Podcasts about crunchfund

In der Rubrik “Investments & Exits” begrüßen wir heute Otto Birnbaum, General Partner von Revent. Otto spricht über die Finanzierungsrunde von ConstellR und Quench.ai sowie den Exit von Opinary und den neuen Fonds von United Ventures. Das deutsche Startup constellr, das intelligente Landwirtschaftsdienste für den Agrarsektor anbietet, hat eine Seed-Finanzierungsrunde abgeschlossen und erhöhte damit den Gesamtbetrag der Seed-Runde auf 17 Millionen Euro. Die Finanzierungsrunde wurde von Karista angeführt, mit Beteiligung von Einstein Industries Ventures und bestehenden Investoren wie FTTF, Lakestar, Vsquared, Amathaon Capital, Natural Ventures, OHB Ventures und EIT Food. Das Unternehmen plant, die Mittel zu nutzen, um den Einsatz seiner Wärmesatelliten zu beschleunigen und seine Aktivitäten in Nordamerika auszuweiten. Die KI-Coaching-Plattform Quench.ai, gegründet von Husayn Kassai, dem Mitbegründer von Onfido, hat in einer Pre-Seed-Finanzierungsrunde 5 Millionen US-Dollar aufgebracht. Unter den Investoren sind Firstminute Capital, Tuesday VC (ehemals CrunchFund), BY Venture Partners, Ada Ventures, Plug and Play Ventures, Notion Capital, IFG, Antler, Ventures Together, Northzone scout und mehr als 50 Gründer. Die Plattform nutzt Künstliche Intelligenz als Coach und bietet den Nutzern geeignete Videos zum Erlernen neuer Fähigkeiten an. Ziel ist es, Probleme wie "Entscheidungsparalyse" und zeitraubende Ablenkungen zu vermeiden. Das Unternehmen plant, mit der Finanzierung sein Team zu erweitern und moderne Lernende, die ihre Fähigkeiten verbessern wollen, anzusprechen.Das indische Werbetechnologieunternehmen Affinity hat das Berliner Startup Opinary übernommen, wobei der Kaufpreis nicht bekannt gegeben wurde, aber geschätzt wird, dass es sich um eine einstellige Millionensumme handelt. Opinary, bekannt für seine Online-Umfragen zu aktuellen Themen, wird durch die Übernahme die Möglichkeit haben, international zu expandieren und neue Produkte von Affinity anzubieten. Die bestehende Geschäftsführung von Opinary bleibt erhalten, während das Unternehmen durch die Unterstützung von Affinity in den USA und Asien sowie in Deutschland und Europa wachsen soll. Die italienische Risikokapitalfirma United Ventures hat den ersten Abschluss ihres neuen Fonds in Höhe von 65 Millionen Euro bekannt gegeben, mit einem Ziel von insgesamt 150 Millionen Euro. Der Fonds wird sich in den nächsten fünf Jahren auf 15 bis 18 europäische Technologieunternehmen im Frühstadium konzentrieren, insbesondere im italienischen Ökosystem. 

Howard Lerman has been building and selling companies since he was in college. After taking his last venture through an IPO, he has launched a new startup helping to solve the future of work dilemma that many are debating right now. His startup, Yext, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Insight Venture Partners, WGI Group, CrunchFund, and Grape Arbo VC.

Kevin has been discovering startups that attack huge problems and a huge part of his mentorship is aimed at helping founders find their “Why.” He's got a degree in quantitative economics, cut his investing teeth at CrunchFund (now Tuesday Capital) and is now the leading investments at MGV. Kevin and the MGV team are early investors in some of the hottest startups like Modern Health, ObserveAI, Wardrobe and many others.https://www.mgv.vc/Contact: kevin@mgv.vchttps://www.thewhyinetwork.com/Social: WhyiNetworkContact: kojo@thewhyinetwork.com

Hello Everone, this is Sheliza from CanadianSME Small Business Magazine, please join me in welcoming Nicholas Reichenbach, Founder, and CEO of Flow Alkaline Spring Water. Nicholas Reichenbach, 42, is the founder and CEO of Flow Water, an Ontario-based company that packages alkaline spring water in eco-friendly Tetra Paks in Aurora, Ont. A seasoned executive & serial start-up, investor and consumer product entrepreneur, Nicholas has built a robust track record, founding, creating and building multiple businesses in the consumer goods, social media, internet/mobile technology, entertainment and hospitality space; Flow ( a socially responsible water company), Mindfull INC (an organic Food & Beverage company), Rabbit (a leading social video chat platform venture-backed by Google Ventures, CrunchFund and other leading VCs). Today we are talking about entrepreneurship, resilience and also discusses his recent launch and inspiration behind Collagen

Nicholas Reichenbach is a serial entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of Flow Alkaline Spring Water, the sustainably packaged spring water company. Flow has attracted an enormous fanbase and attention from some of today’s biggest celebrities. Investors of the company include Shawn Mendes, Post Malone, Chase Utley, and Curtis Chambers and they have launched marketing campaigns with Gwyneth Paltrow and her lifestyle brand Goop. Flow closed their latest $45M funding round on May 4. Nicholas has founded and building multiple businesses in the consumer goods, social media, mobile, entertainment and hospitality spaces. These companies include Mindfull Inc. (an organic food & beverage company), Rabbit Inc. (a leading social video chat platform venture-backed by Google Ventures and CrunchFund), GuestDriven (hospitality/hotel SaaS with clients such as Thompson and Hyatt), and Magmic Games (top mobile social game and app publisher having produced over 300 games). Follow Nicholas on Twitter! Discussion Highlights: (1:43) Building a superstar brand. (4:22) Beating the competition - brand, product, distribution. (8:26) Fostering an attitude of ‘mindful positivity’. (12:54) Flow’s success with surging demand and fundraising during COVID-19. (15:18) Finding gaps in the market: trending towards D2C distribution. (17:56) Personal strengths and weaknesses that this environment has exposed. (20:00) New focus: wellbeing of his family and himself. *** Have any questions or comments? Email me at noahifergan@gmail.com If you enjoyed the podcast, please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts. It’s super quick and very helpful in spreading our positive message. Follow the Podcast on Twitter and Facebook for more exciting episodes!

Patrick Gallagher of Tuesday Capital joins Nick on a special Crisis Coverage installment to discuss VC Firm Survival, How Seed Investing Scales, & A Glimpse at the Road Ahead. In this episode, we cover: Walk us through your path to venture How did things first come together for Crunchfund w/ you and Michael Arrington? Why did Michael leave and why did you rebrand Crunchfund to Tuesday? Gives us the highlights of your thesis? How do current events effect your approach going forward? Anything you'll avoid/be much more cautious investing in?... or anything you're leaning into? Some have said that many seed venture firms will not survive the current crisis.  I think there may be more than 1000 seed firms currently...  Do you think the volume of seed players reconciles as a result of this correction? What is your reserve strategy?  How much and how do you make decision as to how you deploy reserves into current portcos? Why the partnership with Frog and what does that mean for your portcos? Aside from design, branding, storytelling... what is an area that is significantly under-utilized as an area of value that VCs can provide to starutps? I believe you're in Airbnb and Uber... was it difficult to invest in their later rounds while you had a young seed-focused fund? Do you believe seed funds can scale? Why do you think there are so many people that want to do this job?  The numbers aren't good... it takes a long time to establish yourself, most funds fail and even the successful ones take a long time to make money. Before we wrap things up, what would you say to a young individual that wants to make a career in venture capital? To listen more, please visit http://fullratchet.net/podcast-episodes/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on twitter @TheFullRatchet for updates and more information.

Prashant Fonseka, a venture capitalist with Tuesday Capital (https://tuesday.vc) (formerly the CrunchFund) explains his process for evaluating pre-seed, seed and post-seed VC investing. Prashant also lists the advice he gives to portfolio companies during the COVID crisis.

M.G. Siegler of GV joins Nick to discuss Streaming Wars, The Future of Mobile & The Evolution of User Interaction. In this episode, we cover: Backstory/path to Venture How'd you find your way from Hollywood to SV? Who was the first VC that, based on your writing talent, saw your potential as an investor? Why did you leave Crunchfund for GV?  A little confusion about the array of venture funds affiliated with Google - can you give us a quick overview and whether there is still an affiliation between Google and GV? Tell us about your thesis. How hands-on do you get w/ portcos? How does Jony Ive's departure affect Apple? What are the most valuable consumer tech companies by market cap - five years from now? Right now, in the streaming market, we have a fragmented group of services yet know one platform to unify the user experience...  what do you see for the future of streaming? How do you see the competition between Apple and Disney play out?  Who wins? Just heard the announcement that Facebook is acquiring CTRL - Labs. Why do you think this is a good strategic buy for FB? removing monotony.... repetitive tasks....  mental fatigue....  Impact of constant stimulation, content consumption, on happiness, creativity, etc.? You've invested in some big names such as Medium, Slack and Stripe to name a few. What's the single biggest common success factor that you've observed across very different companies? What are some of the major trends we will see in mobile in the coming year and what do you think will phase out? Who is your favorite writer in the space? If you ever get around to writing your screenplay, what will you write about? To listen more, please visit http://fullratchet.net/podcast-episodes/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on twitter @TheFullRatchet for updates and more information.

Micah Baldwin is a serial entrepreneur and founder of Graphicly which was acquired by Blurb in 2014.  We are very fortunate to have him share his experience recovering from addiction and battling mental illness as a child and throughout his adult life.  He has a lot of wisdom and experience living in the recovery community and helping others do the same.  Micah grew up in Silicon Valley and started his first company at the age of 9.  After selling Graphicly, he spent time at Amazon where he led a team dedicated to helping startups grow their businesses by connecting with large enterprises and business units.  Currently, Micah is the founder and Executive Director of Create33 in Seattle which he describes as a labor of love, providing resources to founders such as advice, fundraising access and other resources he would have loved to have when he was starting out as a founder.  He is also an experienced startup investor, and a trusted advisor to many startups as well.  He’s a mentor and advisor at 500 Startups, Techstars, CrunchFund and others where he helps early-stage companies with fundraising, business development, product development, marketing and growth You can connect with Micah on twitter @micah.  You can read more about his background and find a link to all of his socials on his profile at about.me/micahb. 2:15 – Micah tells me about his entrepreneurial journey.  He talks about growing up in the heart of Silicon Valley and how his father worked at Stanford and was asked to be the 4th employee at Cisco.  Micah grew up around entrepreneurship. 4:45 – What comes to mind when you think of mental health?  Micah talks about how stability comes to mind first and goes on to explain his lifelong struggle battling mental health issues.  He discusses his mental health diagnoses which include bipolar 2, anxiety and bipolar depression, all of which are medicated, and he is currently in a stable state.  He talks about how when he was growing up, nobody really knew what mental health was and that people just viewed him as “the crazy kid” who was sad all the time, or the little “genius kid” that was like a little energizer bunny all the time. 9:20 – Micah discusses talking with his mom about his mental health as an adult.  Often her response is that she says she wished she knew this was going on.  Which is a very valid point.  Mental health was not talked about when we were kids.  It was something you kept quiet.  He gives an example about how if he had gotten in a car wreck and become a paraplegic there would have been a conversation about how to deal with it, but mental health just wasn’t talked about. 10:48 – Micha talks about how hope and fear are paired together as opposites.  He lived much of his life in fear until he became stable, and now his life is full of hope. 11:38 – We talked about how addiction interacted with his mental illnesses throughout his life.  Micah talks about having an addictive personality, and how moderation has been something he struggled with.  His very first drug was food.  He became a big kid and he talks about how he used his role as the “funny fat kid” as a defense mechanism.  Later in life that translated into drug and alcohol addiction.  He talks a lot about how he bottomed out and when he decided to get sober, as well as his process to gain sobriety and maintain sobriety. 14:10 – I asked him to talk about the difference between “white-knuckling” it with regards to addiction versus going through a program like AA.  He talks about how he first attended AA after being court mandated after a DUI in the early 2000s.  When he went he expected it to be full of fake people pretending to work a program but, he realized how nice everyone was, how different everyone was, and how every single one of these very different people were full of pure love for one another. The sense of belonging was the biggest wake-up call for him. 17:55 – We talk in-depth about the spiritual component of AA (or 12-step programs).  He talks about how at one point he was turned off by the mentions of “higher power” in AA.  He talks about how he would listen to all these people turning their lives over to a higher power and that it didn’t’ make any sense to him.  He talks about how for him higher power has evolved into the broader AA group and how each friend he has made in the program represents a piece of this higher power. 20:50 – I asked how stigma has impacted his journey with his mental health and addiction.  He talks about how there is always this image of “perfect” in certain fields, like venture, or startups with respect to how you look, or who you are.  He doesn’t fit the mold in many ways, and his fear of adding his mental health issues to his reasons why he doesn’t’ fit the mold kept him from wanting to get help or talk about it.  Eventually, he made the shift from worrying what other people think to not caring if someone judges him because he’s not like everyone else or because of what he’s done in his past. 24:40 – We talk about how we can address the problem of stigma.  Micah outlines three things that need to happen: Each of us needs to be open to admit that we all have biases and we have to work to be compassionate, accepting, and willing to listen to a person’s whole story instead of judging them based on part of the story.  We need to talk about mental health as a medical condition because it is one.  My brain works differently than other peoples’ brains.  That’s ok just as it’s ok for someone’s legs to work different than other peoples’ legs.  Furthermore, education is key.  There needs to be more opportunity to learn what it means to live in unstable versus stable mental states.  We need to educate people on how they can be helpful to us when we are struggling whether it be in a crisis or in a depressed state or whatever it may be.  We need more people who have succeeded in spite of mental illness and addiction, to come forward and share their stories.  We need to make it well known that many people achieve a great deal of success while struggling with instability or addiction. Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website: https://stigmapodcast.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/StigmaCast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Stigma-Podcast-105616270782583/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stigma-podcast/  

Dave Girouard is the co-founder and CEO of Upstart which leverages machine learning to price credit and automate the borrowing process. The company has raised $160 million from investors such as Kleiner Perkins, NEA, Google Ventures, Mark Cuban, CrunchFund, Eric Schmidt, Marc Benioff, Khosla Ventures, or Founders Fund.

Dave Girouard is the co-founder and CEO of Upstart which leverages machine learning to price credit and automate the borrowing process. The company has raised $160 million from investors such as Kleiner Perkins, NEA, Google Ventures, Mark Cuban, CrunchFund, Eric Schmidt, Marc Benioff, Khosla Ventures, or Founders Fund.

YouMail is changing how the world handles phone calls by providing intelligent, cloud-based telecommunication services, having answered well over 5 billion calls from roughly half of the phones in America. YouMail's flagship app is an intelligent call manager that stops robocalls with its highly accurate caller ID and smart blocking technology, provides the industry's easiest one-touch conference calling capabilities, provides an automated virtual receptionist for handling, routing, and responding to calls, and includes the company's award-winning voicemail service. YouMail also produces WhoAreYou, a caller ID and call blocking app on Android, and publishes the YouMail Robocall Index, which tracks the volume and extent of robocalls in the United States. YouMail was founded in Irvine, Calif, in 2007, and the company is privately funded. YouMail is backed by VantagePoint Capital Partners, Wavemaker Ventures, the Tech Coast Angels ACE Fund, the CrunchFund, the Tech Coast Angels, and numerous private investors and family offices. https://www.youmail.com https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id308331524 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.youmail.android.vvm&referrer=utm_source%3DYouMail%26utm_medium%3DOrganic%26utm_campaign%3DHomePageHeader%26utm_term%3D%26utm_content%3D%26

Jeremy Burton is the Co-Founder, CTO & Chief Data Scientist at Wonolo. He is a 9x serial entrepreneur, previously being on the Founding team of Symbian and Co-Founder of Intuwave, both of which have been sold to Nokia.Wonolo (Work. Now. Locally) is an on-demand staffing platform for businesses to fill their immediate hourly or daily job needs. Wonolo allows companies to manage unpredictability by providing a fast, efficient, flexible way to bring in talent when required.Wonolo is funded by Sequoia, Bain Capital, PivotNorth, Crunchfund, Foundry Group Angels Syndicate and Base10.

We speak to the former founder of TechCrunch and CrunchFund, Michael Arrington on the sidelines of the #BinanceBlockchainWeek in Singapore.Tune in to hear about:Background, how he got into crypto and what that journey’s been likeThoughts on Singapore!Investment thesisThoughts on different kinds of founders and what he looks out forThoughts on the dot-com bubble and lessons to be learnt for crypto-investments

Our guest this week is M.G. Siegler. For the past 5-plus years, M.G. Siegler has been a general partner at GV — Google’s venture capital arm. Before that, he helped start a seed fund called CrunchFund. And before that, he was a tech reporter for a number of years at publications such as TechCrunch and VentureBeat. Way back when, he was a front-end web developer. For show notes visit: https://kk.org/cooltools/m-g-siegler-general-partner-at-gv

Howard Lerman is the Founder & CEO @ Yext, the company that allows you to control your brand experience across the digital universe. Due in part to Howard's incredible leadership of the firm, Yext went public in April 2017 with an opening price of $11 a share, today the stock price sits at $26.85 and a market cap of $2.65Bn. Prior to the IPO, Yext raised over $117m in VC funding from Insight Venture Partners, IVP, SV Angel and CrunchFund to name a few. As for Howard, Yext is his 4th company and he is also Co-Founder and Chairman of Confide, a leading off-the-record messaging service. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Howard made his way into the world of startups and came to Partner with is co-founders to start the now public company that is Yext? 2.) Why must every founder know about Teddy Roosevelt and his "Five Minute Meetings"? Literally, what is the right way to structure these meetings? What one question is the right question to ask? How can a leader look to retain that startup culture and ethos with scale? Why does Howard believe running a global company is like running a country? 3.) What have Howard's biggest takeaways been from studying "John Lennon's Storytelling Trick"? How can founders use this trick both to inspire their team more effectively internally and then to present a better vision for the company, externally? 4.) Howard has said before "fundraising is not an end in itself". Does Howard believe that company financing should be celebrated? How was the IPO process for Howard? From a literal standpoint, how does the process run? How did Howard choose which banks to work with? How did the 10-day roadshow shape up? How did the pricing decision-making process look the night before IPO? 5.) Why does Howard believe it is fundamentally better being a public company? What does "public" status allow you? How does being public introduce a challenge never before seen to founders? Why must founders always examine the motives of the VC behind whether they are pushing them to remain private or go public? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Howard’s Fave Book: Five Stars: The Communication Secrets to Get From Good to Great As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Howard on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Susan is a Partner at CrunchFund, the seed-stage fund launched by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington which has invested in the likes of Airbnb, Vine (acquired by Twitter), Cruise (acquired by GM for a reported $1 billion), Onfido and X.ai. Previously, Susan worked at Y Combinator and as the Director of Global Programming at TechCrunch where she focused on major events and the Startup Battlefield. Susan began her career as a teacher in Southern California before making a major transition in 2004 to join a hardware startup based in the UK and Silicon Valley. Susan was the first non-engineering hire at both Codian (acquired by Tandberg in 2007, then by Cisco Systems in 2008) and at CoTweet (acquired by ExactTarget in 2010, then by Salesforce.com in 2013). Speaking to Seedcamp partner Carlos Espinal, Susan discusses her intriguing transition from teaching to venture, arguing that both disciplines require being quick on one's feet and the capacity to connect well with others. Recalling her experiences working at several acquired companies, Susan argues that a successful acquisition requires a level of autonomy for the acquired company post-purchase: "Never leave very smart people with nothing to do because they will very quickly get bored, especially if they are entrepreneurial, and start something else." Given CrunchFund's journalistic origins, the firm also spends a lot of time supporting portfolio founders in 'storytelling', and Susan discusses just how the fund helps entrepreneurs craft their narrative. Learn more about how Susan ended up in venture (following encouragement by Y Combinator's Sam Altman), her time leading global programming for TechCrunch and what CrunchFund focuses on in looking for new companies to back. Show notes: Carlos Medium: sdca.mp/2entVR3 Seedcamp: www.seedcamp.com CrunchFund: www.cf.vc Related bio links: Carlos: linkedin.com/in/carloseduardoespinal / twitter.com/cee Susan: linkedin.com/in/susanhobbs/ / twitter.com/slh

Ben Uretsky is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Digital Ocean. Under Ben’s leadership, DigitalOcean has risen from a cloud startup for developers to the second largest and fastest growing cloud computing platform. To date, more than 1m developers have deployed more than 50 million cloud servers, and the company has expanded its worldwide infrastructure footprint with multiple datacenter locations around the globe. The company has raised $123 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Access Industries, IA Ventures, CrunchFund, and Techstars. Prior to DigitalOcean, he co-founded and built a managed hosting provider that supported some of the top websites online and generated million-dollar annual revenues. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How Ben made the move from co-founding a bootstrapped startup competing with Rackspace to co-founding DigitalOcean and competing with Amazon? What have been Ben’s big learnings in raising $123m for DigitalOcean? How does Ben suggest building a trusted relationship with VCs? How have DigitalOcean scaled to over 1m customers without a sales team? What are the core tenets that have made this possible? How does the team prioritise customer acquisition channels at DigitalOcean? How does Ben say is the right way to build a community? Sean Rad has said before the hardest part is scaling with the firm. How has been seen his scaling as CEO with the firm? How has his personal relationship to the company changed with the scaling? Hear an inflection point in the scaling of DigitalOcean and how Ben’s leadership changed as a result? 60 Second SaaStr What hire des Ben wish he had made earlier? What does Ben know now that he wishes he had known earlier? What are the key inflection points in SaaS businesses? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Ben Uretsky

Moisey Uretsky is the Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer @ Digital Ocean, the second largest and fastest growing cloud computing platform, with more than 700,000 developers having deployed more than 20 million cloud servers. The company has raised $123 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Access Industries, IA Ventures, CrunchFund, and Techstars. As for Moisey, before founding DigitalOcean, he studied Mathematics at NYU and launched CorreGroup, a big data startup that provided valuable analytics to billion-dollar hedge fund firms in New York City. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Moisey came to found the 2nd largest cloud computing platform with Digital Ocean? 2.) Moisey has previously said: 'we did everything wrong for a decade'. What were the biggest mistakes Moisey made and how did he look to rectify them and learn from them? 3.) Does Moisey believe that you can learn to be a great business leader? Is it inherent or if not, what are the steps required to increase your chances? 4.) Moisey has previously said: 'businesses that succeed are either needed or loved'. What does he mean by this? What category does Digital Ocean fall into? How does that affect his management style and thought process? 5.) Question From Ari @ Techstars: How do Moisey and Digital Ocean fundamentally scale love? What are the inherent challenges of building this type of culture? How does the theme of love play out in the hiring and the on boarding process? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Moisey’s Fave Book: Innovator's Dilemma Moisey’s Fave Blog: Tom Tunguz As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Moisey on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Angelloop is the leading post funding management platform for private market investors and their portfolio companies. They help investors manage and track their portfolio companies on the cloud while providing them with access to their investments performance data. Angelloop helps founders of startups track their performance, manage their cap table and keep their investors in the loop. Investors get free access while their portfolio companies pay only $49/Month. Use or share the promo-code 20MinVC to get your portfolio companies online with a two month trial. I’d like to thank Wealthfront for sponsoring today’s podcast. Wealthfront are financial advisors that can help you invest your hard-earned dollars. Wealthfront’s modern financial services helps tailor plans specifically for you, making it easy to reach your financial goals. Wealthfront has low fees and no trading commissions… It’s financial advice at a fraction of the cost of a traditional advisor, all online. And if you sign up using my URL, you’ll get your first $15,000 managed for free. Go to Wealthfront.com/20vc.

2011 interview with VentureBeat & TechCrunch writer, and current Google Ventures partner MG Siegler. MG has been deeply involved in the startup space since 2005, first as a web developer, then as a writer, and most recently as an investor and advisor. Before joining Google Ventures in 2013, M.G. was a founding partner of CrunchFund, an early-stage investment fund. Prior to that, he reported on the startup world as a writer for both TechCrunch and VentureBeat. M.G. still writes a column for TechCrunch on top of writing on his own sites and from time-to-time doing movie reviews in haiku. Originally from Ohio, M.G. graduated from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor before moving out west to work in Hollywood. One day, he hopes to write a killer screenplay.

This week, Andrew Sorcini, Devindra Hardawar, Dwayne De Freitas and Christopher Burnor  take a look at other companies that are storing your data without your permission, following last week's coverage of the Path debacle, and later we examine former TechCrunch reporter turned Crunchfund partner MG Siegler's claim that tech journalists today are foregoing putting research and expertise into their work in favor of using sensationalism to chase pageviews. But first, the headlines... Google develops a home entertainment system, two Kickstarter projects hit the $1 million mark, SNL pokes fun at Verizon marketing, Steve Jobs earns a posthumous Grammy, Twitter beats MSM on news of Whitney Houston's death, The Pirate Bay says goodbye to .torrent files, Apple readies the iPad3 (and tests an 8-in. tablet), and Apple invites inspections of its suppliers. Show Links Contest: $50 ‘Cash Cab' Giveaway on Geeks of Doom Headlines Google Developing Home Entertainment System Google's Foray Into Hardware Will Be A Total Disaster — Here's Why Kickstarter crosses threshold as two projects hit $1 million in donations SNL on Verizon's 4G marketing: “It's an old person's nightmare” Steve Jobs wins posthumous Grammy, accepted by Apple iTunes chief Eddy Cue Twitter Breaks Whitney Houston Death News 27 Minutes Before Press The Pirate Bay Says Goodbye to (Most) Torrents on February 29 iPad 3 announcement March 7, quad-core, possible 4G LTE Apple, Suppliers Test Tablet With Smaller, 8-in. Screen Fair Labor Association Begins Inspections of Foxconn Audible Book of the Week The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, The Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World by Edward Dolnick Musical Interlude Hot Topic iPhone app contact data update & The State of Tech Journalism Twitter stores full iPhone contact list for 18 months, after scan Apple: App Access to Contact Data Will Require Explicit User Permission Your address book is mine: Many iPhone apps take your data Content Everywhere, But Not A Drop To Drink Hit men, click whores, and paid apologists: Welcome to the Silicon Cesspool Paris Lemon and the No Good, Very Bad Day Happy Valentine's Day, Tech Bloggers

Justin and Jason discuss the suspension of Justin's 600 calorie per day diet and whether his plan to move to Ireland is such a s good idea, the process of finding a designer for AnyFu and the progress on the site mockups, the incredible rise in the value of Bitcoins and whether Bitcoins will ever really go mainstream and threaten the dollar, how the Japanese character set cracked Pluggio and made Justin confused, the importance of momentum in just about everything, Justin's crazy work schedule and how Jason is juggling five client contracts, why Jason is considering open sourcing some of his code, whether the Singularity is near or far, the possibility of a CrunchFund, the worrisome addiction of drawing Anime, "black ops" in Pakistan, whether the world economy is near collapse and whether following the news is worth the effort, using Qwerly to clout rank your email list, why working for startups is a smart career move, how MemSQL offer's a 30x performance enhancement over MySQL and the coolness of Google Web Fonts.