News: July 14

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TechCrunch

Consumer Reports Slams The iPhone 4 Over Antenna Issue
Video: David Letterman’s Top 10 Signs You’ve Purchased A Bad iPhone 4
Groupon, Twitter, Foursquare, And Yelp Will Convene At The Social Currency CrunchUp
Twitter’s EarlyBird Takes Flight With Disney Movie Deal; Groupon And Gilt To Come
Here Comes Apple Earth. Map Startup Poly9 Reportedly Snatched Up By Cupertino
AndroLib Gets A Makeover, Estimates Over 1 Billion Android Apps Downloaded So Far
New York City To Keep Track Of Water Use With Wireless Monitors
Naspers Buys 28.7% Of Facebook, Zynga Investor And ICQ Owner DST
Steve Ballmer says Microsoft is 'hardcore' about tablet computers



Mashable

Facebook’s Open Graph and Like Button are Going Mobile
Bill Gates Invests in Cleaner Car Technology
Disney Is Twitter’s First @Earlybird Sponsor
What Apple Must Do to Stop the Bleed
Google Fiber Is One Step Closer to Reality
Intel Gains Almost $11B in “Best Quarter Ever”

CNet

Microsoft keeps eye on Bing's growth chart
iPhone app created for psychic German octopus
Chicken came before egg, evidence suggests
Exxon Mobil growing its algae biofuels program
Twitter's @earlybird: Not the most magical debut
Alleged Russian spy worked for Microsoft
Adobe Reader, IE top vulnerability list
Facebook's Russian investor snags $388 million
Court: FCC 'indecency' rule doesn't make tech sense
New Facebook app whitens men's profile pic
The quest for the supersonic skydive
Building the world's most advanced aircraft carrier
Internet appliances: The next generation
Solar structures offer self-sufficiency in disaster

BusinessWeek

The Factory Rebound May Be Peaking
Intel Cash Machine May Print $12 Billion
Washington is the Strongest Job Market
America's Strongest Job Markets
Microsoft Pays App Developers to Do Windows
Microsoft Worker was 12th Alleged Russian Spy
Ten Top Smartphone Apps for College
Obama Meets With Buffett to Discuss Economy, Jobs
Iran Scientist Says Americans Kidnapped, Held Him for 14 Months
U.S. Stocks Fall on Fed’s Reduced Growth Forecast; Intel Gains
How Yum! Brands Is Conquering the World
Promisec: Securing Networks from Within
Newspapers: Take a Cue From Startups and Get Cloudy
Sorting Fact from Fiction on Health-Care Reform
The Small Business Jobs Bill: To Us, It's Meaningless
The Future of Advertising
Why GM May Be Worth More Than Ford
What if Government Ran Like Business?

Time

Housing Market Sees Widespread Price-Cutting
Chicken and the Egg: Mystery Solved?
Neverland Ranch: The Newest State Park?
Buying a Corvette? Build the Engine Yourself
Will Obama's Immigration Focus Hurt Democrats?
Can the Chevy Volt Recharge General Motors?
The History of the Electric Car
11 Milestones in GM's Year Since Bankruptcy
Obama's Mideast Challenge: Trying to Look Busy
Italy vs. the Mafia: Beheading the 'Ndrangheta
Spain's World Cup Win: Final Brings Spaniards Together
Senate Midterms: How the Tea Party May Hurt Republicans
Beijing Starts Gating, Locking Migrant Villages
Scientists: Gulf Spill Altering Food Web
Cleaning Up On the Spill

New York Times

A Scientist Takes On Gravity
U.S. Delays Test of Device That Could Seal Gulf Well
On Facebook, Telling Teachers How Much They Meant
Police Are Charged in Post-Katrina Shootings
Trapped by Gaza Blockade, Locked in Despair
Scientist Heads Home, Iran Says
Deterred From Gaza, Libyan Ship Enters Egypt Port
Financial Bill to Close Regulator of Fading Industry
Financial Reform Bill Limps Toward Vote
Heads Turn as a Bridge Floats By
Gatton Journal: Trying to Stop Cattle Burps From Heating Up Planet
The New Abortion Providers
On Education: A Chosen Few Are Teaching for America
Grassley a No on Financial Reform Bill
Fed Minutes Weigh on Wall Street
Citing Demand, Intel Tops Forecast
Standards Issued for Electronic Health Records
George Steinbrenner, 1930-2010: His Final Victory Is a Yankees Empire Restored
George Steinbrenner, Who Built Yankees Into Powerhouse, Dies at 80
Explorer: Walking With the Herds in Kenya
Oil Spill’s Impact on Gulf Seafood Remains Uncertain
Downsizing: Styling a Downsized Life
WattStation: An Electric Car Charger With a Designer Touch
Toyota Blames Drivers for Some Acceleration Problems
Letters: A New Approach to Immigration Raids
Movie Review | 'Alamar': A Boy’s Slice of Paradise Is Time Alone With Dad
The Loneliness of Governor Schwarzenegger
Turn 70. Act Your Grandchild’s Age.
Is Yemen the Next Afghanistan?
Is Jousting the Next Extreme Sport?

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Shopping Around For Iran

Image via Wikipedia

Brad Feld and Fred Wilson did not bite - they seem to suggest Iran is not in their domain expertise - but I have a ready presentation in the process, and I have decided to shop around. This is not an investment opportunity. This falls in the public service domain.

I came across a John Boyd blog post while working on this post: Seed Money. And so I emailed him.

You have a great post on seed money ... I followed a link from Fred Wilson's blog to your post. Great post. http://www.blindreason.org/2010/07/rush-to-early-seed-stage-later-stage.html What really got my attention was your putting broadband on the top of the list. I am 15 months from a green card, and 15 months from my startup. My startup will deal with the last mile of the broadband business.

Are you in NYC? Let's meet for coffee some time.

I need you to help me with something. http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2010/07/to-iran-with-love-3.html I need you to put 3-5K into this. This is not an investment. This falls in the public service domain. This is about democracy in Iran.

I also just sent out a whole bunch of tweets to a whole bunch of angel investors. I sent out tweets to all angel investors on the List Of Angels On Twitter. The cut off point was people who had tweeted out in the past 24 hours. If you are not active on Twitter daily, maybe you are not of interest to me.

• Tweet 1
• Tweet 2
• Tweet 3
• Tweet 4
• Tweet 5
• Tweet 6
• Tweet 7
• Tweet 8
• Tweet 9
• Tweet 10

One Tweet Response

I should not have been, but I was surprised to find so many Indians on the list, including one I am Facebook friends with. 

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• Iran scientist heading home via third country: ISNA (reuters.com)
• You: Iran scientist seeks refuge in Pak embassy in US (nation.com.pk)
• Russia Ready to Deliver Fuel to Iran Despite Sanctions (foxnews.com)
• Iran scientist's new kidnap claims (bbc.co.uk)
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Seed Money

Image via CrunchBase

It is much cheaper to start a dot com today than it was in the late 1990s. What I do for free on the Blogger platform today had to be built from scratch for a dot com I was part of in 1999. Amazon got rid of servers for you. Only a few days back Google dropped a bomb: now anyone can create an Android app. Elementary programming is now like flipping the light switch.

The need for early stage funding is not as dire as it used to be. But the need for later stage funding is still dire. I am going to argue that is also going to change in the next wave of innovation. There will be companies like OfferPal Media that will help you monetize early and strong. There will come a time when most startups will need little to no money early stage, and little to no money late stage. Asking a startup to both build a great service and to monetize that service is like asking coders to buy and upkeep servers. Makes no sense.

But this newish development is not just about there being less need for big, early money. This also is about saying investors need to get down and dirty with their investments. They don't need to put in daily involvement like members of the executive team, but showing up once in a while for the Board meeting and getting your fee perhaps does not cut it no more. You need a more hands on approach.

The dot com domain is going to stay fertile for a long, long time. To see saturation in that domain is to suggest the human mind will attain satiation at some point, and I just don't see that happening. The human mind has been programmed to stay permanently hungry. Content creation, content curation, content search: they will stay in play.

There is plenty of room on the cutting edge. But then there is plenty of room if the entire world is your stage. You have to be willing to go wherever there might be opportunities for growth.

And money does not differentiate between one sector and the other. New hot domains will emerge. Clean tech, bio tech, nano tech are the obvious names being bounced around. And there are old names. I believe microfinance could easily digest a few trillion dollars. All that money the Wall Street junkies sunk into real estate the past decade and brought the house down for the rest of us, if they had been innovative, they would have taken some of that money into microfinance.

Summary statement: things are exciting, and are getting heated up. I can't even see five years out, let alone 10.

Fred Wilson: Some Thoughts On The Seed Fund Phenomenon

I blog because it helps me think through a lot of issues we face in our business ...... it still takes on average $20mm to get a web startup to sustainable positive cash flow. But the vast majority of that capital will be required after the business has "traction." ..... What has changed in technology venture capital is not so much the total capital requirements, but when they are required. ..... Dennis and Naveen had built the service all by themselves and had just lured Harry onto their team. They needed no capital to do that. In fact they did not even have a bank account when we went to close our seed investment...... The deals that work get very competitive when it is time to raise real money. ..... First Round Capital, the grandaddy of the web 2.0 super seed funds, has now evolved into a firm that is twice as big as our firm in terms of investors and they have more capital under management than we do. And I've met a couple investors who are talking about creating "seed bridge funds." I think that's a great idea..... We are still figuring out to evolve the VC business to reflect the change in financing needs of entrepreneurs and we aren't done by a long shot.

Paul Kedrosky: The Coming Super-Seed Crash

a combination of ease of entry, lower capital requirements, failing incumbent venture capital (VC) firms, and general fervor has driven the emergence of a host of new "super-seed" firms. These small-ish outfits -- usually running less than $20m -- specialize in seeding a bazillion companies, following on in very few, and generally trying to be fast-moving and networked. ..... Nor does it mean that incumbent VCs will once again rule the world with mega funds. Many of them, like the dinosaurs, have turned out to be evolutionary dead-ends that couldn't adapt with a changing financial landscape. ..... Declining average cost of company creation is driving declining average cost of venture firm creation. ...... Incumbent VCs make up shit about the inadequacies of super-angel funds ..... Venture capital is hard, whether practiced by brain-dead VC incumbents, or by smart and nimble super-angels. Most VCs, and most angels, fail -- it's just that its takes 10 years to kill a VC fund ..... as incumbent VCs justifiably vanish en masse, niche overshoot seems almost ecologically inevitable among super-seed funds.

Chris Dixon: It’s Not That Seed Investors Are Smarter – It’s That Entrepreneurs Are

was a very common occurrence before the rise of seed funds, due to VCs pressuring entrepreneurs to raise more money than they needed so the VCs could “put more money to work.” ..... I thought the brands of the big VCs would help me and didn’t really understand the dynamics of fund raising. ..... Today, entrepreneurs are much savvier, thanks to the proliferation of good advice on blogs, via mentorship programs, and a generally more active and connected entrepreneur community. ...... prominent seed funds will outperform top-tier VC funds

John Boyd: The Rush To Early Seed Stage: Later Stage Implications And Top 7 Mature Themes

every time I turn my head there is another seed incubator popping up. .... Things are not as active in traditional venture capital funds as many struggle to raise super sized funds and maintain the flow of fees. Angels and incubators, on the other hand, are exceedingly active. ...... While some of these early stage deals will be capital efficient even in later stages, many will still need relatively large raises that angels and incubators just can't handle. ..... an early stage deal has to reinvent itself multiple times. ..... Some really famous seed investors use the shotgun approach. ..... Early stage investing requires an ability to go from failure to failure without any measure of diminished hope or exuberance. To me that implies a lot of the ex-corp dev guys and lawyers who are now active seed investors may drop off. ....... My relationships with teams I've invested with early on are like family as you are often in some pretty thick battles with them. ....... Right now we don't have enough competition in broadband and too much spectrum is tied up warehoused in too few hands.

Fred Wilson, 2006: Web 2.0 Is A Gift, Not A Threat, To VCs

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