From: VatorNews.tv on Thu, Feb 11 2010 1:09 PM

CEO Jeff Smith at Vator Splash on why the product and the end users are the marketing While social networks have built a stage for everyone to become a writer, or pundit, Smule - the maker of popular iPhone apps Ocarina, Leaf Trombone and I Am T-Pain - has created a stage to give everyone thei...

From: VatorNews.tv on Wed, Feb 10 2010 10:16 AM

Claremont Creek Ventures 'LifeCycle' venturing model attracts a solid flow of energy deals Claremont Creek Ventures is located in Oakland, Calif. It’s not exactly an area one would call a high-tech haven. But being one of the only VC outfits in that part of the Bay Area is a good th...

From: VatorNews.tv on Tue, Feb 09 2010 3:36 PM

Investors from Greycroft, Venrock, NEA and Ackrell Capital analyze RentCycle - Splash overall winner More than 175 companies, more than 3,000 people voting, and one company left standing onstage.The Vator Splash competition culminated at the Splash event, with the final round to find the overa...

From: VatorNews.tv on Tue, Feb 09 2010 11:24 AM

Social analytics, social monitoring, social gaming should continue to attract capital At Vator.tv’s first-ever Vator Splash event on Thursday, February 4 at Cafe du Nord in San Francisco, Reena Jadhav, founder and CEO of NuAlerts caught up with Kobie Fuller, a venture capitalist at OpenView Ve...

From: VatorNews.tv on Mon, Feb 08 2010 8:54 AM

Video version of Mark Pincus' 10 chapter to scaling an Internet property

As I mentioned in my introduction to Zynga CEO Mark Pincus keynote at the Vator Splash event, he is not an accidental entrepreneur. This is a rare entrepreneur who’s had, for the 10 years I've k...

From: VatorNews.tv on Sat, Feb 06 2010 3:25 PM

Prolific tech blogger predicts war between Google and Facebook, touts Siri At Vator.tv’s first-ever Vator Splash event on Thursday, February 4 at Cafe du Nord in San Francisco, Reena Jadhav, founder and CEO of NuAlerts caught up with prolific tech blogger Robert Scoble. Scoble, who was also c...

From: VatorNews.tv on Thu, Feb 04 2010 11:58 AM

Startup Sessions features SF-based Rentcycle, which wants to bring the rental industry online Just a few months ago, Rentcycle debuted its service at our last event.  The startup launched a platform to help rental companies get their products available online for people who might be looking fo...

From: VatorNews.tv on Thu, Jan 28 2010 12:14 PM

gWallet’s Gurbaksh Chahal on alternative ways to monetize the audience playing social games I recently caught up with Gurbaksh Chahal, founder of gWallet, a monetization platform for social gaming which raised $10.5 million in funding last fall. GWallet essentially allows members of social gam...

From: VatorNews.tv on Wed, Jan 27 2010 12:57 PM

Scale Venture’s Sharon Wienbar: Don't make tactical decisions from the wrong vantage point Recently, I heard my brother-in-law, Demian Entrekin, advise an entrepreneur to look at her startup as a building and step outside of it every once rather than get mired in dealing with the plumbing...

From: VatorNews.tv on Mon, Jan 25 2010 12:29 PM

Super angel Jeff Clavier shares his investment philosophy around video ventures, specifically Vidly Jeff Clavier, prolific angel investor in Silicon Valley, joins us as guest host in this episode of Vator Box. If you have a video service/product and want to show Jeff, better watch this segment...

From: VatorNews.tv on Thu, Jan 21 2010 8:42 AM

Top-rated Internet analyst Mark Mahaney says there’s demand for Zynga, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter When the ducks are quacking. Feed them. It seems 2010 may be shaping up to be the start of an Internet IPO craze, as public-market investors begin to make noise about their interest in newly-min...

From: VatorNews.tv on Thu, Jan 14 2010 9:38 AM

QLess wants to eliminate the act of standing in line from the face of the earth Imagine if you never had to stand in line again...if every time you showed up somewhere, it was your turn to go.  That’s the vision of Alex Backer, founder and CEO of QLess.  Based out of Southern Califor...

From: VatorNews.tv on Wed, Jan 13 2010 12:26 PM

Top Silicon Valley investor in Mint, Ustream seeks to place 20 investments in 2010 Despite the recession in 2009, Jeff Clavier, who was nominated a top angel investor at the Crunchies, invested in 21 companies. Suffice it to say, it was an active year, despite concerns it would be a nuclear wi...

From: VatorNews.tv on Wed, Jan 06 2010 9:12 PM

Experts Advice At a recent conference, I managed  to catch up with Experts Advice’s Chief Technology Officer Joe Mc.... Experts Advice is                        . I asked him to share a few pieces of advice to share with our comm...

From: VatorNews.tv on Thu, Dec 31 2009 2:17 PM

First-time entrepreneur Robert Acker, CEO of Aha Mobile, shares advice on receiving advice As a first-time entrepreneur, I can relate to the first piece of advice Robert Acker, shared in his "Lessons Learned" segment. "Don’t be too persuaded by somebody because of the past success they had," s...

From: VatorNews.tv on Wed, Dec 30 2009 11:07 AM

Accept bumbling around and failure, learn to hit reset, dare to dream, stay lean At VatorNews, we have been building up a great library of "Lessons learned and advice" for entrepreneurs from top VCs to successful entrepreneurs since 2007. (See our Lessons Learned archive) In 2009, we added abo...

From: VatorNews.tv on Wed, Dec 30 2009 9:04 AM

Scale Venture Partners Sharon Wienbar on why local businesses are worth investing in Whether Google buys Yelp for more than half a billion is still an uncertainty. But one thing is for certain, Yelp, the local business review site that launched in 2004, is in the spotlight, begging the questio...

From: VatorNews.tv on Thu, Dec 24 2009 8:23 AM

Mayfield Fund partner Raj Kapoor’s lessons to entrepreneurs The economy isn't out of the woods yet, and that means preserving cash should still be a priority. "Cash is king," said Raj Kapoor, managing director at Mayfield Fund. "No matter what, your most valuable resource is cash."In this...

From: VatorNews.tv on Mon, Dec 21 2009 9:15 AM

Demand Media CEO and co-founder on how his new media company fits into the media landscape This is the third part of my interview with Richard Rosenblatt, CEO and co-founder of Demand Media. In the first two interviews (conducted about a month ago), Richard first talked about Demand’s innovati...

From: VatorNews.tv on Fri, Dec 18 2009 2:58 PM

Brizzly founder Jason Shellen on nearly running out of cash before being snapped up It’s often said that a company that can survive a downturn is one that will thrive or have a good exit in an upturn. In the case of Blogger, the blog publishing platform sold to Google, it was just that. The ...