This Week in Startups

If you've ever looked at Reddit or come across a funny animal picture online, chances are good you've visited imgur. With 128m unique visitors per month, the photo sharing site is both storage and social network. Alan Schaaf founded Imgur while he was still in college at Ohio University, frustrated by poor image sharing options on Reddit. After 5 years bootstrapping - and all that insane traffic - the company took on venture capital for the first time this year: $40m from Andreessen Horowitz and Reddit itself. Jason sits down with Alan to ask whether imgur and Reddit are competitors and how the company will grow with the influx of funding.

In the mid 2000s, Flickr was a red hot startup. Cofounder Stewart Butterfield gets really honest with Jason talking about the early days of Flickr (initially as a tool for a failed game company), its acquisition by Yahoo and how he and the burgeoning photo site changed there. His next big project, Slack, is a IRC-style workplace chat tool that's the first product from his next company, Tiny Speck. Listen in to find out how this, too, was an enterprise tool born of a game that didn't last.

StyleSeat gives beauty and wellness professionals access to online scheduling and makes it easier for consumers to find appointments nearby. Investors include Dave Morin of Path, Uber cofounders Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, Ashton Kutcher, Cowboy Ventures, Lowercase Capital and 500 Startups. Not all of them were convinced at the outset, however. It took awhile to convince Silicon Valley guys who go to SuperCuts (aka Chris Sacca) awhile to understand how valuable the marketplace could be. But now stylists are growing their business, typically by 70% in the first 15 months on StyleSeat, gaining an individual reputation, and accessing tools to expand their marketing efforts. To the tune of 200k+ service providers. Jason Calacanis sits down with StyleSeat founder Melody McCloskey to talk about being a first-time founder, what drew her to the business, and how tech is changing for women.

The CEO of VC-backed ad startup RadiumOne got off too easily on domestic battery charges. In legal news, the FCC's next attempt at writing net neutrality rules will likely include a "fast lane" to allow ISPs to charge Netflix, Disney, and others extra for better speeds. Aereo hits the Supreme Court, Google may add wifi to its rapidly expanding fiber offering, and HBO's back catalogue will now be available to non-subscribers on Amazon Prime. Plus, in the Bing Launch of the Week: 3D printing with circuits, a "lamp" listening device that tweets the conversations it overhears, and on Kickstarter, the Ion light pairs with your phone, and changes colors to match the music. Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times, Amy Schatz of Re/code, and long-time TWIST friend Tyler Crowley join us.

In the early phases of your startup, do you need a cofounder? Who's the right person and what kind of prior relationship should you have? Is it helpful for fundraising? And if you're not a technical person, how do you convince a coding ninja to get on board? In a new series from This Week in Startups, Jason Calacanis tackles common questions in Startup Basics, brought to you by WSGR. As a serial entrepreneur and angel investor, Jason has been on both sides of the table. Now he share his advice with you in short segments, focused on one question. Plus, key advice from investor-turned-coach Jerry Colonna, and VC Mark Suster.

Why start a seed-stage VC firm? For Hunter Walk and Satya Patel, they wanted to work together again. The friends met at Google in the early 2000s as product managers on AdSense. Hunter joined the YouTube team when Google acquired it, Satya eventually moved on to Twitter, and to become a VC. Yes, they could have retired on those pre-IPO Google stock options. Instead, they founded Homebrew. Less than a year old, their initial $25m fund quickly grew to $35m, primarily from institutions. In this episode, we go deep on Google's inner workings: Hunter and Satya tell Jason who was really running the company when Eric Schmidt was CEO, how Larry Page has streamlined where questions and answers come from, and why YouTube on its own could be worth $75b. Plus, how starting a small VC firm to fund seed-stage startups, is a lot like raising a seed round at a startup.

Yahoo is bidding to become the default search on the iPhone and iPad. And while Marissa Mayer has high-level connections at Apple, including designer Jony Ive, it's very unlikely that Apple will ditch Google and Bing any time soon, according to Danny Sullivan. Founding editor at Search Engine Land, he's covered the world of search for 14 years. No formal presentation has been made yet, but Yahoo is pushing hard toward the pitch, according to internal sources scooped up by Re/code's Kara Swisher. How do we really focus our attention online? Is the emphasis on clicks and social sharing for web publishers overshadowing the attention that readers give? Namely to high quality content? Tony Haile of Chartbeat wrote an essay for Time based on the company's data, and explains in detail. Plus, Google snatches Titan Aerospace away from Facebook, Hotel Tonight lets you peek ahead at room rates all next week. And, in the Bing Launch of the Week: editing video of your triumphs inside the PS4, a rolling pocket-sized robot printer is nearing half a million dollars on Kickstarter, and some college hackers have cracked Siri to turn on your lights, control a Nest thermostat, even unlock a Tesla.

I have a great idea but need money to make it happen. How do I network with angel investors? Where do I make the connection? And what's the best way to reach out? In a new series from This Week in Startups, Jason Calacanis tackles common questions in Startup Basics, brought to you by WSGR. As a serial entrepreneur and angel investor, Jason has been on both sides of the table. Now he share his advice with you in short segments, focused on one question.

The concept for Shyp is simple: take a picture of your stuff, Shyp picks it up, packs it up for you and sends it off. You pay $5 for the pickup plus the cost of postage. Just launched in San Francisco, Shyp has its own warehouse and drivers - its Shyp Heroes - to speed up the 1st mile of shipping. How do they stack up in a crowded delivery and transportation space that includes Postmates, Grubhub, and now Uber RUSH? Cofounder and CEO Kevin Gibbon tells Jason where they stand now, and about their future expansion plans. Plus, why eBay sellers, Etsy vendors and even large enterprise companies are going crazy for the service.

Heartbleed is tearing the guts out of the internet this week: a bug that attacks Open SSL encryption, affecting Yahoo, OKCupid and many more sites that use the encryption standard. The troubled Healthcare.gov rollout led U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, to resign. Plus, in the Bing LAUNCH of the Week, Uber is launching a courier service for packages, using bike messengers in Manhattan, the Flatiron School charges $12k to turn students into professional devs in 3 months, and on Kickstarter, listening to the biofeedback of plants.

Mark Suster has the monkey off his back. Nearly seven years into his career in venture capital, he's seen some amazing returns this year. AOL acquired Gravity for $90m. Apple picked up Burstly, the company behind Test Flight). Not least: Maker Studios sold to Disney for $500m.

Namebrand startups are raising huge rounds of financing this week: $250m for Lyft and $40m for photo-hosting site imgur. Jason goes on a full-tilt rant against homophobia in corporations as panelists Liz Gannes of Re/code and author James Altucher discuss the ouster of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich. Eich donated $1,000 to the Prop 8 campaign in 2008, angering many employees and fans of the Firefox browser. Is Mozilla's community more sensitive to political statements given its unique structure? Or should tech workers be prepared to espouse particular political beliefs? Plus, in the LAUNCH of the Week, Amazon's Fire TV hopes to compete with Apple and Roku. Khosla Ventures' Keith Rabois is preparing an eBay-for-homes, which will likely launch this summer. And Indiegogo campaign iHear wants sophisticated hearing aids to be more affordable.

Six startups pitch Jason and Tyler in 60 seconds or less. From preserving the memory of your favorite meals, to finding serendipitous moments to connect with people, to letting kids curate the vacation, these founders are passionate about their products with our tough judges. Plus, target your competitors' fans in Facebook ads, network over Bluetooth Low Energy, and the email assistant that makes scheduling meetings a breeze.

What if instead of upgrading your phone every couple of years, you could switch out the camera, add more memory, or change out just the screen? Seems like the opposite of how smartphone manufacturers operate. But Project Ara, once part of Motorola, now staying with Google's ATAP team, is working on just that. Plus, the small plug in device that lets you communicate directly with your car, beaming all kinds of information right to your phone. It's called Automatic, it works with every car made since 1997, and it's incredibly affordable. Don't miss these incredible talks and demos from LAUNCH Festival, even better on video.

Mitch Wainer called in to This Week in Startups in 2010. He was working in marketing, with no equity, and wasn't learning. Jason said, go join TechStars, find cofounders, and create something you're passionate about. Fast forward 4 years. Mitch is a cofounder and the chief marketing officer for Digital Ocean, an SSD-based cloud provider that just raised $37.2m from Andreessen Horowitz and is growing like crazy.