Category: Random

Yesterday, this billionaire dude Carl Icahn bumped up Netflix shares 14% by announcing that his fund now has 10% stake in the company. Sounds like he’s trying to get the company sold to one of the larger companies providing video streaming, like Microsoft, Amazon, Verizon or Comcast. (link) Also yesterday, Dave McClure’s 500 Startups announced […]

Amplify is an awesome accelerator in Venice by the beach on Windward circle (I just had lunch with their investment director today). One of their portfolio companies, Invested.in just announced that they raised a round of $830k from a large number of angel investors (a fit strategy for a crowdfunding platform). Rather than creating their […]

October 26th. 9pm. Spooky Party Time Free. Wockano Santa Monica. October 29th. 7-11pm. Digital LA – Digital BOO! Halloween Party $15. ROC Santa Monica. October 30th. 6:30-9:30pm. #SocEntLA Tuesdays Free. Corkbar DTLA. November 8th. 10am-5pm. Small Business Expo 2012 Free. Downtown. November 9th. 9am-6pm. Silicon Beach Fest $185 (til Oct 27th) / $250. io/LA & […]

From today: Udacity Raises $15 Million as Money Pours into Online Education Online Guidance System WalkMe Raises Another $5.5M To Make Sure That We Never Get Lost On A Website Again Nokia’s VC arm leads $9m Series B investment in travel-focused online marketing firm Vizury Dhingana raises $7M in Series B funding from Lightspeed, Helion […]

Online Education is rapidly growing. It’s inspiring to hear about 14 year old kids half-way across the world taking (and passing!) MIT classes on circuit board wiring. Passing courses from a University prior to applying is becoming the hot new way for overachieving Highschool students to set themselves apart. The online education startup landscape is […]

Apple announced the iPad mini amongst other great products yesterday, and people loved it. Old iPads are suddenly flooding the market. Facebook shares jumped 22% this morning from around $19 to $24, it’s the best day they’ve ever had on the public market. Zynga and Netflix on the other hand, are struggles. Zynga lays off […]

I love watching the LA startup scene grow, check out this article by Mark Suster to see how you can take part: 12 Tips to Building a Successful Startup Community Where You Live. It’s important though, to remember and celebrate the tech industry growing worldwide. For more Tech News, check out TechGenius.me (http://techgenius.me), a news […]

This is a post I wrote for the Instadat blog. For more news on big data follow @Instadat on Twitter or like us on Facebook. We’re excited to announce the beta launch of TechGenius (http://techgenius.me), our news aggregator and research tool for the tech industry that we’ve been building for the last two months. “What’s […]

This is a post I wrote for the Instadat blog. For more news on big data follow @Instadat on Twitter or like us on Facebook. Most people don’t like staring at excel sheets, with rows and rows of data. The visualization of data makes information and insights clear and quickly accessible. That’s why we love […]

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my name, Yohei, means “Pacific” as in the Pacific Ocean, and that the three cities I’ve lived in are Tokyo, Seattle, and Los Angeles. I do think it’s a coincidence though, that in the last three days I’ve come across three separate articles that mention my three home […]