For newcomers: StartupDigest Reading List is the members-only weekly email newsletter of the best articles in the startup world.

You can become a member for free here.

This week was a historic one for the internet. We stood up to the progess of SOPA and PIPA in the US government, but more pushback is coming. This was the week that government realized that the internet matters. This was also the week that the internet realized that government matters too. Let’s make sure that government continues to hear our support for an open and free internet.

- Chris

 

StartupDigest Reading List is curated by:
Chris McCann – Co-Founder, StartupDigest
Chris Burnor – Lead Engineer, StartupDigest

 

 

StartupDigest Reading List is supported exclusively by:
Check out these sketchbook videos on “finding the magic sauce of entrepreneurship” and “three things entrepreneurs do” and more from the Kauffman Foundation.

 

 

What You Need to Read This Week

Paul Graham, partner at Y Combinator, has noticed that the startups that are hungry to take action and can take care of themselves are the ones who tend to do better than the others.

 

 

Growth is the lifeblood of new companies. Here is how Jeff, a partner at Andreessen-Horowitz, thought about growth while at OpenTable, PayPal, and eBay.

 

Probably the most amazing Stop SOPA page to come out of Wednesday’s blackout was Zachary’s flash-light page. Check out the repo and see how he did it.

 

Here’s a broad overview on the different types of design: graphic, interaction, and UX.

 

Forget what all the browser-specific tags are for using border radius in CSS3? Forget no more with the simplest, but most useful way to instantly see and get the CSS for a cool rounded-border box.

 

Joel built Trello to be a horizontal product similar to how he built Microsoft Excel back in 1991.

 

Here are the resources and timeline Eddy went through to learn Python/Django himself and become his own technical co-founder.

 

Here is a video on the historical context of SOPA/PIPA and what companies that support these bills are really aiming for.

 

See all of the previous resources and articles we’ve featured here.

 

For newcomers: StartupDigest Payments is the members-only weekly email newsletter of the best articles in the payments technology industry.

You can become a member for free here.

This week we are revisiting mobile payments as a recurring trend of interest. The articles included below highlight the continuing uncertainty in timing and scale of adoption. Bulls like PayPal are forecasting explosive growth of mobile payments in this year’s holiday season. eMarketer seems to share their view, projecting more than $86 billion of mobile payments this year (including SMS, USSD, mobile Internet, and NFC payments). Others, like Square COO Keith Rabois, appear to believe that adoption of mobile payments will be much slower than people are expecting.

Our Take: It certainly feels as though there is a lot of buzz and momentum in the mobile payments eco-system. However, a lot of this momentum has been built on the backs of handset OEMs and OS vendors declaring their support for NFC in future handsets. The key infustry challenges remain broader merchant acceptance networks (NFC or contactless readers need to be in place at major retailers) and consumer adoption (will most consumers prefer to pay with their phone or the card they have become accustomed to?). One thing is for sure, if there is this much diversity of expectations, it probably means it will be a while before mobile payments reach mass adoption.

 

StartupDigest Payments is curated by:
Dan Rosen – Principal, Highland Capital Partners
Rich Aberman – Co-Founder, WePay

 

 

What You Need to Know This Week

 

Mobile Payments Are Going to Explode This Holiday Season, PayPal Says
By Dan Rowinski, ReadWriteWeb

Payments company PayPal wants to make sure that it stays in the conversation when it comes to mobile payments. In the last couple of weeks we have heard from innovations coming out of MasterCard and Intuit. PayPal is one of the leaders in mobile payments, especially on the peer-to-peer front. With the holiday season coming, PayPal wants to position itself as the go-to resource for shoppers looking to beat the retail rush and congestion of digital deals.

 

The potential for mobile payments is huge. Globally, consumers make trillions of dollars in credit and debit card transactions each year. Migrating just a small percentage of that spending to mobile-based transactions would be a lucrative opportunity for the companies that facilitate it.

 

Are mobile payments the new speech recognition technologies? One of the bigger stories in mobile this year has been the growing investment and hype behind the idea of using one’s mobile phone as a method of payment, but it’s pretty clear that the details of how any one company or organization will build a mobile-payments system are still very much up in the air.

Computer scientists have been promising that reliable speech-recognition software is just a few years away for decades, and while progress has been made even the best software leaves a lot to be desired. Similar promises are being made these days around mobile payments, and a sizable number of people and companies believe that the smartphone can be a natural evolution of the credit card in just a few years.

 

Google Wallet has run into technical glitches, although the extent of the problems is not clear. Google’s website says the new mobile payment service is having “slower than normal wait times to add [credit and debit] cards to Google Wallet.” Also, Google Wallet over-the-air updates to Nexus S smartphones are going slowly and the app did not reach all users by late Friday, when Google had said the update would be rolled out.

 

For newcomers: StartupDigest Payments is the members-only weekly email newsletter of the best articles in the payments technology industry.

You can become a member for free here.

This week, we decided to revisit mobile payments. For posterity, we included an infographic that summarizes the space, since “mobile payments” can mean different things, depending on the context (mobile wallet, mobile POS, carrier billing, etc.). We also included articles predicting the rapid ascension of mobile payments and the mobile wallet, along with a more sobering article outlining the plethora of reasons so many great mobile payment ideas die before they get off the ground. Although not entirely “mobile,” per se, we couldn’t leave out PayPal’s latest announcement that’s “so big” that it will “change the face of payments.”

Our Take: The PayPal announcement is a big deal, since it’s PaYPal’s first real attempt to disrupt the physical POS space, and it looks promising. While PayPal does appear to be placing a big bet on its mobile application, the article points out that none of PayPal’s ambitions seem to require merchants to replace existing technology or customers to upgrade their phones or bank accounts. To win in this space, companies must innovate without ignoring well-established customer behaviors – it looks like PayPal is doing just that.

 

StartupDigest Payments is curated by:
Dan Rosen – Principal, Highland Capital Partners
Rich Aberman – Co-Founder, WePay

 

 

What You Need to Know This Week

The most important mobile payment infographic. Ever.
From mobilepaymentstoday.com

We at Mobile Payments Today felt it was up to us to cut through the hype and clear things up. And we knew just the tool: an infographic. We developed a highly detailed, informative chart that will help you understand the basics of mobile payments and why everyone is paying so much attention to them. (We were even able to work in the ever-popular “bacon meme” into our infographic!)

A First Look at PayPal’s Strategy for Challenging Visa and MasterCard at the Register
By Tricia Duryee, AllThingsD

PayPal had said it was going to launch pilot projects later this year, but this is the first time it is discussing how it will approach the digital market and how it will defend itself against incumbent payment providers like Visa, MasterCard and American Express, and new entrants like Google and San Francisco-based Square.

Global Mobile Payment Transactions to Total $945B in 2015 —a 30-Fold Jump from 2010, According to IE Market Research
By Kenneth G. Mages, Near Field Communication

IEMR forecasts the gross value of global mobile payment transactions to reach $945 billion in 2015, about a 30-fold increase from the comparable figure of $31.5 billion for 2010. The surge underscores IEMR’s expectation that mobile payments are positioned to become mainstream between 2012 and 2014.

Mobile Wallet Gaining Currency
By Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop, The New York Times

Mr. McLaughlin, chief emerging payments officer at Mastercard, has been one of the first to try out the Google Wallet mobile pay system introduced by the Internet giant in May in partnership with Citigroup and Mastercard Worldwide. N.F.C. transforms smartphones into virtual payment cards; it has become fashionable among cellphone manufacturers, telecommunications operators and finance providers. But the paucity of available N.F.C.-enabled smartphones has hampered any major rollout. This is changing fast.

Why Great Mobile Payments Ideas Die Young
By John Adams, American Banker

Mobile payments have attracted tons of buzz over the past year, but even with all the hype, the tough rules of business apply, particularly for those companies that can’t find the right niche or powerful cheerleaders, or run afoul of stringent regulations.

 

Below is an archived version of the India StartupDigest Events List – a weekly curated listing of the best tech startup events in India. If you would like to get next week’s digest on Monday, sign up here.

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Hello Everyone,As the India StartupDigest grows in numbers (we’ve more than doubled since the India Digest was launched!), I’d like to welcome Vijay Anand as a co-curator. Vijay, who is not a stranger to the startup ecosystem, is founder of The Startup Centre and also founded Proto.in, India’s premier startup showcase event. Follow him @vijayanands.

Enjoy,
PRL & Vijay

India StartupDigest is curatedby:
Parul Raj Lodha “PRL”
Vijay Anand - Founder, The Startup Centre and Proto.in

 

 

What’s Going on in India’s Startup Community

Silicon India Animation Conference (Bengaluru)
When: Sep 10
Where: Nimhans Convention Centre, Near Diary Circle, Bengaluru

Speakers include executives from Amar Chitra Katha, Cognizant, among others.

Silicon India Mobile Developer Conference (Pune)
When: Sep 10
Where: Hotel Aurora Towers, 9, Moledina Road, Pune

Speakers include executives from Zensar, Persistent, Symantec, Syntel, among others.

Silicon India Cloud Developer Conference (Chennai)
When: Sep 10
Where: Hotel Park View, JPRI Towers, 125,Valluvarkottam High Road, Nungambakkam, Chennai

Speakers include executives from HP, Microsoft, OrangeScape, and NetMagic, among others.

4th Financial Inclusion & Digital Payment Conference (Mumbai)
When: Sep 13-14
Where: Taj Lands End, Mumbai

Speakers include key executives from the Reserve Bank of India, Obopay, Techprocess, Atom Technologies, Avenues India, ITZCash, IRCTC, Paypal India, Paymate, SBI, and HomeShop18, among others.

Google Dev Fests (Bengaluru & Hyderabad)
When: Sep 15 (Blr), 17 (Hyd)
Where: The Lalit Ashok Bangalore, Kumara Krupa High Grounds, Bengaluru HICC and Novotel, Izzat Nagar, Kothaguda, Hyderabad

DevFest events are a great opportunity to learn more about Google technologies and developer products. The events also give you a chance to meet developer advocates and engineers who work on those products and ask them any questions you might have.

PyCon India (Pune)
When: Sep 16-18
Where: Symbiosis Vishwabhavan, S.B. Road, Pune

PyCon India 2011 is the primary Python conference in India. A purely volunteer effort, it is being hosted for the third time in India, and will attract some of the best Python developers in India and abroad.

TiE My Story Session (Pune)
When: Sep 16
Where: Sumant Moolgaokar Auditorium, Ground Floor, MCCIA Trade Tower, ICC Complex, Pune

TiE Pune Presents My Story Session with Redbus’ Phani Sama. In TIE’s My Story sessions invited speakers will share their entrepreneurial journeys and talk about lessons learned, mistakes they wish they avoided, and key decisions that helped make their venture successful.

Mobile Monday (Chennai)
When: Sep 17
Where: The Startup Centre, Egmore, Chennai

Mobile Monday is a great place to network with fellow mobile developers. Register for this event to learn about mobile development.

 

Below is an archived version of the DC StartupDigest Events List – a weekly curated listing of the best tech startup events in DC. If you would like to get next week’s digest on Monday, sign up here.

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DC StartupDigest is curated by:
Michael Mayernick – Co-Founder, Spinnakr

 

 

DC StartupDigest is supported exclusively by:
Kauffman’s website Entrepreneurship.org is a free online site chock full of content and resources for entrepreneurs, business mentors, investors and anyone in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Content ranges from information entrepreneurs need to launch a company to policies and research that has been conducted regarding entrepreneurship. Check it out at www.entrepreneurship.org.

 

 

What’s Going on in the DC Startup Community

If you’re a builder of web things or a creative designer, writer, or UXer who wants to get out of the house (or office) a bit, then come join us. We’ll be the group of people nerding out over laptops in various coffee shops and art spaces around Arlington, Virg.

 

Tech Session: X.Commerce @ USA TODAY HQ
When: Wed Aug 31, 5:00pm
Where: Gannett / USA Today, 7950 Jones Branch Drive, McLean, VA 22102

 

X.commerce, a joint effort by eBay, Paypal and Magento, is sending a team and a rockstar bus on a national tour and DC is their first east coast stop. They are looking to meet and speak with as many developers as possible as they make their way across the country. If you’re doing any commerce focused development, web or mobile, this is a great opportunity to meet the X.commerce team and share your insights.

 

Top Upcoming Events

September 12 - DC Tech Meetup #7: Mobile Technology Edition
September 14 - Entrepreneurs in the Cloud: Founders and VCs
September 15 - Social Matchbox Startup Launch Event 2011
September 28 - Digital East 2011

 

Below is an archived version of the London StartupDigest Events List – a weekly curated listing of the best tech startup events in London. If you would like to get next week’s digest on Monday, sign up here.

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London StartupDigest is curated by:
Scott Allison – Founder & CEO, Teamly

 

 

What’s Going on in the London Startup Community

London Business Starters: entrepreneurs sharing their lessons learned
When: Tuesday, August 16th – evening
Where: Innovation Warehouse, 1st Floor, 1 East Poultry Avenue, London, EC1A 9PT

Two guest speakers will be sharing lessons learned over the years. First up, Ami Shpiro has a long career as an entrepreneur, investor and business mentor, and is an expert in complex software development and was the founder and President of ClickSoftware which IPO’d on NASDAQ in 2000. The night’s other speaker is Rob Fitzpatrick founder of a startup which was in the YCombinator summer ’07 class, and following that he raised a round with London investors and relocated his company here.

Flagons Den pitch practise
When: Wednesday, August 17th – evening
Where: The Castle Pub, 34-35 Cowcross Street, London, EC1M 6DB

Relaxed and informal pitch practise in the Castle Pub with pitches limited to just 3 minutes, after which there will be 5-10 minutes of feedback and questions.

 

Top Upcoming London Startup Events

Below is an archived version of the Scotland StartupDigest Events List – a weekly curated listing of the best tech startup events in Scotland. If you would like to get next week’s digest on Monday, sign up here.——————————————————————————————————————————————————- 

Good morning, Scottish startups!

 

You might have noticed this last week if you are subscribed to the London StartupDigest by Scott Allison – UK Trade & Investment is hosting a Multi-platform App Developer Mission to Silicon Valley this September and there are spaces for 30 companies to attend the four days of meetings and workshops with strategists and evangelists from major platform companies such as Apple, Google, RIM; multi-platform tools providers such as PayPal and RhoMobile; B2B strategy enablers such as Mashery and Salesforce, and B2C strategy enablers such as OpenFeint, Tapjoy and GluMobile. Apply online for a chance to be selected.

Please make sure you let me know of any events which should be included in the StartupDigest!

- Christopher

For newcomers: The Scotland StartupDigest features the best startup events Scotland has to offer. I’d love your feedback so please drop me an e-mail at christopher@thestartupdigest.com.

Scotland StartupDigest is curated by:
Christopher McCann is currently co-founding a new venture in the technology space.

 

 

What’s Going on in the Scotland Startup Community

An Integrated Approach to Improving the Wealth of Your Business
When: Thursday 28th July at 8:00am
Where: Apex City Quay Hotel & Spa, Dundee

Three leading experts have come together to provide a talk on creating a business structure with significant wealth generating power.

Back to Basics – Simplifying Social Media Marketing
When: Friday 29th July at 7:30am
Where: 29 Members Club, Royal Exchange Square, Glasgow

The latest New Media Breakfast focusses on how businesses can use social media to market their products. This event is normally attended by quite a few startup founders and is worth attending.

RookieOven Pizza and Beer Meetup
When: Monday 1st August at 6:30pm
Where: Bier Hall, Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow

A now regular monthly meetup in Glasgow over beer and pizza hosted by Rookie Oven. It has been growing in size and is strongly recommended!

 

Below is an archived version of the London StartupDigest Events List – a weekly curated listing of the best tech startup events in London. If you would like to get next week’s digest on Monday, sign up here.

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Would you like to send your rock star developer to San Francisco to learn from the best, while showcasing your app? UK Trade & Investment is hosting a Multi-platform App Developer Mission to Silicon Valley this September and there are spaces for 30 companies to attend the four days of meetings and workshops with strategists and evangelists from major platform companies such as Apple, Google, RIM; multi-platform tools providers such as PayPal and RhoMobile; B2B strategy enablers such as Mashery and Salesforce, and B2C strategy enablers such as OpenFeint, Tapjoy and GluMobile. Apply online for a chance to be selected.

London StartupDigest is curated by:
Scott Allison – Founder & CEO, Teamly

 

 

What’s Going on in the London Startup Community

Gateway2Investment workshop: funding your business

When: Wednesday, 20th July – afternoon

Where: Grant Thornton, 30 Finsbury Square, London, EC2A 1AG

This Information Seminar gives you inside track on how to fund your business. Real-world experts and practitioners will guide you on what the different finance providers will look for in your business and what that might mean for you. You will have the chance ask questions, discuss your business with an expert panel and network with other companies seeking funding.

Facebook Developer Garage

When: Wednesday, 20th July – evening

Where: Freemasons’ Hall, 60 Great Queen Street, London, WC2B 5AZ

The theme for this month is entrepreneurship and starting up, and confirmed speakers are Jakub Nesetril, co-founder of API services company apiary.io, with his startup accelerator survival guide; Sam Clark, head of apps agency Conjure, covering lessons learnt from building branded apps, and John Haggis from Sheridan Solicitors on how lawyers can help set up your company and ensure your app is legal. Simon Cross, a platform partner engineer at Facebook, will also talk about cross-platform authentication. As usual there will also be briefings on what’s hot with Facebook and news of the latest platform updates.

London Web: Social Networking

When: Thursday, 21st July – evening

Where: Radisson Edwardian Kenilworth Hotel, 97 Great Russell Street, London

A well timed meetup given the recent launch of a new social network, Google+. Simon Willison from Lanyrd.com will be speaking on the pros and cons of bootstrapping a social networking tool from an existing network (in their case, Twitter) and Alex Halliday from SocialGO.com will give insight on how social networking has changed over the years, and where he sees it going.

Virgin Media lunch at TechHub

When: Friday, 22nd July – 11am – 2pm

Where: TechHub, 76-80 City Road, London, EC1Y 2BJ

TechHub is throwing open its doors on Friday 22nd July to show off some of the amazing companies that help make TechHub the place it is and to try out Virgin Media’s ground-breaking 1.5Gbps broadband trial. There will be cakes, sandwiches and great tech stuff.

MiniBar Monthly Meetup

When: Friday, 22nd July – evening

Where: Mother – Biscuit Building, 10 Redchurch Street, London, E2 7DD

Free beer, networking and 2-minute pitches from a number of startups, including ItoWorld, Vungle and YourJobDone.com.

UX for Lean Startups Workshop

When: Saturday, 23rd July – all day

Where: UCL, Jeremy Bentham Room, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT

LUXr – started by Adaptive Path founder Janice Fraser, who has been working with Eric Ries – shares her combination of Lean Startup and UX in this one-day workshop. Workshop covers Lean UX Fundamentals, Customer Development Interviews & Generative Research, Developing product and interface ideas and Quantitative and Qualitative Evaluation.

Mini Leancamp

When: Sunday, 24th July – afternoon

Where: UCL, Wilkins Building, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT

UCL will host this 3-track unconference on lean startups. There will be some pre-arranged speakers, but there will be plenty of room for your own talks and ideas too.

 

Top Upcoming London Startup Events

July 28 – Hacker News London Meetup

July 28 – UKTI Online Business Essential Clinics: #6 Fundraising and Investment Strategies

August 4 – London Silicon Roundabout summer bash

September 9-11 – Startup Weekend London

 

For newcomers: StartupDigest Payments is the members-only weekly email newsletter of the best articles in the payment technology industry.

You can become a member for free here.

This issue focuses again on activity in the mobile payments and POS eco-system, with a lot of activity and messaging specifically from PayPal, who is clearly positioning this as the future of their business. Although the first article below includes a video clip from PayPal President Scott Thompson challenging his employees to be completely digital in the next four years, we have also included an article from AllThingsD, which suggests that broader consumer adoption may take a while. Last, we included the announcement of NCR’s purchase of Radiant Systems.

Our Take: Mobile payments continues to be the hottest topic in the payments market, especially as we rapidly approach the broader availability of NFC-enabled phones. Many industry vets are watching with careful skepticism, given the historical fits and starts and the space. As PayPal mentions in the article below, the key to mobile payment success is merchant adoption and the key to merchant adoption is delivering value beyond payments. Why? Because payments in the U.S. is a functioning eco-system today . . . it’s not broken (perhaps despite Senator Durbin’s contention). As the VentureBeat article suggests about Google’s Punchd acquisition, the winning player will be one that can deliver BOTH pre-transaction targeting and demand generation services (couponing, offers, ads) and post-transaction CRM and loyalty services. And the field of players capable of delivering all of these remains quite narrow. It includes leading online players like Google and PayPal, maybe financial software leader Intuit and perhaps one or two very ambitious well funded emerging players (e.g. Square). What does this mean for monolithic incumbents like NCR going forward? Challenging times ahead.

StartupDigest Payments is curated by:
Dan Rosen – Principal, Highland Capital Partners
Rich Aberman – Co-Founder, WePay

 

 

What You Need to Know This Week

PayPal VP: Supporting Payments In The Physical World Is Critical For PayPal
By Leena Rao, TechCrunch

PayPal has been making some interesting acquisitions over the past few months that clearly show the direction of the company in capturing payments flow from digital goods, and physical products at a local level. The company bought local payments and advertising company Where for over $100 million in April, snapped up mobile payments company Fig Card and most recently shelled out $240 million for mobile payments company Zong. The payments giant is clearly serious about mobile and local payments and is buying its way into commanding the space. In terms of future strategy, PayPal believes that by 2015 digital currency will be accepted everywhere in the U.S., from local businesses to large chains.

Google’s Punchd acquisition to push mobile wallet uptake
By Jitendra Gupta, VentureBeat

On first glance, Google’s acquisition of Punchd (a mobile phone-based loyalty service), a company barely a year and a half old, with little revenue and less than $150K in funding for $10M (reported widely) seems crazy. Initial speculation was that Google was making the move to add talent to its Android engineering team. But the fact that it is keeping the Punchd service going (likely moving to Google’s mobile wallet) points to a more strategic objective.

What’s in Their Wallets?
By Tricia Duryee, AllThingsD

That’s the question I asked some digital money experts, whose job it is to push the creative boundaries on payments. So, having captive reps from some of the key companies — BOKU, BilltoMobile, Intuit and Tapjoy — involved in leading the charge to do away with cash and plastic, I wanted to know what they carried around daily. And, given I was moderating a panel for the MobileBeat 2011 conference, titled “The Likely Winners In Mobile Payments: Carriers, PayPal?” — it seemed like an appropriate query.

You’d think they would be on the cutting edge, right? Wrong!

PayPal Enables Peer-to-Peer Payments on Android With NFC
By Tricia Duryee, AllThingsD

PayPal has doubled its mobile payments projections to $3 billion this year, and is investing heavily in new ways to make it easy to pay with the phone. Last week, that meant buying Zong, a carrier billing provider. Today, Laura Chambers, the senior director of PayPal Mobile, demonstrated another way at VentureBeat’s MobileBeat conference in San Francisco.

NCR to Acquire Radiant Systems
From Business Wire

NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR) and Radiant Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: RADS) today announced a definitive agreement for NCR to acquire Radiant Systems, a leading provider of multichannel point-of-sale and managed hosted service solutions to the hospitality and specialty retail markets, through a cash tender offer of $28.00 per Radiant Systems share. The equity purchase price of $1.2 billion has been approved by the boards of directors of each company. NCR and Radiant Systems currently anticipate the transaction will close during the third quarter of 2011, subject to regulatory approval.