Last month, Betabeat’s favorite Facebook sibling Randi Zuckerberg added to her ever-expanding list of responsibilities, launching a “newsletter and online community” called Dot Complicated to help her audience of navigate the complications presented by modern life. Read More
Today Bravo producer and famed Facebook sibling Randi Zuckerberg tweeted a YouTube video that captured a very exciting moment for the spotlight-hungry entrepreneur. Not content to be outshone by her brother Mark, who debuted a new Facebook feature just an hour prior, Ms. Zuckerberg announced that she’d had a walk-on role in a Bay Area edition of the Broadway musical Anything Goes, arranged by the theatrical company SHN San Francisco. Read More
On last night’s episode of “Start-Ups: Silicon Valley,” the close-knit (like real close) brother-sister duo Ben Way and Hermione Way claimed to raise a $500,000 seed round for their health and wellness app Ignite–from respected angel investor Esther Dyson and Gramercy Ventures, no less. Read More
Dear 20 or so religious recap followers,
You probably noticed that I took last week’s episode off. I could give you a list of reasons: it was really busy at work, I was trying to wind down for Thanksgiving, and catching the West Coast feed starting at 10 p.m. Pacific is a bitch. But ultimately, I just didn’t feel like watching it. The first two episodes left me narcoleptic and an unopened Xbox game seemed like more fun.
But Nitasha, Betabeat’s editor, convinced me to give it one last try. Well, I’m glad I did. I managed to stay awake for the entire episode! And it was definitely the most authentic of the season. It may have helped that I was getting texts from Gabe Rivera, founder of the famous tech news aggregator Techmeme, that my startup and I made an appearance in this week’s show. (Gabe was in NYC at the time and claims that he was just “flipping” through the channels). My favorite subject was going to be on . . . me! Read More
Season 1 . . . Episode 2 . . . no end in sight . . . I’m not sure how much more I can take.
Now that the dust has settled from the PR, subsequent Valley backlash, promos, more backlash, and last week’s premiere, we actually get to see what we have here with Bravo’s “Start-Ups: Silicon Valley.” Basically, it’s formulaic reality show. Read More
With 634,000 viewers tuning in for last week’s premiere of Start-Ups: Silicon Valley, newly-minted Bravo TV producer Randi Zuckerberg already has her sights set on New York. According to the Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg Media, Bravo and the production house responsible for Start-Ups, Den of Thieves, have all confirmed that they’re planning a tech-focused show based in NYC. It won’t be a Start-Ups reboot for the Manhattan set, but according to the Journal, “Ms. Zuckerberg and her team are looking to expand and see what techie opportunities there are.” Read More
Last night marked the much-feared premiere of Bravo’s “Start-Ups: Silicon Alley“–a bikini clad-allegory about the startup world’s penchant for self-aggrandizing that vacillates somewhere between a light-hearted brother-sister romcom and “True Life: I Have No Fucking Clue How to Pitch a VC.” It’s your standard Andy Cohen clubhouse fare with the life cycle of an early stage company as a plot device.
But it’s hard for Betabeat, sitting pretty in New York City, to assess what, exactly, the show gets right and wrong about Valley culture. Is the primary mode of socialization really costume parties? Can you get humans to deliver room service to your dog just by saying “social media” three times? Thus we enlisted a native Spencer Chen to separate the real from the fake, borrowing from the recap format pioneered by chroniclers of that other cinéma véritée classic, “Gossip Girl.”
Last night my girlfriend and I hosted a viewing party for the premiere of Bravo’s latest reality show, “Start-Ups: Silicon Valley.” (Yes, startups is spelled with a hyphen and mixed caps and that alone should have been a signal of things to come). It’s definitely one of the more polarizing things to hit the Valley recently because this time, it’s personal. Danny Trinh, a well-known product designer for Path, captured the general sentiment: Read More
The moment you’ve all been waiting for is briskly approaching. Though the much-maligned Start-Ups: Silicon Valley reality show doesn’t premiere until Monday November 5th at 10 p.m., Bravo has begun publishing clips to its website in order to sate our boundless curiosity. AllThingsD picked up on the two drama-filled scenes, one of which features 500 Startups cofounder and noted giver of zero fucks Dave McClure. Read More
Carsabi, a comparison shopping site for cars that graduated from Y Combinator this March, just announced that its cofounders would be joining Mark Zuckerberg to “help Facebook users connect and share.” Facebook isn’t actually acquiring Carsabi, just the talent. “We’re looking for someone to buy the Carsabi service, so the two of us can focus on our new jobs,” cofounders Dwight Crow and Christopher Berner wrote on the company blog.
TechCrunch reports that features baked into Carsabi–including a social element that lets you ask friends for shopping advice and the startup’s ability to crawl all available car listings–make the duo a natural fit to help develop Facebook Gifts or Events. However, we hear that Carsabi first got an offer from Google (another natural fit!) and then parlayed that into a counteroffer from Facebook. Read More
It’s hard to come out the other end of Bravo’s Real-i-Tron with anything in the way of dignity. Just ask these gilded lilies. Something about the cocktail of ambition, insecurity, and actual cocktails tends to make one’s better judgment obsolete.
Thus, we can’t vouch for how the world will perceive stealth startup founder and Ampush Media alum Kim Taylor when Randi Zuckerberg’s creation (working title: “Silicon Valley”) debuts this fall. But over coffee in Midtown last month, Ms. Taylor came across as disarmingly articulate, well-versed in the chutes and ladders of Startupland, and, dare we say, sensible.
Blame her Midwestern roots, or the trial-by-fire of helping to grow a bootstrapped company to revenue in the high eight figures in its first two years. Read More
