Pandora Launches Comedy

Pandora enters the "spoken word" market with Comedy. I have been enjoying "Today's Comedy Radio" (started from the genre list) and "Cheech and Chong Radio" it in the car through my iPhone. The Cheech and Chong station is a mix of both music and skits. Something is wonderful about driving and laughing. Here's a link to an article about the launch in the New York Times:

"Pandora Internet Radio Service to Offer Large Archive of Comedy Clips"
by Ben Sisario

Great review for Powercloud

D-Link DAP-2555 AirPremier N Dual Band, PoE Access Point powered by CloudCommand Reviewed on SmallCloudBuilder.com

Anyone who has tried to install and manage a multi-AP wireless network using browser-managed gear understands the value of centrally-managed WLANs. Unfortunately, the pricing of systems from Cisco, Meraki, Ruckus, etc. puts managed Wi-Fi systems beyond the reach of most small businesses that could benefit the most from them.
Part of the high cost is in the access points themselves, although in some cases this more a reflection of what the market will bear rather than higher cost of material of the APs themselves. But another piece of the cost is the hardware controller(s) required to manage the APs.
What D-Link's partner PowerCloud Systems has done is develop a cloud-based system for managing network equipment. PowerCloud's technology, called CloudCommand, isn't limited to managing wireless networks. But it's PowerCloud's first application with D-Link as their first equipment customer.

.... Installation is dead simple and configuration options are limited so that inexperienced users won't get confused.

Full review is here

Visit Powercloud's website here

SoundHound is Amazon App of the Day on their Android Appstore

Visit Amazon's Android App Store here

Image Vision Labs in the press for its Walden investment

By SHERYL JEAN / The Dallas Morning News sjean@dallasnews.com

Inappropriate images and language somehow make their way to websites such as Facebook and Google.

An Anna start-up may have a way to prevent that and potentially turn itself into the region's next $100 million venture.

Image Vision Labs has developed online filters for inappropriate images, texts, videos on websites and mobile devices. Customers include Apple and Photobucket. It also recently partnered with Alcatel on a development project.

The company is pursuing licensing agreements and partnerships with Web and wireless service providers, but there's also potential for other industries.

The eight-employee company just landed a big vote of confidence - its first institutional investment of more than $2 million from San Francisco-based Walden Venture Capital and other private investors. That followed about $235,000 in funding from two smaller sources this summer.

Chief executive Steven White wrote the code for Image Vision Labs' software and co-founded the company in late 2008 with chief operating officer Mitch Butler and Chad Harbour, head of Web sales.

Click here for the full article in the Dallas Morning news

CES: Pandora is Everywhere

Great article by Eric Savitz in Forbes:

Suddenly, Pandora is everywhere. The Internet radio service is on Blu-Ray players. Televisions. Factory installed and after-market car stereo systems. Home audio systems. PCs. Tablets. And phones. Thanks to more than a decade of hard work, the company has emerged from the massively troubled music industry as a leading player – and one which stands to benefit big time from the spread of high-speed wireless bandwidth and the proliferation of wireless devices.

In a wide-ranging breakfast interview at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week, CEO Tim Westergren laid out the how Pandora has grown from troubled startup to Internet icon – and gave a glimpse at where the company might go next.

Pandora has been around for 11 years, but didn’t launch the Internet radio service until late 2005. The company’s original business idea was to build a music recommendation engine; originally called Savage Beast Technologies, the company tried to license the software to music sellers like Amazon.com (AMZN) and CDnow...

read the full article here

Open Source Band / Pandora at SVR '09

See 2:40 for Open Source Band clips

See 3:45 for Tom Conrad, CTO Pandora, receiving the Technology All-Star Reward on behalf of Pandora. Thanks Tom for including me in your acceptance speech.

Open Source Band at SVR, Dec 1 at Great American Music Hall

Walden Venture Capital's Larry Marcus is honored to be in the drumming chair for the Open Source Band. Playing Wednesday December 1, 2010 at 8p at the Great American Music Hall.

Purchase $5 off tix at http://svrocks2010.eventbrite.com/?discount=osb5off


The Open Source Band is
Andy Barton — Vocals
Greta Boesel — Vocals
Larry Marcus — Drums
Alison Murdock — Vocals
Chris Pan — Guitar
Andrew Stess — Bass
Jay Webster — Guitar
Randi Zuckerberg — Vocals
not pictured is Tim Chang (Guitar) who is taking an OSB sabatical.


The band is all "tech" people from Facebook, Silicon Valley Rocks, Quova, Walden Venture Capital, AmpliFIND Music Services

A detailed profile of the band is here or visit the Open Source Band on Facebook.

See a video of Open Source Band '09 here

The full line up for the evening is:

Sonic Love Tonic — Second place winners at the Emergenza Battle of the Bands in 2009, classic American rock ‘n roll with a hipster twist. Tech affiliations: Dogster, CBSi (CNET).

The Hot Toddies— Oakland’s sweethearts, The Hot Toddies mix 1950’s beach pop with indie rock riffs, a bottle of whiskey and a dry sense of humor. Tech affiliations: SAY Media (formerly VideoEgg/Six Apart).

Open Source Band— SV’s original cover band featuring special guests Randi Zuckerberg, Chris Pan Andy Barton, Jay Webster, Larry Marcus, Andrew Stess, Greta Boesel, and Alison Murdock. Tech affiliations: Facebook, Quova, Walden Venture Capital, AmpliFIND Music Services.

RubberSideDown— Radio-friendly, 70’s hard rock with an alluring rough edge. Tech affiliations: Oracle, The Loomis Group, Advent Software.

Sid Luscious and the Pants — Maximum new wave: the greatest 80’s band there never was. Tech affiliations: MOG, Gracenote, Rhapsody (co-creator), Liquid Audio & IODA (former employees).

Lucid Mechanism — A sonic experience that gracefully abuses the preconceptions of live electronic music. Tech affiliations: Pyramind, Ex’pression College, Apple (Genius Bar).

Ingar Brown and the Future Funk— Funk, hip-hop, soul, dance and R&B all wrapped up in an eclectic box that’s ready to get any party started. Brown was on the short list for a Grammy nomination in 2009. Other Mashery players include Roger Plotz, currently the lead guitar player for The Memphis Murder Men and members of the SF Bay Area award winning coverband Busta Groove. Tech affiliations: Mashery.

Coverflow: eergetic and fun cover band who has made the tech-party circuit from TechCrunch to The Lobby. Tech affiliations: Mayfield, Facebook, Blippy, Dropbox.

Keep music in schools

All proceeds for Silicon Valley Rocks! will be donated to Music in Schools Today (MuST). MuST is the Bay Area’s answer to the crisis in music education. Despite extensive research indicating that music instruction supplies intellectual, emotional and physical components critical to children’s development, music and arts programs are often the first victims of budget cuts. MuST advocates for, supports and develops integrated, accessible, sustainable and measurable music-in-education programs that improve student achievement.

SoundHound featured in NYT top 10 apps

See the full article HERE. Here is an exerpt:

Top 10 Must-Have Apps for the iPhone, and Some Runners-Up

By BOB TEDESCHI

Published: November 10, 2010

I’m always surprised when I come across people who have yet to fill their iPhone with apps. The most often cited excuse? Not enough time to sift through 300,000 apps to find the good ones. True, it can be a slog. (But that’s what I do for you every week.) In this column, I’ve compiled 10 must-have apps that will save you time, make your life easier and make you smile.

You won’t see Twitter, Slacker orFacebook, among others, on this list. Although I find them indispensable, the services aren’t unique to a mobile phone. To make my Top 10, an app must deliver an experience you couldn’t find on your computer — something, in other words, that exemplifies the smartphone at its best.

What qualifies?

SOUNDHOUND (FREE AND $5) You’ve probably heard of Shazam, the app that identifies songs. SoundHound is faster, and it offers a broader range of ancillary features. You can hum a tune into the phone and it’ll find the song, look up lyrics and run YouTube videos of song performances. The $5 version lets you identify an unlimited number of songs. Users of the free version get five tags monthly.

apps he profiled in the article: Google, SoundHound, Hipstamatic, Evernote, Angry Birds, Urbanspoon, Starwalk, FireFox Home, QuickOffice Mobile Suite, RedLaser, Quick Calls.

A is for Amazon, B is for Bank of America, P is for Pandora

Phonetic Alphabet: Google Instant style. You know the NATO or Western Union phonetic alphabet: Alpha for A, Bravo for B, Charlie for C etc? With Google launching it’s “Instant” service where it auto-fills based on what you type, I wondered what brands owned their letters. This is a powerful proxy for brand power and awareness as these should be the leading search terms by letter. Note Google is optimizing results for my location in San Francisco so I substituted #2 for #1 when there is an * as noted below to put the national brand first. Where the first result is an acronym I put #2 #3 result after the "/". Try these the next time your on a call with an airline or help desk. My name (Larry): “L as in Lowes, A as in Amazon, R as in REI, REI, Yahoo!” Congratulations to all for making the list and a special tip of the hat to Joe, Tim and the Team at Pandora.

A Amazon
B Bank of America* / BART
C Craigslist
D DMV / Dictionary
E Ebay
F Facebook
G Gmail
H Hotmail
I iPHone
J Jet Blue
K Kayak*/Kaiser/KTVU
L Lowes
M Mapqest
N Netflix
O Orbitz* / Outside Lands
P Pandora
Q Quotes
R REI / Ross
S Skype
T Target
U USPS / UPS / United Airlines
V Verizon
W Weather
X Xbox
Y Yahoo!
Z Zillow

• for “B”, BART- Bay Area Rapid Transit was 1st result. Substituted #2 (Bank of America) to override local result
• for “K”, Kaiser, hospital/health care organiztion was 1st result, KTVU local TV affiliate was 2nd. Substituted #3 (Kayak) to override local result
• for “O”, Outside Lands was 1st result. Substituted #2 (Orbitz) to override local result


Very surprised about Target beating Twitter. I’d expect that one to change. Also Amazon beating Apple. What surprises you?

A special thanks to Drew Marcus for inspiring this list when he called me to let me know that Pandora was the first on the list when you type a P.

Here’s the phonetic alphabet tables for NATO and Western Union

#1 & #2 in music

This iPhone App Store screenshot is one we are proud of given it has our two portfolio companies (Pandora & SoundHound) in the top two positions in the free music category. They are also both in the top 50 of all apps and there are over 200,000 in the store according to 148apps.biz.


I was recently asked how they differ. Pandora is Internet radio. It's amazing at taking the haystack of music and throwing the needle (song) out that is appropriate and joyful to your listening experience. It's a lean forward experience with rich information about songs that are playing but somewhat passive in nature in that it brings the music to you versus actively having to hunt for it.

SoundHound is the inverse. It's mobile music search, possessing the ability to reach into the haystack to tell you what the needle (song) is. Use it any time you want to conduct a music search for songs, bands, or lyrics. Then indulge in detailed, browsable results including listening and watching. In addition to text search, it enables use of the mic as a search input: voice (say it), singing and listening to the music. You can even launch a Pandora station from a search result.

Tim Westergren gets timeless recognition from Time

Congratulations to Tim and Pandora on the well deserved recognition

Time Magazine's 2010 Time 100
Thinkers: Tim Westergren, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Pandora

By Kurt Andersen

If Pandora, the service that allows users to create their own Internet radio stations, is the little music search engine that could, then founder Tim Westergren, 44, is its quixotic engineer. A former rock and jazz musician, Westergren had a big idea in 1999: the Music Genome Project, a typology for categorizing any piece of music according to nearly 2,000 traits identified by Pandora's experts. As a user, you start with, say, a Brian Eno song, then receive a stream of "genetically" related music — Four Tet, Harold Budd and other artists you'll probably like.

For years, Pandora chronically verged on failure. But thanks to the iPhone, 15 million of which carry a Pandora app, it has finally made it over the top — and Westergren and his hybrid of human discernment and digital power are successful as well as cool.

Andersen is a novelist and host of public radio's Studio 360

See the full Time 100 and read more including a great photo of Tim here

iPad: the Consumption v. Production realization

I realize that the most important reason I love my iPad is that I fundamentally spend way more time consuming content than actually creating it. Sure, I write some emails and these blog posts (using my desktop now... though I could be using the snazzy yet heavy keyboard peripheral (shown above); however, most of the time, I more passively consume rather than actively creating stuff like email, web, models, presentations, docs, board packs etc. And then there's all the entertainment stuff that is pure consumption by definition: movies, TV, books, music, and the wonderful world of apps. With an iPad, all that entertainment is just plain stellar. The iPad sits on the tray table in a plane more easily and comfortably than I would hold a book. It's a better video display than the one built in on the seat backs of Virgin America or JetBlue. It's more enjoyable to sit on a couch or chair with an iPad than a computer. Do I miss the tactile keyboard? Sure, and that's why I have the peripheral as a type of dock; however, the typing is tolerable and brevity is always appreciated. Heck, Twitter only gives you 140 characters. So is an iPad a laptop replacement? Depends on how much you need to produce versus consume. The real question is how much more easily and pleasurably do you want to consume and be entertained? The apps add another dimension to the utility and fun factor of the iPad. That's just something that a desktop can't compete with. My biggest beef is the lack of flash support for web surfing, but the upside of the device working so well without it is worth the trade off. Hopefully websites will adapt appropriately over time. What is your experience?

iPad Excitement

It's been a long time since I've been so excited about a new gadget. It's pretty universal with the early press giving the iPad strong reviews. So the gadget gurus and early adopters will be there for sure. I'll have mine unboxed tomorrow... ill timed trip to the mountains preventing me from going to the Apple store to enjoy the geek gathering. The buzz of kindred spirits waiting in line together for a cherished item. Reminds me of sleeping overnight for Grateful Dead tix in NYC in the early 80s (well, almost).

Gizmodo published a great list of essential iPad apps. Includes both Pandora and SoundHound and some of my other favs: Netflix, Flight Control, Kayak, WSJ, NYT. Looking forward to trying Magic Piano by Smule, Wolfram Alpha and others.

Full Article from Gizmodo is here

Excerpt from Gizmodo:
Pandora's free music discovery app isn't overly ambitious in its transition to the iPad, sticking to its basic customized radio feature, while presenting artist info along your playlists. Still though, the music is free and unlimited, and exceedingly well chosen. (Algorithmed?)



SoundHound: IDs any music that's playing with a seriously fast recognition engine, but doesn't stop there: It does lyrics, music discovery, charts (based on what people are IDing, not buying) and full playlist playback. $5




Another great article from Mashable on Pandora as a "lean-in" experience. Time to mount an iPad on my wall next to the stereo as the dream controller? full article here

We are looking for great services to invest in that can leverage the iPad and it's ilk. Any ideas? email me at Larry@waldenvc.com. follow me on Twitter at @cyberlar

Walden Companies Score In WSJ Top VC backed Companies List

According to the The Wall Street Journal "There are some 10,000 privately held, venture-backed companies in the U.S. To pick the 50 of them with the greatest potential, a team from research firm VentureSource, a unit of Wall Street Journal owner News Corp., applied a strict set of standards."

Two on the list are Walden Venture Capital portfolio companies: Pandora and Glam. Congratulations to the management teams for the recognition. The article continues: "VCs are having a tough time these days, but many of them are still nurturing inventors and entrepreneurs." Walden is grateful to be in the later group and will soon be announcing the addition of some promising companies to our portfolio. Hopefully they'll appear in this list some years down the road.

From The Wall Street Journal: Sizing Up Promising Young Firms
By COLLEEN DEBAISE And SCOTT AUSTIN
Venture capitalists, the investors who supply start-up money to promising young companies, are always looking for the next big thing—whether it's a hot new gadget, game or medical breakthrough...

Here's the complete article

Here's the complete list of the top 50