Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

In order for people to buy into your brand, you have to know who you are. You must convey to them that you truly understand the problem you are trying to solve and that you care about their experience. But, unfortunately, startups don’t always think about this from a consumer perspective.

Bessemer Venture Partners picked up a piece of everyone's favorite pinboard site back when it was barely making a blip on the Silicon Valley radar. Jeremy Levine tells us why he decided it was a good bet

For the entrepreneur, creative capital can be the catalyst to compel investors to sign on earlier in the start-up process. In 2006, after designing products and brands for other companies for 12 years under ASTRO Studios (my design firm), I teamed up with some outstanding business partners and spun-off a separate, product producing, direct-to-consumer brand of premium video gaming products called ASTRO Gaming

As the Netflix CEO launched in the UK and Ireland, he said last year's pricing backlash put the focus back on consumers. How does it feel to go from Wall Street darling to the object of scorn? "It felt bad, that's what you would expect," Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told paidContent as he launched the company in the UK and Ireland

"I loved the idea of a showdown between these two iconic characters, because while they fight on different sides they also share some remarkable similarities," said photographer JD Hancock. "The Dark Knight and the Dark Lord are both orphans who learned at the feet of the masters before embracing a fearful alternate identity and dedicating themselves to a relentless crusade against their enemies." ( "In The Messy NFC Battle, Consumers Are The Biggest Losers" ) Photo by JD Hancock See more of the best photos of 2011

The challenging economy has forced everyone to look at cutting unnecessary costs.

Pizza chain parlays transparency initiative and recipe makeover into a new gourmet line.

I recently saw The Book of Mormon

The latest to announce its demise is Google Powermeter . All the efforts to combine social networking with energy conservation seem to be pulling the plug.

The New Consumers are here. They're youthful, wired, educated and mostly female--and they’re just as concerned with practical values like price, quality and convenience as they are with do-gooder values like local, organic and fair trade. These shoppers make up 30% of the U.S