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STRATEGYfx Analysis and Commentary

Nimbuzz discussed on Vator Box with Jeff Smith of Smule

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Vator Box on Nimbuzz

To help analyze Nimbuzz, which was founded in 2006 and has $25 million in venture financing, we brought in Jeff Smith, co-founder and CEO of Smule, a leading app developer on the iPhone. Given Smule's success with the Ocarina - ranked in the top 20 All-time Top Apps - and Leaf Trombone on the iPhone, and Smith's success as an entrepreneur - having founded and brought Tumbleweed public - we thought he'd be an excellent guest host to give Nimbuzz advice about building a business and a popular iPhone app.

Smith joined Ezra Roizen (digital media investment banker and VB regular) and me for this segment.

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2009 AlwaysOn Global 250

2009 AlwaysOn Global 250
Intro by Ezra Roizen

The innovation community has long prided itself as being the purveyor of creative destruction. The ability to package an innovation as “massively disruptive” has become almost a prerequisite for access to significant investment capital.

In the past year, however, Joseph Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” has reached a rolling boil. Full-blown destruction has toppled incumbent industries, turning them on their heads and leaving them reeling from dizzying changes in landscape and opportunity. This raises a question: In a fully disrupted world, do the opportunities lay in further destruction? Or has the pendulum swung back to creative creation? We think it’s the latter.

See rest of intro and full list here.

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Viewdle discussed on Vator Box with Marissa Mayer of Google

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Vator Box on Viewdle

Viewdle, which recently won the Le Web pitch competition in early December, was in the spotlight for this week's Vator Box. Viewdle is a facial-recognition technology startup that was founded in 2006. Who better to evaluate technology to help us find things across the Web in an automated fashion than Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of search experience.

Overall, Mayer, Ezra Roizen (Vator Box regular and digital media investment banker and me) found Viewdle to be very promising.

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Surviving a venture financing down round

Street Fighter's Down Round Survival Guide
By Ezra Roizen

There's a lot of whacky stuff going on in the private/VC financing world right now. So, I thought I'd put out a quick note on three things I think entrepreneurs should be considering if they're in the unfortunate position of needing to negotiate a critical round of financing right now, and their hands aren't very strong relative to their investors.

See rest of this article here.

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2009 OnHollywood 100

2009 OnHollywood 100
Intro by Ezra Roizen

The digitization of entertainment was exactly what we thought it was going to be and we didn’t even know it at the time. Silicon Valley (writ large) deals with digitizing stuff. Hollywood creates content. When the Internet brought the two crashing together we knew both were going to have a role to play.

At first it looked like technology would control the digital entertainment agenda, and that professionally developed content would be moved to the margin and in its place would emerge a million spontaneously generated, user-driven, long-tail broadcast networks. Networks with no production cost and almost personally customized content offerings.

See rest of intro and full list here.

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Offbeat Guides discussed on Vator Box with Adeo Ressi of TheFunded

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Vator Box on Offbeat Guides

Adeo Ressi, founder of TheFunded.com and TheFunded Founder Institute, joined me and Ezra Roizen (Vator Box regular, Ackrell Capital and Strategyfx) as guest host. We took a look at Offbeat Guides, a personalized travel guide, founded by David Sifry, better known as the founder of Technorati.

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