Entrepreneur Tips

Fab.com is gonna be big — Amazon big, says CEO

When Fab.com won a Crunchie for best shopping app, no one was more surprised than the startup’s CEO, Jason Goldberg (pictured).

“To be honest, I didn’t think we were going to win, mostly because Fab isn’t very much integrated into the whole tech scene… We’re definitely mainstream.”

Being mainstream can be both a blessing and a curse for a tech startup. Massive numbers of users outside the Silicon Valley bubble doesn’t necessarily translate well when … Continue Reading

Dylan’s Desk: What it takes to compete with Silicon Valley

You don’t have to live in Palo Alto to become a software billionaire, though it can help.

For decades, people with ideas, programming talent, and the ambition to make their fortune as entrepreneurs have been moving to Silicon Valley, just as Mark Zuckerberg did shortly after founding Facebook.

But now an increasing number of them are staying at home.

Take, for example, Andrew Mason, the founder of Groupon, who started the company in Chicago in … Continue Reading

LA’s tech scene gets a shot in the arm from Science, the newest incubator

The hustling Los Angeles tech scene is revolving around a new center these days: an incubator called Science. It started just a couple months ago and is the work of former MySpace CEO Mike Jones and Color co-founder Peter Pham.

We took some time over the past couple of weeks to talk with Pham and Jones, as well as at least one entrepreneur who’s working with the Science team on a new startup.

As a … Continue Reading

Want to rent out the Bachelor mansion or Clapton’s pad? Here’s how you can

Say you want to rent out the Entourage house for your birthday or Eric Clapton’s old house for your rock-and-roll-themed wedding reception.

Eventup, a marketplace for hard-to-get event venues, can make that happen.

Eventup is a brand-spanking-new startup launching today in Los Angeles, and we have to say, a startup idea like that could only have come from Los Angeles, the longtime home of entertainment of America.

“More events are thrown in LA than anywhere … Continue Reading

Startup helps employees decide when to sell their stock

Facebook employees and others who are contemplating when to sell their stock can get some help from a new startup called Wealthfront.

The company has created a financial planning tool that lets anyone who works in a tech company test their options for selling stock after an initial public offering.

Andy Rachleff, chief executive of Wealthfront and co-founder of Benchmark Capital, said in an interview that the company is targeting tech professionals in their 20s … Continue Reading

How “The Hacker Way” helped propel Facebook to market dominance

Facebook's core values include a powerful, results-oriented, anti-theoretical philosophy called "The Hacker Way," according to founder Mark Zuckerberg.

"The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration," Zuckerberg writes. "Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it -- often in the face of people who say it’s impossible or are content with the status quo."

VBWeekly: Sh*t startup people say

Watch out! There’s some adults-only vocabulary in Startup Land.

For this week’s video show installment, we decided to deliver a very special VBWeekly addressing the dangers of myopia and jargon.

Also, we decided to slay what’s left of the “Sh*t People Say” meme.

Since we get a lot of press releases, talk to a lot of VCs and entrepreneurs, and live the dream ourselves as startup employees, who better to skewer the startup community than … Continue Reading

Startup incubator just for teens is picking its next class

Hey kids: If you’ve got a great idea for a startup, we know a guy who’d love to help you out over the summer.

The Teens In Tech incubator started last year as a way for ambitious, bright teenagers to accelerate their business and app ideas.

This year, the Teens In Tech gang is welcoming a second class and is taking applications now.

Last summer, six teams went through the incubation process. Nine out of … Continue Reading

Obama calls for reforms to support the “next Steve Jobs”

In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Obama recognized startups and entrepreneurs for innovating and creating new jobs, while calling for reforms that would support everyone who “aspires to become the next Steve Jobs.”

The speech focused heavily on leveling the playing field between the U.S. and other countries so that America’s economy could be more competitive, and included key calls to action that would directly affect the startup community. He asked … Continue Reading

Startup and the city: A great moment in history

Editor’s note: Julia Plevin recently started a job at a startup that’s still in stealth mode. She’ll be posting occasional columns on VentureBeat about her experiences.

Like most great ideas, the inspiration for this article came to me while at a bar at approximately 11:37pm on a Thursday night.

It must have been 11:37pm because I had been working on a report to present the next morning until eleven o’clock.

My roommate convinced me to … Continue Reading

The 14 hottest Chinese tech-startup clones of 2011

Cloning or copycatting ideas, companies, and products is nothing new in China. Westerners, especially Americans, loathe cloning; it hurts their pride and is an insult to their creativity and hard work. The Chinese, however, love it. It comes as second nature and presents a grand opportunity to seize a massive market potential.

People outside of China often wonder why the Chinese love to copy things. The answer is that it’s the way they’re taught to … Continue Reading

Hello VentureBeat — I’m your new sleuth in Silicon Alley, serving up scoops with your morning coffee

Hi VentureBeat! I’ve just joined VentureBeat as East Coast editor, based in New York. I can’t wait to get started on Monday.

I didn’t know much about the Silicon Alley scene until the day I stumbled into NYC Resistor, a hacker collective in Brooklyn. That was about three years ago. The air smelled like burning metal and people were talking about laser cutters and 3D printers and robots that dispensed drinks. It was a little … Continue Reading