Howard Hartenbaum, early backer of Skype, joins August Capital
Howard Hartenbaum, the earliest investor in Internet phone company Skype, has joined Silicon Valley venture capital firm August Capital as a partner.
August partner David Hornik blogs about the move, and describes the hazing process of inviting someone new like Hartenbaum into the firm. He summarizes the decision to hire Hartenbaum as follows:
First and foremost, Howard is a geek. After graduating from MIT, Howard didn’t join an investment bank; he joined Honda Motor Company where he… Continue Reading
Howard Hartenbaum, early Skype investor, joins August Capital
Howard Hartenbaum, an early investor in Skype and partner at San Francisco venture capital firm Draper Richards, has joined August Capital as a partner, VentureBeat has learned.
TheFunded capitulates, lets VCs post comments
TheFunded, a site where entrepreneurs can rate VCs, has capitulated and is allowing venture capitalists to participate.
Until late yesterday, the site had prohibited venture capitalists from responding. However our post a few days ago about the unfairness of that policy – in light of the ugly, spiteful comments being left about VCs – created a surge of demands for a policy change.
It’s just the latest in a string of controversies where character assassination and hateful… Continue Reading
TheFunded, the site for VC hatchet jobs
(See update here: TheFunded has capitulated, and allowed VCs to respond to these attacks)
The Funded, the Web site that lets people anonymously rate venture capitalists, is causing some concern in venture capital circles about the hatchet jobs on VC firms.
Rejected entrepreneurs are flaming VCs with snide remarks at the site, often with no grounding in reality. The site came up during a talk again today when I spoke before a group of 40 or so… Continue Reading
Kyte.tv goes live, with the kitchen sink
Kyte.tv, the service that wants to be your own interactive TV channel, has finally launched.
We wrote wrote about the company two months ago, after first getting a demo.
You can host your photos, slide-shows, videos all in one place — the Kyte channel — and lets you post the channel player anywhere you want. It also lets you do mashups with things like surveys and music, and is integrated with live chat –distinguishing it from… Continue Reading
The new video players: Kyte, DimDim
There are a ton of “video player” companies out there, and they’re starting to blur.
It takes a lot to impress these days. A video player in 2007 should be able to upload any video file — from your desktop or from the Web — and then have it run from any Website from a widget.
Just when we thought innovation was running out, we hear about Kyte, a video player that allows live video and… Continue Reading