Also: How a failed startup led to one founder’s suicide.
Google paid this man $100 million: Here’s his story [BUSINESS INSIDER]
TechCrunch later reported that Google paid Mohan more than $100 million in stock.
In the two years since Mohan signed the deal, Google’s stock price has increased about 35 percent, making Mohan’s deal worth as much as $150 million.
Over the past several weeks, we’ve spoken to his colleagues, clients, and competitors to learn more about Mohan. Some of them asked to remain anonymous out of deference to Mohan’s quiet, behind-the-scenes style. Mohan himself declined to comment. They say Mohan is the visionary who predicted how brand advertising would fund Internet, turned this vision into a plan, and then executed it.
The story of a failed startup and a founder driven to suicide [BUSINESS INSIDER]
Put more simply, Ecomom was broke. The 28-person startup — which had just raised $5 million six months earlier and more than $12 million total — ran out of cash. And no one left at the company seemed to know where it had gone.
Over the past six weeks, we have interviewed more than a dozen people close to Jody Sherman and his startup about what happened in those final months. They’re colleagues, friends, advisors, investors and confidantes. Many of them spoke on the condition of anonymity.
All are shocked by what happened. Many feel duped. And everyone was left wondering:
Who was Jody Sherman?
And what happened in the last few months of his life that caused it to end so tragically?
Facebook’s ‘Phone’ is another triumph of mediocrity [WIRED]
Over the past few days, lots of pundits have been asking who this is for. Facebook gave us an answer today: It’s for people who don’t care about a rich, full experience on the Internet, yet love Facebook. People who want to run apps, but are overwhelmed by them. People who want to connect with friends and family, but want it to be super easy to do so. For many people, Facebook is the Internet, just as AOL was before it. And just as Facebook is the best way for them to experience the Internet in a browser, Facebook Home is going to be the best way for those people to experience the Internet on a phone.
No TV? No subscription? No problem [THE NEW YORK TIMES]
But to the collective relief of nearly everyone I know, the companies with whom I spoke seemed to have little to no interest in curbing our sharing behavior — in part because they can’t. They have little ability to track and curtail their customers who are sharing account information, according to Jeff Cusson, senior vice president for corporate affairs at HBO. And, he said, the network doesn’t view the sharing “as a pervasive problem at this time.”
Allen Stern, blogging pioneer and entrepreneur, passes away — we will miss you Allen [GIGAOM]
Before blogging became a big business, Stern created a tech blog called Center Networks, which became a go-to destination for many in the early Web 2.0 movement. Later, he sold that business and shifted focus to a new startup called CloudContacts — and more recently, he moved from his home town of New York to Austin, Texas to start a company called Let’s Talk Fitness.
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