Chris Pirillo » startup

Veoh Files Bankruptcy

Chris — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 04:35:39 +0000

Veoh Files Bankruptcy is a post from Chris Pirillo

Veoh was once considered to be in direct competition with YouTube. Veoh founder Dmitry Shapiro has said that the company would be liquidating and filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The company announced back in April that it would lay off 25 staffers, despite the $70 million in capital that the company raised from investors such as Intel, Time Warner, and Goldman Sachs. The company has been plagued by lawsuits during the past few years. Even though they have come out of those victorious, the cost of fighting has amassed to an astronomical amount.

Sadly, the news of closure doesn’t come as a surprise to many people. Traffic has been on a steady decline, dropping from more than 5 million unique visitors in December, 2008 to around 3 million uniques as of December, 2009. The company let go of what was left of their staff on Wednesday. Mister Shapiro stated on his own blog that “Unfortunately, great vision, a passionate team, tens of millions of users, millions in revenues and victory in court were not enough. The distraction of the legal battles, and the challenges of the broader macro-economic climate have led to our Chapter 7 bankruptcy”.

Veoh is just another in a long line of promising startups which has now failed in today’s economy. Even when there are investors on board, a company can still lose everything it has, just in the fight to stay alive. Online content consumers are finicky. We want what we want, and won’t accept something different. I’m not saying this is the case with Veoh. The number of visitors the site boasts is quite large. However, when compared with what YouTube brings in, those millions are apparently a drop in the bucket.

Meet a Geek With Money to Give You

Chris — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 08:15:58 +0000

Meet a Geek With Money to Give You is a post from Chris Pirillo

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I ran into my old friend Dave McClure down in Hawaii recently, when we both attended the [re]Think Hawaii conference. Dave and I go way back – all the way to Gnomedex 2 in Iowa! Back then, he was working for PayPal in the Marketing department. These days, he has money that he’s just waiting to give to you! He’s a Venture Capitalist in the Silicon Valley.

Dave started doing angel investing a little when he left PayPal. He was working with some small companies, but started last year doing nothing more than investing money for others into companies and startups. This is what he does full time now, for places like Founder’s Fund.

When looking for someone to invest in, Dave says that he doesn’t invest much in ideas. There’s so many people who have already built websites. You don’t need to look at an idea… you can see what they’re already doing. He looks for people with good marketing and design skills – people who have a vision. He also looks for people who are doing something that are on the straight-and-narrow, such as productivity and home things. He likes to know that his investments are going to be things that are going to sell.

Dave chose to visit [re]Think Hawaii for the same reason the rest of us did – the food! Seriously, though, Dave wanted to be able to hang out and get ideas from people who hail from all walks of life. This conference merges people from every aspect of social media and technology that you can think of, and it’s an amazing way to get new perspectives on things.

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What Do You Toggle in MSConfig?

Chris — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 08:29:42 +0000

What Do You Toggle in MSConfig? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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I keep trying to tell Pixie that she can’t help someone remotely without installing some type of software that will allow her to do so cross-platform. GoToAssist will do this easily for her. I wanted to demonstrate the software for her, and for all of you. I decided to help Danny Minick with some questions he had about MSConfig. When’s the last time you used MSConfig to toggle any settings? What did you change and why?

MSConfig is a system configuration tool that allows you to troubleshoot and make changes to your system. I wouldn’t recommend going in here unless you know what it is you’re doing. You can change your boot method, and even manually choose what is allowed to start when the computer boots. You have to be very, very careful. Never disable something from there if you don’t know what it is for sure. It’s safe to remove things like QuickTime from auto-startup. However, many of the things listed there are necessary services for Windows.

The way that Windows handles programs when it starts is that it loads everything at the same time. This is where you run into issues, and slower startups. It makes more sense to me to have it open programs one by one by one. But alas – that’s not the way it’s done!

It doesn’t matter how fast your computer is. You can still get bogged down on your system start, simply because you’re trying to let too many things start at the beginning. There wasn’t anything wrong with Danny’s computer – he just wanted my opinion of what he could safely remove using MSConfig.

Using GoToAssist, there is no end to what I could have done to help Danny if he did have a problem. It would have allowed me to remotely control his computer and be able to diagnose and fix whatever was wrong. As a user at home, you can help your friends and family with it. As a business owner, you can save yourself both time and money by doing jobs right from your office, instead of on site!

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Manage Startup Items in OS X

Chris — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 05:00:58 +0000

Manage Startup Items in OS X is a post from Chris Pirillo

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http://live.pirillo.com/ – In Windows, if you want a program to run automatically on startup, you’ll need to go to Start – Programs – and drag the program you want into the Startup folder. In OS X, Apple has made it even easier than that. Go figure.

On my Mac, my Dock is on the left side of my screen. In order to place something into my automatic startup, all I have to do is right click on it in the Dock (or click and hold if you don’t have a right mouse button) and select “Open at Login” from the little pop-out menu. That’s it. Nice and simple! Of course, if I wanted to do things the hard way, I could go to System preferences and get to the accounts panel. There is a list of the programs that load automatically when I boot up. From there, I can browse to add a program and click “add”, or else highlight one already there and delete it. Gotta love simplicity and user-friendliness.

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How to Handle Remote Tech Support

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:30:00 GMT

Using GoToAssist is the easiest way to view and control another person's computer online. Use it to provide instant technical support to family, friends and customers. Start a session with just one click, and instantly connect with the other party.

Network Tools for Windows

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

You need these network tools, no matter which operating systems and networks you have to support. SolarWinds ipMonitor: Affordable Network Monitoring for SMBs. Get turnkey network, server and application availability monitoring with SolarWinds ipMonitor v9.0. This easy-to-use, reliable solution for SMBs delivers out-of-the-box availability monitoring so you always know exactly what's up with Active Directory, DNS, Exchange, FTP, Web, IMAP, MS SQL Server, and SMTP. Download your free trial today. Or, try their totally free tools! And, through 2/29, save 20% when you purchase ipMonitor 9.0.

Get Your Own Web Site

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

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VMware and Parallels for Virtual Machines

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

It doesn't matter if you're running on Windows or Mac OS X - every power user needs either Parallels or VMware (or both). There's never been an easier way to test software without destroying your primary operating system's stability. Think of how many times you wish you could press a 'reverse' button on your computer. Plus, there's no easier way to try new Linux distributions - see what all the fuss is about. Run Windows in OS X, run Linux in Windows, but the best way to do either is with VMware and/or Parallels.

Coupons for Online Shopping

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:56:13 GMT

This feed is fueled by Lockergnome Online Shopping and Coupon Codes

Before you shop next time, see if we have a coupon first.