Guy Kawasaki's latest startup a test for him - and for VCs

By Elise Ackerman / Mercury News
10/01/2007 05:54:29 PM PDT

Guy Kawasaki has founded a new website - Truemors.com. (Karen T. Borchers / Mercury News)

As managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, Guy Kawasaki funded all the really smart ideas he could find. None hit it big.

So earlier this year the guru of Silicon Valley startups decided to fund a really dumb idea that cost as little as possible.

In May, Kawasaki started Truemors, a site specializing in what it calls "true rumors" submitted by readers. It cost less than $13,000 to launch and was almost immediately dubbed "the worst site ever" by a leading European technology news site.

Comment on this article | Views:78

Y Combinator Inspires Imitators

Paul Graham's intensive workshop permits investors and startups to check each other out with a minimum of risk and a maximum of potential

by Kerry Miller

Y Combinator's Paul Graham with two cofounders of Octopart, a vertical search engine for electronic components.

Paul Graham knows that most startups will eventually fail. But at Y Combinator, the hacker guru's seed fund for young techies, they're encouraged to fail fast and fail cheap—and then to reboot and start again. Designed with the new economics of Web-based entrepreneurship in mind, Y Combinator is a new type of venture fund—dispensing tiny amounts of cash but lots of hands-on mentoring.

Since its founding in 2005, Y Combinator has funded 58 startups—nearly all in software or Web services—bringing in a new crop twice a year (in Cambridge, Mass., in the summer; in the San Francisco Bay Area in the winter) for a three-month crash course in the Graham-ian philosophy of entrepreneurship (BusinessWeek, 9/26/07). Each team gets a small sum to cover basic expenses ($5,000, plus $5,000 per founder) and the chance to pitch their idea to a roomful of top angel investors and venture capitalists. The insider status of Graham himself—a Web software pioneer who sold his startup to Yahoo! (YHOO) in 1999 for $49 million—lends additional cachet.

Comment on this article | Views:78

Burned-out Startup Founder Seeks Social Solace

Oct. 17, 2007 

Comment on this article | Views:78

Middle-age entrepreneurs turn to social networking

Fred Thompson, owner of an American Leak Detection franchise in Fort Worth, admits a certain amount of tech ignorance – at least when it comes to social networking Web sites like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube.

Sure, he's heard of the popular sites, but "how they work, I have no idea."

Still, he understands that demographics are pushing this online world straight at him.

Increasingly, small businesses are turning to such sites as a way to reach young customers who have embraced them as part of their lives.

For firms with little money to spend on advertising, the Web sites can be a cheap, efficient marketing tool.

Essentially, a business sets up a profile much like an individual would but posts information on services offered and at what prices instead of the age and interests an individual might list.

Comment on this article | Views:78