This painting of Ron Conway was a gift from Steve Jobs' wife. (Photo: Twitter/b_c_g)

Yesterday, Y Combinator (Silicon Valley's ur-accelerator) hosted its biannual Demo Day at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

As cofounder Paul Graham announced last fall, YC downsized both the number of startups and the size of the investment in this current class. And fears that the accelerator bubble is about to pop were not lost on the 47 startups who presented, nor the 500 or so investors in attendance.

Where the buzziest startups once commanded valuations of up to $20 million, "now the higher end is closer to $10 million, and the financial terms of the investment deals have shifted slightly for the benefit of investors," reports the Wall Street Journal. (Perhaps to loosen checkbooks, they started serving booze earlier in the day this year.)

Indeed, like their more established brethren, the hottest trend among YC's early stage companies seemed to be (wait for it) generating revenue! The Journal says Demo Day offered "further proof that the social-networking craze has died down and more founders are tackling 'boring' problems that generate cash."

Guess bored founders will have to get their kicks from checking their bank balance--and still existing in a few years.

Where the pitch decks of yore could be counted on for bubblicious slides on market size, the ones presented yesterday also highlighted money-making metrics:

"Don Dodge, a startup investor and well-known 'developer advocate' for Google, said today’s startups are more focused than ever on revenue—as evidenced by the large revenue-growth charts most of them showed off during the presentations to investors. In prior years, founders focused more on the number of people using their service, he said."

So what did all this emphasis on practicality amount to? Copying proven business models instead of pie-in-the selfie-sky ones, according to CNET.

Does that mean we're done with, "Instagram for ___" startups?: At Y Combinator Day, echoes of Kickstarter cnet.co/16XEfEx via @cnet

— Paul Sloan (@PaulSloan) March 27, 2013

This batch wasn't entirely lacking innovative ideas, however. There was "everything from a “Kayak for insurance” to a service that promises to help people divorce amicably."

But PandoDaily's representative failed to notice an appreciable difference:

"While Y-Combinator made changes over the past year, there wasn’t a whole lot different about the companies this time around. Less money did not, YC partner Jessica Livingston claims, result in greater fiscal austerity. 'It’s not like they were really irresponsible to begin with,' she says. More squishy was the outward impression each company emitted: some attendees told me there was a greater sense of founder modesty."

As revolutions go, disrupting egoes ain't half bad.

(Photo: Kickstarter)

Angelina "Trash Bags" Pivarnick, the Jersey Shore cast member who left the show in the first season after only three episodes, wants a second chance at the spotlight. On Monday, Ms. Pivarnick launched a Kickstarter page called "The Comeback," which aims to raise $8,000 to help her get her own reality show called--yes--The Comeback.

The money will be used to fund a pilot, which Ms. Pivarnick will shop around until a network is so desperate for content they bite. The show's description makes it seem like it will provide a platform for Ms. Pivarnick to finally redeem herself after viewers and cast members alike reacted negatively to her persona on Jersey Shore:

As you may have seen on MTV's The Jersey Shore, Angelina was cornered by the rest of the cast due to her larger than life and 'tell it like it is' personality, but if you were to meet her in real life you would surely get a different impression. Angelina has a fun and outgoing personality that will shine on her new series as you see her go through the trials and tribulations of trying to be the best Angelina that she can be!

Ms. Pivarnick left the show after fellow cast members mocked her, then spent months shopping stories to outlets like Life and Style about how Jersey Shore ruined her life. Now she wants another go at stardom, and needs your money to help her do it. Your reward for contributing? Another Jersey Shore spinoff show. The choice is yours.

(Photo: Indiegogo)

In November of last year, Gawker reported that the notorious gross-out site "Goatse.cx," which showed an old man splaying open his anus for all to see, was being transitioned from a nostalgia-laden '90s meme to an actual email service. The site's new owner, an Australian IT consultant who goes by the moniker Jonathan, planned to offer Goatse vanity email addresses for $5 a pop.

After the post hit Gawker and other sites, interest in Goatse emails skyrocketed, and Jonathan created a $10,000 Indiegogo campaign as a clever way to collect the $50 he decided to charge for each account. The campaign has already surpassed its goal, with seven days of funding still to go. Users can sign up to get a Goatse email address by using Goatse search to find their desired username, then forwarding proof of their Indiegogo donation along with their preferred user name to Jonathan and team.

So far, almost 300 people have paid the $50 for an @goatse.cx address, and three paid $140 to have their image displayed on goatse.cx in the Goatse Hall of Fame. Internet notoriety at its finest.

(h/t Boing Boing)

(Photo: James Cridland via Flickr)

As soon as the JOBS Act passed back in April, would-be equity-based crowdfunding platforms were crawling out of the woodwork, ready to be open for business as soon as the S.E.C. handed down the rules governing this wild financial frontier.

But it seems they might be all dressed up with nowhere to go, for now at least. The New York Times reports that the S.E.C. is most likely going to blow its end-of-year deadline. In fact, it might be 2014 before equity-based crowdfunding is a reality. Hope your startup wasn’t depending on selling shares to average Internet joes!

Now, before you start grousing about government inefficiencies, there's some question about whether the deadline was ever really doable in the first place:

“It’s actually a significant job to do the regulations in this area, so it was an unrealistic expectation that the S.E.C. would have it completed by now,” said Barbara Roper, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America, which is lobbying the agency on other aspects of the JOBS Act.

The trick is balancing investor protection with the reality that a crowdfunding platform might collapse under the weight of the traditional regulatory burden. For example, the S.E.C. wants a requirement that anyone raising more than half a million dollars must pony up audited financials. Just imagine how Kickstarter projects would fare under that kind of burden.

On top of everything else, the S.E.C. is in the midst of a leadership shuffle, with chairwoman Mary Shapiro taking her leave--along with the underlings who ran the regulation-writing office.

Welcome to the swamp that is Washington, D.C., citizens of Startupland.

This single SFW screencap was hard to come by.

Back in August, we told you about Offbeatr, which aims to be the Kickstarter for porn. Four months in, the site boasts five successful projects, which have raised a total of $60,934. And as the blog Flayrah recently noticed, all of them are furry-themed.

Furries, for those of you who've never traversed the deep Internets, are into anthropomorphized depictions of animals. They also like to dress up as animals and, like most fandoms, gather IRL at conventions. The whole deal often has a sexual overtone, which is where Offbeatr comes in.

Flayrah (tagline: "furry food for thought") points out that it's furries that are getting traction on the kinky crowdfunding site. The most successful project, for example, is a fantasy sex game called "Furoticon Online." The explanation:

Furoticon Online will allow you to compete in climactic matches of up to 8 players from all around the world! Bring your friends and your mates along to see who is the champion of the bedroom!

The campaign page is hella NSFW, unless you work at a place where graphically erotic images of anthropomorphic animals are a-okay. It's raised $39,841 from 295 supporters, drawing on an existing fanbase. Furoticon is already a popular card game, and the Offbeatr campaign was simply to raise the case for video game development.

Offbeatr founder Ben Tao told Flayrah that not only was the success of the furry projects not by design, but he also admitted that before they took off, he wasn't even aware of the community's existence. But he's perfectly happy to have them!

Our goal was to build a platform that allowed creative people to explore sexuality and in our minds the furry projects do exactly that. At for us the enjoyment comes out from helping out where prior to us launching there were no legitimate or easy ways to raise funding for adult projects.

So when do we get the TED Talk?

Mr. Musk, please take my money for your rockets. (Photo via flickr.com/jurvetson)

Yesterday, before venturing forth to the casting call for Bravo's Start-ups: Silicon Valley spinoff, we made a rather wonkier stop, at this month's meeting of the MIT Enterprise Forum. The topic of the panel? Space, the final frontier, and aerospace investing in particular.

As we arrived, a brief SpaceX video with a Top Gun-style soundtrack was wrapping up. Adam Harris, the company's VP for Government Affairs, let slip a little, "Yay!" as it came to a close. 

Much of the panel that followed focused on the knotty details of the business. For example: If you make rockets, you can't export them, because they're classified the same as ICBMs. Panelists included NASA Associate General Counsel for IP Courtney B. Graham and Aireon CEO Don Thoma, whose company sells satellite phone technology for use as an air traffic surveillance product.

But when somebody brought up crowdfunding in the Q&A, things got almost rowdy. (Almost!)

One man in the audience posed the question of whether, now that the SEC is finalizing rules for equity-based crowdfunding, that might work to fund the more starry-eyed of aerospace projects. He offered the example of the Kickstarted Pebble. The creators wanted $100,000; they got more than $10 million. "You don't get any stock or anything," he said, sounding a bit incredulous. And people love space way more than they love dorky watches.

"For some of these startups that sell a dream, like SpaceX, I do think that's a perfect funding resource," he said.

Then, nodding in the direction of Mr. Thoma, he added: "When you're talking about Iridium, and all we remember is that it was a great idea but a very expensive telephone, it doesn't have the same sex appeal."

Aireon is a subsidiary of Iridium, selling a wonky product without much obvious sex appeal. Unsurprisingly, Mr. Thomas disagreed with the man's assessment.

"I've spent my whole career in space or telecom associated with space," he said. "I always wondered if other industries have as many nuts as the space industry has."

Mr. Thomas is perpetually running into dreamers with ideas of, shall we say, varied quality. "I think there's dangers in crowdfunding, because they're going to fund these dreams that don't really have a real business," said Mr. Thoma. There are viable companies for whom it might be valuable, but there'll be a whole lot of dreck to sort through.

The crowdfunding proponent immediately leapt back into the fray, before Mr. Thoma could get any further. "I don't think we need guardians of people's decision to invest in something," insisted the Kickstarter fan, adding that "The Wright Brothers may have looked like a bunch of nuts to their neighbors."

The notion of a cable to the moon might be "a great idea for somebody to put money into. I don't know. And I don't think that you know," he said.

"Let's democratize investment," said the man, who we were beginning to suspect as an Indiegogo ringer, before concluding with a flourish: "Why do we want to protect people from making stupid investments when we don't even know which ones are stupid and which ones are terrific!"

To boldly go, indeed.

(Photo: Today's Picks)

There's already email addiction, Facebook addiction and wholesale Internet addiction. Next up on the psychological disorders docket? Kickstarter addiction: people who are "addicted" to the rush of finding and backing fledgling projects on Kickstarter.

The notion of “Kickstarter addiction,” as defined by VentureBeat, encapsulates the do-gooder rush and risk-averse anxiety rooted in crowdfunding. Throwing money at half-formed ideas and projects is kind of like gambling, argues VentureBeat, except you don’t have to be situated on a sketchy boardwalk and coated in cigarette smoke to get your fix. There's just one snag in their theory. The only evidence of this "growing number of people" addicted to Kickstarter is a single thread on the Geek and Sundry message boards.

Some serial Kickstarter backers justify their compulsions as an act of generosity. “I feel like I’m not a terribly creative person myself, but by enabling others to express their creativity, I might be helping in some small way,” one backer told VentureBeat. Of course, this is conveniently ignoring the fact that contributing to a Kickstarter campaign isn't a charitable write-off: backers also expect to get some tangible good in return.

As far as bad habits go, being addicted to giving away money to enable someone else's creative vision won't exactly land you on Intervention. Still, we eagerly await MTV’s investigative take: True Life: I’m Addicted to Crowdfunding.

You wouldn't just buy this, would you? (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

On the heels of a harshly worded blog post earlier this month, ruling that refunds from anyone other than the campaign creator are simply not in the cards, the Kickstarter cofounders are once more clarifying what users can and cannot realistically expect from the platform. This followup reminds everyone that backing a project is not tantamount to placing a preorder.

The title? "Kickstarter Is Not a Store."

Said the cofounders:

It's hard to know how many people feel like they're shopping at a store when they're backing projects on Kickstarter, but we want to make sure that it's no one. Today we're introducing a number of changes to reinforce that Kickstarter isn’t a store — it’s a new way for creators and audiences to work together to make things.

Also, did they mention that there are no refunds? Because there are no refunds.

All campaigns must now answer this great, glaring question: “What are the risks and challenges this project faces, and what qualifies you to overcome them?” In short, projects ought to stand up to the same kind of scrutiny as the most glancing investor evaluation--not to mention the risk portion of an S-1 filing.

Hardware and product design projects also must meet new guidelines. Product simulations and renderings are now verboten--show only what you've got. What next? Outlawing the flattering profile pics that disguise the double chin?

The blog post closes with another reminder that, for the love of God, Kickstarter is not an airport Brookstone:

We hope these updates reinforce that Kickstarter isn't a traditional retail experience and underline the uniqueness of Kickstarter.

Smart steps toward transparency. However, we can't help but feel like maybe backers might want to step up, here. The expression "buyer beware" dates as far back as the Roman Empire. And if someone tries to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge, it's generally a smart move to ask a couple of probing questions before you fork over any greenbacks.

(Photo: Indiegogo)

A few weeks ago, Betabeat wrote about an Indiegogo campaign started by Whitney Port, star of The Hills and The City. Ms. Port began the campaign to raise $50,000 so that she could show her fashion line, Whitney Eve, at New York Fashion Week Spring 2013.

But today, when we went to check up on the campaign's progress, the funding goal had mysteriously dropped by $40,000. Now, Ms. Port is only soliciting $10,000.

Betabeat has learned that Indiegogo agreed to change the fundraising goal for Ms. Port's campaign. She is an Indiegogo partner, which is why both parties agreed to lower the goal.

“The goal was lowered as we got other cooperate beauty sponsors and didn’t want to continue to raise funds we didn’t need from the fans," a publicist for Ms. Port told Betabeat.

For some background: Indiegogo offers two funding options when users opt to create a campaign. There's the "flexible funding" option, where users get to keep however much money they raise, regardless of if they ever meet their goal. The catch here is that Indiegogo retains a 9 percent fee for all money raised during a flexible funding campaign if creators don't meet their goal (vs. 4 percent if they do). On the flipside, a fixed funding campaign--which is what Ms. Port is running--has a stated goal, and the project creator only gets funding if that goal is reached. For successful fixed funding campaigns, Indiegogo retains 4 percent of funds raised.

Four percent of $10,000 is only $400, so it's highly unlikely that Indiegogo would bend its own rules just for a couple hundos. But the incident raises some important questions about crowdfunding and the difference between the experiences of corporate and average users. So far, Indiegogo's most high profile campaign was for Karen Klein, the bullied bus monitor. The Oatmeal, a renowned web comic creator, also ran a wildly successful campaign on the site. But for the most part, campaigns on Indiegogo are created by regular, every day people without connections to Hollywood.

Will Indiegogo begin to allow other users, who aren't celebrities or "partners," to change their fixed fundraising goals if projects aren't taking off the way they'd hoped?

(Photo: Indiegogo)

"How Much Would You Pay To See A Photo Of Ryan Lochte’s Alleged Penis?" begs a headline on the irreverent sports blog, Deadspin. The post, which went up a little over an hour ago, is illustrated by a photo of Gawker Media employees clustered around a computer screen looking (and laughing) at an alleged photo of Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte's penis.

The pic, which is "a neck-down bathroom-mirror self-portrait, in which the tip of the penis almost but not quite reaches into the sink basin," was provided by a source, who is demanding a fee. Deadspin has decided to start a fundraising campaign on Indiegogo, probably because Kickstarter doesn't consider dickpics "art" (subjective!).

Unable to decide just how valuable a photo of Ryan Lochte's penis might be--both in cold hard cash and cold hard pageviews--the editors of Deadspin put the question to a crowdfunding test:

Do you want to see Ryan Lochte's alleged penis? Rather than bidding on some hypothetical market value of the photograph, let's establish a real market value. Call it Cockstarter: Our offer price will be whatever you collectively pledge to the cause, plus a contribution from our own budget. Based on your pledges, we will make a final determination on the photo by next week.

We decided to reach out to ff Venture Capital partner and Indiegogo investor David Teten to gauge his opinion on this important story.

"The adult content industry is suffering because of a surplus of free content," Mr. Teten told Betabeat via gChat. "That implies the market value of this photo is near-zero; creating an equivalent photo in Photoshop would take 1 minute."

"That said, I think the management team at Fitocracy should support this Indiegogo project, and perhaps hire Ryan Lochte," he added.

Additional reporting provided by Nitasha Tiku.