone orchestra (video coming soon):

8:40 p.m. Om Malik grabs the wrong envelope so I have 10 extra seconds to write this paragraph. Evernote wins best mobile startup.

Lots of press in attendance tonight, include Adam Jackson and Scott Beale:

imeem mobile wins best mobile app.

8:42 p.m. Jason Calacanis speaks:

Ray Ozzie comes back to speak to Om Malik:

TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde thanks all of the sponsors. Mayfield Fund, MySpace Music, Charles River Ventures, Microsoft BizSpark, and Founders Fund to name a few.

She explains about the after party at City Hall. I will post some pictures from that later.

8:57 p.m. Best Startup Founder goes to Twitter, of course :)

Zuck wins best CEO:

FriendFeed wins best startup:

And Facebook takes best overall. Think about it though. How often do you login?

Here are all the nominees. I will post some of their links and party photos later:

Best Application of Service
-GetSatisfaction
-Google Reader *
-Meebo
-MySpace Music
-Minted
-Yelp

Best Technology Innovation/Achievement
-Facebook Connect
-Google Friend Connect
-Swype
-Yahoo! BOSS
-Google Chrome
-Microsoft Live Mesh *

Best Design
-Animoto
-Lala.com
-Friendfeed
-Cooliris **
-Infectious
-Sliderocket

Marshall: The best startups survive the downturn.

Malik: We’ve been here before. But we’ve seen tougher times.

Best Bootstrap Startup
-12seconds.tv
-github **
-socialcast
-backtype
-statsheet.com

Most Likely To Make The World a Better Place
-Better Place
-Akoha
-CO2stats
-Kiva **
-GoodGuide
-Causes (Facebook App)

Best Enterprise
-Zoho
-Yammer
-Google App Engine (runner up)
-Amazon Web Services **
-Salesforce

Best International
-ebuddy **
-fotonauts
-openx
-wuala
-event-privee.com

Best Clean Tech
-Better Place
-Project Frog **
-Boston Power
-ElectraDrive
-Laurus Energy

Marissa Mayer: Talks about Google Query Stream.

There are more text messages sent in Nairobi than New York City. You can learn a lot about people if you study how people use technology.

Q: How do you think Google is doing on the social web?

I’m really excited about Search Wiki. People can collaborate with a community of people who do the same search. Blogger, YouTube, and other products promise content creation.

Best Time Sink
-Zivity
-SGN
-Tapulous **
-Mob Wars
-Zyng

Best Mobile Startup
-ChaCha
-Qik
-Skyfire
-Evernote **
-Posterous
-Truphone

Best Mobile App
-Google
-imeem
-smule
-Pandora **
-Rolando
-Big in Japan

Best Startup Founder
-23andMe
-Bebo
-Twitter **
-FriendFeed
-Etsy

Best Startup CEO
-hulu
-zappos.com
-Space X
-Android
-Facebook **

Best New Startup of 2008
-GoodGuide
-Yammer
-TopSpin
-DropBox
-FriendFeed **
-Tapulous

Best Overall
-Amazon Web Services
-Hulu
-Facebook **
-Twitter
-Android

Here are all my photos from Flickr »

September 8th, 2008

TechCrunch50: Day 1

Posted by Andrew Mager @ 6:40 am

Categories: Blogging, Conference, Startup, TechCrunch50, Technology

Tags: Start-up, Presentation, Venture Capital, Entrepreneurship, E-mail, Team Management, Investment, Finance, Financing Startups, Management

When Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis team up on a project, the webs are bound to be shaken up.

Last year, their conference TechCrunch40 was an enormous showcase for startups to present their idea to venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and the press. This year, it’s even bigger.

I will be liveblogging this event for the next three days. I will try to writeup all 50 startups, plus some from the demo pit.

Email me if you want me to cover something specifically.

6:30 a.m. Here is today’s lineup:

• Adgregate Markets (Presented by Henry Wong and Du Nguyen)
• AdRocket (Presented by Scott Milener and Andreas Svensson)
• Angstro (Presented by Rohit Khare and Salim Ismail)
• BlahGirls (Presented by Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg)
• Burt (Presented by Gustav von Sydow and Gustav Martner)
• Connective Logic (Presented by Stuart Smith and Jeremy Orme)
• Devunity (Presented by Alon Carmel and Leeron Shalev)
• DotSpots (Presented by Farhad Mohit and Matthew Mastracci)
• FairSoftware (Presented by Alain Raynaud and Eileen Long)
• Hangout Industries (Presented by Pano Anthos and Lucas Smolic)
• LiveHit (Presented by Jeanine LeFlore)
• OtherInBox (Presented by Joshua Baer and Mike Subelsky)
• Quant the News (Presented by Brett Markinson and Ben Goertzel)
• Rinen (Presented by Hirofumi Manganji and Go Hagiwara)
• Shryk (Presented by Shane Kempton and Kim Stroh)
• Tweegee (Presented by Shay Bloch and Adi Brandwine)
• Yammer (Presented by David Sacks and Adam Pisoni)

6:38 a.m. Heading to the San Francisco Design Center Concourse. Hopefully I can plugin there.

Calacanis announced that Ashton Kutcher will be one of the first presentations at 9 a.m. PST.

Google’s Marissa Mayer will give a presentation today at 11:30 a.m. PST.

7:30 a.m. Just got here. The name badges are two sided:

The demo pit is warming up. Qik’s booth:

Video search engine CastTV:

7:40 a.m. Seesmic is here. Think of it as a video Twitter:

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September 4th, 2008

Please Dress Me: A tee shirt-ch engine

Posted by Andrew Mager @ 8:14 am

Categories: Productivity, Search, Startup

Tags: Social Media, Brother, Gary, Internet, Search, Andrew Mager

When great minds collide on the Internet, anything is possible.

Take the Vaynerchuk brothers for example. When they put their heart into something, it skyrockets.

Gary uses the web to connect with each and every one of his thousands of fans, and still manages to host a 20-minute wine program, aka The Thunder Show. His little brother AJ just completed an internship at Revision3 and is finishing up his senior year of college in Boston. He takes after his big brother in a lot of ways too. In my few encounters with him, I’ve noticed his passion and willingness to learn new things on the web.

These brothers, along with coder Joe Stump (Digg), and designer Chris Henslin, have built a tee shirt search engine called Press Dress Me.

The idea is simple: reach out to tee shirt websites and integrate their products into the search engine. So far, AJ says they have over 100 deals in the works.

You can narrow down you search by category, color, or price too.

Unlike many startups, this one has a heavy social media presence. They link to their Facebook fan page on the front door of their site, and they have social links in the footer.

I’m excited to see this take off. There are so many good shirts on the Internet, but they are hard to find. Hopefully, Please Dress Me will bring all these great threads together.

August 16th, 2008

Wordcamp 2008

Posted by Andrew Mager @ 8:44 am

Categories: Blogging, Conference, Development, Journalism, Startup, Technology, Tools

Tags: Avatar, Wordpress, Automattic, Blogging, Internet, Andrew Mager

In the quiet flats of University of California San Francisco Mission Bay campus, bloggers, thinkers, journalists, developers, and inventors melt together for a full day of lectures and learning. The goal of Wordcamp 2008 is to figure out the future of publishing on the web.

Last year’s event was two days long, but this year it’s crunched into a 9-hour multi-session jam.

8:00 a.m. Checked into UCSF. Automattic’s Marianne Masculino set me up with badge, a free tee shirt, and pass for tonight’s after party.

8:15 a.m. Wordpress schwag everywhere!

8:32 a.m. The badges use Gravatars, globally recognized avatars. This is the newest product from the makers of Wordpress. Once you set it up, every time you comment on a blog, your avatar will show up.

Wordcamp is broken down into two separate sections today: the user track and the developer track. Since most of us are quickly becoming “users” of this type of software, I will mainly cover that part of the conference.

Schedule for the user track

• 9:00 a.m. The Future of Education and Wordpress -
• 9:30 a.m. SEO Mistakes Most Bloggers Make - Stephan Spencer
• 10:00 a.m. Open Source Business Models - Stephen O’Grady
• 10:50 a.m. Andy Skelton - A musical performance
• 11:00 a.m. LOLcats and the Secret of Virality
• 11:30 a.m. Wordpress & Microformats
• 12:00 p.m. Lunch
• 1:00 p.m. Switching to Wordpress Painlessly - Lloyd Budd
• 1:20 p.m. 450 Wordpress Power User Tips - Lorelle VanFossen
• 1:40 p.m. Hassle-free Upgrades - Sam Bauers
• 2:00 p.m. State of the Word - Matt Mullenweg
• 3:00 p.m. Get Friendly with BuddyPress - Andy Peatling
• 3:20 p.m. Democratizing the Web through Global Voices - Jeremy Clarke
• 3:40 p.m. An interview with Om Malik
• 4:00 p.m. Riding the Crazyhorse - Liz Danzico and Jane Wells
• 5:00 p.m. A musical performance by Chuck Lewis aka SEO Rapper
• 5:10 p.m. Kicking Ass and Creating Passionate Users - Kathy Sierra

8:56 a.m. Matt Mullenweg welcomes the crowd and gives logistical announcements. He announces the after party; they will show a movie at the bar.

“The idea behind Wordcamp is to set the tone for the following year. It’s sort of a nice milestone. We want to expose you to the ideas that Wordpress has been thinking about over the last year. In turn, it’s the audience’s chance to connect on a personal level with Wordpress. It’s 100% user-driven, so here’s your chance.” -Matt Mullenweg

9:00 a.m. Let the games begin.

The Future of Education and Wordpress

Allen Levine, New Media Consotrtium

The powerful thing about blogging is that it’s personal. It’s the most important subject: me. My first blog was Movable Type, and my recovery time was about ten minutes. One of the best templates I’ve used is Vertigo Blue by Brian Gardner.

Edublogs - UMW is doing something amazing with Wordpress multi-user installations. They’ve had about 15,000 users sign up so far.

University of British Columbia is getting ready to launch a hosted blog service for their student community.

University of Calgary is doing something similar. The Discovery Channel has an “educator network”.

Al Upton teaches third grade kids in Australia. They have a class blog where the kids are paired with external mentors around the world, where they could get comments and criticism about their writing. The state department shut him down for about a year. He got about 300 comments on his blog from educators around the world about how wrongly he was treated. But he is back up today.

An elementary school in Illinois is showing off student art projects on a simple Wordpress install.

ChickSpeak is a website designed for women at college to help them deal with issues they may run into.

A blog is a great tool for publishing. It has a calendar, it archives your posts, and is searchable.

ScholarPress develops specific plugins catered to educators. Courseware, WPBook, and there are more in development.

• Flickr photoset of the slides.
• Presentation wiki

9:29 a.m. Sitting next to SocialTNT’s Chris Lynn:

SEO Mistakes Most Bloggers Make

Stephan Spencer, Netconcepts

My 16-year old daughter makes about $1,000 a month on a blog about NeoPets.

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August 15th, 2008

Office Tour: Twitter

Posted by Andrew Mager @ 8:08 pm

Categories: Office Tour, Startup

Tags: Twitter, Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software, Andrew Mager

Twitter recently relocated their headquarters from South Park to larger space on Bryant Street in San Francisco.

(Photo by monstro)

One of my former co-workers who now works at Twitter gave me a tour of their new spot. I was really impressed with the laid back feel and comfortable atmosphere.

August 4th, 2008

Teens in Tech launches into private alpha

Posted by Andrew Mager @ 8:00 am

Categories: Startup, Teens

Tags: Social Media, Daniel Brusilovsky, Andrew Mager

Daniel Brusilovsky is the youngest social media evangelist that I’ve ever met.

It’s only fitting that he works for Qik, a company dedicated to enabling mobile video for the world, but now he’s digging into his own startup.

Teens in Tech will give adolescents 100mb of storage space on their own subdomain. They will be able to post rich media and interact with their community in the forums. These kids are the future of tech, so keep an eye on this startup. Creating content online is natural to them.

Right now the site is in private alpha, but I think they should open it up. If the site is ready, why are the gates closed? If you are interested in getting an invite, send me your email in the talkback, and I will see if Brusilovsky can hook you up.