George Doriot, the father of venture capitalism, liked to quip "Someone, somewhere, is making a product that will make your product obsolete." Doriot died in 1987, but his ideas about venture funding can be seen to this day; Intel, Apple, and Cisco (to name a few) are some of the first companies to be funded by venture capitalists. The VCs that followed in his footsteps—including Tom Perkins, Arthur Rock, and Don Valentine—have, through their work, trailblazed a path of American innovation.
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Feed SubscriptionJames Cameron And Eric Schmidt On Why They "Visioneer" For X Prize
An inside look at X Prize's all-star brainstorming session. The X Prize Foundation has grabbed A-list investors and CNN headlines for their industry-creating multi-million dollar innovation competitions, from commercial space travel to oil-spill cleanup .
Read More »An Unlikely Place to Nurture the Entrepreneurial Spirit? Jail.
B.J. was one of many fellow inmates with big plans for the future
Read More »Founding the World’s Simplest Dating Site
Imagine Twitter had a dating service, where the only options were to propose dates, respond to dates, or directly message the person. A user could see the person's picture and basic information, and if interested, click a button to indicate that.
Read More »Two Narcissists Are Better Than One (or Three)
For many years psychologists have explored whether narcissism and creativity are linked, and some studies have suggested that the self-obsessed may, in fact, be more creative than the rest of us. But new research from Cornell University argues otherwise. Two hundred and forty-four under
Read More »Google Prank Becomes a Reality
On April Fool’s Day, the prank that was the biggest hit in the office was Google Motion . With a realistic faux launching page, the seriousness of the prank definitely sparked some loud laughter here at Journyx
Read More »Smartphone Apps Face Grand Jury Probe Over Privacy Issues
Mark Zuckerberg insists that privacy in the digital age is fleeting. But authorities have other ideas: A grand jury investigation is looking at smartphone apps that shared personal data without permission. Various news articles have popped up over the last several months relating to private user data abuses by the developers of smartphone apps.
Read More »Forget the Treehuggers: Five Ways to Attract the Less Stereotypical Green Consumer
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
Read More »The 10 Best Entrepreneurship Courses of 2011
Stanford's new entrepreneurship class is not for the faint of heart. Launchpad is designed around a series of hurdles: the elevator pitch, the functional prototype, week after week of sales results.
Read More »5 Tips for a Useful Mission Statement
Does your company "aim to be a leader of quality products, customer service, and innovation for tomorrow?" So do thousands of others. Sure, this statement sounds nice, but it means very little to your customers—and employees. An intelligible mission statement is essential to clarify the intentions of your business.
Read More »How This Man Led IBM’s Watson Team to Innovate
IBM's Watson , a super-computer best known as a Jeopardy-winning robot, might not exist if not for Dr. David Ferrucci
Read More »How to Build Sustainability Into Your Supply Chain
Incorporating sustainability into any company's operations is a hefty issue. But it's also an increasingly popular shift to make. "It's an increasing liability to not do it," says Summer Rayne Oakes, co-founder and CEO of Source4Style , the online fabric marketplace, which is based in New York City
Read More »Fast Company Goes to Washington: Obama Administration Officials Answer Your Startup Questions
At noon EST (nowish), Fast Company senior editor Nancy Cook is scheduled to moderate a panel, "Startup America--Reducing Barriers" at the White House. The plan is to have a chat with Karen Mills, Administrator of the U.S.
Read More »Future Computer Chips Will Make More Mistakes (And That’s a Good Thing)
Scientists have made a curious breakthrough in computer chip technology. They've discovered that if you "prune" a chip's design--chopping off little-used functions and actually allowing it to make errors--it can result in far more power efficient and smaller designs.
Read More »Did Someone Ruin Foursquare for Me Yesterday?
I was at lunch at Japango with some of my Foundry Group gang yesterday. When I went to my house in Alaska last July, I took a Mac with me but left my PC at home. Ross bet me $100 that before the month was out I'd beg him to fedex my PC to me.
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