Illustration by Frank Chimero
Farhad Manjoo explains how an emerging class of investors is reinventing the startup economy.
Folks in Silicon Valley are fond of attaching friendly, anodyne labels to forces that seem bent on world domination (hello, Facebook). So it's no surprise that the latest group of alleged tech marauders goes by a name that might be better suited to a Japanese cartoon boy band: Beware the super angels!
These crafty interlopers represent a hybrid between the two investing models that have long ruled the normally placid world of startup funding. Super angels raise funds like venture capitalists but invest early like angels and in sums between the two, on average from $250,000 to $500,000. By being smaller, faster, and less demanding of entrepreneurs than VCs, super angels are getting first dibs on the best new ideas. Mint, Digg, and Ustream are three of the prominent super-angel-funded companies with traction.
The...
Farhad Manjoo explains how an emerging class of investors is reinventing the startup economy.
Folks in Silicon Valley are fond of attaching friendly, anodyne labels to forces that seem bent on world domination (hello, Facebook). So it's no surprise that the latest group of alleged tech marauders goes by a name that might be better suited to a Japanese cartoon boy band: Beware the super angels!
These crafty interlopers represent a hybrid between the two investing models that have long ruled the normally placid world of startup funding. Super angels raise funds like venture capitalists but invest early like angels and in sums between the two, on average from $250,000 to $500,000. By being smaller, faster, and less demanding of entrepreneurs than VCs, super angels are getting first dibs on the best new ideas. Mint, Digg, and Ustream are three of the prominent super-angel-funded companies with traction.
The...
- 1/19/2011
- by Farhad Manjoo
- Fast Company
Illustration by Frank Chimero
Apple's App Store has been a runaway success, but Farhad Manjoo warns its growing rank of copycats that it's not the business model for the 21st century.
Jim Marggraff, CEO of Livescribe, had been thinking for years about how to expand his company's main product, the Pulse Smartpen, a clever gadget that records and digitizes both handwriting and audio as a user jots notes. One option: release a public programming kit that would let any developer publish add-on software for the pen, for users to install themselves.
But last fall, Marggraff found a more appealing option. Call it Apple's way. Livescribe would maintain a central clearinghouse for Pulse apps. When a developer wanted to create a pen app, he'd submit it to Livescribe, and the company would review it before deciding to make it available to Pulse owners. "The applications need to represent the medium well,...
Apple's App Store has been a runaway success, but Farhad Manjoo warns its growing rank of copycats that it's not the business model for the 21st century.
Jim Marggraff, CEO of Livescribe, had been thinking for years about how to expand his company's main product, the Pulse Smartpen, a clever gadget that records and digitizes both handwriting and audio as a user jots notes. One option: release a public programming kit that would let any developer publish add-on software for the pen, for users to install themselves.
But last fall, Marggraff found a more appealing option. Call it Apple's way. Livescribe would maintain a central clearinghouse for Pulse apps. When a developer wanted to create a pen app, he'd submit it to Livescribe, and the company would review it before deciding to make it available to Pulse owners. "The applications need to represent the medium well,...
- 1/21/2010
- by Farhad Manjoo
- Fast Company
Immigration is the lifeblood of the U.S., but also a thorny problem of late...and one that some say is aggravated by abuse of the H1-b visiting skilled worker visa. Is it time to consider a new system, one that rewards entrepreneurs instead?
The idea is being getting some traction over at Brad Felds' Web site, where he's championing an idea originally dreamed up by Paul Graham: The Founder Visa. This idea, terribly simple at heart, would see the creation of a limited number of automatic permanent visas for innovators and entrepreneurs who found a start-up company in the U.S.
Brad wrote about the idea a while ago, even going as far as alerting a number of congressmen to the scheme's potential--one of whom has recently displayed much interest in the plan. The reason it's become relevant again is, of course, the continuing economic slump. This...
The idea is being getting some traction over at Brad Felds' Web site, where he's championing an idea originally dreamed up by Paul Graham: The Founder Visa. This idea, terribly simple at heart, would see the creation of a limited number of automatic permanent visas for innovators and entrepreneurs who found a start-up company in the U.S.
Brad wrote about the idea a while ago, even going as far as alerting a number of congressmen to the scheme's potential--one of whom has recently displayed much interest in the plan. The reason it's become relevant again is, of course, the continuing economic slump. This...
- 9/11/2009
- by Kit Eaton
- Fast Company
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