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Jason Calacanis

Jason Calacanis77 posts

Jason Calacanis is an American blogger, publisher, and web entrepreneur, born in Brooklyn in 1970. He created the Silicon Alley Reporter industry newsletter and magazine. He set up the Digital Coast Reporter, a sister publication, and organized conferences in LA, New York, and San Francisco. He later created Weblogs, Inc., which was sold to AOL. He was managing editor of Netscape at AOL, and later joined the venture firm Sequoia Capital. He created Mahalo.com, a search engine, and the Open Angel Forum aimed at connecting startups and angel investors. He hosts the podcast This Week In Startups.

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Advice for Microsoft

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Calacanis talks about how Yammer founder David Sacks could be Microsoft’s Marissa Mayer:

PandoMonthly: Jason Calacanis thinks David Sacks should run Microsoft

Dark career moments

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Calacanis talks with Lacy about how his career has been driven by his father’s failed efforts at entrepreneurship as a bar and restaurant owner and how he has felt the need to prove something to his parents:

I think I was also proving it to myself

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51Z5gBW–2c

21 Nov, 2013

The meaning of being an entrepreneur

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Calacanis talks about how tech companies should create real value for hackathons by offering genuine startup capital or, alternatively for established companies like Google, offering a stake in the companies themselves, to motivate founders. He also talks about why Larry Page keeps working despite having a net worth in the tens of billions, saying that he himself doesn’t need to work after ‘getting lucky’ with several projects, saying that people like Page and himself keep working because they want to build a legacy, or create something:

I love building teams, I love building products, I love building brands themselves…I love the act of creating a brand and doing something innovative

Jason Calacanis on the meaning of being an entrepreneur in the Silicon Valley

21 Oct, 2013

AccelerateOTT Fireside Chat

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Calacanis and Social+Capital Partnerships founder Palihapitiya talk about Palihapitiya’s professional experiences, the lessons they have taught him and his views of the present startup environment.

When things aren’t working…when you’re forced to [work around difficulties] then you’re actually forced to try to be good at something

9 Aug, 2013

NextShark interview

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Calacanis talks about building Weblogs Inc., how a blog network isn’t as easily scaleable now as it was before, and the problems he sees with YouTube. He says for artists, YouTube is possibly the best way to spread their work except for Pinterest which may be better for fashion designers, and Twitter may be better for comedians, but starting a standalone business on YouTube is problematic:

[..] there are certain things that make it really untenable to production companies and make it really impossible for it to be anything more than the third of the mix; anything more than a marketing tool with a little bit of revenue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGU7HDVRMgM
8 Aug, 2013

Making Youtube sustainable

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Calacanis proposes a new deal for content creators to make it more sustainable, and owning your own audience, based on his companies’ experience publishing on YouTube and getting paid for it, and turning down funding from YouTube.

We’re going to hear about some of the good things about YouTube…The awesomeness, YouTube at its absolute best, people starting from nowhere, creating huge movements getting huge audiences and then doing interesting things with them

Jason Calacanis keynote at Vidcon 2013: Making YouTube Sustainable

5 Jun, 2013

Talks about Tumblr acquisition

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Calacanis explains the numbers behind Yahoo’s acquisition:

It turns out, there’s a lot of money in the world. The money is bored. Money wants to be spent! Money is intended to be gambled. These are big numbers, but these are big companies.

Jason Calacanis on the Tumblr acquisition by Yahoo

3 Jun, 2013

Raises $10 million fund

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Investors in the fund include Yammer co-founder David Sacks, and another limited partner who isn’t identified at the time of the announcement. Calacanis in an email describes the fund’s focus:

[..] exclusively on folks who come out of LAUNCH Festival, LAUNCH Hackathon, LAUNCH Education & Kids and LAUNCH Mobile (our four events).

It plans to invest $25,000 to $100,000 in five to 10 startups a year.

1 May, 2013

Wants to run Twitter, YouTube, and more

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For the Pando Daily CEO Supper Club, Calacanis talks to Sarah Lacy about the tech companies he wants to run:

Twitter I think is going to be more valuable than Facebook… I think [Facebook] is a very faddy trend.

He says the filling out the social graph offers no rewards, and is useless.

Jason Calacanis: I want to run Youtube, Twitter, and more

6 Feb, 2013

Minorities in tech writing

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Calacanis and Bouie, Dash, and others talk about whether minorities are underrepresented in tech reporting, and why, after Bouie wrote a blog post about the issue. Calacanis eventually responds with a blog post of his own.

14 May, 2012

Talks about reinventing Mahalo.com

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Calacanis talks about how his human-powered search engine had to change its focus, after Google introduced the Panda software that prevented content-building sites from becoming influential. The company had to close down, try to wait out the changes, or reinvent its business. He chose to shift the company from a search-powered company into a content-powered one, and build in a process to review the quality of the content before publishing, via internal debate:

Most teams fail not because of fighting, but because of a desire to keep the peace

Jason Calacanis Explains How He Pivoted Mahalo

18 Jan, 2012

Talks about Amazon’s dominance

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Calacanis talks with O’Reilly Media about his thoughts on Amazon’s dominance of the online retailing space and the tactics Bezos and co. use at the company, and how he thinks this is a good thing:

Entrepreneur and blogger Jason Calacanis shares his thoughts on Amazon's dominance

Feb 2011

Starts Launch

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Calacanis creates the startup editorial venture partly as a rival to TechCrunch and increase depth, knowledge and thoroughness in startup reporting. Initially it will be an email subscription service:

If you get people to commit to an email relationship, it’s the deepest most intimate relationship you can have online. Much deeper than Facebook and certainly more intimate than a blog. I want high-quality insider information, a celebration of entrepreneurship and taking risk. I want it serious and insightful rather than salacious and link-baity.

19 Feb, 2011

Startup Grind interview

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Calacanis is interviewed at the startup event and talks about starting Silicon Alley Reporter, Weblogs, and his other ventures. His job summary online says he has gone from ‘nobody’ to media titan and back several times, with a question mark over the future:

Never take yourself too seriously

Startup Grind feat Jason Calacanis

3 Nov, 2010

FOWA London interview

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Calacanis talks at the Future Of Web Apps event about his experience with Silicon Alley Reporter, Netscape, Sequoia, and others, saying that he had many great experiences but also difficulties along the way:

That’s how I became a great CEO, thanks to all the hardships

FOWA London 2010 - Interview with Jason Calacanis (Part 1 of 2)