You are what you curate: Why Pinterest is the hot tip in 2012 in Silicon Valley

The new hot social thing on the web these days is a Palo Alto, Calif.–based company started by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra and Evan Sharp. (I incorrectly described this group as ex-Facebookers. My apologies for the error.) It is called Pinterest and it is about the concept of curation — a much abused phrase in Silicon Valley. Essentially it allows you to create visual collections of things that you like and find on the web. It is especially popular with young women. Some smart folks such as serial entrepreneur Elad Gill have started talking about “social content curation” and point to the evolution of online content. They even have a graph to show it all. Gill writes on his blog:

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What Startups Are Really Like - A Paul Graham Essay

I wasn't sure what to talk about at Startup School, so I decided to ask the founders of the startups we'd funded. What hadn't I written about yet? I'm in the unusual position of being able to test the essays I write about startups. I hope the ones on other topics are right, but I have no way to test them. The ones on startups get tested by about 70 people every 6 months. So I sent all the founders an email asking what surprised them about starting a startup. This amounts to asking what I got wrong, because if I'd explained things well enough, nothing should have surprised them.

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And Google Begat...

The search giant's former employees are seeding tech startups—and shaping another wave of innovation During the holidays last year, Aydin Senkut and Elad Gil gathered 50 of their friends at a health-food restaurant in Palo Alto. Over turkey burgers and tofu wraps, they talked about tech trends and how to get rich. Or, more precisely, how to get richer. Senkut, Gil, and their dining circle are alumni of Google (GOOG), one of the greatest engines of wealth creation the U.S. has ever known. Since going public six years ago, Google has generated more than $170 billion for its employees and investors. Many of the millionaires the company has produced are young, wired into the latest developments in tech, and at ease with risk. Which explains why so many Google alums—including many of those at Senkut and Gil's gatherings—are active angel investors, attempting to add another zero to their bank accounts and another innovative company to their list of accomplishments. "I feel like we have such a strong network, it's almost like we've recreated Google outside of the Google walls," says Andrea Zurek, a 39-year-old backer of 26 startups.

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What to Do if your Startup is about to Fail

A lot of CEOs with less than 12 months of capital left have been asking me for advice about what to do, given the massive economic turmoil we're facing. I thought I would take the time put these various conversations into one email to help those who are "up against it," as we say in Brooklyn. Rock out To This While Reading: Don't Stop Believing Forward To: Startups that are hitting the wall

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