Startups

Facebook CTO Bret Taylor leaving to start company

Bret Taylor, who has been Facebook's very public CTO for three years, today announced that he's leaving the social-networking giant to start a company. He didn't say what his next venture will be.

This is a big loss for Facebook and comes less than a month after the company went public. While Facebook stock rose more than 6 percent today, to close at $30.01, it's still 21 percent below its offering price of $38 a share. The news about Taylor, first reported by AllThingsD, came out after the market closed.

Naturally, Taylor turned to Facebook to tell the world … Read more

Why I had it all wrong about Boston's high-tech scene

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- I'm at a crowded tech schmoozefest, and Tim Rowe, the pied piper of local startups, is giving me a serious talking-to about my blase attitude toward the local tech industry.

"I'd like you to think about what you're saying and look at the facts," Rowe says with growing intensity. "I think you're going to see your perception and the facts don't add up."

No startup culture? Look around here in the Cambridge Innovation Center in Kendall Square, ground zero for New England startups, Rowe says. There are about … Read more

Mark Cuban leads funding of video startup Switchcam

Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban is leading a round of seed funding in a new video startup called Switchcam that has technology that can be used to stitch together different videos of the same event so viewers can switch camera angles as they wish.

Other investors in the $1.2 million round, raised via AngelList, include Dave McClure's 500 Startups, Turner Media Camp, Vikas Gupta, Niket Desai, Reed Morse, David Beyer and Jeffrey Schox, Switchcam announced today.

Switchcam CEO Brett Welch told CNET that he got the idea while using his phone to take video of live music concerts. Unlike … Read more

LightSquared reportedly reaches agreement on bankruptcy loan

LightSquared has reached an agreement over a bankruptcy loan from a group of lenders and intends to continue to fight for millions more, the Dow Jones news service reported.

After declaring bankruptcy last month, the company negotiated with a group of hedge funds holding more than $1 billion of LightSquared's debt. The lenders want "severe restrictions" placed on $190 million of cash LightSquared would like to use to hold itself up during bankruptcy, according to Dow Jones.

LightSquared intended to be a neutral wholesale provider of 4G LTE service, giving companies an alternative partner for super-fast wireless … Read more

AIRbudz prototype earbuds let the ambient noise in

I don't run without music. I just get too bored. But a few beats into songs by, say, The Knife, and my feet are pounding the pavement hard. I'm also perpetually safety-conscious, though, which means I tend to avoid Portland's beautiful but busy waterfront loop in favor of quiet streets with low traffic.

So I have long hoped for the perfect sports headphones that are durable, comfortable, and let the ambient noise in. Enter AIRbudz, the alternative earbud attachments that Utah-based entrepreneur (and jogger) Tammy Erdel is raising funds for on Kickstarter.

AIRbudz deal with external sound blockage by incorporating air channels into their 3D-printed buds that quite simply let ambient sound stream in. The ambient noise is obviously still competing with whatever sounds are pumping through the headphones, but that sound doesn't appear to be in any way altered or compromised.… Read more

Dear startups: Don't treat money like toilet paper

Having lots of money isn't a reason to spend it, especially if you're a startup that has yet to prove itself as a viable, sustainable business.

There have been a lot of early-stage startups raising monster rounds in recent months. Ark ($4.2 million seed), Viddy ($30 million), and Gumroad ($7 million) are just a few prominent examples.

The funding party may be over though, at least according to Paul Graham, a prominent investor and founder of Y Combinator.

"Jessica and I had dinner recently with a prominent investor," Graham said in a letter to Y … Read more

Smarterer pulls in $1.75M for job skills testing

Is the resume D.O.A.?

Boston-based startup Smarterer thinks so. The company has raised $1.75 million from True Ventures, Google Ventures, and a handful of angel investors for its job-search-meets-gamification platform.

Sure, its name doesn't quite roll off the tongue as nicely as it should, but the approach of the company is that there must be, in this age of the creative economy, a better way to evaluate job candidates besides where they've been and how long they were there.

The answer: a series of brief online multiple-choice tests on a certain topic, as chosen by … Read more

How Airtime could end up filling Facebook's coffers

When Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning launched their latest startup this morning -- a social video chat service called Airtime -- you can bet that one person hoping for its success was Parker's longtime pal and onetime business partner, Mark Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg wasn't on hand at the celeb-filled launch in New York City -- though Zuck was spotted on Airtime later in the day -- and this wasn't a Facebook event by any means. But the pitch by Parker, who was Facebook's founding president and still owns a chunk of the newly public company, at times … Read more

Hands-on: Airtime won me over

I was prepared to hate Airtime, the new video chat service that connects you to both friends and strangers. The last thing I need in my life is random, time-consuming video chats with distant friends of friends. And for connecting with people I already know, I have instant messaging, Skype, and the phone.

But the moment I fired up Airtime for the first time, an old friend called me and blew me a kiss. Made my morning. Then, a few minutes later, when I pressed the random "Talk to Someone" button , I got connected to Lee Jacobs of … Read more