At the announcement of the new service, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen — an investor in Lyft — went on a Twitter firestorm extolling the virtues of the service. Never one to hold back, Andreessen called Lyft Line “an archetypal example of how Silicon Valley is going straight at the hard problems.”
“The road to failure is often paved with good intentions,” famed writer Samuel Johnson might have said.
Monday is Veterans Day. It’s a day of rest for some, a day of work for others, and a day of reflection for many. We recently had the pleasure to discuss this meaningful day with Dustan Batton, a veteran and a member of the CALinnovates team. I hope you enjoy learning more about Dustan and saluting him for all he has done for America.
Regulations can be suffocating. Used in the wrong way they might accidentally “Napster” a nascent industry.
Thankfully, the California Public Utilities Commission realized the value of the mobile-based sharing economy by voting to legitimize the rideshare industry statewide.
According to Google Maps, it would take the average person 915 hours — or a little over 38 days — to walk from Washington D.C. to San Francisco. That’s without sleep, presumably, or even bathroom breaks. Just miles upon miles of constant, seemingly endless trudging. On the bright side, you’d be able to enjoy at least one ferry ride along the way.
With an FTC investigation in the rearview mirror, it’s no surprise that Google’s Larry Page took a few potshots at government regulators and their inability to keep up with the dynamism of the tech sector during the company’s recent I/O event.
To quote the great philosopher, Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
As fast as life moves, technology moves even faster. It only took Facebook eight years to land a billion users. Twitter hit the five hundred million mark in just six years. Apple’s App Store launched in 2008 and is already closing in on 50 billion downloads.
My interest was piqued last year during a phone call with Nick Allen, a member of my CALinnovates Advisory Board. Nick told me that he was in the process of winding down his fund at Spring Ventures, which would allow him to focus his energy on a new business he founded with Sunil Paul. The new venture, called SideCar, launched in San Francisco last June.
Shervin Talieh, founder and CEO of Drumbi, an OC-based startup, is one of the bright tech stars in Orange County who is disrupting telephony through the creation of an innovative communications platform. Many consider him to be the godfather of the burgeoning tech scene in the region.
This December in Dubai, without your consent, your company’s business model could change radically with the tap of a gavel and the stroke of a keyboard. Got your attention?
A serious threat to our online way of life has emerged in the form of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT).
