Roundups, IT, deals
Evernote Snags Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins Goes Social, Zuckerberg Speaks Out, & More Bay-Area BizTech News
Wade Roush 10/25/10
Companies building cloud-based services got lots of attention last week, as did those building social applications. And companies building cloud-based social applications? Watch out!
—Evernote, the Mountain View, CA-based online notekeeping service with nearly 5 million users, collected another $20 million in venture backing in a Series C round led by new investor Sequoia Capital. I interviewed CEO Phil Libin about the investment.
—I took a close look at Zoho, the Pleasanton, CA-based company offering small and medium-sized businesses free and low-cost alternatives to desktop productivity software such as Microsoft Office and even newer cloud-based services like Salesforce.com.
—While the Apple iPad may lack a camera, there’s no shortage of cool photo apps for the device, and I reviewed 10 of them in my regular Friday column.
—Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers announced the formation of the sFund, a $250 million fund that will be used to invest in startups building social Web applications. Facebook, Amazon, and Zynga each put some money into the kitty.
—I profiled AudioPress, a San Francisco startup that recently launched a versatile audio management app for the iPhone. The app lets users organize podcasts, streaming radio, and spoken-word articles into personalized playlists.
—San Francisco-based Siluria Technologies, which is developing a way to make natural gas into ethylene as a precursor for many types of plastics, raised $13.3 million in a Series A venture round, as Luke reported. Alloy Ventures, Arch Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Altitude Life Sciences Ventures, Lux Capital, and Presidio Ventures participated.
—I Went to Startup School, and All I Got Was This Lousy Video. Just kidding—I had a great time attending Y Combinator’s Startup School event at Stanford on October 16, and as a bonus I was able to make of video recording of a 30-minute interview between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Y Combinator partner Jessica Livingston. Zuckerberg talked about what the makers of The Social Network got right, and what they weren’t so careful about.
—As a follow-up to my column two weeks ago comparing two leading run-tracking apps, Abvio’s Runmeter and FitnessKeeper’s RunKeeper, I staged a virtual “smackdown” between Abvio co-founder Steve Kusmer and FitnessKeeper founder Jason Jacobs.
—San Francisco’s Crosslink Capital participated in a $12.5 million Series B financing round for SiOnyx, a Beverly, MA-based company working on a method for making “black silicon,” a highly photosensitive form of silicon that could eventually be used in image sensors for camera phones, as Greg reported.
—In other tech deals news, Sharethrough raised $5 million, Causes raised $9 million, Revolution Analytics raised $8.6 million, and Kontiki raised $10.7 million.
—In Xconomy news, we announced our first-ever San Francisco event: a public forum with Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital. Moritz is widely respected as one of the leading venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, and I’ll be interviewing him on stage at San Francisco’s Kicklabs on Tuesday November 30. You can register for the event now.
Wade Roush is Xconomy's chief correspondent and editor of Xconomy San Francisco. You can e-mail him at wroush@xconomy.com, call him at 415-796-3024, or follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/wroush. You can subscribe to his Google Group and you can follow all Xconomy San Francisco stories at twitter.com/xconomysf.
Few people are more highly regarded in the blogging-for-business world than Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net. He has essentially set the blueprint for how to turn a blog into a business, and is one of the go-to sources for tips on how to do as much. He had a chat with WebProNews at BlogWorld last week, after speaking in one of the more popular keynotes at the event.
Rowse discussed with us how people can get started blogging, and eventually turn their blogs into moneymakers. "You need a blog to start with, then really my first priority would be getting some useful content on there - some content that's actually going to solve some problems for people," he said. "So if you're blog's a how-to type blog, you want to start thinking 'what's a beginner in this topic need to know?' and start writing that type of content that you can be referring back to later, so that when you start promoting it, you've got content there that they'll find, that is engaging for them. So that is probably the first step, and then, it's about putting yourself out there, and trying to find some readers."
Have you been able to turn your blog into a business? Let us know.
If the how-to path is the one you're interested in traveling, I'd reccommend reading this article, discussing ways to create effective how-to articles, with tips provided by John Hewitt, who has written technical manuals for companies like IBM, Intuit, and Motorola.
Either way, "First you want to know who you want to attract, because it's kind of easy to get noticed on the Internet, but if you do it in the wrong way, you could actually 1. take yourself further away from your goals, but 2. find the wrong readers," noted Rowse. "You could get..readers from a place like Digg or StumbleUpon...some of these social bookmarking sites, but they may not actually be the type of person that you want to journey with for the whole long term. So define who you want to reach, and ask the question, 'where can I find them online?'"
"Answering that question, for me, on my photography site led me to Flickr. Flickr's a place where people have cameras, and not everyone takes great photos, so it was a place for me to develop a presence. For other blogs, it may lead you to Twitter or Facebook or another blog or a forum that is related to your particular niche."
Forums can actually be great for your brand (in some cases, maybe even more so than Facebook or Twitter). Forums are a good source of relevant discussion to your niche, provided you engage in the right places. They can help you establish yourself as an expert (not unlike Q&A sites), and they can be particularly good for building a search presence. Forum threads do really well in Google for certain queries, particularly when someone is looking for help with something.
"I think a lot of bloggers treat their blog as a hobby, and I mean, that certainly is the way I started out," Rowse told us. "I didn't realize you could make money from blogging when I started. But my wife kind of gave me an ultimatum after a while. I'd began to dream about my blog becoming a business, and certainly was moving in that direction...one day, she kind of said, 'you need to do it'. Then she gave me six months to get it done."
"Once I had that ultimatum, and that deadline in mind, it just switched in my mind and started making me thinking of it as a business now, and really that was the turning point for me, because I began to think more strategically about who was reading my blog, what they needed, and products that I could launch to them," he continued. "But also, I got on the phone for the fist time and started ringing advertisers to create a direct relationship with them."
Rowse recently discussed using temporary blogs as stepping stones for your broader goals:
RDR standalone DLC disc dated <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net
Read our news of RDR standalone DLC disc dated. ... Red Dead Redemption Review . Latest Videos. RDR: Undead Nightmare trailer 1 October, 2010. RDR: Legends & Killers DLC 6 August, 2010. Latest News ...
Nielsen: 362000 Monthly Users For <b>News</b> Corp.'s Times Paywall <b>...</b>
News International's silence on subscriber numbers for Times and Sunday Times online content continues, three and a half months after the paywall went up. But today audience research company Nielsen has taken a stab at estimating the ...
Nevada Voters Complain Of Problems At Polls - Las Vegas <b>News</b> Story <b>...</b>
LAS VEGAS -- Some voters in Boulder City complained on Monday that their ballot had been cast before they went to the polls, raising questions about Clark County's electronic voting machines. Tuesday, October 26, 2010.
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bench craft company complaints
RDR standalone DLC disc dated <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net
Read our news of RDR standalone DLC disc dated. ... Red Dead Redemption Review . Latest Videos. RDR: Undead Nightmare trailer 1 October, 2010. RDR: Legends & Killers DLC 6 August, 2010. Latest News ...
Nielsen: 362000 Monthly Users For <b>News</b> Corp.'s Times Paywall <b>...</b>
News International's silence on subscriber numbers for Times and Sunday Times online content continues, three and a half months after the paywall went up. But today audience research company Nielsen has taken a stab at estimating the ...
Nevada Voters Complain Of Problems At Polls - Las Vegas <b>News</b> Story <b>...</b>
LAS VEGAS -- Some voters in Boulder City complained on Monday that their ballot had been cast before they went to the polls, raising questions about Clark County's electronic voting machines. Tuesday, October 26, 2010.
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Roundups, IT, deals
Evernote Snags Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins Goes Social, Zuckerberg Speaks Out, & More Bay-Area BizTech News
Wade Roush 10/25/10
Companies building cloud-based services got lots of attention last week, as did those building social applications. And companies building cloud-based social applications? Watch out!
—Evernote, the Mountain View, CA-based online notekeeping service with nearly 5 million users, collected another $20 million in venture backing in a Series C round led by new investor Sequoia Capital. I interviewed CEO Phil Libin about the investment.
—I took a close look at Zoho, the Pleasanton, CA-based company offering small and medium-sized businesses free and low-cost alternatives to desktop productivity software such as Microsoft Office and even newer cloud-based services like Salesforce.com.
—While the Apple iPad may lack a camera, there’s no shortage of cool photo apps for the device, and I reviewed 10 of them in my regular Friday column.
—Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers announced the formation of the sFund, a $250 million fund that will be used to invest in startups building social Web applications. Facebook, Amazon, and Zynga each put some money into the kitty.
—I profiled AudioPress, a San Francisco startup that recently launched a versatile audio management app for the iPhone. The app lets users organize podcasts, streaming radio, and spoken-word articles into personalized playlists.
—San Francisco-based Siluria Technologies, which is developing a way to make natural gas into ethylene as a precursor for many types of plastics, raised $13.3 million in a Series A venture round, as Luke reported. Alloy Ventures, Arch Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Altitude Life Sciences Ventures, Lux Capital, and Presidio Ventures participated.
—I Went to Startup School, and All I Got Was This Lousy Video. Just kidding—I had a great time attending Y Combinator’s Startup School event at Stanford on October 16, and as a bonus I was able to make of video recording of a 30-minute interview between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Y Combinator partner Jessica Livingston. Zuckerberg talked about what the makers of The Social Network got right, and what they weren’t so careful about.
—As a follow-up to my column two weeks ago comparing two leading run-tracking apps, Abvio’s Runmeter and FitnessKeeper’s RunKeeper, I staged a virtual “smackdown” between Abvio co-founder Steve Kusmer and FitnessKeeper founder Jason Jacobs.
—San Francisco’s Crosslink Capital participated in a $12.5 million Series B financing round for SiOnyx, a Beverly, MA-based company working on a method for making “black silicon,” a highly photosensitive form of silicon that could eventually be used in image sensors for camera phones, as Greg reported.
—In other tech deals news, Sharethrough raised $5 million, Causes raised $9 million, Revolution Analytics raised $8.6 million, and Kontiki raised $10.7 million.
—In Xconomy news, we announced our first-ever San Francisco event: a public forum with Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital. Moritz is widely respected as one of the leading venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, and I’ll be interviewing him on stage at San Francisco’s Kicklabs on Tuesday November 30. You can register for the event now.
Wade Roush is Xconomy's chief correspondent and editor of Xconomy San Francisco. You can e-mail him at wroush@xconomy.com, call him at 415-796-3024, or follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/wroush. You can subscribe to his Google Group and you can follow all Xconomy San Francisco stories at twitter.com/xconomysf.
Few people are more highly regarded in the blogging-for-business world than Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net. He has essentially set the blueprint for how to turn a blog into a business, and is one of the go-to sources for tips on how to do as much. He had a chat with WebProNews at BlogWorld last week, after speaking in one of the more popular keynotes at the event.
Rowse discussed with us how people can get started blogging, and eventually turn their blogs into moneymakers. "You need a blog to start with, then really my first priority would be getting some useful content on there - some content that's actually going to solve some problems for people," he said. "So if you're blog's a how-to type blog, you want to start thinking 'what's a beginner in this topic need to know?' and start writing that type of content that you can be referring back to later, so that when you start promoting it, you've got content there that they'll find, that is engaging for them. So that is probably the first step, and then, it's about putting yourself out there, and trying to find some readers."
Have you been able to turn your blog into a business? Let us know.
If the how-to path is the one you're interested in traveling, I'd reccommend reading this article, discussing ways to create effective how-to articles, with tips provided by John Hewitt, who has written technical manuals for companies like IBM, Intuit, and Motorola.
Either way, "First you want to know who you want to attract, because it's kind of easy to get noticed on the Internet, but if you do it in the wrong way, you could actually 1. take yourself further away from your goals, but 2. find the wrong readers," noted Rowse. "You could get..readers from a place like Digg or StumbleUpon...some of these social bookmarking sites, but they may not actually be the type of person that you want to journey with for the whole long term. So define who you want to reach, and ask the question, 'where can I find them online?'"
"Answering that question, for me, on my photography site led me to Flickr. Flickr's a place where people have cameras, and not everyone takes great photos, so it was a place for me to develop a presence. For other blogs, it may lead you to Twitter or Facebook or another blog or a forum that is related to your particular niche."
Forums can actually be great for your brand (in some cases, maybe even more so than Facebook or Twitter). Forums are a good source of relevant discussion to your niche, provided you engage in the right places. They can help you establish yourself as an expert (not unlike Q&A sites), and they can be particularly good for building a search presence. Forum threads do really well in Google for certain queries, particularly when someone is looking for help with something.
"I think a lot of bloggers treat their blog as a hobby, and I mean, that certainly is the way I started out," Rowse told us. "I didn't realize you could make money from blogging when I started. But my wife kind of gave me an ultimatum after a while. I'd began to dream about my blog becoming a business, and certainly was moving in that direction...one day, she kind of said, 'you need to do it'. Then she gave me six months to get it done."
"Once I had that ultimatum, and that deadline in mind, it just switched in my mind and started making me thinking of it as a business now, and really that was the turning point for me, because I began to think more strategically about who was reading my blog, what they needed, and products that I could launch to them," he continued. "But also, I got on the phone for the fist time and started ringing advertisers to create a direct relationship with them."
Rowse recently discussed using temporary blogs as stepping stones for your broader goals:
bench craft company complaints
RDR standalone DLC disc dated <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net
Read our news of RDR standalone DLC disc dated. ... Red Dead Redemption Review . Latest Videos. RDR: Undead Nightmare trailer 1 October, 2010. RDR: Legends & Killers DLC 6 August, 2010. Latest News ...
Nielsen: 362000 Monthly Users For <b>News</b> Corp.'s Times Paywall <b>...</b>
News International's silence on subscriber numbers for Times and Sunday Times online content continues, three and a half months after the paywall went up. But today audience research company Nielsen has taken a stab at estimating the ...
Nevada Voters Complain Of Problems At Polls - Las Vegas <b>News</b> Story <b>...</b>
LAS VEGAS -- Some voters in Boulder City complained on Monday that their ballot had been cast before they went to the polls, raising questions about Clark County's electronic voting machines. Tuesday, October 26, 2010.
bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints
RDR standalone DLC disc dated <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net
Read our news of RDR standalone DLC disc dated. ... Red Dead Redemption Review . Latest Videos. RDR: Undead Nightmare trailer 1 October, 2010. RDR: Legends & Killers DLC 6 August, 2010. Latest News ...
Nielsen: 362000 Monthly Users For <b>News</b> Corp.'s Times Paywall <b>...</b>
News International's silence on subscriber numbers for Times and Sunday Times online content continues, three and a half months after the paywall went up. But today audience research company Nielsen has taken a stab at estimating the ...
Nevada Voters Complain Of Problems At Polls - Las Vegas <b>News</b> Story <b>...</b>
LAS VEGAS -- Some voters in Boulder City complained on Monday that their ballot had been cast before they went to the polls, raising questions about Clark County's electronic voting machines. Tuesday, October 26, 2010.
bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints
RDR standalone DLC disc dated <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net
Read our news of RDR standalone DLC disc dated. ... Red Dead Redemption Review . Latest Videos. RDR: Undead Nightmare trailer 1 October, 2010. RDR: Legends & Killers DLC 6 August, 2010. Latest News ...
Nielsen: 362000 Monthly Users For <b>News</b> Corp.'s Times Paywall <b>...</b>
News International's silence on subscriber numbers for Times and Sunday Times online content continues, three and a half months after the paywall went up. But today audience research company Nielsen has taken a stab at estimating the ...
Nevada Voters Complain Of Problems At Polls - Las Vegas <b>News</b> Story <b>...</b>
LAS VEGAS -- Some voters in Boulder City complained on Monday that their ballot had been cast before they went to the polls, raising questions about Clark County's electronic voting machines. Tuesday, October 26, 2010.
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