David Vivero

I had a mixed reaction to the news two weeks ago that Facebook received a $240 million investment from Microsoft, valuing the venture-backed company at $15 billion. It's incredibly exciting for the venture investors and the early employees, whose paper options were priced at a valuation much lower than that. The company also gets new operating freedom and tons of cash to spend on building out new revenue ...

Perhaps I'm late to the party, but I just found a fascinating company called Clear, which is essentially a club that expedites security clearance waits at airports for its paying members. For about a hundred bucks a year, the program scans your iris and fingerprints, takes your photo, and gives you a membership card. Then you take that membership card to the airports they've signed up, including San ...

I read early this week that Bill Gates was making a presentation about a new suite of Office products that will allow easier communication for office workers. Given my own inability to keep up with messages, I was excited to hear about the product. Microsoft unveiled their package for unified communication today, aptly titled Microsoft Unified Communications. The first result on Google for "unified communication" is already Microsoft's ...

My friend Chris founded the company behind new Internet fantasy leagues like Fafarazzi.com and Dirtlocker.com. (In the case of Fafarazzi.com, it's a fantasy league for celebrities like Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan.) It's a perfect seed or angel investment, because it requires little total capital to create a captivating experience and prove out the model. (I also happen to think the product is incredibly fun!) During a discussion about ...

I found the recent speculation regarding Google's expected social networking initiative to be incredibly exciting for users and industry observers. The basic proposition, which may not end up coming to fruition, is described and compared to Facebook by TechCrunch's Michael Arrington: Facebook has a platform to allow third parties to build applications on Facebook itself. But what Google may be planning is significantly more open - allowing third parties ...

I was eating lunch with my good friends Alex and Lisa last week, and had a Seinfeldian observation. That observation was: why does cellular voicemail offer a 'paging' option? If you don't know what I'm talking about, try calling a Sprint customer who you know will screen your calls. Cell phones may not be good at certain things. They've historically been a terrible platform for reading long-form content, and ...

This is my first post to the new blog at here at davidvivero.com. I'll be digging into the CSS and trying to put together something pretty for everyone to enjoy. Generally, this blog is going to be about issues in new technology, entrepreneurship, investments, and life in whatever city I find myself living. Hope everyone will enjoy it!