Editor’s note: Peter Vogel is co-founder of Plink, a Facebook Credits-based loyalty program that rewards Facebook members for dining and making purchases at their favorite restaurants and stores. Reach him via email at peter@plink.com or follow him on Twitter @pvogel.

Although introduced in 2009, we’ve only seen glimpses of what Facebook Credits will become when it grows up, and Facebook is about to kick off the training wheels.

So far, Facebook has done little to promote the virtual currency of Facebook Credits and it’s been used almost entirely in social gaming. But even with this limited exposure and promotion, Facebook Credits’ fees already represents $557 Million in revenue or 15 percent of Facebook’s entire 2011 revenue. Even more remarkable is that less than two percent of Facebook users bought virtual goods with Facebook Credits in 2011, yet it still represented 15 percent of Facebook’s revenue, primarily from just one vertical – social gaming. One vertical and two percent of members represented 15 percent of Facebook’s 2011 revenue!

Why hasn’t Facebook promoted the Credits Economy more aggressively? 

Some believe that Facebook has waited to promote Credits as a Facebook-wide currency until after the IPO; a valuation based on advertising revenue is less volatile and less likely to attract concern from investors.

A second theory is that Facebook tends to introduce features slowly and let them develop; even though Facebook’s App Platform was opened in 2007 and hundreds of millions of members were playing games, Facebook did little to monetize the platform until they required game developers to use Facebook to process payments on July 1, 2011, about four years later.

Now, about three-and-a-half years after Facebook Credits were launched, Facebook is ready and they’re going to need the revenue to satisfy shareholder expectations.

What will change after the IPO?

It certainly looks like, post-IPO, Facebook will begin promoting Facebook Credits heavily and will soon be making Credits easier for consumers to use and more profitable for developers.

On the consumer front, we’re predicting that a user’s Facebook Credits balance will be more prominently displayed (still privately) on their profile. Currently it’s hidden a few clicks deep under Home>Account Setting>Payments.  Facebook will also start featuring a list of places where members can spend Credits. Facebook’s new App Center is a great start for this, increasing the ease with which users can find new apps – not just games – some  for free, some for purchase with Credits. Facebook could also feature a new category under “Favorites,” listing recommended ways to spend Credits based on that specific member’s interests, friends, etc.

In addition, Facebook will likely run more promotions offering consumers Credits at a discount, “Buy  $1 in Credits and get $2-3 dollars worth of Credits for free.” This is similar to promotions Facebook ran in games just few months ago, but Facebook will use the same strategy outside of games to attract a wider audience.

Developers will also benefit from all the promotion that makes Credits easier to use for consumers, but for most developers, increased discoverability is key. No matter how great an app or game they build, if a consumer can’t find it, everyone loses. For the Facebook credits economy to flourish, discoverability is essential; increased listings, rankings, categories and a well organized App Center is key and Facebook is already on their way to providing developers with these features.

Facebook has also hinted, with little explanation, that in certain verticals outside of gaming, Facebook will consider lowering the 30 percent tax they typically keep on Credit transactions. This may open the door for Open Graph participants like Netflix, Spotify and the Washington Post, to name a few, to begin accepting Credits for monthly subscription plans, created just for Facebook. Since these partners and more than 50 others and counting are all integrated into Facebook’s Open Graph, already with the ability to share “like’s” “listening to,” and “watching,” the next logical step is to begin accepting Credits as payment. By lowering the 30 percent fee it is now financially possible for these partners to participate in the Facebook economy.

What does all this mean for the Facebook Credits Economy?

I’ve predicted and still believe the revenue generated from Facebook Credits will double every year for the next five year, eclipsing the revenue generated by advertising by 2016.

Credits will emerge from gaming this year and be used Facebook-wide for all sorts of paid apps ranging from dating to entertainment (TV, movies, music and live streaming of pay-per-view events) to more functional utility apps you might be used to buying for your smart-phone.

Facebook Credits is about to grow up fast.

Social gaming was its birth, the new App Center is its first step … and we’re all waiting to hear its first few words. I’m guessing it will be some version of, “Pay… here… always.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

One of the things that people who move away from New York City lament is the lack of delivery services elsewhere. In the Big Apple, you can famously get pretty much any kind of food — or anything else really — delivered straight to your door, 24 hours a day, rain or shine. San Francisco, for example, is a bit more limited. You actually have to leave your apartment to get most things (first world problems, I know, but it is a thing that people complain about.) Well, at least that was the case until today.

Postmates, the urban logistics startup that launched its flagship business-to-business courier system back in December, just launched the public version of its first consumer-facing app, “Get It Now.” The app, which is currently available on the iPhone and active only in the San Francisco Bay Area, lets users get anything in San Francisco delivered to them in under an hour.

‘Hacking’ The Local Delivery System

As my colleague Ryan Lawler has reported, Get It Now has been a big hit in insidery SF startup circles since it launched the private beta version of its app two months ago. It amassed about 1,000 beta users, and grew its courier capacity to be able to fulfill 1,000 deliveries a day with an average delivery time of 30 minutes. And the people who used the app really used it: In private beta, Get It Now averaged $116 in revenues per user per month.

Postmates co-founder and CEO Bastian Lehmann tells me that the company has simply outfitted its current courier fleet with credit cards, allowing them to purchase goods for users. The company takes between 20 to 40 percent commission on each purchase. The big thing here is that it allows consumers to turn any place into something that delivers, he said: “It allows consumers to hack the system. It’s no longer that if you want delivery there’s only that one Italian place, or that one Chinese place, that they can order from. You open the app and see that you have all these beautiful places around you.”

A Sleek Exterior, But Specialized Tech

When asked about the competitive landscape — you can use Taskrabbit and Exec to find someone to deliver something for you, for example, and on-demand car service Uber looks like it’s dipping its toes into the delivery space — Lehmann said that specialization is what gives Postmates its edge. “Uber is a premium product, and I don’t see them starting to deliver food for $7.99 per order. Taskrabbit and Exec are all cute… but if you want efficient delivery of something specific in your city, Get It Now is going to be the fastest option. We’re doing one thing, and we’re doing it really well.”

He said that with its logistics platform, he sees Postmates as a startup more in the vein of companies such as Amazon, FedEx, and Square. “It’s a huge technology play, and we’re taking something that was super complicated for a lot of merchants and making it very easy.”

Shifting The Focus From B2B To Consumer

Postmates will continue to operate its business-to-business courier service, but sees the Get It Now app as a way to effectively promote itself to merchants more effectively than its own small sales force could. “Initially, our plan was to concentrate on merchants. What we realized, though, is that it takes a lot time to sign up all these merchants — if you are a small business, you have several startups coming in every week trying to sell you on a a rewards platform, or a new daily deals app. We realized that maybe sales is not in the DNA of our company.” From a business perspective, it seems to be a very smart move toward efficiency.

Postmates currently has 12 full-time employees, and has raised $1.75 million in seed funding from a group of angel investors. Lehmann says that geographic expansion beyond the San Francisco Bay Area is certainly in the company’s plans, and that Postmates will likely raise a Series A round before it moves into other metro areas.

Here are a few screenshots of the Get It Now app in action (click on images to enlarge):

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

I’ve been on a journey through the past as Disrupt NYC (tickets here) draws closer, sifting through past Disrupt and TC50 startups with the hopes of getting a clear update on the accomplishments, the trials, and the milestones between then and now. The stories have been amazing, but one of the most incredible tales of growth and success I’ve yet to hear lies with Redbeacon.

The company first won top prize at TC50 in 2009, and has since gone on to raise a $7.4 million round led by Mayfield Fund and Venrock (purely bootstrapped up until then), and ultimately found themselves in the midst of an acquisition by Home Depot.

I spoke with co-founders Aaron Lee and Yaron Binur to hear the impressive tale straight from the horses’ mouths.

Here’s the interview in its entirety:

TechCrunch: So tell me what’s happened between TC50 and now? What was the TC50 experience like?

Redbeacon: Well, the interesting part of TC50 is that you have to launch on stage. We had an awesome product and we were excited but no one had used it up until that moment.

We launched in the Bay Area and spent the next 8 months iterating. Even though we launched at TC50 with no users beforehand, we started collecting data which was extremely useful. We skipped the whole angel round with the small amount of money we could raise, including our TC50 prize, and then eventually raised $7.4 million.

I think there were three factors that went into getting that $7.4M round: our willingness to put in our own money, the great data we were generating, and our win at TC50.

The experience of launching our product on stage with TechCrunch and getting interest and appetite from investors made that first round of funding a lot easier to get. It opened up a lot of doors for us. When you have all those things come together — great data, a great team, a great product, and TechCrunch — it makes that round easy to raise and it makes it easy to get a lot out of it.

TC: Did you feel like, after TC50, you kind of had your choice when it came to shopping for investors?

Redbeacon: Absolutely. We were very picky and felt like we had a lot of choices with investors. Our investors were rock solid. Without them, the acquisition with Home Depot would have been impossible.

Once we got that money, up until then we only had three or four people in the company. We could then finally grow the team and grow geographically. We went from the Bay Area to 11 different metros, and as we scaled and grew we arrived at one of the most important things we could learn.

With the growth of our team and product we needed to focus on new products. We had originally launched a very generic product. All services. What we saw from the data as we scaled was that 80 percent of our requests were for home services, and not the other categories.

As a consumer, they didn’t understand the idea of local services. They couldn’t make a connection between wedding planners and roofers. By focusing on home services, we had a clearer brand and could specialize our product in useful ways. Redbeacon then became all about my home or maintaining my home.

That was obviously a huge shift for us. From that point we started seeing a lot of traction and growth. We started introducing key features that were only possible with that focus.

We also went mobile, which was huge, both on the consumer and the provider side.

We saw huge growth on the revenue side throughout 2011. And in January of this year, Home Depot understood the opportunity and that the space is huge. They also saw that Redbeacon is best to take it over. One thing you can see in the marketplace is that a younger generation is moving from DIY to do it for me.

Since the acquisition in January, we’re already scaling and leveraging the business. It’s integrated with the shopping experience at Home Depot, and we have a lot of interesting things in the pipeline too.

TC: One thing I notice during Disrupt is that the Q&A is particularly brutal. A company’s entire stance can quickly be brought down by an Arrington or a Wilson or a Mayer. How did you guys feel about the Q&A experience, and do you think that session might have actually improved your product in the early stages?

Redbeacon: We learned three main things from the Q&A. The first was the chicken and the egg rule. We had a two-sided marketplace and it’s hard to bootstrap and scale the business keeping things even on both sides. That was a big worry for them. But that put it in context in a way that was really useful: we learned that the provider side is much easier than the consumer side. They list themselves, we know how to get a hold of them, so if we come to them with real jobs and work they’re very interested in engaging.

That session helped us identify that issue and while we spent eight months iterating we were trying to figure out how to balance out both sides before expanding.

Another thing that came out of the Q&A was going mobile. This was back in 2009, so the idea was still relatively new, but it turned out to be key. Our engagement on mobile is huge.

The last thing we learned was how we should roll out and scale: should it be city by city, nationally by one vertical? We tested out a lot of different ways, but a local business can’t go national in one day. It was useful to hear their concern about that and think through it.

TC: We have a ton of entrepreneurs and hackers heading out to New York today and tomorrow. You’ve been there before; so what advice would you give to these guys getting ready to launch on the Disrupt stage?

Redbeacon: Along with having experience at Disrupt, I’m also an angel investor and a mentor at 500Startups. A few things to learn is to keep your product and do less rather than more. Launch and iterate quickly. And do tons of interviews early on. Understand how people are using your product and run lots of tests. Don’t make it a stealth product because there’s not enough feedback that way.

It’s also important to remember that raising money is great but it’s a means to an end. Stay focused on the product and the users.

TC: So generally speaking, how do you think that Disrupt helped build Redbeacon?

Redbeacon: I think there are four main ways. It helped us raise money, as I said before. It also helps early on with business development. It’s hard for large companies to trust you when you’re running on your own money. But having won Disrupt opened doors and gave us credibility. Some of our early partnerships told us that after hearing about us on TechCrunch, it instilled a lot of confidence in the team and the product.

Disrupt also helped us with media relations, not only with TechCrunch but across the board. And it also helped with hiring and recruiting. People were excited to be a part of a team that had won at TC50.

Disrupt NYC is set to be one of our biggest shows yet, with returns from Michael Arrington and MG Siegler, along with a variety of big names like Marissa Mayer, Sarah Tavel, Fred Wilson, and David Lee and more. It’s going to be huge.

If you’re interested in checking out Disrupt and/or the Hackathon yourself, tickets are still on sale here and info on the Hackathon can be found here. Companies who want to join the Battleground can apply for the last remaining spots in Startup Alley. You can find the full agenda here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

One trend we’ve been tracking is the “Internet of Things” — the idea that at some point, all devices will be intelligent and connected, allowing for things like whole home automation. The problem is that most new systems equipped to connect to the Internet are reliant on proprietary software and hardware tacked on by the vendor. So whatever devices do come to market Internet-ready tend to be overly expensive, and don’t play well with others.

That’s where Electric Imp comes in. The startup was founded on the premise of decoupling all the connectivity and intelligence for these connected systems from the devices themselves, and instead, letting those applications be powered by a single tiny chip, lovingly called an “Imp.”

The startup was founded by CEO Hugo Fiennes, who was engineering manager on the first four iPhones, along with former Gmail designer Kevin Fox and software architect Peter Hartley. The Los Altos-based company has seven employees currently, but is looking to expand to 20 within the next six months. To spur that growth, it’s raised a $7.9 million round of financing from Redpoint Ventures and Lowercase Capital.

The Imp looks like an SD card, but is much more powerful — it contains Wi-Fi and an embedded processor — and can be programmed to control or measure any matter of things, based on the type of device it’s inserted into. For consumers, Imp cards will cost about $25 a piece, but can be put in or taken out of compatible devices at any time, depending on how the consumer wants to use them. There will also be a very small monthly subscription fee for consumers who take advantage of Imp-enabled services. While final pricing hasn’t been quite worked out yet, the founders are thinking about a fee that is “less than the cost of a latte” for use of up to 20 Imps in one home.

But before the Imp becomes a mainstream consumer product, hardware vendors need to actually adopt the platform and start adding Imp-compatible slots into their devices. The pitch to them is that, for less than a dollar they will be able to add a slot and create powerful new applications for otherwise dumb devices.

And they can do so without having to worry about hiring specialists to integrate connectivity into the device or increasing the cost of their products by adding Wi-Fi or processors that are otherwise unnecessary. Electric Imp will provide the enabling hardware — the Imp card — and it also will manage the back end service which connects all of the devices. Imp-enabled devices can be controlled either from a web browser or on a smartphone, either through Electric Imp’s own application, or through third-party apps that are developed to take advantage of the new platform.

Fiennes demoed a number of applications to me yesterday, all of which take advantage of the mix-and-match nature of the Imp cards. Users can remotely control lights, or set energy-hogging devices like washing machines to run at times when the cost of power is lowest. You could hook up a monitor to measure moisture in your garden, which could then be wired to the Internet and connected to weather reports to ensure that all your plants are watered appropriately. Or you could set up motion sensors which not only turn on the lights and other devices, but also to monitor when people enter a room and can send alerts if there’s unusual activity — say, someone walking in when no one is usually home, or if an elderly relative hasn’t gotten up and gone to the kitchen by a certain time.

The possibilities really are endless, especially when you consider the number of devices which don’t have connectivity now, because it’s too expensive, but could benefit from some smarts and the ability to monitor and control them from afar. Just as importantly, the Imp could enable hardware from multiple manufacturers to work together, rather than having to rely on a single vendor for a home automation system that requires a major upfront investment and, frankly, probably won’t be updated or age well with time. And because the smarts of the device can be updated from the cloud, manufacturers will be able to remotely monitor and update their products seamlessly, without consumers even knowing.

Electric Imp is already talking to some vendors about integrating its Imp slots onto upcoming hardware devices, and will be shipping a developer preview bundle in late June to give manufacturers all they need to prototype and test out new applications.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

When Dish announced their new ad-skipping tech, response was fairly muted. Sure it was some cool technology – the experience is seamless in that you notice maybe the first second of a commercial and then a little notification pops you over the commercials entirely – but TV execs are reportedly upset by Dish’s unilateral decision.

Fox’s Peter Rice said it was “a strange thing to do” and NBC is still evaluating it. However, what is really interesting is that Dish decided to go ahead with the service at all.

The system works because Dish is currently recording all prime-time network content onto its Hopper DVRs. This content consists of all of the big shows – Grey’s Anatomy, Parks and Recreation, etc. – parceled out and ready to watch. The consumer doesn’t even have to set a reminder. The content is just there.

This is amazing news for broadcast TV. It allows a few unique things to happen. First, it ensures content discovery is forefront in the consumer’s mind. When you roll into the ABC channel, for example, you might want to watch your favorite ABC show (that I can’t think of any ABC shows off the top of my head is a testament to the problems broadcasters are facing right now, but that’s a different post) and you pop into the ABC folder. There, next to your favorite show, is another show that’s gotten great ratings or at least good word of mouth. There are a couple of episodes saved so it’s easy to just drop into the show without any problem. Imagine if, a few years ago, Lost or another huge, sprawling epic drama was available online immediately after it aired. This sort of episode saturation is a new paradigm for TV watching, one that even time-shifting advocates didn’t foresee.

Second, it ensures that every show will get a fair shot and, more important, broadcast shows will be seen in a different, more “premium” light than cable shows. As it exists today, the service only works for prime-time broadcast networks. You can always pop over to HBO GO and the like, but what about the rest of those reality shows like American Pickers, Real Housewives Of Reseda, American Gothic Skull Pickers, and Man Vs. Food Vs. Wild? If you want to view the entire season at once, you’re going to have to figure out some alternative source.

Now we come to the ad skipping. Considering Dish’s Hopper is a win-win for broadcasters and consumers alike, what’s the problem? Dish tried something new and made the unilateral decision to programmatically simulate what consumers are doing anyway. Clearly the networks see this feature as going just a bit too far. Obviously everyone with a DVR skips over commercials. It’s a given and it’s the way things work now. However, for Dish to formalize the process programmatically is a wild move. It’s akin to a movie theatre allowing folks to vote on whether the audience will see those inane pre-feature ads and previews.

I personally believe the value given by making entire seasons available immediately far surpasses any damage ad-skipping could do. By recording every single prime time TV episode, Dish creates fans. These fans will eventually watch that broadcast content live and maybe watch previous episodes in the ad skipping interface. For TV execs to even consider this technology to be bad for the media is evidence of an unnuanced and calcified worldview. But, then again, what else is new?

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Open data platform Factual.com is beefing up its Global Places offering today with three new APIs that will provide mobile developers with access to a ton of new data which can help them build better location-aware apps. But the company notes that the APIs’ launch will be of special interest to mobile ad providers, including mobile ad networks, demand-side platforms and agencies, who are looking for new data points around geography. This is particularly important on mobile where traditional methods of ad targeting – beacons and cookies – aren’t viable.

The Geopluse API (beta) is the first of three, and works to reveal directionally where users intend to go, rather than signaling their arrival at a destination. The API provides everything Factual knows about the location. You provide it latitude and longitude, and Factual returns additional attributes which it calls “pulses.” These pulses use Factual’s network of signals, calculated metrics, and census data, which come from Factual itself, publicly-available data, or from third parties.

The first few “pulses” to become available include:

• Factual Commercial Density: Relative density of businesses near a location
• Factual Commercial Profile: Types of businesses near a location
• Nearest: provides the nearest Factual Place (a business or landmark)
• Demographics: Age, gender, race, median household income for a given location (U.S. only)

The more interesting ones here are the Factual Commercial Density and Factual Commercial Profile. The company has taken its Places data and provided overviews of the density and type of businesses in the area.

A potential use case for this API could involve a brand like Starbucks, which wants to know when, where and to whom it should serve its ads to in order to get the highest yield and conversions. With the API, the company would know not only the exact location of the consumer (the latitude and longitude), but also all the contextual info about and around the location, too.

More “pulses” will arrive in the next few months. Factual says that pricing will depend on use case and usage volume.

The second API is the Reverse Geocoder API (beta) which converts longitude and latitude into an address (U.S. only) or region (49 other countries). There a a few of these out there already from Google, Yahoo and MapQuest, Factual notes. While the company says that it does not see itself getting into the mapping business, it does see a need to serve its own API to complement the other offerings in its Places product.

Finally, there is the world World Geographies API (beta) which is primarily used to translate place names between languages, and determine what cities are found in what regions, what states in what countries, etc. This is another complementary service, as Factual has already published small businesses and landmarks. This adds 6 million more natural and administrative geographies.

Factual admits that there are a few other players that have similar products to those it announced today, but wants to differentiate itself with data (especially in terms of the Commercial Density data, above), speed and scale. The company claims to provide near real-time access to these datasets well-under 100ms.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

In its first-ever earnings report as a publicly traded company, mobile advertising network Millennial Media said its net loss for the first quarter widened to $4 million on increased costs. Revenues were up 53 percent year-over-year to $32.9 million.

Millennial’s shares fell by 7.7 percent in after-hours trading, as the company’s annual forecast missed estimates.  For the year, Millennial is looking at $173 million and 176 million in annual revenues, which would be up by 68 percent from the year before. But that’s actually lower than the $202.8 million analysts were expecting on average, according to a Bloomberg survey. When the company went public two months ago, its shares popped more than 100% on the first day and gave the company a nearly $2 billion valuation. Since then, they’ve settled and fallen by 67 percent, giving the company a market cap of $1.16 billion.

Millennial didn’t share much about eCPMs, a key metric that shows how much the company is earning per 1,000 ad impressions. It’s worth noting because many other consumer web giants including Google and Facebook are facing downward pressure on their average ad prices because mobile rates are so much lower than their desktop equivalents. Google’s cost-per-click growth (or the amount it earns every time a user clicks through on an ad) was down 12 percent year-over-year and down 6 percent quarter-over-quarter — largely because of the difference between mobile and web ads. Facebook similarly had to change its IPO filing last week to say that mobile usage was growing so fast that the company is not able to keep up with the pace in terms of how many ads it serves. Many Facebook pages on the web have as many as seven ads on them, while the mobile app just shows sponsored stories occasionally in the feed.

Millennial didn’t share any numbers that would help us understand how the company is coping with these issues, except to say that better targeting is helping.

“Overall, there is a mix and a shift toware more targeting and engaging ads, which have driven prices up for us,” the chief executive Paul Palmieri said on the call.

As for the quarter itself, about $20.1 million of Millennial’s revenue came from existing clients, while the rest came from new customers. Millennial Media’s footprint is still very U.S. based. Only 12 percent of revenues come from abroad, although they’re growing with help from European markets. The company said fill rates are up as the company expands abroad. Before, those impressions would go unfilled because Millennial didn’t have a large sales team outside of the U.S.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Our action packed Disrupt conference is coming to Pier 94 in New York in less than a week. Get ready, because the agenda is chock full of leaders from the city’s up-and-coming tech industry and, of course, Silicon Valley and the world.

Thirty startups have also been working around the clock to launch at the show. But only one of them can win the Disrupt Cup, take home the $50,000 check and everlasting glory. On hand to judge the best contestants and pick the winner, we’re excited to announce a top set of finals judges….

Tickets are going fast but still available here, and companies aching for the chance to join the Battleground can apply for the last remaining spots in Startup Alley. You can find the full agenda here.

Michael Arrington
General Partner, CrunchFund / Founder, TechCrunch

J. Michael Arrington (born March 13, 1970 in Huntington Beach, California) is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of TechCrunch, a blog covering startups and technology news. Arrington attended Claremont McKenna College (BA Economics, 1992), Stonehill College (BS Computer Science, 1979) and Stanford Law School (JD, 1995), and practiced as a corporate and securities lawyer at two law firms: O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. His clients included idealab, Netscape, Pixar, Apple and a number of startups, venture funds and investment banks. He also co-authored a book on initial public offerings. In 1999, he left WSGR to join RealNames as VP of Business Development and General Counsel. In 2000, he cofounded Achex, an online payments company, that was later acquired by First Data Corp for $32 million. Achex is now the back end infrastructure to Western Union online. Arrington worked in an operational role at a Carlyle backed startup in London, founded and ran two companies in Canada (Zip.ca and Pool.com), was COO to a Kleiner-backed company called Razorgator, and consulted to other companies, including Verisign. In May 2008, Time Magazine named Michael Arrington as one of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Roelof Botha
Partner, Sequoia Capital

Roelof Botha is a partner at Sequoia Capital focusing on financial services, cloud computing, bioinformatics, consumer internet and mobile companies. Roelof sits on the boards of Aliph, Eventbrite, Mahalo, Meebo, Nimbula, Square, TokBox, Tumblr, Unity and Xoom. Roelof is a champion of consumer Web plays and considers himself as “just another consumer.” Roelof’s previous investments at Sequoia include Insider Pages and YouTube. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 2003, Roelof served as the Chief Financial Officer of PayPal during its sale to eBay. Earlier, he worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company. Roelof is a certified actuary (Fellow of the Faculty of Actuaries). Roelof was listed as #23 on Forbes’ 2007 Midas List, which identifies venture capital’s most successful professionals.

Chi-Hua Chien
Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Chi-Hua Chien joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 2007. At KPCB he focuses on investments in consumer web and mobile. He serves on the Board of Directors or works closely with the teams at Booyah, Chegg, Erly, GOGII, Home Value Protection, Klout, Path, Reputation.com, Spotify, and Twitter. Prior to KPCB, Chi-Hua worked with Accel Partners as a Venture Advisor and Associate focusing on software as a service, consumer Internet, and online advertising infrastructure. Chi-Hua was instrumental in Accel’s investments in AdECN (acquired by Microsoft) and Facebook, while also working on the firm’s investments in BitTorrent, fbFund, Glam, Trulia, and YuMe Networks.

Previously, Chi-Hua was the Director of Marketing at hosted software provider Coremetrics, where he led the marketing and inside sales teams as the company grew from 20 to more than 200 customers. He also served as the company’s interim CFO through two rounds of venture funding. Chi-Hua’s prior roles include corporate development at Google, business development at start-up eCoverage, and investment banking with Morgan Stanley’s Technology Group.

Chris Dixon
CEO and Co-founder, Hunch

Chris Dixon currently works as the CEO and Co-founder of Hunch. He is also a contributing writer for TechCrunch. He previously was the CEO and Co-founder of SiteAdvisor, which was acquired by McAfee. Chris is a personal investor in early-stage technology companies, including Skype, TrialPay, DocVerse, Invite Media, Gerson Lehrman Group, ScanScout, OMGPOP, BillShrink, Oddcast, Panjiva, Knewton, and a handful of other startups that are still in stealth mode. In addition to his personal investments, Chris is also a co-founder of Founder’s Collective and the host of TechCrunch TV’s Founder Stories.

Marissa Mayer
VP, Google

As a VP at Google, Marissa Mayer leads the product management and engineering efforts of Google’s local, mobile, and contextual discovery products including Google Maps, Google Maps for Mobile, Local Search, Google Earth, Street View, Latitude and more. At 35 years old, she is also the youngest member of Google’s executive operating committee. During her 11 years at Google, Marissa has led product management and design efforts for Google web search, images, news, books, products, toolbar, and iGoogle. She started at Google in 1999 as Google’s 20th employee and first woman engineer.

Fred Wilson
Partner, Union Square Ventures

Fred Wilson began his career in venture capital in 1987. He has focused exclusively on information technology investments for the past 17 years. In 1996, Fred co-founded Flatiron Partners. While at Flatiron, Fred was responsible for 14 investments including, ITXC, Patagon, Starmedia, TheStreet.com and Yoyodyne. Fred currently serves on the boards of Alacra, Comscore, iBiquity, Return Path, Instant Information and Tacoda Systems.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Samsung has been teasing Galaxy Note users with the promise of Ice Cream Sandwich for months, but now it seems like the consumer electronics giant has finally come through for their phablet fans.

Multiple reports from European Note owners confirm that the long-awaited software update is hitting devices, though how users actually install it seems to depend on their locale.

Dutch Galaxy Note owner Devin Balentina reported that his device received the update over-the-air for instance, while a report from SammyHub points out that German users can nab the update from Samsung’s Kies updater. Not every market has gotten their taste of Ice Cream Sandwich though — I have yet to see any reports from the U.K. for instance, and CNET UK’s Crave blog reports that Samsung is being characteristically quiet on the issue.

Sorry AT&T users, you’ll still have to wait your turn, The new OTA update is only for the international-spec Galaxy Note, and it’ll likely be a while before AT&T finally approves the new software build for mass consumption. But hey, you can always take solace in the fact that your devices have those snappy LTE radios — hopefully you’ve got the coverage to back it up.

Despite a company announcement pointing to a release in during the first quarter of 2012, Samsung pointed out last March that the update would end up going live later than everyone had hoped. To help soften the blow, Samsung also introduced their so-called Premium Suite of Galaxy Note apps like S Note and My Story — rather than spell out what they do I’ll just let you see for yourself:

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

EveryMove, an alum of TechStars’ Seattle accelerator program building what they’ve dubbed a “mileage plan for health benefits, today announced that it has closed a $2.6 million round of series A financing. Participating investors include Penera Blue Cross, Blue Cross, Blue Shield of Nebraska, BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners, Founders Co-op, Summit Capital, Jonathan Sposato, Voyager Capital Partner Geoff Entress, Matt Shobe, William Lohse, BuddyTV Co-founder Andy Liu, Ken Kuntz, and others.

As the startup is currently in private beta, it will be using this infusion of capital to ramp up its team as it prepares to launch into the market more broadly in the third quarter.

So what is EveryMove all about?

Founder and CEO Russell Benaroya tells us that the way health care is set up (in the U.S.) today, the people making healthy lifestyle choices end up subsidizing those who are making unhealthy decisions; instead, they should be rewarded for it. If the country is going crazy for consumer-centric healthcare, then that inherently demands that people be given control over their health (and healthcare).

EveryMove is looking to give consumers control by way of an interactive web and mobile platform that helps them connect and organize their health and fitness activities while turning their lifestyle actions into rewards and incentives within their health plans. The market has been primarily focused on “wellness” and “behavior change,” but wellness, Benaroya says, happens to crowded and employer-centric, while behavior change is actually really hard to get right because building a “one size fits all,” scalable platform tends to do so by sacrificing the individual.

In turn, health providers have less than growing reputations among consumers (let’s be honest here — just ask Castlight) so they’re looking to build closer/better relationships with their customers. Generally speaking, to do this, they’re looking to partner with them to encourage actions that have a positive outcome on their long-term health — and their wallets. (This latter part is, admittedly, hard to believe given where their interests lie, but again, see our Castlight coverage.)

In other words, U.S. health insurance premiums increased by an average of 8 percent between 2008 and 2009 (which has gotten worse since) and health care costs comprise a bigger portion of America’s household budgets year-over-year than most others as costs rise and income growth remain flat. As a result, Americans are trying to be smarter, make better lifestyle decisions to avoid going to the doctor, and EveryMove wants to reward them for doing so.

Instead of going after wellness or behavior change, EveryMove is taking a different approach: Marketing. The service connects people through their lifestyle actions, which are captured through the passive collection of data via health apps, devices, and platforms, with companies that want to engage those healthy customers. This can be plans, employers, or brands, the EverMore CEO tells us, but, importantly it’s the consumer that gets to main control of their data — data which is portable and isn’t tied to their employer or insurance company.

EveryMove plans to monetize its platforms on a cost-per-action basis by taking a fee when users redeem rewards or incentives from their plan, brands, or employer. As EveryMove plans to sit in the middle of the marketplace, it takes a toll on each transaction.

Benaroya has been working on EveryMove for the last two years, working closely with Premera Blue Cross, he says, to understand their goals and objectives as the healthcare landscape changes. Benroya himself is a co-founder of Blink Digital Health, REM Medical, and a former senior associate at Blue Point Capital Partners. Taking the customer development work with the insurance plan and his experience with the marketplace, the founder has been looking to build something that’s not just a “nice to have” app, but a “need to have” source of information that will be critical to core business decision making.

The founder also sees real opportunity long-term in big data around lifestyle analytics — how that data and info can help inform decisions companies are making around positioning their products and services.

The ability to offer health plans that provide customized incentives for leading healthy lifestyles “is key to helping meet both employer and individual needs,” says Kent Marquardt, the executive vice president and CFO of Premera Blue Cross. (Premera is also an investor.) Programs like EveryMove, he says, can help them find better ways to do just that.

For more on EveryMove, check them out at home here. Below you’ll find Benaroya’s pitch from TechStars’ Demo Day:

Article courtesy of TechCrunch