The Secret To Google’s Success: Free Beer And Sushi

Google’s original chef Charlie Ayers claims in a new book that much of Google’s success comes from free beer and sushi.

In Eat Yourself Smart, he argues that Sushi made Google’s engineers work better: “The fat found in fish helps make the cell membranes round the brain more elastic and more able to absorb nutrients easily.”

In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, he explains how Google got top results out of it’s employees

[Ayers] started easing the computer engineers into the long hours culture with innovations including free beer and fortnightly “big-ass” barbecues. To introduce computer experts fresh out of university to early mornings, he developed breakfast specials, such as “French toast with coconut, macadamia and rum”. The rum, beer and barbecues provided perfect cover for converting the “googlers” to a diet that ensured they kept working after lunch, weaning them off pizzas and on to salads…..

My favorite quote (and reasonable enough thinking):

“He was hired by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google’s founders, in the belief that like a Napoleonic army, an internet giant marches on its stomach.”

(img credit: TropicalIsland)

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Venture Hacks Branches Out From Blogging, Launches Recommendations System

Venture Hacks, a blog dedicated to helping entrepreneurs navigate the world of venture capital, has launched a new social network of sorts around the idea of professional recommendations.

Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists can use the sub-site, simply called Recommended, to track who and what others think highly of, and to indicate their own affinities as well.

It’s structured much like Twitter - users set up profiles and subscribe to each other, then review recommendations made by others and make recommendations of their own.

Recommendations can be made for both companies and people themselves (entrepreneurs or venture capitalists). Membership is currently by invitation only, although you can request an account if you think you travel in the right circles. Companies, venture capital firms, and people all have profiles where you can find information about track records, teams, outside resources, and more.

The overall idea behind Recommended is to lubricate the process by which members of the startup community network and determine who and what is popular.

While the current set of features is fairly limited, co-founder Babak Nivi says that Venture Hacks has plans to create a more sophisticated online ecosystem for the venture capital community. His co-founder is Naval Ravikant, who runs The Hit Forge and co-founded Epinions.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Smelling Trouble Behind AOL’s $850 Million Bebo Deal

When AOL bought Bebo for $850 million last week, CEO Randy Falco and COO Ron Grant believed the social network would help save AOL from its downward spiral. Social networks are where pageviews are generated these days, and AOL’s own attempt to turn AOL Instant Messenger into one (via Aim Pages) was a dud on arrival. Bebo, with 22.9 million unique visitors in February and 10.3 billion pageviews (per comScore), was growing and it was for sale. Even though AOL is trying to transform itself into an advertising network, it makes much higher margins on the ads it places on its own pages. The formula for its business is pretty simple: Unique visitors X page views = advertising inventory. If social networks are the future of the Web, AOL needed to own one.

But was Bebo the right one, and did AOL pay too much for it? Those are questions that other AOL executives below Falco and Grant are asking themselves, reports Silicon Alley Insider. The concerns of the senior executives who actually run AOL (and reportedly were not consulted on the top-secret acquisition) include: the general difficulty of making money placing ads on social networks (see Google’s missed quarter), “flattening traffic growth at Bebo” (see chart below), overly-rosy revenue projections for Bebo that might have been three times too high, and the likelihood of losing Bebo’s most talented employees (the founders are already out of there).

From my own sanity-checks with sources, there is definitely the sense that AOL was not Bebo’s first choice. Initially, it was aiming for a valuation above $1 billion. But then the ground started falling out beneath it, and AOL’s $850 million offer started to look real good. AOL was a desperate buyer. Even if it bargained Bebo down on price, it may still have paid too much. Bebo’s growth is indeed flattening relative to other global social networks like Hi5 or Friendster. And while social networks generate a lot of pages, they are not yet particularly valuable pages.

There is a silver lining here, though. If AOL can use its targeted advertising assets (Advertising.com, Quigo, Platform A) to make that Bebo inventory pay out, it will surprise everybody. And that will be good for Platform A because it then will be able to grab more advertising business from other social networks. (That is, if New York State does not outlaw targeted advertising before then). The likelihood of that happening is not great, but AOL employees need at least a glimmer of hope to keep showing up to work every morning. (I do what I can).

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

The Semantic Hacker One-Million Dollar Challenge

Semantic startups and projects are hot right now. (See Radar Networks, Freebase, Blue Organizer, Hakia, even Yahoo). But what do you do if you are a little-known technology company in Rochester, New York with a powerful semantic-analysis engine on your hands that you want to turn into new businesses?

Read more

Love Client Number 9: Eliot Spitzer Gets Mashed-Up!

You knew it was only a matter of seconds before there would be video mash-ups on the Web related to the prostitution troubles of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer.

Some are pretty racy, of course, because the story is, well, pretty racy, generating the most excellent headline from the New York Post: “Ho No!”

But here are two ones I liked a lot. The first is from Barry Mitchell on the accordion in a song parody using the Searchers ‘ ditty, “Love Potion Number 9.” And the second does a very funny take-off of “The Odd Couple,” pairing Spitzer with another Luv Guv–New Jersey’s Jim McGreevey.

Calacanis Fires People Who Have A Life

Mahalo founder and serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis has some interesting tips up today about how to squeeze every single last thing from your startup employees.

Helpful advice includes

• If you do meetings, have them over lunch, because you shouldn’t let your employees eat alone
• Don’t provide people with phones, they can always use their own cellphones, and this saves money
• Buy a decent espresso machine and provide food in the office, because you don’t want your staff to ever stop working, this way you keep them in the office every minute of every day
• Buy people who work hard a computer for home, so they can work after hours, on weekends and public holidays
• Urinary catheters are cheap, hook each employee up to one so they don’t waste minutes going to the restroom

OK, so I made the last point up. Here’s my favorite one though:

• “Fire people who are not workaholics…. come on folks, this is startup life, it’s not a game. go work at the post office or stabucks if you want balance in your life. For realz.”

Apparently having a life isn’t “for realz” in Calacanis’ playbook so a note to possible Mahalo employees: expect to check your family at the door if you want to go work for JCal. Up to 18 hours a day for $30-35,000 (what I’ve heard is the going rate for base Mahalo employees) , you’re never allowed to go outside during this time or have a proper break…. sounds like a great place to work.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

When Will We Have Our First Valleywag Suicide?

Today I read all the sordid details about the alleged sexual encounter between a notable technology visionary and a woman who appears to be looking for as much publicity as possible. Where did I read it? On the Silicon Valley gossip blog Valleywag. The posts include private IM chats and various rumors, all designed to make the person mentioned look like as much of a fool as possible. That’s not new, of course. Valleywag is making a business out of digging into people’s personal lives and publishing it for all to see (me included, regularly). Read more

What Exactly Did The JuicyCampus Founder Think Would Happen?

I’m not sure what JuicyCampus founder Matt Ivester expected when he launched a gossip site for college students, but apparently things are getting out of hand. People, who can post anonymously, are being “mean.” And despite some legal protections, Ivester might be getting a little nervous about defamation and libel lawsuits. In a blog post on Friday, he says “Some of the things that have been posted have been mean-spirited, and we have received emails from people claiming to have been defamed on the site,” and adds “We want you to make JuicyCampus Juicy, not hateful.” Read more

Google Bypasses Tech Departments — Again

I've been toying around with Office Live recently -- Microsoft's web-based collaboration tool and today Google announces an addition to it's Google Apps package that will let people build Web sites where they can post anything from contact information to presentations to videos. Google says this will make it easier for workers to collaborate on projects.

Read more

Intel throws venture cash behind site that encourages tequila-shot contests

Something about this just makes me uneasy.

Bragster, a London-based site "for dares and social bets," announced Wednesday that it has secured $3.5 million in Series A venture cash. The funding round was led by none other than Intel Capital, the investment branch of the famed chipmaker.

The premise of the Digg-meets-Jackass-esque site is that members dare one another (or place open dares) to perform ridiculous feats, then insist on video evidence that they were completed. Bragster, co-founded by a former Morgan Stanley employee and an Amazon.com alum, provides prizes to some of the most over-the-top stunts and also sponsors contests like the "Undies at Uni Challenge," which appears to encourage college students to take their clothes off.

So what are some of the top bets and challenges on Bragster? One member has dared another to "slap someone around the face with a fish in a supermarket." O.K., I'd like to see that, however inappropriate it may be. Same thing with "dress like a Spartan and run around in the street shouting lines from the movie 300." Others, like "pour 2 mugs of boiling hot coffee on my laptop," start to make me uneasy. Call me old-fashioned, but somebody could get hurt. At least Johnny Knoxville occasionally informed his viewers that they shouldn't imitate him at home.

Then there's "I bet I can do 15 shots of tequila in 60 minutes." Um, that's called "really dangerous." I hope Bragster has good lawyers.

Next Page »