Latest VatorNews stories

• How does Airbnb make money?

  by Faith Merino, December 12, 2013

  With a solid, no-nonsense business model, Airbnb is the apple of Silicon Valley's eye

  Few startups see the kind of hockeystick growth that Airbnb has witnessed in the last year. The five-year-old startup recently revealed that it has served some nine million guests since it was founded. The interesting thing about that number is that more than half of those guests—five million, to be exact—used the platform in the last year. It took Airbnb four years to serve its first four

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• Doximity CEO Jeff Tangney on being the talent platform

  by Bambi Francisco Roizen, December 12, 2013

  Physician network launches Talent Finder and looks to be the jobs marketplace for doctors

  There was a time - circa 2007/2008 -- when many people were skeptical of vertical social and professional networks. I know all too well as Vator was launched around that time as a social network for entrepreneurs, which had many people scratching their heads, thinking it was a very "niche" idea. But these days, it’s clear that there can be such networks, because of the different value and transparency

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• Bitstrips raises $3M for quirky personalized comics

  by Faith Merino, December 12, 2013

  The viral explosion of Bitstrips has resulted in outages, forcing Bitstrips to build out its system

  If you’re a Facebook regular, chances are you’ve seen the cute, quirky little comic scenes starring your friends. Bitstrips has become something of a viral phenomenon and the company has grown rapidly in the past few months. So naturally, it’s time to raise some money. Bitstrips announced (via a Bitstrips comic, of course) Thursday that it has raised a $3 million Series A round from

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• The Orange Chef snags $1.2M for smart kitchen scale

  by Faith Merino, December 11, 2013

  Thought you could round down with your calorie counting? Think again.

  The Orange Chef’s Prep Pad is a “smart scale” of sorts that calculates the complete nutritional value of a food item you put on its surface, down to one gram. And it’s caught the attention of a few heavyweight investors. The Orange Chef announced Wednesday that it has raised $1.2 million in a seed round led by Google Ventures and SparkLabs Global Ventures, with help from Bertelsmann

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• How the book industry is being reinvented

  by Kristin Karaoglu, December 11, 2013

  Blurb tops 8 million self-published books, can process 1.2M book orders per second

  Traditional publishers are the VCs for authors, said Eileen Gittins, founder and CEO of Blurb, a self-publishing platform, backed by Canaan Partners. But if individuals could publish their own books, the economic would change and her company Blurb is hoping to change that. Gittins spoke at Amplify, hosted by Vator, Girls in Tech and Thomson Reuters this past fall. Not only did she talk about how Bl

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• "Responsible" tops LinkedIn's Top 10 Buzzwords list

  Way to take responsibility!

  LinkedIn has released its list of the top ten most overused buzzwords of the year, and guess which one took the top spot in 2013. Yep—you guessed it: “Responsible.” Of course, it’s ...
  By Faith Merino
  

• The LAUNCH Festival is coming up in San Francisco

  They're offering 200 free tickets to Vator members

  The LAUNCH Festival (http://festival.launch.co) is coming up in San Francisco, February 24-26. It’s the best place to launch a technology company and learn about building great startups. Dropbox, ...
  By Sponsored Story
  

• Music-sharing site Plug.dj gets $1.25 million seed

  Javelin Venture Partners leads round in a Splash LA finalist

  This summer, Plug.dj was one of the top 10 finalists at our Splash LA competition. The startup just revealed that it's raised $1.25 million in funding, led by Javelin Venture Partners. The LA-based company, ...
  By Kristin Karaoglu
  

• PayPal invests in gifting solution Loop Commerce

  Loop Commerce closes the "loop" with gifting, and PayPal likes what it sees

  Gift giving can be quite the ass pain when you don’t know a person’s size, preferred color/style, or their address. I’m no better—my closet is full of clothes I’ll never wear ...
  By Faith Merino
  

• Apple working on curved iPhones?

  Apple is also reportedly working on pressure-sensitive sensors and larger screens

  Flexible and curved touchscreens are all the rage now. Didn’t you hear? Because why buy a flat phone when you can get a curved one? Der! (Actually, reports suggest curved phones may be more ergonomically ...
  By Faith Merino
  

• How to spend the next four years of your life

  Three things to consider in addition to the numbers

  Given that we’ve been emphasizing Evidence-based entrepreneurship and the Investment Readiness Level, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when someone asked, “After we figure all ...
  By Steve Blank
  

• Hour of code

  As part of CE Ed Week, encourage your child or a student to spend one hour coding

  The Codecademy Hour of Code iPhone app - download this on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch and learn the basics of coding in an hour. As many of you know, Codecademy is a USV portfolio company and millions ...
  By Fred Wilson
  

• Top female VCs talk about the future of venture capital

  Rebecca Lynn, Sharon Wienbar, Maha Ibrahim, and Katherine Barr share insights

  Venture capital is changing as we know it. Even if you're new to the business, you've likely realized that the 40-year-old, once-cottage industry is becoming far more accessible and transparent. This is ...
  By Bambi Francisco Roizen
  

• Healthloop bags $10M for patient follow-up platform

  The round marks the first investment from new early-stage fund Canvas Venture Fund

  Getting in to see a doctor can be a trial in and of itself. The average wait time to see a specialist is 20.5 days. And then if you have follow-up questions later, you might find yourself playing a game ...
  By Faith Merino
  

• Report estimates Amazon Prime has topped 16M members

  That's up from 10M in March

  Amazon keeps notoriously mum on its numbers, but that hasn’t stopped other research firms and analysts from doing some good old fashioned back-of-the-envelope math. Now, a new report from Consumer ...
  By Faith Merino
  

• 2013: a look back at the year in acquisitions

  A list of the most popular tech companies, how many start ups they bought and their strategies

  Looking back on the past 12 months, there was a lot that happened. We said goodbye to some old friends, saw the rise of a big new player in the social media world, while watching another achieve its dream ...
  By Steven Loeb
  

• How does LinkedIn make money?

  Unlike other social networks, LinkedIn has a diverse revenue stream not dependent on advertising

  When I compared LinkedIn to Facebook in the past, I talkeded about it in terms of how much money each one makes, how many users each one has and who they appeal to. And don't get me wrong, all of that ...
  By Steven Loeb
  

• Funding roundup - week ending 12/6/13

  EducationSuperHighway, Glassdoor, Sketchfab, Hoxton Ventures, DreamHost, Shareable Ink

  MOVE Guides, which provides a software-as-a-service platform to help employees relocate, raised $1.8 million in seed funding from Notion Capital and New Enterprise Associates. A number of individuals also ...
  By Steven Loeb
  

• 23andMe complies with FDA, rebrands testing kits

  23andMe will continue giving customers ancestry reports and raw genetic data, but no health analysis

  Following orders by the FDA that it cease selling its product last week, genetic testing company 23andMe has done the only thing it could do: it has rebranded and cut out the offending part of the results. ...
  By Steven Loeb
  

• Drones are on the horizon, but what's the human toll?

  Will drones wipe out or create jobs?

  It’s shaping up to be a big week for robotics in the news. In a tactical move that can only have been made with Cyber Monday in mind, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed in a 60 Minutes interview that ...
  By Faith Merino
  
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