Friday, March 29, 2013Report: Goodreads Exit Worth Around $150M-$200MIt looks like the sale of book review and community Goodreads was worth between $150M to $200M, according to a report form AllThingsD Friday, potentially making the acquisition one of the better returns on capital from a Southern California technology startup in recent years. Goodreads--while now located in San Francisco--was started and ran out of Santa Monica for years, and had the backing of such local angels as Mike Jones (now at Science Inc.). AllthingsD cited "sources" for the information, (More info...)
posted on Friday, March 29, 2013(Full story)
Insights and Opinions: Document your tribal knowledgeWhat would you do if a key employee walked away or was hit by a bus? Dave Berkus talks about why it's important to document the "tribal knowledge" in your company in our latest Insights and Opinions contribution.
It is not common for the CEO of a rapidly growing company to think of slowing down the furious pace enough to have each manager (including the CEO) document the job process managed, as well as see to the documentation for each process managed below.
And it is even more of a chal (More info...)
posted on Friday, March 29, 2013(Full story)
Factual Bumps Up Places DataFactual, the Los Angeles-based provider of a giant online API and data storehouse of geolocation and other data, said Friday that it has released a new update to its US data, adding an additional 1.9 million places. The addition bumps up the total size of that data to 26.6 million places. Factual said that globally, it now has 66 million total places in its service. Factual's data storehouse is used by many other, web services to power geolocation and location-based services.
posted on Friday, March 29, 2013(Full story)
Magento Names Global Sales VPCulver City-based Magento, the e-commerce software provider which is now part of eBay's X.Commerce unit, said Friday that it has named Glenn Hasen as Vice President of Global Sales and Channels. Hasen joins the firm from Zend Technologies, where he directed worldwide field operations. He also has served at Pivotal Software and Computer Associates. Magento was acquired by eBay back in August of 2011.
posted on Friday, March 29, 2013(Full story)
Inktank Ties With Austrian Professional Services FirmInktank, the developer and support provider for the open source, Ceph distributed storage software, said this week that it has linked with open source professional service firm hastexo. Los Angeles-based Inktank, which is a spinout of Dreamhost, said that two will link on architectural consulting, systems design and implementation, and courseware development for training on Ceph. Hastexo is based in Austria.
posted on Friday, March 29, 2013(Full story)