Ondi Timoner
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Amanda Palmer connects with the crowd at fan house parties
To finish off what has been riotous year for Amanda Palmer, she is set to play two house parties in Los Angeles this month before performing at the A TOTAL DISRUPTION Soirée on December 15th at the Echoplex. This constitutes a typical stop for the outspoken, polarizing punk-cabaret musician as she closes out a year of over 75 gigs in every kind of venue imaginable across the US, Europe, and Australia.
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You don't know @Jack, but he knows you: My visit with Jack Dorsey on the occasion of Twitter's IPO
On my last total disruption go-round in the Bay Area, I ended up at Twitter HQ looking to find Jack Dorsey. I was following my crew over from filming at Lyft, via Class Dojo, so I was heads down in my “virtual box” and looked up to instant recognition: This was the site of another (upcoming) ATD episode with Russell Brand. On our tour of Twitter with Russell, we discovered that it’s a cozy, bubbling place -- replete with a bar, laundry, showers, and yoga. Russell pointed out that there would be no reason to leave... But Jack had found one. So unfortunately, there was no time to participate in any of the fun that day at Twitter, but instead we tore down the street and several blocks over to find its founder: The sixth youngest billionaire in the United States, who only seven years ago was in debt. @Jack is quite busy helming his newest venture -- the completely disruptive and democratizing mobile payment app & merchant services aggregator, Square.
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The city startup: Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project
Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Ondi Timoner.
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My visit with the Lord of the Startups, Y Combinator's Paul Graham
After filming so many successful graduates of the world-famous preparatory academy for entrepreneurs, Y Combinator, for A TOTAL DISRUPTION, I was inspired to journey up the river and find their leader. I quickly discovered that Paul Graham doesn’t like the word “incubator.” Or, for that matter, “accelerator.” The “guru of startups” prefers to compare himself and, Y Combinator (affectionately called YC by its legions of believers) to JRR Tolkien’s "The Lord of the Rings" -- in that it invented the genre.
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Hacking the system: How Naval Ravikant brings greater transparency to venture capital
Most young startups face the same challenge on their path to success: Navigating the murky waters of Silicon Valley finance. Of course, two geeks in a basement can invent a radical new platform, but to grow that into a real business, they will often need financing, team-building skills, and intelligent execution.
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Andrew Chung of Khosla Ventures is a VC trying to change how we recharge
In the tech world, no one gets a bad rap like the venture capitalist. Often derided as opportunists and gold diggers who take advantage of passionate and eager startups with unfavorable valuations, some entrepreneurs see VCs as a necessary evil to scale their disruptive idea to a national or global stage. Sometimes, though, these VCs are the greatest allies and closest advisors to the founders. They are often the unsung heroes who fuel and guide innovation.
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Sound Advice from the Founder of SoundCloud
When he was a kid, Swedish-born Alex Ljung never had a lemonade stand or dreamed of becoming a startup entrepreneur. But the founder of SoundCloud, a social sound platform, has quickly become a leading pioneer in our new wired world. That's due to the ease of collaboration, social interactivity, and iconic orange waveform that SoundCloud enables.
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A serial pivot to success story
As I travel the country documenting the tech revolution, one of the most crucial insights I encounter across all sectors, from transportation to education, is that a company’s chances of survival are directly tied to their ability to identify what needs to be changed in order to reach their goal as a company and “pivot."