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Startup Clinkle taps Netflix's brain trust again

Payments startup Clinkle might not have launched its service yet, but it's already finding some value in former Netflix employees.

The company on Wednesday announced that it has hired two former Netflixers -- Andrew Rendich and Allison Hopkins. Rendich joined Clinkle from Walmart.com, where he was senior vice president of supply chain and logistics. Prior to that, he spent 13 years at Netflix, where he served as chief service and operations officer and was tapped to take over the ill-fated Qwikster DVD-by-mail offshoot. After that fell through and it was clear Netflix was trying to focus more on … Read more

AlphaLab Gear looks to boost hardware, robotics startups

A new startup accelerator has launched in Pittsburgh with an eye on robotics.

AlphaLab Gear opened on Monday, inviting early-stage companies working in hardware and robotics to join the accelerator program. AlphaLab Gear's accelerator initiative starts first with cash. The company will offer $25,000 to startups for 5 percent equity. Those firms that need $50,000 will have to hand over 9 percent of the company to AlphaLab Gear.

In addition to funding, the accelerator will provide business mentorship and space for working on the project, according to the organization. The offer also includes access to TechShop, a … Read more

Jack Dorsey holds impromptu art and lifestyle symposium

Nobody was quite expecting Jack Dorsey, the Twitter co-founder and now clean-cut tech superstar at the helm of payments company Square, to pull up a slide showcasing the novel "The Art Spirit" by the American painter Robert Henri. Then he began reading from the book off his phone, and it only got weirder from there.

In a self-described first, Dorsey decided to forgo mentioning Twitter's upcoming IPO, or any of the gossip surrounding the founding of the social network. Instead, he waxed philosophical on the things that inspire and motivate him every day, including a longstanding experiment … Read more

At Facebook, Zuckerberg still orders teams into lockdown (sort of)

CUPERTINO Calif. -- In the early days of Facebook, when schools with competing services would get the jump on the burgeoning social network with a unique feature or interesting addition, the company would go into what CEO Mark Zuckerberg called lockdown, where the team wouldn't leave the house until the problem was addressed. It still persists to this day, within reason.

Facebook doesn't lock people in the office, but it comes "as close to that as we can legally get," Zuckerberg said to an eruption from the crowd.

Zuckerberg spent his time with Y Combinator founder … Read more

A radical dream for making techno utopias a reality

CUPERTINO Calif. -- Balaji Srinivasan opened his Y Combinator startup school talk with a joke: Is the US the Microsoft of nations? The question was received warmly by the crowd of more than 1,700 and did in fact have a logical conclusion: Larry Page and Sergey Brin, co-founders of Google, were exactly what Bill Gates feared when he said in 1998 that two people in a garage working on something new was Microsoft's biggest threat.

What ties those two seams together? The idea of techno-utopian spaces -- new countries even -- that could operate beyond the bureaucracy and … Read more

Evernote CEO on how company was saved at eleventh hour

CUPERTINO Calif. -- When Evernote CEO Phil Libin was faced with a cash reserve that would last only two weeks, and the US's record recession was unfolding before his eyes, he made what he refers to as one of the first difficult, truly adult decisions of his life: He decided to shut down the company. He simply couldn't pay the bills after Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy filing killed Evernote's first multimillion-dollar investment.

But one e-mail, from a soon-to-be investor, popped into his inbox at 3 a.m. It happened only moments after Libin came to the conclusion that … Read more

Google looks to help startups start up, unveils hub network

Gone are the days of starting companies in your garage. And Google thinks it can help with the change in venue.

The tech giant announced Wednesday that it will be partnering with co-working spaces and "startup hubs" -- where young companies can get access to office space, mentors, and other resources to help them grow -- to create a hub network that'll help startups commune.

The initiative is being overseen by Google for Entrepreneurs, the arm of the company that focuses on nurturing startups. Google already has startup hubs in London and Tel Aviv, but this new … Read more

AngelList snags $24M, ups assault on traditional tech funding

Venture capital, in its relatively short history, has been a small world.

Many times, a company gets funded because a venture capitalist knew where to look, or a company knew how to reach a VC. While there are some cold-call success stories, many would say there is a sense of exclusivity that exists in the industry.

AngelList, a 3-year-old network that matches investors with tech startups, has sought to change that. On Monday, the company announced it's raised $24 million to help it do so.

Originally started as a blog called Venture Hacks, the goal was to teach startups … Read more

Five trends driving the hardware boom

Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Boris Wertz's bio below.

Hardware startups have long taken a backseat to the glitz and fast track of software, which has been the path to success in Silicon Valley and tech circles elsewhere.

Yet today, it seems that everybody is talking about the so-called "Maker Movement." The top two Y Combinator winter 2013 startups voted most likely to succeed were both hardware companies. Dropcam, a San-Francisco startup that makes a camera that streams and records to the cloud, just announced it raised another $30 million in funding. A maker … Read more