By The Editors 5/17 5:36pm

shameless rumormongering

(Photo: Tumblr)

Rumor Roundup: Betabeat Becomes a Bunch of Glassholes, Prince Harry Hails a Hailo and Zuck Celebrates a Bday

Glasshole Missed Connection Betabeat finally had the distinct pleasure of trying the dorky looking face computer we love to mock so much at a party last night at Meetup HQ. We (only slightly drunkenly) approached a tall white dude donning Google Glass and timidly asked if we might be able to try it on. When we slipped on the device (in slate!), the display was incredibly blurry–not due to our eyesight, but because Glass specifically calibrates to the wearer’s eye. It was hard as hell to see, but the voice commands worked almost seamlessly, impressive since we were at a loud party.

The device’s functionality is fairly limited: you can take a picture, record video and get directions to and from places. It also has the added benefit of making you look like a complete dork while somehow also attracting swaths of attractive ladies to get up real close to your face. Read More

By The Editors 3/08 5:15pm

shameless rumormongering

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Rumor Roundup: International Defoundered Man of Mystery, Plus Alexis Ohanian Wrote a Book

Front Page Printed Pages of the Internet Just before taking stage at SXSW to talk his crowdfunded Internet 2012 tour, Alexis Ohanian emailed out a link to his new book, Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made, Not Managed.

Since you asked, Mr. Ohanian, we dig the cover, but “without their permission,” sounds a little iffy in the context of Reddit’s Creepshot scandal, no? Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 3/07 2:15pm

ECommerce Rules Everything Around Me

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JackThreads Just Had Its Highest Sales Month Ever: ‘We Don’t Give the Store Away’

If there were a word cloud for recent ecommerce reports, it would be shaped like a mushroom cloud with “over-hyped” “implosion,” “froth,” “down rounds,” and “suck it, America, Europe does it better,” all in extra large font.

So we weren’t expecting to hear that JackThreads, the men’s ecommerce site acquired by Thrillist in 2010, had its best revenue month ever in February, even bigger than typically high-selling holiday months. Growth in new members was up 366 percent year-over-year and double the growth in number of new users joining in November and December of 2012. Read More

By Patrick Clark 2/20 8:01am

Linkages

She's laughing at you, fandom. LAUGHING AT YOU.

Booting Up: Marissa Mayer Would Like You to Meet the New Yahoo

Marissa Mayer introduced Yahoo users to a “new, more modern experience” for finding “the best of the web” in a blog post early this morning. [Yahoo]

Ever dream of founding the next Apple, Facebook or Twitter? That might be a long shot. But if you act fast, you can probably get your computer hacked by visiting the same website that compromised the recently-hacked tech giants. [AllThingsD]

“We used to have these ads, I’m a Mac and I’m a PC, and the Mac was always the cool guy,” Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak told Bloomberg. “And ouch, it’s painful, because we kind of are losing that.”[Bloomberg]

Apple’s lead designer Jonathan Ive dropped some knowledge on a British children’s television show. [Quartz]

“You cannot be cross-shopped on Amazon is like e-com 2.0,” said Thrillist CEO Ben Lerer. [PandoDaily]

By The Editors 2/08 4:49pm

shameless rumormongering

(Photo: Instagram)

Rumor Roundup: SpaceX Engineers Got Jokes and an Impassioned Cover Letter for a Job at Valleywag

Journalism 101 It looks like somebody is gunning for a spot at Nick Denton’s soon-to-relaunch Silicon Valley gossip site Valleywag. TechCrunch co-editor Alexia Tsotsis wrote an impassioned post about why tech journalism needs another Valleywag, “a watchdog with enough independence and daring to call it as it is.” Writers at blogs like her own, Ms. Tsotsis argues, are simply too embedded in the ecosystem to properly perform their jobs, unwilling to report on certain unseemly aspects of Valley business and culture for fear of having to, get this, sit next to those she’s written about at a demo day. Read More

By The Editors 1/18 5:45pm

shameless rumormongering

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Rumor Roundup: Bedhopping at Sundance, Kissing and Telling in the Carribbean

Sundancing in the Dark South by Southwest is basically right around the corner, but it seems several techies needed a break before March offers the excuse for a tax-deductible trip to Austin. Investor Scooter Braun is be there (for obvious reasons), as is VHX cofounder Casey Pugh, ABC News’s Maya Baratz, onetime Myspace prez Jason Hirschhorn, and Thrillist cofounder Ben Lerer. Judging from Mr. Lerer’s Instagram, Gary Vaynerchuk is also along for the ride.

Startups are taking advantage of the festival’s halo of hipness. The creatives at Kickstarter have devoted a page to Sundance entrants funded on the platform, and cofounder Yancey Strickler says he’ll be in attendance. Uber will be there–and handing out hot chocolate. “All you have to do is tap the Uber app and we will come wherever you are to deliver sweet salvation from the epic cold,” the company promises. Not to mention helping sooth the pain of Uber’s high fares. Read More

By The Editors 12/07/12 5:59pm

shameless rumormongering

Screenshot_2012-12-06-13-26-26

Rumor Roundup: Artsy’s Art Basel Bust and the $50,000 Tip That Wasn’t

Basel Bust? Artsy’s invite for its Art Basel party this year–thrown by Chanel–was positively littered with enticing cohosts. “On behalf of Carter Cleveland, Larry Gagosian, Wendi Murdoch, Peter Theil & Dasha Zhukova, we invite you to a beachside barbecue on Wednesday, December 5th in Miami Beach,” the invite said. Perhaps too enticing. “I ended up not going because it was such a shit show,” said one would-be guest. The tipster blamed the venue, noting that “the same thing happened last night at Amfar. It was a mess trying to get into the after party and there were 400 people waiting outside and inside it was a crowded mess.”

Typical for Art Basel, said the source, brushing off complaints. “Less so for tech startups ” Too bad they missed Demi Moore’s highly gif-able turn on the dance floor next to Lenny Kravitz. Perhaps our partier will have better luck with Tumblr, which is hosting its own Art Basel extravaganza tonight. Read More

By The Editors 11/16/12 5:36pm

shameless rumormongering

(Photo: Twitter)

Rumor Roundup: Celebrating Diwali White House Style and Ben Lerer’s Beer Pong Skills

In less than a week, you’ll be sitting on your parents’ couch with a belly full of booze and turkey watching shitty cable TV, because ain’t life grand? To tide you over until that wondrous day, we’re back with another batch of juicy rumors. Happy Friday!

Beer Me Storied New York venture capital firm Lerer Ventures knows its target audience. According to a tweet from Scoutmob cofounder Dave Payne, Lerer is hosting a beer pong tournament for some of the companies it has invested in. “just got invited to a beer pong tourney by one of our venture investors,” tweeted Mr. Payne. “that’s hard core @lererventures. well done.”

Competition at the tournament seems like it will be quite fierce. “hope you’ve been practicing,” responded Northeastern student Scott Edelstein. “i’ve seen@benjlerer win with his eyes closed.”

In fact, here’s proof: Read More

By The Editors 11/09/12 5:22pm

shameless rumormongering

We'll use this as an artist's rendering. (Photo: flickr.com/lac-bac)

Rumor Roundup: Kevin Ryan Is a Ping Pong Champ and AllThingsD Knows All About Mustache Rides

Silicon Alley Smackdown One of the many tech events on rain delay because of Hurricane Sandy was the Big Apple Smackdown ping pong tournament, whose guest list included an impressive number of familiar names from the New York tech scene. (Betabeat is one of the media sponsors, so we may be a little biased.) Among the techno-athletes scheduled to play was Gilt Groupe CEO–and soon-to-be Gilt Groupe chairman–Kevin Ryan. Apparently, we missed quite a show.

The tournament was scheduled for Sunday, “and I played on Friday and on Sunday just to get ready for it!” Mr. Ryan told Betabeat. Really? “Oh yeah, because I won a tournament about a month ago.” That was an invitation-only affair for ping pong ringers at the Hamptons manse of ABC Carpet & Home’s Ken Pilot. “You had to put $100 into the pot and the winner got two-thirds of the pot, so I was pretty excited about that,” Mr. Ryan enthused. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 10/24/12 2:30pm

The Third Degree

Mr. Hippeau (Photo: Twitter)

Q&A with Eric Hippeau: Lerer Ventures’ New $36 M. Fund and the ‘Golden Age’ for NYC Entrepreneurs

Earlier today, Lerer Ventures revealed that the early stage investment firm–a powerful, active force in growing New York’s startup ecosystem–has raised its biggest fund yet. While raw SEC filings first indicated that Lerer Ventures was raising $30 million, the deal closed at $36 million. That’s more than $64 million combined in less than two years.

Partners Ken Lerer, Ben Lerer, Eric Hippeau, and Jordan Cooper have backed some of the most high-profile companies from New York’s new class of tech startups, like Warby Parker, MakerBot, OnSwipe, and Birchbox. Lerer Ventures has also had a number of notable exits, like GroupMe (acquired by Skype), Mr. Cooper’s startup HyperPublic (acquired by Groupon), and Venmo (acquired by Braintree). In fact, the Huffington Post mafiosos–Ken Lerer and Mr. Hippeau are both veterans–have been so busy building “the largest infrastructure in New York for entrepreneurs” that they apparently haven’t had time to move Venmo into the “Exits” list on the firm’s website.

Betabeat spoke to Mr. Hippeau this afternoon after his firm’s new fund and why we’re in “the golden age for entrepreneurs in New York.” Read More