(Photo: Flickr/RobertScoble)

Morin needs a Mophie Path founder Dave Morin, he of popped collar fame, did a Q&A with Vanity Fair about his mobile habits. Among the gems revealed is the fact that Mr. Morin boasts a "custom-designed, one-of-a-kind bespoke app" that he built to communicate with his assistant. Guess gChat is too gauche?

But our favorite moment came when the Facebook mafioso revealed that he also has a newfound solution for the fact that his iPhone is always running out of battery. Instead of buying a battery pack or carrying around a charger like everyone else, Mr. Morin has opted to shlep around a second iPhone. "I have two iPhones, one for day and one for the night," he told VF. "When the day phone runs out, the night phone takes over. I never have to worry."

Cool. Cool cool.

NSFWCorp Big week for ex-TechCrunch writer and rabblerouser Paul Carr! He relaunched NSFWCorp and mailed 5,000 copies of a print edition of the site. He also scaled new heights in his commitment to transparency. Witness: Conflict NSFWCorp, a gallery of all of NSFWCorp's backers. Interested parties can buy a "room" in the House of Carr. Prices start at $3 and reach as steep as $1,400, with the top slot already filled by a generous $600,000 in funding from Vegas Tech Fund, Zappos founder Tony Hsieh's investment firm.

In a poetic twist on transparency in journalism, the first room at the top contains an illustration of the firm CrunchFund, including a rather svelte-looking Michael Arrington, a man famous for his conflicts of interest.

Gosling Parker Economically conscious walking Internet meme Ryan Gosling was recently spotted looking dashing in his Warby Parker frames. The company humble-bragged about the royal sighting on its Facebook page earlier this week noting that the frame is the "Preston." We share their exuberance. This is one piece of clothing we don't mind seeing him in.

Reboot that Ho? One hit wonder (#realtalk) Soulja Boy earned that coveted @Windows follow on Twitter. He tweeted "oh hey windows look at my be cool pic," along with a screenshot of the golden moment. What's next? A commercial with Soulja waxing poetically about his swaggy Windows-powered phone?

https://twitter.com/souljaboy/status/317682776788856833/

Living on the Edge On his Tumblr today, LivingSocial cofounder and CTO Aaron Batalion announced that he’s leaving the company.

"After much soul searching, I have decided to leave LivingSocial to pursue some new ideas. No new adventure to announce yet, just a urge to go create… that there is more to do."

That’s probably a hard pill to swallow for investors who ploughed $100 million into the company last month. Guess that makes tomorrow Schadenfreude Saturday for the roughly 400 staffers the company laid off last November.

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: Tipster)

Your Name Here A Silicon Valley source had the pleasure of dining near Path cofounder Dave Morin and his wife, Brit.co founder Brit Morin recently. Mr. Morin spoke about the future of Path while Ms. Morin, a DIY enthusiast, used crayons provide by the restaurant to doodle on the paper table cloth, said the source. There were rainbows, flowers and balloons, but our favorite was a drawing of the Brit.co logo, with "Morin" written underneath and an arrow pointed towards Ms. Morin (just in case the restaurant staff didn't recognize her). That's one way to disrupt advertising, we suppose. Our tipster was kind enough to snap a pic on their way out.

Happy Internet, Mr. President Twice this week in conversation with tech types, Betabeat was asked when Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian was running for office already. The 29-year-old credited with helping to defeat SOPA/PIPA already toured the country (in a bus once leased for John McCain's  “Straight Talk Express") running for president of the Internet. But with Sheryl Sandberg hot on his heels, isn't it time to start campaigning for the real thing?

Last we heard, Mr. Ohanian was rumored to be launching his own startup reality show on MTV. However, he was recently spotted handing out awards on behalf of Republican Congressman Darrell Issa, who likes to call himself "the House GOP's chief watchdog."

We've reached out to Mr. Ohanian comment, but perhaps this lulzy tweet is response enough:

Lol RT @michaelpryor: I just realized why Alexis Ohanian's senate race hasn't yet begun. You have to be 30 years old to be a senator!

— Alexis Ohanian (@alexisohanian) March 1, 2013

(Photo: Instagram/Neil Blumenthal)

Here's Looking At You, Kid Warby Parker celebrated its third birthday last night. And what better way to mark a $41.5 million funding round and potential Google Glass partnership than champagne at Grand Central Terminal. Ain't startup life grand?

Duly Noted We're starting to wonder how the geniuses at Rap Genius get any work done. The beef-starting startup promptly uploaded Andrew Mason's farewell letter and started annotating. A sampling of the notes: "Seems like Andrew has too much swag for a public company, they need to find more of a “boring loser” type…" Can't imagine why this team would be so ready to defend "swag."

VC Ben Horowitz also chimed in with a more sedate contribution, saying, "Andrew does the stand up thing and claims accountability. Make no mistake though—although he’s the only one accountable, he’s certainly not the only one responsible for all the things that went wrong." Wait, was that a dig at Eric Lefkofsky?

No Micky D's Please Worth noting: Gross slideshows about how McDonald's terrible blunders of yore perform far better, numbers-wise, than flattering slideshows about a company-funded visit to HQ.

But since McDonald's paid for airfare + hotel, not such a big deal. Also, 4 kinds of mcnugget shapes! h/t @bupbin businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-four…

— Peter Kafka (@pkafka) February 28, 2013

Star Power Hey, what'd you do for the Oscars? Presumably you went over to a friend's house and had a couple of beers and fell in love with Jennifer Lawrence, like most of America. Well, AllThingsD grand dame and Vanity Fair contributor Kara Swisher was there. Like, Hollywood there. NBD! She tweeted Sunday, "Weird Oscars, now onto the party," complete with Insta. On another snap, she added, "Observation on first and only Hollywood party: Celebs are just like us (except prettier and more insecure)."

Snacks You know what's a really great diet, according to former Google employee Mike Dudas? Quitting Google to work somewhere else without that cafeteria. We've always heard free suckling pig goes straight to the hips.

Who cares about fashion, you're in a hot-air balloon! (Photo: Screencap)

Google Glass certainly isn't lacking in the whiz-bang factor. The gadget was publicly introduced with a skydiving stunt; just yesterday, the company released a video from the point of view of a user, demonstrating how seamlessly the spectacles can capture your exciting life of hot-air ballooning and snake charming.

But now comes the hard part: Getting normals to want the damn things. Unlike many software developers and/or Betabeat reporters, most of America isn't likely to be sold on the pitch that hey, it's just like what Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge wore on Star Trek TNG!

Hence, step one is to make the things a little sleeker. The New York Times reports today that sources say, as part of a stab at style, Google is currently in negotiations with Warby Parker to get some design help with the project. If the company plans to start selling Glass to the wider world later this year, such a partnership would come not a moment too soon.

Right now, you'd be forgiven for spotting Glass in the wild and thinking it's some sort of medical contraption:

OH: "I saw someone in Dolores Park wearing Google Glass. I thought she was wearing headgear for a jaw problem at first."

— Mike Isaac (@MikeIsaac) February 20, 2013

The problem is getting the device to look like something other than, at best, a glorified Bluetooth headset. BaubleBar cofounder Daniella Yacobovsky helpfully condensed the problem with that for the Times: “Is it useful? Of course it is. Do I look like a tool? Yeah. I’m not going to wear it.” And right now? Even models look a little dorky wearing the things. Sergey Brin, the face of Google Glass, is now weirdly jacked, but it's going to take more than a few hours with designer Diane von Furstenberg to make him a fashion icon.

But the appearance of Silicon Alley cool kid Warby Parker has us wondering whether we've been mistaking the market for Google Glass all along. Maybe a computer for your face isn't the ultimate nerd toy. Maybe it's actually the perfect status symbol for no-brandcuffs startup-guy founders. Jazz up the frames with a bit of tortoise, and forget the Pebble--suddenly Google Glass is the new Nike Fuelband.

Once this things hit the shelves, you will never again be able to have a conversation with a founder when he's not checking his email.

I was in the showroom Sunday and you helped me pick out some spectacular frames. Just wanted to say thanks for the confidence boost. As I was leaving I told you that your own glasses are amazing. I should've mentioned your brilliant smile, too. Still thinking of it. :)

Here's to hoping this girl isn't creeped out by Internet strangers.

Peas in a pod Start-Ups: Silicon Valley star and "lifecaster" Sarah Austin snapped this pic of her and a friend hanging out with everyone's favorite early-aughts celebrity, Paris Hilton. The trio were partying at Sundance in Park City, Utah. Don't they look like a match made in heaven?

(Photo: Facebook)

Fight fight fight Sounds like GroupMe cofounder Steve Martocci recently tangled with that most reviled of New York institutions: Time Warner Cable. Seems a phone call to customer service got a tad heated. “‘If we had choice in NY we would NOT CHOOSE YOU...I urge the city of New York to change laws & eliminate your broken system’ -@smart to @TWC” tweeted Poptip founder Kelsey Falter.

Could this be another sign of techies ready to flex newfound political muscle? It seems not quite. In the @replies, Mr. Martocci admitted that he was “so so mad, figured there was some law holding back choice, either way, this just fucking sucks.” It's true that cable providers are probably the leading cause of inchoate rage in the five boroughs. And sadly, the traditional recourse seems to be out of Mr. Martocci’s reach: “my building was built in 1897, never getting fios.” Damn those historic homes!

Moving day Midtown no more: We hear that the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator has picked up stakes, relocating from the Times Square area to the far hipper environs of the Flatiron district. The current class of 10 companies (plus several alums) is now ensconced in a spacious 10,000 feet in Chelsea, with FIT as a neighbor. It comes complete with ping-pong table, kegerator-equipped kitchen, and a “videogame cave.” Party at ERA’s house?

Cozy!

Inquiring minds want to know If there’s one thing that unites denizens of both the Alley and the Valley, it’s frustration at the extent to which the rent is too damn high. But relief may very well be on the way! “Is it rude to ask if/when the Series A bottleneck/whatnot will produce cheaper rents in SF?” asks Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera. Hope springs eternal, we suppose.

Hey ladies Are you a hacker? Are you a lady? Have we got a Technologist thinker Gabriella Coleman tweets, “Lady hackers, especially with a political bent, Cosmo is wanting to write a story on hacker/hactivistas, Interested?” Boy oh boy, the Hacker News thread about this is going to be one for the ages.

Annals of awkward What's more "insufferable and obnoxious and annoying" than a venture firm producing a glossy music video mash-up of "Call Me Maybe" and "Gangnam Style"? For one thing, said venture firm producing a "making of" video about the mash-up, and embedding it in their annual report. So tell us, Josh Kopelman, about doing your own stunts—did your tush get toasted when the fireworks went off? "I couldn't feel anything," the First Round Capital partner said. "I just felt humiliated."

You and us both.

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

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.

G Train Still Lost Forever If you take the Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 trains, you already know what time your train is coming based on the large signs that tell you. In December, the MTA released an iOS app to tell you the subway times. But now the MTA is providing a web app, as well as a native iPhone app, so that you can know what time your train is coming before you get to the station. The web app is located at onthego.mta.info and has real-time updating data for all of your arrival times. Most importantly, the MTA has decided to release the data behind the app to developers. Let's hope someone whips up something cooler than this thing.

Fund This Office Kickstarter will soon be moving to into its new Greenpoint offices in the former home of the Eberhard Faber Pencil Co. Renovations to the space began in the summer, and renderings of the new office were released yesterday and then swiftly taken down. The gorgeous plans show that the former factory will contain a lot of rooms, including a theater, an art gallery, a lounge, a library, a green roof and a cafeteria. Oh yeah, and offices too--have to do work at some point.

Thinkers Posthumously Fill in the Rap Deets Rap Genius is speeding right along on its quest to become the Talmud of the Internet. John Wesley, back from the grave, now has an account to comment on the teachings of the bible. And none other than Samuel Johnson is reading between the lines on some of Shakespeare's juiciest bits. Now if we could only get Heidegger to fill us in on some 2 Chainz lyrics, we'd be all set.

Whistle While You Cowork An article published yesterday on FastCompany has some interesting stats on coworking. The piece says that "50% of all coworkers access their work space around the clock" and that "71% report a boost in creativity since joining a coworking space." Secret Clubhouse, the coworking space originally established by The Barbarian Group cofounder Rick Webb, gets highlighted in the article as well. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the space served as a functional workplace for employees from all over the city.

LinkedIn for the Klout Enthusiast A new jobs site launched today that takes your personal connections into account when matching you up with jobs. CareerSonar is a site that matches the employment history of your friends with every job available online and shows you which jobs you could be connected to. In the "it's who you know" world, this might make the most sense for looking for a job online.

Girl Put Your Records On(line) Accessing your medical records online is an impossibility right now, but the NYC-based New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC) and Health 2.0 are trying to fix that. Yesterday, the two organizations launched the Patient Portal for New Yorkers Design Challenge. They are looking for designers and developers to create a prototype for a website for patients to access their medical records online. This seems like something important!

Jerseylicious Accelerator Wants You TechLaunch, New Jersey’s premier Technology Accelerator, is now accepting applications for its 2013 class. The program is slated to begin in May and will culminate in mid-September with a Demo Day at Montclair State University. The teams that make it past the selection process will join the class and will each receive up to $25,000 of seed capital.

Be an Average Boyfriend The Netflix for fancy flowers, H.Bloom, has recently announced the launch of a special Valentine's Day service its calling "H.Bloom Hero." It allows men to become "heroes" by scheduling flowers to be delivered to their loved ones on Valentine's Day. Not sure if that makes a guy a hero or just a subpar boyfriend, but we're all just taking what we can get at this point, right?

Better Gets Better Betterment, the personal investing startup that helps users manage stocks-and-bonds portfolios from an online dashboard, hit a milestone last week, topping $100 million in assets under management. That was cause to celebrate and also for a minor redesign. "We have a dashboard screen on the wall that shows our assets under management and how they grow each day,” said CEO Jon Stein in an email. “We've finally had to adjust the font because the number wouldn't fit anymore."

Hipster Becomes the Man AOL is switching things up a bit and poaching one of its mobile employees for its venture fun. Doug Ludlow, the former CEO of the AOL-acquired photosharing startup Hipster, is leaving AOL's mobile side to become the first innovation partner at AOL Ventures. The title is extremely unclear, but it's understood that Ludlow will be spending a bit more time back in New York and getting out of AOL Ventures' Palo Alto headquarters.

Because Tweetdeck Popups Suck Rapportive, the add-on that replaces Gmail's ads with information about your contacts, has just launched an early version of Twitter integration to its service. The update lets you follow, reply and retweet your contacts from within Gmail.  You can request early access to the feature here.

(Photo: twitter.com)

Non Hustlers Need Not Apply Lerer Ventures is looking to hire a new analyst. The job requires one or two years of experience at a venture backed startup or major tech company. You have to also be "a sweet and cool person," so no mean losers need apply. According to the listing, they’re looking for “A hustler and/or hacker who works smart.” We're sending this to Cassidy right away.

Playing Hooky Not Cool On Friday, AT&T and NYC Digital will kickoff a hackathon designed to help Mayor Bloomberg's Truancy Task Force. Designers and coders will be given the challenge to create a mobile app to keep kids in school. The first prize is pretty sweet and includes $2,500 in Gift Cards for the team to split, a $5,000 donation from AT&T to the team's choice of non-profit organizations, and one year of the "Small" service from Github for each team member. No word on whether college dropouts are allowed to compete.

Buy Us Pretty Things BaubleBar, the online marketplace for designer jewelry, is launching its first full-time retail storefront, The Bar. It will be located off their offices at 230 Fifth Ave and will be privately tested from October 10th-16th and then will have its official public launch on Wednesday, October 17th. With their store's opening, they join the ranks of online shopping destinations going IRL--Piperlime’s new Soho store, Warby Parker’s showroom, and MakerBot’s Mulberry store, to name a few.

Growing Branch Ian Ownbey, a backend engineer at Twitter, has just been poached by Branch. He joined Twitter in 2009 when the company was only had 80 employees. He's the company's first hire since getting out of private beta mode just over a month ago. Branch founder Josh Miller said on the company's blog that he's excited to work with Mr. Ownbey because they both share the not-so-unique distinction of both being college dropouts.

Watching Baseball Is Boring If the MLB postseason just isn't exciting enough for you, then PrePlay, a NYC based predictive game startup, has the app for you. They just updated their MLB PrePlay app which allows fans to predict plays for every postseason game. You can call what you think will happen on every pitch or spend time before the game picking out how individual innings will go or how specific players will perform. So basically, it's like Nicotine for degenerate gamblers.

The Funny (Web)Pages Crowded Comics, which was selected for the SXSW Accelerator earlier this year, is a news site that tells the day's big stories through comics. The site has five cartoonists that take turns creating an image of the day and users try to top each other to create the funniest caption. It's like a more democratic version of The New Yorker's back page--and a whole lot less stuffy.

Cool Tablet Site, Bro Onswipe, the TechStars grad that lets publishers create custom tablet sites, just launched support for Google’s Nexus 7 and has plans to expand to more Android devices in the near future. CEO Jason Baptiste told The Next Web, "We believe in supporting modern hardware coupled with modern browsers that support the best of the web. Nexus 7 is great hardware combined with the great browser of Chrome that lets us bring the web to the bleeding edge."

Better Than A Greeting Card If a casual "happy birthday" wall post just won't cut it this year, you should try making a handmade HTML 5 birthday card on Scrollkit, the service designed to make website creation easy for people who have no coding experience.Since its start, the site has been used to make pages for friends and lovers and now they're doubling down on that fact. They've added tools to make sending finished products easier, as well as beta Firefox + Safari support. Ukelele hero and Kickstarter employee, Nicole He stars in a video that shows off what Scrollkit can do. The video got us pretty emotional, but we're a sucker for a ukelele love story.

Hungry, Hungry, Hackers This weekend, TechStars alumn Ordr.in, a site that helps restaurant take online orders and manage their web presence, hosted a food hackathon at Pivotal Labs to celebrate its rebuilt developer portal and the expansion of its service to New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia. The winner of the competition was a project called iFridge, a service that keeps track what's of your fridge and has kitschy alerts like texting you when someone takes your beer or playing celebratory music when a bottle of champagne is popped open.

Vaminos! Planning your high class European vacation is so exhausting, but thanks to Vive Unique, aka "the upmarket Airbnb," things just got a bit easier. The company has just expanded its listings of handpicked boutique apartments and homes to include locations in Barcelona. Cofounder Claire Whisker promises that more cities will be added soon.

Do-Gooder Glasses Everyone's favorite glasses company, Warby Parker, just announced that they're doing something really nice. They've partnered with Pencils of Promise, a non-profit devoted to building schools in the developing world, to create two pairs of sunglasses that will generate some cash for the charity. $30 from each purchase of the $95 glasses will go toward supporting Pencils of Promise operations.

Charlie Bit My Hires Rightster, a service that helps content providers maximize revenue from online video, announced three new hires this week after their announcement they will be responsible for bringing the Charlie Bit My Finger show to life. Jonathan Bates, former Head of Multiplatform Video at ITV, is joining Rightster as the Director of Content and Partnerships. Another former ITV guy, Ben Freeman, will be Rightster's new Head of Rightster Studios. Most notably, they have scooped up Donagh O’Malley, the former director of content at Google TV.

Remember when Facebook was a world-changing social network--uniting families, friends, and that girl who moved away in the third grade across space and time? And then remember when Facebook was a punchline, trying to get you to pay real money for the virtual equivalent of the flair buttons on a TGIFriday's vest?

Well, now, Facebook is also partly an e-commerce play--like say Amazon or Pets.com. Today, the company began launching a new segment called Gifts, which allows users to buy and send real-world items, tied to the life events you post on Facebook. It's a gentle reminder that when free consumer web startups say, "Don't worry about monetization, we'll find a magical third way later," what they mean is: "Let us pretend just a little while longer, please."

In nice surprise, however, the gift selection is stuff you might actually want to send and receive, including cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery and glasses from Warby Parker. The team behind Karma, the social gifting app Facebook acquired last May, were responsible for developing Gifts. And they built it with smartphones in mind, which could prop up Facebook's weakness in mobile advertising.

As the New York Times notes:

"Facebook already reminds users when it’s time to send birthday greetings to their Facebook friends. It will now enable them to send a gift along with a greeting. Gift-givers can pay with a credit card. Recipients will have to offer up their offline addresses so a gift can be delivered. The tool will roll out incrementally, starting Thursday, initially in the United States."

Finally, those perfunctory, blasé birthday wishes on your wall will come with an actual treat. Now you just have to ask yourself: Do you trust Zuck with your home address?

(Photo: Warby Parker)

All that company-subsidized beer pong must be inspiring. Warby Parker*, the online glasses retailer, has decided to expand its marketing efforts to the small screen. Rather than just promote their $95 try-at-home model on the web or through cool kid pop-up stores and kiosks in Standard hotels, the company is investing $250,000--a small fraction of its $50.3 millon in VC funding--in a small-scale, highly-targeted TV ad strategy.

The New York Times reports that the company is saving money by sending the ad, featuring anthropomorphized eyeballs riding on unicycles, to its (very) particular target market:

To be thrifty with its dollars, the company will run the spot on Dish TV and DirecTV using addressable technology, which enables the spot be aimed more precisely to the Warby Parker demographic target: men and women ages 18 to 34 who like to buy designer-style eyewear at lower prices.

Yes, Dish and DirecTV subscribers, apparently your cable provider knows your budget and predilections where spectacles are concerned.

You can check out Warby Parker's stylish inspiration board for the 30-second national spot, assiduously annotated with references to artifacts both highbrow and kitsch. Scholars of the brand's quirky sensibilities can even peruse a reading list to go along with the commercial--no doubt anticipating an HBS class on preciousness in ad strat.

Personally, we're rather partial to the video Warby Parker made last year starring photographer Noah Kalina, veteran chronicler of Silicon Alley's far out founders. What can we say? We're suckers for a little sexual innuendo.

*Disclosure. 

(Photo: Crunchbase)

Thrive Capital, the New York-based venture capital firm helmed by 26-year-old Josh Kushner*, announced today that it has successfully raised a $150 million fund for early and later stage startups. The news comes almost a year to the day after Thrive announced a $40 million raise from investors like Princeton University. The fresh $150 million comes from a slew of some of the same investors, including Princeton, Wellcome Trust and Hall Capital Partners.

Thrive has backed many of New York's recent notable startup exits. The firm was an investor in Instagram, purchased by Facebook for $1 billion; Hot Potato, also purchased by Facebook for around $10 million; and GroupMe, purchased by Skype for more than $50 million.

The current Thrive portfolio reads like a who's who in New York tech: the company is also an investor in Pinterest competitor The Fancy, flash sales site Fab and e-commerce glasses hub Warby Parker.

“Many see the way the Internet has already transformed our daily lives and conclude that most of the change that was going to happen already has.” Mr. Kushner told The New York Times. “I am of the belief that it is only the beginning.”

*Disclosure: Thrive Capital is invested in several start-up companies. Josh Kushner, a Thrive principal, is also part-owner of Observer Media Group, which owns Betabeat. Betabeat has no affiliation with Thrive Capital and the views expressed in Betabeat do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Thrive Capital or its principals.