Posts Tagged ‘startups’

What exactly goes on in that garage of yours? Odds are that your garage is used to bring the car in out of the rain or snow, as storage for lawn implements, and maybe for the occasional oil change or other maintenance task. In garages around the world, some pretty amazing things might be happening at this very moment. After all, the garage is where it all began for a handful of major companies.

Hewlett Packard

For example, did you know that HP was started in a garage? William Hewlett and David Packard became friends in 1934 during a two-week camping trip following graduation from Stanford University. They rented a garage in Palo Alto and got to work with a mere $538 and a used drill press. Their first product was an audio oscillator used to test sound equipment, with paint baked on the panels in the oven in the kitchen. The HP Model 200A put them on the map, and the rest is history.

Wall Street Journal

On the first day of Launch Conference in San Francisco, we got to meet a lot of great companies. Entrepreneurs, investors, and developers gathered to talk about the latest and greatest upcoming companies and ideas. Here are our three favorite gems.

High Def Humanity

It was “humanity in high def”. That’s how Uber CEO Travis Kalanick described his night as an Uber driver. As the evening wore on and his clientele grew more inebriated, the social interactions he had fascinated him.

Kalanick went on to encourage people to do what they loved. “I heard a hundred no’s a day for six years straight.” If he hadn’t been working on something he loved, it would have been impossible to keep going.

Robot Cops Are Coming

“As much as I’m scared of it, I kind of want one,” Jason Calacanis, founder and host of Launch voiced the general audience sentiment. Knightscope CEO William Santana Li had just walked us through the features of his five foot tall, 300 pound security machine, which has the ability to scan license plates and identify sex offenders using facial recognition.

Continue reading “Wise Words from the Launch of Launch Conference” »