222 Records
Levine starts his own record label titled 222 Records. Levine created the record label to sign his first artists Rozzie Crane who is a USC music student and Glee star Matthew Morrison.
Starting my own label has been a long time goal of mine and I am thrilled to be at the point in my career where it is finally happening. I am excited for everyone to hear Matthew’s forthcoming album. Great things are in store for him with this release.
Founds AF Square, A\IDEA
Under the umbrella of Atom Factory, Carter founds A\IDEA, a product development and branding agency, and AF Square, an angel fund and technology consultancy that holds interests in many technology companies at various stages of growth.
IPO
Zynga debuts on the NASDAQ Global Select Market at $10.00, and trades between $9.00 and $11.00 during the day. Foundry owns 6.1 percent of Zynga before the IPO, or 34,560,060 shares. Foundry invested less than $5 million in Zynga, but today it holds around $345 million worth of Zynga shares. This is on top of an earlier $22.58 million buyback and $25 million generated via the sale of shares in the IPO.
Starts Dealer’s United
Biter and Sarasota Ford operations manager, Matt Buchanan, son of U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, launch Dealers United. The plan is to build a nationwide network of dealers that will have combined buying power with vendors.
The firm creates deals services common to many dealers, from search-engine optimization to customer management software. Network members decide independently if they want to buy into the deal.
Biter and Buchanan say they will spend at least $1 million in startup costs on the business. Five employees have already been hired and Biter plans to hire at least five more for a Dealers United call center.
Buchanan: We are going to work for the dealers. We’ll be more powerful than any one group.
Leaves Zynga board
Feld leaves the Zynga board. He is replaced by Paul, a partner at Spring Ventures.
Entrepreneurial Spark launches
Duffy launches Entrepreneurial Spark in Glasgow with office space supplied by Haughey, who gives over an entire floor of his City Refrigeration headquarters in the Gorbals, for the project. Duffy:
The whole ethos of the Entrepreneurial Spark is helping start-ups to get to their first and second birthday. We have wrapped around a whole lot of business professionals – we call them ambassadors – legals, accountants, PR firms. The whole idea was that these people would come on board, give free stuff, support Entrepreneurial Spark and then support the start-up chicklets, as we call them, that want to go through our hatchery…A fair number of young companies die very early unfortunately and what we are trying to do here is take away barriers such as cost. Some of these young businesses pay for expensive business plans and for start-up advice and it’s not really what they need…When someone walks in the door, you can tell if they are the real deal, or you can tell if someone has the potential to be that. They will be sparky, they will have an idea, they are willing to collaborate – that’s a big one in Scotland.
Haughey:
A fair number of young companies die very early unfortunately and what we are trying to do here is take away barriers such as cost. Over the years we are probably going to put £1m into this project, but if we get one, two or three decent companies out of here that create 20, 30 or 40 jobs, then it will be money well spent.
Starts Uncrunched
Arrington starts a new blog after being removed from TechCrunch:
Now I’ve got a new pen, though. And a blank slate. Infinite choices, I get to choose my own path. All that jazz.
So as William Shatner would undoubtedly ask if I gave him another $149, what exactly am I going to do here at Uncrunched?
I’m going to do the same thing I’ve been doing since 2005. I’m going to write about startups, and the people who build them, and the people who fund them, and the people who use them.
Starts CrunchFund
Arrington starts the fund with $20 million. He will run it with Gallagher and Siegler. Arrington:
I don’t claim to be a journalist. I hold myself to higher standards of transparency and disclosure.
He will take a reduced role at TechCrunch but continue to report to Huffington. Investments will be disclosed on the blog. AOL is putting about $10 million into the fund. Armstrong:
We have a traditional understanding of journalism with the exception of TechCrunch, which is different but is transparent about it.
Backplane
Backplane is founded by Carter, Michelson, Lonsdale and Lady Gaga. The seven-person project aims to provide a way to organize and power online communities based on certain interests, such as sports teams, musicians, and also bring in feeds from Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites. Gaga has a reported 20% stake in the business. $1 million has been raised in angel funding from investors including Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures.
Dogster acquisition
Say Media buys the company. Financial terms aren’t disclosed. Say Media:
This acquisition marks an important milestone in the evolution of our company
Karpeles buys Mt. Gox
Karpeles buys Mt. Gox from an unemployed software hacker named Jed McCaleb. Before the site started trading in Bitcoins, it was an online marketplace where people could buy and sell cards for the Magic: The Gathering trading card game. Mt. Gox is short for “Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange” McCaleb, nervous about regulatory scrutiny on bitcoin, wanted rid of the exchange and sold it to Karpeles in for no upfront fee, people with knowledge of the deal said. Karpeles told others he had later paid McCaleb a small fee, calling it “a very good deal”.
AOL acquires TechCrunch
The company annouces the acquisition along with the purchases of instructional video site 5min and Thing Labs Inc. People familiar with the deal say it paid around $30 million for TechCrunch. Arrington is retained on a multi-year deal. AOL chief executive Armstrong:
The one thing that doesn’t change is people’s consumption of content.
Starts Demand Progress
Swartz founds Demand Progress, a Progressive Political Action Committee and grassroots activism organization. The group runs online campaigns and lobbies in Washington, D.C. and in various states for progressive causes, such as stopping Internet censorship and issues of privacy.
Intel buys McAfee Associates for $7.7 billion
Intel pays $7.68 billion to acquire McAfee Associates. Intel hopes the purchase will separate its products from those of its rivals and accelerate its move into smartphones and consumer electronics. According to the research firm IDC, McAfee has 17.7 percent of the market for securing computing devices, trailing the market leader Symantec, which has 36.2 percent.
Signs with WWE
Reigns signs with WWE after failing to launch a successful football career.
When I was a kid, that’s all we ever talked about, that’s all everyone around me did, Once things slowed down with football and I finished up in Canada, I figured out that the passion to wrestle and be a WWE superstar was still there, so it kind of summed things up for me, really focused me on getting into the business and learning how to wrestle.
Founds Atom Factory
Carter founds Atom Factory, a “multi-dimensional entertainment and artist management company” based in Los Angeles, CA, where he serves as chairman and chief executive officer. He says the company can be much more than a simple artist-management firm.
It was more about building a platform on top of music—because music, we realized, sells everything but music.
Skype purchase
Ebay sells Skype at a value of $2.75 billion to Silver Lake Partners, which includes Joltid, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and Andreessen Horowitz. SLP acquires a 70 percent stake in the Internet communication company. Andreesen notes:
Skype is gigantic and yet still a relatively small percentage of international call volume. This is, and ought to be, one of the most important companies on the Internet.
Founding
Lynn B. Schramek creates the Parkinson Cafe to provide social, cultural and intellectual interaction for people with Parkinson’s disease and their care partners.
When my husband Brad was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease we started recreating our lives and finding activities that we ‘can do.’ Less became more. Stress-free became a major goal. I decided to create a new program that met Brad’s needs. That’s how the Parkinson Cafe concept was born.
Monthly events running from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. take place at three locations in upstate New York. Art, music and dance therapists provide stimulating interactive programming at Lifetime Care on the first Wednesday, at Home Care of Rochester on the second Thursday and at the Pittsford Library on the third Thursday October 2009 through April 2010.
$7.1m investment round
The company raises $7.1 million from unnamed investors. (SEC filing here.)
Andreessen Horowitz
Andreessen and Horowitz launch Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm. The two are well known investors, backing half a dozen startups each year, including social investing site kaChing, virtual worlds company Metaplace, mobile video company Qik, online publishing company Crowdfusion, dating site I’minlikewithyou, search company Blekko and media/technology company EQAL.