Comic-Con launches a year-round subscription on-demand service. Photo by just asc

April 11, 2016 Comments (0) Views: 2637 Blog, Startup Buzz

Downtown Buzz: Lionsgate Launches Comic-Con Channel

This week’s business and tech news from around downtown

Follow the Money

Hired.com CEO Mehul Patel takes us inside the jobs website’s recent Series C round and paints a picture of the changing climate for companies trying to raise funds.

Comic-Con TV—All Year Long

Variety has reported that San Diego’s Comic-Con has partnered with Lionsgate to launch a year-round subscription on-demand service. According to Variety, “the new service will include original short-form content, films and TV series from Lionsgate and other studios along with archived footage from Comic-Con’s 45-year history.”

Habit vs. Use

A recent guest column in Venture Beat raised some thought-provoking questions about the social responsibility of app makers in the area of Internet Addiction Disorder. The piece lays out the dangers of being addicted to an Internet game and describes the physical dangers associated with it. San Diegan James E. Short, a researcher at the San Diego Supercomputer Center asserted that the difference between addiction and normal use is hard to find. He cited his estimate for 2015 that Americans would consume 1.7 trillion hours of traditional and digital media in 2015, averaging 15.5 hours per person per day, in making this point.

Bitcoin Gets Some More Coin

An article this week in BitcoinMagazine.com brought news on two fronts. First, a new chapter in the ever-interesting story of Bitcoin: Bitcoin Core has launched a new sponsorship program for funders to support development of Bitcoin. Second, turns out a San Diego-based company has long been an established funder of Bitcoin technology development. Ciphrex, founded in 2014 by Eric Lombrozo and his father Enrique Lombrozo, has been supporting Bitcoin development because Lombrozo “believes in the future of this technology, and considers working with the world’s top experts in the field a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” Lombrozo’s company specializes in blockchain technology, digital currency protocols, and decentralized consensus networks. One of their products, mSigna, is a bitcoin wallet.

And if you have no idea what Bitcoin is, here is a primer.

Lots of People Want to Take Lessons

Local startup Take Lessons reached a big milestone recently, reporting they have amassed 100,000 customers. Take Lessons is a website that connects students and teachers enabling people to learn desired skills. Everything from guitar, piano, Spanish, and cooking lessons can be found on their site. Take Lessons also just partnered with Amazon in its Home Services launch, so you can now book your lessons (in certain cities) through your Amazon account.

Pivots and Opportunities

San Diego Venture Group is now accepting applications for the 2016 Cool Companies. Apply here.
Applications are being accepted for Unreasonable Lab San Diego, scheduled for May 20-24. The lab, powered by ImpactSD, will focus on Business Model Validation through a 5-day accelerator for early/idea-stage, San Diego-Tijuana-based entrepreneurs that are tackling financial, social, health, or environmental problems. The event’s goal is to help these companies quickly identify and validate their assumptions.
A reminder: Tech Coast Angels is recruiting analysts for their Spring Volunteer Analyst Training Program. Applications are due Thursday, April 14.