(Founder of watches) Napkin Labs: Should startups pitch close to venture capital?

Josh Zelman works for TechCrunch, as producer, writer, editor and correspondent. ? Read More

Riley Gibson — CEO and co-founder of the Boulder-based napkin Labs, a startup that helps companies manage and involve their Facebook fans and twitter followers. Napkin Labs launched an updated version of the service today (read, napkin Labs allows brands to better understand their customers (and turn them into colleagues) to launch Gibson flew to New York to get advice on building your business during working hours with a hunch co-founder Chris founder Dixon and first round capital managing partner Josh Kopelman.

Based in Colorado, Gibson alleged that his company may be at a disadvantage, because it is not near large sources of venture capital. He wondered if the move will help. Kopelman don't think and react, saying, "I'm not sure it makes sense to go to be near VC ... I think you tend to move if you find that you're starved for talent, if you can't hire to fill positions at the right level. We financed companies throughout the country. "

Dixon chime in with a tongue-in-cheek response that is often better to abandon sources of venture capital.

After an exchange of Gibson asked Dixon and Kopelman on raising money. The question is the napkin Labs to try to reach the defined indicators to make money, or he doesn't worry about benchmarks and just go for it? Dixon and Kopelman take a similar position, with Kopelman, stating "probably makes sense to have just a handful of conversations, testing the appetite and the reaction of investors." he pointed out that you don't turn, fund-raising and shuts down, but rather is an ongoing process to attract sponsors.

Make sure to watch all the videos for additional ideas, along with previous episodes, the founder of the clock with a picture of Dispatch.io, Schedit and profitably.

Napkin Labs allows you to easily locate information from your fans, followers and customers. Our online platform provides tools for market research, brainstorming and rapid, simple, product evaluation ...

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Josh Kopelman is a venture capitalist and managing partner of first round capital. Previously, Kopelman founded Half.com which was acquired by eBay in 2000 year. He remained with eBay for ... Read More

Chris Dickson currently works as Director and co-founder of hunch. He is also a contributing writer for TechCrunch. He was previously CEO and co-founder of SiteAdvisor, which ...

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After the auction, Dropbox is close to the choice of investors — Round put in $ 10 billion

MG Siegler wrote to TechCrunch since 2009. It covers web, mobile, social, big companies, small companies, in fact all. And Apple. A lot. Prior to TechCrunch he covered various technology beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, mg attended the University of Michigan. He had previously lived in Los Angeles, where he worked in Hollywood and in San Diego where ... ? Read More

We are known for a week now, Dropbox has been talking to investors about the new mega round of financing. The company, which just raised $ 7.2 million in seed and series a round in 2007, aspires to something between $ 200 million and $ 300 million, we have heard. But now we know a little more. And we have heard something from one source, which is nothing short of shocking.

Dropbox auction last week, during which investors made their requests to participate in the new round, numerous sources tell us. This week, Dropbox, met with the VCs who bets and collect term sheets. All they have to make that decision now.

Here's the really crazy stuff: one of the proposals under consideration could push the Dropbox score post-money $ 10 billion , one source tells us. Another source said that was inaccurate and considered the final evaluation will settle towards the bottom of the value of $ 5 to $ 10 billion we reported last month.

Score from 10 billion dollars would be amazing for a number of reasons. But consider this: Pandora and LinkedIn, two companies recently became public, have market caps of $ 2.16 billion and $ 8.63 billion, respectively. Yes, start with just 65 staff members may be worth more money on paper than these two public darlings.

Also consider: Yahoo has a Capitalization of $ 15 billion. And our parents, AOL, capitalization of only $ 1.72 billion.

Dropbox has 25 million users (many of whom are paying) downloading files 200 million a day.

More to come soon.

Dropbox was founded in 2007, Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi. Frustrated when working with multiple computers, drew was inspired to create a service that will bring people ...

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