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Thursday, October 30, 2008

They Will Survive–Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs Talk Downturn!

Earlier today, BoomTown posted a video of star venture capitalist John Doerr’s 10 tips to start-ups for surviving the econalypse that he ticked off at a roundtable in Silicon Valley on Wednesday.

Beside the words of wisdom from the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner, I also trolled for advice from the panel of well-known entrepreneurs I moderated at VentureBeat’s “How to manage your start-up in the downturn” event.

The message: They will survive! (Cue the disco ball.)

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The Entire Video of John Doerr Giving 10 Tips for Start-ups to Avoid the Econalypse

Here’s a video of star VC John Doerr reciting his 10 tips for start-ups to follow in the economic downturn, dispensed at a VentureBeat roundtable event on the downturn yesterday.

And the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers VC didn’t need a massive, noisy PowerPoint like Sequoia Capital to make his quick and clear points, which he delivered in four minutes flat.

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Tuesday, October 28, 2008

“How To Manage Your Start-Up in the Downturn”? Well, Come to This Event and Find Out!

Tomorrow, BoomTown is trying to find a silver lining from a group of entrepreneurs at VentureBeat’s “How to manage your start-up in the downturn” roundtable event.

Toni Schneider, chief executive of Automattic will join Max Levchin of Slide, Jason Calacanis of Mahalo, O’Melveny & Myers’ Sam Zucker, and Nirav Tolia of Web 1.0’s Epinions.

Along with my group, for whom I am planning all sorts of verbal tortures (”Exactly how much do you make?”), there is also a star-studded investors panel.

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Thursday, October 23, 2008

Mahalo’s Jason Calacanis in Better Days

As usual, colorful serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis makes lemonade from lemons–or is it vice versa?–touting cost-cutting at his human-powered search engine start-up and newest venture, Mahalo, almost as much as he touted its prospects when he started it up a year ago with $20 million in funding.

But in a blog post yesterday, Calacanis sang perfectly in tune with the new, decidedly grimmer, times. But BoomTown has videos of when things were sunnier for Mahalo.

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Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Kara Visits EconSM (and Lives Large With Jason Calacanis)!

Yesterday, I traveled to Los Angeles for paidContent’s second Economics of Social Media conference, which opened last night and is being held all day today at the Skirball Cultural Center.
This morning, I am interviewing Steve Wadsworth, who helms Walt Disney’s (DIS) Internet businesses.
And after sating myself with as much Club Penguin info as possible, I [...]

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Monday, January 21, 2008

Kara Visits DLD in Germany: EuroSchmoozing!

Here’s a video I did about the first day of DLD–Digital, Life, Design–put on my Hubert Burda Media in Munich this week.
The three-day conference focuses on digital innovation, science and culture. It is chaired by publisher Hubert Burda and serial Israeli investor Joseph Vardi and hosted by Stephanie Czerny and Marcel Reichart.
I was here to [...]

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Thursday, January 10, 2008

Rest for the Wary

While we at D: All Things Digital don’t style ourselves as peacemakers, one of the genuine sateen pillows that we had tossed blithely about our party in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show on Tuesday night seemed to have a dulcet effect on bringing together faux foes.
Pictured below is Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis and [...]

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Thursday, August 23, 2007

Mahalo: The Entire D5 Demo With Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher

In the age of algorithms, is there any use for a human-powered search engine?
Serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis thinks so and tried to make the case for his new company Mahalo onstage at D5, where the service was launched.
By way of background, D: All Things Digital, the annual tech and media conference Walt Mossberg and [...]

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Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Kara Visits Mahalo

So I paid a visit to Jason Calacanis’s newest venture, Mahalo, in its nondescript warehouse office on the outskirts of downtown Santa Monica, Calif., on Friday.
We demoed the manic entrepreneur’s latest company, the “human-powered” search engine, at D5 this year. The venture was funded by–among others–Sequoia Capital and its wunderkind VC Roelof Botha.
The colorful [...]

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Kara Interviews Jason Calacanis

Here is the second video of my visit to Mahalo (the human-powered search engine start-up)–an interview with its founder Jason Calacanis.

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Monday, July 9, 2007

Kara Visits Sequoia’s Roelof Botha

I first ran into Sequoia venture capitalist Roelof Botha in the green room of our recent D5 conference, where he was there to see the demo being done by Jason Calacanis for Mahalo, a “human-powered” search service that Botha had recently invested in.

Though I jokingly congratulated Calacanis on the investment from a “toddler VC,” because of the 33-year-old Botha’s freshly-scrubbed and youthful looks, I’d be pretty pleased if my two sons–2 and 5 years old–could be involved in a multibillion deal after only a few years on the job.

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About Kara

Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference. Read more »

Ethics Statement

Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.

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