Category: Tech news

This is the story of how a husband and wife team designed a game with more daily active users than anything by Zynga. Now the #1 free iOS game, Imangi Studios reveals its Temple Run has hit 20 million downloads and 7 million DAU. Co-founder Natalia Luckyanova tells me how by designing Temple Run to be fun without having to pay, it became the top grossing iOS game despite only 1% of users monetizing.

The first step was making a game that resonated with users emotionally. You play as an explorer running through an ancient temple, constantly chased by a pack of skull-faced monkeys. This seems to trigger the latter half of the human fight or flight response. Luckyanova tells me tweets and word of mouth about how terrifying the monkeys are have helped Temple Run go viral.

“We wanted to make Temple Run feel like it was designed for iOS rather than ported from a console, where you’re using virtual joysticks” Luckyanova says. Temple Run can be played using just one hand, with swipes and tilts controlling the player. A single run through the temple takes 30 seconds to a few minutes. This makes it easy to dip in and try to beat your high score and run past the scores of friends, creating an addictive experience.

The key to Temple Run’s success is that it’s free and doesn’t hinge on in-app purchases. “There’s no barrier to downloading it, and it can be fully played without having to buy anything”. Users collect the in-game currency by picking up coins as they run, meaning they can earn any power-up or character in the store if they don’t want to purchase currency.

Many games make it extremely difficult to complete the later levels or competing directly against other players if you haven’t paid. In contrast, Temple Run focuses on an accessible user experience that boosts retention and sharing, with just 1% choosing to pay. This allowed it to become the top grossing iOS game through massive traction, instead of topping out around 1 million DAU with 4% monetizing like other games.

Founded in 2008, Imangi Studios was one of the first developers in the App Store. It’s since released 10 games including the small hit Harbor Master, and hired an artist bringing the team to 3. Temple Run has been out for just 5 months, but now receives 500,000 downloads a day.

Luckyanova says “It’s a very hit driven business, and a hit like this really funds your studio for years. We’re trying to keep it going by updating the game on a regular basis with new power-ups and characters to keep people engaged.”

Rather than bring complication in-house, Imangi has partnered with another developer to build out Temple Run for Android. After all, evil monkeys are platform agnostic, so Temple Run should be too.

[Image Credits: SegmentNext]

Editor’s Note: This guest post is written by Richard Fontaine, a Senior Advisor at the Center for a New American Security and the co-author (with Will Rogers) of Internet Freedom: A Foreign Policy Imperative in the Digital Age, from which this post is partly drawn.

What is Internet freedom? The United States government has an “Internet freedom” agenda, complete with speeches by the Secretary of State and millions of dollars in program funding. A key United Nations official last year issued a major report emphasizing the right of all individuals freely to use the Internet. Taking a different tack, Vint Cerf, one of the Internet’s founding fathers and “Chief Internet Evangelist” at Google, recently argued in the New York Times that Internet access is not a human right. And Devin Coldewey parsed the debate in TechCrunch, noting that the Internet is an enabler of rights, not a right unto itself.

The answer matters. As an ever greater proportion of human activity is mediated through Internet-based technologies, the extent of our online rights — and what we really mean by “Internet freedom” — will take on greater importance in political and economic life. After a year in which new communications tools were used to dramatic effect throughout the Middle East, and at a time when autocratic governments are cracking down against online freedom, it is worth pausing to get straight the concept so many hold dear.

We might start by distinguishing between two linked but distinct concepts: freedom of the Internet and freedom via the Internet. Freedom of the Internet refers to the ability to engage in unfettered expression in cyberspace. This vision of Internet freedom, as scholar Evgeny Morozov has pointed out, represents freedom from something: censorship, government surveillance, DDoS attacks, and so on. The principles undergirding freedom of the Internet are articulated in documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which describes as inalienable the right to receive and impart information without interference, “throughout any media and regardless of frontiers.”

In this sense, Internet freedom is little different from the notion of free expression, whose advocacy has been an element of U.S. foreign policy for decades. After all, American ambassadors have long pressed foreign governments to allow a free press, release jailed journalists and cease jamming unwanted broadcasts.

Freedom via the Internet is at once both a more alluring and complicated idea. Its advocates suggest that more online freedom can lead to more offline freedom; that is, the free flow of ideas over the Internet promotes democratization. Anyone who witnessed the Arab Spring cannot fail to be moved by the use of new communications tools by protestors to foment political change – nor by the desperate attempts by Mubarak’s Egypt, Qaddafi’s Libya, and others to stop them from doing so.

Then there is Internet access itself. While taking away the ability of individuals to engage in legitimate online expression seems clearly to represent a human rights violation, it is difficult to view governments that fail to provide broadband for their populations as human rights violators.

It is important that those who care about Internet freedom achieve a measure of conceptual clarity, because those who would abridge it are using definitions for their own ends. At an April 2008 U.N. conference that sought to clarify what represents “aggression” online, for instance, a senior Russian official argued that “any time a government promotes ideas on the Internet with the goal of subverting another country’s government – even in the name of democratic reform – it should qualify as ‘aggression.’” Similarly, the six-member Shanghai Cooperation Organisation – which includes Russia and China – in 2009 adopted an accord that reportedly defined “information war,” in part, as an effort by a state to undermine another’s “political, economic and social systems.”

Government officials and their private sector counterparts have a key role to play in all of this. The United States should be in the lead in formulating acceptable international definitions of Internet freedom, aggression, and cyber security that respect widely-recognized human rights. It will also need to continually articulate the distinction between political speech permissible under such regimes as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and truly illicit online activity (like child pornography, cyber crime, and terrorism).

None of this will be easy. Even some of America’s closest democratic friends have views of Internet freedom that are more restrictive than those widely held in the United States. Witness recent attempts by the government of India to have key Internet companies remove objectionable content or restrictions in Europe on online speech that insults population groups. But the effort begins with getting straight precisely what we mean by “Internet freedom.” The idea – and the reality – is too important to muddle.

Excerpt Image from Feross.org

Editor’s note: This is Part III of a guest post written by legendary Silicon Valley investor Vinod Khosla, the founder of Khosla Ventures. In Part I, he laid the groundwork by describing how artificial intelligence is a combination of human and computer capabilities In Part II, he discussed how software and mobile technologies can augment and even replace doctors. Now, in Part III, he talks about how technology will sweep through education.

In my last post, I argued that software will take over many of the tasks doctors do today. And what of education? We find a very similar story of what the popular – and incredibly funny! – TED speaker Sir Ken Robinson calls “a crisis of human resources” (Click here for the RSA talk from the same speaker which has been animated in a highly educational fashion). At the TED 2010 conference, he stated that “we make poor use of our talents.” Indeed, in the same way that we misuse the talents and training of doctors, I believe we misuse the talents and training of teachers.

I want to comment on what I consider a far greater misuse of talent and training: that of our children/students, mostly here talking about high school education. We have focused so much of our education system on children attending primary school, then middle school, then high school, all with the objective of attending university. This is a progression that still remains unchanged and largely unchallenged. Yet, this system is completely linear and, most tragically, unwaveringly standardized not only through instruction methods, but also through testing. Worse, it is mostly what I call “fixed time, variable learning” (the four-year high school) instead of “fixed learning, variable time” to account for individual students’ capabilities and status.

Identifying Emerging Trends In Education

There are new key trends that I see emerging in education enabled by advancing technology: namely decentralization and gamification. By understanding these trends, it is much easier to imagine why we won’t need teachers or why we can free up today’s teachers to be mentors and coaches. Software can free teachers to have more human relationships by giving them the time to be guidance counselors and friends to young kids instead of being lecturers who talk at them.  This last possibility is very important—in addition to learning, schools enable critical social development for children through teacher student relationships and interacting with other children—classrooms of peers and teachers provide much more than math lessons.  And by freeing up teachers’ time, technology can lead to increased social development rather than less as many assume.

Still, nearly all the attempts at technology in education have mostly failed so far, but I doubt they will continue to fail. I believe the failures have been failures of tactics rather than failures of strategy. In other words, just because some social networking sites like Friendster and Myspace failed does not mean that all social networking sites (like Facebook) will fail!

Let’s start with decentralization, which involves not only making content available online but also producing content that is interactive and mobile. It’s encouraging to me that we are starting to seriously experiment with content that is different than linear translations of books to online. With the new platforms, we have the ability to rapidly run experiments with new styles, techniques and resources (like social learning) which will lead to a new understanding of education.

At a very simple level, organizations like Khan Academy are making up for students who have bad teachers by starting with good lectures on every topic. And it seems to be working; hundreds of thousands of students are already accessing these videos, making up for what is lacking (likely from their “average teacher” – on the other hand good teachers, the top 20%, like great doctors, will always be in demand, and though each of us can tell stories about an awesome teacher, anecdotal counterexamples to my assertions are not “statistical proof” of the general quality of teachers). Meanwhile organizations like my wife’s CK12.org are making the basic content for high school education free and continuously improving (because they are open source).

This decentralization does not have to benefit only the students, though. Coming next from CK12, early in 2012, for example, will be lesson plans for teachers to access, “bionic software” to help them assess their students (Khan is also adding this to their system). The CK12 system in 2012 will also allow for students to teach themselves from a concept map of all 5000 or so concepts that each student needs to know to qualify to get into MIT or Stanford (the number of concepts depends on granularity and is mostly semantics). CK12 will allow teachers to guide individuals or for students to guide themselves while being aligned with state (or country) curriculum requirements using any of several different learning modalities (text, video explanations, experimentation, labs, playing with Flexmath, simulations, Q&A bank for students or teachers to self-test, social Facebook-like help for students, and teachers and much more). Systems such as these will enable near universal learning (again with some exceptions). There are numerous other examples.

The important thing is not the specific first instantiations of these systems but that they offer a customizable playground for low-cost experimentation.  Today, to try a new experiment in education in the US means starting a new school, training new teachers and taking years and tens of millions of dollars. My hope is that environments like that of CK12.org (and I see many more bubbling up, too numerous to mention here) will decrease the cost of experimentation and hence dramatically increase the amount of experimentation. This will result in accelerated innovation in education well beyond anything that has happened in the past.

The universal availability of inexpensive web access devices like tablets and smartphones and new trends like gamification and social software will surely add to the acceleration. Meanwhile the ability to collect data online, at a scale not possible in traditional systems will help us better understand student behavior. When every click and every hesitation at every stage of every reading, assignment or problem is available to analyze with big data techniques, we will finally understand at an exponentially faster rate what works and what does not.

The other trend I am excited about is gamification. When parents think of games, they usually consider them a waste of time. More importantly, they consider them a waste of talent. The debate about the place of games in learning rages on, but one aspect of gaming is unequivocally clear: it’s sticking around. Therefore, I firmly believe that we should embrace it and harness its best parts to drive the education of our children who grow up with online and mobile games. And I really mean, grow up with it! In a NYT article also from last year, according to research by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, 60 percent of the top-selling iPhone apps on the education store are made for toddlers and preschoolers. Do we expect these children to relinquish and forget their app- and game-centered development after they get to first grade? This is completely unreasonable! And for me it is easy to envision how we can make education more engaging with these approaches, hence enhancing learning at all levels be it kindergarten or medical school. There is sufficient early evidence to suggest these assertions will be proven correct. I am a fan of views like those of Jane McGonigal whose  #1 goal in life (quoting her website) is to see a game designer nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize because of the impact game design can have on humanity.

I am particularly excited about the possibilities when high school education moves from teachers talking uniformly to bored A students and clueless D students, fifty to a class, to individual, gamified, and adaptive-difficulty systems, that leverage our social inclinations as demonstrated by Facebook. Imagine friends helping us understanding subjects while they also understand our context.  Both the students helping and the ones being helped are likely to understand the subject matter better in my view.  And with points and stars and badges and the like both are likely to want to spend more time participating, and will be more motivated when they do participate compared to today’s average classroom. Add reputation systems to that and one has the beginnings of a revolution. The content to train the trainers will be produced by some of the top 20% of teachers, and over time technology will multiply the impact and reach of these top teachers, motivating the rest of the best to participate as well. Other motivated teachers can feel free to jump in while the rest can go enjoy their favorite TV show.

Envisioning Future Education

Can you imagine an educational platform like CK12 version 9.0 in ten years, for example, with the excitement-generating, attention-grabbing, and skill-building potential of a Zynga game times ten? Can you imagine an environment based around a game? The awkward early prototype example of this (that will get much better in its multi-generational evolution) is Quest to Learn. Rather than pushing education on its students, the teachers pull the students into education through a game-like progression exploring 21^st-century skills such as code-based problem solving, social media generation and integration, and design through games. The beginnings of  these future trends of educational institutions and platforms are, therefore, already in place.

One other critical piece in my vision of the future is (re)-discovering the potential of each student as just that – a student. Pioneering social experiments such as Hole in the Wall have shown us once more in explicit terms the incredible ability of children to learn if self-motivated. Children who have never seen – much less operated! – a computer, were able to learn how to browse the web, play games, learn the basics of a foreign language, and read manuals to the software in the computer. All of this within the timeframe of less than three months. Most of these tasks, they accomplished within hours of playing around with the machine!

More importantly, they were then able to teach themselves and others in their community. Children have the natural ability to learn and teach. With socialization, big data analytics and gamification as helpful tools, the future of education lies in providing children with an environment in which they can learn in their own way, at their own pace, and their preferred style/methodology/modality. I suspect they will still be able to meet any state or university curriculum standards. I could even imagine each university defining its own standards, providing the ultimate customization that no typical school today could. We may not need as many doctors as we have today but I suspect there is still a major role for the 80% of teachers who are not in the top 20%. They can provide the “human touch” and be mentors and coaches. Maybe teaching will become interesting enough to attract more teachers!

So is it possible to imagine solving the healthcare and education problems without doctors and teachers in their traditional roles within a decade or two or three? (Timing is always far off and the technologists always over-estimate the near term while underestimating the long-term because of the exponential nature of progress that builds on each previous step). As I’ve mentioned before, if computers can drive cars and master all the knowledge required to win Jeopardy, then surely it won’t be long before they will be able to diagnose disease and teach high school. With more and more data, these teaching and healing algorithms will keep improving and will free up human teachers and doctors to do what they do best.

Technology can allow us to make better use of our natural human resources, be they related to our health or to our education. Empowering patients to understand themselves better through continuous and comprehensive data and enabling students to develop themselves through accessible and attractive environments…this is the future I see. And if I can see it from these emerging trends, the key takeaway, then is, this: if we can see it, we can most certainly grasp it. All we need to do to reach this future is to invent it.

Illustration by koya979

We get mailed a lot of stuff at TechCrunch and sometimes a good item will slip through the cracks. This iRiffPort has been sitting in my pile of gear since it came out in October. I wrote a review. Shot some photos. It was all ready to roll and then somehow it got misplaced and I forgot about it completely. Too bad, because it is a good cable.

This week, I received a postcard from Kevin Robertson, head honcho at PocketLabWorks and also the creator of the iRiffPort. He asked me what I thought of his device (and the software with which it works). The iRiffPort…Oh yeah, I think I remember that I liked that thing. What happened to it? I dug through my closet, found it, plugged it in and lo and behold, I had remembered correctly—it was a solid device.

So I decided to rewrite this post and do a Paneldome video demo, not because the iRiffPort is breaking news—it’s been out for 3 months—but rather because it is good. It’s a good cable and the software it works with, while not dripping with features, is solid and easy to use.

Pros

• Solidly constructed
• Six feet long
• Feels like a real guitar cable
• Built in headphone and line out jacks
• Works well with PocketAmp and PocketGK iOS apps

Cons

• A bit on the expensive side at $99
• I would prefer it in black instead of white

To hear how a bass guitar sounds playing through the iRiffPort and PocketGK for iOS, just checkout the video below.

Editor’s Note: David Binetti is the CEO and co-founder of Votizen, a consumer technology company based in Mountain View, CA focussed on giving voters a greater voice. You can follow Binetti on Twitter @dbinetti.

Photo Credit: Creative Commons Flickr / George Parilla

Editor’s note: Contributor Ashkan Karbasfrooshan is the founder and CEO of WatchMojo.  Follow him @ashkan.

Alright, in my last post I argued that bootstrapping is just as over-rated as raising venture capital. But for those who decide to pursue fundraising, here are some things entrepreneurs should avoid when raising capital.

For all of the talk about how much excess capital there is, it’s actually hard to raise capital because very few projects fit the VC profile—even though many VC-funded projects come across as frivolous, me-too projects.

Life’s unfair.  To quote Mark Twain: “Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”  Personally, I’ve bootstrapped my company; initially because I didn’t have to raise capital and then because I didn’t play the game properly or refused to accept what came with the territory.

Do VCs Really Make a Difference?

In Chamath Palihapitiya’s leaked email to AirBNB’s Brian Chesky, he wrote:

I’m all for getting the best valuation you can, minimizing dilution and maximizing control (…) I don’t believe investors add much to a success story, so minimizing their impact is a great strategy when you are onto something that is working.

For the record, a good VC helps through advice and introductions and the best VCs also serve as amazing therapists and coaches.

Zynga’s Mark Pincus blames entrepreneurs for sometimes giving VCs the power to kill your business or take it away from you.  So if you are going to raise VC, here are some things you need to accept and avoid before signing on the dotted line.

What You Need To Accept (it’s the system)

There are some seemingly unfair things about VC:

• VCs invest in Preferred Shares whereas founders and managers have Common Shares.  This is actually not all that unjust, but many entrepreneurs don’t know the difference, even though preferred shareholders get paid first whenever there is a liquidity event.
• The VCs’ legal fees are paid from the money you are raising.  That one is a bit more unfair, but it avoids protracted negotiations since VCs will offer you standard terms and don’t plan on deviating much.
• As the entrepreneur you have one baby whereas the investor has his eggs in multiple baskets, so they won’t care as much about your company as you do –that’s normal and to be expected.

While a term sheet contains more clauses and the subsequent unanimous shareholder agreement will include drag along and piggy back rights clauses, investors do need to protect themselves so expect things to be stacked in their favor.  The Drag Along allows a majority shareholder to enforce minority shareholders to be dragged along in the event of a sale whether they like it or not so that they don’t waste the big shareholder’s time, basically.  The Piggy Back allows a minority shareholder to sell their shares at the same price offered to majority shareholders.

What You Need to Avoid – Part 1 (it’s them)

Board composition

Be careful how much power you give up early on at the board level because before you know it, you will have less than 50% of the voting shares and when the going gets rough, you will want to avoid boardroom shenanigans that may cost you your job and stake.

Chairmanship

This one is tricky.  If you’re the average technical founder, you may have no business (or interest) running a board.  Even most business founders lack the experience of running a board.  But the board is ultimately responsible to appoint the CEO and the Chairman runs the board, so if you can hold on to the Chairmanship, you should.  It’s common for VCs to appoint one of their partners to the board – as they should.  It’s also common sometimes for that VC to become the Chairman.  But unless someone is a major investor in your company or you managed to land a big industry veteran whom you trust, they shouldn’t be the Chairman, though your company will hopefully get to a point where you may step aside and make room for a new Chairman.

Liquidation preference

The liquidation preference determines how the pie is shared in a liquidity event (M&A, IPO).  In a fair situation: investors get their money back before anyone else does, even though the risk and return tradeoff would require that everyone wins or loses together.  But with leverage a VC will be able to land a 1x liquidation preference; which is standard.  If they ask for anything more than that, tell them to take a hike; you’ll never see a return.

Vesting

It’s one thing for investors to back a founder based on a Powerpoint presentation or business plan – the proverbial idea on a napkin – but it’s another thing for VCs to join an ongoing party.  In either case, VCs tend to require founders to essentially give up their equity and earn it back (hence vesting) over a period of years.  In the latter scenario, this feels like marrying a woman after years of dating her but having to earn the right to share a bed.

I understand why VCs want to feel protected against departing or ineffective founders, but there’s a problem when VCs can both push a founder out and require them to vest their shares and earn them back.

What You Need to Avoid – Part 2 (it’s you)

Ok, now stop blaming others – what are you doing wrong?

Raise Money When You Can, Not When You Have To

One of the more popular adages is not raising money when your back is to the wall and instead raising money when you can, under better terms.  As entrepreneurs, we’re occasionally too optimistic and this clouds our judgment.

But Don’t Raise As Much As You Can

Conventional wisdom suggests that you “raise as much money as you can” but that is good for investors but bad for entrepreneurs, raise a reasonable amount – don’t order with your eyes.

Don’t be too Fearful: These are your Partners

Yes, only the paranoid survive, but not all VCs are out to get you and dilute you of your holdings.  Yes, some VC relationships go awry, especially if the company isn’t growing fast enough and the investment is at risk, but ultimately all partnerships risk going sour.  If you go into a VC relationship thinking that they’re out to get you, you’ll poison things.

Don’t be too Greedy: Strike a fair valuation

Yes, greed is good, but too much greed will kill things.  When an investor is considering making an investment, he is driven by greed; once he is involved with a company, fear becomes a factor.  Unless you offer the investor a potential to earn an abnormal return on his investment, he’ll balk and back the next entrepreneur.

While raising capital is hard, what happens afterwards is much harder – make sure you stick around to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

(If you enjoyed this, then you may enjoy my old rant Top 10 Mistakes VCs Make).

Support in Washington for the SOPA anti-piracy bill in Congress (and its Senate equivalent, PIPA), is waning. After weeks of mounting uproar online, Congressional leaders started backpedaling last week and the Obama Administration weighed in on Saturday in response to online petitions to stop the bills. The White House issued a clear rejection of some of the main principles of SOPA.

While the White House supports the major goal of the bills to stop international online piracy, the growing chorus of complaints about the ham-fisted way the law is going to be implemented may finally be acting a s a counterweight to all the media-company lobbying which is trying to push the bills through. In fact, the White house blog on the subject almost amounts to a pre-veto of the bills as they now stand (and which have yet to be voted on, much less approved, by either house of Congress).

Specifically, the White House states:

While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.

The big problem with SOPA is in the way it is supposed to be enforced, namely by blocking domain-name system (DNS) servers of copyright-infringing websites. But DNS servers are a basic technical component of the Internet (they translate site names like techcrunch.com into numerical IP addresses computers can understand better). Once you start messing with DNS, all sorts of unintended problems arise.

Blocking DNS without a full adversarial hearing in a courtroom raises the potential for censoring speech and other lawful activities. It is also the same method China uses to block “offending” content from China’s Internet. The practice also undermines new security protocols. The White House acknowledges:

We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet

Thank you. But it still is not clear how the objectives of the bills can be achieved without causing damage to the Internet. Congress should come up with a different mechanism for going after foreign pirate sites or else kill the bills entirely.

SOPA supporters may be rethinking their positions, but they have not retreated entirely. Online SOPA opponents shouldn’t be doing any victory dances just yet.

For more on SOPA, watch this interview I did with Union Square’s Brad Burnham:

Editor’s note: Guest contributor Aaron Harris is a co-founder of Tutorspree, the marketplace for tutoring. Follow him @harris, or take a lesson from him on Tutorspree.

In the wide world of startups, we mostly like to think of ourselves as go-getters, ass kickers, “in all the way” sorts. We also like to think of ourselves as iterators, tinkerers, rapid iterators who test unceasingly. But the combination of those two traits can lead to one of the most dangerous cycles in startup – half measure syndrome (HMS).

Interestingly, HMS starts off as something very intelligent – the team does not want to commit to a single strategy until it can prove that that strategy will create the hockey stick. When controlled and focused, that impulse is an excellent driver of evolution, but when not properly grounded in the reality of where you are, it becomes quite dangerous.

Steve Blank (arguably the inventor of the rapid iteration philosophy) did an incredible job illustrating the dangers of HMS in a post he wrote about a former student who, despite having achieved product market fit, refused to commit his full resources on the found solution – preferring to continue iterating in the belief that something bigger was hopefully around the corner. Looking at his bank account and fearing the prospect of it dwindling to zero, he became locked in a potential death spiral – continually pitching halfsies that did not go anywhere, more desperate each time, rather than committing to the seemingly proven if not 100% certain results already seen.

That mental state makes a lot of sense to me. It is, to a large degree, driven by fear of failure – and not just of your idea. As we build companies, we continually create buy-in from stakeholders – be they friends, family, colleagues, investors, or admirers. That faith in our ability to succeed is, at surface, driven by the particular success of a product. To risk the failure of that product, without the potential recourse of “but we haven’t tried everything” is terrifying. At its heart, it would mean that, fundamentally, you, as a founder, fell short of a goal that others thought you were capable of achieving.

HMS allows a founder to continually list things that have not been tried in total, to believe in the salvation lodged around the corner which they’ll get to before they run out of time. Paradoxically, that faith means that you will likely never uncover that secret – if it does exist (and very rarely is there a single silver bullet for any company).

Committing halfway fundamentally means that you will not fully understand any piece of that halfsies strategy. It means that, should the strategy fail, you will not fully understand the reason for it. While, in some instances, that may mean you avoid a number of bad roads, it will also mean that your ability to identify the right road will be materially decreased.

Then how, really, can you identify whether or not you are pursuing verifiable tests, or are simply caught by HMS? Fundamentally, I believe the answer is in how you approach testing, in the type of framework you build around it. Tests are not half measures when they are designed to prove individual pieces of an overall hypotheses (can I get to 500 tutors in NYC?).

Keeping a conscious eye on what the point of a test or iteration is, not just to itself, but to your overall plan and mission (how building a certain number of tutors in a given area influences student activity and community creation, in my case, rather than just the number of tutors) removes the halfsies quality of a test. Rather than continually shifting a business strategy to reflect the results of a single test, aggregating data across a set of them, and altering your strategy accordingly creates consistent momentum for your company where the success or failure are equally useful.

Within that framework, there needs to be set decision points – moments where you predetermine that, based on given sets of data, you will make a decision. This is, in truth, the most important aspect of not falling to HMS. Create whatever forcing function you need around those decision points – whether a giant whiteboard, a commitment to your cofounders or employees, or an agreement with your investors or board. At each stage, map out what your confidence interval is/will be. Know whether or not you need complete data on any single iteration to make a decision, or if the aggregate will suffice.

And when that decision comes, make the hard choices necessary. Get advice on those decisions if you can, but make the decision. Don’t push it off because, now that it is here, it is scary – that’s what HMS does. Take the most objective point of view you can, and go. Because, fundamentally, your most dangerous enemy at a startup is time, not any single decision. Every minute you spend not deciding is a minute you’re not learning and not evolving. It may feel like being intelligently deliberate, but it might also be half measure syndrome.

Photo credit: JK B

CoverItLive, the Demand Media-owned liveblogging platform used by many outlets to cover major events in real time, has just alerted their users of a potential data compromise.

According to the alert e-mail sent to CoverItLive customers, the company noticed that “certain proprietary data files were accessed without authorization” beginning last Saturday. While they say they’re currently unsure as to what exactly was accessed (though they claim that payment details were definitely not), they urge their users to change their passwords be it they use the same (possibly exposed) password anywhere else. While they say that all user passwords are encrypted, they do not say what sort of encryption (and thus what level of security) was used.

The full text of the e-mail follows:

CoveritLive recently discovered that certain proprietary data files were accessed without authorization starting on or about January 7, 2012. We have not yet determined if, or to what extent, CoveritLive account information (i.e., user names, email addresses and/or passwords) was accessed. We do know, however, that no financial account information has been compromised.

Our investigation is ongoing, and, as a precautionary measure, we will implement required password resets for all active CoveritLive accounts. We plan for this process to begin Saturday January 14, 2012 at 12 AM EDT (5 AM GMT). The next time you log in after the process has begun, you will be asked to change your password before you will be allowed into your account. NOTE: we do not anticipate that you will experience a disruption in your event if you are using CoveritLive while the change is invoked.

Your password and all account passwords are encrypted as a standard CoveritLive information security practice, and we have no evidence that an unauthorized individual has actually retrieved, or is using such data. However, out of an abundance of caution we recommend that if you registered for CoveritLive using an email address and password combination that you use for other online accounts, you should immediately create unique passwords or new login credentials for those other sites and accounts.

We take this matter very seriously and will continue to work to ensure that all appropriate measures are taken to protect your personal information from unauthorized access. We also would like to take this moment to remind you of a couple of tips that should always be followed:
Do not open emails from senders you do not know. Be especially cautious of “phishing” emails, where the sender tries to trick the recipient into disclosing confidential or personal information.
Do not share personal or sensitive information via email. Legitimate companies will not attempt to collect personal information outside of a secure website.
We regret any inconvenience that this password change process may cause you. Please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected] if you have any questions.

Editor’s note: This post is authored by guest contributor Jon Bischke. Jon is a founder of RG Labs and is an advisor to several startups. You can follow Jon on Twitter here.

On stage at last month’s Le Web conference Shervin Pishevar, a Managing Director at Menlo Ventures, stated “The World is a Startup.” It’s an interesting perspective, and I think what’s true for the world is also true for countries, states and municipalities. With developments like last month’s announcement that Cornell was selected to build a new tech campus in New York City, it seems to follow that if “a city is a startup,” then the best mayors are the ones who are looking at their cities in much the same way as entrepreneurs look at the companies they have founded.

The ingredients for a successful startup and a successful city are remarkably similar. You need to build stuff that people want. You need to attract quality talent. You have to have enough capital to get your fledgling ideas to a point of sustainability. And you need to create a world-class culture that not only attracts the best possible people, but encourages them to stick around even when things aren’t going so great.

Paul Graham has written extensively on this topic in essays like How to Be Silicon Valley and Why Startups Condense in America. Much of his thinking no doubt played into the decision to base Y Combinator entirely in Silicon Valley. Boston’s loss was the Bay Area’s gain and a striking example of why it’s important for mayors to view their cities through an entrepreneurial lens. Paul viewed Y Combinator through that lens and it led him to believe that Silicon Valley simply had more of the ingredients that would make his companies successful than Boston did.

So let’s take a look at those ingredients. Making products and services people want to buy has to be at the top of the list of any forward-thinking mayor. Extensive research by the Kauffman Foundation shows that virtually all job creation comes from companies less than five years old. So if you’re running a city and want to increase the number of jobs in your city, you should be doing whatever you can to encourage more viable startups. It’s something that Ed Lee, San Francisco’s newly-inaugurated mayor seems to understand, telling TechCrunch back in November “I want them [tech companies] to start here in San Francisco, and I want them to stay and to grow.”

Talent is another important factor and lies at the heart of Bloomberg’s efforts in New York City. Creating a world-class engineering campus in New York can be thought of as the municipal equivalent to Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed or Gowalla. By having more talented people in the city, New York is better able to compete with other cities in the same way that Facebook better competes with rivals by having more talented engineers under its roof. (What’s more, Facebook recently announced that it will open an NYC engineering office in 2012.)

Of course, getting top engineers and designers to actually work for a city might prove challenging (with a notable exception to be seen in the success of the Code for America program), but mayors can have a significant impact on helping a city to attract the best and brightest.

I recently spoke with Daniel Huttenlocher, the dean of the Faculty of Computing and Information Science (CIS) at Cornell University, who played an integral role in Cornell’s bid for the Roosevelt Island campus (read more about this effort in Eric Eldon’s interview with Huttenlocher).

His observation that Bloomberg’s history as both a technologist and an entrepreneur helped him and others in his office to better understand the need for New York to increasingly be a hub for the best technologists on the planet. Bloomberg is to New York City as John Calipari is to Kentucky basketball, intuitively adhering to Vinod Khosla’s notion that CEOs should be spending a very high percentage of their time recruiting.

Capital is another necessity for a city’s success. In some cases this might mean mayors actively courting angel investors and venture capitalists. The success of the Silicon Valley ecosystem is due, in no small part, to the availability of early-stage capital and its density of investors. Other metro areas have historically struggled to replicate this investment ecosystem but more attempts are underway.

Sergio Fernández de Córdova, the founder of Fuel Outdoor and chairman of New York Entrepreneur Week, pointed me to an effort underway in the state of Connecticut to provide more funding to early-stage companies in the state. In addition, New York City announced $150 million in funding solely devoted to startups in the city as part of the tech campus announcement. While these efforts might pale in comparison to the latest billion-dollar fund raised by a Silicon Valley venture firm, they are a step in the right direction for states and municipalities trying to spur innovation.

A final ingredient is culture which can loosely be translated to livability when we think about cities. This was impressed upon me recently during a meeting with Eric Garcetti, the former Los Angeles City Council President and leading contender to become the city’s next mayor. Garcetti recognizes the challenges that LA has when competing against the Bay Area to be the home base for the next great technology company. Indeed, Los Angeles has lost a number of its most promising companies to the north such as Lookout and Yammer (born out of Los Angeles-based Geni).

Still, Los Angeles is one of the most desirable cities in the country to live in and the recent Silicon Beach resurgence is due in part to this. Listening to Garcetti talk about LA’s strong points reminds you of Larry and Sergei discussing why Google’s culture made it possible for them to attract so many outstanding engineers or Tony Hsieh sharing why Zappos’ quirky, fun work environment helped them retain top performers. By emphasizing LA’s strengths, Garcetti hopes to retain talented USC, UCLA and Cal Tech grads who might not be so keen on spending “Junuary” in San Francisco.

As we roll into an election year, many cities are in a state of crisis. Budgets are a mess and job growth has been minimal for a good swath of the country. Cities in need don’t just need strong leadership, they require transformational leadership. It’s no easy feat but it’s likely that the more that mayors view their cities through an entrepreneurial lens, the better they will be able to adapt to a rapidly-changing world.

Bloomberg seems to be leading this charge with his efforts in New York City and mayor’s offices around the country are taking notice. Others like Ed Lee, Garcetti and Newark mayor Cory Booker appear to be taking a similar tone in their respective cities. Perhaps these are the first examples in what will become a long line of mayor-entrepreneurs.

Excerpt image by Greg Knapp via Creative Commons

A few weeks ago, I wrote: A couple weeks ago, MG wrote: “Android development itself remains a huge pain in the ass. I hear this again, and again, and again.” Which took me a bit aback. I’ve developed numerous Android and iOS apps (though not games, so I can’t speak to the differences there) over the last few years, and neither set of developer tools seems to me to be hugely superior: both have their strengths and their really irritating failings.

Oh, the irony.

Up until recently all the Android apps I’d worked on had had fairly vanilla graphics requirements. But over the last few weeks, for my karmic sins, I’ve been in crunch mode developing an Android app with moderately elaborate graphics — and. Well.

I stand by what I said, to a point: the developer tools for the two platforms are comparable. But Android’s fragmentation has become a giant millstone for Android app development, leaving it worryingly behind its iOS equivalent. It’s not the panoply of screen sizes and formats; the Android layout engine is actually quite good at minimizing that annoyance. It’s not the frequent instances of completely different visual behavior on two phones running exactly the same version of Android; again, annoying, but relatively minor. Device fragmentation is just an irritation.

OS fragmentation, though, is an utter disaster. Ice Cream Sandwich is by all accounts very nice; but what good does that do app developers, when according to Google’s own stats, 30% of all Android devices are still running an OS that is 20 months old? I sure would have liked to stop caring about Android 2.2 bugs fixed in 2.3. It would have been awfully nice to be able to use the animation libraries from Android 3.0, described in this almost-a-year-old blog post, to say nothing of Ice Cream Sandwich’s features; but at this rate, Android developers aiming for a mass audience will have to wait another year, if not longer, before they can actually build apps that take advantage of all the shiny new features.

More than two-thirds of iOS users had upgraded to iOS 5 a mere three months after its release. Anyone out there think that Ice Cream Sandwich will crack the 20% mark on Google’s platform pie chart by March? How about 10%? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

OS fragmentation is the single greatest problem Android faces, and it’s only going to get worse. Android’s massive success over the last year mean that there are now tens if not hundreds of millions of users whose handset manufacturers and carriers may or may not allow them to upgrade their OS someday; and the larger that number grows, the more loath app developers will become to turn their back on them. That unwillingness to use new features means Android apps will fall further and further behind their iOS equivalents, unless Google manages – via carrot, stick, or both – to coerce Android carriers and manufacturers to prioritize OS upgrades.

Thus far Google’s attempts to do so have been an ignominious failure. Well, “fail fast” has always been their motto, but I sure hope they get it right the next time. Me, every other Android app developer … and every other Android user. The latter group isn’t missing out on anything huge, yet; iOS isn’t that far ahead. But if Google can’t solve the problem, and OS fragmentation remains an ever-growing millstone on Android’s back, then iOS — and maybe even Windows Phone — will nimbly scamper ever further forward, while Android can only limp and trudge.

Image credit: Laura Billings, Flickr.

Private car service Uber entered Washington, DC a month ago and has loaded up lots of local support. But now it has hit a regulatory traffic jam. Taxi Commissioner Ron Linton personally led a sting yesterday to bust one of its drivers for trying to transport him within the district, following up on his declaration earlier this week that Uber is “illegal.”

Whether or not Uber is actually breaking any rules is still unclear. He hasn’t told the company anything directly, and he hasn’t responded to its requests for more information. He’s just talking to the media about the issue. That includes inviting The Washington Post and local blog DCist to personally witness his sting outside the Mayflower Hotel.

The sting involved Linton personally using Uber’s mobile application to order a sedan (from his DC office, apparently). It arrived as scheduled, and took him to the Mayflower Hotel. Then, Linton’s Taxi Commissioner officers surrounded the car, handed the driver a variety of fines, and impounded the driver’s vehicle. “We did it,” Linton told a local ABC station later that day, “to send a message to drivers who are signing up with Uber that we are going to enforce our laws.”

Before I get into what the laws are or maybe aren’t, here’s sinister-looking meta angle to keep in mind, that I discovered when I wrote about the story earlier this week. Linton is an appointee of Mayor Vincent Gray, who gained office in part through the support of the taxi lobby — which, speaking of the law, broke it to give him donations. Seems like there could be a conflict of interest here.

Well, at least Uber has to follow the law. So what is it?

Linton, who doesn’t normally lead stings in person, told a local NBC outlet yesterday that “the primary issue is that they are trying to operate as a limousine company, using taxi rules, and it can’t be done.” Limos in DC decide on rates with passengers before the start of the trip, whereas the taxis charge based on distance (and a few other fees), based on Commission-set rates — at least according to him. So Uber would need to install meters like taxis in order to operate within district limits, or else change from its GPS-derived mileage charge to one-off negotiations with passengers?

Hold on, chapter 12.99 of the DC taxi regulations includes a section that defines sedans differently than regular limos:

Sedan – a for-hire vehicle designed to carry fewer than six (6) passengers, excluding the driver, which charges for service on the basis of time and mileage (effective May 1, 2008).

This line specifically says that sedans are able to charge taxi-style for their services, and indeed many of the non-Uber ones in operation already do this. How is Uber breaking the law in the way that Linton is describing above? Oh, and also, contrary to what you might think from Linton’s description, Uber doesn’t actually employee the drivers, it partners with existing, licensed drivers and companies.

The other part of Linton’s beef could be more of an issue for Uber. Some of its drivers are based in neighboring communities in Maryland and Virginia. While they can pick up passengers in the district, according to the existing regulations, they have to drop them off back in the state they came from. That was part of Linton’s sting: he ordered a Virginia-based driver to pick him up and drop him off within DC.

Given all these regulations, what had Uber done to try to make sure it was following them before it entered the market? It approached the taxi commission and spoke with lower level representatives, Uber DC head Rachel Holt told me earlier this week, and had launched believing that it was in the clear.

But the company is speaking up more and more strongly as Linton has increased his attacks. “It’s out of turn for a city official to call an entity out for violating the law,” chief executive Travis Kalanick told me yesterday, “without some sort of notice or specification of which law that entity is breaking.”

The bigger picture here is that it is the Taxi Commission’s stated mission to provide a structure for the best transportation options possible for anyone in DC. They don’t purely exist to enforce What The Law Says Today. In fact, looking at its mission statement, you’d think that Linton would be going out of his way to help Uber operate (bolding mine):

The mission of the DC Taxicab Commission is to provide the citizens of the District of Columbia and its visitors a safe, comfortable, efficient and affordable taxicab experience in well-equipped vehicles operated by highly qualified individuals who have knowledge of the District’s streets, boundaries, history and tourist destinations, as well as the basic tenets of high quality customer service. At the same time, the Commission strives to provide taxicab owners and operators with a system of rules and regulations that are fair and transparent and that allow for technological advancements to be introduced to the industry and for properly qualified individuals to participate in the industry.

The most grating part about the situation is that Linton and his commission, beyond failing to explain which rules are being broken by Uber, has the mission of making companies like it successful in DC through creating and changing existing regulations.

Like I mentioned before, the whole thing looks exactly like cronyism. DC, which Congress has perenially denied from having any federal representation, has been left to figure things out on its own. The result has been a particularly unique pile-up of rules, and a particularly nice place for inside interests to develop their own little self-serving setups free of much oversight (as former mayor Adrian Fenty and his team recently learned the hard way when they tried to overhaul various parts of the city government).

Linton’s approach, which may have been business as usual to him considering his long experience on the local scene, is also looking more ironic by the day when you consider that Mayor Gray has been trying to tout himself as a pro-technology leader who supports the local startup scene.

The situation is at least headed towards some more clarity. Linton said last night that he’s turning the matter over to the city attorney general.

[Top photo of the sting via DCist. Linton is on the far right.]

Editor’s note: The following is a guest post by Jon Paris, CEO and co-founder of Astrid To-Do. Astrid participated in AngelPad and immediately raised a successful seed round from Google Ventures and other investors. His opinions are his own.

Incubators are playing an increasingly vital role in acquiring meaningful investment for first-time entrepreneurs. TechCrunch reported that elite accelerators like Y Combinator receive on average one application every minute, and AngelPad reminds its participants that it is many times more selective than the Harvard Business School.

Incubators ask for a 2 to 10 percent stake in your company, a sum that could alternatively be used to attract a junior co-founder or provide meaningful ownership to the first few engineers you enlist. In return, incubators offer intensive coaching, networking with other founders, and warm introductions to likely investors. Incubators give first-time entrepreneurs and international teams alike a crucial link to Silicon Valley.

In addition to the giving up meaningful equity there are other downsides to consider before participating in an incubator. Most have a schedule that’s built on a demo near the end of the program. While many companies view that external structure as helpful, others can find that working with such a timeline damages their business.

The long lead up to D-Day could mean a delay in fundraising or product lunch, which in turn can translate into missed opportunities. There are other potential pitfalls, from committing too quickly and prematurely to an idea, to trying to scale before properly understanding a market and the company’s place in it. And with any robust community, there’s the danger of succumbing to groupthink. Founders need to remember they understand their market better than anyone.

For most first-time founders, these downsides are far outweighed by the benefits. Below are some lessons I regularly share with prospective entrepreneurs interested in applying to incubators.

1. Know their interest and expertise

When planning to apply to such incubators as 500 Startups, Y Combinator, TechStars or AngelPad, watch any and every online video you can find of incubator leaders outlining what they are looking for and what they can offer your company. Numerous incubator leaders, including Paul Graham, Thomas Korte and Dave McClure, have explicitly mapped out what they can bring to the table and what kind of companies they are targeting.

Know what’s important to the investors: Dave McClure at 500 Startups will want you to have a deep understanding of the micro-economics; AngelPad loves great B2B opportunities; and Y Combinator appreciates founders who have already demonstrated their smarts with submissions on Hacker News. They all will make exceptions, but you should pitch in a way that will resonate with the specific incubator.

2. Understand their challenge

All incubators play an arbitrage game, curating great early-stage startups for the community of larger investors. They need to believe they can readily convince other investors to put in an even larger sum at the end of the program. It is your job to convince them you have the raw material, which usually means great engineers (preferably branded by great universities or companies), beautiful design, strong team dynamics, and an ability to get a meaningful user base. If you have these ingredients, the incubator can help you polish your pitch and get in front of investors.

3. Intros matter

Getting a friendly introduction from someone the incubator knows can prevent your startup from getting buried in the application avalanche. The best intros come from people they trust who have insight into what it takes to start an effective company. Founders, fellow investors or former colleagues (hint: search LinkedIn for shared connections) can help get that needed extra attention. Intros from their friends and family members outside the startup ecosystem will be much less helpful. I got a key intro to AngelPad from the MoPub founders and to Y Combinator through Posterous co-founder Garry Tan.

4. They will be watching closely

Many incubators now require a video submission with your application and will follow up with an in-person or video chat with you and your co-founder(s). While these might cause the incubator to miss great people due to some unconscious bias, they also give a glimpse of confidence, charisma and, perhaps most importantly, your relationship with your colleagues.

The least you can do is ensure that everyone pays attention to whoever is speaking. If the engineer rolls his eyes, yawns or corrects the CEO when he speaks, the incubator might regard your startup as radioactive. If you get a live interview, make sure everyone has defined roles, with the CEO answering all market and business questions, the CTO answering all technical questions, etc. And practice the interview dozens of times. Enlist smart friends to barrage you with questions in rapid succession until you can confidently provide short and clear answers.

5. You’ll get a new Alma Mater

Incubator provides fantastic coaching and rich networking opportunities with other companies and investors during their programs. This is especially helpful for international teams that can boast great products and meaningful traction, but lack connections to the Silicon Valley investor community. But the time in the incubator is just the beginning. Months out, the mentors continue to provide trusted counsel and meaningful introductions.

Our incubator class provided us with thousands of dollars in free services and have consistently been among the first to try our new products, provide honest feedback and give them a five-star rating in the App Store. The camaraderie runs deep, fostered by shared experience and an understanding that each companies’ success will elevate everyone’s status.

Many first-time entrepreneurs succeed without participating in an incubator, in the same way many professionals can have successful careers without going to college. But this will increasingly be the exception. Young companies passing on the incubators can squander time, even years, when they could be building their networks, getting greater market feedback and scale their business with investor dollars.

In the past year, I have seen four great teams with early traction and Stanford founders stagnate while trying to do things on their own. Each had a few connections with the investor community, but they didn’t compare to what the best incubators deliver. Don’t make their mistake — if you want to build a company with world-wide impact, joining an incubator may be your most important early step toward achieving success.

This is a guest post by Ryan Spoon (@ryanspoon), a principal at Polaris Ventures. Read more about Ryan on his blog at ryanspoon.com.

Last week I began an effort to answer the questions I get asked most frequently by entrepreneurs, starting with how to create an early-stage pitch deck. Today, I address a topic as relevant for early stage startups (vying for consumer attention) as it is for more mature companies (focused on customer relationships):

How to grow your brand on Twitter?

Twitter is the ultimate marketing platform. But the scale of Twitter activity is so extraordinary (250 million tweets per day) that it is quite easy to get lost in the noise… particularly if you are an early-stage startup and/or an emerging brand.

Separating yourself from the masses really begins with the recognition that Twitter is first and foremost a platform for conversation. If you believe that, you avoid the mistake most brands make: treating Twitter as a mechanism to push content rather than create engagement.

And once your goal is to foster conversation and engagement, you can follow these five guidelines:

1. Listen.

2. Be authentic.

3. Be compelling.

4. Find the influencers.

5. Extend off Twitter and onto your site.

In the below presentation, I break down these core themes and provides examples of people and companies successfully using Twitter to drive engagement and grow their brands.

Fab.com, the incredibly fast-growing marketplace for all things design, has made its first acquisition after raising over $50 million in venture capital. The company this morning announced that it has bought NYC-based FashionStake, a community-curated marketplace for independent designers.

The deal will enable the hundreds of indie designers who’ve sold their collection on FashionStake to date a brand new e-commerce platform to sell, through Fab.com.

To give you an idea of how big Fab.com is these days, founder Jason Goldberg blogs:

We’re on a mission here at Fab to be the world’s most valuable design resource.

In June 2011 we opened our doors and took big strides towards achieving that goal. 7 months later 1.65 million people have now joined Fab. 350,000 new design enthusiasts have signed up in the last 30 days alone. They’ve purchased 750,000 products from us so far. And, it’s just the start.

Financial terms of the FashionStake acquisition were not disclosed. After some digging, I found out that the company raised an undisclosed amount of financing from Battery Ventures and angel investors from the fashion industry in the Summer of 2010.

FashionStake co-founders Vivian Weng and Daniel Gulati will be joining Fab.

If you’re interested in this space, be sure to read Weng’s recent contribution to The Huffington Post: Fashion and Tech and Startups, Oh My!