If public ridicule memes suggest that the sun may soon set on a tech boom, it may be time to sell your stocks. A Tumblr called Jesus Christ, Silicon Valley, is gaining attention after appearing in late March to offer a scathing critique of the oft-attacked Dave Morin.
We're kicking off our upcoming Social Media Marketing Boot Camp with a special keynote presentation by Ella Chick (left), the digital producer at Anderson Cooper 360°. She'll discuss how the network uses social media for breaking news and leverages social media to draw attention to organizations and causes. Learn more about our program and register here. 
Benevolent, a crowdfunding site that helps economically needy individuals buy one-time items, is expanding beyond a Chicago beta into several additional markets including Detroit and Silicon Valley.
Collegefeed today launched into a public beta a social network for young job seekers and the companies looking to hire them.
Elevated levels of the chemical TCE were found in recent Environmental Protection Agency tests in two Mountain View, Cal., Google buildings that sit where tech companies had manufacturing operations.
Study the infographic and determine which company you would like to work for based on their perks.
There’s one company NOBODY wants to work for
“Spinlet wants to take advantage of the close proximity between the entertainment industry and the Silicon Valley by tapping into the enormous technical talent and creative resources available in the region,” said Spinlet Director, Eric Idiahi.
Business around Silicon Valley is booming biggert than ever. And in a bid to make fun of the rapidly growing startup scene, clothing designer Gemma Aguiar launched Startup Apparel, a company that sells goofy t-shirts aimed at the entrepreneurial set.
Aguiar is no stranger to startups. Spurred on by friends such as Chris McCann, co-founder of Startup Digest, she started Design Like Whoa!, a custom printing business back in December. After seeing all the startup activity around her, she thought “I can make shirts out of this and it would be really funny.”
With slogans such as the hash tag-infused “It’s All About the #startuplife,” and “Will Work for Equity,” they aren’t for everybody. But for the jeans and t-shirt entrepreneurs in the San Francisco Bay Area, we think they fit just fine.
TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington accused a group of “super angel” investors of collusion and price fixing in a post Tuesday night.
Arrington claims that he walked into a “secret meeting” of around ten investors responsible for nearly all of the early stage startup ventures in Silicon Valley who were pooling their resources to muscle traditional venture capitalists out of early stage deals, keep new angel investors out of the market, and combat the growing influence of startup incubator Y Combinator.
Arrington says he knows all the angel investors personally, and did not name names. Collusion and price fixing are very illegal forms of anti-competitive behavior. Penalties include jail time.
The “Godfather style” meeting (Arrington’s words) took place at Bin 38 in San Francisco and immediately shut down upon Arrington’s arrival. However he says he was able to talk to several participants after the fact, and their agenda allegedly included:
- Complaints about Y Combinator’s growing power, and how to counteract competitiveness in Y Combinator deals
- Complaints about rising deal valuations and they can act as a group to reduce those valuations
- How the group can act together to keep traditional venture capitalists out of deals entirely.
- How the group can act together to keep out new angel investors invading the market and driving up valuations.
- More mundane things, like agreeing as a group not to accept convertible notes in deals (an entrepreneur-friendly type of deal).
- One source has also said that there is a wiki of some sort that the group has that explicitly talks about how the group should act as one to keep deal valuations down.
Writing checks casually for $100k, selling companies for hundreds of millions of dollars, and then throwing back drinks with semi-well known rappers (see videos below) … this is what Silicon Valley is made of. It’s also only two days of activity. The Valley is an environment where life-time successes are celebrated for half a minute before the next guy cashes a check bigger than yours. Dave McClure raised $30 million for an investment fund in under 6 months but is that really all it took? Definitely not. The founders of Playdom built and sold a gaming startup (now what most people would consider an empire) in a couple years. But is a couple years all it took? Hell no.
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