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mine is bigger
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Mine Is Bigger
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Echelon fuels up CEO's private jet
Network appliance manufacturer Echelon will now cover half the cost of CEO Ken Oshman's travel on his private jet after a vote by the company's board. Previously, the company only reimbursed up to the equivalent expense of first-class commercial airfare for Oshman and any employees travelling on company business. Based on Oshman's travel so far this year, the new perk will cost the company an extra $370,000 a year. [Mercury News]
mine is bigger
mine is bigger
10 "I Am Rich" ratings reveal how delightfully cynical online product reviewers can be
Armin Heinrich's "I Am Rich" iPhone App, sadly no longer available for $999.99 in the iTunes App Store, was probably the most important software development of our time. Wonderfully, some 502 iTunes App Store shoppers took the time to review it, giving it a rating of two stars out of a possible five. Our 10 favorite reviews — sometimes marked by calm, playing-along cynicism, sometimes by wide-eyed fury — are below: More »
mine is bigger
Behold the $999.99 do-nothing iPhone App; buy it because you can
Maybe you haven't heard about the $999.99 "I Am Rich" iPhone App by Armin Heinrich yet. We'll catch you up, poor thing. Purchase this app for your iPhone 3G from the iTunes App Store now and it will do two things: display a glowing red gem for an icon and tell everyone who handles your iPhone 3G that you have more money then there are orca skin purses to spend it on. It's a bargain compared to a Patek Philippe watch which does the same thing.
geek love
Marrying into billions still acceptable so long as you're a smart girl
Forbes lays on the Cosmo when it comes to finding wives for the rich: "Today, there are just 110 eligible 10-figure bachelors, including divorced men, in the world. So what does it take to marry one? For starters, looks are great—but brains are even better." Take Melanie Craft, the romance-novelist wife of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. A wife with her own career can stay busy and well-off. The more successful she is on her own, the more time her guy has to hire girls for rides in his Love Copter. And the less money he'll have to hand over in a future settlement. Everybody wins! (Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images)
mine is bigger
Keeping Bezos, Ellison and Schmidt safe cost $3.4 million last year
Keeping Oracle CEO and cofounder Larry Ellison safe cost the company $1.7 million over the fiscal year ending May 31, 2007. Most of that money went to guards at his homes as well as installing and repairing home security systems, according to Oracle's SEC filings. Part of Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos's 2007 compensation included $1.2 milion for personal security. Google CEO Eric Schmidt spent $475,000 on security in 2007. A lot of the money probably goes to security precautions that might seem a lot more like luxuries than necessities. More »
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Charles Simonyi policing Hudson river, close enough for girlfriend Martha Stewart to wave a handkerchief
The 233-foot yacht owned by Charles Simonyi, the Microsoft billionaire and Martha Stewart love-muffin, has been spotted in the Hudson River. For a sense of scale, the helicopter, painted to match, can be clearly seen perched on the helipad. (True story: the only time I've flown in a helicopter, Simonyi was the pilot). I'm sure that with Stewart's help, the whole thing is quite tastefully decorated — if only to remove the stank of the Danish girlfriend whose pet name for Simonyi was "skat." That's also the name of the yacht, according to Wikipedia. (Photo by Eric Etheridge)
mine is bigger
Why is VC Tom Perkins already selling the Maltese Falcon, his 289-foot sailing yacht he finished building in 2006? For a quick profit, ostensibly. But he has likely botched the timing. In 2007, used yachts cost more than new ones because wealthy buyers wanted them immediately. That demand led to profitable yacht-flipping, similar to the condo-flipping of the late real-estate bubble. But that was 2007. In 2008, sales for yachts priced between $200,000 to $800,000 are down 50 percent, a broker told Fortune. Likewise, another recent megayacht sale didn't happen until the owner slashed the price by $7 million. Still, the market might be different if Perkins sails his $233 million ship through the Suez Canal, where petrodollar fortunes abound.
Tom Perkins picked a bad time to sell the Maltese Falcon
Why is VC Tom Perkins already selling the Maltese Falcon, his 289-foot sailing yacht he finished building in 2006? For a quick profit, ostensibly. But he has likely botched the timing. In 2007, used yachts cost more than new ones because wealthy buyers wanted them immediately. That demand led to profitable yacht-flipping, similar to the condo-flipping of the late real-estate bubble. But that was 2007. In 2008, sales for yachts priced between $200,000 to $800,000 are down 50 percent, a broker told Fortune. Likewise, another recent megayacht sale didn't happen until the owner slashed the price by $7 million. Still, the market might be different if Perkins sails his $233 million ship through the Suez Canal, where petrodollar fortunes abound.
mine is bigger
Fired TokBox CEO didn't need to know HTML to drive his $80,000 BMW
Early last month Sequoia Capital fired TokBox founder Serge Faguet as CEO. An engineer who spoke with Faguet for a job interview tells us his firing "comes as no surprise." The tipster, perhaps sore that his job interview didn't go so well, characterizes Faguet as "rude and arrogant" and argues that the original idea for TokBox came from cofounder Ron Hose. But mostly, our tipster objects to Faguet's car: a BMW 650i. More »
maltese falcon
5 best videos of the $233 million megayacht Tom Perkins no longer wants
At 289 feet, the Maltese Falcon, is the world's largest sailing yacht. Its owner, venture capitalist Tom Perkins, is over it. He's looking for a buyer to take the Falcon off his hands for about $233 million, according to The Wealth Report blog. Of the Falcon, Perkins once told Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes: "I just wanted the biggest boat." It was a beautiful sentiment, people, and we're here to honor it. So below, the five best videos on the Web catching the Maltese Falcon in all its glory. More »
lou montulli
Early Netscape engineer admits to owning the Mozilla M5
Yesterday we speculated that a BMW M5 with a "Mozilla" vanity plate might belong to Mozilla Foundation chair Mitchell Baker, who could afford the $80,000 car with her $500,000-a-year salary. We were wrong. "I will admit to it being mine," Lou Montulli, one of Netscape's founding engineers, commented on the post. On his personal site, Montulli admits to more. More »
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Larry Ellison and fellow billionaire trade accusations of rigging the America's Cup
The America's Cup is the world's premier opportunity for the ultrariches to prove whose is bigger. But if you think the race has anything to do with sailing, you'd be mistaken — it's about who can muster the most capital. This year the victor could be rigged by lawyers, not sailors, thanks to a spat between billionaire software tycoon Larry Ellison and billionaire biotech tycoon Ernesto Bertarelli. More »
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ArcSight's Robert Shaw gets a free yacht-club membership and you don't
Of all the companies gone public in the past year, only one pays for its CEO's yacht-club membership. That's security-software maker ArcSight, which went public on Valentine's Day. The CEO is Robert Shaw. According to Footnoted, Shaw's other benefits include an apartment near ArcSight's Cupertino headquarters, a car for when he's in San Francisco and airfare for travel between Shaw's homes in Montana and Cabo San Lucas. All of which isn't as unusual as the yacht-club membership. More »
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Meghan Asha's party plane
Videoblogger Meghan Asha, who pals around with TechCrunch's Michael Arrington from time to time, comes from a wealthy Los Gatos family, we hear. The evidence? She flies around the country in a private plane. Here's what that party venue in the sky looks like. That's Asha between fellow geek-luster Julia Allison and comedian Demetri Martin. A tight squeeze.
jason calacanis
In Amersterdam, they have glass doors. In Silicon Valley, we have Twitter. And Jason Calacanis wants you all to himself. According to Twitterholic, Calacanis has 6,955 Twitter followers to Scoble's 6,865. This lead is a new development and it's got Calacanis as giddy as a nihilistic oil tycoon about to bludgeon a priest with a bowling pin. "Robert Scoble: I drink your Twitter Milkshake!" Calacanis writes. "I'm coming for you Robert!"
When attention whores compete, you lose
In Amersterdam, they have glass doors. In Silicon Valley, we have Twitter. And Jason Calacanis wants you all to himself. According to Twitterholic, Calacanis has 6,955 Twitter followers to Scoble's 6,865. This lead is a new development and it's got Calacanis as giddy as a nihilistic oil tycoon about to bludgeon a priest with a bowling pin. "Robert Scoble: I drink your Twitter Milkshake!" Calacanis writes. "I'm coming for you Robert!"
mine is bigger
One day left to commission portrait of "Fellowship of the VCs"
"Are you a leader in Silicon Valley who has been unfairly left out of this work of art?" asks a project proposal on Strayform."Much like patronages offered by the leaders depicted in historical works, your patronage can earn you the recognition you deserve."More »
Hawaii -- Silicon Valley's Hamptons, minus the potato fields
Architectural Digest profiled the Hawaiian home of a Silicon Valley mogul in its November issue. A reader fingers Rick Fluegel, a former general partner with Matrix Partners.
Architectural Digest profiled the Hawaiian home of a Silicon Valley mogul in its November issue. A reader fingers Rick Fluegel, a former general partner with Matrix Partners.
venture capital
Venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson has a thing for rockets. He once built and launched a miniature replica of the Nazis' V2 rocket, the weapon Hitler used to devastate London during World War II. Well, the early investor in Hotmail, is back at it. Now director of space operations at local blogger Todd Lappin's faux company, Telstar Logistics, Jurvetson and a team traveled to Farmington, California to launch the Telstar Logistics Expediter over the weekend. They strapped a video camera to it, so enjoy the ride. All 5,186 feet of it. So close, and yet so far.
Steve Jurvetson fails to make the mile-high club
Venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson has a thing for rockets. He once built and launched a miniature replica of the Nazis' V2 rocket, the weapon Hitler used to devastate London during World War II. Well, the early investor in Hotmail, is back at it. Now director of space operations at local blogger Todd Lappin's faux company, Telstar Logistics, Jurvetson and a team traveled to Farmington, California to launch the Telstar Logistics Expediter over the weekend. They strapped a video camera to it, so enjoy the ride. All 5,186 feet of it. So close, and yet so far.
