Dan Kaplan

Once upon a time, Dan considered himself a magazine journalist with dreams of "The New Yorker" and a couple of well-reviewed but only mildly successful books. Then one day, life, as it is known to do, decided it was time for rebirth. Like so many things before it, this rebirth was conceived on a mostly-empty plane to Reno. Now, instead of magazine writing, Dan would plunge into the world of New Media and write for Matt Marshall's blog.

It's funny how it goes.

Recent Posts

PartnerUp’s Weekly Opportunities

PartnerUp’s Weekly Opportunities

Below you’ll find this week’s PartnerUp Opportunities of the week.

PartnerUp, a Deluxe Company, is an online community for entrepreneurs and startups that helps them find people for their businesses, such as co-founders, business partners, advisers, board members and skilled technical workers. In addition, PartnerUp helps entrepreneurs ask for and offer up advice, find commercial real estate and locate resources for their businesses.

The PartnerUp team blogs on the StartUp Blog, an up-and-coming site about entrepreneurship, small… Continue Reading

The first 100 tickets to The Crunchies 2008 are on sale!

The first 100 tickets to The Crunchies 2008 are on sale!

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been taking nominations for the Crunchies 2008. You have voiced your support for your favorite startups, the most impressive entrepreneurs and the coolest gadgets.

Now, we’re opening up sales for the event.

This year’s Crunchies will be held at San Francisco’s Herbst theater at 7:30 on the evening of January 19th.

Today, we and our co-hosts, TechCrunch, GigaOm and Silicon Alley Insider, are puttting the first 100 tickets on sale.

Later this week,… Continue Reading

Announcing The Crunchies 2008

Announcing The Crunchies 2008

VentureBeat is happy to officially announce The Crunchies 2008 — the second year of this tech-startup awards ceremony.

With the economic downturn setting in, there may be fewer business successes to celebrate for the foreseeable future. So it’s more important than ever to recognize companies and leaders of excellence.

On January 9th at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco, VentureBeat — along with co-hosts TechCrunch, GigaOm and Silicon Alley Insider — will award the pictured Crunchies statues… Continue Reading

“Downturn” roundtable event is tomorrow: What questions are on your mind?

“Downturn” roundtable event is tomorrow: What questions are on your mind?

The VentureBeat “how to manage your start-up in a downturn” roundtable event happens tomorrow. We’ll be talking to John Doerr from VC firm Kleiner Perkins, Ram Shriram — one of Google’s first investors — Max Levchin of Slide and Jason Calacanis of Mahalo, among others.

Despite the dot-com bust, many of our participants flourished during the last recession and each will have a unique take on how entrepreneurs can get through this one. We have built… Continue Reading

Virtual goods company Viximo offers online communities an alternative to advertising

Virtual goods company Viximo offers online communities an alternative to advertising

With a recession looming, many online entertainment sites who currently depend on ad revenue are exploring a new source of revenue: Virtual goods.

Boston-based Viximo wants to make it as easy for publishers to earn money from selling virtual goods as it is to run ads on a website. And more profitable.

Viximo provides a plug-and play virtual goods platform that allows a publisher to offer their own version of Facebook Gifts, which are nice-looking graphical icons… Continue Reading

Lala convinces major record labels to be a little less dumb

Lala convinces major record labels to be a little less dumb

Have you ever been sitting at your computer, wishing you could listen to your music collection without being forced to open a desktop application? If so, Lala is launching just the thing for you.

Since the beginning of the summer, Lala has offered a service that lets you stream any song one time, then pay $.10 for the right to stream it as often as you want. The Palo Alto-based company has now convinced the major… Continue Reading

Amidst the cacophony of music start-ups, ReverbNation echoes

Amidst the cacophony of music start-ups, ReverbNation echoes

While grinning investment bankers, safe pension funds and good returns from tech stocks may be hard to come by for the foreseeable future, the world does not lack start-ups promising to help indie musicians. Among them, ReverbNation, which has just raised $3 million, looks like a serious contender.

Companies like Topspin Media, an early-stage music marketing platform, and Tunecore, which offers a relatively easy way to distribute albums across multiple online stores, have partial answers to… Continue Reading