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SAN FRANCISCO--If there's one thing that technology investors would like to have an easier time doing, it's poaching highly skilled engineering talent.

That much was clear at the AngelList Hackathon, an event held here today at the offices of AngelList, a company built around connecting early-stage startups with investors. But unlike many hackathons, during which entrepreneurs build new products meant for the world at large, these hackers were showing off new tools aimed solely at the large AngelList community of startups seeking funding.

In about 90 minutes, AngelList team members showed off 10 tools all meant to add … Read more

The boys who brought Napster to the world -- Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning -- are getting ready to reveal details of their next, still stealthy startup.

It's called Airtime, although a year ago the project apparently was going by the name Supyo, and it has to do with live video. And, naturally, social media -- a familiar world for Parker, who was Facebook's founding president and is currently a backer and board member of Spotify.

Few details exist yet, but last year TechCrunch reported that the startup is a Web-based video chat service that aims to connect … Read more

The rush to replace paper loyalty cards with app equivalents is on, and one of the hottest in the race -- Chicago-based Belly -- has just won a big nod of support.

Venture firm Andreessen Horowitz is investing $10 million in Belly, which the company will use to conquer new markets and keep up its pace of signing on more than 100 local merchants per week. Belly, which is currently available in six cities, today is launching in New York and Boston.

The $10 million investment, a series B round, comes with some star power. Andreessen Horowitz partner Jeff Jordan, … Read more

Color, the flexible startup from Bill Nguyen, formerly of Apple and the startup Lala, is taking yet another stab at the live video-sharing market, this time with help from Verizon.

The company's updated Color app will use the carrier's high-speed network to dramatically improve the quality of the videos it takes and will be preinstalled on some Verizon phones.

It looks like a good deal for Color, which has been struggling to get the features mix and social play right. The first version, which gave users a way to see photos coming in from people in the same … Read more

Hot on the heels of raising a $70 million funding round, the popular note-taking service Evernote is announcing today that it has acquired Cocoa Box Design, publishers of the iPad handwriting app, Penultimate.

The Penultimate note-taking app currently has integration into Evernote: You can send pages you create in the app to a linked Evernote account. It integrates with Dropbox the same way.

Evernote CEO Phil Libin told me the app won't be changed substantially, though integration into Evernote will be made tighter. "The important thing is to not break it," Libin says. Evernote will, however, put … Read more

SecondMarket, which runs a market for shares of private companies, took a big hit when it lost Facebook as a customer, even letting go of 10 percent of its staff.

So who will replace Facebook, which since SecondMarket got into this business has been its most actively traded stock? That's a tall order, and it's unlikely that any one company will make up for all the trading that went on with Facebook.

Moreover, it's hard to assess what's going on with SecondMarket since the company doesn't disclose much. It won't say, for instance, which … Read more

Evernote has raised yet another funding round, $70 million on top of the $96 million it previously raised in several rounds. CEO Phil Libin confirms that the funding puts Evernote at a $1 billion valuation and prepares the company for IPO.

In a blog post announcing the funding, Libin reiterates his goal to build a "hundred year startup that can be everyone's second brain." He says the funding will be used for expansion, acquisitions, increasing the pace of product improvements, and international expansion. It's "not because we need the money to fund operations," he … Read more

When it comes to courting investors, especially venture capitalists, for your startup, the recipe is simple: stop worrying and start focusing.

Most investors have a singular goal -- to fund a startup that eventually becomes a large, independent, defensible company. Finding an Evernote, Airbnb, or Instagram provides the kind of return that makes or breaks a venture capital firm.

But how do VCs find a company that is going to become big? It's not an easy task, but there are a few clues investors look for in order to determine your chance at hitting the jackpot. Here are a … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Are we in a technology bubble? From the looks of things here, we may well be. The city that hosts Google, Evernote, and Pinterest hosted its first open-air startup festival today, attached to the annual Startup Conference. Although churros, cotton candy, and midway games were lacking, the carnival atmosphere was not.

Inside at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, next door to City Hall, 600 conference attendees listened to talks from investors like Dave McClure and panels on topics like crowdsourcing. Outside, organizer Alain Reynaud had set up a festival where, he said, he … Read more