Airbrite, a Y Combinator-backed e-commerce startup, is debuting its first product today called Celery (its name a play on the world “sell”). Celery is designed to be a “pre-commerce” store builder – or, in other words, it allows anyone to start selling ahead of having a product to ship. That means sellers can start taking credit cards now, then charge when their product is ready to launch. And in case you couldn’t figure it out by that description, Airbrite is hoping the product will be a hit with those raising funds using crowdfunding.

In fact, says Airbrite co-founder Chris Tsai, the company has already seen some traction with crowdfunders during its private beta, which rolled out to hundreds of users this March. But, he clarifies, Celery isn’t just designed for those merchants – it’s for anyone in any business who needs to enable pre-commerce on any platform.

Some of its early customers include Kickstarter crowdfunder the3doodler.com, e-commerce site dagnedover.com, connected hardware maker breathometer.com, and onesmall.biz.

Tsai says the product itself was inspired by the shift the team saw happening in commerce – that sellers want to establish more personal connections with buyers, and vice versa. But to do so, they need tools that give them more flexibility. ”E-commerce is kind of like  blogging was five years ago. It was really challenging to get a good CMS up without a serious backend developer, then came things like Tumblr and Blogger which made it really easy for anybody to get a blog up and running,” Tsai explains.

“It’s really hard today to get an e-commerce storefront that flexible and available anywhere,” he continues. “We want to make it easy to embed an e-commerce touchpoint wherever you are – whether it’s your website, your mobile app, on Facebook, or even on Google Glass.”

In addition to Tsai, who previously led mobile commerce initiatives for Groupon overseas, Celery’s founding team includes Brian Nguyen, whose background is in social commerce, and Peter Shih, a key developer on LinkedIn’s iPhone development team, who also worked at Foursquare. Their diversity of experience with social, commerce, and multiple platforms helps to inform their decisions as to how to proceed with Celery.

During their time in Y Combinator, the company was building its API and e-commerce platform, though originally with more emphasis on their support for mobile.

Celery is actually built on top of Stripe, which makes it similar to newly launched MoonClerk, another e-commerce startup whose focus is on one-time and recurring payments. But it also competes in the broader e-commerce space with giants like PayPal and Google, as well as startups aiming to simplify the experience including Ribbon, Chirpify, Soldsie, Sellfy, Gumroad, and more.

Stripe enables Celery’s flexible payment processing, but Celery’s platform also allows for pre-order management, pre-order customer service, tracking via analytics, plus support for coupons, emails to customers, and more – the whole checkout layer on top of payments.

The company charges a 2 percent commission on transactions, in addition to Stripe’s 2.9 percent + $0.30 payment processing fees.

In the future, Airbrite will introduce support for volume and bulk pricing for larger sellers, for pre-orders via Celery, and for general e-commerce, the company offers an open API.

Based in San Francisco, Celery’s team of five has seed funding from YC and SV Angel, but declined to disclose additional investments, only stating that it’s in a “healthy” place right now, and is not looking to raise.

Interested users can sign up for Celery here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Change.org got its start in 2007 as a social network for non-profits and for project-based giving. For years, growth was slow for the fledgling social action platform, but, over the last year, that changed dramatically. Change.org has grown from six million users in early 2012 to more than 35 million users today, and, as a result, has become one of the largest and fastest growing companies of its kind.

In fact, this growth has led Change.org to take on its first round of outside financing in its six-year history. The company announced this morning that it has taken on a sizable $15 million investment led by the Omidyar Network, the philanthropic investment firm created by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife, Pam.

The firm, which has also backed platforms like Meetup and micro-lending giant Kiva.org, will be taking a minority (and non-controlling) stake in Change.org, even without the promise of a traditional liquidity event — as the company has expressly stated that it will not sell or IPO.

Other investors in the round, which brings the startup’s total capital to around $20 million thanks to previous angel investments, includes Uprising, a new “mission-aligned” San Francisco-based fund, among others.

Part of what makes Change.org unique (and appealing to investors) is that, unlike many others mission driven companies of its ilk, the startup is decidedly for-profit and is certified as a B corporation. It’s a similar approach to the one taken by sites like Rally.org, though it runs counter to an exciting new wave of non-profit startups, like the much-buzzed about Watsi, for example, wich is Y Combinator’s first not-for-profit incubation.

Change.org Founder and CEO Ben Rattray tells us that both becoming a for-profit company, while simultaneously proclaiming that his company will never go public or seek an acquisition, aren’t decisions that were made lightly. Not, at least in the latter case, to simply to attract attention. Rattray and company are on a mission to prove to startups, investors (and the world) that it’s possible to build a socially-minded, mission-driven business without being a non-profit. A business that can have a real impact, but also make money and afford to hire the same level of talent that the Facebooks and Googles of the world attract regularly.

That’s been a stigma that non-profit and mission-driven organizations have had to wrestle with for some time. While a whole new generation of people have grown up on the social activism of Twitter, Facebook and Reddit and want to make a difference while making money, the perception that it’s impossible to do both remains.

“If we’re going to build real tools that help people create change, we need to generate revenue,” the founder says. “Many of my friends told me I was crazy to seek venture capital, but if we want to be fast, to build an innovation-focused business and create the kind of scale you find in the for-profit world, we need this capital to help us get there.”

Now that it’s reached 35 million users, Change.org wants to encourage more social enterprise investors and help evangelize for the development of a third, alternative means of creating liquidity. Whether it’s stock buybacks or some form of dividends, mission-driven businesses need a method that allows them to remain independent without seeking a one-time liquidity event.

Granted, the founder continues, these kind of social enterprise businesses are working over the long-term, 15 to 20 year windows, which is beyond the scope of most venture capitalists. “I have no doubt this is going to change, that eventually more investors are going to start backing socially-conscious businesses,” Rattray says, “but that support probably won’t come from existing funds; instead, it may come from sources like large foundations.”

Either way, by focusing on being fast, on hitting scale and generating revenue (the company hit $15 million in revenue in 2012), the founder says that the company has made an effort to offer comparable compensation to the big tech companies, even if it can’t offer the same perks on the equity side. Instead, it uses a different hook: Join us, and you can actually help make a difference in the world.

This hook, whether it appeals to your or not, has seen the company grow to over 170 employees in more than 18 countries over the last year. But, even if Change.org eventually runs aground, Rattray tells us, the key is to show other startups and investors that there’s opportunity to create big, sustainable businesses within this space, which offer social and financial returns.

When asked what pushed Change.org to the tipping point early last year, which has led to those 35 million users (nearly half of which are international), the founder credits simplicity. Rather than trying to be everything to everyone, he said, the company focused exclusively on petitions; in other words, making it easy for users to create and sign digital petitions.

While this may sound too simple, or like it just encourages “lazy clicktivism” instead of true activism (as Liz points out), Rattray says that the key has been embedding its petition tech within social communities.

Twitter and Facebook have emerged in the last five years as remarkably effective advocacy and community organization tools, but they’re not built to harness real, sustained social movements, the founder says. By embedding petitions within social communities and by allowing people to find out what kind of movements or campaigns are happening now, are happening locally and by highlighting the most effective campaigns, Change.org can go beyond just being a simple “online petition site.”

Skeptics may roll their eyes at that statement, but SurveyMonkey, now a billion-dollar company, would probably say the same about surveys. And, for Change.org, when 35 million people have used the site, it doesn’t really matter, does it?

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

After announcing its deal to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion, mostly in cash, Yahoo today started to lay out some of the details for how it intends to make use of the property while trying to stick to its promise “not to screw it up.” Expect more advertising by next year as well as more Tumblr content on Yahoo properties, but more of a cautious step as to how Yahoo will deal with some of Tumblr’s more NSFW content.

Here are some of the more interesting details revealed in the call:

What are Tumblr ads going to look like? Tumblr apparently made only $13 million in revenues last year but CEO David Karp apparently thinks the site is “ready” to make more now that it understands its users, according to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. But she also noted that they will be working from a challenged position, not just because of user resistance but because Karp himself has been “skeptical” about online ads.

In the conference call, Mayer made an early reference to how Tumblr would be able to make good use of Yahoo’s advertising technology, in ways that fit Tumblr’s so-far successful, image-based, quick-blogging, youth-oriented format — what she called “native advertising formats.”

As one example, she pointed to an ad format that Yahoo launched at the end of April, in-stream ads that it runs on its news pages. “On Tumblr we feel we can monetize in ways that are meaningful and add to user experience,” she said. She cited the Tumblr dashboard, or as she called it, the inbox for the blogs you follow. “Today Tumblr already does some ads in that feed. We would like to look at that and understand how to introduce more ads where the ads fit the expectations and follow that form and function.” She also noted that Yahoo may possibly work with bloggers to provide ads that will be run with their permission.

On top of this, expect to see more search ads: there are also plans to integrate Yahoo’s search functionality into the site as well. “We think there is a complelling search story,” said Mayer. “Their body is 50b posts and 5 billion posts of original content so search is already vast. We see an opportunity to integrate with search and provide that. That’s one area we are excited by the acquisition.”

Throughout this, a focus on trying to be Tumblr-centric about whatever Yahoo tries to do there. “It’s not a choice between creativity and monetization,” insisted Mayer.

So when are those ads coming? CFO Ken Goldman said that ad revenues from Tumblr will be “modest” this year — the acquisition is not expected to close until the second of of 2013 — but that they will “ramp up” in 2014 “and beyond.” “We do think those revenues will start monetizing materially [and] will contribute to revevenues in 2014 and beyond,” he said on the call, “not just standalone for Tumblr but also incrementally, helping Yahoo to growth.”

Porn? The NSFW, notorious part of Tumblr was never referred to by name, but an analyst did ask about what Yahoo, while courting mainstream brands to market to that attractive Tumblr audience, would do about content that is not “brand safe”. “The richness and breadth of the content… is what makes it more exciting,” enthused Mayer. “In terms of addressing concerns around brand safety we need to have good tools for retargeting.” [Another acquisition, methinks? In any case, no outright announcement that Yahoo intends to get rid of all those sites that Tumblr has more or less accepted into the fold.]

Mayer continued: “Tumblr is now at the point that they do know what it is and what makes sense to monetize in way that is tasteful.” She also mentioned due diligence but also something else, effectively implying that Yahoo will figure out a way of getting around the NSFW content and serving ads where they want them to go, because that’s what the advertisers want: “There are a lot of marketers eager to participate in Tumblr platform and the demographics,” she said.

What does the $1.1 billion “substantially in cash” mean? Goldman noted that it’s effectively an all-cash deal, save for some shares in Yahoo for David Karp. He also noted that Yahoo still has “ample cash” for more acquisitions and investments, to the tune of about $6.2 billion. These will not likely be along the lines of Tumblr in terms of size. “This is an exceptional company and team,” she said of Tumblr. At 300 million monthly unique users, Yahoo is paying about $3.67 per user for the acquisition.

Complementary properties. Mayer made a lot of the fact that Tumblr and Yahoo actually fit “really beautifully together,” like South America and Africa, in her words. In addition to Yahoo skewing older and Tumblr skewing younger, “We are strong on sports, finance and news; Tumblr’s strong on architeture, travel and fashion. We need great tools for content publishing and creation. They have them. Tumblr prides itself as a home for brands. Yahoo is all about brands.”

Tumblr comes to Yahoo. While a lot of the expectation so far has been about how Yahoo may mess up or spiff up or monetize up Tumblr, another theme that emerged during the call was the idea of Tumblr content going out to Yahoo properties — a way of attracting users to Yahoo that may not have gone there before.

“Our strategy is to let Tumblr be Tumblr,” said Mayer. “There are some who will always prefer Tumblr and will never come to Yahoo. [But] as we pull Tumblr content into our news feed and media experiences it will cause them to become that much more interesting and richer and will cause more to come to Yahoo. I imagine engagement will improve as we incorporate that content.”

Flickr. There is a separate news conference today that will likely concentrate on updates to Flickr, but today Mayer appeared to douse out speculation that it will be a move to begin integrating its online photo site with Tumblr in any way: “In terms of how the content of Tumblr evolves it depends on the creators,” Mayer said in answer to a question of what this acquisition will mean for Flickr. “It’s something that we will turn our attention to in the future. It will provide great storage, but we will see how those two cousins should relate to each other.

Image: Tumblr (where else)

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Zynga has apparently told the makers of the dating website CupidWithFriends that they need to change the site’s name, because it allegedly infringes on Zynga’s trademarks.

CupidWithFriends was built by the startup Apartment 7 (which also released the dating apps Flock and Wednesday Night). The site launched a couple of months ago, allowing users to build and edit dating profiles for their friends.

Apartment 7 co-founder Jared Tame just forwarded me a copy of the letter from Zynga’s lawyers. I’ve pasted the full letter at the end of this post, but the gist is that users are likely to think that CupidWithFriends is associated in some way with Zynga (which acquired the developer of the With Friends mobile gaming franchise, a franchise that recently expanded with the launch of Running With Friends). So the social gaming company is demanding that CupidWithFriends change its name by May 24.

Tame said he has “no plans to change the name of the product,” adding,”At the end of the day, we’re busy trying to innovate in the dating space and dealing with Zynga would be a major distraction to us. I think they should be more focused on innovating rather than targeting month-old startups like us.”

I emailed Zynga for confirmation and details, but a spokesperson declined to comment. When I ran a search on the US Patent and Trademark Office’s website (direct links to specific filings don’t seem to be working for me), I did find a trademark filing for “With Friends” in relation to computer game software and entertainment services.

Tame isn’t the only one building an app named using a “with friends” name. There’s also Bang With Friends (which has other problems, as it was recently booted from the Apple App Store) — I asked the company whether it has received a similar letter from Zynga, but it declined to comment.

Here’s the full letter to CupidWithFriends:

Dear Sir or Madam:

We serve as intellectual property counsel to Zynga Inc. (“Zynga”). Among other things, Zynga publishes and owns intellectual property rights in the ‘WITH FRIENDS™ family of social games, which includes Words With Friends®, Chess With Friends®, Scramble With Friends®, Hanging With Friends™, Matching With Friends™, Gems With Friends™ and Games With Friends®, as well as other ‘WITH FRIENDS games in various stages of development (collectively the ‘WITH FRIENDS Family of Trademarks). Each of Zynga’s games using the ‘WITH FRIENDS Family of Trademarks is published and played by millions of users on various social networking portals, including Facebook, Android and iPhone.

Zynga has consistently used and promoted the ‘WITH FRIENDS Family of Trademarks together as a family and, as a result of Zynga’s extensive marketing efforts and commercial success, the ‘WITH FRIENDS Family of Trademarks is strongly identified by consumers with Zynga’s reputation for quality.

It has come to our attention that CupidWithFriends has developed and launched an application called “Cupid With Friends”. CupidWithFriends’ use of the name “Cupid With Friends” for an online application is confusingly similar to the ‘WITH FRIENDS Family of Trademarks owned by Zynga, and users are likely to believe, erroneously, that CupidWithFriends’ application is published, sponsored, endorsed by or associated with Zynga. CupidWithFriends’ use of “Cupid With Friends” also dilutes the distinctiveness of Zynga’s famous ‘WITH FRIENDS Family of Trademarks.

Zynga has invested substantial time and resources in developing and promoting the ‘WITH FRIENDS Family of Trademarks, and it vigorously protects its rights in its marks, both collectively and individually. Zynga hereby demands that CupidWithFriends immediately cease use of the name “Cupid With Friends” in connection with its online application, and refrain from further exploitation of the goodwill that Zynga has developed in its ‘WITH FRIENDS Family of Trademarks.

We anticipate that you will accede to this demand, and ask that CupidWithFriends confirm by Friday, May 24, 2013 that it has ceased use of the name “Cupid With Friends” in connection with its online application. Nothing contained in this letter constitutes an express or implied waiver of any rights, remedies, or defenses of Zynga, all of which are expressly reserved.
Very truly yours,
/s/

Dennis L. Wilson
Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Austin, I wish I knew how to quit you. It’s only been a few months since TC ventured down south to check out SXSW, but it wasn’t enough. We’re returning on May 30 with the legendary TC Meetup + Pitch-off, and tickets are selling out fast so pay attention and get ‘er done.

The TechCrunch Meetup + Pitch-Off is an event wherein tech fanboys, entrepreneurs, readers, and even a few chicks can join us for some booze, conversation, and a generally merry time. Plus, entrepreneurs looking to show off their stuff can apply to be in the 60-second pitch-off competition. The startups will have one minute to wow a panel of judges, including TC staffers and local VCs, using only their words. No demos. No PowerPoint presentations. Just pure entrepreneurial energy.

The Austin Meetup + Pitch-Off will be held atThe Stage On Sixth promptly at 6pm on May 30, and will come to a close around 10pm. We’ll have plenty of booze, live entertainment in the form of that 60-second pitch-off contest and there will even be some prizes and a fireside chat with a local Austin luminary, Bijoy Goswami.

First place in the pitch-off will receive a table in Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2013. Second Place will receive two tickets to the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt, and Third Place will receive one ticket to TechCrunch Disrupt SF. And that’s just the start of it.

Our NY Meetup + Pitch-Off yielded some excellent Disrupt companies. PaddleYou was spotted in Hardware Alley after coming in third at the Pitch-Off, while runners up Talkz and winner 3DLT both made it into the Disrupt Battlefield.

The only condition is that these products must currently be in  beta. Go ahead and apply here. Hurry up because we’re in the process of selecting companies and will announce the finalists next Wednesday.

Of course, what’s a stage without an audience? And how will the judges know how to feel but if not for the difference between a dead-eyed mass of heads bowed to smartphones and a group of people excitedly tweeting their favorite picks and pics about the badass event. Cause let’s face it, ya’ll are going to be on your phones the whole time. (So will I.)

This is why you should head on over here and buy tickets. The ticket is only $5 and includes drinks. 21 and older only, please.

We want to see you in Austin and we want you in our pitch-off. Let’s make this happen.

Our sponsors help make events happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our sponsorship team here sponsors@techcrunch.com.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

In a post on Google+ today, Google CEO Larry Page discussed for the first time publicly the voice problems he’s been experiencing. It doesn’t sound like Page is experiencing life-threatening medical problems, but it has become a topic of interest every time he speaks publicly. During the last earnings call, Page actually spoke for a long time, albeit a bit labored, and answered questions at the end of the call.

He’s addressed his fellow Googlers over the years, letting them know that nothing was “seriously wrong.” He had to skip I/O last year because of these issues, and then skipp the next few earnings calls.

Here’s his post, where he says that his problems started some 14 years ago:

About 14 years ago, I got a bad cold, and my voice became hoarse. At the time I didn’t think much about it. But my voice never fully recovered. So I went to a doctor and was diagnosed with left vocal cord paralysis. This is a nerve problem that causes your left vocal cord to not move properly. Despite extensive examination, the doctors never identified a cause — though there was speculation of virus-based damage from my cold. It is quite common in cases like these that a definitive cause is not found.

While this condition never really affected me — other than having a slightly weaker voice than normal which some people think sounded a little funny — it naturally raised questions in my mind about my second vocal cord. But I was told that sequential paralysis of one vocal cord following another is extremely rare.

Fast forward to last summer, when the same pattern repeated itself — a cold followed by a hoarse voice. Once again things didn’t fully improve, so I went in for a check-up and was told that my second vocal cord now had limited movement as well. Again, after a thorough examination, the doctors weren’t able to identify a cause.

Thankfully, after some initial recovery I’m fully able to do all I need to at home and at work, though my voice is softer than before. And giving long monologues is more tedious for me and probably the audience. But overall over the last year there has been some improvement with people telling me they think I sound better. Vocal cord nerve issues can also affect your breathing, so my ability to exercise at peak aerobic capacity is somewhat reduced. That said, my friends still think I have way more stamina than them when we go kitesurfing! And Sergey says I’m probably a better CEO because I choose my words more carefully. So surprisingly, overall I am feeling very lucky.

Interestingly, while the nerves for your vocal cords take quite different routes through your body, they both pass your thyroid. So in searching for a cause for both nerves that was an obvious place to look. I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis in 2003. This is a fairly common benign inflammatory condition of the thyroid which causes me no problems. It is unclear if this is a factor in the vocal cord condition, or whether both conditions were triggered by a virus.

In this journey I have learned a lot more about voice issues. Though my condition seems to be very rare, there are a significant number of people who develop issues with one vocal nerve. In seeing different specialists, I met one doctor — Dr. Steven Zeitels from the Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital Voice Center — who is really excited about the potential to improve vocal cord nerve function. So I’ve arranged to fund a significant research program through the Voice Health Institute, which he will lead. Thanks a bunch to my amazing wife Lucy, for her companionship through this journey and for helping oversee this project and get it off the ground. Also, thanks to the many people who have helped with advice and information many of whom I have not had a chance to thank yet.

Finally, we’ve put together a patient survey to gather information about other people with similar conditions. As it’s fairly rare, there’s little data available today — and the team hopes that with more information they can make faster progress. If you have similar symptoms you can fill it out here: voicehealth.org/ip

The medical condition that Page mentions in his post, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, is dangerous if it goes untreated, but as Page points out, he was diagnosed in 2003.

With Page missing public appearances and earnings calls, some pundits and shareholders wondered if this was a situation similar to former Apple CEO Steve Jobs. During Jobs’ final years at Apple, his physical condition was a constant target of speculation, leading people to wonder if Apple could maintain its forward progress without him. It’s unknown if he’ll be keynoting tomorrow’s I/O conference, but this is definitely a calculated announcement ahead of the event.

In typical Page and Google fashion, he will be setting up a fund to aid research for the Voice Health Institute.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

“Power is a lot like real estate. It’s all about location, location, location.” — Frank Underwood, House of Cards

At this very moment, Mark Zuckerberg’s political lobby, FWD.us, is probably taken aback at how reviled it has become, both from the public and its own members. After all, there are countless political technology lobbies, including Facebook’s own Political Action Committee, which routinely offer Republican candidates campaign cash for quid pro quo political favor. So, why, after discovering FWD.us indirectly supporting the controversial Keystone Pipeline initiative, have would-be supporters flooded their Facebook page with scathing comments, and its A-list supporters, such as Tesla’s Elon Musk, ditched the group?

Unlike other lobbies, FWD.us burst on to the scene with a very public op-ed from its celebrity founder, promising to galvanize the latent civic passions of Silicon Vally’s netizens in a noble crusade to advance the knowledge society. While one hand extended towards grassroots supporters, the other reached into its wallet pocket and discretely doled out funds to controversial candidates.

There’s a reason most lobbies don’t bother with grassroots activism: communities don’t get excited about the kinds of soul-crushing moral compromise necessary in DC politics. So, when FWD.us rolled up with millions in hand claiming to be the voice of the technologists, those who felt misrepresented freaked out.

Even more confusing, when confronted, FWD.us chose to do something no other major organization in technology has done: it remained silent. Even the notoriously tight-lipped Apple holds a press conference after public uproar.

Californians haven’t been become jaded to the kinds of secrecy common for Wall Street banks and campaign SuperPACs. The unfazed backdoor dealings caricatured in Netflix’s (addicting) House of Cards series may work for lobbies based in our nation’s capitol, but Californians evidently won’t tolerate it in their backyard.

“I revised the parameters of my promise.” – Frank Underwood

Twitter co-founder Evan Williams tweeted a link to a scathing blog post from former Branch CEO, Josh Miller, explaining,

“In service of noble causes, FWD.us is employing questionable lobbying techniques, misleading supporters, and not being transparent about the underlying values and long-term intentions of the organization. More discouragingly, the leaders of the technology industry (and of FWD.us) have built their careers on bringing meaningful change to the world. They should be doing the same in Washington.”

FWD.us would-be grassroots supporters agree, “Will Fwd.us prostitute climate destruction & other values to get a few engineers hired & get immigration reform?”, wrote one commenter on their Facebook page.

Folks in San Francisco had a sense that FWD.us understood technologists’ natural aversion to Washington culture, “People in tech have often felt a cultural disconnect from the political process, which is a shame considering we are naturally idealistic,” went a press release of FWD.us’s launch last month.

True to their word, unlike any other lobby, they were building tools for grassroots activism, with the audacious aim of bottling the rare Internet flash mob protests that brought down the entertainment industry-funded, Stop Online Piracy Act, and helped smartphone taxi service, Uber, overcome the Washington DC regulators.

But, unlike Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is actually planning a social media campaign to push for Immigration reform, FWD.us’s grassroots promise is nowhere to be found.

“There’s a value in having secrets.” – Frank Underwood

Like many of us at TechCrunch, tech luminaries have been begging FWD.us for a hint of transparency, “It’d be easier to believe that FWD.us will be a positive force if we knew the full breadth of its agenda,” wrote popular blogger and entrepreneur, Anil Dash. Unfortunately, they refuse to talk to anyone. Even at our own Disrupt conference, Director Joe Green didn’t (or couldn’t) be interviewed, instead opting for a generic story about the value of immigration reform.

See, their strategy feels like patronizing, as though us overly-idealistic Californians can’t possible deal with the realities of DC politicking. As Dash concludes, not only can we handle the truth, we’re begging for a dose of reality, if it’s the best way forward,

“It’s already clear that with FWD.us, the tech industry is going to have to reckon with exactly how real the realpolitik is going to get. If we’re finally moving past our innocent, naive and idealistic lack of engagement with the actual dirty dealings of legislation, then let’s try to figure out how to do it without losing our souls.”

“Friends make the worst enemies.” – Frank Underwood

What have been the results?–near unanimous condemnation from every corner of Silicon Valley. Just last week, superstar innovator Elon Musk, made a very public departure, after a list of environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, boycotted Facebook over FWD.us-funded ads that praised Republicans for supporting the Keystone pipeline (below)

Ironically, the group can’t post a single update on Facebook without being flooded with angry comments. Just 18 hours ago, after FWD.us posted about a congressional immigration hearing, 50% of the comments are about Keystone, “How can you justify completely selling out on he keystone pipeline in order to further your own immigration agenda? This is politics at its worst.”

In other words, FWD.us poisoned its only mechanism for grassroots activism: social media. Forget Twitter, forget Youtube, forget Tumblr. Every conceivable social platform permits open dialog, which has now become the bane of their existence.

A Way FWD (Pun Intended)

When we first wrote about FWD.us, the reader comments were largely positive. Most readers (including myself) were excited to see what a team of technology titans could accomplish. But, since then, the suspect secrecy is killing their trustworthiness.

Their calculation is clear: a win on immigration reform will absolve their sins. They’re wrong. Since they’ve chosen to mimic other lobbies, their accomplishments will be indistinguishable. So, each of their investors could just as easily fund a tech lobby employing the same tactics without the public heat.

Personally, I like the organization and its mission. We routinely advocate for many of the same issues and carry the voices of their partners. But, evidently, FWD.us underestimated just how little tolerance their supporters have for compromising the value of truthfulness.

I  understand the consequences of writing this piece: when Joe Green eventually does speak, it certainly won’t be with me. But, until then, I’ll leave them with one thought. If FWD.us is so committed to traditional DC politics, perhaps they should also take Frank Underwood’s advice on transparency, “There is no better way to overpower a trickle of doubt than a flood of naked truth.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Looks like Bebo, once an early star in social networking, is progressing to the next step in the long and messy struggle between majority shareholder Criterion Capital Partners and minority shareholders that include co-founder Michael Birch, Hecker Consultancy and SV Angel: Bebo.com, Inc. has filed a voluntary petition for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in the Central District of California. First spotted by the blog Chapter 11 Cases, this appears to be the latest development in a case that was first filed in February of this year, in which some of the smaller shareholders requested for the courts to appoint a receiver to take control of the company after they judged that it had been mis-managed by Criterion.

This appears to be what happened. According to the Chapter 11 filing (embedded below), the receiver that got appointed in the Bebo case, after the February motion, was Michael Ong, who is listed as an investing partner at Burke Capital Corporation. Burke lists as its specialties “Capital Sourcing, Crisis Management, Growth & Value Accretion, Exits & Harvest.” We have also reached out to Ong for more detail on what comes next — whether it will be a sale of whole or part of the assets with an attempt to restructure the remaining business.

Chapter 11 Cases lists the largest unsecured creditors in the case as the “IRS ($380,000); Criterion Capital ($314,000 – disputed); AOL Advertising ($120,900 – subject to setoff, according to Bebo); Quality Technology Services ($120,000) and e-DBA Limited ($43,571).”

The February suit, as we reported at the time, might lead to the removal of Adam Levin as Bebo’s CEO. And according to his LinkedIn profile, the appears to be what happened, with his role as CEO at the company ending in February 2013 (although, confusingly, under his name on his profile card, Levin still lists “chief executive officer at Bebo”). Levin is also MD of Criterion Capital Partners, a position he retains.

We have reached out to Levin, as well as two of the shareholders, Michael Birch (also one of the co-founders) and Richie Hecker of Hecker Consultancy, for more detail.

Once a fast-growing social network that was particularly popular in the UK and Ireland — in the UK in 2008 (when Facebook was much smaller) it claimed to have 40 million users who spent an average of 40 minutes each on the site. Bebo was bought by (TechCrunch owner) AOL for $850 million in 2008 but then sold to Criterion for $10 million only two years later.

Prior to the February 2013 motion, in April 2012, minority shareholders had filed a $5 million suit against Criterion for “destroying” the site, in their words. Competition from much bigger and stronger players like Facebook may have been the biggest pressure on Bebo — which turned to various avenues like original video content to drum up more usage (perhaps ahead of its time, considering the move once more to online original video content) but the shareholders allege that the site’s owners didn’t help that situation.

After apparently defaulting on a lease for its San Francisco offices, Levin then allegedly moved the company down to Los Angeles without consulting the board — LA is where Bebo is now listed as being headquartered on current Chapter 11 filing. The lawsuit also claimed Levin paid himself $14,000 a month as CEO even though he wasn’t working full-time at the company and was focused on other work for Criterion. Moreover, the company didn’t hold any board meetings for at least 20 months and didn’t turn over financial information about the performance of the company over to the board.

The February 2013 motion added more kindling to that fire, claiming that Levin didn’t pursue leads for the sale of Bebo to interested parties like Tagged and AdKnowledge, with the latter offering to pay $15 million plus a $15 million earnout.

On the consumer front, Bebo has also been somewhat quiet: the site’s official Twitter account hasn’t been updated since November 2012, and its @TeamBebo support account has not tweeted since 2011. It’s suffered a few bouts of downtime, too, the most recent being earlier this week.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

While it would take you a million lifetimes to watch all the video on YouTube, the company relies on contributions from its amateur and professional partners to keep its content fresh. At the same time, its core business model revolves around providing advertisers with the ability to reach its billion-plus viewers. In turn, video creators rely (or want to rely) on a piece of that ad revenue to continue producing their content. The problem is, of course, that those ads are intrusive, annoying and, at the end of the day, its partners are finding that the revenue from those banners and clips isn’t growing nearly as fast as, say, the number of cat videos on YouTube.

In an effort to provide its partners with an alternative revenue stream, YouTube announced today that it is officially launching a pilot program that enables its video stars to charge subscription fees for access to their channels. Subscriptions will start at $0.99/month, and every channel will be able to offer a 14-day free trial, along with discounted yearly rates.

In its announcement, YouTube cites Sesame Street, which will offer full episodes through its paid channel, and UFC offering fans the ability to watch classic fights as examples. For more, here’s the list of its 53-odd pilot channels.

As of today, users can subscribe to paid channels from their desktops and laptops and watch across devices, but going forward YouTube will look to add the ability to subscribe from any medium/device. On top of that, YouTube will begin a broader roll out of subscriptions in the next few weeks for “qualifying partners,” and from the looks of it, it will be adding a paid channel recommendation feed — just as it does now for free channels.

If you don’t have a YouTube channel, why should you care? Well, YouTube has been telegraphing this for awhile, but it’s really the first (official) sign that YouTube is beginning to tiptoe into the paid video market. Granted, the subscription model isn’t a new idea for YouTube, considering the company just announced in March that it will be launching a music subscription service later this year.

The goal is much the same: Give musicians/artists/creators an opportunity to make some money, while improving the user experience for listeners by potentially removing some of those obnoxious ads that start every video. Of course, in the case of both video and music, it’s much more likely that YouTube is going to stick with both.

Amateur content creators are going to be hesitant about erecting paywalls around their content. Most viewers are going to balk at the idea of buying a subscription to a YouTube channel, and there’s a question of whether or not they’d really be able to convert enough of their viewers to paid subscriptions to make it worth it. In the end, it’s the same issue newspapers and publishers have struggled with for years.

There’s also the fact that every video producer is already offering their content for free, although behind ads. Now you’re going to tell viewers that they have to pay for the same content they’ve been getting for free? Sure, that will work for your superfans, but as is the way with the “freemium” model, if you’re going to charge, the content behind the paywall better be, well, premium. I want to see “Extras,” exclusive content/footage, and so on.

Of course, as Peter Kafka pointed out this week, amateur video producers likely don’t have the resources to produce that exclusive or premium content.

Nonetheless, the company is going to use paid subscriptions in an attempt to attract new partners, new content creator and, we assume, more dollars — although YouTube doesn’t specify whether it will be taking a cut of subscriptions or not. YouTube is clearly aware of the success Hulu, Netflix, Vimeo and other video sites have been having with subscription and on-demand models, and it wants to become more attractive to film and TV networks, studios and producers.

But for now, YouTube can’t make the jump exclusively to subscriptions, because it needs those ad dollars that are keeping the whole thing afloat. It’s a tricky line to walk, no doubt, but YouTube certainly isn’t helping its user experience by setting up the potential to have both a paywall and ads in and around videos for the foreseeable future.

Just speaking for myself personally, I probably most frequently use YouTube for search (and a little discovery), particularly around music. In other words, I’ll have a song or an artist in mind, will do a YouTube search, which inevitably serves a couple or dozens of choices for the same song, artist or even subject. There’s a high likelihood that I have no idea which video I want or is best, which requires some perusing, so having a 10 second ad at the beginning of each video is really disruptive.

Maybe that’s a niche use case, but I suspect not. YouTube ads, while tolerable because we consciously or subconsciously recognize their role in keeping millions of cat videos afloat and online, are frustrating. Sure, Hulu has ads, too, and they aren’t much better. But at least in Hulu’s case, the viewer knows they’re watching a 30-minute or hour-long episode of television online, and regular old offline TV has already conditioned us to expect ads every 5 seconds. Unfortunately. But for a 2-minute clip of questionable quality? Come on.

So keeping ads, while slowly throwing up paywalls is just a bad idea. So the roll out of paid video will end up being incremental and almost just a show of good faith — to keep from ruffling feathers — while the ads just keep proliferating.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

BDC Venture Capital, the leading major investment firm for accelerators in Canada, announced today that it would add its financial and expert support to ongoing Canadian Technology Accelerator programs being run in the U.S. by the Canadian government. The programs, spread across various major tech hubs, including Boston, Philadelphia, New York and San Francisco, give Canadian startups the U.S. face time they need to make connections and product sales.

BDC says that the goal is to get the Canadian startups with the most potential into a high-growth market as effectively as possible and says this is a natural extension of its work with Canadian-based accelerators and incubators, including GrowLab, Extreme Startups, Hyperdrive and Founder Fuel. BDC’s Montreal VP Senia Rapisarda explained that, while startups participating in the CTA program will get access to its convertible note options for financial support, this is more about providing an experience for startups that they might not otherwise have.

“We understand that we can bring companies up to a certain level [with our Canada-based accelerators],” she said. “But then, the U.S. clearly being the first port of entry in terms of customers, it really made a lot of sense to pair up with the CTAs in New York, San Francisco, Boston and Philadelphia who were so close to customers that at that point a company could be seriously accelerated.”

Rapisarda uses an example an enterprise software startup that gained access to Fortune 500 companies located in New York and the Bay area through the program, where they were better able to learn exactly what those companies needed and then tailor their offerings for them. Overall, the whole program is about treating companies not as specifically “American” or “Canadian,” but about going after opportunity where it’s biggest, in order to give them the best start possible.

BDC is sending the “best of the crop” to these CTAs, she said, which is “producing results quite quickly.” The approach they’re taking is akin to how you run a startup, Rapisarda says. BDC is treating each case individually and tailoring its approaches to the vertical or industry of each startup they send in terms of how long they’ll stay in the U.S. and what kind of mentors they need and connections they’ll make. She says it’s about being flexible, and “evaluating” and “pivoting” the same way early stage startups do to properly meet the market’s needs. In other words, BDC Venture is very keen on eating its own dogfood when it comes to running these international accelerator efforts.

One key area to watch in the future is how Canada’s Startup Visa program affects the international dynamics of early stage companies, and of accelerators. “What I think is interesting is to see the impact of the Startup Visa on Canadian companies, which are able now to attract even more talent from different countries,” she said. “And how that will impact the relationship with the United States in terms of markets, because clearly the most promising markets are then South America, India and China.”

For now though, the U.S. remains the major gateway for Canadian businesses, and initiatives like this one hope to help them make sure that companies with the strength to succeed in that market get the chance to prove it.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch