Comedian John Oliver may joke that SnapChat is designed for sending penis pictures, but the company is destined for a lot more.

SnapChat, an app that lets people share fleeting images, has closed $13.5 million in its first round of funding led by Benchmark Capital.

Oliver joked about the popularity of “sexting” while hosting the Crunchies, an awards ceremony that honors achievements in the tech world. SnapChat won the award for “Fastest rising startup” and is heralded as an example of the startup Holy Grail:  viral growth. A report in the New York Times states that the app sends more than 60 million messages a day and has millions of users.

The popular mobile social photo sharing service, based out of Los Angeles,  enables people to share a photo with another person or group of people who can only be viewed for a very short time (a few seconds). The person you send that photo responds with one of their own, which is also only available for a few seconds — hence the name “SnapChat.”

Photo sharing is one of the obsessions of our generation. Whether it is baby pictures on Facebook, a hipster coffee shop on Instagram, roasted chicken with bread on Foodspotting, room decor on Pinterest, or that day’s vintage-inspired ensemble on a fashion blog, taking and posting images is almost second nature. Sometimes, it feels like if no-one documents the moment on the internet, it doesn’t exist.

However, not every photo needs to live forever, which is where SnapChat comes in.

People can send images to their friends that may not merit (or be appropriate) for public, permanent display. A majority of the users are between 13 and 25, and wary of embarrassing content coming back to haunt them later in life. The story of the job-seeker denied a dream job due to a unflattering Facebook photo is something of a modern urban legend.

Speaking of Facebook, SnapChat founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy claim that Mark Zuckerberg met with them in December, just before launching its own self-destructing messaging app Poke. The competition has not seemed to diminish SnapChat’s success. The company is now valued at $60 to $70 million.

Rumors arose in December that SnapChat was raising an $8 million round at a $50 million valuation from Benchmark’s Matt Cohler. The rumors were half true, as rumors tend to be.

In fact, it was Benchmark partner Mitch Lasky who spearheaded the financing after hearing about SnapChat from his teenage daughter. Benchmark is also an investor in Instagram, the world-famous photo sharing app that Facebook bought for $1 billion in 2012.

After returns like that, it is no surprise that the firm is going down the rose-lined photo sharing path again.

Teens in Tech, an annual conference in Silicon Valley, celebrates the elite and high-powered designers and programmers in the industry that are too young to swig a beer.

They may be college dropouts with dimples, and they certainly say the word “awesome” a lot, but these teens are a force to be reckoned with. At an age where most of us are still taking AP classes, these kids were hustling products, snagging meetings with investors, and teaching themselves to build mobile apps.

We’re at Xerox PARC, a famed research and innovation hub a stone’s throw from Sand Hill Road, and these teen mavericks have some wisdom to pass on. Listen up, kids.

Gumroad’s founder and CEO, 19-year-old Sahil Lavingia

On startups: “Before you start something, ask yourself: Could you see yourself working on this ten years from now?”

On raising funding: “Raise money when you don’t need to. I put my first million dollars in the bank, moved to San Francisco and got a loft. Use the money to build things that are difficult and valuable, and help you build focus.” 

On building companies: I think products keep me alive. Ask yourself “why” before you starting something? My “why”? I want to build products. I think a song is a product. A product is a way to outlive yourself. 

Kiip’s 20-year-old head product designer, Adam Debreczeni

On networking: Even if you’re 16-years-old, go out and email people. I would never have had opportunities if I hadn’t. Just reach out to talented people, especially if they’re not famous yet. Talk to me now! I don’t have an entourage. But have your parents spell-check your emails first!

On startups or school?: For the four years you’re in school, your job is to become a better person. Don’t rob yourself of that experience.

Read more here about Peter Thiel’s $100,000 fellowship for talented teens to drop out of school. 

On playing tough: It is weird being on the phone with the VP of Marketing at Disney when you’re 19-years-old. There are benefits though. This girl I was crushing on in college was into One Direction. So I got some props from her when I did some design work for them.

On delegating and designing: People are going to criticize you, so stop googling yourself! Instead, if you’re really stoked about your work, make sure you show it off. Put your work on Dribbble, it will push you to become a better designer.

Alexander Bass, lead designer, ONE inc. / teen star of “That’s so Raven” 

On snagging opportunities: I met my cofounders going down in the elevator, and we talked about design. Cory and Michael said, we like you. … Go home, check your email, and we’ll make you an offer. It was that easy.”

On Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley: Acting … it’s not a burning love like I have for design and products. But if you’re on TV, they’ll listen to you more. I have learned to accept rejection, be humble, and work with people. In design, you also have to remove yourself from the process and do what’s necessary. I don’t get mad or take something personally. I think the creative process is similar. 

Mark Daniel, 18-year-old CEO of GoalHawk 

On making the move to Silicon Valley from Nashville: I always had this incredible ambition and wanted to make products that impact people on a real level. I also hope that one day I won’t have to worry about money. Growing up, my dad has always had a six-figure corporate job, but we were over-extended and in 2009, we lost everything.  

The collegiate route or the startup?: I’m going to Babson College. It makes sense for me to do both, unless my startup takes off. If it doesn’t work out, I really don’t want to be left in a vulnerable spot.

Advice to fellow entrepreneurs: If you try to do everything, you’re destined for nothing. Stay humble. There’s an infinite amount to learn from every single person. 

Images courtesy of Michael O’Donnell (@Photo) 

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“Do they like me? Do they think I’m fat? Oh god, they think I’m stupid and my idea will fail. I WILL NEVER SUCCEED IN MY LIFE!”

Ok, this might be pushing it, but you get the point. Investors are the one group of people entrepreneurs are dying to get validation from. You desperately want every investor to love you and your startup, but you can’t emotionally deal with the outcome when they don’t.

That’s the problem. When you enter any relationship with a desperate desire for love and validation, you usually won’t get it. It’s a pretty unattractive attitude. Investors can smell desperation and often make the emotional conclusion that you’re probably a bad bet (they call it “pattern recognition”).

And sometimes, investors take advantage of entrepreneurs who are dying to be just like Zuckerberg or Jobs.

Entrepreneurs spend hours and hours reading the latest news and gossip about the coolest new startup, the most badass founders, and the most powerful investors. They daydream about how it would feel like to be one of the “cool kids” but deep down are afraid that they may never be good enough.

It’s a shame. We’re talking about entrepreneurs here. People who didn’t listen to their families and friends when they quit school or their well-respected job to go and pursue their dreams. People who by definition have to be unreasonable. Movers and shakers.

But when it comes to investors, most of them lose their edge.

And the worst thing is that it’s that kind of emotional insecurity that turns investors off. It makes them feel like you’re weak and don’t have what it takes.

Investors, too, daydream about finding the next Zuckerberg and look at you to see if you “act” just like the “cool kids.”

You know what they say – if you look like a Zuck, swim like a Zuck, and quack like a Zuck, you have to be a Zuck!

Let’s stop all this nonsense. Step back and relax. Adjust your point of view. When you talk to investors, ask yourself, do you like them?

Case in point, two days after I wrote a similar post about working with investors on my blog, I received an email from a potential investor that read something like this:

Hi Steli,
I’m writing to you from BIG MONEY Capital, an early-stage venture capital fund based in San Francisco with offices around the world. You might know some of our portfolio companies, which include THE BIGGEST STARTUPS RUN BY THE ENTREPRENEURS YOU LOOK UP TO.

Travis Goodman (who is a founding partner at the firm), was impressed by YOUR DARLING COMPANY and asked me to find out more about the team behind it and the company’s financing plans.

Could I ask you to make time for a brief call in the next couple of days? When would be good for you?

- Stacey

Sounds awesome, right? But, if you’re experienced in interacting with investors, you’ll know that this probably means they want to schedule a call with a junior associate, who will ask a million questions about my business and learn as much as possible without having any decision making power when it comes to actually investing.

That’s how VC firms work. Lots of associates do the groundwork and a few partners actually make the decisions. Nothing against associates, but I want to talk to the decision makers.So I say:

Thanks for the kind words and for reaching out.
I’d be happy to jump on a quick call with Travis sometime next week. Best would be Thu or Fri.

She responds:

Many thanks for getting back to me. I would like to schedule a call with Justin, one of our team members working closely together with Travis. Would that work for you?

Yeah that’s what I thought. Nope – not really interested in that.

So I write:

I hear you – but I’d love to talk to Travis, let me know when he’s free and we’ll schedule a call.

To which she responds:

Understood. Unfortunately, Travis’ schedule is pretty dense so we always gather some data points first. Should that go well, we would certainly appreciate it if you could do a meeting with Travis.

Yeah that sounds totally reasonable but doesn’t work for me.

My response:

I’m happy to jump on a quick call with Travis. I’m cool postponing a discussion until he has time.

She makes another attempt at convincing me to do a call with the associate first but I don’t respond.

Finally, a few days later, Travis, the senior partner, sends me an email:

Steli -

Looks like you are following your own advice!  :) Just read your blog post about not being intimidated by investors.

My assistant is copied on this email, coordinate a time for us to talk ASAP!

-Travis

In my early entrepreneurial days I would never have had the guts to say no to any request by a VC firm. But then again, in my early entrepreneurial days I wasn’t successfully raising money!

So stop worrying about whether investors like you and if you’re worthy of their love and attention. Think about whether they’re people you really want to work with. Can they talk about your space intelligently? Do they have value-add? Would you like to go on another “date” to learn more and see if this is a relationship with a future worth investing in?

Simply be yourself and be confident. Because confidence not only makes you more attractive to the opposite/same sex but also works wonders on investors.

Steli is a high school dropout, self-taught entrepreneur, anonymous learning addict, and owner of a one-way ticket that took him from Europe to San Francisco where he founded Supercool School, VibaTV, and SwipeGood. As an alumni of Y Combinator, Steli recently launched Elastic, Inc., offering sales-as-a-service to other startups here in Silicon Valley and throughout the U.S.

[Top image credit:  Ariwasabi/Shutterstock]

If you’re a kid with a pulse and an Internet connection, chances are you’ve used your computer to do something improper. And if you’re a parent – well, you have no idea just how bad your kids can get.

So says a recent survey from Internet security firm McAfee, which charted the disconnect between unruly Internet-addicted teens and the parents who try and fail miserably to police them.

The core result of the study is this: Parents are overwhelmed by the Internet, a disadvantage that their Internet-savvy digital native teenagers use to hide all sorts of unbecoming Internet activities.

The numbers are sobering. More than half of teens say they know how to hide their online behavior from their parents, and 71 percent of them admit to doing just that.

A lot of these measures are surprisingly unsophisticated. Only 16 percent of parents, for example, are aware their kids minimize browser windows to hide their activities when their parents enter the room, which 46 percent of kids say they do.

Kids also know the age-old trick of clearing their browser history, a tactic known to only 17 percent of parents.

Other common concealment methods include deleting instant message conversations, using a smartphone instead of a computer, using private browsing features (hello, Incognito mode!), and creating duplicate social network profiles.

Parents aren’t entirely dumb: 56 percent say they know their kids are capable of hiding their activities. Strangely, in spite of this awareness, only 23 percent of parents are aware that their kids visit sites the parents disapprove of.

And what are these kids looking at? A third of them say (note, say) they intentionally access pornography online, and 43 percent say they access violent content.

Those numbers are fun to toss around, but McAfee online safety expert Stanley Holditch said that what’s most surprising is the number of kids who do things with consequences that extend beyond the Internet.

The biggest surprise? Half of kids admitted to accessing (“hacking” into) a peer’s social networking account.

“With things like hacking, we’re talking about severe consequences simply because of kids messing around.” Holditch said.

In another significant example, one in 10 teens admitted to meeting someone in person whom they had talked to online. A similarly significant number of teenagers admitted to illegally downloading music and movies.

“Do you think kids think about the long-term consequences when they do these things? Of course they don’t,” Holditch said. ”And parents just have no idea where to start.”

So is there any hope that the current generation of semi-digital natives will close the gap? Holditch isn’t holding his breath.

“I’d love to say that there will be a catch up period, but doing so would be ignoring how history has worked so far. Technology changes by the hour,” he said. “There’s really no telling what the next generation of children will be into.”

Photo: Young boy in bedroom/Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

We’ve long suspected teenagers are disgusting animals, and a recent survey from a mobile message monitoring company pretty much confirms those suspicions.

In a data-gathering exercise spanning hundreds of thousands of messages per month from phones across the U.S., TxtWatcher found that around 4 percent of teen-sent text messages include adult or sexual content. Roughly 2.35 percent of messages contained references to drugs, and a further 4 percent contain vulgar content.

(A TxtWatcher rep tells us that “vulgar content” includes terms such as “bastard” and “buttface.” And now, I have accomplished my life goal of using the word “buttface” on the Internet in a professionally acceptable context.)

On average, teens are sending around 65 messages each day. Speaking in solely mathematical terms, this means that the average teenager is sending around 77 sexually explicit messages and 39 drug-related messages each month, as well as more than 1,800 much more boring texts.

Around 2 percent of messages from teens contain images; the study did not discover or discuss the content of those images.

“‘Adult content’ refers to sexually explicit words or phrases that we identify in the text message, and as you can imagine, these phrases can get very graphic,” TxtWatcher rep Dan Maier told VentureBeat via email.

“We have a dictionary containing hundreds of words and phrases, including things like ‘blow job,’ ‘clit,’ ‘f-ck,’ ‘boner,’ etc. This dictionary is dynamically updated by us as well as our customers, who suggest new entries. In addition to sexually explicit words and phrases, we also scan messages for potential sexting, which we flag as the combination of explicit content with a picture.”

Lest you think the TxtWatcher folks are mere stalkers, the company makes a bit of software for Android phones that parents can choose to install on their kids’ devices. So it’s the parents who are doing the stalking. The service launched three months ago and has so far been installed on thousands of teenagers’ phones.

“One thing that makes identifying adult content in text messages difficult is that the text language is constantly evolving,” Maier said. “Teens use shorthand codes and slang to compress the amount of text in a given message, and to keep parents in the dark. So we also scan for phrases like ’8,’ which actually translates into ‘oral sex.’”

TxtWatcher has, for this specific purpose, developed a “slang translation engine” called SmartAlec to keep parents hip to their offspring’s lingo. For example, did you know (B) means beer? Kids these days…

Still, only .25 percent of teen-sent texts involved alcohol, and less than half a percent contained references to crime, the survey showed. There may be hope yet.

Image courtesy of Golden Pixels LLC, Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Intuit is an old company by today’s standards. It was founded in 1983, went public in 1993, and is still kicking. Chief executive Brad Smith has a reason for its continued growth: they’re watching teenagers and their phones.

No, not in the creepy way. Smith, who spoke at the DEMO Conference in Santa Clara, Calif., believes people like his daughters are the ones actually dictating technology change. Smith explained that he came home one day and asked his two teenage daughters why they hadn’t responded to his e-mail. They said, “Dad. I don’t read my e-mail.”

Intuit needs to change, pivot as Silicon Valley calls it, as younger generations change — away from the PC and toward the smartphone.

“It has completely transformed our business. We had to get back to the roots of who we are,” said Smith. “The computer has moved to the palm of our hands now.”

Other companies, such as Facebook are also focusing on the mobile problem. Recently, Facebook acquired photo sharing application Instagram for nearly one percent of its market cap, $1 billion. But unlike the rest of the technology world, Smith doesn’t think it’s that crazy.

“I would be willing to make that bet if I had the courage in my convictions that it was that core [to my business],” said Smith.

Intuit has also made big purchases in the mobile space. Mint, a financial organization app, cost more than one percent of Intuit’s market cap and has been a big success for the company. According to Smith, smartphone engagement with Mint has tripled. And while there’s still activity in the web version, mobile is quickly becoming the preferred method of interacting with Mint.

Smith, who maintains that Intuit is broken up into teams that could be fed with only two pizzas, doesn’t even want to hear about other Intuit projects in quarterly reports anymore. Instead, he told everyone, “All I want to hear about is mobile,” and thus, the focus has shifted.

This type of focus is what helped Intuit win out when Microsoft attempted to crush the company. In 1994, one year after Intuit had gone public, Microsoft wanted to buy it to complement its own tax group. Intuit, which makes TurboTax (Smith says he filed his taxes using the software for 2011), declined the offer and thus spurred Microsoft’s attempt to knock it out of the water.

Smith has a message for the small businesses out there, however: “The people who have the most assets are not the ones who win… When you focus your team on the most important problem, and you play like there is no tomorrow, the odds are in your favor.”

It’s two in the afternoon, do you know where your kids are? Evidently, they’re on Google+ but don’t worry, Google has put in some privacy policies to police their raucous Internet partying.

“We think the best strategy is to equip teens and parents with the right information to promote safe online behavior, rather than limiting functionality completely,” a Google spokesperson told VentureBeat in an e-mail.

Bradley Horowitz, Google’s vice president of product for Google+, explained in a blog post Thursday that when we share information in real life it is special, selective, and builds relationships. Online networks, on the other hand, lead to teens “over-sharing with all of their so-called ‘friends.’” How do you protect a teen on a social network that is built to be open and non-reciprocal in sharing?

YOU ALERT THEM THAT DANGER IS COMING.

Google launched three new privacy measures Thursday touching on circles, notifications, and Hangouts. The safety measures, while not entirely passive, trend more toward “warnings” than actual actions within the product. Google did not want to inhibit teens from enjoying the social network, but rather let them make smart decisions for themselves.

First, Google identifies teens based on their birthdays, unless they gave a fake birthday when creating their profile, in which case, tough luck, tiger mom. Google+ does not allow kids under 13 to join. Unless they give a fake birthday, in which case, tough luck, helicopter mom.

Here’s privacy meausre #1: When a teen creates a post and wants to share it with people outside of their circles, Google asks them if they really want to publish publicly. That’s really it. Adults can make decisions on whether or not content is appropriate for the masses, but teens might “over-share,” as Horowitz points out. This is a nice buffer between the 13-year-old’s angst poetry and the real world, but it doesn’t do much to actually stop its distribution.

As for Hangouts, Google+’s video chat function, Google tries to protect teens from stranger danger. If an adult that is not in one of the teen’s circles enters a Hangout teens are participating in, the teen is temporarily dropped from the video chat. A message pops up on the teen’s screen and says who entered the Hangout, that the person was not someone the teen knows and then … gives them the option to re-enter the Hangout.

Google is also setting the default for notifications to only be people in that teen’s circles. That is to say, that notifications of photos, tags, and more can come from people the teen has recognized as a known person. Those outside the teen’s circles cannot comment on any of the teen’s posts either. But hey, what if they want to get the whole world’s opinion on their recent switch from blond to brunette? All you have to do, resourceful teenager, is head over to your settings and change them.

So, will parental controls ever come out? They’re not in Google’s pipeline just yet.

“Traditional services restrict teens from using desirable functionality, which gives them an incentive to misrepresent themselves,” said the spokesperson. “Our aim with Google+ is to create an environment that encourages teens to represent themselves on Google+ as they do in real life. For example, we set age-appropriate defaults but supply teens with educational materials and the capability to modify those settings based on their own choices.”

In essence, Google has put up a lot of speed bumps its social network, but the teen can always fly right over them. Let’s be honest, we all know your kid is going to be valedictorian of Generic Prep School, but he’s not exactly worldly yet. Also, his biggest idol is that hipster on his Google+ Hangout that listens to Bright Eyes and smokes clove cigarettes.

Besides, how many teens do you know who like to be told to wait?

Family photo via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

The teenage demographic spends the least amount of time watching television, talking on the phone or using personal computers, according to a Nielsen report about how young people engage media. Mobile technology appears to be what they use most.

Teens are using text messages to communicate with their social circle over twice as much as any other demographic, the report states. And teens also watch more mobile video content than any other demographic.

The 12 to 17 age demographic viewed an average of 7 hours 13 minutes of mobile video per month in Q4 2010, while the general population viewed an average of only 4 hours 20 minutes.

Not surprisingly, the report also states that mobile advertising has the greatest impact on teenagers.