Launching A Startup? Make A Clean Legal Break From Your Employer First

Editor’s note: Stephanie Singer practices law at WilmerHale where she advises emerging companies in the technology and life sciences industries on formation, financings and ongoing corporate matters.

Before quitting your job to launch a startup, read the documents you signed with your current employer carefully. They could contain provisions that put your new venture at risk.

Thousands of entrepreneurs quit their jobs each year to start their own companies. It happens all the time, and it’s no problem, right? Not quite. Many employment contracts contain provisions that can make it difficult for entrepreneurs to pursue their startups unfettered. It’s important to address those issues now before you quit your job.

The areas most likely to cause problems pertain to intellectual property, competition and solicitation (typically of customers and employees). Contracts in these areas protect companies from losing a competitive advantage when you leave to work for someone else or start a business of your own.

The areas most likely to cause problems pertain to intellectual property, competition and solicitation.

What is the best way to handle these restrictions? Ideally, you would avoid signing any employment contract that places limits on your professional pursuits. But that’s not always a realistic option since many employers require them, and many would-be entrepreneurs have already signed such contracts by the time they decide to start a company.

So the next best thing is to read your contract carefully to determine if it could limit your startup plans. From there, you can figure out how to navigate any potential conflicts. Look for language in three key areas: intellectual property, non-competition and non-solicitation.

Assignment Of Intellectual Property

Assignment of intellectual property, also called “assignment of invention,” ensures that the ideas, discoveries and techniques that you developed for your employer remain the property of the company. For example, if you developed a clever data-mining tool as part of your job, you can’t use that same technology in your startup. It’s the property of your employer. This typically includes any work you did during working hours or using company technology or property (such as a company-issued laptop).

That may seem straightforward enough, but here’s the rub â€" this clause could also include work you did for your startup during non-working hours using your own property. Some particularly restrictive contracts assert that any work you did while you were employed at the company is their property, even if you did the work on Christmas Day using your personal laptop or mobile device.

The key is to make sure the idea behind your startup is not part of an idea, or based on any technology or other intellectual property, that you assigned to your current employer. If it is, you either need to come up with another idea or ask your employer for permission to pursue it.

Non-Competition

Of the three areas, non-competition is probably the most common issue for entrepreneurs. These clauses restrict an employee from starting a business that competes with the employer. Non-compete agreements often extend for one year after employment ends and cover the geographic area in which the company operates. In today’s online world, however, it is often difficult to determine the actual limits of that geographic restriction.

The challenging aspect of non-compete clauses is determining what constitutes competition. Usually the agreement will contain a description of your employer’s business or industry. But it can be tough to know for sure if your proposed business falls into the category of competitor. To get a better sense, ask yourself the following questions:

• Is my startup in a similar business or industry as my employer’s business?
• Will I target the same customers?
• Does my startup use similar knowledge or technology?

It’s also helpful to think about this from the employer’s perspective. Could they make a credible case that your venture would compete with the company?

Non-Solicitation

This clause is typically the easier of the three to analyze. It prohibits you from soliciting employees or customers of your employer. Some agreements go a step further and prohibit the hiring of any employees. This means that if an employee decides to apply to a job at your company, even without any overtures from you, you could be found in violation of that agreement if you hire that employee. More stringent agreements may also cover former employees. Non-solicitation clauses are often limited to a period of time.

What If My Startup Plans Appear To Violate My Contract?

Determine if the language is overly broad or vague. Some contracts will contain such broad language that it’s likely not enforceable. For example, if you work for a web consulting firm as a programmer, and your contract states that you cannot work as a web developer anyplace else, there’s a very good chance the provision is not enforceable or at least the scope of the restriction might be limited by a court.

Examine your state’s laws. State laws can influence the enforceability of many of these provisions. For example, California does not uphold non-compete agreements under most circumstances. And while noncompetition agreements are enforceable in most states, they generally must be reasonable in scope. It’s a good idea to check your state’s laws to learn what they allow.

Ask your employer for a waiver. You might consider this option if you are on good terms with your employer. There’s a good chance your request will be granted if your venture isn’t a competitive threat, even if it technically falls within the scope of the IP assignment or non-competition agreement. This approach is not without risk, however, as there’s always a possibility your request could be denied, making it harder for you to assert at a later date that there was no violation.

If you still have doubts after going through this process, seek advice from someone who is knowledgeable on these issues. Most importantly, don’t wait until your startup is successful â€" and the envy of others â€" before addressing these legal issues.

Old Ideas Are Better Than The Idea You Just Thought Of

Editor’s note: Jake Knapp is a design partner at Google Ventures where he helps startups with product strategy and design. Follow him on Twitter @jakek.

It drives me crazy every time I hear about Mailbox, the fancy-pants email app that Dropbox bought for a gazillion dollars. I mean, come on, it’s such an obvious idea â€" the app’s killer feature is “email snoozing.” It’s basically organized procrastination, and it’s been around since David Allen’s Getting Things Done, if not longer. There’s even been a plug-in called Boomerang for years that allows you to snooze your email in the browser. I could have taken that old idea, quit my job and made my own beautiful email-snoozing iPhone app. And then I would have been rolling around atop piles of thousand-dollar bills in Dropbox’s fancy headquarters. It’s aggravating.

You can probably spot the flaw in my thinking: It’s a ton of hard work to take an old idea and make it amazing. And the older an idea gets, the less motivated one might be to do that hard work.

Some ideas are stacked up on shelves because, for one reason or another, they’re just bad. Others are set aside because, while they might be good, they’re either really hard to execute or the team isn’t ready to pursue them. Or maybe the timing isn’t right or the person who had the idea doesn’t know how to convince others of its merit. Regardless, once an idea begins to age, it can be difficult to tell whether it has potential. All old ideas are then sullied with the bad-idea funk and people forget how promising those good ideas once were. After a while, it’s hard to tell them apart.

All old ideas are then sullied with the bad-idea funk and people forget how promising those good ideas once were.

This is a pattern I’ve seen a lot. In the last year, I’ve worked with more than 50 startups on design projects at Google Ventures. Our design team comes in to help when a company is stuck on a big problem. And it often turns out that the company has a good solution somewhere on that idea shelf, collecting idea dust (which is practically impossible to get off your clothes, by the way).

So while I’m happy to help teams look at new ways to solve a design problem, I always encourage them to bring old ideas out first. It makes sense: The team has probably been thinking about the problem for weeks, months and maybe even years. They’ve had endless hours of opportunity for inspiration to strike: sitting on the train, standing in the shower, or waiting in line for the bathroom at a San Francisco Giants game.

Time and again, buckling down on an old idea yields impressive results. For example, a few months ago our design team worked with the designers and founders of CustomMade, a company that connects people looking for anything from custom woodworking to custom jewelry with the makers who can actually build it. We were trying to figure out how to help more people successfully post their custom projects.

We had a great new idea that we carefully designed, refined and prototyped. But we also decided to pursue something else â€" an old idea that CustomMade already had but never implemented. We took that old idea, worked out some of the kinks and prototyped it, as well. Then we recruited some real customers and tested the two prototypes, head-to-head.

Guess what? The old idea was better. It was easier to understand and more straightforward. It just hadn’t ever been executed all the way. Now CustomMade buckled down, hammered out the details, and built and launched it. In the real world, the old idea performed even better than in our tests, boosting CustomMade’s monthly project posts by 300 percent.

Making the decision to double down on something old â€" especially something that hadn’t worked yet â€" can be difficult. New ideas are fun, and they’ve got that new idea smell. It’s easy to get excited about them. As CustomMade CEO Mike Salguero said, “Building something new is far more tempting.”

But even famous inventors got famous with old ideas. Take Thomas Edison and the light bulb. Greatest invention of all time, right? And the universal symbol for having an idea. But wait. The light bulb was invented in 1840 â€" seven years before Thomas Edison was even born. So while he didn’t invent the light bulb, he figured out how to make it commercially viable. How? By creating a vacuum with the recently introduced Sprengel pump, invented by… you guessed it, some dude named Hermann Sprengel. The light bulb wasn’t a brand-new idea for Edison. It was an old idea that was difficult to execute on. It was the Mailbox of the 1800s.

So the next time you’re stumped, the next time you don’t know how to proceed, the next time you’re tempted to invent new ideas, take a good long look at your old ones. There might be a light bulb in there somewhere.

CustomMade is an online marketplace connecting Buyers who want one-of-a-kind creations with professional and passionate Makers of those goods. Born in 1996 with the vision to help people find the unique gifts, objects and goods they cannot find through traditional retail channels, CustomMade has grown from a community of 350 carpenters to thousands of Makers of all trades since its acquisition in 2009. For more information, visit http://www.custommade.com, Facebook, Linkedin, +CustomMade, @CustomMade.

â†' Learn more

Mud-slinging Behind The Scenes As Malaysia's Taxi Apps Duke It Out

There is an ongoing land grab for taxi drivers in Malaysia, with taxi app startups aggressively targeting the handful of taxi drivers keen to jump on a digital platform.

Two year-old taxi booking startup, MyTeksi has been busy recruiting cab drivers over to its service. When I visited its offices two weeks ago, Aaron Gill, MyTeksi’s product and marketing head, said the company ramped up its efforts over the past six months to convince drivers to get smartphones and data plans.

It’s had to sell the benefits of getting hooked up to a service that allows drivers to receive jobs, rather than have to drive around looking for passengers by the side of the road.

So far, MyTeksi has recruited about 2,500 drivers covering the capital city of Kuala Lumpur, as well as Putrajaya, Selangor and Negeri Sembilan. The platform receives one booking every eight seconds, or 10,000 per day, which nets the company about $3,100 (10,000 MYR) daily.

Several competitors have joined the fray: Hopcab and TaxiMonger launched last year.

But things really started heating up in the past month, when Rocket Internet debuted its Easytaxi service in the country.

Since Easytaxi’s launch, there have been rumors of its staff approaching cabs with MyTeksi decals and getting them to hop over to Easytaxi instead. Sources close to the companies said that Easytaxi’s staff have also helped delete the MyTeksi app from drivers’ handsets, instead replacing them with Easytaxi’s app.

Joon Chan, managing director at Rocket Internet did little to deny the rumors. “Drivers are free to use any app they want on their phones. It’s only fair since they pay for their own phones and data plans,” he said.

He added that only about 10 to 15 percent of the drivers in the country have smartphones, indicating that the addressable pool of drivers is even smaller.

But MyTeksi may be deploying its own anti-competitive tactics. Chan produced a photo of the MyTeksi app apparently prompting the driver to remove the Easytaxi app.

Chan said Easytaxi started driver acquisition on the 12th of May, and has been putting up kiosks at gas stations to recruit drivers. The startup is expanding quicklyâ€"in the past month, it’s added five new employees each week, he said.

Gill of MyTeksi, commenting on Rocket’s entrance in its space, said: “They’ve made us better and sharper. We are growing our fleet at a faster pace now, enhancing our service levels and will continue to work hard to maintain our edge.

“We must be doing something right if a well-funded and experienced organization such as Rocket Internet finds this space worth their time and investment.”

MyTeksi is in the midst of raising its Series A, and has just expanded to Manila. Under Rocket Internet, the Easytaxi service is in 10 different countries now.

The App Gap For Booking Taxis
The opportunity for taxi apps in Malaysia has been created by the less-than-stellar reputation of taxi drivers there.

An old 2008 survey by The Expat ranked Malaysia’s taxis the worst in the world. And other accounts of errant behavior continue to pop up in the media, suggesting this hasn’t changed since.

When I was there two weeks ago, most of the taxis I flagged insisted on charging a flat (and significantly higher) fee, refusing to use the official meter for the ride. Some of the locals said being cheated or even robbed by cab drivers was still an issue in the country.

Gill said taxi apps have been helping to regulate drivers by registering them to the service, and allowing them to be tracked as they travel.

Another factor contributing to the opportunity is the lack of competition with any large taxi company in Malaysia. In Singapore, for example, the main cab operator, ComfortDelGro, produces an app for its fleet which covers more than 50 percent of the local market. The majority of cabs in Malaysia, however, still rely on radio transmission for job calls. The only cab operator that has produced an app appears to be Sunlight Taxi, but it only has about 10 percent market share. Its app was released this year.

Rocket Internet GmbH invests in the development of innovative companies in the internet industry. Their passionate, dynamic, highly motivated team works to establish promising business models in the market.

â†' Learn more

Easy Taxi was founded by Tallis Gomes in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2011 and is now one of the world’s leading mobile Taxi apps, present in 11 countries, Easy Taxi connect drivers and passengers in a smooth, easy and safe way. The value proposition is straight-forward: download/open the Easy Taxi app, available for iOS, Android and the new BlackBerry devices, confirm your pickup point and order your cab with the press of a button. In seconds you’ll receive...

â†' Learn more

Brit + Co. Nabs $6.3M Series A Led By Oak Investment Partners To Go Big On Its Tech Media Hub For Makers

It’s become crystal clear over the past couple of years that Brit Morin, the former Googler who has been dubbed Silicon Valley’s answer to Martha Stewart, is not just another 20-something woman operating a pretty lifestyle blog. Since its late 2011 launch, Brit + Co. has emerged as a full-fledged technology and media company, complete with a staff of 16, more than 100 editorial contributors, its own suite of mobile apps, big name brand partnerships, and an e-commerce arm.

Now Brit + Co. is primed to take all of this to the next level, with the close of a $6.3 million round of funding led by Oak Investment Partners.

The new round, which serves as Brit + Co.’s Series A (the company closed on a $1.25 million seed last year), also included the participation of Index Ventures, Lerer Ventures, Aileen Lee’s Cowboy Ventures, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, entrepreneur Karl Jacob, and longtime Facebooker Katie Zacarian.

The Series A also marks the formation of Brit + Co.’s board of directors, which now includes Oak’s Fred Harman, who steered Oak’s quite successful investment in Huffington Post among other big media deals, and iVillage co-founder Tina Sharkey along with Ms. Morin. Also coming on board as advisors are One Kings Lane exec Sascha Jamall and Apple vet Allison Johnson.

Brit Morin, founder Brit + Co

In an interview this week, Brit Morin told me that the new funding comes on the heels of some pretty impressive growth. “Since this time last year we’ve grown by 11x, and our users are super-duper engaged,” she said. “Out of our monthly uniques, 50 percent come on a weekly basis, and 20 percent on daily basis.”

Since 60 percent of all Brit + Co. visitors access the site through mobile devices, either on one of Brit + Co.’s mobile apps (the company has built native apps for iOS, Android, and Windows devices) or the mobile website, a big focus for the company going forward will be on more fully building out its mobile platform. Also in the works will be expanding Brit + Co.’s social community features.

It’s that Silicon Valley perspective â€" building solid technology to underlie the content â€" that Morin says really sets Brit + Co. apart from other players in the lifestyle-driven new media space, from Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOP and beyond. She put it this way:

“I don’t really know of any other company that’s at the intersection of tech and DIY. I like to say that we see importance in helping people manage their homes just as in helping them manage their homescreens. Today’s millenial digital consumer wants to see order and creativity both online and offline.

It’s important to us that we’re building everything in house. A lot of media companies will outsource [the building of] all their apps, but we take design really seriously. We spend a lot of time thinking about simplified user interfaces, new user experiences, and things like that.”

Not surprisingly, another big focus going forward will be on letting people purchase more DIY-maker-meets-techie-meets-fashion stuff through its platform. “A big portion of the new funds will go into creating a bigger strategy around commerce,” Morin said.

But there is no rush to that front, as Morin points out that Brit + Co. has already been making money through day one. “We make money through partnerships, advertising, events, subscription commerce, premium services like the custom domains on Weduary,” she said. “That diversified revenue model we have is appealing to a lot of investors.”

That appeal is certainly evident with today’s news. It’ll be exciting to see where Brit goes in the months ahead.

Founded in late 2011 by Brit Morin, Brit + Co. is an online community and e-commerce platform that provides tools to teach, inspire and simplify everyday life. Brit and her fellow makers and DIYers curate ideas for creative living, making and doing in the digital age on Brit.co. The Brit + Co. Shop lets users purchase Brit Kits subscriptions as well as projects featured across the site’s Living, Tech, Food, Style and Health categories. To stay up to date...

â†' Learn more

Brit Morin is the founder & CEO of Brit + Co., an online community for creative living, making and doing in the digital age. Brit has had the opportunity to partner with like-minded brands such as 3M, Fab, Intel, L’Oreal, Nikon, UNIQLO and Velcro to further her aspirations of teaching people how to live more simply and creatively. When she’s not coming up with inventive ideas to share with her fellow makers, Brit can be seen on Katie as Katie...

â†' Learn more

Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Skype & Yahoo Hit With Prism Data Protection Complaints In Europe

The European data protection activists behind the Europe v Facebook (evf) campaign group, that has long been a thorn in Facebook’s side in Europe, have filed new complaints under regional data protection law targeting Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Skype and Yahoo for their alleged collaboration with the NSA’s Prism data collection program.

The student activist organisation is targeting the European subsidiaries of these five U.S. companies, arguing that their corporate structure means they fall fully under European privacy laws despite being U.S. headquartered companies. And yet, being as they are U.S. companies, they are required to comply with U.S. surveillance laws â€" putting them in the “tricky” situation of having to comply with potentially conflicting legal requirements. It’s that legal conflict evf is now probing.

Evf takes the view that the law needs clarifying â€" and it using these new data protection complaints as the vehicle to obtain clarification from the various regional data protection agencies. Facebook and Apple; Microsoft and Skype; and Yahoo have subsidiaries in Ireland, Luxembourg and Germany respectively. ”We want a clear statement by the authorities if a European company may simply give foreign intelligence agencies access to its customer data. If this turns out to be legal, then we might have to change the laws,” noted evf speaker, Max Schrems, in a statement.

The key question, as evf sees it, is whether “mass transfer” of personal data from to a foreign intelligence agency is legal under European law.  ”Many journalists have asked us in recent weeks if PRISM is legal from a EU perspective. We have looked at that a little closer. The result was â€" after consulting with legal experts â€" that it is very likely illegal under EU data protection laws, because of the corporate structure of the companies,” added Schrems.

Google and YouTube have not been included in this first round of evf complaints being as they have a different corporate structure that does not include European subsidiares. However it notes they do have datacenters in European countries, which will give evf a route to filing Prism-related data protection complaints against both at a later date.

Writing in a press notice announcing its new action, evf added:

If a European subsidiary sends user data to the American parent company, this is considered an “export” of personal data. Under EU law, an export of data is only allowed if the European subsidiary can ensure an “adequate level or protection” in the foreign country. After the recent disclosures on the “PRISM” program such trust in an “adequate level of protection” by the involved companies can hardly be upheld.

There can in no way be an adequate level of protection if they cooperate with the NSA on the other end of the line. Right now an export of data to the US must be seen as illegal if the involved companies cannot disprove the reports on the PRISM program.

According to evf, the subsidiares being targeted by these complaints have “the burden of proof” â€" to either “credibly assure” that the Prism program is a hoax, or “explain how mass access by a foreign intelligence agency interplays with EU data protection laws”.

Evf cites a 2006 case precedent involving payment processor SWIFT which had forwarded transaction details to U.S. authorities. In that case it says a group of EU data protection authorities decided that such a mass data transfer is illegal under EU law, leading to SWIFT to move European data to a server in Switzerland. The case also led to an agreement between the U.S. and the EU on the use of payment data to combat crime.

February 1, 2004

NASDAQ:FB

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 1 billion monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original...

â†' Learn more

April 1, 1976

NASDAQ:AAPL

Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. in January 2007. Among the key offerings from Apple’s product line are: Pro line laptops (MacBook Pro) and desktops (Mac Pro), consumer line laptops (MacBook Air) and desktops (iMac), servers (Xserve), Apple TV, the Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server operating systems, the iPod, the...

â†' Learn more

Skype is a software application that allows users to make voice and video calls and chats over the Internet. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free, while calls to both traditional landline telephones and mobile phones can be made for a fee using a debit-based user account system. Skype was founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis who were also the founders of the file sharing application Kazaa. Skype has also become popular for its additional...

â†' Learn more

January 1, 1994

December 4, 1996, Nasdaq:YHOO

Yahoo was founded in 1994 by Stanford Ph.D. students David Filo and Jerry Yang. It has since evolved into a major internet brand with search, content verticals, and other web services. Yahoo! Inc. (Yahoo!), incorporated in 1995, is a global Internet brand. To users, the Company provides owned and operated online properties and services (Yahoo! Properties, Offerings, or Owned and Operated sites). Yahoo! also extends its marketing platform and access to Internet users beyond Yahoo! Properties through its distribution network...

â†' Learn more

April 4, 1974

NASDAQ:MSFT

Microsoft, founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, is a veteran software company, best known for its Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software. Starting in 1980 Microsoft formed a partnership with IBM allowing Microsoft to sell its software package with the computers IBM manufactured. Microsoft is widely used by professionals worldwide and largely dominates the American corporate market. Additionally, the company has ventured into hardware with consumer products such as the Zune and...

â†' Learn more

Meet Cody, The Casual Fitness Coach And Social Discovery Tool For Everyone Else

Today, there’s a long list of apps and services that sit at the intersection of fitness and mobile technology and leverage everything from social dynamics and behavioral economics to Quanitifed Self-inspired tracking to motivate us to be more active and drop a few pounds. There’s Lift, Nike+, Basis, RunKeeper, Runtastic, Fitocracy, Endomondo and MyFitnessPal â€" the list goes on and on.

Rather than simply adding another me-too product to an already-crowded space, two former Microsoft product managers launched Cody earlier this year to offer an experience they think has been missing from the world of mobile fitness. Co-founders Pejman Pour-Moezzi and Paul Javid tell us that the majority of fitness apps today tend to cater to hardcore fitness enthusiasts, who get a lot of mileage out of wearable gadgets and obsessive data-tracking.

By nature, many of these products revolve around activities where GPS and accelerometer-based tracking and metrics really come in handy, like running and cycling. Of course, not everyone wants to track every second of their day or exercise routine, is wearing a Fuel Band (or some alternative thereof) or is an avid runner.

Rather than targeting hardcore Quantified Selfers or focusing on running, Cody is going after casual fitness enthusiasts by emphasizing sharing rather than tracking and by building an experience that’s more reminiscent of Instagram and Vine than RunKeeper and Nike+. On Cody, users can add photos, videos, tag their location and leave status updates â€" actions aimed at making it easy to share the story of their daily fitness routines, rather than the metrics.

Users can log and share workouts across a range of categories, like Crossfit, Yoga, Barre, weightlifting, walking, running and cycling, and 70 percent of the workouts logged fall outside of running and cycling, the co-founders tell us.

“One of the things we want to tap into is the group-fitness movement,” Javid says, “which happens to be one of the fastest growing segment in fitness.” The goal instead is to create a mobile experience that people don’t just open when they have something to track. Since launch, Cody has seen a lot of activity around group-fitness categories, like CrossFit, Yoga and Barre, but 85 percent of user sessions on Cody don’t even include a workout, he explains.

By allowing users to describe their workout, follow their friends and top users â€" along with commenting on their status updates â€" and by recommending articles and offering tips, Cody is building a social fitness experience that centers around consumption. The app also incorporates some familiar tracking features, allowing users to review past performance and view personal highlights in graphical layouts and swipe through a calendar of each of your activities, while filling out their personal profile that is shown to others in the network.

While there’s value in being able to browse through a shared workout feed to check in on what your friends are doing, a key part of creating a social fitness experience and a “fitness graph” like this is discovery. And up until now, that’s largely been missing from Cody. But today, Cody is adding a new feature called “Explore,” which makes it easier to discover people and workouts, and browse through other Crossfitters, yogis and weightlifters with one tap.

Explore intends to make it easier to find and follow people by grouping them into categories, so that you can search and discover workout pals by activity, Featured Users or Featured hashtags, like “#5K,” for example. Like Edomondo and other apps, Cody has also set out to add value to its fitness network by acting as a virtual coach.

After users download the app, they’re asked to identify their goals, whether that be running 10 miles or reducing a little bit of stress, which Cody uses to surface content and tips relevant to those goals. Now, with its Explore feature, Cody is adding another piece of the puzzle in pursuit of being able to more accurately recommend friends, workouts, information and venues based on their activity and interests.

It’s a similar path to the one followed by Twitter and Foursquare â€" the more data it has on you, your friends, your favorite workouts and workout spots, the better it can help you find people you’ll enjoy meeting, following or working out with, and content that better helps you meet your goals.

By providing a familiar Instagram-like feed and Twitter-inspired Hashtags in a clean, simple design, Cody is reducing some of the friction less hardcore fitness enthusiasts might experience at the thought of downloading another fitness app. If Cody can successfully strike content deals with top fitness publications to offer quality fitness content and offer support for various fitness-tracking health gadgets, there are plenty of ways for Cody to incentivize potential customers.

Furthermore, Cody hasn’t yet settled on a business model, but by, say, offering top yoga instructors the ability to post five-minute instructional videos in an activity feed that users can access for a fee or by allowing local gyms to create profiles and target in-stream ads (a la Twitter) at local exercisers, it has some potentially cool opportunities to begin monetizing, while adding value for local businesses and instructors.

However, with Fitocracy already offering a popular, fitness-dedicated social network and with the bevy of fitness apps out there that have a running head-start, Cody has its work cut out. Apps like Runkeeper already have sizable user bases and data pools to work with, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine them putting that to use to enhance the discovery experience at some point down the road.

Cody is off to a great start, and while the road ahead is a steep one, by targeting more casual exercisers, focusing on adding value to the social, mobile fitness experience and catering to a wider range of activities, it may be able to find its niche in a crowded market.

Device Shipments Up 6% To 2.4B In 2013, Driven By Android Tablets, Smartphones Amid More PC Decline

Gartner today has released its latest figures charting its overall predictions for how IT devices â€" from PCs to mobile handsets â€" are going to perform this year and in 2014. As in years before, numbers will continue to climb: in 2013, total shipments will rise 5.9% to 2.35 billion, and will rise again in 2014 to 2.5 billion units, driven by portable, often less expensive, but just as powerful mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android will account for just over one-third of all devices this year, and nearly half in 2014. It’s an Android world after all.

But continuing a trend we have been seeing for some time, personal computers â€" which kicked off the technology love affair for consumers â€" will not be the hardware reaping the most benefits from that growth. PC shipments will decline this year to 305 million units, Gartner says, before dropping again in 2014 to below 300 million (289 million).

Mobile devices will continue to replace PCs as consumers’ primary computing device, leading with smartphones, which will continue to be the most popular IT device sold. The 1.8 billion units in smartphones that that Gartner estimates will be shipped this year equates to about six times the number of PCs. And while tablets are still far behind both at only 201 million units, they will be growing the fastest, up some 68% on 2012. In comparison, mobile phone growth is 4.3%, actually slower than the overall average of 5.9%. And this is far from being a simple first-world trend or emerging market trend:

“Consumers want anytime-anywhere computing that allows them to consume and create content with ease, but also share and access that content from a different portfolio of products,” writes Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. “Mobility is paramount in both mature and emerging markets.”

“Shipments”, as we’ve pointed out before, refers to devices sent to channels for sales. Some analysts use the term interchangeably since these are estimates; and they are an important barometer for how sales are proceeding and users are moving. Indeed, in an example of shipping estimates at work, Gartner notes that the “sharp decline in PC sales recorded in the first quarter was the result in a change in preferences in consumers’ wants and needs, but also an adjustment in the channel to make room for new products hitting the market in the second half of 2013.”

The “ultramobile” group is an odd one and it will be interesting to see how this evolves. This is gartner’s preferred term for the neither-here-nor-there category of hardware that includes devices like Chromebooks, tablet/PC hybrids and non-traditional “phablets”, and Gartner’s guess is that whatever impact they will have on sales will be to the detriment of tablets rather than PCs or smartphones:

“The increased availability of lower priced basic tablets, plus the value add shifting to software rather than hardware will result in the lifetimes of premium tablets extending as they remain active in the household for longer. We will also see consumer preferences split between basic tablets and ultramobile devices,” writes Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner. Specifically, in Q4, he notes that ultrabooks will hit the market built with Windows 8.1, equipped with new Intel processors Bay Trail and Haswell.

In any case, ultramobiles’ impact will be minimal for now. Out of the 2.35 billion devices shipped this year, only 20 million will be ultramobiles.

Perhaps more to the point will be the fact that cheaper smartphones and tablets will see another kind of pressure: the growth of software that will extend the life of these devices, which will mean users will be less inclined to spend money upgrading them.

“The increased availability of lower priced basic tablets, plus the value add shifting to software rather than hardware will result in the lifetimes of premium tablets extending as they remain active in the household for longer,” writes Atwal.

When it comes to platforms, there aren’t many surprises here. Android â€" which has been dominating the computing industry for a while now with very ubiquitous smartphones running on Google’s OS â€" will continue to ride that wave. This year there will be 866 million Anroid units shipped â€" or roughly one-third of all the devices that will be sent out for sale. Android devices will continue their climb, at a rate fatster than that of overall devices. They will hit the billion-unit mark in 2014, with 1.06 billion Android-powered units, equating to just under half of the 2.5 billion devices sold that year.

As you can see from the figures above, Apple is not winning in terms of having the most ubiquitous platform â€" and it’s not even a close second contender. But interestingly, Gartner points out that it is the most successful at achieving a cross-device ecosystem.

“Although the numbers seem to paint a clear picture of who the winner will be when it comes to operating systems (OS) in the device market, the reality is that today ecosystem owners are challenged in having the same relevance in all segments,” writes Milanesi. “Apple is currently the more homogeneous presence across all device segments, while 90 percent of Android sales are currently in the mobile phone market and 85 percent of Microsoft sales are in the PC market.” What she also didn’t note is that while Samsung is the strongest in smartphones, there are dozens more making Android devices, and in PCs the picture is much the same. This points to how Apple may be better positioned to capitalize on making the best margins not just on their hardware, but also on the services that they lock consumers in to using across all of it.

Samsung, it should be pointed out, is a strong contender in all these categories as well, so it will not be surprising to see it making moves to offer more services that tie in their different devices together. The question remains, though, whether companies like Microsoft and Google who have been so far strongest in software will try to expand that more into hardware. Results so far have been mixed.

Gartner Consulting provides fact-based consulting services that help their clients use and manage IT to enable business performance. Gartner’s 1,200 analysts and resarchers offer consulting services and advice to business executives in 80 countries. In addition, Gartner publishes original research and answers client questions.

â†' Learn more

April 1, 1976

NASDAQ:AAPL

Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. in January 2007. Among the key offerings from Apple’s product line are: Pro line laptops (MacBook Pro) and desktops (Mac Pro), consumer line laptops (MacBook Air) and desktops (iMac), servers (Xserve), Apple TV, the Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server operating systems, the iPod, the...

â†' Learn more

September 7, 1998

NASDAQ:GOOG

Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Google+, the company’s extension into the social space. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing...

â†' Learn more

Samsung is one of the largest super-multinational companies in the world. It’s possibly best known for it’s subsidiary, Samsung Electronics, the largest electronics company in the world.

â†' Learn more

Today's Acqui-Hires Will Become Tomorrow's Innovators

Editor’s note: Peter Relan is a former programmer and Internet executive, as well as a successful serial entrepreneur, Silicon Valley executive, angel investor, and technology veteran for over 25 years. He founded YouWeb Incubator in 2007, spinning out a string of successful mobile and gaming companies. Follow him on Twitter @prelan.

There is no doubt about the unprecedented wealth of talent in Silicon Valley, both technical and entrepreneurial. The area has become known as a mecca, and for some the Wild West, of digital innovation. So many entrepreneurs migrate to the Valley in hopes of building the next Facebook or Twitter, and technical talent and engineers are the bread and butter making this possible.

Most of the engineers that come out here after finishing school or graduating from local universities like Stanford or Berkeley have the desire, at some point, to start their own companies. Most of these engineers, however, will find this a daunting task better left for a few years down the road and seek to find their bearings by joining a small but promising startup.

This wealth of talent has led to an idea that you’ve certainly heard a lot about by now: the acqui-hire, the acquisition of a company purely for its talent. Yahoo, Google, Twitter and Facebook are the main companies behind acqui-hires and overall acquisitions over the last couple of years, which has led to many young startups, alongside their handful of rock star engineers, being gobbled up into a new organizational structure.

The next Jack Dorsey is probably already in Silicon Valley but is not currently an entrepreneur.

Make no mistake â€" even successful M&A deals often leave VCs and founders well compensated. But other senior and mid-level team members are often hungry for more, having tasted some success but are nowhere near ready to retire. Thus, the next Jack Dorsey is probably already in Silicon Valley but is not currently an entrepreneur. Rather, they are biding their time working within a bigger tech titan, dreaming about something bigger.

It seems an innocuous-enough practice, but the acqui-hire and overall M&A trend is the reason behind my conviction that the next big company will be founded by someone who is currently working at one of Silicon Valley’s top tech companies, but who may never been a founder themselves.

Here’s Why

What’s unique about this moment in Silicon Valley history is the sheer number of engineers in companies like these that have been brought in through acquisitions, or the increasingly popular acqui-hire. Big companies will acquire smaller, hungrier startups that have great teams with great talent and put these minds to work on existing initiatives. Tim Cook has even publicly stated that this has been Apple’s strategy â€" to bring in companies that not only contribute a product but a superior team to add value â€" and it has averaged an acquisition almost every other month for three years.

I’ve been running an incubator for six years, and I’ve observed something interesting. While Peter Thiel’s 20 under 20 program is fascinating and holds promise, and Y Combinator has a great track record for bringing young entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley, there is an untapped group of potential founders who are milling about right under our noses. These individuals, likely engineers and product managers in their late 20s or early 30s, have hard skills working at a startup, an understanding of the market, and are drawn to entrepreneurship but are slightly more risk-averse.

These future founders may not have track records as the founders or CEOs of companies with exits, but they have worked for a startup and now a large company. They understand what it means to build a product, and they also understand what scale looks and feels like now that they have worked at Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter or Google. You need both for the maximum probability of success in building The Next Big Thing.

Many entrepreneurs have seen the former â€" it’s the easier part â€" and it’s why Y Combinator is able to pull 50+ companies a class with the seeds of a product already built. Where many entrepreneurs fail, however, is during the scaling stage, as it’s very difficult to get it right if you haven’t seen it done before. Of course, other types of founders can succeed, too, but the maximum probability of success is in this type of founder.

The Company Matters

When I say, “working for a company that is highly innovative,” I mean companies like Google, Twitter and Facebook. Google because it has an agenda, which, as Larry Page put it, is “to build great things that don’t exist”; Facebook because it has the highly iterative hack-and-break things mentality; and Twitter because it’s had to innovate a lot to figure out its monetization models.

Google and Facebook are examples of companies that truly stand apart from the rest and empower their employees, but in slightly different ways â€" one being a corporate goliath with high ideals to change the world, and the other a big startup that is constantly thinking of better ways to optimize and re-engineer an idea. Yahoo is getting there, as well, under Marissa Mayer. It’s why many founders have come from these companies, including Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann who worked in customer support and sales for Google, when he decided to leave to start his own venture. It’s not that Ben did not like Google, but just as most entrepreneurs, he wanted more.

Another example of a team being acquired, working for their acquirer, and then breaking out to develop their own companies are members from the former AdMob team, which was acquired by Google in 2009. Two members of this team who went on to found companies of their own were Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, who founded self-learning, cross-device ad company Drawbridge, and Mike Mettler, founder of Card.io, which was acquired last year by PayPal. This is a great example of two entrepreneurs working from the ground up, seeing and feeling what scale truly feels like, who went into bigger companies and decided that they had what it took to build their own companies. And it worked.

What’s unique about both Facebook and Google is the fact that both have a bottom-up, technically driven culture where they designate a specific amount of time for employees to work on projects they like, encouraging the engineers to take time to work creatively on new, non-initiative products that can spur creativity and new ideas or approaches that might not have otherwise been pursued.

I had lunch with a founder that came out of my incubator that was recently acquired by Facebook, and he had nothing but the highest praise for the hacker way of the entire company and how it works there. In his essay “The Hacker Way,” Mark Zuckerberg defines a hacker as a person who is never finished with their work, believing that there is always room for improvement no matter what the product. This is the vision of the CEO. This is how the company is run, and, for the most part, this is how the majority of the engineers at Facebook feel and operate.

Imagine this situation: You worked for a startup for a year or two, you’ve gone through an acquisition (or acqui-hire) and you now are settled (more than you probably would like to be) in this big company. You’ve been there a year or two and you were then asked to come up with an “intrapreneur” project that you want to drive to scale. What if, as an engineer at Google, you use your weekly 20 percent time to develop and create an idea or product that you’re incredibly passionate about. What better training can you possibly get to be a future founder?

Now add the second ingredient: accelerators popping up everywhere. Despite my prediction that most will fail to do well for their investors, I add that they are great for the U.S. and the world. Well-trained future founders with access to seed capital and mentorship equals a great recipe for creating startups.

While Google, Facebook and Twitter do a fantastic job of acquiring and then retaining rock-star engineers at their bottom-up, technically driven companies, I predict it will be these specific folks who will drive the next evolution of Silicon Valley. Their experience within an innovative big company, coupled with their amazing network and time to think about a problem/solution while being paid a nice salary, makes for the best recipe to build something that succeeds. It is on the heels of this trend that the next Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk or Steve Jobs will appear.

[Image via Shutterstock]

Zuckerberg Replies To His Facebook Commenters' Questions On Immigration

“If it’s just about tech wanting to hire more people, not as impressive” commented one of Mark Zuckerberg’s 18 million Facebook followers. “It’s definitely not just about tech immigration” Zuckerberg shot back in the comment thread for a video he’d posted from his political advocacy group FWD.us. Replying to average joes and reporters alike, Zuckerberg took a step towards clearing up confusion about his recent lobbying efforts.

“The bigger problem we’re trying to address is ensuring the 11 million undocumented folks living in this country now and similar folks in the future are treated fairly”, Zuckerberg concluded his response to Jeff Walsh, a man from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania with just 56 followers and who previously claimed to have been on a “Facebook detox”.

Public figures typically don’t respond to the reams of Facebook comments they get on their posts, but Zuckerberg seemed determined to show Facebook is a conversation, not a broadcast medium. The exchanges comes as Zuckerberg and FWD.us have been working towards comprehensive immigration and education reform that they say could boost the American economy.

The group has taken flack for buying ads supporting conservative politicians that back immigration and education reform, but also the Keystone XL pipeline and drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge that eco-friendly liberals denounce. Some prominent members including Tesla’s Elon Musk left the group over the issue. Others have speculated that FWD.us’ A-List lineup of founders and funders which include Google’s Eric Schmidt, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, Y Combinator’s Paul Graham, and  Zynga’s Mark Pincus are backing immigration reform for their own benefit â€" they want to import more highly-skilled foreign engineers.

Zuckerberg tried to tackle both of these issues on his wall. The discussion started when Zuckerberg posted this video with the description, “Drawing on our history as a nation of immigrants, “Emma” is the new ad from FWD.us showing how passing reform is our chance to keep America a magnet for the world’s brightest and hardest working people.”

Despite the hostile tone of some responses, Zuckerberg remained calm. Dietmar Hochmuth called him out saying “‘America a magnet for the world’s brightest and hardest working people.’ â€" Please let’s not overdo! This is BSing. Why do think that other people are working less bright and hard?” Zuckerberg explained “, my point was that we should make America a place that attracts the smartest and hardest working people to come here, not that we have them already. I was definitely not saying that all of the smartest and hardest working people are in this country â€" that would be crazy.”

 of the Naval Academy asked, ”How about supporting reforms that allow people a real path to permanent residency, rather than more H1B indentured guest worker visas?” Zuckerberg replied “this group is focused on getting full comprehensive immigration reform passed. H1Bs are just one part of that, but they’re far from the full solution.”

The most serious exchange came when TechCrunch’s own politics writer Gregory Ferenstein took the opportunity to address Zuckerberg directly:

“Comprehensive immigration reform still treats immigrants like second-class citizens. Unions want a mandatory wait period for American companies before they can hire a foreign worker, even if he or she is the most qualified. What is FWD doing to address this? Also, many of us love FWD’s mission, but we were disappointed in the political tactics. Ignoring these criticisms seems like the opposite of the kind of transparency you advocate for. Please give us clarity on what makes FWD unique from a normal political lobby and why you think their political strategy still upholds your values.”

Zuckerberg touted FWD’s bipartisan approach:

“We’re pushing for all the issues you mention. In terms of transparency, I think we’ve been way more transparent than other political groups I can think of in terms of disclosing which ads we run, who our funders are, what our platform is and what tactics we’ll use. I think what’s going on is that some folks are upset that we’re supporting politicians who have other views they don’t agree with â€" even though we’ve been quite clear that we’re going to support people in both parties who have the courage to support immigration reform and stick their necks out to do so. That approach â€" of actually trying to work with people on both sides â€" is what makes us unique. It may sound crazy, but most political groups don’t do it. And without bringing people in different parties and with different views together, meaningful reform will never happen.”

Time will tell whether playing politics gets immigration reform passed, burns the public opinion of FWD.us members, or both. Just by conversing with people directly, though, Zuckerberg and FWD are doing something different. Many citizens feel so disconnected from their elected officials that such raw discourse with a prominent figure now involved in politics might seem quite refreshing.

[Image Credit: Jeff Chiu / AP]

February 1, 2004

NASDAQ:FB

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 1 billion monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original...

â†' Learn more

Tencent, Naspers JV Ibibo Buys Redbus To Grow Its Online Travel Empire In India

China’s internet giant Tencent and South Africa’s media powerhouse Naspers are doubling down on tech in India. TechCrunch has just found out that Ibibo, their domestic joint venture, has acquired redBus.in, a Bangalore-based online bus ticketing company that has become a dominant and disruptive force in how people travel in the country. A formal announcement (which we are embedding below) will be coming out shortly.

Ibibo’s CEO and founder, Ashish Kashyap, tells us that the terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but there have been rumors of an acquisition in the works for some time, with prices in the region of around $135 million. The acquisition is interesting not only because it signals more activity for Ibibo, which is 80 percent owned by Naspers and 20 percent by Tencent, but also raises questions of whether the two plan to take Redbus’s platform and business model to new markets, like China for example.

Kashyap confirmed to TechCrunch that the company will keep Redbus running independently and operating as a separate business. It plans to bring Redbus into its existing travel portfolio which includes a B2C travel aggregator, Goibibo.com, and TravelBoutiqueOnline, a B2B travel agency platform.

He also reiterated that Phanindra Sama, the co-founder and CEO of Redbus, will be staying on and running the business under the new owner. “Yes. Absolutely. He is going to continue to participate with me and continue his role as the CEO of Redbus.”

Rumors have been swirling for the past week on Redbus’ acquisition, since a NextBigWhat report quoted a source saying a buy-out was on the cards for an estimated $135 million (800 crores).

Again, we don’t have details on the final sale price, but there are a number of signs of the company growing fast. Since the company’s founding in 2006, Redbus has shot past the 2 million user mark, and last year hit 10 million in ticket sales, using a combination of online reservations with confirmations delivered via SMS, usable across handsets in this feature-phone-dominated market.

It employs more than 600 staff, and sells more than a million tickets each month, across daily listings of 228,000 seats. It takes a commission from bus operators upon successful transactions.

If the $135m figure is accurate, it looks like a healthy exit for the copany. Bangalore-based Pilani Soft Labs, the formal name of the holding company that owns Redbus, raised a Series A round from Seedfund of $1 million. A Series B from Seedfund and Inventus Capital Partners in 2009 was for $2.5 million, and in 2011, Helion Venture Partners led a Series C to raise $6.5 million. Invenus and Seedfund came in for that latest round, as well.

As Drew pointed out when he visited Redbus in February, the company has been one to watch. Its chief product officer, Alok Goel, is an ex-Googler who approaches the business of organizing how people find and pay for bus tickets to a new level of big data. You can see how this model could be subsequently applied to the same situation further afield, or to different problems altogether.

If that is a problem that ambitious Redbusâ€"and now its ambitious owners Tencent and Naspersâ€"want to tackle, it could be some time before that happens. “The Indian online bus market itself is under penetrated at less than 6 percent,” Kashyap told TechCrunch. That means more room to grow at home first.

There is also the case with platforms. For now the majority of Redbus busines is online; the company only really started to make a push on mobile in February. With India as one of the world’s fastest-growing smartphone markets at the moment, this could present a new spurt of growth and opportunity for the company. IDC estimated that only 2.5 percent of mobile phones in the country were smartphones in 2012.

Tencent has also been keen to get in the Indian market. In July last year, it launched its mobile messaging app, WeChat, in India through Ibibo. When I visited its offices in Shenzhen earlier this year, the company spoke about how it conquered the domestic social networking scene, and its plans on expanding to more Asian countries. It’s started releasing TV ad campaigns in some of the countries in the region, and we can expect the company to continue to push its products in India.

Ibibo is owned by Naspers’ online media arm, MIH. Last year, MIH led a Series D round of $150 million in funding in Bangalore-based e-commerce company, Flipkart. MIH also won a board seat on Flipkart as a result of the funding. Flipkart sells a wide variety of consumer products such as books and apparel. The acquisition of Redbus could have it start cross-selling bus tickets on the site to the growing numbers of Internet-connected Indians.

Naspers has also declared it will up the ante on e-commerce, as online businesses grow for it in its home country of South Africa and abroad. Naspers chairman, Ton Vosloo, said during the company’s November 2012 earnings call that it is starting to place increasing focus on selling online. Last year, it acquired a majority stake in eMag, one of the biggest e-commerce sites in Romania. It also has a minority stake in Souq.com, an e-commerce portal in the Middle East, and bought 70 percent of Turkish shopping site, markafoni, in 2011.

Naspers, through its Indian subsidiary, ibiboGroup acquires redBus.in

ibiboGroup (MIH India), has executed a binding agreement to acquire India’s leading online Bus ticketing business, redBus.in(Pilani Soft Labs Pvt. Ltd) for an undisclosed amount.

This transaction will expand and diversify ibiboGroup’s existing travel assets : Goibibo.com  (one of the leading B2C Online travel aggregators) and TravelBoutiqueOnline (a B2B Online travel platform that enables thousands of small and medium agents)

The combined volumes of redBus.in and ibiboGroup’s existing travel assets makes the group, one of the biggest online travel players in India.

All the travel entities of ibiboGroup (MIH India), including redBus.in, will continue to run independently and operate as separate businesses to drive deep focus. The founders and management teams of each of these entities will continue to build out their businesses.

redBus.in, founded by Phanindra Sama in 2006 is India’s number one online bus ticketing platform by all metrics : sales, transaction volumes and available inventory. redBus aggregates bus inventory from thousands of bus operators and makes it available real time to end consumers and agents across the country via its e-commerce portal www.redBus.in.

redBus aggregates 228,000 seats per day, sells more than a million tickets a month and has 600+ full time employees.  The core business model of redBus is commission revenues on successful transactions.

Speaking on this event, Phanindra Sama, Co-Founder & CEO of redBus.in said “We are excited to be a part of ibiboGroup. Naspers’ strong belief in internet industry and operating experience in multiple countries will help redBus grow into a renowned brand in the coming years.”

According to Ashish Kashyap, CEO of ibiboGroup : “Our key motivations to acquire redBus are :  Strong management and founding team that will continue to run redBus as an independent operation. Second, significant leadership and market share of redBus in the online bus ticketing space.  Third, this marriage leap frogs us to become an even stronger online travel player in India.  This gives us significant combined scale in terms of daily transaction volumes and GMV. Lastly, we see this as an exciting market opportunity. Online penetration of the bus market is only 5.7% compared to 28% for air travel, suggesting headroom for rapid future growth”

RedBus.in provides an online service to purchase bus tickets in India. Like all innovations, redBus too has a very interesting story. All the founders used to work in Bangalore at the time (sometime in 2005) - all with top IT MNCs - IBM, Texas Instruments and Honeywell. They were friends from BITS Pilani, one of India’s finest engineering colleges. During Diwali that year, one of them wanted to spend the festival in his home town. Since he didn’t know...

â†' Learn more

ibibo Web Pvt. Ltd., an Internet and mobile product company, provides social gaming based social networking and e-commerce platforms. It enables users to get connected and network through various forms of social gaming and contesting genres. The company was founded in 2006 and is based in Bengaluru, India. ibibo Web Pvt. Ltd. operates as a subsidiary of Mih India Global Internet Limited.

â†' Learn more

Per the company’s claims as of March 2008, Tencent is China’s largest and most utilized internet services portal. The company powers popular products like instant messaging and gaming service QQ and e-commerce and online trading platform PaiPai, amongst others.

â†' Learn more

Naspers is a leading multinational media group, incorporated in 1915 as a public limited liability company and listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) in September 1994. The company also has an ADR listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE). Over the past two decades the group has evolved from a traditional print media business in one country, to a broad-based e-media company in multiple markets. The group’s principal operations are in internet platforms (focussing on commerce, communities, content, communication and...

â†' Learn more

AP Takes A Stake In Bambuser, The Real-Time Mobile Video Service That Helps Eyewitnesses Tell Their Stories

Bambuser, the upstart mobile video service that has carved out a name for itself as a crucial tool for eyewitnesses to record and transmit footage of major events â€" be they political uprisings, bombings or a star sighting â€" is today announcing another step along the route to becoming a part and parcel of the traditional media world. It’s taking an investment from the Associated Press, the storied news organization that works with dozens of newspapers, websites and broadcasters to source and report on the news of the world.

The exact amount has not been disclosed but Sandy MacIntyre, the AP’s global head of video news (who is also joining Bambuser’s board), says it is in the “mid six figures” and is more strategic about where the companies will go together in the longer term.

This is the AP’s first investment in a video-based social media service, but this is not the AP’s first dalliance with Bambuser.

The pair have actually been working together for the last three years, with AP reporters using Bambuser’s backend to record and then deliver video to its studios from the field; and also to source content from citizen journalists to bolster overall coverage. Notable events that have benefitted from that relationship have included the siege of Homs; video taken by activists inside the Syrian government’s Taftanaz air base; the Oklahoma tornado; the Russian meteor; and the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings.

“At end of the day we are judged on being first and right so anything that helps us with the speed of delivery or accuracy through crowdsourcing, we will aggressively want to be in that space,” MacIntyre told TechCrunch. He notes that the decision was made to stay away from an outright purchase for now because this part of the news ecosystem is still “at an infant level.”

“We are better doing this together with a startup company,” he adds. “They are experts in their space and doing a partnership makes more sense than trying to master that space ourselves.”

Indeed, one of the big issues in traditional, big media companies is the inability to innovate and move fast enough to keep up with the pace of change; deals like these are one way of tackling that challenge. (The AP, of course is no stranger to that criticism and falling in its shadow.) The tune has changed quite a lot these days. “User-generated video content of live and breaking news is the new frontier of news generation,” MacIntyre says. “Every story that breaks, your first thought is where are the user-generated images. With Bambuser as part of our stable we would expect that kind of coverage to grow in future.”

One of the key advantages with Bambuser, apart from the fact that it is free for regular people to use (only professional news organizations get charged) is that it’s a very strong platform for sourcing content because it works over even the most basic handsets and most basic networks â€" one of the ironic advantages to first opening for business in 2007 â€" before the first iPhone had even landed in the market.

The plan will be to build out existing areas of coverage, but also to help Bambuser build out its bigger business model, effectively doing for other news organizations what it has been doing for the AP up to now on an exclusive basis: creating a cost-effective platform that can be used by reporting teams to both record and transmit video footage, and also help source footage that can be authenticated and used alongside that “professional” coverage.

So for now Bambuser will keep its monetizing restricted to a B2B play (and leave to those other news organizations to continue to figure out how to finance their news services), but you can see how, with the flattening of the internet, there could be scope for Bambuser to use investment to grow other aspects of its own platform. Whether it can do this without stepping on its customers’ toes in the process is another question.

“Working so closely with the AP over the last year has proven the huge demand for user-generated video content,” noted Hans Eriksson, executive chairman at Bambuser, in a statement. “This equity investment is an important milestone in Bambuser’s journey as it not only brings our two organizations closer, but enables us to share our expertise to an even greater extent.” The company has recently rolled out a new SDK for organizations to more easily embed content from Bambuser on third-party sites â€" a crucial move to take the service to a wider market.

In this deal to grow its customer base, it looks like the AP will remain a key partner in the process: “Through Bambuser, AP can source UGC video news live from the scene from eyewitnesses exclusively for its broadcast and online publisher customers. This not only ensures that the AP remains the foremost global provider of live video news, but also helps its customers overcome their own UGC challenges,” the AP notes in a statement.

The company does not disclose the size of its user base or revenues, or total past funding. It has raised at least $2.5 million more to date, in addition to the AP’s most recent investment.

Bambuser is an interactive mobile video streaming platform, enabling users to quickly and easily stream and share live mobile video with all of their favorite social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, WordPress, RSS and Blogspot. Used by both professional broadcasters and consumers worldwide, Bambuser is the easiest and most dynamic video streaming solution available for 3G and Wifi devices. Featuring geo-location tagging, integrated web storage, and one click social sharing, Bambuser is the smart mobile video solution. Bambuser is...

â†' Learn more

The AP is one of the largest and most trusted sources of independent newsgathering, supplying a steady stream of news to its members, international subscribers and commercial customers. AP is neither privately owned nor government-funded; instead, as a not-for-profit news cooperative owned by its American newspaper and broadcast members, it can maintain its single-minded focus on newsgathering and its commitment to the highest standards of objective, accurate journalism. Today, AP employs the latest technology to collect and distribute content. It...

â†' Learn more

Fab Grabs $150M At $1B Valuation (And Is Raising Another $100M+ More)

Design-focused commerce company Fab has raised that round of funding we scooped a few months ago. Fab is announcing today that it has raised $150 million in the first tranche of the company’s Series D round of financing. We’re told that $150 million is the first part of a larger Series D round that Fab expects to complete over the next few months. New to this round is Chinese Internet giant Tencent, who will also have a board seat at Fab; and Japanese conglomerate Itochu. Previous investors Atomico, Andreessen Horowitz, Menlo Ventures, RTP Capital, Pinnacle Ventures, Lars Hinrichs, and Docomo Capital also participated in this latest round of financing.

This brings Fab’s total funding to $310 million. We’re hearing from multiple sources that the pre-money valuation of the company was $1 billion, as we had reported in April (a spokesperson for Fab has confirmed the valuation). And we’ve also heard from a source that Fab will be raising another $100 million or more in the later part of this round. At Fab’s last round of financing in 2012, the company was worth around $600 million. Past investors include First Round Capital, SoftTech VC, Baroda Ventures, Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary, Thrive Capital, Kevin Rose, SV Angel, The Washington Post, VTB Capital, Phenomen Ventures and the Times of India.

Founder and CEO Jason Goldberg said the company started down the fundraising route in March to raise enough capital to have several years of runway, at least until 2015. He added that for this round there was $400 million worth of interest coming from investors.

Growth, International And Another Pivot

Fourteen million users strong, Fab is continuing to grow at a fast clip after its initial pivot. Last year, the company saw $150 million in revenue, and revealed in February that sales were up by nearly 300 percent in January 2013 over January 2012. In fact, January was Fab’s third-highest sales month ever.

According to the company, Fab should reach $250 million in 2013 sales. Fab’s now achieving 43 percent gross margins, up from 29 percent in 2011. Interestingly, Fab says that most of its revenue is not derived from flash sales, which was the initial model Fab adopted after its pivot in 2011. As we wrote in this profile of the company, Fab infamously pivoted from Fabulis, which was a social network for the gay community, into a flash sales site. Fab says that two-thirds of sales are currently not from the flash-sales on the site, and the company recently rebranded to reflect this change. And 50 percent of Fab’s sales are in home categories.

In May, Fab debuted its new design store, which makes it more of an integrated e-commerce site. You can access design pages by room, type of furniture, color, designer and more.

International is also a huge potential growth area for the company. Fab has 1 million members in the UK, which is generating nearly 40 percent of its sales in Europe and is its fastest-growing market outside the U.S. Asia is the next frontier, which is why Goldberg and Fab are bringing on Tencent and Itochu as partners.

As Goldberg explains, there are currently only four e-commerce companies in the world that are valued at more than $10 billion: Amazon, Alibaba, eBay, and Rakuten. He believes that Fab has a legitimate chance to be the fifth by leading in what he calls Emotional Commerce. This basically means that Fab helps people discover the items they love and want.

Part of Fab’s plan to take over emotional commerce involves making its own line of products and home goods. Fab is also partnering with designers to manufacture and sell home furnishings exclusively through Fab. Additionally, Fab is experimenting with brick and mortar stores, with the first store debuting in Hamburg, Germany. Mobile is also a huge growth area, with one-third of sales being placed via mobile. And international will also be a major strategic focus for Fab, which just acquired German custom furniture store Massivkonzept. Fab sells products in 27 countries and 40 percent of sales today occur outside the U.S.

What Fab Is Spending The Cash On

$150 million is a lot of cash, and Fab is raising more. Where is the money going? Goldberg says that Fab will be investing in additional enhancements to its supply chain, logistics, customer service, technology, and merchandising. At the beginning of 2012 it took 16 days â€" on average â€" from time of purchase to shipping a product. Today, 75 percent of Fab’s orders ship within 24 hours of purchase, and Fab wants to make sure this is the case for 100 percent of the products sold on the site. This year Fab will open its own new Fab-operated warehouse in The Netherlands to serve European customers. In 2014 Fab will open a warehouse in the Las Vegas area.

As mentioned above, Fab will also be doubling down on manufacturing and designing more products in-house, as well as working with designers to offer items exclusively on Fab. We can also expect more development in social and mobile. And Goldberg says Fab will be putting more investment in international (likely via more acquisitions, as it has bought five companies in two years).

With the Tencent investment, Goldberg says that Fab will be working together to expand the site’s presence in China.

As for why Fab has raised as much as it has in only two years, Goldberg maintains that this is how retail works. “Tell me an e-commerce business that is worth more than $5 billion that hasn’t raised a lot of money,” he says. To fund things like logistics, fulfillment, inventory and manufacturing, a business needs a lot of capital, he explains. He adds that if Fab stayed as a U.S. business, the company wouldn’t need to raise as much.

There is also now a somewhat clear path towards profitability, at least for the U.S. and European businesses. Goldberg says that Fab will likely become profitable in its U.S. and European operations by Q4 2014 or Q1 2015.