Google's Fiber Takeover Plan Expands: Will Kill Cable & Carriers

Last year, on August 1st, I emailed you guys my thoughts about Google Fiber:

Google's Fiber "Proof of Concept" Is Anything But
http://blog.launch.co/blog/googles-fiber-proof-of-concept-is-anything-but.html

In that piece I wrote, “Mark my words: Google Fiber is not a test, it's a takeover plan.”

Last week, Google announced its second Fiber city: Austin. Yes, the nerd/hipster home of SXSW will get fiber in a move clearly designed to blow every techie's mind at SXSW 2014.

This week, Google announced that it had bought fiber provider iProvo to launch a third city: Provo, UT.

They just tripled their cities in 10 days.

‘Noogle’ -- the new Google since Larry Page took over as CEO -- is all about moonshots. Google can’t shut up about moonshots in fact, with Steven Levy winning an interview with Larry for WIRED with the title 'Why moonshots matter.' 

In 10 short months, 30k+ tech, film and music nerds could be walking around Austin hearing locals brag about their free 5-megabit download connections (and 1 gigabit up/down connections that cost $70 a month.)

More importantly, every Google Fiber home will have a public wifi component. In order to get Google Fiber, you’re going to have to agree to put a router in that lets anyone use a portion of your bandwidth.

That’s not announced, but it’s gonna happen.

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WLITF: Speculation, Investigation & Hacktivism

This Vine video of TV coverage of the Boston Marathon has been tweeted over 40k times.

[ WLITF = We Live in the Future ]

Checking Twitter is a mixed bag.

One day you open it to find out Kobe’s season is over or that your favorite TV show got picked up by Netflix. Another day a startup you love was either sold or shut down. Sadly, like many of us, you might check your stream and find out that an old friend killed himself.  

Yesterday was the worst of these experiences: a terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon.

Or was it a terrorist attack?

Perhaps it was a gas explosion?

Or maybe two gas explosions?

Is that possible to have two gas lines explode? Wait, could this be another 9/11 or 7/7?

If it is, who is responsible?

The speculation starts in our minds the moment the shock fades -- and boy does our shock fade quickly these days. As a society, we process instantly, be it terrorist attacks or viral videos.

We move from ‘shock and retweet’ to ‘reply and incendiary post’ in minutes or hours, and then we get meta: with one side telling the other to shut up and that reactions are not right, not wanted or somehow inappropriate.

'Now is not the time to speculate!' is the rallying cry.

We all process so fast: one minute we’re in shock and the next we are criticizing each other’s reactions to shocking events.

Perhaps we should be more forgiving of news anchors and to each other in moments of stress, fear and outrage?

No one can put their foot in their mouth when it’s closed, but the quickest path to resolution is our words.

Should we speak or shut up?

Click to read more ...

How to Raise Money in 2013

by @Jason Calacanis

Every few years—at least for the past 20 that I’ve been in the technology space—I’ve witnessed a change in how startups go about getting funding from investors.

In the mid ’90s, the best way to build a pitch was to collect a couple of MBAs and build a kick-ass business plan, a slick PowerPoint deck and, of course, a killer business model in Excel. (Back then, people spent more time building their business plans than founders spend on the first versions of companies I see on today’s AngelList!)  

Ten years ago, the best practice was finding an emerging market and building the category killer in it. Basically, you paired a large vertical (healthcare, sports, kids, plastics) with a buzzword (blogging, photo sharing, social, e-commerce) and put a “for” between them. For example: “blogging for sports,” “photo sharing for kids,” or “social for healthcare.”

Today? People are obsessed with the “lean startup” genre of businesses that reinvent—basically optimize—traditional activities like hailing a taxi or booking a hotel room.

If you came into a room with a VC 10 years ago and said you were building any of the following businesses, you probably would have been quickly dismissed:

1. Hail a taxi

2. Back up your files

3. A message board for employees

Yet those businesses—Uber, Dropbox and Yammer—are three of the hottest startups. (Full disclosure: I’m an investor in Uber, and while I didn’t invest in Dropbox and Yammer, they did debut at my conference.)

So, how does one get an investment for an idea that seems obvious? Very simple: Understand what angel investors and VCs are looking for and give it to them. Investors have pattern recognition, and they are driven by four Fs: fortune, fame, fear and fun.

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Should You Pay $250k to Go to College?

I was talking with my brother recently about higher education. We both struggled our way through school, barely able to afford our approximate $40k in tuition and expenses over the four years (he at a state school, me at Fordham University).

Now his son has been accepted to a bunch of amazing schools, and we discussed a $250k four-year bill. Yep, 20 years after we graduated, the same set of schools cost 6x+ as much.

Which leads to the question parents are faced with today:

Is college worth the money?


The answer?
===================
No, it’s not enough value for the money.

In my estimation college is worth it if you have a ton of money and don’t care about ROI, or if you can pay less than $50k-$75k and get a job with starting pay of $50k or more (generally technical, trade or finance work).

At $100k-$250k, it’s simply foolish.  

Click to read more ...

All LAUNCH Festival 2013 Winners and Investment Prizes

Everything you need to know to catch up on LAUNCH Festival 2013 is here.

• List of all 50 Presenting Companies
• Watch all the videos
• Check out all the photos
• Press coverage

Something we need to add? Email team@launch.co

LAUNCH Festival 2013 Overall Winners 

• Best Overall 1.0 - Boxbee
• Best Enterprise 2.0 - Zillabyte
• Best Consumer 2.0 - Jawfish
• LAUNCH Alpha (aka Hackathon winner) - WizzyWig

Additional Winners

• Best Demo Pit - NanoSatisfi
• Diamond in the Rough - Addicaid
• Best Hardware - CubeSensors
• Best International - Instabridge
• Best Enterprise 1.0 - Synata
• Best Presentation 1.0 - Knowyo
• Best Business Model 1.0 - AdStage
• Best Design 1.0 - Triptease
• Best Technology 1.0 - Navisens

Investment Prizes**
We had a number of folks promise to put up investment prizes. And they are coming through on their promises!

• Brad Gerstner (Room77) - $150k offer: AdStage & Instabridge
• David Cohen (TechStars) - $100k offer: Boxbee
• Jay Levy (Zelkova) - $50k+ offer: AdStage
• Gigi Brisson & Harvey Allison (Attractor Ventures) - $50k offer: AdStage
• Steve Chen (Screendate) - $25k offer: Jawfish
• Marc Meyer (Persefon) - $20k offer: Boxbee
• Marc Meyer (Persefon) - $15k offer: AdStage

Did we miss you on this list? Email team@launch.co.

** All investment prizes are still pending due diligence.