start-up

Demo 09: Where start-ups show off

Editor's note: For CNET News' latest coverage of DemoFall 2009, please click here.

roundup The high-tech confab prides itself on putting cutting-edge companies in front of A-list venture capitalists and journalists. Here's this year's crop. (See live video feed at bottom of page.)

Featured stories Lessons from Demo on surviving recession The smaller size of Demo 09 doesn't mean the tech industry is going out of business. Rather, it suggests what companies need to do to get funding. (Posted in Digital Media by Daniel Terdiman) March 4, 2009 9 AM PST The best and worst of Demo 09 … Read more

Obama Inc. - Web activism for profit

A few months after Barack Obama’s historic election, and a couple of weeks after the release of Barry Libert’s and Rick Faulk’s book Obama Inc. (and, of course, Obama's inauguration), the first start-ups are popping up that directly apply some of the widely heralded business lessons emerging from the innovative campaign. The fact that most of these lessons lie in the marketing domain supports the view I’ve expressed earlier and on numerous occasions: 1) Marketing will (again) become the number one change agent in business, 2) when it follows the new rules of “marketing with … Read more

Lucid Imagination conjures up $6 million

If you were looking to create a start-up, and particularly an open-source start-up, you could hardly do better than to stumble upon a pre-existing open-source project with millions of downloads, widespread adoption by some of the biggest names in the industry, and a fast-growing enterprise need.

Take Lucene, for example, as CMS Watch's Kas Thomas noted on Monday. It is a hugely popular project with one big failing: no enterprise support. Writes Thomas:

Lucene has a lot going for it...(It's) one of the safest (open-source projects) around, in terms of governance and oversight (through the Apache Foundation), … Read more

Venture capital plummets 71 percent

Hey buddy, can you spare a dime?

Venture capitalists put a virtual lock on their funding during the fourth quarter, doling out a mere $3.4 billion, according to a report released Monday by Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association.

The meager performance pales in comparison to the $11.7 billion distributed to start-ups a year ago during the same period. That's a decline of 71 percent. Funding is down nearly 60 percent from the previous quarter.

During the fourth quarter, venture capitalists launched 33 follow-on funds and 10 new funds, resulting in a 3-to-1 ratio for … Read more

A program worth learning

David Nash's Startup Manager is a free utility that lets you choose the programs you want to run at start-up. We had to visit the Help feature to make sure we were on the right track, but in the end it worked well for us.

The program's user interface uses a tree menu to locate the different start-up sections--StartUp, Registry, and WinINI. Depending on what you select, the individual files appear in the main panel. All of the command buttons were within quick reach at the top of the window. But even though the interface appeared to be … Read more

Why Europe is no land of brilliant start-ups

American tech entrepreneurs would rather answer e-mails in the middle of the night than have sex. It is the reverse for Europeans.

At least that seems to be the conclusion of a very stimulating post by the splendidly populist Andrew Keen.

Mr. Keen, who, I am led to understand by the excellent Owen Thomas of Valleywag, is rather enthusiastic for the poor not to have Internet access, relayed a very interesting discussion between Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and Loic LeMeur, the CEO of Seesmic, a video social-networking company.

Apparently, there is a general lamentation in Europe that it has originated … Read more

Working overtime for venture capital funding

Editor's note: This is part of a series of stories about the recession's effect on the tech industry.

Entrepreneur Treb Ryan remembers in vivid detail the day the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted nearly 700 points and dropped below 9,000 for the first time in years.

He was visiting a major computer maker on that day, October 9, waiting to meet with a potential investor about funding his start-up OpSource.

"I was about a half an hour early for the appointment and was sitting in the lobby, where they have a big screen TV," recalled … Read more

Small is beautiful for green-tech newbies

Les Fritzemeier heads up a tiny solar-energy start-up that most people have never heard of, Wakonda Technologies. But rather than worry about being steamrolled by the sliding economy, he feels like he's in a great spot.

"In a lot of respects, the best time to start a company is in the middle of a recession, assuming you've got money," he said. "Our target is to go to market when most people expect the economy to turn around."

Without a doubt, the recession and lower oil prices are hurting many companies in clean tech, a … Read more

HomeAway opens door to $250 million funding round

Vacation home rental site HomeAway announced Tuesday it received a substantial $250 million fourth round of funding.

HomeAway, which has raised $405 million to date in private equity, received its latest round from lead investor Technology Crossover Ventures, along with existing investors Institutional Venture Partners and Redpoint Ventures.

HomeAway's $250 million third round represents the largest U.S. venture stake for an Internet company over the past eight years, according to Venture Source.

Companies that tend to raise sizable venture rounds in excess of $100 million tend to be in capital intensive industries, such as networking company Santera Systems … Read more