I’m a power user of Evernote, the Web-based notekeeping service used by more than 16 million people around the world. I’ve got Evernote’s applications and extensions installed on my Mac, my iPhone, my iPad, and my Web browser, and I’ve saved thousands of items in the system, dating back to June 2008 (the wildflower photo … Continue reading “How To Build A 100-Year Company? Ask Evernote’s Phil Libin on Feb. 7”
Author: Wade Roush
Between 2007 and 2014, I was a staff editor for Xconomy in Boston and San Francisco.
Since 2008 I've been writing a weekly opinion/review column called VOX: The Voice of Xperience. (From 2008 to 2013 the column was known as World Wide Wade.)
I've been writing about science and technology professionally since 1994. Before joining Xconomy in 2007, I was a staff member at MIT’s Technology Review from 2001 to 2006, serving as senior editor, San Francisco bureau chief, and executive editor of TechnologyReview.com. Before that, I was the Boston bureau reporter for Science, managing editor of supercomputing publications at NASA Ames Research Center, and Web editor at e-book pioneer NuvoMedia.
I have a B.A. in the history of science from Harvard College and a PhD in the history and social study of science and technology from MIT. I've published articles in Science, Technology Review, IEEE Spectrum, Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Technology and Culture, Alaska Airlines Magazine, and World Business, and I've been a guest of NPR, CNN, CNBC, NECN, WGBH and the PBS NewsHour. I'm a frequent conference participant and enjoy opportunities to moderate panel discussions and on-stage chats.
My personal site: waderoush.com
My social media coordinates:
Twitter: @wroush
Facebook: facebook.com/wade.roush
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/waderoush
Google+ : google.com/+WadeRoush
YouTube: youtube.com/wroush1967
Flickr: flickr.com/photos/wroush/
Pinterest: pinterest.com/waderoush/
SuccessFactors, Admeld, Gowalla: Bay Area Biztech by the Numbers
Time for our irregular, data-driven review of recent Bay Area funding and M&A news and other developments. From biggest to smallest: $3.4 billion—The amount German business software giant SAP (NYSE: [[ticker:SAP]]) expects to pay for San Francisco-based SuccessFactors (NYSE: [[ticker:SFSF]]), the maker of cloud-based human resources management software. The all-cash acquisition was announced Saturday. $400 … Continue reading “SuccessFactors, Admeld, Gowalla: Bay Area Biztech by the Numbers”
WeVideo Makes Cloud Video Editing Look Like Kids’ Stuff
Video editing software is way too hard to use. At least, that seems to be what most consumers think. It explains why most of the videos you’ll find on YouTube and other video sharing sites are so raw, with no cuts, titles, or other effects. Apparently, people have a hard enough time just getting video … Continue reading “WeVideo Makes Cloud Video Editing Look Like Kids’ Stuff”
Jive, Solaria, Awe.sm: Bay Area Biztech News by the Numbers
It’s been a while since our last data-driven news roundup of Bay Area business and technology news. Here are some of the choicest tidbits from the last few days, from biggest to smallest: $134.6 million—The amount that San Francisco- and Portland, OR-based Jive Software hopes to raise in its upcoming IPO, according to a regulatory … Continue reading “Jive, Solaria, Awe.sm: Bay Area Biztech News by the Numbers”
Healthline Battles WebMD with Personalized Medical Search Tools, Body Maps
“Marcus Welby is dead.” So says West Shell, the CEO of San Francisco-based Healthline. Not that Dr. Welby was ever actually alive—the fictional physician, played by Robert Young, made house calls for ABC TV from 1969 to 1976. But Shell’s point is that few people these days have a family physician like Welby to whom … Continue reading “Healthline Battles WebMD with Personalized Medical Search Tools, Body Maps”
Get Satisfaction Makes Customer Support Less Robotic-And More Strategic
Get Satisfaction, the San Francisco-based builder of freemium online customer support communities, has one of those longest-overnight-success-ever stories. Founded in 2007 by Thor Muller, Amy Muller, and Lane Becker, the company has had at least a couple of brushes with death on its way to finding thousands of customers and $21 million in venture capital. … Continue reading “Get Satisfaction Makes Customer Support Less Robotic-And More Strategic”
Autodesk Labs Builds Tools for Capturing Reality—And Improving On It
If you had to boil down Autodesk‘s business to a few simple words, it might be “helping people create new realities”—whether that means constructing new objects or structures first envisioned on the company’s computer-aided design (CAD) programs or generating new Avatar-like movie worlds using its modeling and animation software. But increasingly, the first step in … Continue reading “Autodesk Labs Builds Tools for Capturing Reality—And Improving On It”
A Video Feast: Foodspotting, Foodzie Headline a Food Startup Gathering in San Francisco
Let’s face it: Your whole Thanksgiving weekend is going to be about food. So you might as well start a day early by watching the video below, which captures the entirety of the Food Startups Meetup I moderated last week in downtown San Francisco. Where else, after all, are you going to see the founders … Continue reading “A Video Feast: Foodspotting, Foodzie Headline a Food Startup Gathering in San Francisco”
PBS NewsHour Features Xconomy in Report on Startup Accelerators
In a segment featured Tuesday night on the PBS NewsHour, correspondent Hari Sreenivasan brings an outsider’s curiosity to the strange, wonderful world of startup accelerators. The eight-minute report features Sreenivasan’s interviews with entrepreneurs and mentors at TechStars, AngelPad, and Y Combinator—archetypes of the venture incubator wave (or is it a bubble?) that we’ve been chronicling … Continue reading “PBS NewsHour Features Xconomy in Report on Startup Accelerators”
For A Boost Building Mobile Apps, Web Developers Step On the Appcelerator
Apple’s iPhone and iPad may be the hottest, most stylish gadgets out there—in fact, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has already enshrined the iPad 2 in an exhibit on industrial design. But inside, iOS devices use a programming language that’s truly antiquated. It’s called Objective-C, and it rose to prominence in the late … Continue reading “For A Boost Building Mobile Apps, Web Developers Step On the Appcelerator”
Box Reaches Out to Developers in a Bid to Promote Its Cloud File Sharing Service
Box, the Palo Alto file-sharing startup that recently snagged another $81 million in venture funding, has started to throw around the “E” word: ecosystem. At a media event in San Francisco last Thursday night, the company announced the formation of a community program called the Box Innovation Network—abbreviated /bin, a clever reference to a common … Continue reading “Box Reaches Out to Developers in a Bid to Promote Its Cloud File Sharing Service”
Yelp, Intermolecular, Hotel Tonight: Bay Area BizTech News by the Numbers
It’s roundup time. From biggest to smallest, here are the major deals and developments around the Bay Area since our last roundup on November 17. $100 million—The amount San Francisco-based Yelp hopes to raise in its initial public offering, according to an S-1 filing made public last Thursday. The local business search site has raised … Continue reading “Yelp, Intermolecular, Hotel Tonight: Bay Area BizTech News by the Numbers”
Why Mint.com for Health Is a Terrible Idea, and How Keas Pivoted
If you’re a hammer, you just want to smash nails; if you’re a programmer, you just want to build features. But features do not a successful product make. This is the central myopia that eventually blinds even the most brilliant engineer-entrepreneurs, unless they’re smart enough to surround themselves with people who can check their bias. … Continue reading “Why Mint.com for Health Is a Terrible Idea, and How Keas Pivoted”
Marketo, Zuora, BrightRoll, Impermium: Bay Area BizTech News by the Numbers
Time for our rundown of recent deals and other key biztech news around the Bay Area, from biggest to smallest. $50 million—Series D venture financing announced yesterday for Marketo, the San Mateo, CA-based startup providing software to help companies manage sales lead generation. New investor Battery Ventures led the round, which was joined by existing … Continue reading “Marketo, Zuora, BrightRoll, Impermium: Bay Area BizTech News by the Numbers”
Why Do People Answer Questions on Q&A Sites? Ask.com Users Speak Up
Today’s main infotech feature on Xconomy San Francisco is about Ask.com, the Oakland, CA-based search company that has been busy transforming itself into a question-and-answer service powered by an army of community members. If you can’t find an instant answer through Ask.com’s Web search tool, you can easily pose it to other Ask.com users. Depending … Continue reading “Why Do People Answer Questions on Q&A Sites? Ask.com Users Speak Up”
Ask.com Rediscovers Its Roots as a Question & Answer Site-Powered by People This Time
What’s the best way to tell my mother-in-law that we’re not going to visit her at Thanksgiving? My college friend has taken over my friendship with another guy, and now both are ignoring me. Should I ask them why? What do you do if the girl you asked to marry you says no? [Questions posed … Continue reading “Ask.com Rediscovers Its Roots as a Question & Answer Site-Powered by People This Time”
Facecash, Vyatta, Ginzametrics: Bay Area Biztech by the Numbers
Time for our irregularly scheduled, data-driven roundup of news from the Bay Area technology world, starting with three separate $25 million items: $25 million—The amount raised back in August by Redwood City, CA-based Personal Capital, which on Friday launched a financial media site called Daily Capital. The news aggregator collects finance-related content from 500 sources. … Continue reading “Facecash, Vyatta, Ginzametrics: Bay Area Biztech by the Numbers”
A Post-Demo Day Look at Three Rock Health Startups-WeSprout, Pipette, and BrainBot
A confession: When I first heard that a recent Harvard Business School MBA named Halle Tecco intended to start an incubator for healthcare startups in San Francisco, I was more than a little skeptical. It seemed to me that all of the successful incubators, such as Y Combinator, succeed by picking Internet and mobile startups. … Continue reading “A Post-Demo Day Look at Three Rock Health Startups-WeSprout, Pipette, and BrainBot”
17 Months of Stories from Xconomy San Francisco
The first anniversary of Xconomy San Francisco, back in June, flew by so fast we didn’t have time to commemorate it. But today, November 14, it’s been 17 months to the day since we turned on San Francisco—the fifth city in our network of six hyperlocal sites. I thought I’d take the occasion to look … Continue reading “17 Months of Stories from Xconomy San Francisco”
Klip: iPhone Video Sharing Refined to A High Art
Put high-quality cameras into devices with broadband wireless connections. Add powerful smartphone operating systems like iOS or Android and app-store ecosystems like iTunes and the Android Market. Mix in some sloth and disinterest on the part of established photo-sharing destinations like Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter. Under these conditions, it was probably inevitable that entrepreneurs would … Continue reading “Klip: iPhone Video Sharing Refined to A High Art”
Practice Fusion Bids for Dominance in the Doctor’s Office with a Free, Ad-Supported Electronic Health Record System
“Healthcare is broken. Insurance companies are innovatively bankrupt. There are huge hurdles to entry. The biggest companies in the world can’t solve this problem; even Google can’t build a good personal health record system. Doctors are frugal. Patients are lazy and don’t care about their health. You guys are choosing a very hard path.” Such … Continue reading “Practice Fusion Bids for Dominance in the Doctor’s Office with a Free, Ad-Supported Electronic Health Record System”
Yelp, Invensense, Cloudera, PunchTab: Bay Area BizTech News by the Numbers
Time for the data-driven roundup of deals news and other developments in the Bay Area tech world. From biggest to smallest: $1-$2 billion—The amount that Yelp hopes to raise in a rumored IPO. According to media reports today, the San Francisco-based local business guide, which is backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, … Continue reading “Yelp, Invensense, Cloudera, PunchTab: Bay Area BizTech News by the Numbers”
ScaleVP’s Mitchell: FDA’s Capriciousness Is Driving Out Life Sciences Investors
Yesterday’s announcement by Scale Venture Partners that it will make no new investments in healthcare companies may not have come as a huge surprise to some insiders. Kate Mitchell, a founder and managing director at the firm, says ScaleVP has been pondering the shift for two or three years, and that it effectively stopped investing … Continue reading “ScaleVP’s Mitchell: FDA’s Capriciousness Is Driving Out Life Sciences Investors”
Scale Venture Partners Gives Up On Healthcare & Life Sciences Investing
Life sciences investing is up against the ropes. The sector has been beset by such high capital costs and such long paths to market that many venture partners don’t seem to want early- and mid-stage biotech companies tarnishing their portfolios anymore. Hence the news last week that Menlo Park, CA-based Morgenthaler Ventures and Boston-based Advanced … Continue reading “Scale Venture Partners Gives Up On Healthcare & Life Sciences Investing”
Death of the Salesman? Marketo Is Automating Sales Relationships-And Growing Like Crazy
From Phil Fernandez’s point of view, there’s a precise moment in the sales process when a potential buyer is ready to be contacted by a seller. Reach out too soon, and they’ll be annoyed or spooked. Contact them too late, and they may have moved on to another vendor. In the old days, human salespeople … Continue reading “Death of the Salesman? Marketo Is Automating Sales Relationships-And Growing Like Crazy”
Ustream, Coraid, Gogobot: Bay Area BizTech News by the Numbers
Time to round up the latest local funding and deals numbers. Some of this is catch-up from last week. $500 million—The amount of a planned secondary stock offering by Mountain View, CA-based professional networking service LinkedIn (NYSE: [[ticker:LNKD]]), according to a November 3 regulatory filing. The company’s principal shareholders include LinkedIn founder and CEO Reid … Continue reading “Ustream, Coraid, Gogobot: Bay Area BizTech News by the Numbers”
Mobile App Search is So Bad AltaVista Could Have Done It. Chomp Is Biting Off the Problem
There are roughly 500,000 iPhone and iPad apps in Apple’s iTunes App Store, and almost that many smartphone and tablet apps in Google’s Android Market. That gives mobile consumers lots of choices, but it has created an untenable situation for mobile developers. Unless you get lucky and your app vaults onto the top-5 or top-10 … Continue reading “Mobile App Search is So Bad AltaVista Could Have Done It. Chomp Is Biting Off the Problem”
Massive Health’s App Data Proves It: People Eat More Junk Food at Work
Yesterday we told you about The Eatery, a new iPhone app from San Francisco-based Massive Health. The app lets users snap photos of their meals, rate how healthy they are, and get a reality check on those ratings from other users. While the app is designed to be fun, it also has a serious point—if … Continue reading “Massive Health’s App Data Proves It: People Eat More Junk Food at Work”
Trade Shows Go Virtual at ON24; The Civilized Alternative to Second Life?
The boardroom windows at ON24 look out over San Francisco’s Moscone Center, the city’s largest convention complex. Every year, Moscone is home to giant events like Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, Oracle OpenWorld, Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce, and the MacWorld Expo; in fiscal year 2009-2010, more than 919,000 registered event attendees visited the complex. But as busy as … Continue reading “Trade Shows Go Virtual at ON24; The Civilized Alternative to Second Life?”
Clearwire Adds Subscribers, Stems Losses in Third Quarter
Years ago, Bellevue, WA-based Clearwire (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CLWR]]) placed a big bet. It thought that an Intel-backed wireless technology called WiMax would become the foundation of the “4G” broadband data networks that will eventually take the place of today’s 3G networks. It bet wrong—a rival technology called long-term evolution (LTE), backed by Verizon, AT&T, and other … Continue reading “Clearwire Adds Subscribers, Stems Losses in Third Quarter”
Yahoo, Auditude, 100plus: Bay Area BizTech News by the Numbers
Time for our periodic data-driven roundup of funding news, acquisitions, and other developments in the Bay Area business and technology sphere. $270 million—The value of Yahoo’s acquisition of New York-based digital media company Interclick (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ICLK]]), announced yesterday. Interclick makes software that helps brands and agencies optimize their online advertising campaigns. Yahoo said the acquisition … Continue reading “Yahoo, Auditude, 100plus: Bay Area BizTech News by the Numbers”
Massive Health Builds an App for Healthy Eating; Think Foodspotting Meets FitnessKeeper
Do phones, food, photos, and fitness mix? Massive Health is hoping they do. The San Francisco mobile health startup, which debuted last spring with $2.25 million in seed funding from Felicis Ventures, Greylock, Andreessen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures, and Mohr Davidow Ventures, has come out with its first consumer app. It’s called The Eatery, and … Continue reading “Massive Health Builds an App for Healthy Eating; Think Foodspotting Meets FitnessKeeper”
ATDynamics Works to Reduce Drag in the Slow-to-Change Trucking Industry
Semi-trailers suck. Literally. As these boxy shapes barrel down the freeway, they leave a vacuum in the air behind them, and this area of turbulence and low pressure generates suction that accounts for at least a quarter of all aerodynamic drag on a tractor-trailer rig. If you could do something to disrupt the vacuum and … Continue reading “ATDynamics Works to Reduce Drag in the Slow-to-Change Trucking Industry”
The Economy in 17 Syllables, All of Them Gloomy
For the third quarter of 2011, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation leavened its otherwise morose quarterly survey of economics bloggers (PDF) with something new: a haiku contest. The 63 academics, entrepreneurs, investors, and journalists who participated in the survey, including myself, were asked to describe the state of the economy in the form of a haiku, … Continue reading “The Economy in 17 Syllables, All of Them Gloomy”
Facebook Should Have Stayed in Boston, and Other Quotable Moments from Y Combinator’s Startup School
For startup people, the 714 seats inside Dinkelspiel Auditorium at Stanford University were the hottest ones in the country on Saturday. That was the day of Startup School, the invitation-only event produced by Stanford’s student entrepreneur group BASES and Mountain View, CA-based venture incubator Y Combinator. For the seventh year in a row, a cast … Continue reading “Facebook Should Have Stayed in Boston, and Other Quotable Moments from Y Combinator’s Startup School”
StartUpdates: 1000memories Introduces Shoebox App, Animoto Makes Video Creation Easier, HealthTap Taps 5,000 Physicians
Author’s Note: I’ve got a problem. Because Xconomy is still relatively new to the San Francisco Bay Area, most of the stories I write are about companies we’re covering for the first time. Because there’s an endless supply of new companies, I can never quite empty out my notebooks. But at the same time, there’s … Continue reading “StartUpdates: 1000memories Introduces Shoebox App, Animoto Makes Video Creation Easier, HealthTap Taps 5,000 Physicians”
Vinod Khosla Helps Startup Entrepreneurs Think Bigger
I had been planning to talk in today’s column about the shortcomings of the Google Chromebook, which are numerous. But I’m in too good of a mood this week to play the critic, partly because of a terrific Silicon Valley event that I attended Tuesday night called Get Bigger! With Vinod Khosla. So instead, I’m … Continue reading “Vinod Khosla Helps Startup Entrepreneurs Think Bigger”
Sencha, Subtext, Sociable Labs: Bay Area BizTech News by the Numbers
Time for our periodic, data-driven roundup of business and technology news around San Francisco Bay. $151 million—The price Google paid to acquire restaurant review aggregator Zagat back in September, according to a regulatory filing examined by Reuters. $135 million—Total financing raised to date by San Jose-based display maker Prysm, according to an announcement today. Xconomy … Continue reading “Sencha, Subtext, Sociable Labs: Bay Area BizTech News by the Numbers”
Xconomist of the Week: Phil Libin, Evernote, and the Death of the Exit
Xconomist Phil Libin, the CEO of Mountain View, CA-based Evernote, is a little unusual among his Silicon Valley brethren. He’s on the record as saying that the online notekeeping startup doesn’t want to be acquired. “There has never been an exit strategy at Evernote,” he wrote in an FAQ-style blog post after Evernote raised $50 … Continue reading “Xconomist of the Week: Phil Libin, Evernote, and the Death of the Exit”
The Web’s Last Word on Words
Wordnik (wərd-nik) noun. 1. A person associated with or characterized by a love of words, word usage, linguistics, or lexicography. 2. A startup company headquartered in San Mateo, California. Origin: word + -nik (Yiddish, from Russian). Cf. beatnik, peacenik. On the Internet, it’s hard to get people to slow down enough to use actual words, … Continue reading “The Web’s Last Word on Words”
RightNow, BlueStacks, Bridgelux: Bay Area BizTech News by the Numbers
Time for our irregular roundup of business and technology news. Some of this is today’s news, and some is catch-up from last week: $1.5 billion—The approximate price fetched by Bozeman, MT-based RightNow, which was acquired today by Oracle, the Redwood Shores, CA-based database giant. RightNow offers cloud-based customer service and support software. Oracle executive vice … Continue reading “RightNow, BlueStacks, Bridgelux: Bay Area BizTech News by the Numbers”
From the Lab that Brought You Siri, It’s Trapit—A Personalized Discovery Engine
There are two kinds of people: Those who already own an iPhone 4S, and those who don’t but have seen Apple’s Siri ads and wish they did. Siri, of course, is the voice-operated personal assistant that can read your text messages, schedule appointments, check on the weather, make waffles, and babysit your toddler (just kidding … Continue reading “From the Lab that Brought You Siri, It’s Trapit—A Personalized Discovery Engine”
Venture Industry Calls for Rules Changes to Reopen IPO Market
There was a time when most growing companies went to the public stock markets for the capital they needed to keep hiring and growing—but that time ended a decade ago. At no point since 2001 has the number of initial public offerings per year reached even the minimum levels set in the 1990s. (The pre-1999 … Continue reading “Venture Industry Calls for Rules Changes to Reopen IPO Market”
The VeriSign of Privacy? TRUSTe Scales Up and Tackles Mobile, Cloud, and Ads
It’s taken me a long time to figure out TRUSTe. I’ve been to their offices, which are in a swanky building on Second Street in San Francisco’s Financial District, about three times in the last 10 months. But my last story about the company was back in September 2010, when it introduced some new privacy … Continue reading “The VeriSign of Privacy? TRUSTe Scales Up and Tackles Mobile, Cloud, and Ads”
Dropbox, Tidemark, Livefyre: Bay Area BizTech News by the Numbers
Numbers make the world go round—and Dropbox is seeing some big ones this week. $1.2 billion—The likely closing size of the tenth fund at San Francisco- and Chicago-based private equity firm Thoma Bravo, according to a report today from peHub. Nine digits—The dollar value of Apple’s rejected bid for document sharing startup Dropbox back in 2009, … Continue reading “Dropbox, Tidemark, Livefyre: Bay Area BizTech News by the Numbers”
Khosla, Sunpreme, Grockit: Bay Area BizTech News by the Numbers
Time for our periodic data-driven roundup of company news from the San Francisco and Silicon Valley tech world. $1.05 billion—The size of Khosla Ventures IV, the new investment fund closed last week by Khosla Ventures, the Menlo Park, CA-based investing firm founded by Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla. As with its first three funds, the firm … Continue reading “Khosla, Sunpreme, Grockit: Bay Area BizTech News by the Numbers”
Putting Consumer Reviews to Work: PowerReviews Takes on Amazon, Looks to “Social Navigation” for E-Retailers
If you’re like me, you do a lot of research online before you make a big buying decision, and sometimes even before a small one. And you lean heavily on the reviews left by other shoppers. My favorite trick, when I’m zeroing in on a specific product, is to read all of the “1 star” … Continue reading “Putting Consumer Reviews to Work: PowerReviews Takes on Amazon, Looks to “Social Navigation” for E-Retailers”
iCal or iHAL? Apple and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
Dear Mom: You asked me to write to let you know if I arrived safely in iCloud-land. Well, I’m here and I’m in one piece, although unfortunately some of my things didn’t make it here with me, such as my calendar. It was a pretty hellish journey, I’ll tell you. There were a couple of … Continue reading “iCal or iHAL? Apple and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”
Yammer is Not Just Facebook for Enterprises: A Deep Dive with CEO David Sacks
It took enterprise social networking startup Yammer 18 months to gain its first million users, nine months to add its second million, and only six months to add its third million. At that rate of increase, according to my calculations, the startup will have 20 million users by late 2012, and 7 billion by 2014. … Continue reading “Yammer is Not Just Facebook for Enterprises: A Deep Dive with CEO David Sacks”
Box, Qumu, Zenprise: Bay Area BizTech News by the Numbers
Time for our occasional data-driven roundup of local business and technology news. From biggest to smallest: $81 million—A Series D expansion round formally announced yesterday for Box.net, the Palo Alto, CA-based enterprise document sharing startup. The round involved new investors Salesforce.com, SAP Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, as well as existing investors Andreessen Horowitz … Continue reading “Box, Qumu, Zenprise: Bay Area BizTech News by the Numbers”