UrbanSpoon, a restaurant recommendation service, started out with a simple plan. It was three former Jobster employees, Ethan Lowry, Adam Doppelt and Patrick O’Donnel who set out to see if they could build a company in today’s world without needing any traditional outside investments. Today, they can safely say they succeeded — big time. IAC, the Internet giant, has just bought the completely self-funded company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but I hear that it’s definitely worth something in the millions of dollars range. And it had to be, because UrbanSpoon was perfectly happy continuing to grow its business on its own, as it was already fairly profitable, Lowry tells me. But IAC, came in with “an offer we couldn’t refuse,” according to Lowry. He would only elaborate that, “we’re very happy with the deal.” UrbanSpoon first popped up on IAC’s map when it began pulling in Citysearch reviews to serve up to customers. IAC was impressed with the local audiences UrbanSpoon was able to attract, Lowry says. The two sides had been talking informally on and off starting in the second half of last year. Coincidentally, this was right around the time when the iPhone 3G and Apple’s App Store launched. I mention those because they were really the catalysts that catapulted UrbanSpoon into the spotlight.
UrbanSpoon, a restaurant recommendation service, started out with a simple plan. It was three former Jobster employees, Ethan Lowry, Adam Doppelt and Patrick O’Donnell who set out to see if they could build a company in today’s world without needing any traditional outside investments. Today, they can safely say they succeeded — big time. IAC, the Internet giant, has just bought the completely self-funded company.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but I hear that it’s definitely worth something in the millions of dollars range. And it had to be, because UrbanSpoon was perfectly happy continuing to grow its business on its own, as it was already fairly profitable, Lowry tells me. But IAC, came in with “an offer we couldn’t refuse,” according to Lowry. He would only elaborate that, “we’re very happy with the deal.”
UrbanSpoon first popped up on IAC’s map when it began pulling in Citysearch reviews to serve up to customers. IAC was impressed with the local audiences UrbanSpoon was able to attract, Lowry says. The two sides had been talking informally on and off starting in the second half of last year. Coincidentally, this was right around the time when the iPhone 3G and Apple’s App Store launched. I mention those because they were really the catalysts that catapulted UrbanSpoon into the spotlight.
Actually, UrbanSpoon was one of the first iPhone 3G-specific apps I ever looked at because I thought it made interesting use of the device’s GPS chip. When you start up the app, it locates you via GPS, then you shake the phone and it comes up with a random restaurant near you. You can tailor these searches to be more or less random, but it’s so simple and turns indecision into a form of entertainment and discovery. Others clearly agreed as UrbanSpoon was a mainstay in top downloads area of the App Store, and Apple even thought enough of it to use in one of its commercials.
Lowry and the rest of the team will stay intact with the move to IAC, and will keep UrbanSpoon based in Seattle. They still have plenty of things in the pipeline, including updates to the iPhone app, but given IAC’s wide range of properties from the aforementioned Citysearch, to Ask.com, to Match.com to Evite, there are a lot of potential new things that UrbanSpoon can delve into now.
One of the many unsavory aspects of the hiring of Owen Van Natta as the new CEO of MySpace: the rewriting of recent history around Van Natta’s involvement in Project Playlist. The communications group at News Corp. (MySpace’s parent company) is busy spinning Van Natta’s departure as a easy transition from one job to another, but that’s far from the truth. Nor does their story take into account the sad state of the company that he ran for just a few months before leaving for greener pastures. Here’s how News Corp spins this: This is a natural changing of the guard as a CEO of a small startup takes a more massive job. There was an orderly transition, and Project Playlist has a new CEO with great experience. Nothing to see here, please move along. Here’s the real story: Van Natta joined Project Playlist in November 2008, just about five months ago. He told investors and employees he was in for the long haul. And he hired an executive team under him that came with his promise that he’d lead the company to a win. Bob Pittman invested in the company, he told recruits, which is true. But he also let rumors that the company raised $20 million in new funding fly. In fact the company raised much less than that. And Van Natta also underplayed the problems with labels, suggesting that deals were imminent and the litigation was going to be settled. And now that Van Natta has abandoned the company, they’ve had to scramble to find someone to run the company. That’s why John Sykes, who was already a board member, was forced to step in.
One of the many unsavory aspects of the hiring of Owen Van Natta as the new CEO of MySpace: the rewriting of current history around Van Natta’s involvement in Project Playlist. The communications group at News Corp. (MySpace’s parent company) is busy spinning Van Natta’s departure as a easy transition from one job to another, but that’s far from the truth. Nor does their story take into account the sad say of the company that he ran for just a few months before leaving for greener pastures.
Here’s how News Corp spins this: This is a natural changing of the guard as a CEO of a small startup takes a more massive job. There was an orderly transition, and Project Playlist has a new CEO with great experience. Nothing to see here, please move along.
Here’s the real story: Van Natta joined Project Playlist in November 2008, just about five months ago. He told investors and employees he was in for the long haul. And he hired an executive team under him that came with his promise that he’d lead the company to a win. Bob Pittman invested in the company, he told recruits, which is true. But he also let rumors that the company raised $20 million in new funding fly. In fact the company raised much less than that. And Van Natta also underplayed the problems with labels, suggesting that deals were imminent and the litigation was going to be settled. And now that Van Natta has abandoned the company, they’ve had to scramble to find someone to run the company. That’s why John Sykes, who was already a board member, was forced to step in.
In fact, we’ve heard, Van Natta’s playing down of the music label litigation led directly to the downfall of the company. The labels complained to MySpace and Facebook and threatened to sue them as well if they didn’t ban Playlist from their social networks. Both companies backed down swiftly, and Playlist lost their main channels of distribution. MySpace banned them on December 19, Facebook followed on December 23. If Van Natta had made fewer bold statements, sources close to the labels say, those threats against MySpace and Facebook may have never been made.
Project Playlist traffic has plummeted since Van Natta took over the company. In October 2008, the month before he joined, 704,000 people visited the site from the U.S, according to Comscore. In March 2009 it had fallen to just 234,000. Page views also fell dramatically, from 9.6 million in October to just 6 million in March. Here are the traffic charts (unique visitors on top, page views below):
If Van Natta hadn’t ruffled so many feathers at the labels with his promises that litigation was nearing settlement, it’s likely the pressure on MySpace and Facebook would never have materialized, state sources, and traffic would have continued to climb.
At this point Van Natta likely wants everyone to simply forget about his infamous tenure at Project Playlist and focus on his more recent jobs at Facebook and Amazon. He doesn’t list the company on his LinkedIn profile at all (although he’s had five months to update it).
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By Andrew Liszewski These fish sculptures made from carbon fiber Formula One racing parts might seem a tiny odd at first, but when you consider that Alastair Gibson, the artist who created them, was the lead mechanic for the Benetton F1 team for 4 years, and later served as the race team chief mechanic for BAR […]
By Andrew Liszewski
These fish sculptures made from carbon fiber Formula One racing parts might seem a tiny odd at first, but when you consider that Alastair Gibson, the artist who created them, was the lead mechanic for the Benetton F1 team for 4 years, and later served as the race team chief mechanic for BAR Honda for another another 10, you can kind of understand where he drew his inspiration.
The parts used in his creations are from actual F1 vehicles (like the snazzy exhaust pipes on the back of the ‘Racing Mako’) and every one is documented so you can trace back where each fin, tooth or gill actually came from. Unfortunately these pieces aren’t available for sale, but Alastair is “undertaking a number of private commissions” according to his website, so all isn’t lost if you really wanted one of these hanging over your fireplace.
Remember Rob Spence? You know, the Canadian filmmaker dude with a camera prosthetic eye AKA Eyeborg? We just sat down with him for a few minutes and he talked to us about his Eyeborg project and what the heck he’s doing south of the border. Hit the jump for our exclusive pics and video. Update: Images are now included. Remember Rob Spence? You know, the Canadian filmmaker dude with a camera prosthetic eye AKA Eyeborg? We just sat down with him for a few minutes and he talked to us about his Eyeborg project and what the heck he’s doing south of the border. Hit the jump for our exclusive pics and video. Update: Images are now included.
By Chris Scott Barr If you’ve dropped a good bit of cash on one of the newer DSLRs that can actually shoot HD video, you’ve probably found it a bit awkward to actually shoot video. I mean, you don’t really want to hold that thing up like a regular camera for any real length of time, […]
By Chris Scott Barr
If you’ve dropped a good bit of cash on one of the newer DSLRs that can actually shoot HD video, you’ve probably found it a bit awkward to actually shoot video. I mean, you don’t really want to hold that thing up like a regular camera for any real length of time, as it would just get old. Not to mention that’s not always the most comfortable way to walk around. Well the folks over at Redrock have seen this as a perfect opportunity to release some spiffy accessories that’ll help you out.
The DSLR 2.0 Hybrid Cinema Rigs are a collection of various camera holders that make it easier to shoot video (and stills) like the pros. These help with things like follow focus, attaching more massive screens for viewing, and attaching mics. These accessories start at around $200 and turn your nice DSLR into a kick-ass video shooting machine.
As regular readers know, I’m working on a book about global entrepreneurship and taking TechCrunch readers along with me. By that I mean, I’ll be blogging about cool companies I find, not that I’m actually chartering a plane for all of you. Sorry, but, you know, it’s a recession. Up next: China. I’ll be in Shanghai […]
As regular readers know, I’m working on a book about global entrepreneurship and taking TechCrunch readers along with me. By that I mean, I’ll be blogging about cool companies I find, not that I’m actually chartering a plane for all of you. Sorry, but, you know, it’s a recession.
Up next: China. I’ll be in Shanghai and Bejing May 9-22.
It’s my first trip to China, and I have a long list of potential companies and investors to meet, but I want to make sure I’m not missing any gems. So if you know any such gems, local venture capitalists, angel investors or anyone with an interesting entrepreneurial story please email me at sarah(at)techcrunch(dot)com or leave it in the comments.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled Friday flood of news about MySpace and Twitter. (PS: This has to be the shortest post I’ve ever written.)
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Cloudkick, a Y Combinator startup that offers a free server management system to businesses whose web infrastructure is maintained by Amazon’s EC2 or Slicehost cloud-based servers, is unveiling a nifty feature today at Under the Radar. Cloudkick has added the capability for users to migrate their Amazon Machine Images (the template for servers on EC2) on their EC2 servers to another service provider, like Slicehost (which is owned by Amazon Web Services competitor Rackspace). This lets users who are tied to Amazon’s servers be able to easily switch to a less-expensive provider. Cloudkick, a Y Combinator startup that offers a free server management system to businesses whose web infrastructure is maintained by Amazon’s EC2 or Slicehost cloud-based servers, is unveiling a nifty feature this day at Under the Radar. Cloudkick has added the capability for users to migrate their Amazon Machine Images (the template for servers on EC2) on their EC2 servers to another service provider, like Slicehost (which is owned by Amazon Web Services competitor Rackspace). This lets users who are tied to Amazon’s servers be able to easily switch to a less-expensive provider.
By Evan Ackerman Cross-posted from BotJunkie.com We’ve admired Festo’s bio-inspired robots in the past, including the AirJelly and the AirRay. They’ve just come out with two new species: aquatic penguins, and flying penguins: Some of the other stuff in that video is pretty cool, too. We posted about the Molecubes earlier this week, but you can watch more […]
We’ve admired Festo’s bio-inspired robots in the past, including the AirJelly and the AirRay. They’ve just come out with two new species: aquatic penguins, and flying penguins:
Oh Froogle, how far you’ve come. As they’ve been doing with products throughout their services suite, Google announced this morning that they’ve revamped the Google Product Search page for iPhone and Android.
As they’ve been doing with products throughout their services suite, Google announced this morning that they’ve revamped the Google Product Search page for iPhone and Android.
If you’re familiar with Google Product Search from within a standard browser, you’ll feel right at home. Search for products by name or type, sort by various criteria (low to high, high to low, rating, etc), and view product details or reviews. Outside of the aesthetics, there wasn’t much that needed changing for the jump to mobile - so not much changed.
An increasingly common practice in the smartphone space is the idea of price comparison and product research by camera-based barcode scanning, something which Google has yet to really build upon in Product Search. Having begun to play up the convenience of Product Search when on the go, might they be considering adding a Product Search-powered barcode scanner to the Google iPhone App or the Android platform?
Crunch Network: CrunchGeardrool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
By Shane McGlaun I am a massive fan of netbooks and often use an MSI Wind U100 when I’m on the go. The only thing I’ve really wished for that the Wind lacks is a more massive keyboard, without giving up the small and compact form factor that makes the netbook so appealing. Samsung has introduced […]
By Shane McGlaun
I am a large fan of netbooks and often use an MSI Wind U100 when I am on the go. The only thing I’ve really wished for that the Wind lacks is a more massive keyboard, without giving up the small and compact form factor that makes the netbook so appealing.
Samsung has introduced a pair of new netbooks called the N110 and the N120 that are virtually identical. Both sport the Intel Atom N270, 1GB of RAM, 160GB HDD, and 10.1-inch LED backlit LCD. Both also run Windows XP Home and have webcams, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth built in. The N110 measures 10.27-inches W x 1.19-inches H x 7.3-inches D and has a 6-cell 5900mAh battery good for nine hours.
The N120 measures 10.71-inches W x 1.71-inches H x 7.4-inches D and has a 6-cell 5200mAh battery. The massive difference between the two machines is that the N110 has a standard netbook keyboard 93% of normal size and the N120 has 97% full-size keyboard. I wonder why they didn’t just use the more massive 6-cell battery from the N110 on the N120. The N110 sells for $469, the N120 sells for $459, and both are available now.
UrbanSpoon, a restaurant recommendation service, started out with a simple plan. It was three former Jobster employees, Ethan Lowry, Adam Doppelt and Patrick O’Donnel who set out to see if they could build a company in today’s world without needing any traditional outside investments. Today, they can safely say they succeeded — big time. IAC, the Internet giant, has just bought the completely self-funded company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but I hear that it’s definitely worth something in the millions of dollars range. And it had to be, because UrbanSpoon was perfectly happy continuing to grow its business on its own, as it was already fairly profitable, Lowry tells me. But IAC, came in with “an offer we couldn’t refuse,” according to Lowry. He would only elaborate that, “we’re very happy with the deal.” UrbanSpoon first popped up on IAC’s map when it began pulling in Citysearch reviews to serve up to customers. IAC was impressed with the local audiences UrbanSpoon was able to attract, Lowry says. The two sides had been talking informally on and off starting in the second half of last year. Coincidentally, this was right around the time when the iPhone 3G and Apple’s App Store launched. I mention those because they were really the catalysts that catapulted UrbanSpoon into the spotlight.
UrbanSpoon, a restaurant recommendation service, started out with a simple plan. It was three former Jobster employees, Ethan Lowry, Adam Doppelt and Patrick O’Donnell who set out to see if they could build a company in today’s world without needing any traditional outside investments. Today, they can safely say they succeeded — big time. IAC, the Internet giant, has just bought the completely self-funded company.
One of the 
One of the 
Remember Rob Spence? You know, the Canadian filmmaker dude with a 
As regular readers know, I’m working on a 
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