The 69th Regiment Armory, site of the Silicon Alley Talent Fair
FORTUNE -- Last week, more than 1,200 people walked into an armory to be enlisted. But they were not there to join the military. They were there to be conscripted into a different American tradition: the boom and bust business cycle. They had come for the Silicon Alley Talent Fair. About 150 employers were waiting to induct them.
Three months ago, the idea for this jobs fair didn't yet exist. It was only created after another fair sold out, leaving dozens of companies on the outside looking in, upset they didn't have the same shot at talent as their competitors. But as so often happens with outcasts, they banded together, organizing a jobs fair of their own, this one far more inclusive for employers and recruits alike. Soon thereafter, they'd sold 1,200 tickets at a $10 face value, (Update: 1,100 tickets sold was the final count, with some going for as low as $5 thanks to coupon codes.) and coaxed many of the big and buzzy New York startups to buy tables. MeetUp, Canvas, bit.ly, Sonar, VYou, and others were there, looking for fresh blood.
To review: that's two job fairs in three months, featuring nearly 200 startups combined, all of them looking to hire 3,000 miles away from Silicon Valley. It is time to stop looking for indicators of a tech bubble. We're not going to get one better than that. More
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"Legacy is a stupid thing! I don't want a legacy. ... I like what I'm doing now to my old job. I worked with a lot of smart people; some things went well, some didn't go so well. But when you see how what we did ended MORE
JP Mangalindan, Writer-Reporter - Jun 13, 2011 10:27 AM ET
Groupon's largest shareholder and chairman, Eric Lefkofsky, has a back story investors might want to know.
By Kevin Kelleher, contributor
FORTUNE -- "Lets start having fun... lets get funky... let's announce everything... let's be WILDLY positive in our forecasts... lets take this thing to the extreme... if we get wacked [sic] on the ride down-who gives a shit... THE TIME TO GET RADICAL IS NOW... WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE..."
Eric Lefkofsky, MORE
Jun 10, 2011 5:00 AM ET
Image via CrunchBase
Tech luminaries who point to all the bubble talk as proof we know more this time around may need a history lesson.
FORTUNE -- Marc Andreessen reportedly said this today at the AllThingsD conference: "A key characteristic of a bubble is that no one thinks its a bubble … If everybody's upset, it's a good sign . . . I hope there are lots of bubble stories."
The trouble with MORE
Dan Mitchell, contributor - Jun 2, 2011 6:25 PM ET
The original enterprise tech company has been using social tools for years, says its new CIO.
IBM CIO Jeanette Horan
FORTUNE --Business software makers -- from SAP (SAP) to Microsoft (MSFT) -- are in a race to make their products more "social." IBM (IBM) is no exception. The New York-based company says its social media roots date back to the 1970s, when its mainframe programmers started discussion forums (on System/370 consoles). MORE
Michal Lev-Ram, writer - May 31, 2011 2:55 PM ETWhen the founder of an unheralded startup offered a cri de coeur about the inanities of the funding process, he heard hundreds of voices crying back.
FORTUNE -- If there is a tech bubble, it certainly hasn't given lift to Adam Neary. Neary is the CEO of Profitably, a financial analysis service for small businesses. It doesn't feature check-ins, a bespoke social network, or a game layer. Its cofounder hasn't crashed MORE
Chadwick Matlin - May 6, 2011 12:54 PM ET
The startup aims to take reams of computer generated data and make it digestible to humans. That could make it CEO Godfrey Sullivan's second multi-billion dollar company.
Image via CrunchBase
FORTUNE -- Companies like SAP (SAP), Oracle (ORCL) and IBM (IBM) sell fancy business software that analyzes data created by humans. But what about the terabytes upon terabytes of data that are created by machines? That's where Splunk comes in. You MORE
Michal Lev-Ram, writer - Apr 28, 2011 1:54 PM ET
In each corner of the startup world there's a Venmo for every Paypal -- a little engine that could, and wants to, badly.
FORTUNE -- Hours before I met Andrew Kortina, I had already given him my credit card number. I don't do this with just any stranger. But Kortina and his cofounder Iqram Magdon-Ismail have built a service called Venmo, which promises to make mobile payments so easy, people will MORE
Chadwick Matlin - Apr 25, 2011 11:15 AM ET
An anthropological technography of the strange, ritualized world where startups sell themselves to venture capitalists: Demo Day.
The male at work
FORTUNE -- As more people have fled to the startup community for the promise of wealth and freedom, a new tier of gatekeepers have emerged. They're called "incubators," and their imprimatur is tantamount to a college degree. It's like getting a degree from Harvard or MIT, explains David Cohen, the co-founder MORE
Chadwick Matlin - Apr 15, 2011 1:51 PM ET
Image via CrunchBase
The world's dominant Internet backbone just got a lot more dominant. Should we worry?
Level 3 already runs the single most important part of the Internet. Of the 36,878 autonomous networks that collectively make up the global Internet, Level 3 (LVLT) is by far the largest and most interconnected. Buying Global Crossing (GLBC), which by most measures is now the global Internet's third largest part, in a $3 billion deal will only MORE
Scott Woolley - Apr 11, 2011 5:14 PM ETEvery morning, discover the companies, deals and trends in tech that are moving markets and making headlines. SUBSCRIBE
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| Company | Price | Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bank of America Corp... | 7.95 | -0.16 | -1.97% |
| Microsoft Corp | 31.27 | -0.17 | -0.54% |
| Ford Motor Co | 12.28 | -0.25 | -2.00% |
| General Electric Co | 19.39 | 0.17 | 0.88% |
| Citigroup Inc | 32.36 | -1.00 | -3.00% |
| Index | Last | Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dow | 12,938.67 | -27.02 | -0.21% |
| Nasdaq | 2,933.17 | -15.40 | -0.52% |
| S&P 500 | 1,357.66 | -4.55 | -0.33% |
| Treasuries | 2.00 | -0.04 | -1.96% |
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