Auren Hoffman
Auren is CEO of Rapleaf -- portable ratings for buyers and sellers. He was formerly Chair of Stonebrick Group and the Connector Group. Previously, he founded and sold three Internet companies before age 30: BridgePath (sold in 2002), Kyber Systems (sold in 1997), and GetRelevant (sold in 2002). Auren is a trustee of the Junior State of America Foundation and Chairman of Lead21. He is the founder of the Silicon Forum. Auren holds a B.S.E. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the UC Berkeley. He writes a widely read blog called Summation (www.summation.net).
Recent Posts
Why big high tech companies are losing the talent war
[Disclosure: Auren works at Rapleaf, a startup, and is thus biased towards startups.]
Big companies are losing their “A” players and they’re struggling to attract “B” players. In an industry where everything is about people, large tech companies are in trouble because they are losing the talent war. And keep in mind, an “A” player in an organization can usually produce the same results as three “B” players.
Joining a big company is irrational in today’s… Continue Reading
Why I hate Evite
(Editor’s note: This one resonated with us. And since Auren’s pieces so far have been well liked, we’re going with it. Take note that Auren is an investor in new Evite competitor, Socializr.)
Like some of you, I get a lot of Evites. In fact, too many. In the past 8 months alone, I received 228 Evites. Annually that’s 342 Evites • almost one a day!!!
I’ll admit that Evite is one of the greatest viral… Continue Reading
The oncoming video ads movement
(Editor’s note: Back by popular demand is Auren Hoffman, whose last post about the Black Hat Tax has been the favorite among all the contributors so far at SiliconBeat/VentureBeat. This time Auren, who runs a comany called Rapleaf, writes about video ads.)
Web video ads are scarily potent.
When you’re watching a video on the web, whether it is on YouTube, Break.com, or Blip.tv, all your attention is focused on that video. You block out everything… Continue Reading
The Black Hat Tax on consumer Internet businesses
(Editors note: Auren Hoffman, who runs a Silicon Valleys start-up called RapLeaf, writes below about the Black Hat Tax on consumer Internet businesses. It is timely, because spam is as bad as ever. Yesterday, it emerged that Comcast even blacklisted the innocent email group called The WELL, despite numerous efforts by the group to be rated “legitimate.”)
A couple of months back, I was grabbing a smoothie with James Currier and was going on and on… Continue Reading