In January, we broke the news that prolific Silicon Valley angel investor Dave McClure was to set up its own venture capital fund . Yesterday, the man filed for the fund with the SEC, providing us with more details (hat tip to FormDs.com ). The name will be 500 Startups – McClure has long called himself the master of 500 hats – and the initial fund will amount to max. $30 million according to the filing . McClure has turned to 99 Designs to come up with a logo for the fund ( my favorite so far). Here’s part of the brief for the logo design: 500 Startups is a new, edgy, risk taking seed fund which invests in early stage consumer internet companies. Incubator/seed investment funds are popping up left and right and we’re looking to differentiate ourself through edgier design. Our founder likes to swear. In public. A lot. Think Ari Gold, but for tech companies and without a suit. We are not — *not* — your typical fund composed of a bunch of stiff white guys sitting around a board table. We’re young. We’re diverse (Women! People of color!). Our investments are blustering balls of sleepless eagerness, And the markets we’re looking to dominate are murky and emergent. Our values: – “Fun at All Costs”… authentic, down-to-earth, *real* – Creative, Smart, Innovative Environment – Learn & Educate at Same Time – Move Quickly, Take Risks, Make [Manageable] Mistakes Sounds like McClure, alright. For your reference: McClure has been investing in early stage startups for years. He is a direct angel investor in a half dozen or more startups, including Mint, Simply Hired, Mashery, bit.ly, UserVoice, SlideShare, TeachStreet and others. And he has invested in dozens more through fbFund , a $10 million Facebook investment fund backed by Founders Fund and Accel , and FF Angel , a Founders Fund early stage fund. CrunchBase Information Dave McClure Information provided by CrunchBase
We’re hearing that Facebook and Malaysian payments company MOL Global will be holding a press conference shortly to announce a significant new partnership around gaming and payments in Asia. MOL, you may recall, was in the news when it acquired Friendster earlier this year. The press conference is being held in Kuala Lumpur and will begin shortly, we’re told. More details to come… CrunchBase Information Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase
Perhaps you’ve heard the news by now that Matthew Papakipos, the key architect of Chrome OS, is leaving Google to go to Facebook . While it’s not entirely clear what Papakipos will be doing yet at Facebook beyond joining the engineering team, this is massive news. This is the key component of Chrome OS leaving the company before its launch to join what can perhaps be seen as Google’s most important competitor going forward. So what does Google think about the defection? “ Matt made great contributions to Google and Chrome OS, and we know he’ll do the same in his next endeavors. We wish him the best. We have a deep bench of talent and are very excited about the launch of Chrome OS devices later this year ,” a Google spokesperson tells us. So first of all, Google is confirming that despite the loss, Chrome OS remains on track for release this year. This echoes what Papakipos hinted at in his tweet : “ Now that Chrome OS & WebGL are in good shape, it’s time for something new. I’m going to work @ Facebook! Love the product and team. Woot! “ Still, while the product may be in “ good shape “, it’s still not released, so it’s just odd that he would leave before he sees his vision come to completion. I can only imagine Facebook made an offer he couldn’t refuse. Second, in their statement, Google refers to their “deep bench of talent.” That’s an interesting way of putting it. Basically, without saying it directly, Google is suggesting that Papakipos was expendable. They’re saying that they’re like a well-built basketball team. Even when they lose a star player, they can survive and keep winning games. Still, it’s nice to have that star player if you want to win the championship. That appears to be what Facebook is attempting to do . CrunchBase Information Google Facebook Google Chrome OS Information provided by CrunchBase
Today during its keynote at I/O, Google officially announced that the latest version of Android, called Froyo, will feature tethering and wireless hotspot functionality — a big win for Android users. When we broke the news last week we questioned whether or not carriers would be able to disable or charge more for this functionality given that it was baked into the default Android OS. Unfortunately, at least as far as consumers are concerned, it sounds like carriers will get their say. In other words, expect at least some carriers to charge more for tethering. I asked Hiroshi Lockheimer, who heads up engineering on Android, about the issue and the answer was confusing to say the least. Lockheimer said that Android doesn’t do anything special to tag data that’s being accessed through tethering, though carriers could probably find a way to detect it if they really wanted to. But they probably won’t have to, because Android is making it easy for carriers to either charge extra for, or disable entirely, tethering on the phones they sell. It sounds like these would both require small modifications to the OS. That’s straightforward enough — carriers and OEMs have been molding Android to suit their needs for a while now. But what about phones that feature the “Google Experience”, which is the term used to describe devices that ship with the stock Android OS (Google Experience phones include the Motorola Droid and Nexus One)? Presumably carriers wouldn’t be able to insert their payment switch if the OS is unmodified, which means these phones could potentially get tethering included in their normal data plans. We’ll have to wait to find out — Lockheimer said that the answer isn’t clear yet. CrunchBase Information Android Information provided by CrunchBase
If you can find the silver linings, the news is finally getting a little better over at the number three largest carrier in the States after countless quarters of brutal numbers. Sprint still isn’t turning a profit or earning net customer adds, but it’s continuing to stem losses by posting its first sequential rise in revenue in almost three years, clocking just under $8.1 billion for the quarter; that’s still less than the revenue it posted a year ago, but hey, at least it’s an improvement over Q4 2009′s roughly $7.8 billion. All told, that works out to a net loss of $865 million, which is also better than Q4′s $980 million. Net wireless customers fell by 75,000 — considerably better than Q4′s 148,000 — but net postpaid customers fell by a much larger 578,000, suggesting that Boost Mobile’s aggressive marketing is probably working. That’s all well and good, but it also likely means that ARPU is on a downward trend; Sprint claims it was flat sequentially and down a dollar from $56 to $55 year-over-year. All told, it seems the company’s fortunes are improving by baby steps — but is it fast enough? And how much is the EVO 4G going to mix things up? Sprint halves its quarterly customer loss, increases revenue for the first time in ages originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 14:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | Sprint | Email this | Comments
