By Patrick Clark 11/12/12 10:25am

fundraising

spotify

Spot Off or Spot On? Spotify Said to Miss Valuation Goal, but Still Plenty Pricey

When Spotify landed in the competitive U.S. digital music marketplace last summer, it was boosted by a cresting wave of good publicity, strong track record in Europe and a $100 million investment funding round that valued the company at $1 billion.

That wasn’t all: Given the strong demand for Pandora and LinkedIn IPOs (and even stronger anticipation for the eventual Facebook offering), Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s timing for a U.S. launch seemed spot on.

Well, things have changed: Share prices for high profile tech IPOs such as Facebook, Zynga and Groupon have tanked, and as Spotify readies to close its latest round of fund-raising, the company looks likely to fall short of its goal. Instead of the $4 billion valuation that Spotify initially sought, the company will likely settle for something “slightly more than $3 billion,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Read More

By Jessica Roy 11/12/12 8:09am

Linkages

Even Aplusk had a Dailybooth account. (Photo: Wikispaces)

Booting Up: RIP Dailybooth Edition

Dailybooth, the original platform for gratuitous selfies, is shutting down. At least we’ll always have Instagram. [The Next Web]

Remember when YouTube unleashed a slew of investments in branded content channels? Now it’s doubling down and infusing even more cash in content. Pity then that we can’t recall the name of a single one of those original investments. [AdAge]

Spotify is seeking a $3 billion valuation, down from a reported $4 billion round the Times wrote about back in May. [Wall Street Journal]

The Brooklyn Beta Summer Camp–akin to San Francisco’s Dogpatch Labs–recently finished its 12-week accelerator program. Adweek surveys the companies, the program and of course, the pivots. [Adweek]

Kim Dotcom’s new site is finally live at Mega.co.nz. That whole Me.Ga didn’t work out so well with the Gabon government, which owns the .Ga extension. [Mega.co.nz]

By Gary Sharma 11/05/12 8:30am

Goooood Morning Silicon Alley!

sponsor_garys_red_tie

Best Tech Events This Week (Ingenuity, Capital OnStage, Red Innova, PandoMonthly w Daniel Ek of Spotify, Hack ‘n Jill, EcoHack)

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.

The lights are back on in Lower Manhattan, the subways are up and running again (well, most of them) and things are slowly returning to normal in the city. But in Staten Island, the Rockaways, Red Hook, Hoboken, Breezy Point, Long Beach, Seaside Heights and other coastal areas that bore the brunt of Sandy, there’s a ton of recovery work still to be done. People are cold, hungry and tired and devastated communities are gravely in need of our help. If you want to donate cash or goods or volunteer your time, go check out our updated Hurricane Sandy Relief: Volunteering and Donations Guide to see how you can help.

For those of you frustrated from not hearing back from volunteering organizations, I’d recommend just getting a van and a bunch of friends together and driving out to one of the affected areas and start helping. You can take much-needed supplies like food, blankets, flashlights, batteries, diapers, jackets, etc. Volunteers are desperately needed on the ground to distribute supplies and help clean up, and this will be even more true during the coming days, as many folks go back to work. Remember, there may be another storm coming on Wednesday, so the next couple of days are critical.

It’s been really heartening to see everybody come together and pitch in and help out over the last few days, so let’s keep this trend going. Makes me proud to be a New Yorker! Read More

By The Editors 10/19/12 6:58pm

shameless rumormongering

MTV JAMS

Rumor Roundup: The World’s Most Cheapskate VC and 57 Is Spotify’s Unlucky Number

I’ll Take Stingy for $5, Alex We’ve heard of venture capitalists who drive a hard bargain when it comes to their term sheets, but not so much when they drive off Sand Hill Road. So we were dismayed to learn that a VC at a very prominent 36-year-old venture capital firm asked the non-profit(!) meetup group Hacks/Hackers, which brings together journalists and technologists, to waive a $5 attendance fee for an event. To put that number in context: the firm has more than $400 million under management.

Hacks/Hackers has a very welcoming attendance policy and routinely waives fees for students so that no one gets shut out. But if your portfolio’s aggregate revenue teeters up into the billions, just pry your hands off the fiver, dude. Read More

By Steve Huff 10/05/12 12:23pm

streaming music

Spotify playlist (screengrab)

Spotify’s Business Model Called ‘Unsustainable’

In 2010 Swedish music streaming service Spotify was on the rise, with a 151 percent jump in revenue. According to PrivCo, a company that tracks financial data, the bottom almost fell out for Spotify in 2011 and the service’s current model is “unsustainable.”

CNET obtained confirmation from Spotify that numbers reported by PrivCo were correct–but not news. Spotify’s losses since jumping into the U.S. market were first reported in August by the Wall Street Journal.

Regardless of who reported what first, PrivCo’s assessment might sting at Spotify HQ: Read More

By Myles Tanzer 9/28/12 5:30pm

All the jobs

Patrick Duggan (Photo: twitter.com)

Tech’s Unemployed Flock To 7 World Trade Center To Try Their Luck

New York’s unemployed tech talent and soon-to-graduate comp sci students assembled on the 10th floor of 7 World Trade Center today with the hopes of snagging a job at the NYC Startup Job Fair. Betabeat attended the early session that was reserved for developers and engineers, which meant we missed the arrival of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who apparently greeted the crowd by saying, “It’s never been a better time to be a tech startup in New York City.” Judging from this fair, no one could disagree–it looked pre-recession, to say the least.

The jobless in attendance followed a snaking hallway lined with companies that were actually physically grabbing at programmers in order to draw them into their company’s pitch. At the end of the slender maze, a room opened up that looked way more like a recognizable job fair with four rows of tables.

Two cops stood in front of the sprawling windows overlooking the 1 World Trade Center construction site and 9/11 memorial. They were sporting a silly look on their faces that seemed to say, “These were the kids I beat up in high school?” Read More

By Jessica Roy 7/03/12 5:33pm

Summer Fun

(Photo: Twitter)

The Funniest Tech-Related For Dummies Books

We haven’t thought about the prolific For Dummies series since a college programming class when our professor had us buy Flash for Dummies (thanks for the vote of confidence). So imagine our surprise when this tweet popped up in our Twitter feed and we learned that there is an entire canon of For Dummies texts that go as niche as niche can go. Here are some of our favs, since it’s the evening before 4th of July and no one is reading the Internet anyway. Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 6/28/12 8:53am

Apples and Androids

That cord = digital crow's feet. (Photo: flickr.com/philomglol

Let Me Let Me Upgrade Ya: Apple Reportedly Plans Major iTunes Overhaul

Damn, we feel old: Did you guys realize that iTunes debuted in 2003, which is now almost a decade ago? That’s practically a glacial age in technology, and in the era of Spotify, the software is starting to show its age.

Lest the program find itself suddenly in the dustbin of cultural history–Winamp-style–Apple reportedly plans to do a bit of sprucing up. Bloomberg says a major overhaul is scheduled to debut sometime before the end of the year.  Read More