Around the Net
No Sign Of Start-up Slowdown
- All Things Digital, Friday, December 16, 2011 12:33 PM
Don’t expect the current flood of tech start-ups to slow in 2012. In the past few weeks alone, AllThingsD’s Liz Gannes has gotten wind of three new ventures, each of which is out for supreme market disruption. First up, Yelp co-founder Russel Simmons, who left the review site a year and a half ago, is reportedly working on an education project dubbed Learnirvana. “It looks like Learnirvana’s first product, Lentil, just came out,” Gannes reports. “It’s a Web tutor program that helps users learn to read Japanese or the capital cities of the world through constant quizzing.”
YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, who left the company in its early days to finish grad school, has apparently created a travel photography site named Fotons. According to Fotons’ “about” page: “Our mission is to create the best collection of great photos from around the world. With your help we aim to catalogue every notable country, city, building, river, stadium, statue, castle, library, zoo, island, river, cave, volcano — you name it.”
Finally, 23andMe co-founder Linda Avey -- who left in 2009 to start a foundation focused on Alzheimer’s research – reportedly has a new company called Curious. “Curious only has a landing page for now, but a source said the company is working on topics around monitoring and sharing personal health information,” Gannes explains.
