The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘mentor’

Joel and I were so angry at each other in this picture that Cat Schwartz literally had to keep us apart. I don’t usually want to bring people’s personal lives into focus here on CG. After all, we’re dedicated to, as Joel himself always pointed out, self-deprecation and dick jokes.

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An interview with Joel Johnson on why he’s funny

Virgin Mobile’s Broadband2Go prepaid 3G data service made a splash last summer by offering no-contract plans that came close to competing with two-year offerings from the likes of Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. The major drawback was that the top plan, at $60, only allowed for 1GB of data usage, whereas you’d get 5GB on a contract plan

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Virgin Mobile increases value for prepaid broadband data buckets — $60 for 5GB

Did you look at your Verizon Droid minutes ago and wonder why you hadn’t gotten any emails within the last few minutes? I did.

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Verizon currently experiencing nationwide data outage

The explosion of casual gaming over the last few years, primed by companies like PopCap and touched off by Nintendo’s incredibly accessible Wii, has put gaming firmly in the mainstream. Halo, Grand Theft Auto , and other AAA games, while not by any stretch of the imagination “casual,” end up selling in the tens of millions of units, resulting in billions of dollars in revenue. Nintendo employees were said to generate more money per employee than Goldman Sachs , and the growth of the industry was barely hampered by recession

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The DSi XL shows once and for all that gaming is no longer just for gamers

Over the last twelve weeks, 24 startups have been working out of Facebook’s old headquarters in downtown Palo Alto as part of fbFund REV, Facebook’s startup incubator program that’s jointly run with Accel Partners and Founders Fund. During that time the startups have receieved mentorship from some of Silicon Valley’s elite, as well as help from Facebook engineers. Tomorrow, they’ll be presenting at the program’s Demo Day (we’ll have full coverage beginning tomorrow afternoon). In light of the close of this session, we’ve compiled a number of the mentor presentations given thoughout the summer, and sat down with fbFund team member Dave McClure, who outlined what made the program unique.

McClure says that REV is a “social incubator” — an idea that is helped by the fact that all of the startups enrolled somehow take advantage of Facebook, the world’s largest social network. But McClure also says that the structure of the incubator, from the way classes are held to the actual layout of the building, is designed to ensure that the startups involved maintain interaction with each other. Startups have been working in wide, open rooms with white boards and no cubicles, and the program invited mentors to speak to all of the startups around three times per week. The fact that the startups get office hours and help from Facebook employees can also help give them a leg up on the competition.

Of course, fbFund has been around for some time now — it was announced back in September 2007, and has since seen a number of graduating classes. But past winners in fbFund were given no-strings-attached cash grants, while the new model, obviously inspired by incubators like Y Combinator invites the finalists to participate in a mentorship program while fbFund takes a small stake in the startups.

Here’s a list of talks that were given over the summer, as well as embedded videos of a few of the sessions.

Financing
Marketing
Product Management
Legal Issues
Early Stage Hiring (HR)
Why Startups Fail (Strategy)
Gaming
Monetization

Early Stage Web Product Management by Dan Olsen

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

TicketLeap, the Philadelphia-based provider of Internet ticketing services for event organizers, recently launched a product that turns any Internet-enabled computer with a browser into a functional box-office ticketing system. The new product, dubbed Anywhere, allows organizers of events - big or small - to facilitate the online handling of ticket sales at the venue door or when talking to customers on the phone.

While there are many companies offering online ticketing services to organizers (full disclosure: I’m a partner at Oxynade, which also markets an e-ticketing solution), TicketLeaps claims to be the first one that provides its customers with a way to use their own computers to sell tickets at their events. It does acknowledge however that there may sometimes be extra equipment needed too (think bar-code scanners or printers) and thus offers a way for their customers to rent it directly from them in case they don’t own any.

The cloud-based Anywhere software service includes ticket barcode scanning, the ability for customers to choose their exact seat and support for all sorts of venue customization. TicketLeaps charges a ’small fee’, although it’s unclear exactly how much, for every ticket that gets sold through the platform and says most organizers opt to simply charge the extra fee to the patron. The company expects most ticketing solutions to follow suit and eventually live in the cloud as well.

“It’s only a matter of time before every ticket you buy comes from web-based ticketing software like this,” TicketLeap CEO Chris Stanchak says. “There’s really no comparison when it comes to cost, convenience and flexibility.”

TicketLeap was started by Stanchak as a recent Wharton graduate back in 2003. In July 2008, the company raised its first round of financing: $2 million from MentorTech Ventures and Ben Franklin Technology Partners.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0