By Jordan Valinsky 5/22 10:32am

Hipster Rage

Hipstblr (Photo: wikipedia.org)

Vespa-Riding, Williamsburg-Residing Tumblr CEO Does Not Appreciate Being Called a Hipster

Call David Karp anything you want–high school dropout, sidecar sideshow–but the one label he won’t stand for is “hipster.” Unknowingly emulating the first rule of hipstersdom by automatically lashing back at the title, the 26-year-old Ludlow suit-wearing, Vespa-riding, Williamsburg-dwelling, brunch-loving chillwave Tumblr CEO was annoyed when ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos dared to call him that yesterday. Read More

By Myles Tanzer 1/16 1:04pm

startup rundown

Katie Couric in Warby Parker (Photo: Facebook.com)

Startup News: Warby Parker Ate Way Too Much Salad and Sold a Lot of Monocles This Year

Rose-Colored Glasses Warby Parker just released its annual report for 2012, and it’s a pretty fun slideshow to click through. The glasses empire now has 113 full-time employes and 42 part-time employees. Of those bespectacled folks, 108 have company-sponsored gym memberships. In other Warby Parker health news, 2,507 pounds of salad were eaten in the office this year. Although there are not too many exact sales figures in the package (besides the fact that 296 monocles were sold this year) a diagram on the last page shows that sales from the first quarter of the year to the last one have nearly tripled. Warby Parker says it gave out 250,000 pairs of glasses this year, some of which went to victims of Hurricane Sandy. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 9/14/12 10:30am

Fresh Capital

(Photo: via The Pitch)

Lerer Ventures Is Raising $30 M. for Its Third Seed-Stage VC Fund in Two Years

Roughly a year-and-a-half after closing its second $25 million seed stage fund, Lerer Ventures is in the processing of raising money for a third. An SEC filing, first noted by TechCrunch, says the size of the round is $30 million.

Although the Form D indicates that the early-stage venture capital firm has yet to sell, expect the round to close quickly.

Last May, it only took Lerer Ventures “a matter of weeks” to raise that $25 million from individuals and family offices. And that was before the highly-regarded New York City firm–launched by Huffington Post cofounder (and Betaworks and Buzzfeed chairman) Ken Lerer and his son Ben Lerer, cofounder of Thrillist–boasted a handful of exits.  Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 1:46pm

Be Like the Virus

onwander splash

Wander, the ‘Utterly Pointless Leaderboard’ and the Most Ridiculous Marketing Strategy Ever

Remember when Hipster.com launched with a splash page and some incentives to tweet or whatever, and it went totally viral before no one even knew what it was? (We still don’t know!) Well, New York-based Wander has done them one better, soaring to new heights of social media insanity with a completely baseless viral marketing campaign. Already it’s been endorsed by @FAKEGRIMLOCK and Chris Messina and blogged about by Wired. What is it? “Love the typography on Wander…! Curious what this site will be about… did you reserve your username yet?” Mr. Messina wrote on Google+.

The “incentiveless” sign-up process (in the words of Wander’s co-founder and CEO Jeremy Fisher, formerly of Dinevore) consists of a splash page and a leaderboard. Read More