launching

"It takes the same amount of time to run a small company as a big one."

--Shervin Pishevar, Managing Director, Menlo Ventures

This was just a little tip that Shervin let slip during a judging panel he was on at the Launch conference (stories). Later, Sky Dayton echoed the sentiment, talking about one of his early ventures running coffee shops in Santa Monica.

Sky watched Starbucks take off while he was running mom-and-pop cafes. He recognized that Starbucks chief Howard Schultz was probably not working much harder than he was, yet Starbucks was opening stores every day. … Read more

I have already weighed in on my top picks from the Launch conference (Day 1, Day 2), but I was also part of the conference's Grand Jury panel that picked the winners from the show in categories more standard than mine. The full rundown follows.

Also at this conference, more than a million dollars of prize money was committed to investing in these startups, with, again, Space Monkey being the big winner. My favorite Demo Pit company, Scoot Networks, also made off with $50,000, and That's Suspicious Behavior nabbed a much-needed seed round.

Launch is a great … Read more

"You make it mean something."

--Don Dodge, Developer advocate, Google

Don and I were at the Launch startup conference talking about goofy company names. It turns out he's sort of in favor of them. New companies spend way too much on securing what they think are important, common-word short URLs. And then they try to back into the justification. Color, for example. Or Path. I can tell a company has paid too much for a domain name when I ask the CEO what it cost, and they turn red and quietly answer, "We'd prefer … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Another day, another two dozen or so new companies and products at the Launch conference. And again, five more winners and some bonuses. Today my winners (not the judges' winners; those I'll report on later) are mostly companies solving boring, dull, old-fashioned, real-world business problems. In other words, things that will make actual money.

There is some exciting technology in here, though:

1. License123 From the guys at Docstoc comes a new service that knows which licenses you need to open your business, whatever it is, no matter where you are. It saves the business owner the hassle … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Four companies at the Launch conference here today were pitching new social interaction models. It's a risky thing to do, trying to drive users to interact with each other in heavily scripted ways, but these companies are trying, mostly to good effect.

I'll start with 15Five, the strongest in this bunch. This service is a way for company employees to, once a week, quickly say what's working at their jobs, what isn't, and how they are feeling. These quick reports roll up to their manager, who can then reply to feedback items, and select some … Read more

I'm an official Grand Jury judge at the Launch startup conference that's in town right now. Tomorrow I'm supposed to render my judgment on the presenting companies to help determine which ones get pieces of the $1 million in investment prizes that have been contributed to this event. Nothing says I can't talk up the products I like ahead of time, though. Here are five. And some bonus picks.

1. Space Monkey This was the favorite of most of the judging panels today, as well as my top pick. Not only is it being a potentially … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Shimon Peres, president of Israel, continued his high-profile swing through Silicon Valley by speaking at the Launch Conference this morning. Speaking to an audience of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, he made the case for working in Israel and appealed to the entrepreneurs to create technological goods and services that could help humanity, and Israel itself.

The country of Israel, he said, "had nothing. No water, no oil, no resources." He said that the only true resource in the country was, and is, the people. That has made for a highly technological society. Israel has more scientists per … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--There's another new voice-response assistant that wants to date you: Robin, an Android app launching today at the Launch conference. This one is built for speed, though. Robin is designed specifically to be your in-car voice assistant.

Like Evi, and unlike Siri, Robin keeps your conversation in its head. If you ask for directions to location, and then later ask, "what's the parking like there?" it will know where "there" is. Also, it reads all information back to you, instead of displaying it and requiring you to look at the screen.

Like the … Read more

Yesterday, we got some new numbers on the number of Vita hardware and software units sold, so I thought it would be a good time for a Vita launch recap, with a quick look at what's gone right and what's gone wrong.

First, the numbers Sony says it has sold more than 1.2 million Vita units worldwide since the portable launched in Japan on December 17. As CNET blogger Don Reisinger noted in his post, Sony didn't break down the sales figures by country, but acknowledged that this month's launch across the U.S. and … Read more