Instagram Has 1.75 Million Users And Now $7 Million In New Funding (AAPL)

Instagram, the red-hot iPhone photo startup, just made a couple big announcements: It now has 1.75 million users who upload 290,000 photos a day, which is huge. And it just raised $7 million in new financing from Benchmark Capital and some individual investors, like Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, ex-Googler Chris Sacca, and Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo. It's interesting to see how the Facebook Mafia has split its bets between Instagram and rival Path, which was founded by ex-Facebook star Dave Morin, and just announced an $8+ million round led by Kleiner Perkins and Index Ventures. Benchmark's Matt Cohler (early Facebook exec) just made a big bet on Instagram, but he's also a personal investor in Path, according to CrunchBase. Adam D'Angelo (also early Facebook exec) made a smaller bet on Instagram. Meanwhile, Path counts The Founders Fund, early Facebook backer Peter Thiel's fund, among its investors, as well as Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz and current/former Facebook execs Sam Lessin, Chris Kelly, Ruchi Sanghvi, Paul Buchheit, etc. (Some of whom may have also invested in Instagram and/or Picplz, too; we may never know.) Big bets only, here's who is backing whom in the mobile photo wars: Picplz: Andreessen Horowitz Instagram: Benchmark Capital, Andreessen Horowitz (seed) Path: Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, First Round Capital, Digital Garage, The Founders Fund What's Instagram? Click here to see how it works →Join the conversation about this story »

Silicon Valley's Biggest Stars Are Making A Huge Push For Immigration Reform

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped into the center of the immigration debate Thursday with the launch of a new lobbying group aimed at fixing the country's "strange immigration policy." "We have a strange immigration policy for a nation of immigrants," Zuckerberg wrote in a Washington Post op-ed announcing his new group, FWD.us. "And it’s a policy unfit for today’s world." FWD.us has offices in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C., and is lead by entrepreneurial and technology stars, along with political operatives from both left and right. More than 30 high-profile names in Silicon Valley are backing the initiative, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Marissa Mayer of Yahoo!, and Eric Schmidt of Google. According to Zuckerberg's op-ed, the group will call on lawmakers to adopt a new approach to the immigration issue for the "knowledge economy," asking them to offer talented immigrants a path to citizenship, specifically by streamlining the H-1B visa process. He also calls for a greater focus in science, technology, engineering, and math — an area in which the U.S. has fallen further behind. And in a nod to Republicans, Zuckerberg also calls for securing the border before offering undocumented workers a path to citizenship. Here's his group's five-point plan:  Secure the border Streamline the H-1B visa process and allowing talented guest workers to stay Develop better employment verification Provide a pathway to citizenship for immigrants currently residing in the U.S. illegally Reform the legal immigration system Aside from the changes FWD.us wants to the H-1B visas, the plan is not that far off from the four-point immigration reform plan offered by President Obama in January. One big supporter is Max Levchin, who co-founded PayPal seven years after immigrating to the U.S. in 1991. "America is a nation of immigrants and I am exhibit A in that book," says Levchin in a short video on the site, "and stifling that, or reducing the inflow of brainpower into this country seems, simply upside down." In addition to Zuckerberg, FWD.us founders include: Aditya Agarwal (Dropbox), Jim Breyer (Accel Partners), Matt Cohler (Benchmark), Ron Conway (SV Angel), John Doerr (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Drew Houston (Dropbox), Chamath Palihapitiya (The Social+Capital Partnership), Ruchi Sanghvi (Dropbox) and FWD.us President Joe Green.  Major contributors include Brian Chesky (Airbnb), Chris Cox (Facebook), Paul Graham (Y Combinator), Reed Hastings (Netflix), Chad Hurley (AVOS/YouTube) Josh James (Domo/Omniture), Max Levchin (PayPal/Yelp), Joe Lonsdale (Palantir), Andrew Mason (Groupon), Marissa Mayer (Yahoo), Mary Meeker (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers), Dave Morin (Path), Elon Musk (Tesla/SpaceX), Hadi Partovi (Code.org), Alison Pincus (One Kings Lane), Mark Pincus (Zynga), Keith Rabois (Khosla Ventures), Hosain Rahman (Jawbone), David Sacks (Yammer), Eric Schmidt (Google), Kevin Systrom (Instagram), Padmasree Warrior (Cisco), and Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures). Please follow Politics on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »    

The Craigslist Ad That Found Us An Incredible CTO

In 2009, Irving Fain and Josh Bowen were ex-finance guys with an idea for a music loyalty startup. They searched high and low for a technical cofounder at meetups and networking events.  Finally, they posted this ad on Craigslist: Ninja Developer & Leader Needed to Assume CTO Position of Music Start-up Seasoned music & finance executives looking for a technical leader who can do it all! We are taking a proven business model and applying it to an industry starving for innovation. Looking for someone who can get into the weeds, build a killer beta product and assume the responsibilities of a CTO. Must be skilled in multiple languages & technologies or able to quickly learn new ones. Individual must be ready for a start-up environment with a substantial equity share. Please only apply if you are the real deal - we are looking for a rockstar. When they received a resume from Michael Montero, they thought it was fake.  "This guy was too good to be true," Fain told us.  Montero had two hugely successful prior companies. Montero created and sold one of the first social networks, Community Connect, for $38 million in 2007. After that he sold another company, Fotolog for $90 million. A giddy Fain and Bowen met with Montero and instantly hit it off. They even had a technical friend screen Montero to confirm his stellar resume. "He said, 'I don't know how you found this guy but he's incredible," Fain recalls.  Now the three have built and grown CrowdTwist, a customer loyalty and social media analytics platform, into one of the top NYC startups to watch. Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »See Also:The 31 Best New Tech Founders In NYCHere's The TechStars Class Of Summer 2011Dropbox Is Looking For Big Money At A $5 To $10 Billion Valuation

While The Market Implodes, The Guys At Dropbox Quietly Line Their Pockets With Cold Hard Cash

Internet storage service Dropbox is raising a huge round, everybody is reporting. The latest news: founders Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi are keeping a big pile of that money for themselves.  VentureBeat originally reported that Houston and Ferdowsi would be taking  "the 'vast majority' of the funds raised in a new $200-$300 million round." Later, a source told VentureBeat "majority" is the wrong word. Anywho. Sounds like a lot of money, either way. It used to be rare for startup founders to take any money off the table until some sort of liquidity event, like and IPO or a sale. But starting in 2008, that trend really began to change. Since then, the founders behind startups like Twitter, Facebook, Groupon, Foursquare, and Zynga have all sold big chunks of the equity to later stage investors. Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »See Also:Dropbox Is Close To Finishing A Mega-Round That Could Value It At $5-$10 BillionA Quick Theory About That Disastrous Obama SpeechCHART OF THE DAY: LinkedIn Has Been Mauled In This Crash

Inside Facebook's Big Re-Org: Meet The Winners

Facebook has reorganized its technical teams and product groups around around five leaders. Each will report directly to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In a statement, Facebook says it did this "in order to streamline the product development process." 800 million people use the Facebook products and services these five guys have developed and will develop. That makes them more than just the five most powerful people at Facebook.   It makes them some of the most influential people in the tech world.Bret Taylor is working on the Facebook phone

Bret Taylor came to Facebook through the acquisition of FriendFeed. Later he became CTO.  Since the spring of 2011, however, he's been working on Facebook's secret phone project. The first phone is expected to come out next year, from Samsung. Sam Lessin is Zuckerberg's college buddy

Sam Lessin befriended Mark Zuckerberg while both were at Harvard.  His father is a famously wealthy businessman. His girlfriend is a Wall Street Journal reporter. He came to Facebook in May when it bought his failed Dropbox competitor, Drop.io.  He's already had a big impact, having lead the development of the redesigned Facebook profile, called Timeline.  We imagine his focus will remain in profile product development. Mike Schroepfer will head Facebook engineering

For a long time, Schroepfer was Facebook's most impressive engineering recruit, having joined the company from Mozilla at a time when it was having a surprisingly difficult time attracting new talent. Facebook put Schroepfer out front when it launched Subscribe – a product that allows users to follow each other without becoming friends.  See the rest of the story at Business Insider Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.See Also:Facebook Security Flaw Allowed Access To Mark Zuckerberg's Private PhotosTHE SHERYL SANDBERG INTERVIEW: On Working With Mark, Competing With Google, And The Challenge Of Having It AllFacebook Begins Big 'Timeline' Profile Rollout Tonight In New Zealand

Stop Chasing Tech Talent

CTOs are hot commodities; 26-year-old Mike Lewis has a resume most startups would devour. He's started two companies and even developed military software systems. Lewis is happily settled as cofounder/CTO of Spoton, a mobile app that recommends places to go with friends. Still, he's frequently prospected. We asked Lewis what drew him to SpotOn and what attracts CTOs to startups during the recruitment process.Here's his advice to startups looking for tech talent:

Network in tech communities. First-time entrepreneur with no funding? Network in the Python or Rails meetups and find a first-time CTO. Experienced entrepreneur or have funding? You probably don't even need this advice, but network with CTOs through your CEO friends. All CTOs have techie friends and know who is CTO material.

Demonstrate progress. Be it a contracted prototype or significant business development/traction. Techies meet way too many business folks who consider themselves "idea guys" and just need somebody to implement. Idea guys are useless as founders (they're better as investors). Founders should be deft executioners.

Show an effort to learn basic tech lingo and concepts. If the only languages you can name are PHP and Java, you won't get much respect from the best techies (who usually stay on the cutting edge). Like-wise, your CTO should also take an interest in the business side of things as well. If they only care about tech and can't prioritize business needs, that's a warning flag of problems to come.

 Vet potential CTOs using other CTOs. If you don't know any top-class CTOs personally, contract the job to the CTO of a well-respected startup. It's easy money to them and they can tell you more in 2 hours about the candidate than you could figure out in a week on your own.

Finally, a developer is not the same as a CTO. A CTO can develop, but they also have in-the-trench experience to make higher level decisions with regard to tech architecture, team structure, and engineering process. Many developers will grow into CTO's, but it depends upon personality.

Please follow SAI: Silicon Alley Insider on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »See Also:The Truth About The New York Tech Scene's Latest "Winklevoss Situation"The Truth About Getting Acquired By ZyngaInstagram's Growth Is Amazing: Here's How It Can Make Money

A Six-Figure Salary Is The Average For Silicon Valley Engineers

The average annual salary of tech workers in Silicon Valley passed $100,000 for the first time last year. That's according to tech job listing service Dice.com, which pegged average Silicon Valley salaries at $104,195, up 5% from last year. Silicon Valley companies also pay out a lot of bonuses: 38% of tech workers there got a bonus last year, and the average payout was $12,450. These salaries make it expensive for startups to find and hire good technical talent -- Founders Fund partner Luke Nosek recently brought a busload of college students to Silicon Valley to try and help his portfolio companies find talent. Austin, TX, showed the biggest jump in tech salaries -- up 13% to $89,419. The nationwide average was $81,327, up 2% from last year. Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »See Also:JOBS IN TECH: Here's Who Is Hiring And For What An Insider's Take On Why Silicon Alley Completely Rocks Silicon ValleyGET HIRED: What 6 Hot Tech Companies Want To See In Your LinkedIn Profile

Dropbox May Have Just Acqui-Hired A New CTO

Cove, a collaboration startup founded by two former Facebook employees, has been acquired by Dropbox. It seems to be a talent acquisition; a source tells TechCrunch that Cove's founder Aditya Agarwal will become CTO of Dropbox. Cove's other founder, Ruchi Sanghvi, joined Facebook in 2005 as its first female engineer. There she worked on News Feed, Platform and Connect. Dropbox cofounder Drew Houston says the company's top priority is hiring engineering talent; Cove's team represents the best in Silicon Valley. Cove is the file-sharing company's first acquisition. Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »See Also:Even Walmart Is Snapping Up Social Media CompaniesFab Moves Beyond Home Decor To Fashion Sales With Its First Acquisition, FashionStakeSamsung: Sorry, We Don't Want To Buy RIM

Groupon Makes A Small Acquisition, Buying The Social Search Experts At Campfire (GRPN)

Groupon has acquired stealthy startup Campfire Labs, TechCrunch reports. The acquisition is for talent. The founders, former Google Sakina Arsiwala and social search expert Naveen Koorakula, are married. Campfire Labs was reportedly building a social networking service to improve engagement. Groupon is a pretty social service itself, so adding anyone with expertise in social is a smart move. Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »See Also:GOOD RIDDANCE: 9 Bad Tech Ideas That Expired In 2011The Big China Fraud Is About To Become Apparent To EveryoneIt's 2012--It's Just Absurd That We're Still Addicted To Middle-Eastern Oil

It Is Now Safe To Say Any Early Facebook Employee You Know Is Very Rich (GS)

The kids who helped Mark Zuckerberg turn a college project called TheFacebook.com into Facebook, the multi-billion dollar company, are getting their rewards. Cold, hard cash, that is. Goldman Sachs, DST, and Goldman Sach's clients are in the process of buying up as much as $2 billion in Facebook stock at a whopping $50 billion valuation. According to the New York Times, much of this stock will be purchased from early Facebook employees and investors. As one big time VC pointed out this morning, this is basically a private IPO. So yes, it is now safe to assume Facebook's earliest employees are as loaded as all those Google, YouTube, and Yahoo millionaires we used to read about all the time. To be clear – attention private wealth managers looking for leads – we're not suggesting that ALL the folks at Facebook HQ are now suddenly yacht-buying rich. We're just talking the kids who worked in Facebook's spray-painted HQ back in downtown Palo Alto, before all the ex-Googlers started coming over. (We're particularly pleased for a woman named Ruchi Sanghvi. She helped Facebook launch the News Feed way back in 2006, wrote a blog post about it, and then took a public harassing as users rebelled against a feature they would eventually come to love. She left the company in 2009. Congrats, Ruchi!) Of course some early employees and investors made out better than others.  Click here to meet the (soon-to-be) Facebook billionaires.Join the conversation about this story »See Also:Goldman Sachs Just Bought The Facebook IPOThe Private IPOHere's How Tumblr Is Better Than Facebook