He left BMW to start a next-generation car company, with high-end design and eco-friendly. He worked in the car industry for 20 years. He realized a new business model was needed to get cost of development down. Fisker Automotive has taken the time to development to be less than 5 years and $1 billion. UsuallyContinue reading “Live Blogging: AlwaysOn On DC: Henry Fisker Keynote (new automotive company)”
Category Archives: Companies to Watch
Prediction: Facebook Will Be the Largest Social Network in the World
I saw history in the making today.
For some reason, I was lucky enough to be in San Francisco for the Facebook f8 Platform launch event. This announcement was at least an 8.0 on the Richter scale. It was a whopper.
Bambi on Geni (with video of David Sacks)
Bambi Francisco has been my favorite columnist covering the internet for several years. (Read her Netsense columns on CBS Marketwatch.) Today she blogged about Geni.com\’s approach to social networking, and features a video clip of Geni COO David Sacks talking about how he hopes to enable everyone in the world to map themselves to the networked family tree that they have developed.
News Discussed at Today’s Live Friday Session (Mostly from Business 2.0)
Normally I get my news for Live Friday from 100+ RSS feeds, but this week I found that a deep dive into Business 2.0 (my favorite internet publication–it took the place of Industry Standard which went away years ago) gave us much more interesting topics that the kinds of PR and brand new announcements that hit the blogosphere. Business 2.0 tends to cover companies that are getting real traction, so you can avoid wasting time on all the hype that is out there. I think I\’ll use Business 2.0 a lot more in the future when planning Provo Labs Academy events.
Ancestry.com “Thrilled” With New Genealogy Startups
The Salt Lake Tribune published this interesting article two days ago:
Utah-based Ancestry.com, with 900,000 subscribers the reigning king of commercial Internet genealogy services, welcomes Geni.com and a spate of other online family history newcomers to its world.
\”For years, we were the only ones driving growth in this category,\” said Tim Sullivan, CEO of Generations, which owns Ancestry.com, MyFamily.com and related sites.
\”So when we see Geni or any number of new genealogy upstarts, we\’re thrilled,\” Sullivan said.
Allegiance Acquires National Hotline Services, Inc.
My friend Adam sent me this press release about Allegiance this morning. I have watched the last few years while SilentWhistle, which won 2nd place in a Utah Business Plan Competition a couple years ago, acquired Allegiance Technologies and changed its name to Allegiance, and now has acquired another company.
Online Retail Grows by 20% This Year to $211 Billion
Shop.org just released its ninth annual ecommerce study. It projects $211 billion in ecommerce revenue this year, up from $176 last year.
Team Formation Summit for Worldhistory.com
Last year I wrote in Connect magazine that I would be trying a grand experiment in team building. I would be trying an idea I got from The Entrepreneur\’s Manual, a very popular book for entrepreneurs published in 1997. I would hold a 2-day retreat with a couple dozen executives to brainstorm, network, plan, and then vote on the Founders Team for Worldhistory.com.
MyFamily.com Alexa Chart
It is interesting to look at the 5-year Alexa chart of MyFamily.com–a web site that was a high-flying pioneer in user generated content, photo sharing, free voice chat, and viral marketing; but which has been neglected in both development and marketing for nearly 5 years.
Company and Product Launch Events
Startup companies with finished products need publicity, media and blogger coverage, and analysts and reviewers to take note of what they are doing. They also often need investor interest. Since investors often flock to the same hot deals, it can be good to have a large number of investors exposed to your deal at the same time.
Some launch events give startups a chance to reach all these audiences at the same time.
DEMO is a semi-annual event that has featured pitches from some of the remarkable technology companies of our time. Investors and the media pay a lot of attention to the companies that get selected to present at DEMO. At every DEMO, conference organizer Chris Shipley chooses a number of DEMOgods that are worthy of special attention.
