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Tesla Motors, the automobile startup with backers that include Sergey Brin and Larry Page, held a party tonight to mark the launch of its Menlo Park storefront. The store, which is the company’s second, will be open to the general public beginning this Tuesday.

Despite Tesla Motors’ well deserved reputation as a high-end car manufacturer, it is still very much a startup - the company’s $150 million in funding pales in comparison to coffers held by large automobile companies like Ferrari. As a result, Tesla has strived to create a atmosphere of style and sophistication at its showrooms without breaking the bank.

The new dealership is situated in Menlo Park, about 5 minutes away from downtown Palo Alto and Stanford University. The interior of the building is designed to be “industrial chic” - a strange mix of luxurious furniture (white leather sofas, marble tables) and the trimmings of a basic garage (concrete walls, exposed wooden ceilings). It works surprisingly well, keeping the store’s high-end customers at home without distracting from the showroom’s main attraction: the cars.

Ah, the cars. Tesla has half a dozen of their Tesla Roadster electric car on display, and they don’t disappoint. It’s hard to put into words how ridiculously sexy the Tesla Roadster is in person, so we’ve grabbed a lot of pictures. Suffice to say, as soon as you walk in the store, you’re going to want one.

Unfortunately, actually buying a Tesla Roadster is an involved and lengthy process. To reserve a car, first you’ll need to make a $5,000 deposit, which is mostly just to show you’re serious. To actually get a place on the 1,100 person long waiting list, you’ll need to pony up another $55,000 - making a grand total of $60,000. Of the 1100 people on the waitlist, 600 are for the 2008 model, which had a base cost of $98,000. The remainder of the list is for the 2009 model, which has been upped to a $109,000 base value, mostly to account for the weakened dollar.

Tesla is currently telling customers that the waitlist is one year long, but production is only just ramping up so that time frame may slip a bit. By weeks end there will be around 12 cars on the road, most of which are owned by company boardmembers and investors. For the time being, cars are being assembled at a rate of about 4 a week, with expectations that the company will be able to finish 40 a week early next year.

Unsurprisingly, you won’t be able to just waltz in and test drive a Roadster. To get the keys to one of these beauties, you’ll need to prove that you’re serious (namely, pay the initial $5000), or otherwise convince the dealership that you mean business. At least you have these pictures.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/340356086/

Well, here’s something that’s so ridiculous it couldn’t be made up. McDonald’s teamed up with MySpace to create a new jingle for the 40th anniversary of the Big Mac. The original song (two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce…) was created back in 1974. Over 1,000 user created songs and videos were submitted - the winner’s jingle becomes the official Big Mac song and will be featured in a McDonald’s Big Mac TV commercial.

Enter 29 year old Tamien Bain, who held up a McDonald’s at gunpoint when he was 14, was convicted as an adult and served 12 years in prison. He’s also one of the five finalists in the jingle competition (no. 4, the guy with the white tshirt and baseball cap).

The finalists were selected by a panel of judges. Apparently someone didn’t do a background check before making the final decisions. Or perhaps they did a background check and this is a publicity stunt. Either way, Bain has reportedly hired a PR person and is making the most of the contest.

I can’t wait to see the commercial, because he’s definitely going to win. Here’s his video submission:

Big Mac Chant

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/340243324/

Pressflip is a new blog search engine (it’s actually a relaunch of a site called Persai, which launched earlier this year). The idea is you do a search, train the engine by telling it which results aren’t interesting to you, and then wait for new results to come in over time.

The search results aren’t very deep compared to established blog search engines, there’s no RSS for the future search results that I can find and the training feature isn’t intuitive or explained clearly anywhere. Pressflip is far from launch ready, and under normal circumstances we’d add a page on Crunchbase for them and move on until it became interesting or went into the deadpool.

Persai/Pressflip has some notoriety because the founders, Ted Dziuba, Matt Kent and Kyle Shank, previously wrote a blog called Uncov, which focused primarily on tearing apart startups and the entrepreneurs behind them. Uncov has now been taken down, although a review is here) It was a blog that, while overly harsh at times, provided a good counterbalance to much of the sometimes overly positive coverage of startups. And, it was extremely funny.

But Uncov was just a hobby for the Pressflip founders as they raised small amounts of angel financing and worked away on their startup. Perhaps the workload from Pressflip became too much, or perhaps they realized that the startup they were building was turning into exactly the kind of thing that they would tear apart clinically on their blog, but they shut down Uncov just a few days before Persai first launched.

Pressflip/Uncov is a perfect illustration of The Man In The Arena quote from a 1910 Theodore Roosevelt speech given in Paris. It’s awfully easy to criticize the work of others but incredibly difficult to build something unique yourself. The Uncov guys are now in the arena, and failing. We’ll see if they have what it takes to take their hits and keep fighting.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/340125893/

Edopter is a unique concept that attempts to combine crowd-sourcing with internet buzz to predict new trends. It’s called “social trendcasting.”

The way it works, is by allowing users to generate “trends” according to what they think will catch on. Some trends are “cewebrities” (pictured below), “Batman: The Dark Knight,” and “tap water.” The user who makes the trend writes a “pitch” - the reason they think it will catch on. Then the Edopter system scans the web to measure current internet “buzz.” Users can join a trend, and give their pitch, upload photos and videos related to the trend, and discuss the trend with the other users in that trend. The more discussion and content you add, the more likely more people will join, thus increasing the value of the trend.

There is a point system that measures the trends based on the users involved, the internet buzz, and the time it’s been a trend. The points go up with each user, and down as time goes by. To join a trend, a user has to buy in with some of their points (each user starts with 500). The purchase price for a trend is its current worth, so users are encouraged to get in on trends early.

The Edopter “Showcase” is where users can trade in points for exclusive opportunities and other prizes. The showcase is currently under construction, with plans to open it up sometime in the near future.

Edopter recently launched their Facebook application so users can connect with friends already using the service and invite others. Through the application users can track other users’ favorite and recent trends, and or use the VS. feature to compare common trends and statistics.

The potential for a solid business model here is huge. If it were to take off (maybe its users and algorithm could predict if it will or not), they would have access to a very hard to reach demographic - early adopters. The trendsetters who are always on the lookout for the next new thing. There’s opportunities to sell sponsored trends, and promotions where users could earn more points. They could draw some inspiration from popular virtual currency Facebook applications like Friends for Sale. For example, using points as rewards for users that invite their friends, and become more involved in the site.

There are several sites with with similar concepts, but they mainly stay within one vertical. MediaPredict is a site where you buy shares in movies, music and books and predict milestones for each item. Another similar application is PicksPop, where users can predict and bet on celebrity gossip and pop culture. There’s also CoolSpotters, a site where users can “spot” cool clothes on celebrities and share with the community to get reviews and similar trends. What these sites lack in comparison to Edopter, is the proprietary algorithm that Edopter uses to predict the trends’ staying power. Edopter is also lacking a specific vertical, enabling users to predict and measure any trend they want.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/340093426/

Second quarter data is out on venture deals from the National Venture Capital Association and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Despite the IPO market drying up completely, the What-Me-Worry crowd on Sand Hill Road keep pumping money into venture deals at a steady pace. Venture capitalists invested $7.4 billion last quarter in 990 deals, compared to $7.5 billion in 997 deals during the first quarter (a number that looks like it was revised upwards from the $7.1 billion the same group originally reported last April). The average deal size last quarter was $7.5 million. (Click on the charts for bigger images).

The amount of money going into first-time financings is declining, with only 22 percent of VC money going to early stage deals. Late-stage and expansion deals are attracting more capital, a trend we saw last quarter as well. These deals are generally deemed more safe than first-time deals since these companies are further along and some of the early risks have been taken off the table.

Software is still the biggest sector attracting VC funds ($1.3 billion), followed by biotech ($1.1 billion), but both those sectors are seeing a slowdown in investments (down 19 percent and 14 percent year-over-year, respectively). The only sectors that saw increases was energy (up 102 percent year-over-year to $1.2 billion) and media (up 23 percent to $586 million).

There were a couple of bright spots in the report. Drilling down into Internet-specific and clean tech deals, VC optimism seems to be holding for now. They invested $1.5 billion in Internet deals, up 14 percent from last quarter. Clean tech financings were pretty much flat at $884 million.

If the IPO and M&A drought continue, it should have a deeper impact on current funding levels. But there is usually a lag period between the former going down and VCs waking up to the fact that the environment has changed (the two have been linked historically, despite current investments having a five-to-seven year horizon).

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/339832198/