Tushar Khandelwal

even after living here for 20 yrs, excited after unlocking the foursquare city badge for Tokyo! makes me feel giddy, and more Tokyo-ite! still lovin’ the service! =)

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2012 from Tokyo! 明けましておめでとうございます!

Merry Chrismahanukwanzakah! Wishing everyone a joyous holiday break! =)

columbiavc:

We’re excited to announce the first annual CVC30, a list of Columbians who have accomplished the most interesting things in the technology, entrepreneurship, and venture industries.

From not-yet-graduated wunderkinds to venerated experts, the 2011 CVC30 is made up of alumni, faculty, staff, and students who represent a host of diverse backgrounds and experiences, much like CVC itself. 

It goes without saying that there are many, many more people who deserve to be applauded for their accomplishments this year. We hope this list will serve as a reminder that with every round of funding raised, site launched, and graduate who dares to take a non-traditional career path, Columbia and New York City are only growing in their relevance to the startup world .

Without further ado, the CVC30:

Mike Brown Partner, AOL Ventures

Bill Campbell Chairman, Intuit

Mark Davis CEO, Kohort | Venture Partner, HPVP

Chris Dixon Founder, Hunch

Michael Dwork Founder, Verterra

Roger Ehrenberg Founder, IA Ventures

Marc Glosserman Founder, Hill Country Barbecue

Seth Goldstein Founder, Turntable.fm

Ron Gonen Founder, Recyclebank

Jared Hecht Founder, Group.me

Daniel Hoffer President/CEO, CouchSurfing International

Ben Horowitz Founder, Andreesen Horowitz

Doug Imbruce Founder, Qwiki

Deborah Jackson CEO, JumpThru

Philip James Founder, Lot18 & Snooth

San Kim Founder, ShowMe

Graham Lawlor Founder, UltraLight Startups

Dave Lerner Venture Studio + Venture Lab @ Columbia

Cyrus Massoumi Founder, CEO, ZocDoc

Chris McGarry Major Gift Officer, SEAS

Jen Schnidman Medbery CEO/Founder, Drop the Chalk

Alan Patricoff Founder, Greycroft

Alessandro & Alexandra Piol Co-founders, Vedanta Capital

Adam Pritzker Founder, General Assembly

David Rose Chairman, NY Angels

Bartek Ringwelski CEO, SkillSlate

Zach Sims & Ryan Bubinski Co-founders, Codecademy

Jon Stein CEO, Betterment

Jon Steinberg President, BuzzFeed

David Whittemore Founder, ClothesHorse

Chris Wiggins Founder, HackNY

Revenge of the Personal Assistant with Artificial Intelligence (Siri)

This outtake / overtime of Steve Jobs talking about rivals Microsoft / Google / Facebook is definitely the more fascinating part of last night’s 60 Minutes interview with Walter Issacson on his biography of Steve Jobs.

I’d say Microsoft and Google have a lot in common. Microsoft never had the humanities and the liberal arts in their DNA - it was pure technology company. And they just didn’t get it. Even when they saw the Mac, they couldn’t even copy it well. How dumb do you have to be to not see it once you see it, you know? But, Google’s the same way - they just don’t get it.

Jobs’ advice to Larry Page on becoming the CEO of Google again:

Focus. Don’t be like Microsoft doing products all over the map. Figure out what you do best and keep it focused. Secondly, don’t try to be too nice as a CEO. You want a team only of A-players, and it really means that at times, you’re going to have to blow people off.

On Facebook:

You know we talk about social networks in the plural but I don’t see anybody other than Facebook out there. It’s just Facebook - they’re dominating this. I admire Mark Zuckerberg. I only know him a little bit, but I admire him for not selling out. For wanting to make a company. I admire that a lot.

Bill Gates to Jobs on the great difference they had:

You know, you proved that your model (everything should be connected, end-to-end, integrated tightly) works. [Later on: What I didn’t tell Steve was that it only works when you have a Steve Jobs]

Steve Jobs in return:

Well, you know, your model (of licensing it out) - that worked as well; I guess we were both OK [Later on: Yeah, it works, but only if you don’t mind building crappy products]

I don’t agree with everything, but it’s definitely interesting and the love-hate relationship between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates is always fun

nevver:

Waffle irony

I WANT.

Ashton Kutcher has even more foursquare stickers on the back of his laptop now (on Two and a Half Men)! Awesome!

Steve Jobs passing this week brings back memories of this famous pic (22,000 hits in 2 hours!) from Alexa Andrzejewski of Foodspotting (an awesome visual guide to good food + places to eat) when the founder of Apple was denied a table at Flour + Water (they have infamous wait times, like 3 hours?!)

Here’s the back story in Alexa’s own words (republished from TechCrunch):

Kim (@taro) is an awesome Swedish programmer living in Japan. He took a month off from work here at Smart.fm to do a cross-country road trip, with the idea of hitting Apple land as the Mecca of the voyage. He’d just spent the previous day in Cupertino, just to see “The Apple Temple.”

Kim is the the biggest Steve Jobs/Apple fanboy in the universe, and his trip ended with him seeing Steve Jobs and getting his picture with him plastered all over the place.

Kim’s second love to Apple is food, so I’d been planning to take him to Flour + Water for months. I had no idea that Steve Jobs would be waiting in line right behind us! What are the chances that, as our other flabbergasted friend Simon put it, “the great god in his infinite kindness and wisdom would grace @kimtaro with his presence at Flour + Water.”

When Steve Jobs politely declined our request for a photo with Kim, we walked away sullenly, but moments later my husband turned around to snap this “photobomb.” It was the happiest day of Kim’s life! Here are a few more photos to dispel the Photoshop charges. Plus this guy did a thorough analysis here.

By the way — he was there with his family of course. And yes, we were just bystanders.

Alexa

arainert:

evangotlib:

Steve Jobs memorial (done in chalk) at General Assembly, NYC.

GA’s a perfect place for this.

This is awesome and perhaps one of the most fitting tributes to Steve Jobs

Google + Dogfish Head collaborated to create a beer w/ ingredient ideas from Google offices all around the world! Although much of this is a marketing video, the ingenuity that went into this idea and this video showing the process of bringing the beer to life is awesome! =)

Way to go for innovative companies + concepts!

geekiest convo ever describing pants in RGB color values by Mark Hamilton + Thomas Bonnin! come meet these peeps @ #geekrdv!

Hilarious, and awesome! McGill scientists, students, lab techs, and volunteers dance to highlight some of the work being done at the Goodman Cancer Research Centre! Oh, and it gets even better; for every view Medicom will donate towards supporting advances in cancer research! <- let’s make this video go viral!

Not too long ago someone asked me what gets me up every day and keeps me goin’. I’ve also been asked a million times why I want to work at a tech startup. This video and Michael’s blog post (“How to Engage with the Community”) is ‘nuff said! Thank you guys! =)

theendresult:

A video response to the letter, card and gear that I received from Producteev in the mail! And I’m not talking about e-mail either.

I wanted to add what the first part of the letter said:

You’re an inspiration everyday! — Wow. Just… wow! Thank you so much! Judi, Tushar K, Farhana… YOU rock ;)

After the video I looked up the word “artistry”. I was sad to see that I, in fact, did not make up that word. But! I was glad to see that I used it in it’s correct sense — which I should because I am the editor of the school newspaper after all.

Here’s Michael’s blog post: How to Engage with the Community
You can also follow him on Twitter: @silversteelwolf

Also, here is the link I referenced too about ProducteevEdu

8226:

Tour de Fashion Kickoff

I’ve helped organize a week of free bike rental during NYC Fashion Week. 30 bikes decked out by some big names. Ride one for free starting tomorrow. Grab one at 39th & Broadway or 14th & 9th Ave, and ride it to the other location! True bike share. Sponsored by the Fashion Center Business Improvement District and Social Bicycles. http://tourdefashion.com

(by Ted Ullrich)

YAY for Social Bicycles launch! This is seriously awesome! =)

Cross-posted from the Producteev blog

Awesome news: starting with the new school year today, we’re launching Producteev for Education and giving away our Premium plan to anyone with a .edu address.

Students are one of the most common demographics on Producteev. They use it for everything from manging their homework to keeping a simple shopping list. But, with Producteev’s freemium model, it’s been pricey for students to collaborate with others. Now it’s free!

With ProducteevEdu, you can now easily manage tasks for yourself or with your group, classmates, professors, and more - the possibilities are literally endless. And using our web, native, and mobile apps, you can take your tasks to go and manage them from anywhere!

Remember Producteev integrates with students’ favorite tools too, so you can sync with Google Calendar and email in a task! With our newest crowdsourcing feature, you can even keep a workspace completely private but get help on a specific task by sharing it on twitter, facebook, or over email in one click!

Producteev for Education is already being embraced by superusers and newbies. After doing a private demo at Columbia University (two team members’ Alma mater), student governments, developer groups, and labs on campus have contacted us about getting it implemented in their environment.

We’re really excited about how students will use Producteev! We hope you’re excited too, so don’t put off productivity a minute longer - sign up today!

Bonus: Anyone can use their unique sign up URL to refer peeps and have a chance to win a Kindle, iPod, or even access to the awesome Producteev3 beta! =)

Spoils of the day @ Producteev’s paintball outing today! No dev / community member left unharmed! It was awesome and I killed several peeps! =)

This summer’s internship has been the most exhilarating, challenging, and awesome experience I’ve ever had. Not because my other internships have been any less so, but because things have been different this time ‘round. I’ve had 7 internships so far and I never get tired of them. In fact, I highly recommend them as they’re a great learning experience (when else do you get your own personal mentor for free?!)
 
A little background: I spent this summer as a social media and community intern at Producteev. I’ve done everything from co-founding a new meetup group for techies (come out to our first event) to helping with copy for our web redesign to going out and attending meetups almost every night, promoting our app like crazy (and having fun while at it!)

“The pivot is arguably the most important part of a startup.”

xandra:

EAT (by Rick Mereki)

This.