On February 6th, eager students crowded into a room in the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California to hear Robert Herjavec speak at an event by the Annenberg Dean Ernest Wilson III. Herjavec, a shark on ABC’s popular show “Shark Tank,” is the CEO of Herjavec Group, an author of two books, and now a Hollywood star.
The Annual TechZulu Startup Forecast is one of our most anticipated events. It’s about as close as you can get to a macro-level crystal ball for the tech industry, expressed through a rapidfire string of insights from the minds of some of tech’s biggest investors, founders, and gamechangers.
Today we bring you Plug.DJ Co-Founder & CEO, Alex Reinlieb. We discuss user acquisition, scaling issues, and get a great glimpse (and receive some invaluable lessons) into the challenges and inspiration behind Plug.DJ’s rocketship growth.
Join us February 27th as TechZulu & Gadget Review present REACH: The Connected Future. During this half day event (including an evening party), you’ll get a glimpse into the future of connected devices, courtesy of the industry’s thought leaders.
Last week, they announced the acquisition of IBM’s x86 server business for approximately $2.3 billion. And now they’ve just shocked the world by announcing their plans to purchase Motorola Mobility from Google for about $2.91 billion.
Ironically, Nicole does not refer to herself as an innovator. In her eyes, the innovators are the ones who are curing cancer and reducing the world’s impact on the environment. However this self-professed “irresistible force against immovable objects” is a Cannes-Lions Gold Lion award-winning marketer who for 13 years has gotten to play in a sandbox filled with social scientists, technology makers, and a gigantic portfolio of brands and partners.
Why do we date? To connect. To go beyond fleeting, ephemeral interactions and sharing of internet cat photos to find support, understanding, romance, etc. But what happens when we go beyond preferences to conditional? It’s an intriguing question – just what LA-based CupidRadar is hoping to answer. They operate under the premise of the chance encounter – the one run-in that could yield a deep, meaningful, long term connection.
Overall, great news for our fair city with a 25% increase in funds raised in 2013 over the year before. This last year, we saw a record high of over $1 billion raised with 200 launches and 25 successful exits which yielded $1.11 billion.
These figures, among others, indicate LA’s digital startups aren’t simply keeping pace with past years, but exceeding them.
How it works: Every time someone connects to your Karma hotspot, both you and the connecting individual get a free 100mb of data to use. You can add additional data online through your account and Wi-Fi connections are always open to encourage sharing.
Every day, 1000’s of new bright-eyed and bushy tailed companies sprout from depths of start-up soil. Some are formed in incubators, and some are the results of a few cocktails and some ink on a napkin. Others come from angry laid-off executives, and even some stem from the optimistic naiveté of college and high school students. Like a song on the radio, we never quite know how some blow up and become chart topping billion-dollar organizations while others – even crowd favorites – simply bang, pop and fizzle; never to be heard from again.
