Rami Alkarmi.Entrepreneur. Invest. Business Models

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With the $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr apparently wrapped up and ready to be announced Monday morning, Yahoo and its hard-charging CEO Marissa Mayer are making a big bet that the Internet pioneer can return to relevance.

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With the $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr apparently wrapped up and ready to be announced Monday morning, Yahoo and its hard-charging CEO Marissa Mayer are making a big bet that the Internet pioneer can return to relevance.

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When Jim Keenan, the social sales specialist, describes his work today, he’ll tell you that he’s “ushering salespeople from the old world into the social world” - the cold calling world to the Twitter world, the salespeople who call prospects incessantly to the salespeople who educate their prospects with relevant content. Keenan’s argument in the The Rise of Social Salespeople is that using social media to sell - increases profits.

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Wearable tech isn’t new but Credit Suisse (as cited by Barron’s here) is calling it “the next big thing” and forecasting the market to ramp from about $3B – $5B today to $50B over the next 3-5 years. The implications and opportunities for clinical healthcare (not just fitness/wellness) are intriguing. As this unfolds, it could easily be that the Credit Suisse forecast is overly conservative. One of the slides in the CS report included many of the devices that are well known in the mobile and digital health circles – including the new Shine by Misfit Wearables.

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At Betterment, we don?t do spring cleaning. We do spring efficiency. It?s the equivalent of clearing out the winter cobwebs once and never having to do it again.

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When asked who had the most influence on advertising in the 20th Century, most people point to David Ogilvy. Few remember Marion Harper Jr., whose influence on the business of advertising as it?s practiced today is even greater.

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I had to call my technical support contact last month about a simple billing question. When I finally got a live person, after enduring five minutes of Yanni’s greatest hits, her boredom just radiated through the phone. I guess I caught her mid-yawn. When I told her about my issue she asked me to wait while she pulled up my records. The silence between was broken only by her quiet sigh. Then I said, “Thank you for your help.” And something amazing happened – she warmed up. She said, “You’re welcome” and we quickly got to the bottom of my issue.

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Whenever a spunky,  growing startup gets sold to an established player - the cry goes out.  Users won’t like it.  The culture will be ruined.  The startup will be subsumed by it’s parent.  Sometimes it’s true,  but in the case of the Yahoo purchase of Tumblr,  I think there’s an arugument to be made that everyone wins.  Tumblr users,  Yahoo users,  and the investors and staff’s of both teams.  Here’s five reasons why critics are worried, and why their wrong.

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You might have thought the world of lethal autonomous robots would be sole be here in the United States, or Japan.  Both countries are working on their own version of robotic soldiers. And now Russia has joined their ranks.  Only their robo-cop has terrorists in its cross-hairs.

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A few years ago, then 13-year-old Nicky Bronner woke woke up the day after Halloween to find that his dad had taken away a big chunk of his Halloween Candy.

He was outraged. 

So he set out to prove his father wrong, but he soon realized that his dad was right. Candy is bad for you.

“It’s the only time I ever admitted to him he was right,” Nicky tells us. “I asked him why it couldn’t be done with just peanut butter and chocolate (Bronner’s favorite candy). That’s where the basis came from. We wanted to do [candy] the right way.”

Now 16 years old, Nicky is managing the task of co-running a startup with his father, two-time entrepreneur and angel investor Michael Bronner. 

UNREAL offers a line of candies that are just as delicious as their mainstream counterparts, but without all the junk. 

UNREAL doesn’t use any corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oils, artificial ingredients, genetically modified organisms, or preservatives. Instead, it uses all natural ingredients and is made with 40% less sugar than candies from major brands. 

But just because UNREAL’s candies are healthier, it doesn’t mean you should wolf down an entire bag of them. 

“It’s still candy,” Nicky says. “It’s better but we still prefer that when you want something to eat, you grab an Apple. But we’ve done our best so that when you want a candy bar, it’s a nice alternative [to traditional candies].”

Since Nicky is home-schooled, he’s not able to work full-time on the company, but hopes to become more involved in the company’s marketing efforts. 

But thanks to Bronner’s connections, UNREAL Candy already has a pretty impressive roster of celebrities who stand behind Unreal’s mission to unjunk candy. That includes musician John Legend, Square founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, actor Matt Damon, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, and football player Tom Brady. 

“People respect it so they want to get behind it,” Nicky says.

In a little less than a year since launching, Unreal has made its way into about 18,000 stores nationwide, including major retailers like CVS and Target. It expects to be in 25,000 stores by the end of this year. 

Other than celebrities, UNREAL Candy has also attracted some venture capitalists. Its raised “tens of millions” of dollars from Khosla Ventures and Raptor Consumer Partners. Over the last year, investors have put in nearly $350 million into food startups.

In the future, UNREAL plans to move beyond candy and unjunk traditional snack foods.

SEE ALSO: VC Slams Analyst Who Questions $350 Million Investment In Food Startups

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The lackluster IRS testimony so far suggests we may never know what happened, who did what, who knew, when they knew and worse. Confusion and Staff Troubles Rife at I.R.S. Office in Ohio. For both sides of the political spectrum that is sad, suggesting a cancer that may be hard to cut out. Steven Miller was in an uncomfortable position, and perhaps little is even his fault. But his testimony did the IRS and its thousands of employees no favors.

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Despite having a decent Metacritic rating of 73, the Star Trek Into Darkness movie failed to build on the domestic success that the original JJ Abrams reboot had established four years ago. The film, which was forecast to break the $100 million barrier over its extended weekend launch, made just $84 million ($2 million Wednesday, $11.5 million Thursday, $22 million Friday, $27.2 million Saturday and an estimated $21.2 million Sunday). And that’s the second consecutive piece of bad news for Paramount Pictures.

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