By Myles Tanzer 1/30 12:45pm

startup rundown

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Startup News: Quora Gets Bloggy and Foursquare Gets Down to Business

Do We Really Need More Blogs? For the last three years, Quora has been the site for headsdown homebodies to ask their fellow coding brethren about what it’s like to go outside. But the company has recently announced two new developments that show a shift of attention to writers. The question site now has plans to include blogs. Quora has also announced the release of a rich text editor for their mobile app which should help Quora users ask bolded crazy questions while they’re on the go. Read More

By Jessica Roy 11/14/12 11:30am

Insurgents

Mr. Taub and Mr. Schonfeld

Tech Insurgents 2012: Alex Taub and Michael Schonfeld

The Credit Card Killers

With an ever-crowded financial tech market and companies like PayPal and Google Wallet elbowing for industry dominance, the race to kill the credit card is heating up. But among the standouts is Iowa-based mobile payment startup Dwolla, thanks to an innovative pricing structure and a growing New York presence helmed by Michael Schonfeld and Alex Taub. Dwolla has raised money from two New York venture capital firms, Union Square Ventures and Thrive Capital. (Josh Kushner, a Thrive principal, is also part-owner of Observer Media Group.) Read More

By Gary Sharma 10/29/12 8:45am

Goooood Morning Silicon Alley!

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Best Tech Events This Week (NYU Entrepreneurs Festival, Fintech Startup Weekend, Mashable Media Summit, Foursquare Hackathon, NYC Uncubed)

This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and CEO of GarysGuide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.

Hola folks,

Batten down the hatches. Stock up on the liquor (and food). Bring out the candles and flashlights. Because Hurricane Sandy (a.k.a. #frankenstorm) is almost upon us. And now, at almost a thousand miles wide, it definitely has our attention. Hopefully by this time y’all are safely at home (and not still slumming in Zone A) with eyes glued to the twenty-four-hour news coverage, watching weathermen expound on “cones” and “surges.”

As you know, the MTA has shut down all subway and buses, and pretty much every event on Monday has been cancelled or postponed including AllThingsD’s Dive Into Mobile conference, Google’s Android event, Facebook’s engineering open house and our own Big Apple Smackdown Silicon Alley ping-pong tournament (which will be re-scheduled).

At this time, the Tuesday events (and the rest of the week) seem uncertain too. They’re still listed below, but I’d highly recommend you confirm first with the event organizers. In the mean time, stay safe, keep your fingers crossed that the storm turns out to be a mild one and don’t forget to check Miguel Bloombito’s Twitter feed for the latest updates! Read More

By Myles Tanzer 10/24/12 12:52pm

startup rundown

Mr. Bloomberg. (Twitter)

Startup News: Bloomberg Wiring up NYC and Canadians Make Sweet Love to Songza

Time Warner Still Sucks On Friday, Mayor Bloomberg made a big move toward ing promise to expand broadband in New York. He launched ConnectNYC, a contest for small businesses that will award free fiber cable wiring (overall value of up to $12 million) to 240 local businesses across the five boroughs over the next two years. But will it make slow cashiers go faster?

All Your Dwollas Belong To Us Dwolla, the way to pay people via smartphone, just rolled out a cool feature called MassPay. It allows you to pay up to 2,000 people at once, which is great for business owners or degenerate gamblers who have a lot of friends. Payments under 10 dollars are free, while anything higher than that requires a small fee of 25 cents per transaction. Parking Panda, VHX and Major League Gaming have all pledged to start using the service immediately. Read More

By Gary Sharma 7/30/12 12:00pm

Goooood Morning Silicon Alley!

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Best Tech Events This Week (BlogHer, Social Curation Summit, eCommerce HackDay, Future of Fashion, FinTech Startups, ER Roundtable)

This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and CEO of GarysGuide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.

Photo-sharing apps may be hot, but what’s even sexier are startups that bring home the bacon. That’s the basic premise behind 500 Startups’ unSEXY, a 1-day conference, which covers verticals such as financial services, communications, email, data, infrastructure and more. It’s all about tech startups and companies who are actually doing something incredibly sexy–they’re building scalable, sustainable businesses. So if you’re in the Bay Area next week, definitely go check it out!

Speaking of the Bay Area, there are a ton of interesting events coming up there, including TechCrunch’s Annual Crunchup, StartupGrind, Teens in Tech Conference, TwilioCon, GigaOm’s Mobilize and more. Gary’s Guide has an extensive list of upcoming events.

Rumor also has it that there may be a crazy, fun party happening later this week on my b’day on August 5. Stay tuned for more details

And now let’s see what shenanigans are happening in the Alley this week… Read More