A private memorial service for David Goldberg was held in Stanford this morning. The event was attended by family and close friends. Sheryl Sandberg paid a moving tribute to her husband and partner. Here is how Adam Lashinsky from Fortune described Sandberg’s tribute to Goldberg: In one moving tribute, she was simultaneously the poised, articulate public… Continue Reading
Meet Anshuman Bapna of MyGola.com. Bapna and Prateek Sharma founded their startup in Bangalore in 2009. They raised a seed round and Series A and pivoted a couple of times. Here is how Bapna describes the pivots: Arguably, travel planning is one of the top worst ideas entrepreneurs can think of. In our quest to crack that impossible… Continue Reading
On May 25, 2015 a 7.8 magnitude earthquake wrecked havoc in Nepal. This natural disaster has affected millions of people in this landlocked Himalayan country. The earthquake destroyed parts of Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital. Over 1.4 million people need food, water and shelter according to a BBC report. Over 4,000 people have lost their lives and relief… Continue Reading
Alex Gibney’s documentary “Steve Jobs: Man In The Machine,” was the opening night film at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival. In this 120 minute long documentary we get to see Steve Jobs up close and personal and discover facets of him like his obsession with Zen Buddhism. Jobs apparently wanted to be a monk… Continue Reading
We are obsessed with Steve Jobs. We just can’t seem to get enough of him. There is a new book out about Jobs and two different films about the iconic Silicon Valley entrepreneur. This is not including the 2011 book by Walter Isaacson and the 2013 Hollywood film “Jobs,” with Ashton Kutcher that did not do… Continue Reading
In last night’s episode of HBO’s Silicon Valley, you watched the good folks at Pied Piper struggling to raise their first round of funding from Venture Capitalists (VC). This, after being chased by VCs, who were eager to invest in the startup in last week’s episode. You may have fleetingly wondered how much was actually… Continue Reading
San Francisco Film Society (SFFS) is gearing up to host the 58th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 23 – May 7, 2015). This is the longest running film festival in the Americas points out Noah Cowan, Executive Director of SFFS. What is different about this year’s festival I asked Cowan. The actual festival itself won’t… Continue Reading
Meet Hollywood actor and TV star Tiya Sircar. We caught up with her at this year’s Cinequest film festival in Silicon Valley. She was here for the world premiere of her new film “Miss India America.” A couple of years ago Sircar spent time in Silicon Valley filming for “The Internship.” Naturally one of the… Continue Reading
April is certainly been a busy month for startups and investors. As you know investments are no longer in the $10-15 million category, they appear to be in the $70-100 million category with valuations pegged in billions of dollars. Here is a sample of companies that raised fund in the last few days. Docker, an… Continue Reading
LinkedIn announced today it is buying Lynda.com, an online learning platform for $1.5 billion. This is the largest acquisiton by Mountain View-based LinkedIn. This is a mix of cash and stock deal with approximately 52 % in cash and approximately 48 % in stock. LinkedIn plans to close the acquisition by the end of second quarter of 2015 according… Continue Reading
Martin (Marty) Cooper made the first phone call from a cell on April 3, 1973 in New York. And he made the first mobile or cell call to Joel Engel of Bell Labs, whose team was working on a similar project. Do you want to guess how heavy that first mobile phone was? It was 2.5… Continue Reading
Meet Manan Mehta, co-founder of Unshackled, a new angel fund based in Palo Alto. Started in 2014 the company has raised $4.4 million, and they plan to invest their money, effort and time in helping entrepreneurs, especially immigrant entrepreneurs realize their dream of doing a startup. Many immigrant workers are tied to their H1B or “work”… Continue Reading
That is Elon Musk in a 1999 documentary. He had just sold his first company Zip2.com for a little over $300 million, and was working on his second company called X.com which later on became PayPal when they acquired Confinity. Did you notice the last sentence he said in that video? He’d be happy if… Continue Reading
The verdict is in for the high profile legal case between Ellen Pao vs. Kleiner Caufield Perkins and Byers (KCPB), the famous Silicon Valley venture capital firm. Pao lost the historic gender discrimination case against KCPB that was keenly followed by folks in Silicon Valley and around the world. Pao was a partner at Kleiner Perkins. She sued… Continue Reading
Academy Award winner Danny Boyle of “Slumdog Millionaire,” is busy directing his latest movie in San Francisco bay area. And the new biopic is about Silicon Valley icon Steve Jobs. The shooting of the film started in the beginning of the year. The cast and crew has spent time filming in San Francisco and in locations around South… Continue Reading
Google announced today that it is getting a new Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Ruth Porat is headed to California to become Google’s CFO. She was CFO at Morgan Stanley. Porat grew up in Cambridge, MA and Silicon Valley. She studied at Stanford before heading out to study in London and Wharton. She joined Morgan Stanley in… Continue Reading
Louis Lumiere and Auguste Lumiere, the French inventors showed their first motion picture in Paris on March 22, 1895. They made the film using Cinematographe, which in turn was inspired by Thomas Edison’s invention Kinetascope. “Workers Leaving The Lumiere Factory,” is less than a minute long and to use that hackneyed phrase the rest is history.… Continue Reading
Today is World Water day and naturally there are lots of stories, photo essays and interviews about water and how millions of people around the world have no access to water. The hashtag #worldwaterday is trending on social media and is helping create awareness about water right from paucity of water to how to solve the problem… Continue Reading
San Francisco bay area has a rich history of filmmaking going back to the late 19th when Eadweard Muybridge demonstrated the moving picture of a horse to Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University. In the early 20th the bay area was home to the Silent Film industry and Niles Canyon near Fremont was home to Essanay… Continue Reading
Facebook unveiled a new feature today that lets you send and receive money through Facebook messenger.”It is easy and free,” is how the the Menlo Park-based company described this new feature that will be available to users in the US in the coming months. Facebook introduced Messenger in 2011 that is used by millions of… Continue Reading
San Francisco-based Pinterest, a visual bookmarking company has raised $367 million at a valuation of $11 billion according to the Wall Street Journal. This is Series G round reports the Financial Times on the company’s latest round of funding. In 2004 Pinterest raised $200 million at a valuation of $5 billion per NYT DealBook. The company is not done… Continue Reading
Apple Watch was not the only thing that CEO Tim Cook and his team announced yesterday at their much anticipated March Spring Forward event in San Francisco. They announced a clutch of new products and services like an all-new MacBook, MacBook Pro, ResearchKit and HBO NOW on Apple TV. In case you missed here are… Continue Reading
Really sorry to see Gigaom shut down. If someone knew how to do things in style it was Om Malik, the founder of the influential technology website based in San Francisco. Earlier this evening this is what Om wrote: “There will be time for postmortems, but not today. Today, I want to thank all the people… Continue Reading
“Make It Happen” is the theme for this year’s International Women’s Day. Everyday millions of women make it happen for themselves, their family and the society around the world. Over the years I have interviewed many women from different walks of life and have been lucky to talk to them about their lives and how… Continue Reading
Stanley Kubrick, the multifaceted filmmaker passed away on this day in 1999. Kubrick was born in New York, but spent most of his adult life in the United Kingdom. He started off as a photographer and went on to become a filmmaker. His film repertoire includes “Spartacus,” “Lolita,” “Dr. Strangeglove,” “The Space Odyssey,” “Clockwork Orange,” “Full… Continue Reading
Former Googler Punit Soni has left Silicon Valley to join Bangalore-based e-commerce company Flipkart as its Chief Product Officer according to The Business Insider. This is an interesting development since Soni has left a high-profile job at Google to join Flipkart, another high-profile company, whose valuation is over $10 billion. Flipkart raised $700 million in… Continue Reading
What is behind the symbolism of India-US relationship? President Obama became the first American President to visit India twice. What are the business opportunities for American business in India beyond IT and technology? What are the business opportunities for California and the states on the west coast? We sat down to speak with Ambassador Venkatesan… Continue Reading
Diversity. Diversity appears to be on everyone’s mind in Silicon Valley and San Francisco-based tech companies. What is the make-up of the workforce in tech companies? What is the percentage of minorities? What is the percentage of women in the work force? These, and other diversity related questions is part of this conversation on diversity in… Continue Reading
Two Indian-American films had their world premiere at Silicon Valley’s Cinequest Film Festival (Feb 24-Mar 8, 2015) this weekend – “Miss India America,” and “For Here or To Go?” The films are made by Indian-American filmmakers from California. “Miss India America,” is set in Southern California, while “For Here or To Go?” is set in… Continue Reading
Actor Omi Vaidya’s film “For Here or To Go?” will have its world premiere at Silicon Valley’s Cinequest Film Festival this evening. We caught up with the actor last night at Cinequest to talk about his new film, working in Bollywood and his future plans. “For Here or To Go?” captures the angst and uncertainties of… Continue Reading
The Kamla Show 