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‘The Circle' Author Dave Eggers Denies Reading Facebook Memoir That He's Accused Of Plagiarizing
One of the weirder things to come out of all the discussion around Dave Eggers’ upcoming novel The Circle (which focuses on life at a fictional tech company) has been the accusation by Kate Losse that parts of Eggers’ book are lifted from The Boy Kings, her memoir of her experience as an early Facebook employee.
McSweeney’s, the San Francisco-based publishing that Eggers founded, just sent me a statement from Eggers denying that he read Losse’s book at all. To be honest, I’ve found Losse’s claims to be pretty unpersuasive (more on that in a second), but the statement also includes some interesting commentary about the research that Eggers did (or didn’t) do for the novel, so I figured it was worth noting. Here it is:
I’ve just heard about the claims of Kate Losse that my novel, The Circle, was somehow based on a work of nonfiction she wrote. I want to make it clear that I have never read and have never heard of her book before today. I did not, in fact, read any books about any internet companies, or about the experiences of anyone working at any of these companies, either before or while writing The Circle. I avoided all such books, and did not even visit any tech campuses, expressly because I didn’t want The Circle to seem to be based on any extant companies or upon the experiences of any employees of any extant companies. Because The Circle has not been released, it’s my understanding that Kate Losse has not read my novel yet, so I trust that when she does read it she’ll understand that I have not read, and certainly never lifted anything from, her book.
This denial probably won’t persuade people who seem to agree that there are suspicious parallels between Losse’s book and Eggers’, so maybe we should take a closer look at Losse’s claim. As noted in the statement, Losse says she hasn’t read the book (the official publication date is Oct 8), so she’s basing her accusation on an excerpt published in The New York Times Magazine, and she posted annotated excerpts from The Boy Kings highlighting similarities.
Losse first notes that like her, Eggers’ protagonist is hired to work in Customer Experience at a tech company, which isn’t exactly a telling or hugely specific detail — when I left Stanford in 2006, applying for customer experience jobs was one of the default paths for people who didn’t know what they were going to do with their lives. (True story: I applied for multiple customer experience jobs at Google, and was rejected for all them.)
That first note also says, “Her name eerily echoes mine in its phonetic structure: Katherine Penney Losse/Maebelline Renner Holland & in short form as well: ‘Kate Losse/Mae Holland.’” Hmmm.
Losse’s next annotation notes that both books include scenes where someone tells the new customer experience employee what their job will be like. The one after that says there are discussions of company passwords.
It all seems to me, at least, to consist entirely of generic parallels covering experiences that will be familiar to many TechCrunch readers. I’m not trying to dismiss some of the broader issues of cultural appropriation that Losse brings up, but I’m not sure an unconvincing claim that someone is “ripping off” your book is the best arena for that discussion.
The other interesting thing about Eggers’ statements is how he goes out of his way to deny doing any research related to specific tech companies, whether it’s reading books or visiting offices. That might dampen the enthusiasm of some writers who see the book’s sinister tech company (which, like the novel itself, is called The Circle) as way to take “vengeance” on Google and Facebook. Eggers seems to be arguing that he isn’t attacking any particular company, and that the book is meant to be a broader critique of tech trends and culture.
Of course, if you wrote a novel implying that Facebook and Google are evil, it may just be easier to disavow any specific attack and let others make the comparisons.
Split Lives Up To Its Name, Creates Cheap Earbud Headphones With Absolutely No Cords
Even wireless earbuds have wires, let’s be honest – they have to, in order to link one earbud to the other. It’s been an impossible barrier to cross in headphone design, with some exceptions that generally cost a whole lot of cash. Enter the Split, a new Kickstarter project that wants to untether one earbud from the other forever.
The Split isn’t bulky like previous designs, and it doesn’t require any fancy transmitters. Each unit is a contained piece of gadgetry, with its own battery built-in, and they’re only just slightly larger than standard earbuds, with bits that stick out slightly from either ear. They each have their own memory chip and processor, too, and they sync playback between one ear and the other (something founder Marco Scandurra says isn’t likely to fall out of sync, barring physical damage to the devices).
The biggest problem with these earphones is that they work independent of any devices, however. That means they only play locally stored music, uploaded to the Split buds themselves –which currently tops out at a max of 256MB – and can’t connect to your iPhone or Android device via Bluetooth or any other protocol.
While there’s not currently any workaround in sight to bring Bluetooth connectivity to the Split, there is a plan to make it usable with mobile devices in the early stages of development.
“There are plans for next year to make an app that is compatible with iOS and Android phones,” Scandurra explained. “With that app you will be able to manage and upload songs onto Split, and we are also planning on developing an adapter that can support Lighting connectors on iPhone and iPad devices, while the regular USB port will just need to be converted to mini USB to work with Android devices.”
Memory on the device is limited, and a means of loading it with songs which requires frequent shuttling of content back and forth isn’t going to work for most people. Scandurra says they’re working with their supplier to double space on the device to half a gig by next year, so that’s something at least. And if you’re an athlete looking for a completely tangle-free solution, you’re probably going to be decently happy with enough content to run a simple playlist or two.
Now of course, if you’re like me you’re terrified at this point about what the Split is doing in terms of radiating your brain. But the headset uses around 1,000 times less radiation than a Bluetooth headset, according to Split. And how do you control a music player that’s only an inch deep and resides inside your ears? With bites, of course. Each one has an accelerometer within to detect jaw motion for play/pause, volume control and track skipping.
Honestly, this is an extremely niche product that’s at least a little crazy looking. But Scandurra has a PhD in high-energy physics from the University of Leipzig in Germany, and held a post-doc position at MIT in the Physic Department so if he’s crazy, he’s also at least got the creds to make these real. The team behind Split is looking at December as a ship date, and backers can pre-order for only $29, which means you don’t have to be soft in the head to get on board. This is definitely an early version of experimental tech, but it could also be the ground floor for something big.
Runnable Wants To Become The “YouTube Of Code”
For many developers, Googling code snippets is just part of their everyday routines. Those snippets, however, are spread all over the web. The co-founders behind Runnable, which is launching today, saw this in their own work at Amazon and hosting companies and decided to build what they call a “YouTube of Code” – a site that allows users to discover code snippets and edit and run the code right on their sites.
Runnable wants to become the central repository for developers to find their code. To achieve this, it needs to feature as many code snippets as possible, so the team also plans to become the default place for developer-oriented projects to store their code examples.
As the company’s CEO and co-founder Yash Kumar told me, the team believes that developers today spend less time writing new code and more time recycling existing parts. Even expert developers, Kumar noted, now have a hard time keeping up with all the new technologies, tools and components. At the same time, more people are starting to code than ever before and they have new APIs to choose from every day. What’s happening then is that, for many developers, coding is slowly becoming more about gluing together existing parts than creating something entirely from scratch. Nobody, however, has made the process of discovering code snippets really easy.
Developers today, the company argues, are spending their time looking through internal and external documentation and wikis to learn how to understand the intricate details of each language and API.
On Runnable, the six-person team has aggregated code snippets in languages ranging from PHP to Node.js, Python, JavaScript, ASP.NET and Ruby on Rail (as well as some of their frameworks) from a range of reputable sources. Currently, there are about 1,000 code snippets on the site, but Kumar is confident that, as the site becomes better known, the number will increase 10x in just a few months. Right now, the team is still screening all the code, but over time, the idea is to make publishing code on Runnable as easy as writing a blog post on Medium.
Besides the languages themselves, the team is also focusing on APIs and on how to use products like MySQL, MongoDB, redis and similar frontend and backend services. The site, for example, features a set of code examples for working with the PayPal API right now, and similar examples for other popular APIs are also in the works.
One of the coolest features of Runnable, by the way, is that you can edit the code and test it right on the site. A few years ago, that would have been impossible, but spinning up a few sandboxed environments to run this code is now easy and affordable for a project like Runnable, Kumar noted.
Looking ahead, the team plans to add more community features to the service. One idea, for example, is to add a commenting system to the code editor that could be mapped globally across all the projects on the site. Runnable also plans to add support for more languages and frameworks, too.
So far, Runnable has raised a small seed round to get it to this point. Over time, the team plans to work with developer-oriented ecosystem companies to charge them to highlight their code.
500 Startups Confirms $44 Million Second Fund, Plans To Invest In 200 Startups Over The Next Year
It’s hard to believe, but its been just three years since 500 Startups started making investments in early-stage companies. But in that time, the firm has put money in at least 500 companies, and it will keep investing in more, thanks to the closing of its second fund and the continued growth of its team.
As previously reported, the second fund for 500 Startups closed at $44.1 million in July. That was above its $29.4 million initial fund but below its $50 million target for Fund II. At the same time, however, 500 Startups has been raising a number of region-specific funds in places like India and Mexico.
A lot has happened in just a few years. 500 Startups has grown substantially since it was founded three years ago. It’s expanded from just the two founding partners — McClure and Christine Tsai — to 30 employees, of which 10 make investments. It also has a fairly international presence, with employees in Brazil, Mexico, China, India, and Malaysia, as well as its home office in Mountain View.
The firm has now made investments in well over 500 startups (actually, close to 600, according to McClure), but have no fear — it’s not changing its name anytime soon. It’s averaged about 150 investments per year over its first few years, but is on pace to do 200 investments this year.
McClure says the firm has no plans to slow down: In fact, with the number of venture partners on board making investments, 500 Startups could put money into well over 200 startups in 2014. He imagines each member of the investment team making 20 or so bets each, which is a lot more scalable than say, when 500 Startups launched and it was just McClure and Tsai writing checks.
Having its investments more evenly spread across its partners could bolster its focus overseas, as many of the folks writing checks at 500 are focused on specific geographical regions. The firm has strategically hired investment partners for a variety of overseas markets in the past year or so.
Of these, Brazil and Mexico are probably showing the best results so far, McClure said, but they’re also the most mature markets that its been placing bets on. The firm is also optimistic about India, China, and Southeast Asia, although its efforts there are newer.
Early Results
Overall, while it’s just three years in, 500 Startups is starting to see some positive results, in terms of the number of companies which have had exits — or at least those which have gone on to raise Series A and later rounds of funding.
Notable investments that have resulted in exits include Wildfire, acquired by Google for $350 million; Makerbot, purchased by Stratasys for $400 million; and Viki, which was bought by Rakuten for $200 million. Meanwhile, companies like Twilio, CreditKarma, SendGrid, TaskRabbit, and 42 Floors continue to chug along and have taken on Series B and later rounds of investment.
While it’s done a large volume of seed investments, the firm is seeing about 15 to 20 percent of its bets moving on to later stages of funding. McClure expects that to increase over time, to get closer to an internal target of 20-30 percent.
Believe it or not, even while 500 Startups is writing more checks each year, McClure believes that it’s been making better investments over time. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the 500 Startups Accelerator program, where the team has had to become ultra-selective about which companies it accepts.
For its seventh batch in the accelerator, 500 Startups once again accepted applications via AngelList, and had to choose from about 1,200 startups that applied. It narrowed that number down to 30 that were accepted and will take part in the program, which starts next week in Mountain View.
One reason that 500 Startups Accelerator is gaining interest is that it has strong expertise in marketing and distribution, and it’s looking to continue differentiating in this area. To that end, it’s hired a four person distribution team to help its portfolio companies refine their products to better reach target customers.
Oh yeah, almost forgot: They did an infographic too.
FBI Seize Deep Web Black Market Silk Road, Arrest Owner
The feds have caught up to the Silk Road. The underground website long known for drug trafficking was seized by the FBI who also arrested the owner on three criminal counts. Prosecutors charged Ross William Ulbricht with one count each of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, according to a court filing.
Silk Road has long existed in the corner of the Internet dubbed Deep Web and accessible only through the seemingly secure Tor Network. Launched in 2011, the site quickly gained notoriety for its market place of drugs and guns. Silk Road became the Amazon of illegal things.
An upstart site, Atlantis, aimed to add a bit of whimsy and Web 2.0 marketing pizzazz to the same markets. It closed last month.
As the court documents note, the owner of Silk Road, Ross William Ulbricht, intentionally and knowingly violated the US’s narcotics laws. The document, available here, reads:
From in or about 2011, up to and including in or about September 2013, ROSS WILLIAM ULBRICHT, a/k/a “Dread Pirate Roberts,” a/k/a “DPR,” a/k/a “Silk Road,” the defendant, owned and operated an underground website, known as “Silk Road,” that provided a platform for drug dealers around the world to sell a wide variety of controlled substances via the Internet.
But that’s just the start of Ulbricht’s troubles. He is also charged with hacking conspiracy and money laundering. The site is currently down, seized by the FBI. It should be interesting, however, to see how the government handles this hydra of an organization. The vast majority of interactions on the Silk Road are anonymous, performed using Bitcoin transfers between parties and set up in secure email exchanges. More as we get it.
Flea Market App Stuffle Raises Seven-Figure Cash And “Media For Equity” Funding
Flea market-style mobile apps are both a dime a dozen and refreshingly straightforward. Upload a photo of the item for sale, write a description, set a price, and wait for nearby interested buyers to make a purchase. That level of simplicity and transparency, however, isn’t to be found in Stuffle‘s latest funding round.
The German startup, which competes with a host of similar “flea market” apps, including Shpock and Depop in Europe, or Rumgr and Yardsale in the U.S., has raised a “seven-figure” founding round led by Tivola Ventures, and Leverate Media. Nothing out of the ordinary there — an undisclosed funding round is very European.
But where things deviate somewhat from business as usual is that Leverate Media’s involvement consists of what’s being called a “media for equity” deal in which it will provide Stuffle with a media plan and premium advertising worth several million euros, in return for 20 percent of the company.
And while the overall funding amount isn’t being disclosed, beyond that “seven-figure” mention, Tivola Ventures is said to be taking 25 percent equity. It has to be said that it’s unusual for what is otherwise an opaque funding round to break out equity numbers, but, with a mixture of cash and “media equity,” this deal is nothing if not convoluted.
That said, Leverate Media isn’t the only operation to be touting premium advertising reach for a stake in a consumer startup with high-growth potential. London’s Squadron Venture Media offers a similar arrangement (or, alternatively, media buying in return for a future revenue share).
Along with Stuffle’s two new “investors,” existing investors Heiko Hubertz, Tim Schumacher, Mehrdad Piroozram and High- Tech Gründerfonds also participated in this round.
Commenting in a statement, Sebastian Erasmus, CEO of Leverate Media, said: “We are looking forward to helping Stuffle generate more reach by setting up a media plan. It will specifically address the needs of the young company while delivering long-term and sustainable growth. Together with Morten and his team, the existing investors and of course Tivola Ventures we have found a setup through which Stuffle can realize its growth strategy at an optimum rate. ”
When asked, a representative for Stuffle was unable to breakout any further numbers for the app, or be more transparent in terms of the investment figures. What we do know is that prior to this latest round the Hamburg, Germany-based startup had raised €975,000 (~$1.23m). Meanwhile, as of late January this year, Stuffle had been downloaded approximately 147,000 times since it launched the previous May, seeing 75,000 items listed and 12,500 successful sales at a total value of €1.2 million. We’ll update this post if and when we receive updated metrics.
Update: And just like magic, updated stats provided by Stuffle:
Downloads so far: 400,000
Listed items: 275,000
Successful sales: 35,000 with total value of €3.6 million
Investments (cash and media combined): (worth) over €10 million
Lucidpress Launches Web-Based Design And Publishing App For Print And Online
Lucid Software, the company behind the popular Lucidchart online flow chart and diagramming service, announced a new product in its lineup today. Lucidpress, as the name indicates, is a web-based publishing app for creating print and online content that takes on the established design and desktop publishing market.
Lucid CEO Karl Sun believes that “desktop software lags behind the new realities of an evolved market.” His company’s new app, Sun said in a statement today, aims to make “it easy for anyone to create stunning content like a design pro with all the added functionality made possible in the cloud.” The company also hopes to fill the gap between existing cloud-based productivity apps like Google Docs, Dropbox and similar tools, none of which feature comparable publishing tools.
I had a chance to test the app before its launch and it is indeed very easy to use. If you’ve ever used a desktop publishing app in the past, you’ll feel right at home with Lucidpress, as it features the same kind of standard top-bar menu and layout options as most other publishing apps. In terms of features, it can also hold its own against similar desktop-based apps.
To get started, you either pick one of the company’s many templates for your digital or print project or start with a blank page. These cover all the usual bases and range from birthday books to flyers, brochures and newsletters.
Lucidpress features a deep integration with Google Drive for sharing documents, and it allows you to easily add images from your Flickr, Facebook and Dropbox accounts to your documents. You can also find images on the web through Google and Iconfinder and import YouTube videos for online projects.
The service wouldn’t be much of a web app if it didn’t include some collaboration features, , so it also includes a built-in chat tool and social sharing features to get feedback from colleagues and clients.
Lucid Software was funded by Google Ventures, 500 Startups, 2M Companies and K9 Ventures (as well as a number of angel investors). Lucidchart, the company says currently has more than 1 million users, including teams at AT&T, Warby Parker, Groupon and Citrix.
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