“The deployment of this technology in the mass market also opens up an entirely new range of categories of services for mobile marketing, which is already projected to grow to $24 Billion worldwide by 2013.”
ST@B and CSUA are hosting Hackathon at Wozniak Lounge, UC Berkeley. Looks like a pretty crazy event, 18 hours straight? Who knows, there could be some cool projects as a result. Nevertheless, it’ll probably be a great event to find people who are passionate and dedicated about what they’re doing. I’m not going to code, but I’ll probably stop by to see what’s up.
The Hackathon is a group project coding competition. Projects can be about anything, but all the work must take place during the competition period, which starts on Friday evening and ends Saturday at noon. At the end of the competition, groups will present what they’ve done to a panel of industry and professor judges who will be allowed to ask questions about the projects. The judges will make their decisions based on how well the projects embody the “hacker ethos”, which is meant to be interpretted broad
No one seemed to notice, but YouTube quietly came out with a new UI for comments and statistics. Finally! I think the key with the new box lets users know that the screen won’t totally reload when clicking on more comments.
A lot of topics were covered, but I’ll cover 5 areas that are most relevant to young entrepreneurs and students. Excuse my writing; I’m just quickly jotting down notes.
1. What classes did you wish you took in college?
Most answers began with the usual suspects: Business Law, Organizational Behavior, Computer Science, Sales, etc. However, Tim makes a point about partying more; most of business is about networking, while also being a friendly person. Also, take classes you really don’t want to take. For example, do you really suck at finance? Force yourself to confront your weaknesses.
2. How do you guys bring together a team?
The biggest part of a startup is the people. The advantage about hiring young people is that they are more susceptible changes and adapting. Hire people who have an opinion on things. Hire people who are way smarter than you; sounds like a cliche but it’s very important. In early stages, surround yourself with people who are really passion about problem solving; there are no answers.
4. What is a VC looking for?
Are you mature enough to be CEO?
What type of network does the entrepreneur come from.
A great ability to hire rockstars.
Salesmanship and communication. Life and business are constantly about selling.
Persistence. Will the person give up? It is common to change to business model over 3 times.
Self-awareness. How mature are you? Are you able to identify your weaknesses?
Are you in it to be rich or famous? Some people there to grow the company as big as possible, while others just want control and PR coverage.
4. Lifestyle Business.
Many students are happy making a facebook app, or a small social site. You don’t need much venture capital to start a “lifestyle” business. Venture capitalists expect a billion dollar company. They need companies that return 10-20x in order to maintain a good return on their investment fund. You may be happier just owning a small website that can sell for $20M. What is your agenda?
5. How important was your MBA?
Great networks. You will meet friends who will stick with you after graduation.
Most importantly, it’s a time to take a step back and think about what you really want to do in life.
Unlike engineering schools, business schools prepare for problems that do not have a clear solution.
If you’re not interested in grad school, look for mentors. Surprisingly, a lot of people are willing to give their time back.
As mentioned on zdnet, Seesmic’s got a killer line-up of funders.
Michael Arrington – Founder, TechCrunchSteve Case – Co-Founder and former CEO and Chairman, AOLJeff Clavier – Managing Partner, SoftTech VCRon Conway – Early investor, GoogleSteve Garfield – Pioneering video bloggerDan Gillmor – Director, Knight Center for Digital Media EntrepreneurshipReid Hoffman – Founder, LinkedInMichael Parekh – former Managing Director, Goldman SachsMark Pincus – Co-Founder and former Chairman and CEO, SupportSoftAriel Poler – Founder and former CEO, IPRO and TopicaJeff Pulver – Chairman and Founder, Pulver.comMartin Varsavsky – Founder, FON
Just saw this video of the “wall street meltdown.” Thought it was pretty well made as a video response to the original tech bubble video. It just seemed very fitting with the R word (recession) running rampant, stock market being extremely volatile, and Microsoft attempting to acquire Yahoo.
I’m not sure if anyone else is noticing, but Yahoo’s homepage videos are consistently copying Digg’s videos, except one week late. I do think that Yahoo’s AJAX video loading style is pretty nifty, but they need technology that can break videos first.For example, here is one screenshot of what I just saw:
Here is the one from Digg a week ago:
I’ll give Yahoo the benefit of the doubt and think that they just coincidentally had the same video. I mean, the definition of viral videos means that they are everything right?Anyways, for your entertainment, here is the actual video. I was at the game.
Danny of SearchEngineLand listed out some resources to help map out the california fires. I hope everyone is okay.
LA Times Interactive Fire Map: Built on Google Maps and from the Los Angeles Times, fire icons show each major fire, and you can click on the flames for more information about the incident. This is probably the best and most widely referenced resource that I’ve seen.
San Diego County Fires Map: From public radio station KPBS, covers incidents in the area, including evacuation centers.
Google Earth Blog List: Links to a range of maps including a special layer covering the fires in San Diego and animations of how smoke is spreading (and here’s how some of that was done). Here’s my personal view of smoke moving over Newport Beach.
NASA MODIS: Shows the smoke plume as today’s image of the day.
Malibu Fire in Birds Eye: From Microsoft’s Virtual Earth / Windows Live Local blog, covers a special look at the Malibu area fires.
Wildfire Resources: From Gary Price’s ResourceShelf, more links to fire information.
Google Lat Long Blog: Both the first maps on the list are mentioned in this post, and it’s a good place to watch in case future posts provide an update.