Keen On | TechCrunch

How Cloud Films Wants To Keep Movies Authentic In The Age Of The Selfie

Andrew Keen — Fri, 25 Apr 2014 16:26:38 +0000

The innovative film maker Tiffany Shlain isn't a great fan of selfies. They are mostly two dimensional, she told me at a FutureCast salon at the AT&T Foundry in Palo Alto.

Keen On… Nanotechnology: How It Changes Everything

Andrew Keen — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 18:00:09 +0000

Matthew Puttnam is exactly the kind of guy one would expect to found a nanotechnology company.

Keen On… Scale: How To Spread Excellence From The Few To The Many

Andrew Keen — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 21:39:35 +0000

Bob Sutton is one of Silicon Valley's most influential business gurus.

Keen On… Taxis: The Real Dangers of Riding In an Uber Car

Andrew Keen — Fri, 21 Mar 2014 17:00:15 +0000

According to Bill Rouse, the GM of Yellow Cabs of Los Angeles, riding in an Uber car is more dangerous than catching a traditional cab.

Keen On… Iridescent: How Girls Are 3 Years Ahead Of Everyone Else In The Race To Innovate

Andrew Keen — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 21:08:30 +0000

Tara Chklovski is the founder and CEO of Iridescent, a remarkable Google funded non profit dedicated to encouraging young women's innovation in technology.

Keen On… Success: Why 99.9% Of Tech Companies Aren’t WhatsApp or Instagram

Andrew Keen — Thu, 06 Mar 2014 19:00:22 +0000

Reggie Aggarwal, the founder and CEO of Cvent, describes himself as a "15 year overnight success".

Keen On… Absolute Value: What Really Influences Customers In The Age Of (Nearly) Perfect Information

Andrew Keen — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 21:15:21 +0000

How do we decide what to buy? According to Itamar Simonson and Emanuel Rosen, the authors of Absolute Value: What Really Influences Customers in the Age of (Nearly) Perfect Information, we used to make buying choices based on brand. It was guesswork, they say. And often we were duped by sexy advertising campaigns that presented bad products in a good way. And then the Internet came along.

Keen On… Big Bang Disruption: How The Innovator’s Dilemma Has Become The Innovator’s Nightmare

Andrew Keen — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 19:00:14 +0000

According to Downes, the innovator's dilemma has now been replaced by what he calls the "innovator's nightmare". Today's new technology products are so much better and cheaper than legacy products that they can literally wipe out old industries overnight.

Keen On… Hacking Gender: How Women In Silicon Valley Can Become Jane Bond

Andrew Keen — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 21:36:20 +0000

Despite incremental improvements, the gender bias issue in Silicon Valley remains an important one -- and one that could benefit from special attention. Earlier this month, Y Combinator's Jessica Livingston announced that the Silicon Valley startup incubator would be putting on a conference dedicated especially to female founders. And along similar lines, I produced a sold-out event last week at the San Francisco office of BloombergBETA entitled Hacking Gender.

Keen On… Slava Rubin: How Indiegogo Is Reinventing Capitalism

Andrew Keen — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 19:38:09 +0000

It was one of those coincidences that social media types call serendipitous. There I was, wandering around the basement of Las Vegas' Venetian hotel at CES, innocently minding my own business, when who should I bump into but Indiegogo co-founder and CEO Slava Rubin. It was too good an opportunity to turn down. With Marius Klausen a product developer at Airtame, one of Indiegogo's most popular recent campaigns, acting as spontaneous cameraman, I finally got the chance to drag the elusive Rubin onto my show.

Keen On 2014: Apple, Apple & Apple

Andrew Keen — Sat, 11 Jan 2014 10:30:43 +0000

Having reviewed 2013 with me, Robert Scoble now turns his Google Glass eyes forward to 2014. What, I asked him, are going to be the really big deals in 2014?

Keen On… The 2013 Debacle: Why Gavin Newsom Says The Government Is On A Collision Course With The Future

Andrew Keen — Mon, 30 Dec 2013 19:00:06 +0000

It may be the holiday season, but Gavin Newsom, California's tech savvy Lieutenant Governor, is as mad as hell. And he's not going to take it any more. The fury of California's second most powerful state politician is, ironically, directed at government itself. After what Newsom called "the debacle" of Obama's Healthcare.gov roll-out, he says that we now know how fundamentally useless government is when it comes to what he calls the "procurement" of technology.

Keen On… Innovation: Is Silicon Valley Losing Its Mojo?

Andrew Keen — Thu, 26 Dec 2013 21:26:47 +0000

Perhaps best known for his definitive book about Facebook, David Kirkpatrick is one of tech's smartest and best informed writers. He now runs a media startup called Techonomy, which -- through a series of annual conferences in Detroit and Tucson -- focuses on the impact of technological innovation on the broader economy.

Keen On… 2013: Robert Scoble’s Person And Company Of The Year

Andrew Keen — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 20:58:51 +0000

2013 has been kind to one of Silicon Valley's most iconic characters - the blogger, tech evangelist and writer Robert Scoble. He published a well received new book, Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data and the Future of Privacy, with Shel Israel, that not only has already sold 10,000 copies but has also received corporate sponsorship from ten technology companies including Rackspace and Microsoft.

Keen On…Jessica Rosenworcel: Why Silicon Valley And Washington DC Can’t Live Without Each Other

Andrew Keen — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 22:17:56 +0000

There are, of course, many libertarians in Silicon Valley who see Washington DC as the mortal enemy of innovation. But according to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, who was appointed to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by Barack Obama in 2012, Silicon Valley needs to "participate more" in DC.

Keen On… The Future of Money: Kickstarter and the Bitcoin Climax

Andrew Keen — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 21:00:20 +0000

Having raised over $37,000 on Kickstarter to make a TV show about the future of money, Heather Schlegel knows a thing or two about both social and financial value.

Keen On… The Future Starts Here: Why AOL Might Be The New Hollywood Studio

Andrew Keen — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 20:31:15 +0000

At last count, Tiffany Shlain's massively successful new AOL short film series, The Future Starts Here, has already racked up 8.5 million views. An eight part series about life in our digital age, Shlain's new series includes such off-beat subjects as Technology Shabbat and the hilarious Tech Etiquette, which she told me was inspired by "everyone becoming total jerks with their cellphones". The purpose of the series, she told me, was to create 3-6 minute videos designed to encourage her viewers to wrestle with big ideas about technology.

Keen On… Apple Versus Google: The Dogfight Over A $250 Billion Industry

Andrew Keen — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 20:00:37 +0000

The two biggest dogs in Silicon Valley are Google and Apple, and according to the writer Fred Vogelstein, they are waging a war for control of the $250 billion content industry. In his new book Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution, Vogelstein argues that this titanic struggle between the Android and iOS operating systems will determine how we get our content in the digital age. Like the Apple versus Microsoft war over the personal computer, Vogelstein believes that this will be a "winner-take-all" fight. "History," he says, "suggests there will be a winner".

Keen On… Amazon: What Startup Entrepreneurs Can Learn From The Ever Innovative Jeff Bezos

Andrew Keen — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 19:00:58 +0000

While Jeff Bezos' wife, McKenzie, only gave Brad Stone's new book about Amazon one star, most critics have been much more generous about the "engrossing" The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon.

Keen On… Social Media: The First 2,000 Years

Andrew Keen — Thu, 31 Oct 2013 18:15:55 +0000

How old is social media? Maybe we can date it from the birth of Facebook in February 2004. Or perhaps we can go back to 2002, to when Friendster was founded. Or even way, way, way back to digital antiquity - back to 1997, when Reid Hoffman founded the first social media website, SocialNet. No, social media is actually older, 2,000 years older, than Facebook, Friendster or SocialNet.