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Vator Box

Vator innovation series

Vator Box by Bambi Francisco Roizen

Vator's version of Siskel & Ebert meets American Idol. Each week, host Bambi Francisco, VB regular, Ezra Roizen, and a guest host, rate entrepreneur pitches.

All episodes

Vator Box on idea futures and social shopping

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, April 20, 2008 | Comments (2)

462

Do crowds get dumber the larger they get? That’s what Drew Curtis, founder of Fark.com and a previous guest host on Vator Box, said about predictive markets. Because NewsFutures CEO Emile Servan-Schreiber called Drew “clueless,” we decided to take another crack at services that tap into the wisdom of crowds. This time, we set our sites on Emile’s company NewsFutures, a place where you can buy and sell predictions with virtual currency, but win actual cash prizes. Given our focus ...

Vator Box on beatboxing founders and next-gen social networks

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, April 13, 2008 | Comments

463

In this episode of Vator Box, the show where we rate your pitches, Paul Martino, CEO and founder of Aggregate Knowledge was our guest host. Paul made a great Simon Cowell (as I like all my guest hosts to be). This time around we watched the beatboxing founders at Buzzd, the mobile social networking company that’s a bit like Loopt meets Rabble meets Yahoo Buzz meets Yelp. We also look at Moli, a new social network for those who want ...

Vator Box on voyeurism and brand control

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, April 6, 2008 | Comments (1)

423

We're back again with Drew Curtis of Fark.com fame. This time we looked at fast-growing FriendFeed, and the appetite for voyeurism and socially-produced content. We then look at Gorilla Spot, which lets consumers create video ad mashups. The company competes with MixerCast and Genius Rocket, and is part of the booming, video-ad-solutions industry drawing up-and-comers like ScanScout, BrightRoll, Digitalsmiths, VideoEgg for publishers, and HotPluto, Spotzer and Turnhere - video solutions for small businesses. advertising. Finally, we look at file-backup company ...

Vator Box on predictive markets and college video networks

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, March 30, 2008 | Comments (3)

421

Drew Curtis of Fark.com fame is our Simon Cowell for this episode of Vator Box - our version of Siskel & Ebert meets American Idol. This time we look at predictive market company, Hubdub – which appears to compete with companies like Spigit, Inkling markets, NewsFutures.com as well as Younoodle, Pollection or Vizu. We also look at CrushTV and ask whether this social video site grows up to be YouTube or Girls Gone Wild.We started with Hubdub, which calls itself ...

Vator Box pays its respects to Respectance and Geni

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, March 24, 2008 | Comments

387

This week the Vator Box spans the human life cycle -- from birth to death -- by rating pitches from Geni and Respectance. Respectance is a site where users can create posts dedicated to loved ones who've died. While there is a genuine human need to share the grief over losing a loved one, our panel -- Bambi Francisco, Ezra Roizen, John Shinal and Kirill Makharinsky -- isn't so sure that alone will be a big enough driver of traffic ...

Vator Box rates iLike and WooMe

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, March 17, 2008 | Comments

370

In this episode of the Vator Box, we rate pitches from iLike and WooMe with the help of our guest, YouNoodle co-founder Kirill Makharinsky.Makharinsky, plus our panel of regulars -- Bambi Francisco, Ezra Roizen and John Shinal -- pretty much agreed that iLike will become an attractive takeover candidate thanks to its fast-growing user base -- over 20 million and growing at another one million every two weeks, according to CEO Ali Partovi.The startup has become a leading source of ...

Vator Box takes a look at ScanScout, Adify and Pixsy

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, March 3, 2008 | Comments (1)

352

In this episode of our newest show, the Vator Box, Citigroup Internet analyst Mark Mahaney joins our usual crew to help us rate pitches from ScanScout, Pixsy and Adify.First up is ScanScout, an online ad networks that lets advertisers insert scrolling banner ads across the bottom of Web video content.Vator Box regulars Bambi Francisco, John Shinal and Ezra Roizen agreed that the company's technology provides a better viewing experience than the annoying pre-roll ads that dominate online video. Still, Roizen, ...

Vator Box: Match.com founder Gary Kremen helps us rate ShareThis, Genius Rocket, T5M Gary Kremen

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, February 18, 2008 | Comments

319

Welcome to our version of "Siskel & Ebert" meets "American Idol." We call it Vator Box, and this is our third show. The Box is where we sit around the table with an outside expert and rate pitches on Vator. In this episode, we have the usuals - yours truly and Ezra Roizen (Vator contributor and investment banker for digital media companies) and our guest host Gary Kremen, who founded Match.com and has invested his own money in 40-plus startups. ...

Vator Box: Conde.net's Kourosh Karimkhany helps us rate new-media pitches

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, February 10, 2008 | Comments

293

Welcome to the second episode of our new show, the Vator Box, in which we subject original pitches on our site to the opinions of the Vator.tv staff, plus a weekly special guest. With us for this episode is Kourosh Karimkhany, the head of corporate development for Conde.net.Karimkhany, a former journalism colleague of Vator.tv managing editor John Shinal, lent his expertise in rating several new media startups targeting different aspects of that emerging business: original content, production and distribution. First up ...

The Vator Box, Episode 1, Part 2: we rate Collage Wikies

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, January 27, 2008 | Comments (1)

258

In this, the second part of the first episode of our new series, we rate pitches from two startups that are using the Web to do two very different things. As in our inaugural show last week, Vator.tv staffers Bambi Francisco and John Shinal are joined by guests Ezra Roizen and Pete Cashmore to rate and debate the video pitches. First up, College Wikis, a site founded by two Stanford students designed to help students get answers to mundane but ...

Welcome to the "No-Name" show...

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, January 21, 2008 | Comments (3)

245

Think of it as a modified version of the original Siskel & Ebert, only for startup pitches and with four contributors opining about video pitches submitted to Vator. Those four contributors include myself, John Shinal (Vator's managing editor), Ezra Roizen (Digital media banker and AlwaysOn columnist, and Pete Cashmore (Mashable founder/blogger). For those who've followed our Vator Reports shows, you'll notice this significant change in format. Notably, we're now filming in our San Francisco studio and really focusing on highlighting ...

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