Kara Swisher – Co-Executive Editor of All Things Digital

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Kara Swisher
http://www.twitter.com/karaswisher
http://www.twitter.com/allthingsd
http://www.allthingsd.com

All Things Digital Co-Executive Editor Kara Swisher told Jason and the
crowd at WeWork exactly what she thought of the state of tech
journalism, turning 50, gay marriage and Marissa Mayer’s performance
so far (see the ‘jazz hands’ video). She also revealed that her
contract with Dow Jones is up in December (no discussions so far) and
that she wanted to be a CIA agent when she was younger.

http://twitter.com/jason
http://twitter.com/kirinkalia

LAUNCH:
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Special thanks to the members of the TWiST Backchannel Program!

How Cozy CEO Gino Zahnd Landed A-List Investors Like Kevin Rose, Gary Vaynerchuk — and Me (!)

The last thing Gino Zahnd and his co-founder John Bragg wanted to do was take investor money for Cozy, a startup that makes it easy for landlords to collect rent and screen applicants. After all, they’d bootstrapped their very successful UX consultancy. But after extensive market research, they realized they were building a financial service and needed money to build a rock-solid product.

They then asked themselves, “Who are the investors who are going to help us the most and we can feel are a core part of team Cozy?”

Their first step was to hook up with Paul Bragiel of the accelerator i/o ventures. They didn’t need design or engineering mentorship: they wanted fundraising help. Through Paul and the accelerator program, they met Kevin Rose.

And how did they impress Kevin? “We opened up our laptop and said, ‘Here’s the problem we’re solving, here’s the market opportunity. We’ve done all this research, and we’ve got these 12 people who we’ve worked hand in hand with to build this piece of the product, and here’s where we’re headed,” Gino recalled during our interview for “This Week in Startups.”

Read the whole post on LinkedIn.

Watch the interview:
Gino Zahnd, CEO & Co-Founder of Cozy

Yahoo + Tumblr = Big Win, But Zuck + Tumblr = Bigger Win

Yahoo is going to buy Tumblr for $1B on Monday according to reports.

I will explain to you why the media is freaking out, why big companies need to make more bets like this, why Yahoo is the perfect home and why Zuckerberg should offer $2B.

Media… Freak Out!

Over 20 years in the industry I’ve learned that when something gets bought for $1B or more, people tend to freak out.

People can comprehend millions of dollars, because we all know folks who have a million or more dollars (or homes worth that). When you start talking about 100s or 1,000s of millions, people get emotional and some start lashing out.

Journalists are one of the first groups to lash out. Why? Because they have no chance of making big money in their jobs, and they have to fight for $5k raises while their pensions are replaced with 401ks. Also, they tend to have covered startups like Tumblr from year one and they can’t reconcile how something that didn’t exist five years ago is now worth $1B — and that they don’t have to balls to create something.

F@#4k it, Yahoo Should Buy 10 Tumblrs

Here’s the truth: a billion dollars is nothing to a company like Yahoo or Google or Facebook or Apple or Microsoft.

If there were 10 startups like Tumblr, with 100M+ users and $50M-$100M in revenue potential a year, it would actually make sense for Google, Yahoo or Facebook to buy all 10.

At once.

Roll the dice.

Why?

Because those companies have tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in market cap and cash, and if one in 10 of those startups turn into YouTube, it’s worth it.

Read the complete editorial on LinkedIn here.

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Majestic English bulldog

World Series of Poker Main Event 2012

I’m going to play day 1C (Monday) of the World Series of Poker Main Event. If you’re interested in buying “equity” in me I’m selling straight equity (1% = $100), with 10% of any winnings coming off the top for charity.

So if you bought 1% for $100, and I won $1M you would get $10k – 10% for charity…. so $9k.

If you’re interested email wsop@calacanis.com. I’ll be doing updates from http://www.twitter.com/jason

First six judges for http://www.launchedu.co