Showing posts with label Spark Capital. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spark Capital. Show all posts

Monday, March 05, 2012

Naveen Leaving FourSquare

Image representing Naveen Selvadurai as depict...Image via CrunchBaseI just read the headlines. I have not read the full length articles yet. But I must say I am very, very surprised. This was so unexpected, to me it was. Unless the split between the two cofounders was quite tilted, or if by now after having raised several rounds of money Naveen's percentage ownership in the company had become really low, or the guy has come up with the next big thing, I mean. I have thought of FourSquare as a company that could end up with an IPO.

Now let me go read. The guy himself has a blog post on the topic, I think. Let's hear straight from the horse's mouth. If I were him I'd have left my equity still in the company. Because that money is growing. I wonder what he did.

GigaOm: Naveen Selvadurai, Foursquare co-founder is leaving
Business Insider: The Co-Founder Of One Of New York's Hottest Startups Is Checking Out
Pulse2: Foursquare Co-Founder Naveen Selvadurai Stepping Down
TheNextWeb: Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai announces he is leaving the company to work on new projects
AllThingsD: Foursquare Co-Founder Naveen Selvadurai Leaving
Naveen: Next
VentureBeat: Cue violins: Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai leaving the company
CNet: Foursquare co-founder Selvadurai to leave company
TechCrunch: SV Angel Also Buying Up Foursquare Stock. Dennis Crowley Emerges As Big-Company CEO

Okay, so the guy sits on the FourSquare Board.

Looks like the guy sold his stock to Spark Capital, one hopes only some of it.

Okay, so the guy feels like he has done all he can and he needs to move on.

It is possible some of the VCs in the picture have been gently working towards this end.

Pinterest Competes With Twitter, Instagram With FourSquare
FourSquare Should Rent A Stadium
FourSquare, I Was Not Here
Instagram Now Bigger Than FourSquare
FourSquare SMS Based Check Ins: Sometimes Messed Up
436 Friend Requests On FourSquare: Accepted
FourSquare's New Round
FourSquare Has 6000000 Users

Friday, June 24, 2011

FourSquare's New Round

The first place I heard about it was here.


Then I went to the TechMeme site, pressed the F for find button and typed FourSquare. And I read up.

Monday, July 12, 2010

You Can Create An Android App Too, Anyone Can

An apple with the logo of Google made with laserImage by missha via Flickr
The Official Google Blog: App Inventor For Android anyone—programmers and non-programmers, professionals and students—to create mobile applications for Android-powered devices. .... “I used to think that no one could program except CS people. Now, I've made dozens of applications for the Android phone!”
ComputerWorld: Google's App Inventor For Android Is A Game-Changer App Inventor has the potential to do for mobile app creation what VisiCalc did for computations -- move it out of the exclusive realm of specialists in glassed-in data centers (or, in the case of mobile apps, programmers who can use a conventional SDK) into the hands of power users as well as make it easier for IT departments to create corporate apps. .... a fair number of components available, ranging from text labels to motion sensors .... you can hook up your phone to your computer while using App Inventor in order to see your app in action. ..... App Inventor for Android is one of the smartest things Google could have done in its battle with Apple for the hearts and minds of smartphone power users. ..... friendly to non-coding power users.
ComputerWorld: Android App Inventor: Another Slap To Apple's Closed Model Google's new App Inventor for Android might just be magical -- and maybe even a little revolutionary. ..... apps created with App Inventor won't even be published to the Android Market as of now. .... The satirical likening of Apple to a communist regime doesn't always seem so far-fetched. ..... While Apple has long bragged about the 47 bazillion apps in its App Store, analyses suggest the vast majority of them actually sit unused.
New York Times: Google’s Do-It-Yourself App Creation Software Google is bringing Android software development to the masses. ..... Google App Inventor for Android (http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/), has been under development for a year .... as cellphones increasingly become the computers that people rely on most, users should be able to make applications themselves. .... he helped initiate M.I.T.’s OpenCourseWare program, which offers free online course materials used in teaching the university’s classes. ..... similar to snapping together Lego blocks ..... A student at the University of San Francisco, Mr. Abelson said, made a program that automatically replied to text messages, when he was driving. “Please don’t send me text messages,” it read. “I’m driving.”



This is not only the future of Android app creation, this is the future of programing itself. Computer programming languages have been on a one way ride to simplicity all these decades. This was bound to happen. Creating an app is now like putting together legos.

This is about thinking of software as utility, as commodity. You don't need a degree in electrical engineering to flip that switch, do you?

Used to be you needed to buy and upkeep servers. Then Amazon came to the rescue. This is a similar big shift in programming.

In The News

Techmeme Offers Tech News at Internet Speed New York Times Techmeme could become a model for other industries as a useful way to harness the increasingly unwieldy Web and arm readers who are preparing for business meetings or cocktail parties. ...... “Techmeme is our go-to primary source,” said Marshall Kirkpatrick, an editor and lead blogger at ReadWriteWeb, a tech blog. ..... Techmeme combines all three strategies, automatically searching the Web, employing editors and accepting tips from readers. .... its 260,000 readers, who check it three million times a month. .... Bijan Sabet, a venture capitalist at Spark Capital who reads Techmeme daily, also visits other aggregators, like Hacker News, because they have more diversity.
Casualties Of War: OfferPal Downsizes As Facebook Chooses Competitor TechCrunch Offerpal is currently the largest offers and alt-pay provider world-wide. Offerpal’s business continues to grow and expand in numerous other areas including an exciting new agreement with Yahoo!, and on the mobile iPhone, iPad and Android platforms, with more to come. We are projecting continued strong growth going forward as well as sustained profitability.
Man Claims Ownership of Facebook Wall Street Journal
Waging war on Wordpress: Posterous prepares the switch Guardian

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