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Aussies venture into Silicon Valley’s elite investment world

Nassim Khadem Reporter

Aussies venture into Silicon Valley’s elite investment world

Published 27 November 2013 09:46, Updated 28 November 2013 07:56

Silicon Valley investors and companies are more attracted to Australian start-ups and engineers than ever before, the co-founder and managing partner of fast-growing recruitment firm MitchelLake Group says. Australian Phaedon Stough heads San Francisco-based MitchelLake Group, which is ranked 75th in the 2013 BRW Fast 100 and is on track to reach $US2.4 million ($2.6 million) in revenue in 2013-14. He has spent the past few years helping Australian tech companies establish themselves in Silicon Valley. Read more of this post

Yahoo’s Mobile News Service Is A Bold Move

Yahoo’s Mobile News Service Is A Bold Move

MARTIN HIRST, THE CONVERSATION UK
NOV. 29, 2013, 6:37 PM 2,093 3

Yahoo’s new business model appears to be taking shape, following the surprise announcement that the NASDAQ-listed search and mobile App tech-giant has employed a group of well-known and high-profile journalists and editors to staff its own news portal. For Yahoo, it is a move into quality mobile content with a news focus, in an attempt to win the mobile advertising market. The question is: will it work? Read more of this post

When Algorithms Grow Accustomed to Your Face; Companies are developing software to analyze our fleeting facial expressions and to get at the emotions behind them

November 30, 2013

When Algorithms Grow Accustomed to Your Face

By ANNE EISENBERG

People often reveal their private emotions in tiny, fleeting facial expressions, visible only to a best friend — or to a skilled poker player. Now, computer software is using frame-by-frame video analysis to read subtle muscular changes that flash across our faces in milliseconds, signaling emotions like happiness, sadness and disgust. With face-reading software, a computer’s webcam might spot the confused expression of an online student and provide extra tutoring. Or computer-based games with built-in cameras could register how people are reacting to each move in the game and ramp up the pace if they seem bored. Read more of this post

WhatsApp Has Surpassed Facebook As The Most Popular Mobile Messaging Service

WhatsApp Has Surpassed Facebook As The Most Popular Mobile Messaging Service

GILLIAN WEST, THE DRUM NOV. 30, 2013, 5:24 PM 9,142 2

Messenger service WhatsApp has leapfrogged Facebook to become the leading mobile social messaging service. According to the results of a survey of nearly 4,000 smartphone users in five countries, 44 percent used WhatsApp at least once a week, compared to 35 percent using Facebook messenger. On Device’s report revealed that social messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, BBM and WeChat, dominated the way people communicate via mobile, eclipsing calls and texts with 86 percent using social messaging daily. 73 percent, 75 per cent and 60 percent said they used their handset daily for voice calls, SMS and email respectively. Read more of this post

Software eats dinner: Why VCs are pouring cash into food startups

Software eats dinner: Why VCs are pouring cash into food startups

ERIN GRIFFITH 
ON NOVEMBER 29, 2013

Startups are seeking to change the way we buy groceries, eat out, host dinner parties, pay for drinks, and cook our meals. OpenTable proved there’s a lucrative business in reservations, earning its investors a solid return. Now, with the Web 1.0 flameout Webvan a distant memory, a new, massive wave of food startups are seeking to cash in on the way we eat. Investors are paying attention. The question is, what do they know about food? Venture capital is well-suited to invest in software. The easy scalability of a software startup, where you build the product once and sell it to everyone, means companies can grow abnormally fast compared to their analog counterparts. But it’s strange to see high-growth venture capital injected into old-school analog industries, particularly one as old-school as food. Food-tech even has its own Lumascape, created by Brita Rosenheim of Rosenheim Advisors. Read more of this post

Master of the Game: With the success of Grand Theft Auto V, CEO Strauss Zelnick has put Take-Two Interactive Software on the path to long-term prosperity

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2013

Master of the Game

By DYAN MACHAN | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

With the success of Grand Theft Auto V, CEO Strauss Zelnick has put Take-Two Interactive Software on the path to long-term prosperity.

Strauss Zelnick’s early success in the movie industry earned him the epithet media wunderkind. It stuck like Krazy Glue, no matter that the kid is now 56.

A serial hit maker in multiple media, Zelnick has another winner on his hands with the videogame Grand Theft Auto V, launched in mid-September by a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive Software (ticker: TTWO), the gaming company he has chaired since 2007 and run as CEO since January 2011. The latest installment in a controversial but hugely popular crime series, GTA sold nearly 29 million units in its first six weeks on the market. And the long-awaited kickoff of the first major videogame-console cycle in seven years— Microsoft (MSFT) introduced the Xbox One last month, and Sony (SNE), the PlayStation 4—can only mean more sales for Take-Two’s flagship property. Read more of this post

Inside the mind of Marc Andreessen; The successful venture capitalist opines on Facebook, the media industry, and why cars may go the way of the buggy whip

Inside the mind of Marc Andreessen

November 21, 2013: 5:00 AM ET

The successful venture capitalist opines on Facebook, the media industry, and why cars may go the way of the buggy whip.

Interview by Andy Serwer, managing editor

FORTUNE — Marc Andreessen is never short on opinions and never shy about sharing them either. The co-creator of Mosaic, the first commercially used web-browser that he helped evolve into Netscape, he now runs the upstart and uber venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (with partner Ben Horowitz.) Andreessen serves on the board of Facebook (FB) and HP (HPQ) and has invested in Twitter (TWTR) among myriad other advisory and investment relationships. Now an emblematic figure of Silicon Valley, Andreessen is actually a product of the Midwest, growing up in Cedar Falls, Iowa and New Lisbon, Wisconsin and attending the University of Illinois. He returned to that part of the world to speak at an investor meeting at BDT Capital Partners in Chicago, a merchant bank run by Byron Trott that invests in and advises large family-controlled and closely held companies. The inspiration for this conversation came from an interview of Andreessen I did there. What follows are the highlights. Read more of this post

Short on Space, Taiwan Embraces a Boom in Recycling

November 29, 2013

Short on Space, Taiwan Embraces a Boom in Recycling

By CAIN NUNNS

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Twenty-five miles west of here on Taiwan’s rugged northwest coast, a cavernous warehouse under construction represents the new priorities for an island where the streets were once littered with piles of discarded electronics and other refuse. At the clean and tidy construction site, building materials are stacked neatly and even workers’ cigarette butts are carefully collected. The surroundings are designed to evoke a Roman villa, with lagoon, garden and canopies. The energy-saving shade tiles are made out of old CDs, DVDs and computer motherboards. Read more of this post

Pearson sells subscription-based news service Mergermarket for $624 million (382 million pounds, revenue 100 million pounds) to focus on education business

Pearson sells Mergermarket to focus on education business

Fri, Nov 29 2013

LONDON (Reuters) – British media and education group Pearson has agreed to sell its Mergermarket news service for 382 million pounds ($624 million), to invest in its global education business. The sale to funds advised by private equity group BC Partners was at a higher price than the 300 to 360 million pounds banking sources had expected. Pearson Chief Executive John Fallon is reorganizing the company to concentrate on fast-growing economies and digital services, rather than Europe and North America, where austerity measures have hit public spending. Read more of this post