It's more of a "how are you paying?" than "what are you doing?" kind of business. Square Inc. is a new startup cofounded by Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Jim McKelvey which will allow businesses and individuals to take credit card payments from customers anywhere. Receipts and confirmations are paperless and get sent to buyers via text message or email. While the media believes it is set to shake up the credit card processing industry, it has also committed to donate a penny on every transaction a merchant takes to a cause of their choice. Square is starting business with $10 million in venture capital funding and is of course tweeting the process; you can see it in action here or try it at Sightglass Coffee in San Francisco.
posted by cgomez on Dec 1, 2009 - 65 comments

Reddit founders Kn0thing and Spez have left the building. The social media juggernaut's founders Alexis (Kn0thing) and Steve (Spez) have declined to renew their contracts, prompting much discussion and speculation on reddit itself, and the incubator that helped it start up, Ycombinator.
posted by khafra on Oct 27, 2009 - 28 comments

Like iScribble and Oekaki before it, DoInk.com is a place for people to create collaborative artwork online. The difference? It's for animation. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi on Apr 20, 2009 - 2 comments

What happens when a former NASA software engineer and a co-founder of Wired magazine decide to start up a chocolate company? TCHO Ventures is trying to make single-bean varietal chocolate varieties that best express the component flavors of chocolate, which they've identified as "chocolate", "nutty", "fruity", "floral", "earthy", and "citrus". To test this concept, they've been "beta-testing" their chocolate in plain brown wrappers, and collecting feedback. The result is good chocolate, with just a hint of viral marketing.
posted by kaszeta on Oct 2, 2008 - 26 comments

So apostrophree corrects these kinds of errors before people see them, preventing employees from spending time posting corrections and engaging in online flame wars about English usage?
posted by blasdelf on Aug 12, 2008 - 94 comments

Start-up Junkies. An eight-part documentary on hulu about the genesis and growth of a multi-million dollar startup company.
posted by norabarnacl3 on May 24, 2008 - 16 comments

In an artificial world, only extremists live naturally. Or: You weren't meant to have a boss. On the other hand, maybe you are.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Mar 21, 2008 - 36 comments

They claimed they would destroy all television with their business. $100 million and one cast member of First Kid later, all they had were massive amounts of failure, tremendous parties with Bryan Singer, and many, many, many allegations of sexual molestation. Now they hide in the Spanish Riviera and hire Chinese sweatshop workers to mine for World of Warcraft items. Check as well the original 2000 LA Times expose on the company, to say nothing of the "gay pedophile version of Silver Spoons" which remains their finest artistic achievement. via boingboing [more inside]
posted by Sticherbeast on Nov 16, 2007 - 49 comments

Pixoh is a new online simple image editor in the vein of PXN8. Pixoh, however, allows quick image import and export from Flickr or upload any other webpage via bookmarklet. At the moment, only the most basic of editing tools are available, but the creators - in the spirit of Web2.0 openness - promise new features based on user votes. Effect for MeFi? Oversized inline images won't know what hit 'em.
posted by youarenothere on Mar 7, 2006 - 7 comments

PRANGSTGRÜP: Startup Sound [via Engadget]
posted by cmicali on Oct 21, 2005 - 22 comments

Can't think at home? Working from home, but feeling isolated?

Is this the latest new fangled fad in office space concepts?
posted by blahblah on Jun 22, 2004 - 18 comments

People are talking. Now, someone's listening. Late-from-the-gate tech startup BuzzMetrics "analyzes, measures, monitors, & influences the unaided consumer discussions that naturally occur in online communities." If that's not spooky enough, they continue: "Some consumers have more influence over public opinion than others, but targeting them has always been extremely difficult." BuzzMetrics is happy to identify negative posters and research their posting histories, among other services. Does this toe an ethical line? Does it change how you post to online conversations? Oh, yeah -- they're hiring.
posted by busbyism on Oct 10, 2002 - 9 comments

Get your snail mail by e-mail. This startup will scan in your postal mail, e-mail you the images, and snail mail back your e-mailed reply. All for a monthly fee of $30 (or $40 for color scans). They offer CD-ROM archiving and optionally weed out the junk mail. Anyone want to try this out and post their experiences?
posted by waxpancake on Feb 20, 2002 - 23 comments

Startup.com the movie...I guess it was only a matter of time before a documentary like this was made. It's produced by the team that did "The War Room." (There's an NYTimes article here.)
posted by treedream on Apr 30, 2001 - 2 comments

Observe a startup. Some startups use a combination of openness and secrecy and while they're getting their act together. REMO (a quirky independent retailer who used to run a popular shop font in my hometown of Sydney) is letting the whole world see everything while they make the transformation to a web-only up-market general store for the whole world.
posted by grestall on Mar 29, 2000 - 5 comments

Bob Metcalfe on how to be a startup millionaire. I love Bob, ever since he left 3com, he's been a prolific writer on the tech industry. This time he tells how to grow a successful company in 8 easy steps.
posted by mathowie on Nov 19, 1999 - 0 comments

Marc Andreesen announced his new startup, LoudCloud yesterday. The first thing I heard from everyone was 'What in the hell is LoudCloud supposed to mean?' Well, if you take a look at Marc Andreesen's domain ownership record at NSI, you can see that LoudCloud was only one of a dozen bizarre names he bought.
posted by mathowie on Oct 27, 1999 - 0 comments