Michael Arrington hopped on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF for a fireside chat with Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures, a very prominent VC firm in Silicon Valley. The two discussed Khosla’s perspective on how companies within his firm’s portfolios get the most out of working with the team.

Khosla is very passionate about assisting his companies with recruiting, even suggesting that talented folks send him their resume.

Khosla went on to discuss what happens when you hire the wrong people, and he says that it’s hard to get a team back on track once those mistakes are made early on.

I spend most of my time recruiting for my companies. You hire the first 15 people and they hire the rest.

As Khosla discussed his practices, he says that it sets them apart from the rest of their competition. Khosla Ventures participates in way more than just investing in many different verticals. Helping companies grow for success makes complete sense, since the firm gets to reap the rewards in the end…hopefully.

Not only is it about hiring the “right” people, but as Khosla has said here on TechCrunch before, you don’t have to be a jerk to be successful. Finding the right spot for someone in a company is key:

If people aren’t performing, put them in the another job where they can perform or fire them.

Disruption is key as well, as some of Khosla’s portfolio companies have taken on the biggest and most difficult problems in the world. On Khosla’s investment on payment service Square:

If you said to someone three years ago that you could compete against PayPal, most people would say that’s a crazy idea, payments are done.

Some of the new things that Khosla’s firm is getting into is the consumerization of healthcare, and he has discussed some of the new companies he’s investing in, including smart chips and apps that help you track your vital signs.

At the end of the day, Vinod Khosla doesn’t even like to refer to himself as a venture capitalist:

I don’t consider myself a VC, I consider myself a mentor.

Other organizations clearly do things differently, including Y Combinator. Give this piece a read for more details:

I Feel Sad Sometimes For Y Combinator Companies That Get So Much Hype

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

On stage today at Disrupt San Francisco 2012 TechCrunch Founder Michael Arrington asked LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman about the enterprise. Then Arrington yawned.  He later said this:

“”I like Ferrari’s, not mufflers.”

Enterprise – it’s boring. It gets that rap all the time. And frankly, for the most part, the stereotype is true. But Hoffman put it in the right context by saying that the next wave of tech IPOs will be enterprise but with a consumer flare. You can see that with the recent news from Workday, which has filed for a $400 million IPO. Workday borrows from the rise of social and mobile technologies to make better work experiences.

It’s Hoffman’s view that a shift in the way we work will have profound impacts.

“I think helping companies do what they do better is another way to change the world,” Hoffman said.

“I’m all for it,” Arrington said. “Yawn.”

The startups are saving the enterprise from its status as the dullard of the tech space. There are some awesome startups here that are doing such things as using visualization techniques to better collaborate. Again – it’s the consumer influence of services like Pinterest that are starting to have an impact on the way work is done in an enterprise setting.

But please – the writing is on the wall. Keep filling my ear with crap about compliance and I will do just what Arrington did this morning.

I will give a big yawn.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

On the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, Michael Arrington got LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman to open up about his initial investment into social networking giant Facebook. Apparently it was $37,500 at a $5M valuation. Talking about getting in on the ground floor:

Mobile is an innovation that needs to be solved given that it’s (Facebook) a billion users and a huge amount of time spent there. I’m very bullish on the prospects.

Regardless of any difficulties that Facebook has had with its IPO, its pretty obvious that Hoffman will make out well on the deal. He’s currently waiting on the lock-ups to pass.

In addition, Hoffman is discussing everything he’s done in the investment world, which of course comes on top of founding LinkedIn. Of course, he’s involved with Greylock Partners, the powerful VC firm. He’s involved in the Hackfest, which just announced its second iteration today.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

During a December 2010 fireside chat, TechCrunch founder (and then-editor) Michael Arrington asked Marissa Mayer what she would do if she hypothetically ran Yahoo.

As you all know, Mayer was VP at Google at the time, but left on Monday to become the CEO of Yahoo. The oddly prophetic interview is even more interesting to watch now that Mayer has taken the Yahoo position.

Here’s the (slightly cleaned up to remove “um,” etc.) Yahoo bit:

Arrington: Do you mind if we do some what-ifs, just for fun? Like, if you ran Yahoo, for example, what would you do?

Mayer laughs

Arrington: Just theoretically. Would you cut back? Lay everyone off, like they’re doing? Would you try to expand in a certain area? I’m just curious.

Mayer: I think if I were Yahoo—I think, one, it’s a difficult job. But I do think Carol’s done a lot of smart things. The partnership on search was smart in many ways. We would’ve liked the partnership to have been with us. But that was smart. I also think that looking at other really interesting brands that are getting a lot of traction on the internet—those are smart acquisitions for them to make to really help broaden out their base, broaden out their platform and ultimately stay relevant.

It’s no longer a hypothetical. The difficult job is Mayer’s and now we get to sit back and see how her thoughts have changed over the past two years and how they will translate into action.

Mayer and Arrington will sit down again at TechCrunch Disrupt in September; the last time Arrington interviewed the Yahoo CEO at Disrupt, it was quite colorful.

The full video is below; if you just want to watch the Yahoo piece, it starts around 28:10

Thanks to Adrianne Jeffries for the heads up.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Happy Saturday, readers! Unless your boss is making you work this weekend, you’ve got two days of freedom ahead of you. If you want to spend that time making new friends or meeting people with similar interests, a new startup called At The Pool can help.

The social network sends users a different match, based on their location, history, interests and intent (their pols) every day in an email. Users are encouraged to connect on- and offline.

“Think of us like the host of a party — someone who knows both of you, what you’re into, where you’re from, and more,” the network’s “about” section reads. “Like any good host, we make an introduction because we know you’ll get along.”

I just joined @At_The_Pool! Join me and get early access at: atthepool.com/?r=CBbCos

— Michael Arrington (@arrington) June 29, 2012

The site officially launches Monday—it’s had beta launches already—with a “Silicon Beach Pool” aimed at the LA Tech scene. However, the At The Pool team has launched a “TechCrunch Pool” for readers that is live now. Readers can go to the site and sign up early using the code “techcrunch.” Once in the site, TechCrunch readers will get matched with one another.

“We’re sort of a mashup between Meetup and Match.com (you join pools like you would a Meetup group, but you’re then interacting and meeting others one-on-one, as Match facilitates),” founder and CEO Alex Capecelatro tells me. “While Facebook is all about connecting you with your friends and family, we aim to connect you with new people you don’t yet know.”

Capecelatro came up with the idea when he was frustrated trying to find someone to go road biking with in a small town in upstate New York. After using sites like Facebook and Meetup, and disliking the notion of using Craigslist or dating sites, he decided to build his own site.

“I realized the Internet is pretty terrible at helping us meet new people,” he says in an email from the company’s Los Angeles headquarters. “This is very obvious when you graduate college, move to a new town, or pick up a new hobby. I set out to build a site to connect with like-minded people in an easy and fun way.”

He launched a beta version to the University of Connecticut and saw it “light up like wildfire.” Capecelatro says they saw very high engagement by connecting people in pre-existing communities.

There are a number of other companies in the same space, including the aforementioned ones. Coffee Meets Bagels connects users with a similar once-a-day introduction, but is focused on dating. Social mobile apps like Highlight and Glancee aim to connect the user with people around them, but Capecelatro points out that At The Pool recommends and tells you “why we think you should know each other,” taking it a step further than geographic proximity.

The company took an early $50,000 seed investment from David Carter. Capecelatro tells me they are currently “in the process of raising a more substantial seed round.” He says At The Pool will be releasing more pools, based on interests and cities, this year, with a heavy focus on meeting like-minded people, as well as considering partnership offers.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

There is a lot to be said about TechCrunch founder and my former boss Michael Arrington, but nothing more true than this; The technology community owes him immensely for the value he created in the six years he built and led the editorial voice of TechCrunch. I can’t wait to see what he creates next.

Arrington has weathered a lot in the time he went from Edgeio co-founder to Crunchfund founder and partner and has undoubtedly learned a few hard-won lessons. Speaking at the Founder’s Institute’s  Eighth Quarterly Founder’s Showcase last week, Arrington imparted the best of those lessons to the entrepreneurs and wannabe entrepreneurs in the crowd.

The most important thing to realize as an entrepreneur, Arrington said, was that although founders need to work hard at getting themselves in the right place at the right time, for the most part success is a matter of luck.

“The strategy of being lucky is all that matters. I raised a fund and I put myself in a position to make money if we’re lucky. That’s where we all are.  How many would-be Mike Moritzes are there out there? Luck plays a huge factor in everything in life. I agree that you make your own luck but you got to be in a position to be there when it happens. You make your own luck, but it’s still luck. If you fail it doesn’t mean you suck, it means the luck didn’t go your way and then you keep trying.

If we say that ‘Failure doesn’t matter it doesn’t make you a loser,’ it also means that success doesn’t make you that much of a winner. To some extent you put yourself in a position where something’s going to happen and if it didn’t work out you try again. We shouldn’t pat ourselves on the back too much when we’re successful, because a lot of it is luck.”

“So how is Arrington going to be a major force moving forward?” interviewer Adeo Ressi asked.

“We’ll make really good investments and make a ton of money,” he responded.

Naturally.

Note: “Luck” speech begins about 20:00 or so in. 

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

For 99 percent of you, the following will be way too

Last night, hundreds of UC Berkeley students like myself sat in a packed auditorium to hear Michael Arrington speak with visiting Berkeley scholar, entrepreneur, and TechCrunch contributor, Professor Vivek Wadhwa. What was expected to be a mild discussion turned into a heated debate. Wadhwa firmly disagreed with Arrington on key topics on the agenda for the night such as the worth of a college education, ethics, and, you guessed it, women in tech.

Arrington started off the talk saying what a room full of professors and college students dreaded to hear—that a college education can hinder instead of help the path of a brilliant entrepreneur. While he thought that for most of us college is a necessary stage for maturing, he half-joked that for the Zuckerbergs out there “The best thing in the world is to go to Harvard for a year and drop out. Everyone knows you were smart enough to get in”.

For Arrington, great entrepreneurs are fearless daredevils who should be willing to take a risk as big as dropping out of college if they’re passionate about their cause. Wadhwa cited the valid example of small-time entrepreneurs who need a college education in order to survive, with Arrington rebutting that “if you think small, you end up small”.

The normally mild-mannered Wadhwa became visibly impassioned about the dearth of women in technology. Wadhwa argued that Arrington lived in an “ivory tower”, oblivious to the ugly prejudice that Wadhwa has himself faced as an immigrant entrepreneur in North Carolina. Arrington admitted that as a white male, he could not speak about gender or race discrimination firsthand. Yet Arrington did point to his TC colleagues (and boss) as well as women in the audience who are living examples of the success and support women in tech are able to achieve.

As expected, Arrington riled up the crowd with more bold statements and colorful analogies. You’ll have to watch to understand why he thinks “entrepreneurs are like pirates” or why he feels pressured to get a sex change.

The arguing did make for great TV, but the most interesting part of the lecture were the undeniable words of wisdom Arrington and Wadhwa had for their young audience. A piece of advice both panelists agreed on was to never forget the importance of ethics. As Arrington said, “Never hurt anyone to benefit yourself…but do something amazing, however you define it, and change the world”. That advice also serves as an important tip for young entrepreneurs hoping to gain exposure on TechCrunch: aim to change the world, because as Michael said “I’m not interested in the people who aren’t”.

Thanks to CalTV and camerapersons Matt Grobar and Tiffany Hsu for providing the video.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington has made it very clear that he’s an Android fanboy. Hell, he may have started the movement (which is now rivaling iPhone fanboydom). And yet, according to a source close to the situation, he plans to buy an iPhone 4 when it launches on June 25. How good is the source? Well, it’s Arrington himself.

As regular readers may know, Mike and I tend to fight in our internal Yammer room regarding iPhone versus Android. Mike posts those from time to time. So I figured it’s fine for me to divulge his startling (to everyone but me) admission. “Yeah ok I’m buying an iphone,” Arrington wrote in Yammer yesterday.

This is humorous for a couple of reasons. First, Mike has never actually seen the iPhone 4, nor has he used one. I have and Jason has, but Mike has not. Even some iPhone fanboys are waiting until they get their hands on one to decide if they should buy it. Not Mike.

Second, just this morning, Mike was ripping me for liking the iPhone. “MG Siegler irrationally loves the iPhone and it has become an important fashion accessory and self confidence crutch in his San Francisco hipster lifestyle.” Again, I do love this new iPhone, but it’s because I have actually used it.

My former colleague Eric Eldon left a good comment on Mike’s post: “I’ll start calling MG a ‘San Francisco hipster’ when he moves to the Mission, dyes his hair black, gets an armsleeve tattoo, starts listening to emo, drinks Pabst instead of better beers, rides a fixie — and switches to an Android device just to go against the mainstream of what’s considered cool (the iPhone).“

He’s dead-on. Hipsters don’t love the iPhone anymore. It’s way too popular. Hipsters want they device that spits in the face of the mainstream iPhone. They want an Android phone.

When I questioned why Mike would make the move back to iPhone land, he quipped, “why take a strong position on something unless you fully intend to reverse that decision dramatically at some point?” Fair point, though my strong position was that he was going to change his strong position. And I’m holding firm.

Likely knowing I was going to call him out, Mike went on to clarify, “just to be clear, it will still be my second phone. must have android/google voice for primary. But the EVO frankly sucks.” Second phone or not, that’s still him supporting the “Apple dictatorship.” Also, if you see him around, make note of which phone he’s actually using more.

Speaking of the EVO sucking, Mike does back up my stance that the device is no good. After a string of improving devices, Android took a step back with the EVO 4G. And Mike should know, he’s switched his phone like four times over the course of the past few months to be on the latest and greatest Android phone of the week. Me? I’ve had the iPhone the entire time.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Today at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York, Square co-founder Jack Dorsey took the stage to show a demo of Square running on the iPhone. To do the demo, Dorsey had a good idea: take money from Michael Arrington.

Dorsey took $100 from Mike with the swipe of a credit card. Mike was concerned about Dorsey’s intentions for the money, but it will actually go towards Charity Water as a donation, Dorsey assured. He then sat down to talk a bit with Mike and Erick Schonfeld about Square, and his experience raising funding.

At the end of the interview, Mike asked the audience if anyone would be willing to use Square to donate $1,000 to Charity Water. Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis graciously volunteered. Then, after being humorously called out, so did Google (thanks to developer evangelist Don Dodge).

Funny stuff for a good cause. Watch it all in the video below.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch