Angel investor Ron Conway: Every entrepreneur should get funded

Are there too many angel investors funding too many startups? That was the topic of some debate today at AngelConf, which was held at the Mountain View, Calif. campus of incubator Y Combinator.

The opening speaker was well-known and prolific angel Ron Conway (pictured), who argued that if anything, there should be more angel investing, not less. He said he hopes that any entrepreneur that has “the guts” to start a company gets funded.

“The more angels we have in Silicon Valley, the better,” he said, later adding, “We are funding innovation. We are funding the next Facebook, Google, and Twitter.”

Critics have described this high-quantity approach to angel investing as “spray and pray,” but Conway said angel investing is a hit-driven business. If you invest in enough companies, then you’ll eventually put money in a home run that pays off so well that it funds all your future investments.

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Dave McClure Files For $30 Million Venture Fund: 500 Startups

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.

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What Do 2.0 Hippies Think About?

2.0 Hippies don’t think like the “crowd” rather they think about the “crowd”.  The “crowd” represents the masses being lead down the wrong path only to be captured and used for “the media’s and the man’s” benefit. The media represents “the man” which reflects the philosophy of the past.

Many who stay stuck in the old business philosophy think they understand the power of social technology and try to apply it to old corporate practices in marketing, PR, advertising, customer and employee relations etc. only to learn that their strategies fail because they are driven by the wrong philosophy.

Hippies 2.0 challenge the assumptions and beliefs of organizational and personal thinking stuck in 1.0 philosophies. You can spot thinkers of Hippie 2.0 by their media which reflects profound changes in knowledge, values and reason about the human interaction with markets of conversations. Hippies 2.0 are early adopter ideologies which show the counter cultural values created by the intersection of technology with the human network.

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Corporate Venture Capital For Cars, Cola And Kaplan

Corporate venture investing has made a minor comeback in recent months, with three corporations establishing venture capital initiatives.

General Motors Corp., which has been an active investor in high-tech companies over the past few years, is committing $100 million to a new venture arm that will give the automaker a more structured way to tap into emerging technologies. “The idea is to identify early-stage technologies that we could potentially incorporate into GM vehicles,” said Jon Lauckner, who is heading General Motors LLC. “Also, there’s a possibility of a financial upside to boot.”

Kaplan Inc. launched its own venture arm to look at start-ups targeting students. Kaplan VC LLC is designed to identify and develop innovative learning strategies, technologies and products with the potential to transform education worldwide. The new group will be led by Jason Palmer, who will serve as senior vice president of Kaplan Ventures.

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Eat More Innovation

Have you seen the new HBO made-for-TV movie called “Temple Grandin?”

It’s a powerful story about a woman, Temple Grandin, who overcame autism to become one of the most influential figures in today’s livestock and animal husbandry industry. Not only is Temple’s story a testament to the ability of the human spirit to overcome tremendous obstacles, it teaches many principles that all business leaders would do well to embrace.

When diagnosed at a very early age, doctors said Grandin would never speak. When they recommended life-long institutionalization, Grandin’s mother refused to accept that possibility, and continually pushed her daughter to develop her abilities and learn to work around her autistic limitations.

With the support of her mother and several key mentors along the way, Grandin went on to graduate from college and earn a Ph.D. in animal science. More important, she revolutionized the livestock industry by designing innovative systems that improve herd management and facilitate more humane treatment of the animals we depend on for food. (Lesson #1: Don’t let others tell you what you can and can’t do!)

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Internet Connectivity and Economic Development

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Seedcamp 2010

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YouTube Promises 15 Minutes Of Fame

To mark an increase in allowable running time for non-partner videos, YouTube says it will promote a handful of video makers.

If it seems like YouTube videos are getting longer, you may be watching a particularly dull bit of filmmaking. Or it may be that the video actually is longer.

YouTube on Thursday said that it is now allowing content creators to upload videos with running times in excess of 10 minutes.

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In Search of the Chief Sustainability Officer

As a corporate social responsibility (CSR) recruiter, I study CSR job postings and titles. For the past six years, I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet of CSR-related job postings. Recently, I published my biennial CSR Jobs Report, which identifies hiring trends in the field.

One of  the most notable findings is the increase in senior-level corporate positions—those with VP and Director titles. Before 2006, none of the job postings had a title of VP or above. What’s changed? Companies are placing an increased value on CSR as a component of corporate strategy, which elevates the importance of positions overseeing CSR. Dave Stangis, Vice President of CSR and Sustainability at Campbell’s Soup, says: “The emergence of the VP of CSR and VP of Sustainability titles seems proof of the growing strategic business position of CSR.”

But, why stop at Vice President? How high can the title go? What about a Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO)? Can CSR find a place in the C-Suite?

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Touchable holograms brings us closer to Star Trek's holodecks

A team at Tokyo University has figured out how to make holograms "touchable." When you think of holograms, you probably picture your hand sliding right through them, being a projection of light and all. Here, you won't feel anything, but you certainly can interact.

At first blush, the tech seems to be little more than a trick. After all, you aren't really touching the holograms as much as you are manipulating them by placing your hand in a certain place. The ball doesn't bounce off your palm, for example — the system registers that that's where your hand is and the virtual ball react.

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Google Earth Now Shows Rain and Snow in Real Time

Google Earth is one of the great "wow" applications in Google's stable, especially on touch devices like Android smartphones or the iPad, whether it's showing undersea formations or cities in 3-D. It's also surprisingly useful, and Google's always adding elements to it to give it more utility and/or fun.

The newest is the clouds layer, which now shows rain and snow in real-time weather patterns, across the globe. After enabling the clouds layer, you can just zoom in to any location you want, provided Google has supplied the layer for the part you want to see. So far, that's limited to just parts of North America and Western Europe, but that includes some of the rainiest places I can think of, including the Pacific Northwest and the U.K. By enabling the radar layer, you can see where the precipitation data is available.

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Beaches one step closer to commercialization

With a City Council committee’s blessing July 14, city beaches are one step closer to featuring commercial advertisements on lifeguard stations and seasonal lifeguard stands.

If approved by the full council, the proposed commercialization of the beaches could bring millions of dollars back to the city’s lifeguard program, which has been hit hard by budget cuts.

“It was an important step and I give the lifeguards a lot of credit,” said District 2 City Councilman Kevin Faulconer, part of the council’s Budget and Finance Committee that unanimously approved the project. Faulconer said the beach advertising proposal would likely be brought to full council in the fall, with public outreach planned between now and then. In this proposed pilot program, each of the city’s eight main lifeguard stations alone — including the one in Ocean Beach — could potentially generate between $200,000 and $500,000 per year — as much as $4 million annually.

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Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists Are Feeling Glum

Confidence among venture capitalists in Silicon Valley weakened in the second quarter, according to a new industry report, as concerns over financing, the economy and new regulations added to an already tough working environment.

But while confidence dipped, investments increased as several venture capitalists seemed excited about a new crop of quality start-ups hitting the Valley.

Venture capital has been one of the hardest-hit parts of the economy during the recession. The lack of financing choked off money to the industry, while the moribund capital markets made it very difficult to exit past investments through initial public offerings or mergers and acquisitions.

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Never Mind the Valley: Here's Toronto

While not the political capital of Canada, Toronto is certainly the cultural and financial capital of the country. With over 5 million residents, Toronto is the largest city in Canada, sitting in a densely populated part of Southern Ontario. With over 200 ethnic groups speaking over 130 languages, Toronto's cosmopolitan population makes it one of the world's most diverse cities. Toronto also boasts a clean environment, low crime rates, a high standard of living, and incredibly nice folks who live there, all helping make it one of the world's most livable cities and according to a recent Huffington Post article, "the capital of cool."

It's also by all accounts a thriving startup hub, with both strong investor presence - the National Angel Capital Organization and Extreme Venture Partners are headquartered there, for example - and with a lot of entrepreneurial talent and activities.

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What’s Your Social Spread?

As more and more organizations use all things social to attract audiences the issues of “spread” becomes a focal point for reaching the right audience.

In statistics, statistical dispersion is variability or spread in a variable of probable distribution. Probable distribution is important to distribution of relevant content in context with your audience.

Dispersion is contrasted with location or central tendency, and together they are the most used properties of distributions. If your content is not being dispersed to locations where your audience is then you are wasting efforts to attract the wrong audience.

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APLU Successful 2010 Summer Meeting held in Austin, TX – Presentations Available Online

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Helping Joints Regrow Themselves

A chemical-infused scaffold generates new tissue by attracting stem cells.

Today's titanium replacement joints work very well for 10 to 15 years, but replacing them after they've worn out is a challenge for both patient and surgeon. A team of researchers from Columbia University proposes a way around that problem: by implanting a scaffold that encourages the patient's own stem cells to regrow the joint.

In research published this week in The Lancet, the researchers demonstrate that the technology--a joint-shaped scaffold infused with a growth factor protein--works in rabbits. About a month after the implant, the animals began using their injured forelimbs again, and at two months the animals moved almost as well as similarly aged healthy rabbits. The study is the first to show that an entire joint can be repaired while being used.

"They used the potential of the body as a bioreactor, instead of doing everything in the petri dish," says Patrick H. Warnke, a professor of surgery at Bond University. Warnke wrote a commentary on the Columbia study for The Lancet. While the connection between bone and the titanium in existing implants wears out over time, the hope for this alternative approach is that the new bone formed by the stem cells will create a more natural and durable connection, and that the scaffold itself would disintegrate over time.

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MAP OF THE DAY: Alarming German Study Shows Ocean Has Bigger Problem Than Oil Spill

The foundation of the ocean food chain, phytoplankton, is declining at a much faster rater than expected. Phytoplankton are down 40 percent since 1950 and disappearing at a rate of one percent yearly. Scientists don't know what the effects will be, but clearly it's not looking good.

Sorry, this is another global warming story.

Spiegel:

"We had suspected this for a long time," Boris Worm, the author of the study for Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "But these figures still surprised us." At this point, he said, one can only speculate as to what the repercussions might be. "In principal, though, we should assume that such a massive decline is already having tangible consequences," said Worm. He said that the lack of research on the food chain between phytoplankton and larger fish in the open ocean is a hindrance to knowing the extent of the damage.

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Competitors beware: Innovation in search benefits Google

Microsoft's new search engine Bing has been making waves in the search market, adding new features and slowly chipping away at Google's established search dominance. But smaller search engines have an uphill battle when it comes to toppling Google in search.

As Ask.com's Barry Diller pointed out today, innovation in search often works toward Google's advantage. Regardless of whether Google does the innovating.

Ask.com made headlines this week with some userface changes that reverted the site back to its earlier question and answer format. Furthermore, the site beat analyst expectations, growing 18% to $197.2 million. But IAC head Barry Diller had some candid words about Ask's prospects during the company's second quarter earnings call. According to PaidContent, he said:

“One thing I want to make clear to investors is that Ask itself is not a large segment of the company. I had hoped it would become one, but I was wrong about that. I was wrong about the competitive landscape with Google."

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Porsche Says Yes to Electric Sports Cars

Porsche said it would come out with electric sports cars in the future, but left the specifics to be revealed at a later date.

The company, in conjunction with Siemens and others, has shown off an all-electric Boxster at trade shows. We took this picture of one of the three all-electric Boxsters earlier this year at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi. Now, Porsche says it has been testing the prototypes on the track and will come out with a car in the future.

"We will definitely be offering electric sports cars in the future," said Michael Macht, the President and CEO of Porsche AG in a prepared statement. "But such a concept only makes sense if it offers performance and a cruising range comparable to that of a sports car today."