Category: Tech news

In the same way that LinkedIn has become the home of your professional identity, and Facebook the home of your social identity, founder and CEO Adam Lieb wants to turn his startup Duxter into the center of your gaming identity.

There are plenty of other gaming social networks, but Lieb argued that they’re too focused on specific aspects of the gaming experience. Raptr, for example, is mostly where you go to share your gameplay stats and achievements. Duxter should include that kind of tracking, he said, but instead of going deep on any one feature, it should support a broad range of social interactions. Ultimately, Lieb is aiming to create the platform for all of your gaming-related and social activity related needs — that’s where the Facebook and LinkedIn comparisons come in.

When someone signs up for Duxter, they link their accounts from other gaming services, including Xbox Live, Playstation, World of Warcraft, Steam, and YouTube. Then they can follow updates from other users, games, and general pages. They can also send messages, participate in the forums, browse videos watched by other users, play games, and earn rewards.

As an on-and-off gamer, I signed up for Duxter myself, and I have to admit, I struggled a bit to find any interesting content — though that may be related to the fact that I’ve mostly been in “off” mode for the past few years (I haven’t had much luck on other gaming networks, either). Plus, the site just opened to the public.

One of the big distinctions between Duxter and other sites, Lieb said, is that it’s “more about the lifestyle than the gameplay.” That means the discussion will move outside of gaming to include other topics that gamers are passionate about, such as the new trailer for The Hobbit or Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm.

It sounds like the company’s business model is focused on advertising, but not in a traditional sense. The about page says, “We aren’t about putting static banners all over the place and hoping for accidental-clicks. Duxter focuses on connecting gamers to the games and brands they love, or have not yet heard about. “

Moving forward, Lieb said he wants to make sure that a wide variety of gaming communities are represented on the site. He also wants to expand beyond desktop browsers by launching mobile and console versions.

Duxter raised a seed round of a little more than $500,000, Lieb said.

Americans are notorious low-information voters: 41 percent can’t name the vice president, and two-thirds can’t name a single Supreme Court justice. As proof that Americans aren’t getting any smarter about politics, Google searches for “Who is running for president?” have skyrocketed.

Even as billions in campaign funding saturate every known communication medium on the planet, there are apparently citizens — who know how to use Google — who have managed to remain blind to advertisements. For a hilarious take on low-information voters, check out this Saturday Night Live clip:

Before readers get too depressed, there are some credible studies in political science demonstrating that low-information voters may not harm representative democracies. University of Michigan Professor Arthur Lupia famously found that, on average, low-information citizens vote in similar ways to knowledgeable voters [PDF]. Ignorant voters can look to cues, such as political party or a trusted official, to effectively emulate the behavior of their better-informed counterparts.

Still, research in “Deliberative Polling,” where citizens are educated by experts on issues, finds that  information can make a notable difference in public opinion. After hearing expert arguments on both sides about the Iraq War, for instance, more participants in the deliberative poll agreed that the Iraq War was not worth the cost (38 percent in the deliberation group thought Iraq was not worth it compared to 45 percent of those in a control group who did not receive expert education).

So, this raises the question: Why has our education system not stepped up and solved this problem?

[Image via Salon]

AOL (owner of TechCrunch) reported earlier today its quarterly earnings for Q3 2012 ending September 30. The results beat expectations with a flat revenue of $531.7 million compared to Q3 2011. It’s the first time in over seven years that revenue didn’t decline. Net income was $20.8 million compared to a net loss of $2.6 million in the same quarter last year. Diluted earnings per share were $0.22.

As the company beat expectations, shares (NYSE:AOL) have popped and closed at $43.70, 22.03 percent higher than yesterday. Consensus analyst estimate from S&P Capital IQ expected $522 million in revenue, around $10 million less than what the company reported.

When it comes to performance, traffic was up for all AOL properties, with 111 million unique visitors every month. It represented a 4 percent increase year-over-year but a decline of 1 million compared to Q2 2012.

More importantly, global ad revenue was up 7 percent year-over-year, with $340 million compared to $317.7 million, thanks to an increase in search and contextual ad revenue. The domestic display ad revenue was down 3 percent year-over-year.

Dial-up subscription revenue was down 10 percent year-over-year. Even though it was anticipated, it was the lowest rate of decline in six years. The company has successfully compensated for the revenue loss with advertising revenue.

Last year, AOL invested more than $300 million to develop Patch, a network of local news websites. The company reported 11.9 million unique visitors for September 2012, a 19 percent increase year-over-year.

AOL’s video network is now the second largest video network by views according to comScore. The company experienced double-digit growth in video revenue with 100 percent more video impressions sold through Advertising.com

“We just reported the best relative revenue performance in seven years and the second consecutive quarter of year- over-year profit growth, exceeding our expectations,” AOL CEO Tim Armstrong commented in a statement. “We have positioned AOL for growth in 2013,” he continued.

During the earnings call and in an interview with Reuters, Armstrong confirmed that the main focus is now advertising and video. In other words, after investing in building or acquiring strong content brands, the company is now focused on bringing more revenue.

AOL shares are up 130.1 percent over a 12-month period, which is nothing short of astonishing. Comparatively, over the same period, Apple shares are up 46.7 percent, Google shares 14.6 percent.

Spriggle made its debut last week out of the NewMe Accelerator with the aim of building a new, super social way for parents to test out and shop for kids’ toys — by bringing the experience into in-home playdates that are already a way of life for so many families with young children.

Spriggle’s co-founders Susie Ye and Carolina Huaranca tell me it’s essentially a spin on the classic sales model associated with big brands such as Tupperware and Mary Kay cosmetics and, more recently, given more of a modern and tech-savvy spin with jewelry sales startup Stella & Dot.

Spriggle wants to focus especially on toys that stimulate thinking about math and science, and let people see how kids respond to the toys by testing them out in play dates hosted at parents’ homes. It’s a really clever idea, and could be very promising — the real trick is seeing how well it scales beyond tech-focused, relatively affluent, and densely populated regions such as Silicon Valley. But of course, focusing on those types of places alone can make for a very successful startup.

You can see Huaranca and Ye talk a bit about Spriggle in the video below:

We had six of the seven new NewMe companies stop by TechCrunch HQ to give us their quick pitches and talk a bit about NewMe and their plans going forward (one startup was tied up in investor meetings, so had to take a pass on the press — which is always a good thing!) In a series of posts going forward, we’ll give you a look at each one of these companies. You can find them all by going to TechCrunch.com/tag/NewMeFall2012.

Thanks to the “genius” of the electoral college, if you live in a sure-fire red or blue state you might feel like your vote doesn’t matter much. You can still have an impact, though, by reminding friends in swing states to vote. But which of your friends live in swing states? Obama’s “Remind Friends To Vote” app and Romney’s “Commit To Mitt” show you who to make sure made it to the polls.

Both apps pull in your Facebook data, show you a list of friends in swing states, and let you instantly share with them a statement or image encouraging them to cast their ballot. Obama’s lets you deliver a wall post, while Romney lets you do the same or be more discreet with a private message reminder.

You could also use the apps to figure out who to send text messages and make phone calls to. Note that Obama’s app seems to running a little slow with all the traffic so be patient and give it a minute or two to load.

And if you still haven’t hit up the polling center yourself and carry an iOS 6 device, political startup Votizen lets you save to your Passbook a card showing who you want to plan to vote for. That way you can research candidates and issues at home without worrying you’ll forget when you get in the booth.

Afterwards, you can follow along with what people are tweeting about the election with Votizen’s live social media monitoring dashboard.

So go, make your voice heard even if not through your vote. Here’s links to Obama’s “Remind Friends To Vote” app and Romney’s “Commit To Mitt” app.

Check out more of TechCrunch’s election tech coverage:

Election Day Prep: Is Your Congressman Tech-Friendly?

Can’t Figure Out Which Candidate Is Winning? Use These Web Apps

Click Facebook’s “I’m Voting” Button, Research Shows It Boosts Turnout

Apple is hoping to add Samsung’s latest tablet, the Galaxy Note 10.1, and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean to a list of product it claims infringe its patents in an existing court case in California, Bloomberg reports. The arguments supporting these additions were made in federal court in San Jose today, and follow Samsung’s expressed intent to add the iPhone 5 its own infringement claims in the same proceedings.

The Galaxy Note 10.1 is Samsung’s latest self-branded tablet, though the manufacturer has been tapped to provide hardware for Google’s Nexus 10 slate as well. The Jelly Been update is the version of Google’s Android OS that powers the Note, thus its inclusion in this suit, which is slated currently for a 2014 trial date.

Obviously we’re not looking at a draw down situation here, as both sides in the case seem eager to make sure device lists are updated to include the latest from each side. Apple won a preliminary order in this case blocking the sale of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus in the U.S., and added the Galaxy S III to the list of products it says are infringing its IP in August. In October, Judge Lucy Koh rescinded a previous injunction against the Galaxy Tab 10.1, an earlier 10-inch tablet from Samsung, in a separate proceeding in the same court.

For any action resulting from these proceedings to have teeth, they really need to apply to current products, and given that the trial date isn’t for over a year yet, expect to see more devices named by both parties in the interim as additional hardware is released.

According to the latest data from web application performance management firm New Relic, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8 currently has the fastest response time of any browser on Windows, leading the company – and Microsoft – to conclude that IE10 is currently the fastest browser on Windows. Looking at the 40 billion web pageviews it monitors every month, New Relic’s data shows that IE9 comes in second, followed by Firefox 15, Safari 5 and Chrome 21.

On the Mac, interestingly, an older version of Chrome (19) showed a faster average response time than any of the newer versions (New Relic’s data doesn’t include measurements from Chrome 23, though, as it was only released today).

Microsoft, of course, is quite happy with these results. One thing the folks over in Redmond don’t talk about in their celebratory blog post today is the fact that once you look across platforms, IE10 starts falling behind quickly. In a full comparison, Chrome 19 for Linux shows the fastest response times, followed by Chrome 19 for Mac (Google clearly did something right with version 19), Chrome 21 for Mac, Chrome 20 for Mac, Chrome 18 for Mac and Firefox 15 for Mac. IE 10 only places eighth in this full comparison.

Here is what Microsoft has to say about today’s result:

Internet Explorer 10 is fast and fluid, and built from the ground up for real-world performance. Growing evidence shows Internet Explorer as the fastest web browser on Windows 8.

To be fair, though, IE10 is clearly ahead of the pack on Windows and that’s pretty much in line with the results of numerous other benchmarks as well. Despite its reputation, then, Microsoft is clearly on to something with Internet Explorer 10. For now, of course, only Windows 8 machines can run IE 10, but a Windows 7 version (or at least a preview) should arrive in the next few weeks.

In 1987, as the first reduced instruction set computing (RISC) ARM chips hit the scene, programmers at Acorn Computers created RISC OS, a simple, ‘co-operatively multi-tasked’ OS designed for small computing environments. While it’s no Linux, it’s still a great way to get to know RISC computing and, more important, it boots fast and has a working GUI. Now, according to a post on Rasberrypi.org, it’s available for download for all Pi users.

You can download the OS here but the Raspberry Pi creators recommend a quick stroll around the OS using this PDF as a guide. You can also try the OS using an ACORN emulator for Windows and OS X (although the Mac version seems to be missing). There is also an interesting history and tutorial on the site.

People rave about the filer and the consistent UI, but I’m just excited to see seemingly dead OSes resurrected as teaching tools. It gets us back to the bare metal of the machine and, more important, puts budding programmers into a situation where not everything is a given.

Monday night was our TechCrunch meetup in Toronto and we had a blast. The city’s entrepreneurs and tech community showed up in full force for a night of networking and revelry, hosted at Toronto local gem the Steamwhistle Brewery. For me personally, this was a chance to put faces to a lot of names and voices I’ve spoken to many times over the phone, and in general our writers and events team had a blast meeting up with Toronto’s best and brightest.

We enjoyed some great one-on-one time with startup teams during office hours, and then were wowed by a massive turnout for the general meetup in the evening. Toronto proved it has a rich, varied and vibrant startup community, full of talented individuals working on exciting, innovative projects. Check out the slideshow below for some photo highlights of the night’s festivities.

Click to view slideshow.

Special thanks to our sponsors for the Toronto meetup: Ford, Extreme Startups, New Relic, Quicken Loans, SoftLayer, Uber, SiteScout, WhatRunsWhere, Herd Wisdom and ModiFace.

Photo by Jackson Lynch/Wired

The concept of “personal music” has become so embedded in modern culture that we no longer even entertain the idea of not pocketing our music and piping it directly into our brains.

For those of us minted prior to the iPod age, the Sony brand is synonymous with creating and laying that foundation with its Walkman line of portable players. Clearly, much has changed since the early ’80s, and Sony has been leapfrogged by many competitors in portable music. But that doesn’t mean the big “S” doesn’t know a good thing when it hears it. That’s why the company has teamed up with British mega-producer and singing-show lightning rod Simon Cowell to develop the MDR-X10, a premium on-the-ear headphone.

The industrial design of these “X Factor” headphones, all matte and polished silver polycarbonate, is thoughtful and aesthetically pleasing. However, the ear pads on the X10 are rather deceiving — they’re not hollowed out like most bigger cans on the market. Instead, they’re flat, but when placed over your head, the cushy memory foam envelopes your ear without significantly altering the sound-channeling shape of the ear’s cartilage. This design creates an excellent acoustic seal that markedly diminishes the incursion of outside ambient sound. Another pleasing design element is the removable, single-sided flat cable that comes in two flavors — one is a plain straight cable with a mini phone jack, and the other is an iGadget-friendly cable with an in-line mic/remote assembly.

Photo by Jackson Lynch/Wired

The X10s are tuned to accentuate the predominant sounds in popular music. And straight out of the box, the proprietary 50-millimeter driver pumps the bass and treble just the way you’d expect. That initial listen demonstrated to me how headphones with boosted bass often overshadow the subtleties of the midrange elements.

However, to get the truest impression of a speaker’s sound, whether it’s inside a headphone or a big wooden enclosure, they need to be “burned in” for 100 hours or so. It’s a simple process: Just connect them to your audio source, turn the music up to about six on the dial, and walk away for four days.

That’s exactly what I did. When I returned to Cowell’s cans, they were greatly improved. The midrange frequencies in the soundstage were much more defined. The bass and treble were still holding court, but the mids were definitely clearer and made space for themselves in my ears. The post-burn-in sound was deep, rich, full and well defined — much more balanced overall, and closer to what I’d expect from a set of headphones that costs $300.

Simon Cowell’s personality on television is definitely polarizing, but his success at discovering and launching musical talent is well documented. Sony’s development partnership with the notoriously nit-picky producer has actually served this product well.

Andrew Sivori, Sony’s VP of personal audio, tells me Cowell was involved in the development of the headphone’s sound signature throughout the entire process.

“He gave fantastic feedback,” Sivori says. “He listens for a living, and he’s been incredibly successful at it.”

It looks like Sony and Cowell may have another hit on their hands. The X10s are comfortable, they kick out some great sound, and they look great doing it.

WIRED Ear pads are plush and comfy. Deep, rich, dynamic sound. Comes with two replaceable flat cords and a 1/4-inch plug for an audiophile sound system. They fold up for portability. High-quality protective case.

TIRED Price is steep. Headband could use a little more padding at the top of the head. Tough to simultaneously wear glasses.

Photo by Jackson Lynch/Wired

Politico was our favorite political news app we tested. Image: Politico

How is Ohio breaking? What’s the current Electoral College math? Stay on top of all the election-day craziness with these apps for on-the-go political news.

Politico

Politico’s fire hose of news and opinion can be tough to contain in a full browser, so the app would seem at risk of bursting at the seams. Instead, things might actually be more manageable here. Select the topics, blogs, and pundits you want to follow, set particular favorites to update automatically, and star articles to read later. Free, iOS, Android

WIRED Great balance of accessible wonkiness. Generous set of sharing options for every article.

TIRED No access to story comments. Android interface is rough.

Politifact

Launch this truly nonpartisan app for a list of recent assertions from prominent figures, parties, and organizations. Each statement sits next a “Truth-o-Meter,” whose needle moves from the green of truth to the yellows and reds of half-truths and lies. Blatant distortions push the needle to “pants on fire.” It’s a great way to quickly see who’s fleecing you when. $1.99, iOS, Android

WIRED Tabs for recent news, people, and topics. Truth Index tracks average trustworthiness of political debate for the previous week.

TIRED Truth Index rarely hits positive territory.

Real Clear Politics

If you asked a die-hard political junkie to create their perfect RSS feed, it would look like a less-polished version of RealClearPolitics.com, a bare-bones aggregator that provides an immediate and constantly updated snapshot of the nation’s political discourse. This mobile companion simplifies browsing with tabs for top stories, latest news, most read, and polls. Free, iOS

WIRED A one-stop political-news shop. Arrow keys for jumping between stories without returning to home screen.

TIRED Variety of sources means inconsistent experience from story to story.

The Hill

This super wonky news app is filled with original reporting and makes its inside-the-Beltway focus clear right from the home screen, where there are only five labeled tags: News, Senate, House, Executive, and More. That last one takes you to subcategories like Business & Lobbying and topics such as transportation, health care, and defense. Free, iOS, Android

WIRED Save stories for off-line reading. Focused on original reporting.

TIRED When ads pop up, there’s very little room left for browsing headlines.

Political Fury

If you can’t get enough of political arguments, debates, and partisan red meat, you’ll love this. The “editorials” aren’t up to high-school-newspaper quality, but they’re an afterthought anyway. The real fun is in the quiz showdowns. Once you’ve chosen your party affiliation, you can challenge users from the other side. First to correctly answer three questions on government and U.S. history wins. $1.99, iOS

WIRED Battle over real facts. Links to actual political articles.

TIRED Forums and editorials are filled with bottom feeders.

Photo by Alex Washburn/Wired

The Lumia 920 is a heavy phone. At 6.5 ounces — much heavier than Apple’s new iPhone, which is just shy of 4 ounces — the Lumia is big and chunky and not shy about it.

It’s as if, with its new flagship Windows Phone device, Nokia has crafted a physical token representative of the weight it would like to wield in the smartphone market.

Among all Microsoft’s hardware partners betting on the Windows Phone platform, Nokia has the most to lose, and potentially the most to gain. Analysts and carriers have said again and again that the smartphone market needs a third platform to compete against iOS and Android. And with the arrival of Windows Phone 8, it looks like we finally have a three-horse race. Should Windows Phone succeed, Nokia could reap untold benefits. If the Windows smartphone market stays lukewarm, Nokia will continue to wilt.

But I have to admit that when I started using the HTC Windows Phone 8X, a device that directly competes with the Lumia 920, the future started looking more grim for Nokia. It seemed as though HTC had beat the Finnish company at its own game, making a gorgeous Windows Phone handset, bright colors and all.

That’s not quite the case, though. After days of using the Lumia 920, it’s hard to deny Nokia has delivered a heavyweight player (pun intended) to take on the other smartphones, Windows Phone or otherwise.

Photo by Alex Washburn/Wired

First off, the Lumia 920 is very well-designed. It looks like a slightly larger, more polished Lumia 900. It has the same rectangular polycarbonate shell, with rounded edges and flat tops. However, the polycarbonate now surrounds a sculpted, 4.5-inch curved Gorilla Glass display. With its rounded edges, it looks more fluid than the flat display of the Lumia 900.

The polycarbonate also now comes in glossy and matte textures. The black model of the phone that I tested has a matte body, which I prefer over the glossy finish I saw in the red and yellow models. The phone also comes in white and cyan. Like other Windows Phones, there are capacitive Home, Search and Back buttons below the screen. Three physical black buttons — a volume rocker, a lock button, and a dedicated camera shutter button — line the right edge. On the inside, there’s a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, 32GB of storage, 1GB of RAM and a 2000 mAh battery. Windows Phone 8 was snappy and responsive as usual, and I had no problems with battery life.

This isn’t a small, or necessarily pocketable phone. It’s more than 5 inches tall and almost 3 inches wide. And as I mentioned, it’s a relatively heavy device, weighing 185 grams (or 6.5 ounces) compared to the HTC 8X’s 130 grams (or 4.6 ounces) and the iPhone 5′s 112 grams (or 3.95 ounces). The heft might deter people who prefer to carry their phones in jean pockets.

Photo by Alex Washburn/Wired

But that’s one of the few drawbacks to the Lumia 920. Otherwise, it’s a stunning device with two killer features: An amazing display and an excellent camera. The 1280×768 pixel PureMotion HD+ display is one of the best I’ve seen. My one complaint is that whites seemed slightly off, with a hint of yellow, even in the brightest mode. Still, reading on the Lumia 920 was a joy, also thanks to the expansive size of the screen.

Most importantly, the Lumia 920′s camera is a winner. Nokia has been touting its PureView technology since the 41-megapixel monster showed up in the 808 PureView Symbian smartphone. The company has ported the software technology over to Windows Phone and slapped in a more modest 8.7-megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens. Photos are super-sharp, and taking photos in low light is impressive. I tested it against the iPhone 5 and found that the Lumia 920 was able to capture more light in dim and dark settings than the iPhone.

My only problem with the Lumia 920 camera is that when using the stock Windows Phone camera app, it doesn’t give you a live preview of what the image is going to look like. In iOS, you can select which specific part of the image you want to use to set the exposure for the whole frame, and the viewfinder adjusts accordingly to show you what your image will look like. All of my low-light photos shot with the Lumia 920 ended up looking like they were in direct light, which is great for certain situations, but not all. If you want a low-light photo that actually looks like you’re in a low-light environment, you’ll need to fuss with the settings, and even then you might not get what you expect. (Usually going down to the lowest possible exposure should do the trick.)

Editor’s note: Dr. Paul Judge is a serial entrepreneur and investor. He is chief research officer at Barracuda Networks, co-founder and Chairman of Pindrop and Limitless Smart Shot, and previously led three companies to successful exits. Follow him on Twitter.

A few months ago Facebook’s initial public offering became the largest tech IPO in history initially valuing the company at over $100 billion. More than 70 percent of African Americans online have used Facebook or other social networks^[i]; however there were none on stage in the cast of newly minted billionaires ringing the NASDAQ bell. Many have raised the question of who is or will be the black Mark Zuckerberg? That question translates to who are the successful black technology entrepreneurs?

For the last year, there has been great debate about blacks in Silicon Valley’s technology industry. This argument was fueled by a CNN program called Blacks in America: The New Promised Land — Silicon Valley.

The program showed Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch and an investor, stating that he did not know any black entrepreneurs. In response, some people called him a racist, others said Silicon Valley is racist, and others concluded there are no qualified black technology entrepreneurs.

I sat on the sidelines until now reading article after article written on this topic, many of which were fueled by anger or lacking relevant insight.

I am taking a break from building companies to comment. I am a successful technology entrepreneur. And you might have noticed that I am black. I never previously broadcast that I’m a “black entrepreneur,” as my focus has been on success and I do not find my skin color relevant to the source code I write or to the purchase orders I receive.

It is, however, difficult to sit by and watch misinformed views on the intersection of two things that I know well: 1. building technology companies and 2. being black. Misinformation and improper conclusions will only make the situation worse, which is counter to the goals of people on both sides of the debate.

Here I share three opinions on the ongoing debate about blacks in Silicon Valley and then three suggestions on how to improve the state of blacks in Silicon Valley.

Three Opinions On The Debate About Blacks In Silicon Valley

1. Underrepresentation does not equal racism

One uninformed comment about black entrepreneurs started the debate, which grew into a discussion of black underrepresentation in Silicon Valley.

I’m going to state what should be obvious. Underrepresentation does not equal racism. Nor does underrepresentation equal lack of ability. A group can be underrepresented for various reasons, including lack of interest, lack of knowledge, and lack of access.^[ii]

If underrepresentation equals racism then the NBA is racist against whites because only 17 percent of the NBA players are white even though whites make up over 70 percent of the U.S. population.^[iii] Even with this underrepresentation, it is understood that the NBA is not racist against white men.

The white underrepresentation also does not mean lack of ability. There are many examples such as Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki, Larry Bird and Jerry West to quickly dispel that notion. My point is that there are many contributing factors to underrepresentation instead of blaming racism as the broad explanation. This is a critical point because those other factors can be affected by individuals interested in impacting the situation.

2. CNN’s “Blacks in Silicon Valley” was not representative of blacks in Silicon Valley

I appreciate Soledad O’Brien and CNN making the effort to highlight positive images of blacks in America. But, they missed half the story. CNN focused on individuals trying to build companies, not black individuals that have built companies and are living the Silicon Valley dream.

Thus viewers concluded there are no successful blacks in technology and that the TV show’s entrepreneurs were the first blacks to try to build tech companies. Wrong.

That is like doing a show on blacks in the comedy business by visiting a random local amateur night. Certainly you will find talented hardworking people, but you will miss the entire spectrum of black comedians that have been successful over the years and continue to be the leaders in their field such as Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, and Whoopi Goldberg.

I applaud and support the goals of NewME Accelerator but the TV show was an incomplete story. The actual story of African Americans in Silicon Valley starts with pioneers like Ken Coleman and Roy Clay. It includes executives such as John Thompson, CEO of Virtual Instruments and ex-CEO of Symantec; David Drummond, chief legal officer of Google; and Shellye Aarchambeau, CEO of MetricStream. It also includes African Americans at successful startups such as Tristan Walker, formerly director of business development at Foursquare and now entrepreneur-in-residence at Andreessen Horowitz, and Michael Seibel, founder and CEO of Socialcam.com. It involves African American venture capital investors such as Charles Hudson of SoftTech VC and Lisa Lambert of Intel Capital.

3. Greed trumps race

During the “Blacks in America” debate, people screamed “racist” as if they were screaming “thief,” but the reality is that being a racist is not illegal. I appreciate civil rights leaders who fought for the opportunities minorities and women now have. My point is that in many cases people spend too much energy complaining that the playing field is not completely level instead of spending that energy playing on the field and leveraging the opportunities. Oprah Winfrey offered guidance when she said, “Excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism.”

For example, instead of piling onto the attacks on Arrington, I opted instead to introduce him to a black entrepreneur: me. I wrote a friendly note and introduced a hot startup that I would like to pitch to his investment group. That did not result in a meeting but most investors are quite busy so rather than blame that on race and lose focus, we pressed on and raised an impressive round.

“Greed trumps race,” wisely remarked Ben Horowitz recently during a panel on diversity in Silicon Valley hosted by his firm, Andreessen Horowitz. Not only did I borrow it for the title of this article, but I have also witnessed this phenomenon over the years. Kanye West put it another way, “Heard Yeezy was racist, well, I guess that’s on one basis, I only like green faces.”

Three Thoughts On Improving The State Of Blacks In Silicon Valley

1. Risk equals reward

In tech businesses, high risk is balanced by high potential. If your idea attracts a small niche and they pay little for it, it will not scale. Do not focus on how your idea can make a million dollars; instead focus on how it can make a million dollars a day.

Choose a problem that is sufficiently big but that you can actually tackle. One mistake that I see people make is choosing a problem that is so big that they have no reasonable path to making it happen. Break a big idea into stages. Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook with a simple social fun website, turned it into a destination for Harvard — then other schools — and then a global social network.

In the Valley it is well understood that ideas are worthless and that execution is what builds value. It is what separates the haves from the have-nots. Steve Jobs said, “I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.” I had to take a position well below my capabilities to get in the door as one of the first 10 employees at CipherTrust. Within a year I designed the flagship product and was responsible for the engineering, product management and R&D divisions. Then I became chief technology officer and continued to help lead our company to a successful $270 million acquisition.

2. Increase the pipeline

While speaking to a second grade class at a predominantly black elementary school, I asked students what they wanted to be as adults. They said football player, basketball player, rapper, and music producer. Only one kid said anything in sciences, stating that he wants to make video games.

The reasoning behind such skewed ambitions begins at home. That is where kids consume images of fame and fast money and see adults recite rap lyrics and fathers wearing jerseys bearing other men’s names. Many blacks can name the last three platinum rap albums and basketball’s “Big Three,” but not three black scientists. And it’s not just about money because more times than not the three black scientists have a higher net worth than the three rappers or athletes. In extreme cases, the amount of wealth created by just one founder of one technology company can surpass the salary of an entire sports league. For example, Facebook’s Zuckerberg is worth about $12 billion from the company that he started in 2004. This means that he’s made about the same as the total salary of every NBA player on every team for every year from 2004 to 2012.

To follow in the footsteps of Silicon Valley greats requires a serious focus on the sciences. Most of the greats in Silicon Valley were technologists such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Andy Grove, and Jeff Bezos. This does not just happen by putting on a suit and showing up at a VC office. This happens after years of study either independently or in school. There are no shortcuts. It is true that this is a high-growth high-risk business and success can happen relatively quickly, but it does not happen without great effort.

Blacks comprise 13.6 percent of the U.S. population, but only earn 9.8 percent of bachelor degrees in computer science (CS), 4.7 percent of CS masters degrees and 1.8 percent of CS doctoral degrees.^[iv] We must increase black interest in, and pursuit of, CS and other science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) educations. Otherwise the talk about boosting black representation in high tech is pointless. As Peter Drucker once said, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

3. Silicon Valley is about creating something from nothing

Blacks are a creative people, and writing software is an art. Its creation is a near-pure translation of thought into value. Raw materials, land or money, which were historically difficult for African Americans to acquire, are not needed to write software. Open source and software-as-a-service create an environment that allows even more efficient creation of products and companies.

The CNN program overstressed acquiring funding instead of focusing on what really matters: building product, gaining traction and achieving revenue. Venture capital and angel investment is a means to an end, not the final destination. From there you have to continue to build significant value in order to deliver impressive returns to your investors and other shareholders.

Information technology is polarizing the workforce into high-skill, high-wage and low-skill, low-wage sectors, and fuels the creation of wealth unlike anything that the world has seen in decades. The fastest-growing young firms (3-5 years old) account for less than 1 percent of all companies but generate 10 percent of new jobs annually.^[v] Venture-backed companies annually generate revenue equal to 21 percent of the U.S. GDP.^[vi]

The software business allows people to start with nothing yet finish with everything. There are hundreds of examples of this. One study showed that immigrants founded 25 percent of U.S. venture-backed public companies even though they only represent 8.7 percent of the U.S. population.^[vii] The background image on my phone is a photo of a bank advertisement that says “two-thirds of the world’s billionaires made their fortunes from scratch.”

I beseech you to make answers, not excuses. Make product. Make customers. Make revenue. Make value. Those are way more fun to make than excuses. Let’s get to work. 

________

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. He publishes more frequently over on his blog BothSidesoftheTable

It is election season. So it’s tempting to think this is going to be a partisan post – it is not.

I use George Bush vs. Al Gore as allegory and I’ve been using it with entrepreneurs for years to sink in a simple point about how to communicate with the market. I use it because I believe in the power of visual and memorable stories to sink into the consciousness. I talked at this point at length in a previous post on “The Importance of the Narrative.”

So why re-hash Bush v. Gore?

I think most people remember the era in which Al Gore was running for president. Partisan rancor aside, we had just come off a boom decade – especially in tech – and many people at the start of the election thought Al Gore was a shoe in. He is clearly a smart individual and he had had 8 years of the vice presidency under his belt so he sure seemed qualified. Before that he was a US senator.

But the narrative in the press about Al Gore was that he was a smarmy know-it-all. You imagined him as the kid in your class at school at the front of the room raising his hand at every question and saying, “Oooh, me. Call on me. I know the answer.” And I imagine he probably did do that. No matter how smart or knowledgable Gore was he couldn’t get a break in the media.

Bush had the opposite narrative in the press. They wrote about his verbal fumbles. Most famously he said he was “misunderestimated.” He didn’t try to come off as too smart. He has a message he wanted to get across and he did so in a folksy manner.

Obviously press narratives of people are characterizations that seldom match reality.

But here’s the thing.

Most Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs I know are more like Al Gore. They have very accomplished backgrounds. They are incredibly smart and a huge command of details of complex markets and systems. They favor intellectualism over folksy delivery of key messages about their markets, their product or their competitors.

And I think this is a mistake.

I have sat through countless pitches with Ivy League grads spewing off intellectual descriptions of the details of their product or service and why it will win in the market. It’s not that I’m dense and can’t grab complex concepts. It’s just that I see them for what they are – overly complicated explanations to appear smart and inability to simplify a message. In a VC pitch this type of messaging will do just fine. But it won’t play well in Peoria when you need to communicate with a broader market.

1. Simplify Your Message
Let’s talk about your target audience for getting your message out to a market. You need to communicate with journalists. They also aren’t dumb. But they’re under the gun to crank out story after story so they don’t have the time or energy to understand why your behavioral targeting technology is mathematically better than your 5 competitors. Plus, they are spun so much bullship constantly that they don’t know whether to believe you or not.

Or what about your sales team? They’re not dumb either but they’re not as motivated to learn all of the minutiae of your product qualities as you would like. They want a simple deck that sells. And they want a human explanation of why you beat your competitors. And they want to spend their time in front of clients winning deals.

Even the VC who invested in your deal struggles to properly position why you’re going to be huge when they’re calling big tech companies or other VCs on your behalf.

So you need to distill complex concepts down to a small handful of talking points. These messages need to pass the cocktail party pitch. You need to rattle off why you rock in 60 seconds or less and have a group of strangers undertand what you do.

2. Create visual metaphors that stick in people’s minds and are easily repeated
Think of James Carville’s slogan for Clinton in 1992, “It’s the economy, stupid.”  It was so easy it was repeated frequently. Or Ronald Reagan, “are you better off than you were four years ago.” What about Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com? He didn’t get too complicated on the differences of multi-tenant online databases or the power of remote logins when all your data is in the cloud. He simply asserted, “the end of software” by putting up a logo with the word software and a red line through it. WTF does that even mean? Just because it’s online doesn’t mean it’s not software. But journalists (and buyers) sorta got it. And it was oft repeated and gave Salesforce a huge marketing advantage.

Other tech examples:

• People constantly come up to me and tell me they want to start “becoming a line” which is shorthand for my post “Lines, not Dots.” Many people in Internet TV talk to me about “Torso TV” or “Why Hulu is like OPEC.“
• Fred Wilson has created many important analogies, amongst the most important is “mobile first” which is quoted in so many entrepreneur pitches I think he should trademark it!
• Chris Dixon spoke of “techies vs. normals” as a metaphor that always sticks with me when thinking about products
• Marc Andreessen famously opined, “software is eating the world” and now everybody I know says that
• Chris Anderson, “the long tail“
• Negraponte famously shaped our views in “Being Digital” by talking about Atoms becoming Bits

These are all powerful concepts that are simplified into catchphrases that allow people to remember the core point with a one line phrase. You don’t need to establish an industry catchphrase to be effective. You just need to give journalists, your marketing department, your sales team, your VCs and everybody else who becomes an ambassador for your brand a simpler way to tell your story.

“There you go again with the fuzzy math.”

3. Be human.
What George Bush really mastered was the human connection. He spoke in plain and folksy terms. He seemed human. He was the guy you wanted to have a beer with while Al Gore seemed like the guy you wanted lecturing at a local university. I know that many people post presidency don’t want to have a beer with Bush but during the election he WAS that guy. Al Gore was not. He sighed at the debates which seemed aloof.

That’s why your examples need to sound human. Whenever I think of messages to communicate I always start by thinking about the audience

• how informed will they be about our product / service?
• how can I tell the story in a way that will resonate with them in their daily lives?
• how can we create an angle that will interest readers?

I spent a bunch of time last year with Tracy Dinunzio who is building an awesome company Tradsey. (I am not an investor, just a fan). Her core proposition is a company that allows people (mostly women) exchange clothes from their closets with other women. Sure, she could pitch it as a P2P marketplace. That would resonate with VClandia. But not Peoria.

We started talking about how in a country with so much consumer debt she could help women unlock the value of the clothes already in their closets. And it stead of running up more credit card bills to buy new clothes, how about if they got new good stuff without spending new cash?

If you can spare just 4 minutes you should watch this amazing video of Tracy telling what they do on ABC. Simply put, this is an amazing 10/10 example of how to put simple marketing metaphors to work in practice.

4. Don’t divert from your core message
When you’re in a meeting with journalists it’s very easy to get diverted. They ask you a bunch of questions and you’re smart so you answer them all to your fullest extent. You are professorial. You give them an education in whatever topic it was that they asked about. The problem is that after 20 minutes they don’t have a strong thesis from which to hang your story. You feel like you did your job – by answering their questions – but in reality you created more uncertainty in how your story will get told.

I learned very early on in public communications the following:

• have simple messages. no more than 3-4 talking points
• ABC = “answer, bridge, communicate.” The journalist asks you a question. You answer it briefly so as to not seem like you’re unwilling to give them the info they have asked about, but you quickly use a bridge phrase to divert the topic back to your key messages.
• repeat, repeat, repeat. You need 4-5 ways of saying the same thing but you need to continually divert back to your key messages. I know it will feel awkward for you to be George Bush. To be much smarter than the information you’re divulging. To be misunderestimated and make it a strength. But I promise you it’s more effective in communications than over informing people and losing the message. Seriously, think back to Marc Andreessen. He is clearly intellectually very smart yet simplifying to “software is eating the world” helped him better deliver his message.

Quick story – I once helped a friend get an interview with a journalist at the Financial Times. It was a journalist who covered Venture Capital. He did the interview and was eviscerated in the article. He complained to me for years that she did a hit job. Every time we talk about this topic I remind him it was his fault. She only asked questions and did very limited background research other than the interview. The stories he told were the stories she reported.  If he opened up and gave her an angle to make him bad it was he who enabled it.

This point isn’t just about press meetings. It’s about presentations in front of large audiences. You need simple messages people can remember. You know the rule, “tell them 3 things up front that you’re going to tell them, tell them the 3 things, then summarize the 3 things that you told them.” This is maddening for people who got perfect scores on their SATs. It is 101 for anybody who understands memory and information retention. And anybody who understands communications.

5. Don’t exaggerate
Finally. Hyperbole. It’s rife in our industry. “We’re totally transforming the way education is delivered in this country.” “We’re going to put the rental car companies out of business.” “Hollywood is run by dinosaurs and we understand the future of media.” “We’re crushing it.”

None of these are true. Nor did Al Gore actually claim in “invented” the Internet.

What did he actually say?

“During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth”

Not exactly a simple message. Not something easily repeated in the press. And the reason he was eviscerated is that he seemed to be exaggerating. People generally don’t like people who seem exaggerated.

What do they tend to like?

Somebody they can drink a beer with. Be that person. Save your over-intellectualizing for your book club.

Image is an AP Photo from BillMoyers.com

Editor’s Note: Nir Eyal blogs about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business at NirAndFar.com. Sangeet Paul Choudary analyzes business models for network businesses at Platformed.info.

If there is one altar at which Silicon Valley worships, it is the shrine of the holy network effect. Its mystical powers pluck lone startups from obscurity and elevate them to fame and fortune. The list of anointed ones includes nearly every technology success story of the past 15 years. Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, eBay, and PayPal, have each soared to multi-billion-dollar valuations on the supreme power of the network effect.

But today, the power of the network effect is fading, at least in its current incarnation. Traditionally defined as a system where each new user on the network increases the value of the service for all others, a network effect often creates a winner-takes-all dynamic, ordaining one dominant company above the rest. Moreover, these companies often wield monopoly-like powers over their industries.

In The Beginning

Once, all a company needed to do to leverage the network effect was facilitate communication between a critical number of customers. If enough people used a particular system to exchange information, a leader would emerge and become the de facto platform. Companies who could either form a marketplace or facilitate the flow of information between parties became tremendously powerful as central hubs of data transfer.

In fact, the first network effects platform was Bell Telephone, which established a government-sanctioned monopoly nearly 100 years ago. Since then, successful network effects businesses have sung from essentially the same hymnal.

First, establish a medium of communication by building the required infrastructure or inventing a new technology. For example, lay down telephone wires from coast to coast. Then, provide access to the network to improve the ease of information transfer — say, by selling fax machines. Finally, race to grow the user base before competing services do. If you get bigger faster than your competitors, voilà! You’re inside the pearly gates.

Rapture

That’s the plan at least. But today, things are not quite so simple. For one, in the old days, consumers paid to access the network through their upfront investment in hardware. These upfront costs locked users into the network and once they were in, they were in for good, thus erecting barriers to entry for would-be competitors.

However, the cost of providing access to the network has fallen precipitously. The days of customers buying expensive hardware to use a network are gone as is the correlating lock-in effect.

Converts

In addition to access costs falling to zero, another key component of what once kept users locked into a network has vanished. Once, porting contacts onto a new network, like switching instant messaging services from Yahoo! to AIM, was a non-trivial task.

Today however, customers use their Facebook, Twitter or Google profiles to join a new service in seconds. A burgeoning network, take Instagram or Pinterest, can leverage the single sign-on enabled by the social graph to reach critical mass faster than ever before. Users not only port their personal information but bring their connections as well. In the age of the social web, the convenience of the social graph has largely toppled the lock-in that once kept users bound to one network over another.

Tending The Flock

Without the upfront investment in physical hardware and users’ newfound ability to port personal information and contacts, how is a company to retain its users? Is the network effect’s ability to lock-in users dead? Hardly.

The power to leverage the network effect now resides in “stored value.” Unlike network access costs, stored value is investment that comes in small increments with repeated use, increasing the importance of the service the more a user engages with it.

Stored Value

Stored value comes in four forms, and companies leverage these tiny investments to build lock-in to their service and retain users.

Creative content (e.g. Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram): Users invest in creating a portfolio of creative content, which forms the basis of their interactions on the platform. The quality and quantity of the content results in more interactions with other users, which, in turn, provides greater value to the content creator.

Reputation (e.g. TaskRabbit, AirBnB, StackOverflow): Although marketplaces for physical goods, such as eBay, have been around for some time, services marketplaces have grown in popularity lately. Trust is an important component of this new breed of network effects business. As a result, reputation built on the platform directly contributes to greater value for all users. Building reputation on a platform requires consistent delivery of highly rated services and may also involve qualifying for some minimum criteria set forth by the platform. Hence, once a service provider builds reputation on a platform, it prevents her from migrating to a competing platform.

Usage Data: Users store value in the form of data, either by actively collecting information, such as in the case of Dropbox or Reddit, or passively as their usage improves the service by offering more relevant information, such as is the case with Quora, which delivers a personalized news feed based on usage. The more a user consumes information through the platform, the more intelligent the algorithm becomes in recommending pertinent content to the user. In both cases, the data set built by or for the user delivers greater value with increased usage, something that won’t directly be available on a competing platform.

Influence (e.g. Twitter, YouTube channel subscriptions): Networks that utilize a one-sided follow model create an influence dynamic. Unlike importing contacts or “friending” people, collecting followers is largely outside the direct control of the user. With the exception of sketchy tactics banned by the Twitter terms of service, accruing more Twitter followers can only be done by tweeting content others find interesting enough to share. As the user’s follower count grows, so does the stored value in the network and the incentive to stay actively engaged.

Keys To The Kingdom

Creating a network effect is not what it used to be. Today, stored value created by the users reinforces the power of the network effect to retain users and grow market share. This dynamic makes creating user habits all the more important as investments of stored value only occur through successive passes through the user experience (see Nir’s previous article and video).

With the portability of the social graph and the fall of upfront costs to join a network, companies must leverage new ways of acquiring and retaining users. Business models that leverage a network effect plus stored value, hold the keys to the kingdom.

Photo credit: opensourceway

Follow Sangeet on Twitter at @sanguit and Nir at @nireyal