Bambi Francisco Roizen's channel on VatorNews

Apply to Women Innovate Mobile, get $18k, mentorship

Bambi Francisco Roizen — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 03:00:00 -0800

Interview with co-founder Deborah Jacks on the benefits of this NY-based accelerator for women

It seems there's an incubator or accelerator launching every month across the country. But there's only one accelerator, that I've seen of late, that is focused specifically on women-founded start-ups focused on mobile technology. It's called Women Innovate Mobile. Talk about specific! I caught up with Deborah Jackson, an investor and entrepreneur, who co-founded the program with two other women ... [Read more]

How to get funded by IDG's Alex Rosen

Bambi Francisco Roizen — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 02:00:00 -0800

Rosen's job is to sift through a field of 700 to 800 start-ups a year and find gems

Alex Rosen is a partner at IDG Venturs, an early-stage venture capital firm. In this interview, you can learn about Rosen's and IDG's investment philosophy. IDG typically looks at 700 tp 800 start-ups a year and invests between four and 10. These figures are similar to the more established firms (e.g. Morgenthaler has five VC partners and invests in about ... [Read more]

Kaggle's lessons in building a crowd-sourcing platform

Bambi Francisco Roizen — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 03:00:00 -0800

Anthony Goldbloom and Jeremy Howard on engagement and funding lessons

The No. 1 and 2 questions I typically ask start-ups when they're getting started is: How do you plan to market your service and how do you plan on keep customers/users engaged? Kaggle has done an incredible job engaging its users to compete for prizes to solve complex problems. In this interview, I spoke with the founders Anthony Goldbloom, CEO, ... [Read more]

Mark Suster video: The bubble bursts in 2012, '13

Bambi Francisco Roizen — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 02:00:00 -0800

Partner at GRP shares bold proclamation at Bullpen and Vator's Venture Shift NY

Mark Suster, prolific blogger and partner at GRP, is not one to mince words. At Vator and Bullpen's Venture Shift event in New York last November, where Suster gave a keynote, his point was essentially: I'm not funding you. And, 2012 (maybe 2013) will be an ugly year as funds dry up. In 2012 or maybe 2013, "fund flows slow down," he ... [Read more]

Pew: Online news sites struggle to get advertising

Bambi Francisco Roizen — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Most news sites use in-house display ads; Yahoo News top site in offering targeted ads

As an owner of a news site, I can tell you that it's true: A lot of our ads in our newsroom promote our own services. If we're not promoting our events, we're promoting the ability to find your friends' start-up in our business network or we're promoting a competition. Apparently, we're not alone. The top news sites in the U.S. ... [Read more]

MeUndies launches comfortable undies for delivery

Bambi Francisco Roizen — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 06:00:00 -0800

Online underwear retailer emerges out of LA-based incubator Science

Online shopping and home delivery of groceries have truly made me lazy. But once you know the brands you like, it's so much more efficient to have necessities, like toilet paper, sparkling water and cleaning supplies delivered on a consistent basis. In like vein, why not just have a regular shipment of underwear, undershirts and socks delivered every six months ... [Read more]

XYDO pivots to deliver auto-created email newsletters

Bambi Francisco Roizen — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 07:00:00 -0800

From consumer-focused to company-focused provider of emails and news

Often business models or products take shape over time, after many trial-and-error attempts to find something that really takes off with customers. In the case of XYDO, which launched as a challenger to Flipboard and news readers back in 2010, that Aha! moment came about two months ago when the start-up decided to send out daily briefs filled with relevant news ... [Read more]

First Round leads $1.75M round in Schoolfeed

Bambi Francisco Roizen — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:00:00 -0800

Founder of RockYou's new start-up, with 7M members, announces funding; readies for new round

Like most people, every so often I get friend requests from people in my past. And, while I don't mind "friending" them, I'm not the type to reminisce. I didn't even go to my class reunions. It's not that I don't want to "friend" old friends. It's just I can't keep up with my ever-growing family, friends and colleagues. It's ... [Read more]

Pivot3 lands $23M in funding to expand sales, marketing

Bambi Francisco Roizen — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:28:50 -0800

Samsung Ventures leads round for the provider of virtual servers and shared storage

Pivot3 announced early Wednesday that it's raised $23 million in funding, led by Samsung Ventures, with participation from past investors, including Focus Ventures, InterWest Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mesirow Financial, Northleaf Capital Partners and Silver Creek Ventures. The new funds brings Pivot3's total funding to more than $100 million. Austin, Texas-based Pivot3, which was founded in 2003 and has 500 customers, ... [Read more]

Spreecast makes its video player embeddable

Bambi Francisco Roizen — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:47:00 -0800

The social video platform, founded by Stubhub founder Jeff Fluhr, now accessed across the Web

We already gave you an example of the Spreecast embedded player at Vator Splash SF last Thursday, when Jeff Fluhr, founder and CEO of Spreecast, gave a live demo of the player on VatorNews while giving his keynote presentation. Now the San Francisco-based start-up, which is a social video platform that lets people broadcast together, officially announced Tuesday that its ... [Read more]

Adku acquired by Groupon for over $10M

Bambi Francisco Roizen — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:41:00 -0800

Big data start-up company Adku, founded by ex-Googlers, gets snapped up by Groupon

Groupon has acquired Adku, an one-year-old start-up focusing on providing data to big retailers to make recommendations, for over $10 million. Adku, which raised $1.5 million from investors in January of last year from Greylock Partners, True Ventures, Battery Ventures and AngelPad for a pre-money valuation of $5.25 million, has been in stealth mode ever since launching in early March 2011. The San ... [Read more]

YC start-up Ridejoy gets mileage with $1.3M seed round

Bambi Francisco Roizen — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:38:00 -0800

Freestyle Capital, Lerer Ventures, Founder Collective, and more back social riding start-up

Sometimes there's upside to meeting people when sharing rides. I met my husband while sharing a taxi cab out of Burbank, Calif. Little did I know that the 40-minute ride would lead to a new life for me as we have three sons and one more on the way. While getting married to people you share rides with isn't common, ... [Read more]

David Hornik: Sh#%&t venture capitalists say

Bambi Francisco Roizen — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:05:00 -0800

Venture capitalists vacation tons; have their assistants tweet for them, complain about their cereal

As part of our Vator Splash SF event, David Hornik has become a regular "Late Night" host. As part of our February event, Hornik prepared a comical skit, as only Hornik could pull off, portraying venture capitalists in their true light.

Facebook makes Sheryl Sandberg worth about $2.1 billion

Bambi Francisco Roizen — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:34:00 -0800

COO earned $31 million in 2011, making her the top paid executive at the social network

She already has a lot of power and influence in the tech world, now Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's 42-year-old chief operating officer, may have just solidified her ranking as one of the richest females in the world, and definitely one of the highest paid executives in technology. In Facebook's highly-anticipated IPO filing released Wednesday, in which it states it will raise $5 ... [Read more]

Rumgr raises $500k from Tony Hsieh and other angels

Bambi Francisco Roizen — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:32:00 -0800

Social and mobile commerce site focuses on helping you discover items nearby

(Correction: to reflect the post-valuation) There's something to be said about the serendipitous nature of finding something. For instance, the other day my husband and I were passing by a museum, and two beautiful antique chairs caught our eyes. They happened be for sale at the museum and though we hadn't intended on buying anything that day, we did. In ... [Read more]