Last week, we witnessed something fairly remarkable. A major Alphabet executive — Nest Labs CEO Tony Fadell — publicly shamed the cofounder and employees of Dropcam, the connected camera company that Nest had acquired in 2014 for $555 million. In an article in The Information, Fadell said that he didn’t think Dropcam cofounder and CEO […]
Same-Day Delivery Takes One On the Chin
Over the weekend, eBay took down a standalone app for its $5 same-day delivery service “eBay Now.” The company, which continues to make the service available online, is “rethinking how it wants to handle the high costs associated with running same-day delivery services,” reported TechCrunch. It would be a mistake to declare same-day delivery economically […]
Elad Gil on Angel Investing, AngelList, and His New, Stealth Startup
By Semil Shah In 2009, Elad Gil sold his company, Mixer Labs, to Twitter, where he worked another two-and-a-half years as a VP before plunging back into the world of startups — and startup investing. Recently we talked with Gil about how, more precisely, he’s spending his time these days. As an individual investor — […]
Elad Gil on the Angel Investing Lifecycle
By Semil Shah Elad Gil is like a lot like other smart, accomplished Silicon Valley angel investors. His credentials include an advanced degree from M.I.T. He has worked at both small and big companies, from Plaxo to Google (where the mobile wireless team he started acquired Android). He’s also an entrepreneur himself, starting Mixer Labs, […]
Googler #25 and Others Respond to That Khosla Interview
Sunday afternoon, I wrote a column about a new video that features investor Vinod Khosla interviewing Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. I noted the interview was not going to be well-received outside of tech circles, where it was uniformly applauded. For example, asked by Khosla about rising income inequality in San Francisco, an issue that’s been linked in the […]
StrictlyVC: July 7, 2014
Hi, everyone, welcome back. Hope you had a terrific break! —– Top News in the A.M. A quick heads up: the TSA says that it will no longer allow U.S.-bound passengers to board flights at certain overseas airports with uncharged electronic devices. —– Missed Connections: Larry Page on Income Inequality Over the long weekend, Khosla Ventures released […]
Missed Connections: Larry Page on Income Inequality
Over the weekend, Khosla Ventures released a video of its founder, Vinod Khosla, interviewing Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who rarely participate in joint speaking engagements. Page and Brin come across as charming in different but complementary ways. Page plays the straight man, responding earnestly to Khosla’s questions about Google’s priorities. “I guess […]
StrictlyVC: June 27, 2014
Good morning! Hope you have a stellar weekend, everyone. —– Top News in the A.M. Aereo investor Barry Diller: “It’s over now.” Facebook: We’ve been fighting bulk search warrants in court. —– My Best Friend, Google In yesterday’s New York Times, columnist Farhad Manjoo wrote, “One way to think of Google is as an extremely helpful, all-knowing, hyper-intelligent executive assistant.” And […]
My Best Friend, Google
In yesterday’s New York Times, columnist Farhad Manjoo wrote, “One way to think of Google is as an extremely helpful, all-knowing, hyper-intelligent executive assistant.” And it’s only getting smarter. As Sundar Pichai, top banana at Google’s Android division, tells Manjoo of the near future: “If I go and pick up my kids, it will be good […]
A New Startup by Orkut Buyukkokten (Yes, that Orkut)
Orkut Buyukkokten, the Turkish engineer who is best known for building Google’s early social network, also named Orkut, has left the company after nearly 12 years to co-found Hello, a still-stealth social network that’s been flying under the radar for the last three months — though likely not for much longer. Buyukkokten hasn’t yet responded to […]