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Entrepreneurs: Please do your homework on the competition

Choosing the right market opportunity will make or break a startup. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs choose to tackle markets that are over-saturated, not realizing their mistake until it's too late.

I've listened to thousands of pitches from thousands of startup founders. Most of the time, these pitches don't stand up to my scrutiny for one reason or another. Some don't have differentiating features while others simply don't tackle big enough market opportunities.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks that trips up most entrepreneurs though is their lack of market and competitive research. They come up with more

Is Pinterest more popular than Tumblr in the U.S.?

It's well known that Pinterest is growing in leaps and bounds. But is that success starting to outpace even popular microblogging site Tumblr in the U.S.?

Royal Pingdom today revealed the results of data it compiled comparing traffic for both Pinterest and Tumblr. The blog first turned to Alexa, and found Pinterest to be just inching out Tumblr in traffic. On Google Trends, Pinterest scored more daily unique visitors than Tumblr. However, analytics services Compete and Quantcast gave the nod to Tumblr.

Not satisfied with the results, Royal Pingdom moved on to research firms, and found that Experian more

Corporate VCs still have love for the Golden State

Corporate venture capital investments are down from last year but more than half of that money has stayed in California, according to an investment trends study released last night by CB Insights.

The report -- which tracked more than 220 corporate VCs, including Google Ventures, Intel Capital and Dow Venture Capital -- found that corporate VCs contributed to 11 percent of all venture deals in the first quarter of this year, but the $1.09 billion total invested is the lowest amount in the last five years.

The money was spread over 84 deals, the number is down from last

Institutional Venture Partners closes $1 billion fund

Institutional Venture Partners has secured $1 billion for a new investment fund.

The company broke the news to TechCrunch earlier today, telling the startup blog that it's calling the fund IVP XIV. The $1 billion raised is the largest fund the company has ever had and brings its total committed capital to $4 billion.

"Essentially it's going to be the same strategy," IVP General Partner Jules Maltz told TechCrunch in an interview. "We're a late-stage firm, we're very focused. We only do tech investing. We don't do China, we don't do clean-tech. We really more

Thiel-backed Mithril Capital targets growth-stage tech ventures

"Mithril" is a metal in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," said to be stronger than steel but much lighter in weight. It's malleable, doesn't tarnish and extremely rare.

PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel hopes some of the invented metal's properties are imbued on his new venture capital firm of the same name, announcing this morning that the San Francisco-based company is seeking growth-stage technology companies in which to invest.

"Technology holds solutions to most of the world's most pressing challenges, from resource scarcity to disease," Thiel said. "Solving an intractable problem may more

Geeking out on hardware is not just about robots anymore

What do you get when you stick a bunch of geeks from all around the world in an hardware-focused incubator program for 111 days?

Well, you still get robots (which are pretty cool), but with the HAXLR8R hardware-related accelerator program, you also get young people who are excited about nearly every facet of life.

The program's demo day in San Francisco on Monday night highlighted several new products that consumers can literally get their hands on. This included some products you would expect from really smart people interested in hardware like:

Bilibot, a robotic platform designed to make affordable more

Geeking out on hardware is not just about robots anymore

What do you get when you stick a bunch of geeks from all around the world in an hardware-focused incubator program for 111 days?

Well, you still get robots (which are pretty cool), but with the HAXLR8R hardware-related accelerator program, you also get young people who are excited about nearly every facet of life.

Bilibot, a robotic platform designed to make affordable more

Index Ventures raises 350M euro early-stage fund

Venture capital firm Index Ventures announced today it has closed a new 350 million euro ($442 million) fund to invest in early-stage technology companies.

The new fund, the firm's sixth that focuses on early-stage technology investments, will concentrate its resources heavily on Europe, while also making investments in Israel and the U.S.

The new fund is very similar to the firm's fifth early-stage fund, which it raised in the summer of 2009, with some small differences.

"One surprise on our last fund was that we did a much higher percentage of deals in the U.S. than more

Facebook CTO Bret Taylor leaving to start company

Bret Taylor, who has been Facebook's very public CTO for three years, today announced that he's leaving the social-networking giant to start a company. He didn't say what his next venture will be.

This is a big loss for Facebook and comes less than a month after the company went public. While Facebook stock rose more than 6 percent today, to close at $30.01, it's still 21 percent below its offering price of $38 a share. The news about Taylor, first reported by AllThingsD, came out after the market closed.

Naturally, Taylor turned to Facebook to tell the world more

Why I had it all wrong about Boston's high-tech scene

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- I'm at a crowded tech schmoozefest, and Tim Rowe, the pied piper of local startups, is giving me a serious talking-to about my blase attitude toward the local tech industry.

"I'd like you to think about what you're saying and look at the facts," Rowe says with growing intensity. "I think you're going to see your perception and the facts don't add up."

No startup culture? Look around here in the Cambridge Innovation Center in Kendall Square, ground zero for New England startups, Rowe says. There are about seven floors filled with more