TripAdvisor CEO Steve Kaufer (Photo: Thisistravel.co.uk)

Jetsetter, the luxury travel site that Gilt Groupe put up for sale for around $50 million back in October, has been acquired by TripAdvisor, according to a press release published to PRNewswire. A Gilt Groupe representative confirmed the acquisition to Betabeat. Skift reported back in March that Jetsetter was close to an acquisition, most likely by the travel reviews site.

"In a short span of time, Jetsetter has emerged as a premier player in the travel space, and we are proud of what the team has accomplished," Gilt Groupe CEO Michelle Peluso said in the release. "There are strong synergies between Jetsetter and TripAdvisor and we are confident that having Jetsetter be part of the TripAdvisor group will further accelerate its growth."

A report in the Wall Street Journal in October indicated that Jetsetter was having difficulties finding buyers as it had reportedly set its asking price at $100 million. However, a source close to the situation told Betabeat in October that the listing price was actually $30-50 million.

Jetsetter endured a series of ups and downs prior to Gilt's decision to put it up for sale. Its founder and former CEO Drew Patterson faced staffer mutiny last May before Gilt Groupe CEO Kevin Ryan asked him to step down. Mr. Ryan attributed Mr. Patterson's departure to turnover and low staff morale. "More than half of us are looking to leave within the next month, at which point the business won’t be operational,” a Jetsetter employee told Betabeat back in May.

“Too many people have left," Mr. Ryan told Betabeat after Mr. Patterson stepped down. "When you’re the CEO, you’re responsible for that. We’ve had a lot of communication over the last six months on this issue. At a certain point, for myself, you make a change.”

Meanwhile, TripAdvisor is no stranger to acquiring NYC startups. Back in October, it also acquired Brooklyn travel startup Wanderfly.

Update:

A source within the company tells Betabeat that TripAdvisor took the Jetsetter team out tonight to an open bar at Strand and told them "nothing will change." The source also said Jetsetter will be moving out of the Gilt offices "soon," and will keep some sort of relationship with Gilt, though it's unclear what that will be.

Additional reporting contributed by Nitasha Tiku.

Mr. Patterson

Skift broke the news today that former Jetsetter cofounder Drew Patterson was named the new CEO of Room 77, a hotel price comparison startup that raised almost $44 million in funding from investors like Expedia, Concur, Bob Pittman, and General Catalyst Partners.

Mr. Patterson was CEO of Jetsetter--a flash sales luxury travel site operated independently under the Gilt Groupe umbrella--for more than three years until Gilt Groupe chairman Kevin Ryan asked him to step down last May. The move by Jetsetter's board followed an exodus of senior executives, low morale, and fears of a "mutiny" among staffers. 

After leaving Jetsetter, Mr. Patterson, a former executive at Kayak.com, cofounded CheckMate, an app that allows hotel guests to check-in from their smartphone. He's served as CEO there since January, according to his LinkedIn profile and has changed his Twitter handle from @JetSetDrew to the more nimble @DrewPats. Skift reports that Room 77 has "absorbed" CheckMate, as well as Mr. Patterson's cofounder, Adam Rugel and some team members.

Skift also reports that Mr. Patterson been busy raising money for Checkmate and already secured funding from high-profile techies like Twitter cofounder Biz Stone and Twitter's former chief scientist Abdur Chowdhury.

In an interview with Skift, Patterson, who was VP of marketing at Kayak for three years before co-founding Gilt Groupe’s Jetsetter in 2009, said no company has “claimed the mantle of leadership” in mobile and vertical hotel search, which he described as only being “in the second or third inning.”

With all that investor pedigree, Skift wondered whether Room 77 should have "tapped a CEO candidate with public company experience for a possible IPO," posing questions about the motivations of Room 77 founder and chairman Brad Gerstner:

Speaking of spin, some will question the announcement’s back story.

Gerstner and Patterson say the idea to hire Patterson as Room 77′s first CEO only emerged around three weeks ago when the two were having dinner and discussing mobile, hotel search, and Patterson’s fledgling CheckMate.

As chairman and founder, Gerstner has wielded control of Room 77 since its beginnings in 2010. Perhaps opting for Patterson instead of one of the “bigger names” would ensure that Gerstner’s choreography goes unchallenged.

That's the thing about founder/chairman, they tend to like to control.

As for Mr. Patterson's former company, Gilt Groupe put Jetsetter up for sale last October. At the time, the Wall Street Journal reported Gilt had trouble finding buyers and lowered its asking price.

When we spoke to Mr. Ryan in December, he said everything was on schedule for the sale and that he expected "binding bids" due that month. We asked about the status of the sale this afternoon, but a Gilt Groupe representative declined to comment.

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.

The company also boasted the highest number of app downloads in February. Mobile revenues were triple from November, with sales from the app counting for 40 percent of JackThreads February revenue. But the most important metric--as that imaginary word cloud can attest--was the fact that JackThreads did it while maintaining its highest gross margin month ever as well.

"I can feel the heat," heat-seeking CEO Ben Lerer told us by phone, "Frankly, for a company that's seven years old, it's a little unexpected." Mr. Lerer raised a $13 million Series A last year (after growing Thrillist to 150 people on just $1.7 million). He attributed the surprising success to a number of little tweaks and improvements, rather than one magic bullet.

"You figure out make a bet and you win one, you lose one. But they all harmonically came together," he said, adding, "I don’t know if that’s English." Improvements were made on the website (adding a search function and boosting speed) as well as in mobile development, SEO, speed of order fulfillment, greeting customers the right merchandise when they arrive on the site, better photography, and buying deeper into certain categories.

One popular item seen around the upwardly mobile men of Soho? A seasonally appropriate "ninja hoodie." Rebrand it as a snuggie for your neck and Betabeat might consider throwing down for a few.

Of course, if there's any niche that's getting beat up worse than ecommerce, it's digital media, i.e. the Thrillist side of Mr. Lerer's business. But he brushed off concerns that Jackthreads gains means that he'll eventually be running an ecommerce company, rather than a "media group."

"The lifetime value of a user," he said, "is monetized through both media and ecommerce. Ultimately, it's going to mean a larger audience for our advertisers to reach as well, but that doesn’t work in real time." They're sure trying. Register for JackThreads and you'll get a pop-up noting the city you're in and wondering if you'd like to sign up for relevant recommendations from Thrillist.

We asked the ever-amiable Mr. Lerer why he thought there was so much skepticism about ecommerce recently. "There has been a tendency online for ecommerce companies to buy revenue," he replied. Companies like Gilt Groupe and Fab.com, he said, have spent a lot on marketing. The idea is, "I can make no money on my users, but they can buy a whole lot of stuff from me," he said, noting, "You don’t raise $150 million to put it in the bank. You raise it to spend it." Only after they scale does the focus turn to making money. "Gilt is an example of that. I think Gilt will pull it off, but not without some pain to get there. And Fab is on a similar trajectory."

Mr. Lerer opted against that route. "Maybe we were wusses," to try growing a more comfortable clip rather than aim to be an industry leader, he said, but, "our margins feel a lot more like businesses that are private label than companies that are also selling large quanitifes of third party goods." Despite unintentional misses, like early foibles running a shipping promotion without understanding how it might impact margin, "We don’t give the store away."

JackThreads has evolved over the years from its target 18-to-24-year-old demo, he said, and been able to sell at a higher price point, incorporating more athletic brands and tailored items. "Our users are a little bit less price sensitive and a lot more focused on curation and brand discovery," he said. "If you’re gonna be known for being super cheap, you better stay super cheap." You can find Self-Edge denim on JackThreads, but at the same time, they're not selling $250 pairs of jeans.

Mr. Lerer said JackThreads recently did a sale on vintage Patagonia items and is incorporating more home goods. "But without the Gilt approach of: JackThreads Home! JackThreads Taste!"

The "pre-launch" page for new startup called Harry's features a handsome image of a razor emblazoned with an "H" logo and the slogan, "RESPECTING THE FACE AND WALLET. SINCE LIKE...RIGHT NOW." Sign up to learn more and you'll be directed to what looks like a package deal on shaving supplies, including the historically-themed "Truman Handle" and the "Winston Shave Set" How mid-century! But why not just label it the Don Draper special?

According to a source, Harry's is actually tied up with the marketing experts at Warby Parker. Jen Rubio, head of social media at the eyeglass retailer, shared the site on her Facebook page with the message, "Remember in 2010 when I said Warby Parker was going to be big? This is kinda like that."

Betabeat also heard that Warby Parker put $4 million into the company and the name. We've reached out to the company and will update the post when we hear back. Warby recently raised $41.5 million funding from American Express and J.Crew CEO Mickey Drexler and is rumored to be discussing a partnership to hip-up Google Glass.

UPDATE 3/7: As Ben Kessler points out in the comments (below), Warby Parker cofounder Jeffrey Raider is listed as the cofounder and "co-CEO" of Harry's on LinkedIn. None of Mr. Raider's fellow Warby cofounders--Neil Blumenthal,  David Gilboa, or Andrew Hunt--currently lists Harry's on their LinkedIn profiles.

UPDATE 3/11: Another tipster directed us towards a Form D filing that appears to be tied to Harry's. Mr. Raider, Andy Katz-Mayfield, and Thrive Capital founder Joshua Kushner* are listed as directors on the form, which was filed last August. On his LinkedIn profile, Mr. Katz-Mayfield lists himself as a the cofounder and co-CEO of Harry's. The form indicates that the company raised $2.25 million toward a $4 million equity round from two investors.

Harry's already has some competition among the seemingly endless list of subscription startups, including the lower-brow humorists at Dollar Shave Club, which raised $9.8 million to sell discount razors.

Vishal Sapra, who works in global business development at MRY, also shared it on Facebook, with the note: "ATTENTION Gentlemen: my brilliant pal (and Vikas Sapra's housemate before I replaced him) Will Freund, a Gilt.com veteran, is going to change the way we shave! For a smoother, cheaper, and cooler shave, check out Harry's! Still in prelaunch so he welcomes your feedback! Start sharing and get some free man goodness!"

On his LinkedIn account, Mr. Freund is listed as a VP of creative production and sales operation at Gilt Groupe.

Stay tuned for a new deal on the FDR beard trimmers?

*Disclosure

(Photo: AlleyCorp)

A little more than a year ago, Betabeat reported that despite his lofty role as chairman and chief executive officer of 10gen, the company behind the MongoDB database language, Dwight Merriman was still mixing it up with his developers, drinking beer and writing code with the company's engineers. 

So when news broke this morning that Mr. Merriman was giving up the CEO job at 10gen to focus his time on the chairman's role, we wondered if it meant he was giving up the technical side of his function to concentrate on the business side of things. Au contraire.

"I was the CEO that codes," Mr. Merriman told us over the telephone this afternoon. "Now that the company is order of magnitudes bigger, the coding part of the job has been getting squeezed."

To free Mr. Merriman up to keep his hands on the product, 10gen elevated Max Schireson from the role of president to CEO, allowing Mr. Merriman to spend more time working on the company's core database kernel. That could mean coding, or architecture or product definition, Mr. Merriman said, stressing that he'll still be engaged in functions more typically associated with a company's chairman.

"It was sort of interesting question what the right title would be," he said. "The best analogy is probably that I'm operating like a founder of company would do, where I touch lots of things. If we changed my title to something more tech, that’s not accurate either. I'll still be doing a lot of work on the business side, whether it's thinking about strategy or talking to customers."

At that, a founder's role is appropriate for Mr. Merriman, the DoubleClick veteran who cofounded 10gen in 2007 as part of the AlleyCorp network. Of course, it was less than two months ago that another AlleyCorp company saw its top executive move on to a chairman's position. Did Kevin Ryan's decision to cede the CEO job at Gilt Groupe influence Mr. Merriman's thinking about his own role at 10gen?

"I think the timing similarity is completely random and coincidental, and the reason for those changes is different," Mr. Merriman said. "For one thing Kevin is spending a little more time on 10gen, a day a week up from something more like a director's level of engagement. ... For me, it's no change in the distribution of my time."

(We told Mr. Merriman that if Henry Blodget—CEO of Business Insider, another AlleyCorp company—announces he's giving up his CEO title, we'd be mad at Mr. Merriman for not giving us a hint.)

Meanwhile, Mr. Merriman said he decided to make the change ahead of 10gen's annual meeting next week, when the company's 200 employees will gather in Florida. The changes, the new chairman said, from Mr. Schireson's ascension, Mr. Ryan's added involvement and his own more varied role, would help to build on the company's promising 2012.

"There's huge potential there," Mr. Merriman said. "It's growing so fast, it’s going to be a very large company."

Secretly seething? (Photo: rosiesays.com)

While browsing our Google Reader this morning, we came across this list of wacky interview questions compiled by Glassdoor.com. You know the drill: "How many cows are in Canada?" (Correct answer: Who cares?) However, we were reminded of our favorite party game, which we haven't played in quite some time, wherein we investigate God-only-knows-how-reliable Glassdoor reviews of our favorite startups.

Let's just say there are some very unhappy underlings running around Silicon Alley.

Cash-rich Buzzfeed has just one review dating from May, written by a former senior developer who called it an "overall good place to work" and said his boss had "an insanely good sense of humor." But he adds,

Cons – Technology stack is kind of old. I left to work with newer shinier toys.

Advice to Senior Management – Encourage more of a hacker culture. Consider internal hack days.

We imagine $19 million will go a long way to upgrading software.

Tumblr, despite its gazillion page views, also has just one tremendously laconic review. The anonymous currently employee summed the place up as "addictive." Pros: "a lot of nice people." Cons: "when the site go's down." Let's assume this wasn't someone working within the company's editorial operation.

There are only three Foursquare reviews, all by folks who seem pretty happy, though there is a complaint that it's "Not as trendy as other startups. The backlash and snark have already begun." And that was before PrivCo released that damning forecast.

One former Thrillist employee seems a mite put out. Under pros, he/she wrote: "If you like to get drunk all the time this is the place for you. The JackThreads part of the company is doing wonderful." Yowzers! Some of us might call that a "perk." The griper also complains about a lack of office supplies (really, dude? try working in media) and poor work/life balance, and ends on a note that smells faintly of sour grapes, suggesting senior management should "Realize the talents in their employees and acknowledge it." U mad, bro?  

A former intern seems a bit more pleased with the experience, though: “Not once was there a day I wasn't ecstatic to go to work at Thrillist.” Okay kid, you don't have to impress the boss anymore.

ZocDoc has a whopping 62 reviews, almost half of which gave the place five stars. But that doesn't mean there aren't a few malcontents: eight reviews fall under "very dissatisfied."  The most recent unhappy review, posted five weeks ago by someone calling himself a current employee, complained of a "Sketchy and offensive office enviroment [sic]." Details, please! Another review, dating from October, advises the higher-ups:

Sell to a big firm. None of you know what you are doing. Maybe it is time to get grown ups in the door.

Of course, we've already made mention of complaints regarding Gilt Groupe. The bulk of the total reviews are either satisfied or at least neutral, but here's a very unhappy operations employee writing in August:

Management is cliquey and condescending. They push you too hard. Your job is below them and they don't offer to help with what you do when you are overwhelmed. Instead, they try to figure out better 'processes' and point the finger. Never been so unhappy with a department in my years experience in the job force and I'm not the first one of my co-workers to say that.

Our personal favorite, however, is the March 2012 review that lists the pros as "free granola and advice and a computer" and the cons as "unstable and strange and weird."

If there's one thing we've learned covering Silicon Alley, it's that a little free food goes a long way toward pacifying employees.

LONGREADS

Ultra-Orthodox Jews Take a Hard Line on the Internet at Rally of 40,000 Men (And Me) In which our intrepid reporter sneaks into Citi Field in drag. 

Faith, Hope, and Singularity: Entering the Matrix with New York’s Futurist Set It's the end of the world as we know it, and they feel fine.

The Battle Over Revenge Porn: Can Hunter Moore, the Web’s Vilest Entrepreneur, Be Stopped? Victims and hackers are on the case.

Meet Betabeat's 2012 Tech Insurgents Ambiable agitator Anil Dash, Tumblr's Mad Man Rick Webb, and the merry pranksters of OkFocus.

Jonah Peretti’s Meme Streak Making viral happen inside the factory at BuzzFeed.

THE YEAR IN HEADLINES

Uber Bulldozes Its Way into New York City's Taxi Market Before all the bureaucratic setbacks, CEO Travis Kalanick revealed his grand plan.

Flash Dance! Luxury Flash Sales Sites Regroup After Layoffs Can Gilt Groupe cross the IPO finish line without scuffing the lacquer on its Louboutins?

How to Avoid Being Pushed Out of the Company You Founded Insiders dish on Naveen Selvadurai's defoundering.

Records Point to Credit Card Fraud by Silicon Swindler Shirley Hornstein She used her friend's credit card to buy a plane ticket in her name. Twice. 

Investors Wonder About the Future of TechStars New York Will TechStars New York maintain its prominence?

OP-EDS

We Need to Make Tech Uncool Again A call to arms for the idealistic nerd in us all.

Friends Investing in Friends: When It Comes to Startups, Is the Fix Already In? Is Startupland an insider’s game?

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Why We’re Definitely in a Bubble The social media bubble is real, and it's spectacular.   

Social Media Companies Have Absolutely No Idea How to Handle the Gaza Conflict War in the time of social graphs.

Area Blogger Worried People Will Think Reality Show Is Real A little perspective on Bravo's version of Silicon Valley.

TINY GEMS

Diary of Two Snapchat Addicts We just can't help ourselves.

Google Says ‘Gchat’ Is Not a Word Ubiquitous noun/verb is totally unofficial.

What Y Combinator Startups Actually Do, Based on Their (Unpronounceable) Names Zapier: Birchbox for swords?

Tortoise & Blonde Thought ‘We Want To Sit On Your Face’ Was a Good Idea for a Slogan "This was a family decision."

In Which We Went to Bravo’s Casting Call for the Real Wantrepreneurs of Silicon Alley The first tech party where someone tried to yank up our skirt! 

Ms. Peluso (Photo: Working World)

Earlier this afternoon, Gilt Groupe named a new CEO to replace founder (and current CEO) Kevin Ryan. Michelle Peluso, formerly the president and CEO of Travelocity, will take the top slot at the flash deals site beginning in February. Ms. Peluso, who currently serves as the chief marketing and Internet officer at Citigroup, is also the only outside member of Gilt Groupe’s board who isn't an investor. She joined the board in October 2009.

"There aren’t that many people that you would trust to become CEO of a company that you’ve spent five years building and that has a thousand people," Mr. Ryan told Betabeat by phone. "She’s always been my first choice. But in the process, midway through, you can’t say ‘Oh my God, I really want Michelle,' because she hasn’t said yes yet; we haven’t made an offer yet.”

The news comes on the heels of swirling rumors that Gilt was looking for an IPO-friendly CEO to replace Mr. Ryan. At the time, a source close to the company told Betabeat that it was never Mr. Ryan's intention to stay on as CEO. Mr. Ryan will continue working closely with Gilt, returning to his previous role as chairman, but shift his focus to other fast-growth companies in the AlleyCorp network: Business Insider and 10Gen. Ms. Peluso will be the third CEO in four years, following Mr. Ryan and Susan Lyne, who stepped down to the chairman spot in 2010, swapping roles with Mr. Ryan.

"So I actually approached Michelle a year ago. One of things I do is that I’m thinking about recruiting all the time," Mr. Ryan said, noting his attempt to hire away a woman in charge of suite sales for the Jets after attending a game seven months ago. "Fast forward, she works at Gilt City today."

Gilt has had a fair amount of difficulty expanding its business in recent years. Its forays into full-price menswear and travel didn't pan out, with its travel vertical Jetsetter now for sale for around $50 million. Back in January, the company laid off 90 employees, closing Gilt City offices in six different markets.

Mr. Ryan said that part of Ms. Peluso's appeal is that "the managing team really likes her." During the search process, he interviewed former employees of hers who said the same thing. "That was important to me," said Mr. Ryan, who let go of Jetsetter CEO Drew Patterson back in May.

Another factor in Ms. Peluso's appointment was her experience with different-size companies. "Here’s a hard thing when you look for someone in this spot. You want someone who has entrepreneurial energy and focus and moves quickly. At the same time, we’re not a 20-person company, we’re a 1,000-person company and with global operations. So you need to have that big company structure and thought process, but not slow you down--and that’s a weird hybrid," he said. "I’ve interviewed people from big companies and I’m like: oh my God, they’re going to be a disaster here. They’re gonna wanna take too long on everything. And yet people can be too sloppy if they just come from startups."

In contrast, Ms. Peluso had sold her travel company Site59 to Travelocity for $43 million in 2002. Her startup was "sort of like a Jetsetter, actually," Mr. Ryan said. "The unusual thing is that they made her the CEO of Travelocity, which is a 5,000-person company!"

Was Ms. Peluso's marketing background ideal in light of Gilt's expected IPO road show? "The most important thing is that you run a good company," Mr. Ryan insisted. "Because you can be a terrible presenter, but if you show up and you have great results, you know public investors will love you. Second thing, you’re right though, is being able to present well."

In January of this year, Mr. Ryan had predicted an IPO for Gilt in the fourth quarter of this year or 2013. That timetable has been delayed. In an interview with AllThingsD, Mr. Ryan mentioned Zynga and Groupon's performance in the public markets with some distaste. He told Betabeat that because Ms. Peluso won't join until next year. "She needs to be here a couple months before we can make the decision and say go," he said, predicting an IPO by either end of next year or the end of 2014. "If I had to refine it, I’d say end of 2014," he added.

"Look no one loves the prospect of going public for all the obvious reasons," Mr. Ryan acknowledged. "On the other hand, it’s inevitable that any company I’m in--if they get really big--either they sell or have to go public. You need to get liquidity at some point." However, he added, "It depends on your alternatives. I think in Gilt's case going public is the best option. If someone walks up tomorrow and says, 'Here’s $10 billion,' I’ll call you up and say, 'Guess what? I got a better option!"

As for the impending sale of Jetsetter, everything is on schedule, Mr. Ryan said, with binding bids due in the next two weeks of December. "You never quite know whether you get zero bids or five bids," he said. "But so far the right things are happening, and that would close in the first quarter."

Startupland, he explained, can only stay insulated from broader economic forces--like, say, today's warning about a new global recession--so for long: "The LP's that fund booms are, after all, pension, municipal, and sovereign wealth funds. Consumers need disposable income to invest in the latest products,  as do the companies who serve them and advertisers who reach them."

The latest venture capital numbers and tales from the boardroom seem to indicate that some of Mr. Ries' predictions are coming to pass.

In a trenchant blog post over the weekend, Union Square Ventures' Fred Wilson said, "it is a tougher time for early stage consumer internet companies than I have seen since the 2001-2004 time frame. And I think we are still in the early innings of this more challenging environment," noting reports of a 42 percent drop in VC funding for consumer web and mobile companies for the first nine months of 2012 (year-over-year).

Looking at same report from Dow Jones VentureSource, the Wall Street Journal noted that:

“Just under half of the 165 companies in the consumer information services sector that raised first rounds in 2010 have raised a subsequent equity round and fewer than one-quarter of those who raised a first round last year have done so.”

Those numbers spurred fears of what Ed Zimmerman called a "Series A Funding Cliff," where the emergence of seed funds and so-called micro VCs has not been matched by an increasing number of funds in the next stage. That results in the kind of bottleneck that's bound to create carnage, though at the the moment, the impact has been softened by “the seemingly inextinguishable thirst by larger companies” like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Groupon to “acqui-hire” talent, he explained.

Meanwhile, between heady times and inexperienced entrants, "investors have gotten a little sloppy," says The Verge:

The temptation to pick up a company on little more than a good first impression or a colleague’s recommendation was strong. One entrepreneur who raised over half a million dollars for his startup last year told me that he fudged the presentation to investors — the technology didn’t work yet, so he used a video and pretended it was live.

But the constriction is not just at the seed stage. Last week, Bloomberg noted that investors were wary of sky-high valuations in ecommerce companies like Fab, Gilt Groupe, and celebrity-infused BeachMint and ShoeDazzle.

After pouring more money into retail startups in the third quarter than in any period since the dot-com bust in 2000, venture capitalists concerned over the formation of an e- commerce bubble are balking at deals they consider overpriced. The valuations in recent funding rounds and executive exits suggest investors are no longer willing to sink cash into online stores that don’t have proven growth prospects.

Concern over growth prospects--and profitability!--are also hurting Foursquare's attempts to raise a $50 million round, the Wall Street Journal reported last week.

Foursquare is expected to bring in about $2 million in revenue this year, people familiar with the matter said, by selling targeted coupons. That is well behind the pace set by Facebook, which generated $153 million in revenue selling ads in its fourth year, and Twitter, which sold $45 million in ads at the same point in its history, according to research firm eMarketer.

Foursquare also faces "a backdrop of growing skepticism about young technology companies in the wake of deep stock-market declines for their publicly traded peers," i.e. Zynga, Groupon, and Facebook.

Mr. Wilson's astutely analyzes some of the underlying causes of this capital crunch, including competition for consumers' attention as large platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn "suck up a lot of the oxygen" of time spent online in the English-speaking world.

there are still occasional new entrants into this list and departures too. tumblr and pinterest have risen a lot in the past couple years while myspace has declined. but consumer behaviors are starting to ossify on the web and it is harder than ever to build a large audience from a standing start.

What's more, he argues, the turn towards mobile means has led to difficulties in getting that coveted homescreen spot. Careful observers of the startup scene have no doubt witnessed startups get "stuck in the transition" from having a good-looking product that does what it promises fail to get a large user base. As Mr. Wilson says:

you need to master the "download app, use app, keep using app, put it on your home screen" flow and that is a hard one to master.

For some evidence of that, look at a mobile-first companies like Foursquare. As the Journal noted, only 8 million of the company's 25 million registered members use the app at least once a month.

Perhaps because of those challenges in adoption and engagement, Mr. Wilson notes that momentum for late stage investors is moving away from consumer towards enterprise. Dave McClure of 500Startups vehemently objected to that shift in interest, calling it a "huge error," and seeing an upside even in the flailing trajectories of Groupon and Zynga, especially as nearly "every possible internet distribution channel has MORE users than ever before – whether it be search, social, mobile, video, local, SMS, email, chat, etc.":

The number of recent internet services that have grown from nothing to hundreds of millions of users is frankly rather astonishing – Pinterest, Instagram, Groupon, Zynga – all of these took less than a few years to get to hundreds of millions of users and in some cases billions of revenue. While Groupon & Zynga have certainly fallen Icarus-like from higher heights, it’s still the case that both are amazing for how fast they grew and acquired users via search, social, and other channels.

Despite their respective reading of the tea leaves, neither Mr. Wilson nor Mr. McClure is backing off consumer Internet investments. And the decreasing cost of building scaleable software-based companies means one can live lean to survive harsh startup cycles. But especially in New York's app-happy tech scene, entrepreneurs might want to look down at their home screens and keep Mr. Wilson's litmus test in mind.

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

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.

Mad that Sandy ruined your chance to see him action? You can drown your sorrows at Appular's F#@K SANDY event this coming Thursday and throw one back for a good cause.

Make It or Break It Start-Ups: Silicon Valley glamazon Kim Taylor finally has a name for her soon-to-launch startup, and being the gymnast that she is, she's named it after a move from Yelena Shushunova’s floor routine. The former NBA dancer will launch Shonova this winter, targeting the "millennial luxury fashion market," because you can never have too many websites dedicated to selling expensive clothes to young professional women.

LOLfamous Speaking of Bravo, it appears that I Can Has Cheezburger founder Ben Huh is starstruck by himself. Following the premiere of his new Bravo show, LOLwork, Mr. Huh tweeted a link to his freshly-minted IMDB profile with the caption "So...this happened." Don't let the fame get to your head!

And the techno's so loud USV ringleader and hometown hero Fred Wilson is wheels up and L.A.-bound today. However, his wife--Gotham Gal and investor-in-her-own-right Joanne Wilson--booked the tickets, and so he's not flying his preferred airline. Instead, he's flying Virgin, which is not his preferred airline and for a very specific reason: "I find flying on Virgin like going to a nightclub because of the lighting and I avoid it as a result." We always suspected Mr. Wilson was more of an indie music club kinda guy, and this cinches it.

"Executive scent" It seems that, after several years of "sifting through the crap," Team Thrillist has finally found the platonic ideal of brochandising. Behold:

Via Thrillist CEO Ben Lerer's Instagram.

So saucy Betabeat hates to clutch her collective pearls, but my goodness! Who knew the crowd at AllThingsD were quite so naughty? (Okay, we had an inkling.) Earlier this week, ATD doyenne Kara Swisher tweeted out the link to a colleague's story, which had the headline, "Meet the Man Behind Those Hot Pink Mustache Rides." Catalyst Group CEO Nick Gould immediately gave that the side-eye, noting that he "Can't help wondering if @lizgannes is aware of the off-color meaning of the term "mustache ride." Ms. Swisher didn't miss a beat: "i mean I ASSUME she is. I am." Duly noted.

Digging up history The Computer History Museum, located in Mountain View, California, is kind of like mecca for tech geeks. Contained within its hallowed walls are artifacts that tell the history of computers and videogames. Among those artifacts, apparently, is a copy of Windows 1.0, originally owned by Digg founder Kevin Rose. "My copy of Windows 1.0 on display!" Mr. Rose wrote in a caption for the below photo. A nerd's dream come true.

(Photo: Instagram)