<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/exec/billg/speeches/2008/02-19stanford.aspx">Microsoft</a></span></p><p class="caption">Bill Gates</p></div><p></p></div></div><a href="http://www.insidephilanthropy.com/tech-philanthropy/2014/3/18/meet-the-12-most-generous-tech-leaders-and-6-of-the-least.html">Inside Philanthropy</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> has come up with a new list of the most generous donors in tech, basing the ranking on the size of their donations relative to their overall wealth. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">The names who made the list may seem surprising, especially compared to other rankings of philanthropy. While the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-philanthropists-2013-2014-2">Chronicle of Philanthropy creates a list of the 50 largest donors any given year</a>, this list in particular uses relative generosity as its main criteria. </span></p>
<h3>12. Michael Dell</h3>
<p>The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation has given away nearly $1 billion since 2000, equal to about 10% of their estimated net worth of $17.5 billion. </p>
<h3>11. Paul Allen</h3>
<p>The Microsoft co-founder gave away $327.6 million in 2011, making him the most generous American of that year. He's given away just over $1.5 billion of the estimated $16 billion he's worth. </p>
<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_left"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>AP Photo/Paul Sakuma</span></p><p class="caption">Mark Zuckerberg</p></div><p></p></div></div>10. Mark Zuckerberg</h3>
<p>The 29-year-old's $992-million gift was the single biggest donation of 2013. He's donated about $2 billion of his wealth, which is now estimated to be $28.5 billion. </p>
<h3>9. Pierre Omidyar</h3>
<p>E-bay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam have given away more than $1 billion, donating $225 million in 2013 alone.  </p>
<h3>8. David Bohnett</h3>
<p>Bohnett made $300 million when he sold GeoCities to Yahoo! in 1998. Since then, his foundation has given away nearly $53.5 million to charitable causes, with a special focus on the LGBT community. </p>
<h3>7. Irwin Jacobs</h3>
<p>The Qualcomm founder and his wife Joan have been very generous over the past few decades, donating around $500 million of their fortune, estimated at $1.8 billion. </p>
<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>pmo via Flickr</span></p><p class="caption">Jeff Skoll and Pierre Omidyar</p></div><p></p></div></div>6. Jeff Skoll</h3>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">When eBay's first president signed the <a href="http://givingpledge.org/">Giving Pledge</a>, he said he hoped to donate nearly all of his $3.8 billion "<span>to the betterment of humanity." </span></span></p>
<h3>5. Tim Gill</h3>
<p>Gill made about $500 million when he sold Quark at the height of the dotcom boom. His foundation has given about $240 million towards LGBT initiatives. </p>
<h3>4. Ed Scott</h3>
<p>Scott, who made his fortune with a software company called BEA, isn't at the Forbes 400 level, but Inside Philanthropy <a href="http://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2014/2/10/who-is-silicon-valleys-most-effective-global-giver.html">describes him</a> as "Silicon Valley's most effective global giver." His donations have gone towards fighting global poverty and disease, as well as projects to find better treatments for autism. </p>
<h3>3. Bill Gates</h3>
<p>Gates has donated more money than any other living person, but he wasn't first on Inside Philanthropy's list because his current net worth is $76 billion, nearly twice the endowment of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. </p>
<h3>2. Gordon Moore</h3>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Intel co-founder Gordon Moore and his wife Betty put about half of their wealth into their foundation in 2011. It has since made about $3 billion in grants, focused mostly on scientific research and Bay Area charities.</span></p>
<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_left"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Neilson Barnard/Getty Images</span></p><p class="caption">Sandy Lerner</p></div><p></p></div></div>1. Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner</h3>
<p> The Cisco co-founders have given more than anyone else, relative to their total wealth. They made $170 million when they walked away from their company in 1990, but they gave about 70% of that money away to charity. </p>
<h2>The Least Generous Tech Leaders<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> </span></h2>
<p><a href="http://www.insidephilanthropy.com/tech-philanthropy/2014/3/18/meet-the-12-most-generous-tech-leaders-and-6-of-the-least.html">Inside Philanthropy</a> also compiled a list of the least generous people in tech. Though these executives have made valuable contributions to charity in the past, IP argues that these six people have donated the least amount of money compared to their total amassed wealth.</p>
<p>Among the biggest offenders are (not ranked): <span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Jeff Bezos, </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Larry Page, </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Steve Ballmer, </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Larry Ellison, </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Jerry Yang, and </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Michael Birch. </span></p>

The Most And Least Generous People In Tech

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQebmygKq7A">CBS / 60 Minutes / YouTube</a></span></p><p class="caption">Apple CEO Tim Cook</p></div><p></p></div></div>One day after Georgia Governor Nathan Deal <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/salesforce-ceo-won-his-georgia-showdown-2016-3">agreed to veto a bill</a> that critics said would have encouraged discrimination against gay people, a similar fight in North Carolina has ramped up. </p><p>On Tuesday, over 80 CEOs and business leaders signed an open letter asking North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory to repeal a controversial law <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-nc-lawmakers-return-to-address-transgender-bathroom-measure-2016-3">passed last week.</a></p><p>Signatures included Apple CEO Tim Cook, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and, naturally, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who has been the Silicon Valley point-person speaking out against state-level laws that negatively impact the LGBT community.</p><p>The law, which was passed by North Carolina's legislature in a one-day session and immediately signed into law by the governor, has been called <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nc-ag-wont-defend-controversial-transgender-law-2016-3">a "national embarrassment"</a> by North Carolina's <span>attorney general. </span></p><p>The law was in reaction to a regulation passed by the city of <span>Charlotte that allowed transgender people to use bathrooms based on their gender identity. </span><span>The new state law requires people to use the bathrooms based on their biological sex.</span></p><p><span>But it goes beyond regulating bathroom use and prevents local governments from passing regulations that eliminate discrimination based on sexual orientation or identity, according to a lawsuit <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/03/28/472164084/aclu-sues-over-north-carolinas-law-blocking-anti-discrimination-legislation">that's already been filed by the ACLU</a></span><span>.</span></p><p><span>The business community, particularly the tech community, and Hollywood are up in arms about the law.</span></p><p>Here's the letter:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">Dear Governor McCrory,</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">We write with concerns about legislation you signed into law last week, HB 2, which has overturned protections for LGBT people and sanctioned discrimination across North Carolina. Put simply, HB 2 is not a bill that reflects the values of our companies, of our country, or even the overwhelming majority of North Carolinians.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">We are disappointed in your decision to sign this discriminatory legislation into law. The business community, by and large, has consistently communicated to lawmakers at every level that such laws are bad for our employees and bad for business. This is not a direction in which states move when they are seeking to provide successful, thriving hubs for business and economic development. We believe that HB 2 will make it far more challenging for businesses across the state to recruit and retain the nation's best and brightest workers and attract the most talented students from across the nation. It will also diminish the state's draw as a destination for tourism, new businesses, and economic activity.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">Discrimination is wrong and we believe it has no place in North Carolina or anywhere in our country. As companies that pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming to all, we strongly urge you and the leadership of North Carolina's legislature to repeal this law in the upcoming legislative session.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">Sincerely, <br />Karen Appleton, Senior Vice President, Box <br />Brandee Barker, Cofounder, The Pramana Collective <br />Marc Benioff, CEO, Salesforce <br />Chip Bergh, President and CEO, Levi Strauss &amp; Co.<br />Michael Birch, Founder, Blab <br />Ed Black, President and CEO, Computer &amp; Communications Industry Association <br />Nathan Blecharczyk, Cofounder and CTO, Airbnb <br />Steven R. Boal, CEO, Quotient Technology Inc. <br />Lorna Borenstein, CEO, Grokker <br />Brad Brinegar, Chairman and CEO, McKinney <br />Lloyd Carney, CEO, Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. <br />Brian Chesky, CEO, Airbnb <br />Ron Conway, Founder and Co-Managing Partner, SV Angel <br />Tim Cook, CEO, Apple <br />Dean Debnam, Chairman and CEO, Workplace Options <br />Jack Dorsey, CEO, Square and Twitter <br />David Ebersman, Cofounder and CEO, Lyra Health <br />Jared Fliesler, General Partner, Matrix Partners <br />Joe Gebbia, Cofounder and Chief Product Officer, Airbnb <br />Jason Goldberg, CEO, Pepo <br />Alan King, President and COO, Workplace Options <br />Kristen Koh Goldstein, CEO, BackOps <br />Mitchell Gold, co-founder and chair-man, Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams <br />John H. Graham IV, President and CEO, American Society of Association Executives <br />Logan Green, CEO, Lyft <br />Paul Graham, Founder, Y Combinator <br />David Hassell, CEO, 15Five <br />Charles H. Hill III, Executive Vice President, Worldwide Human Resources, Pfizer Inc. <br />Reid Hoffman, Chairman, LinkedIn <br />Robert Hohman, Cofounder &amp; CEO, Glassdoor <br />Drew Houston, CEO, Dropbox <br />Chad Hurley, Cofounder, YouTube <br />Dave Imre, Partner and CEO, IMRE <br />Dev Ittycheria, President &amp; CEO, MongoDB <br />Laurene Powell Jobs, President, Emerson Collective <br />Cecily Joseph, VP Corporate Responsibility and Chief Diversity Officer, Symantec Corporation <br />David Karp, Founder and CEO, Tumblr <br />Travis Katz, Founder and CEO, Gogobot <br />Brian Krzanich, CEO, Intel <br />Joshua Kushner, Managing Partner, Thrive Capital <br />Max Levchin, CEO, Affirm <br />Dion Lim, CEO, NextLesson <br />Shan-lyn Ma, CEO, Zola <br />Marissa Mayer, President and CEO, Yahoo <br />Melody McCloskey, CEO, StyleSeat <br />Douglas Merrill, CEO, Zestfinance <br />Dyke Messinger, President and CEO, Power Curbers Inc. <br />Hari Nair, Vice President and General Manager, Orbitz.com &amp; CheapTickets.com <br />Michael Natenshon, CEO, Marine Layer <br />Alexi G. Nazem, Cofounder and CEO, Nomad Health <br />Laurie J. Olson, EVP, Strategy, Portfolio and Commercial Operations, Pfizer Inc. <br />Bob Page, Founder and CEO, Replacements, Ltd. <br />Michelle Peluso, Strategic Advisor and former CEO, Gilt <br />Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google <br />Mark Pincus, Founder and Executive Chairman, Zynga <br />Hosain Rahman, CEO, Jawbone <br />Bill Ready, CEO, Braintree <br />Evan Reece, CEO, Liftopia <br />Stan Reiss, General Partner, Matrix Partners <br />John Replogle, CEO, Seventh Generation <br />Virginia M. Rometty, Chairman, President and CEO, IBM Corporation <br />Dan Rosensweig, CEO, Chegg <br />Kevin P. Ryan, Founder and Chairman, Alleycorp <br />Bijan Sabet, General Partner, Spark Capital <br />Julie Samuels, President, Engine <br />George A. Scangos, PhD, CEO, Biogen <br />Dan Schulman, President and CEO, PayPal <br />Adam Shankman, Director and Producer <br />Gary Shapiro, President and CEO, Consumer Technology Association <br />David A. Shaywitz, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer, DNAnexus <br />Ben Silbermann, CEO, Pinterest <br />Brad Smith, President and Chief Legal Officer, Microsoft <br />Arne Sorenson, President and CEO, Marriott International <br />David Spector, Cofounder, ThirdLove <br />Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO, Yelp <br />Bret Taylor, CEO, Quip <br />Todd Thibodeaux, CEO, CompTIA <br />David Tisch, Managing Partner, BoxGroup <br />Nirav Tolia, Cofounder and CEO, Nextdoor <br />Kevin A. Trapani, President and CEO, The Redwood Groups <br />Ken Wasch, President, Software &amp; Information Industry Association <br />Bob &amp; Harvey Weinstein, Co-Founders and Co-Chairmen, The Weinstein Company <br />Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO, Facebook</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/peter-bergen-terrorists-reasons-isis-brussels-2016-3">Terrorism expert reveals 4 key reasons people become violent extremists</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="E3eW5hMjE6SgUisggnJ72OAAAoK05LjG" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, Ginni Rometty, others are asking North Carolina to repeal its 'discriminatory' law

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Vinaya</span></p><p class="caption">VINAYA CEO Kate Unsworth.</p></div><p></p></div></div>VINAYA, the London-headquartered wearables startup <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/london-wearables-company-vinaya-has-gone-into-administration-2016-12">that went into administration on December 12</a>, emailed backers of its Indiegogo campaign on January 1 telling them that they won't get the products they paid for.</p><p>The email (which can be read in full below) sent to the 1,308 people who backed VINAYA's Indieogo campaign said "technically we are not liable, and you are not entitled to a refund, or even the product your ordered."</p><p>Business Insider asked Indiegogo whether that email is an accurate representation of the site's policies, but Indiegogo was not immediately available to comment.</p><p>Instead of the products people have paid for, VINAYA is offering backers equity in a new company run by the same founders.</p><p><a href="https://www.vinaya.com/press-statement-company-administration">A press statement released by VINAYA </a>said that the company is considering moving to B2B, rather than the consumer model that it previously followed. The statement explains that CEO Kate Unsworth and VINAYA's other cofounders acquired what remained of the company, and they will offer equity in a new business named Vinaya Limited to their previous investors, as well as their Indiegogo backers.</p><p>The only other option given to backers is to wait and see if the new company releases a product, and to get that instead. VINAYA says it will "gift you new product if and when released."</p><p>VINAYA's closed Indiegogo campaign page <a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/zenta-stress-emotion-management-on-your-wrist#/comments">was flooded with angry comments</a> after the email was sent. "Wow, what a fraud," said backer Linda Unternahrer. "They took money from me just two weeks ago and then gave my sister a lousy card for Christmas and a link to the webpage, and now this. I'll never invest in Indiegogo again."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Lucy England</span></p><p class="caption">One of VINAYA's original Altrius wearable devices.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Business Insider spoke to Unternahrer about her reaction. She explained that she backed VINAYA with $159 (£129) after it reached 200% of its funding goal, "so I felt it was a safe investment," she said. She described the email from VINAYA as "flippant" and said she intends to seek a refund from the company. VINAYA did not respond to a request for comment.</p><p>Another backer, Yvonne Coats-Branley, wrote "Wow they stole my money… not gonna invest in indiegogo anymore, and I've done dozens, it's over.."</p><p>Andie Katschthaler, who also backed VINAYA, told Business Insider that "I found myself wondering if the whole thing was a scam from the get-go. After all, this isn't just some small crowdfunding campaign run out of a garage that just happened to miscalculate out of sheer inexperience. This is a campaign by an existing company with existing products that got 239% funded and received more than $272,000 in contributions."</p><p>Despite angry comments from backers, there's no indication that VINAYA acted fraudulently. Instead, the company said in its press statement that it was about to sign a large B2B contract that was delayed. It caused a cash flow problem, Unsworth said, which pushed her company into administration.</p><p>VINAYA had appeared to have a bright future. <a href="https://www.vinaya.com/products/">The company described its products</a> as "distraction management" tools that help customers to "filter out the noise." Its Altrius devices are smart jewellery pieces that connect to a smartphone via bluetooth and only notify the wearer when a notification is deemed important enough.</p><p>And VINAYA had an all-star lineup of investors including Net-a-Porter cofounder Carmen Busquets, Tech City <keyword id="6354868" type="COUNTRY" weightage="60" keywordseo="UK">UK</keyword> chair and Passion Capital partner Eileen Burbidge, Bebo founder Michael Birch, Localglobe partner Robin Klein, and Playfair Capital.</p><p><strong>Here's the full email sent by VINAYA to its Indiegogo backers:</strong></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">"Dear Indiegogo backer,<br /> <br />We've had a challenging 2 weeks. In short, the business had some unexpected, and unfortunately detrimental, cash flow issues mid-December and as a result, we had to close the company (please see this press statement for more info).</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">I'm incredibly disappointed that we weren't able to deliver on our vision; this has been financially painful for all our investors, and obviously very difficult for the whole VINAYA team. The group of people that I'm most disappointed for however is you; the people, mostly complete strangers, who were excited and inspired by our vision, enough to actually give us your financial support.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">I wanted to email you to update you, clarify the situation, explain what has happened over the last few weeks, and suggest a way we may be able to make it up to you:<br /> <br />When you backed our campaign, you agreed to Indiegogo's Terms and Conditions, which protect us (the company) in the event that we are unable to deliver the product, or the company has to close down.<br />Last week we had to close the company due to unforeseen circumstances. Technically we are not liable, and you are not entitled to a refund, or even the product your ordered. I understand how disappointing this must be.<br /> <br />Whilst there can be no guarantees at this stage, and contractual commitment isn't possible within the confines of the administration process, it is the founders' intention to find a way to repay your faith from a personal perspective if a new company structure is successful moving forward. Our intention would be to gift you new product if and when released, or alternatively award you some shares in the new company if formed, which would obviously produce a financial return in the event that the new company is profitable or sold. <br /> <br />As you can imagine, there are still a number of unknowns, so we appreciate your patience while we assess our options. Please bear with us while we get back on our feet - we no longer have a team to help manage everything, so updates to you may be less regular and / or less detailed, and responses to your queries may be delayed.<br /> <br />We will be in touch as soon as we can see a clear path forward.<br /> <br />Thanks again for your continued support.<br /> <br />The VINAYA Founders"</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-iphone-8-better-than-7-rumors-7-2016-12">Forget the iPhone 7 - here are 11 reasons the next iPhone will blow everyone away</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="hjOGpsODE6OFSNEzPzsiuHzXatNw1z13" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Failed hardware startup VINAYA told backers they won't get the products they paid for - and now they're furious

<p dir="ltr"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div>Video-chatting startup Rabbit quietly relaunched yesterday as a browser-based video chat application, after <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/07/rabbit-video-chat-launch/">a short-lived run as a Mac desktop app in 2013.</a></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The app is aimed at creating a completely new video-chatting experience that mimics the real-life experience of walking into a friend's dorm room or hanging out at a party. What that translates to is the ability to video-chat with 10 friends at once, while sharing videos, games, documents, and movies simultaneously.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>"We see it as a way to share experiences with people the way you would in real life. People watch TV together, people go to the movies together - we're trying to recreate that experience. We're not trying to compete with the standard players in video chat," Rabbit CEO Michael Temkin told Business Insider. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Rabbit users can watch Hulu or Netflix together, work on a GoogleDoc, or conduct large business meetings, complete with Powerpoints.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The app currently works with Google Chrome and Opera browsers and will be coming soon for Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari. A mobile app for iOS and Android is in the works for an early 2015 release.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Founded in 2012 by the founder of Acclaim Entertainment and others with extensive experience in video games and massively-multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), Rabbit's mission is simple: "to bring people together."</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>During the app's original launch in 2013 as a Mac-exclusive, Rabbit was focused on creating chat-rooms featuring multiple conversations. Users could gather in public spaces, "Rooms," </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">based around a common event like a concert.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>According to Temkin, users loved the concept, but it was difficult to get them to go through the "friction" to get on the app: namely an app download, required audio and video plug-ins, and sign ups.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr">The new Rabbit aims to remove all the barriers to use. The Rabbit engineering team rebuilt the app <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/whats-next-for-webrtc-2014-1">using WebRTC , a new type of video codec</a>, so that there are no downloads or plugins. Starting a Rabbit chat is as simple as opening a browser and sharing a link with your friends. Signing up for an account is completely optional.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Users that sign up can be assigned their own room, complete with a sharing link that they or any one of their friends can go to at any time.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Rabbit's no-brainer video chat and screen-sharing is useful, but it's the company's long-term plans where things get interesting. Rabbit is working on integrating its video-chat software with existing media organizations and social networks as kind of next-level version of commenting. Rabbit envisions a world where you read a story on The Washington Post's website and, at the bottom of the article, join a Rabbit chat where readers are having a reasoned discussion on the topic.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>While that may be optimistic (commenters are notoriously vicious), Rabbit is betting that face-to-face interactions will make people more civilized. Their goal is to have the type of application that convinces people to stay on pages longer, engage more, and drive video advertising views.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>During Rabbit's first launch in 2013, the company saw average chat times in the 70-90 minute range and average chat sizes of four people. If at some point in the future, Rabbit were able to achieve that in its integrations with existing media properties, Rabbit could quickly become the industry's darling.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr">Rabbit experimented with the idea in 2013, <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rabbit-chosen-as-first-live-streaming-and-chat-partner-for-mtv-iggy--intels-the-music-experiment-20-featuring-taeyang-233444461.html">when the site partnered with MTV and Intel to broadcast concerts by Korean pop-star Taeyang</a> and UK electronic music duo Disclosure. During the concert, "audience-members" were able to watch the concert while having multiple conversations with other audience members via Rabbit. The event was a demonstration of what Rabbit could do when opened up to a large setting, hosting hundreds of people at the same time.</p>
<p></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>"In the beginning, people would tentatively join up with conversations, but by the end of it, we had large groups of people drinking and hanging out around the concert. It was giving people the opportunity to meet in the way they would in the real world," says Temkin.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The Taeyang concert is an example of Rabbit's conception of "Rooms," part of the company's future vision. According to Temkin, the goal is for Rabbit to have numerous public spaces where large groups of people could meet and interact around topics or content. By example. Temkin says that during the testing phase, Rabbit set up a room where random users could interact around a news channel. The response far outpaced their expectations, as they found users were happy to talk for hours with random people about current events.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>For those that are thinking the obvious: that its difficult talking in a group of four, let alone dozens or hundreds of people at once. Temkin says that, in practice, such a situation is far more intuitive than one might guess. Users naturally break up into groups of people that they are interested in talking to and new entrants wander from conversation to conversation until they find one that interests them.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr">One of the most obvious questions with an app like Rabbit is streaming quality and internet speed. The company has designed the platform so users can have a "high-quality experience in a low-bandwidth setting," says Temkin. To do that, Rabbit has made it so streaming is controlled on their servers, reducing the bandwidth necessary for the app to work well. When the internet is particularly bad, the app is designed to always maintain audio quality (which users have told them is most important), even when top video quality is unavailable.  Temkin maintains that he was able to conduct a meeting on Rabbit <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/att-in-flight-internet-2014-4">using notoriously bad GoGo WiFi</a>. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Though Rabbit has yet to do its Series A funding yet, the <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/28/rabbit-raises-3-3m-seed-round/">company raised $3.3 million in 2013</a> from Google Ventures, CrunchFund, Michael Birch, and others.</p>

A Startup Named 'Rabbit' Thinks That It Solved A Major Problem With Video-Chatting

<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>It didn't take too long for Howie Liu, CEO of Airtable, to realize he could be in for one of those crazy overnight Silicon Valley success stories.</span></p><p>Liu's startup Etacts was building an email and contact manager specifically for salespeople. He was one of the 15 startups presenting in front of a group of potential investors at Y Combinator's 2010 Demo Day.</p><p>S<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">hortly after it was over, Liu was approached by a man he knew only from the TV series, </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">"</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">That '70s Show.</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">"</span></p><p>It was Ashton Kutcher.</p><p>"Awesome job, guys," Kutcher told Liu and the cofounders of his startup, saying how impressed he was by their contact management software. "My guys will contact your people," he said.</p><p>Soon, Kutcher became one of the first investors in Etacts. A year later, Etacts was acquired by Salesforce. Liu was only 21 years old.</p><p>"I personally made in the low 7 figures on day one at Salesforce," Liu told Business Insider.</p><p>But it wasn't just the financial part of the deal that made Liu want to take Salesforce's offer. In fact, he says, a number of different companies, including a big consumer brand, showed interest in Etacts. Ultimately, it came down to Liu's desire to get his feet wet in a large <keyword id="6356323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Enterprise">enterprise</keyword> company.</p><p>"I thought it would be the best learning experience," Liu told us. "You look at the big consumer companies out there, Jerry Yang didn't learn from consumer companies, and Mark Zuckerberg just went straight out of college. But Marc Benioff spent a lot of time at Oracle, learning from the inside."</p><p>And his choice turned out to be the right one. As a product manager at Salesforce, Liu was able to see firsthand how things were run at an enterprise company, joining meetings with Fortune 500 CIOs and talking with clients in different industries. Working with Alex Dayon, Salesforce's President of Products, on a daily basis also taught many little details of the business he didn't know then.</p><p>But Liu only stayed at Salesforce for about a year. He saw an opportunity to start a new business, where he could provide the tools for regular people to build their own spreadsheets - only better. He chose spreadsheets because he realized they weren't used in the right way by most users, and often ended up as a bunch of disorganized blocks cluttered with words.</p><p>"Spreadsheets are really optimized for numerical analysis and financial calculations. But almost 90% of spreadsheets don't have formulas. Most are used for organizing purposes," Liu said.</p><p>The result was Airtable.</p><p>It's almost like spreadsheets on steroids, where users can organize columns in a much more sophisticated way. You can add text, files and images in each block, while linking each data block to other spreadsheet files. It also allows simulateneous collaboration on the same file. For new users, it also has recommended templates pre-built for different industries and verticals.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Once he had his prototype ready, Liu reached out to Kutcher to ask for seed investment. Kutcher at the time was filming his TV show, "Two and a Half Men," and asked Liu to come down to his filming set in Los Angeles.</p><p>"We actually drove in to the Warner Brothers studio area," Liu said. "[Kutcher] literally had his outfit on."</p><p>After waiting for about 45 minutes, Kutcher was finally done filming and asked Liu and his cofounder, Andrew Ofstad, to come into his movie trailer for the pitch. Liu walked him through Airtable.</p><p>"I can really see this taking off, beyond Hollywood," Kutcher told him. "Even in my own world, I could see hundreds of different use-cases. They have spreadsheets tracking all these different stuff, it's one giant organizational problem."</p><p>Kutcher pretty much made up his mind to invest in Airtable on the spot. Later, he ended up joining a group of investors that included ZenPayroll CEO Josh Reeves and Bebo founder Michael Birch.</p><p>Airtable was founded in 2012, but has been in product development for almost two years. It only had its official launch earlier this year, so there's no publicly available data on its user base or revenue figures yet.</p><p>But it's adding new features quickly, and on Thursday, just made its API builder that allows users to build more customized features, available to the public. It's also added an embeddable feature where users can add customized lists of content directly within their websites.</p><p>Airtable is still in its early days. It could become another success, like Liu's first startup, or end up never gaining any kind of traction.</p><p>But for 26-year old Liu, it's all about being on this wild ride through the Silicon Valley startup world. "I really loved every second of it. Even if I had zero percent equity in this company, I would still want to work here and work on this kind of problem," he said.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/excel-data-hack-text-to-columns-2015-4">The handy tool that solves one of the most annoying problems in Excel</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="Z1MGs1bDriNRtaLeoHRaOzgkHH_wpJxK" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

This 26-year-old CEO pitched Ashton Kutcher in his movie trailer - and got funding

<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Not many people have the luxury of working with the Paypal "Mafia," the big shots from early days of the payment company that sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But for those who do, like Mixpanel's 26-year old CEO Suhail Doshi, it meant the difference between zero and $835 million.</span></p><p>In the spring of 2008, Suhail Doshi received an unexpected message through IRC, a chat forum popular among hackers and computer engineers: "Come intern at Slide."</p><p>Slide, an app widget-making startup founded by ex-PayPal CTO Max Levchin, was one of the hottest startups back then, worth roughly $500 million (it was later acquired by Google). Doshi was a self-taught programmer, majoring in computer systems engineering at Arizona State University. It was a no-brainer for him to take the offer.</p><p>At Slide, Doshi wasn't assigned to any specific project, working almost independently on different ideas. But he really liked his time there - so much that he would work past midnight every day.</p><p>Slide's CEO Levchin took an immediate liking to Doshi. Levchin loved that kind of intensity. Almost every day, Levchin would sit next to him, hearing new ideas and pitches."I don't know why he did it, but I got to build this great working relationship with Max," Doshi tells Business Insider.</p><p>Levchin liked him so much that he tried to get Doshi out of school and hire him full-time when the three-month internship was over. He even called Doshi's mother and tried to convince her that it would be OK for Doshi to drop out of college. But it was a tough sell, and Doshi ended up returning to Arizona State at the end of the summer.</p><h3><strong>The Startup Bug</strong></h3><p>Doshi returned to school, but his mind was already back in Silicon Valley. "I got the [startup] bug. I got bit really hard," Doshi tells us.</p><p>He tried many different things, but eventually settled on tan idea he got from working at Slide: building a sophisticated analytics software that helps apps track and learn more about its users. Although general analytics software like Google Analytics were available, Doshi noticed Slide was spending over $1 million on building its own customized, internal analytics software.</p><p>"At Slide, they would measure crazy things. It was like they were quantifying every part of what they did," Doshi says.</p><p>Mixpanel is designed to do exactly that. It measures more detailed "engagement" numbers, such as when the user clicks "likes" on Facebook or "filters" on Instagram, not the more traditional pageviews or install figures. He believes pageviews and uniques are <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mixpanel-now-measures-12-billion-actions-per-month-2013-4">"BS metrics" that fail to gauge</a> the true value of your product.</p><p>When Doshi built his first prototype, he sent it to Levchin. The feedback was crushing: "The Slides of the world would build this themselves," Levchin told him.</p><p>But Doshi didn't stop there. He soon found a cofounder, Tim Trefren, from the math course he was taking. The two became close friends, spending almost 16 hours a day and every Friday night at the computer lab, working on Mixpanel.</p><p>"It was just rapid product iteration. Every day, we were just cranking," Doshi says.</p><p>Eventually, the work paid off. In the summer of 2009, they came up with a much improved product. It won them a spot on Y Combinator and $15,000 in seed funding. A few months later, even Levchin bought in: Slide became Mixpanel's first big-time customer, nearly 10 months after Doshi got that first feedback from Levchin.</p><h3><strong>"Business Dad"</strong></h3><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>But the $15,000 YC money didn't last long. Even though Doshi and Trefren didn't spend much - they rented a small one-bedroom apartment, living out of a suitcase and a $200 grocery budget - they reached a point where they were a week away from going bankrupt.</p><p>At the time, investors were lukewarm on business software, and the economic downturn wasn't helpful either.</p><p>"Half of our YC batch died in 2009. Today, 90% get funded," Doshi says.</p><p>But Levchin, after using Maxpanel for a few months, saw its potential and decided to invest $500,000 (alongside Bebo founder Michael Birch) into a seed round in 2010. "If Max and Michael didn't put in $500,000, there would be no Mixpanel," Doshi says.</p><p>Levchin helped in future rounds too. In 2011, when Mixpanel struggled to find Series A investors, Levchin brokered a deal with Sequoia to get a $1.25 million "bridge round," where another Paypal mafia member Keith Rabois joined as well.</p><p>A year later, Levchin helped again, connecting them with VCs like Andreessen Horowitz, who ended up leading a $10.25 million Series A round. Andreessen Horowitz also led <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mixpanel-raises-65-million-slide-deck-2014-12">the $65 million Series B round in December</a> that gave Mixpanel a $865 million valuation.</p><p>"Max has helped us with every funding round in the history of the company," Doshi says. "I don't know if we'd be here without him, honestly."</p><p>Mixpanel continues to be one of the fastest growing business analytics apps today. It now caters to 3,000 paying customers, analyzing over 43 billion data points, including clicks, swipes, and taps (Mixpanel calls this "actions). It's putting a lot more emphasis on mobile, and is even experimenting with predictive analytics.</p><p>But there's lots of competition, too. Companies like Google Analytics, Omniture, and KISSmetrics are all vying for market share. Yet, Doshi seems undeterred by any of them. When asked about those competitors, Doshi pointed back to the first feedback he received from Levchin.</p><p>"Our competitor is someone building this themselves," he says. "Max is still kind of right."</p><p>And he knows if things ever get tough, he'll have someone to turn to. "Most people are scared of their investors, but you can pretty much go to Max even with your worst problems," Doshi says. "He's like my business dad."</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/drunk-driving-checkpoint-regulation-hack-2015-2">A lawyer in Florida has come up with an ingenious way for drivers to evade drunken-driving checkpoints</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="EwZXE5czqobpJLXsPUCBDsxSm8XxaRw0" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

How a PayPal 'Mafia' member helped this 26-year-old build an $865 million startup

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Second Home</span></p><p class="caption">Second Home founders Rohan Silva and Sam Aldenton.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>Workspace company Second Home is expanding its office empire to include a new space for corporates in Clerkenwell, London.</strong></li><li><strong>Second Home launched its first office space in east London in 2014 and made its name with colourful offices that feature glass walls and plants.</strong></li><li><strong>The company has faced planning issues that have caused one set of plans to be voluntarily withdrawn, and another to be delayed by 18 months.</strong></li><li><strong>Second Home is planning a US expansion with two offices in Los Angeles.</strong></li><li><strong>Cofounder Rohan Silva, formerly an advisor to ex-Prime Minister David Cameron, said he's "much more optimistic" about Brexit now compared to one year ago.</strong></li></ul><p><br />Take a walk around the new floor that opened recently in trendy office space company Second Home's Spitalfields location and you'll see 11,000 coloured hats suspended from the ceiling. They are there to muffle sound, apparently. Step outside, and there's a body of water, complete with aquatic plants, which works its way around the balcony and the startups working inside the building.</p><p>Across the street, Second Home runs the Libreria book shop which features a mirrored wall and books organised by theme rather than whether they're fiction or non-fiction. The company also has an office in Holland Park in West London, a site in Lisbon, an inflatable building it calls "Second Dome," and <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/rohan-silvas-second-home-buys-2015-serpentine-pavilion-to-take-it-to-la-2015-6">it purchased the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion, which it plans to ship to Los Angeles to hold events in</a>.</p><p>Second Home is an unusual place to work. According to its founders, its unconventional design attracted visits from architect Bjarke Ingels and designer Thomas Heatherwick before they began drawing up ideas for Google's new London office. </p><p>Second Home has ambitious plans to expand to two sites in Los Angeles, a new space for corporates in Clerkenwell, and a family-focused office in London Fields. The company has attracted investment from investors including Index Ventures, Bebo founder Michael Birch, LocalGlobe, and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Second Home</span></p><p class="caption">Some of the 11,000 coloured hats in Second Home Spitalfields.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Founders Rohan Silva and Sam Aldenton have enviable career experience for establishing the business. Silva was a senior policy advisor working under then-Prime Minister David Cameron. And Aldenton helped to start a series of creative businesses including the Dalston Roof Park, the Rooftop Café, and Feast.</p><p>Yet the pair said they have faced "incredibly frustrating" planning delays, and also<a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/wework-aggressive-uber-coworking-startup-2017-10"> increasing competition from rival office company WeWork</a>, which is expanding aggressively in London.</p><h2>Second Home's new London office will be designed for corporates</h2><p>Second Home has long been associated with startups. Sure, large corporates like Ernst &amp; Young and Volkswagen have rented desk space, but the colourful office spaces always seemed better-suited to smaller companies.</p><p>That's all going to change with Second Home's new office space in Clerkenwell, which cofounders Silva and Aldenton announced in an interview with Business Insider.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Second Home</span></p><p class="caption">The new top floor at Second Home's Spitalfields site.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>"What excites us about Clerkenwell is it's the place in London where corporates are most comfortable working alongside startups," Silva said. "It's really one of those spaces in London for hundreds of years where, because it's outside of the City of London [and] the Square Mile, people who think differently have been able to live there and work there."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Second Home</span></p><p class="caption">Second Home's planned Clerkenwell office space.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The new office, which is scheduled to open in the autumn, will have space for startups on the ground floor, Silva said, but the other six floors will be occupied by teams from corporates. Second Home plans to include features like biometric locks, a podcast studio, desks that can rise and fall as needed, and a series of talks designed to appeal to corporate customers.</p><p>Aldenton said that Second Home also plans to install "a mirror on a ceiling and a mirror on a floor and create an optical illusion that will give you an incredible sense of energy when you arrive" on the ground floor of the building.</p><p>But does expanding to a new building focused on corporates risk selling out, in a way? Silva disagreed: "The day we opened we had Cushman &amp; Wakefield and Santander here."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Second Home</span></p><p class="caption">Another render of Second Home's planned Clerkenwell office.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>"And we've always been banging on about this point that we want to try to bring together as many industries and organisations of different stages and sizes. The reason being that actually it's really hard to do business with people if you're all at the same stage."</p><p>Silva criticised competing office space companies like WeWork for focusing on startups and early stage companies. "Lots of workspaces are just full of startups," he said. "And that's fine and everything, and broadly a good thing, but it also just means that those startups can't really do business with each other."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Second Home</span></p><p class="caption">A breakdown of the kinds of companies who work from Second Home's offices.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Rohan Silva still wants to build homes - but the planning system 'makes it almost impossible'</h2><p><a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/rohan-silva-interview-second-home-build-homes-lisbon-portugal-2016-11">Back in November 2016</a>, Silva told Business Insider that he planned to look at ways to build affordable housing in London in 2018. But since then, he's found that London's planning systems have made it difficult to get the permission he needs to build living spaces.</p><p>"It just became clearer and clearer as we got through the planning system that actually the planning system makes it almost impossible to build [and] to really innovate when it comes to housing," Silva said.</p><p>"These rules are put in place for well-meaning reasons and they do stop bad things happening, but they can also stop good things happening. So the more we've looked at it, the more it's clear that's a real challenge."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Second Home</span></p><p class="caption">Second Home member Sharmadean Reid, founder of WAH Nails</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>That became more clear when Second Home had to back out of a plan to build a living space next to its office in Spitalfields. It changed its plans for the building from housing to office space, and eventually ended up dropping the proposal, <a href="https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/02/12/2198694/second-home-pulls-plans-for-carport-building/">as The Financial Times reported in February</a>.</p><p>Silva complained that The Financial Times' reporting on Second Home was "deeply unbalanced," and he emphasised that Second Home voluntarily removed its application. "We didn't have to do it and we had seven successful planning applications and this will be the eighth," he said. "We'll probably have some other successful ones in between. But we chose to do it in order to work with the council, not against them."</p><p>Silva said that Second Home would resubmit its planning application "shortly." And as for his plan to build affordable homes, he said that the company now plans to build housing in a separate project in central London which he said would open "in a couple of years time."</p><h2>Second Home has faced 'incredibly frustrating' delays in building another new office space in London Fields</h2><p>Another Second Home project that has faced issues is the company's plan to build a family-focused office space and creche in London Fields. Aldenton said that Second Home has faced "incredibly frustrating" issues in getting planning permission for the project.</p><p>"The sad thing is actually that the local authority are supportive of Second Home," Aldenton said. "But because of the bureaucracy involved in this process, it's taken us introducing people in the same organisation to each other, which makes no sense when the will is there to do it but they get tangled in their own red tape."</p><p>Silva was also unhappy with the delays. "We've waited 18 months for council approval for that site," he said. "It's really frustrating because we get stuff built really fast. Second Home here, when we opened, that was 16 weeks of construction and we found the site in January, we signed the lease in March, we got planning permission in June, and we opened on the start of November. We work that fast, all of our projects have been that quick. Clerkenwell will be that fast, et cetera."</p><p>Silva said that construction work had just started on the future London Fields office space after 18 months of delays, and Second Home plans to open the office in September.</p><h2>The company is preparing to open 2 new office spaces in Los Angeles</h2><p>In contrast to the delays faced in London, Second Home's expansion in Los Angeles is on track, Aldenton said. "We've been working with some very experienced partners out there who are leading the construction work on our behalf. We're actually 90% permitted."</p><p>Construction on the Los Angeles office will start in several weeks, Aldenton said, and the company plans to open its first US location in either Spring or early Summer 2019. Silva also said that "we're actually working already on a second location in LA."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Getty Images Europe</span></p><p class="caption">Architects José Selgas and Lucía Cano in front of the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Second Home plans to ship the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion, <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/rohan-silvas-second-home-buys-2015-serpentine-pavilion-to-take-it-to-la-2015-6">which the company purchased for "big six figures" in 2015</a>, out to Los Angeles. "That'll be up in LA at the end of this year ... beginning of next year," Silva said, "and we're going to be hosting a great programme of art and film and music and everything."</p><h2>Rohan Silva is 'much more optimistic' about Brexit</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Second Home</span></p><p class="caption">Second Home founder Rohan Silva.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Silva's background in government means he's well-placed to look at the potential impact of Brexit on businesses in the UK.</p><p>"I think the thing that will screw London and the UK is if we make it much harder for talented people to come here," Silva said. "I think the good news is that politicians seem to be pretty united right now in saying we don't want that to happen."</p><p>"I think entrepreneur visas, which I was responsible for getting set up, could be broadened out massively. I think we can make it much, much easier for small businesses to become sponsors."</p><p>"There is still a lot to do but I am actually much more optimistic than I was a year ago that things are heading in the right direction on that so I think, all being well, we'll be in good shape."</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/open-bionics-prosthetic-arms-2018-2">These bionic arms make kids feel like superheroes</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

Second Home's founders have global ambitions for their office empire - but local councils have caused 'incredibly frustrating' delays

Silicon Valley Is Living Inside A Bubble Of Tone-Deaf Arrogance

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Second Home</span></p><p class="caption">Rohan Silva photographed in Second Home in London.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Rohan Silva, the former government advisor who now runs the Second Home office for creative and technology workers in east London, says his next big project is building homes to offset London's high cost of living.</p><p><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/61dc00e6-a1c1-11e4-bd03-00144feab7de">Silva joined the Treasury after graduating from university</a> and became a policy advisor to David Cameron and George Osborne while they were in opposition.</p><p>After the 2010 election, Silva continued to work in government, and was in a position to help turn policies into reality. <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2013/07/05/goodbye-mr-silva-now-its-time-to-test-tech-city-yourself/">He helped convince Google to set up its Campus coworking space in east London</a>, and he also helped to create the Tech City initiative which promoted east London's growing technology cluster. </p><p>Silva left government in 2013 to become an entrepreneur, and set about working on a series of ambitious projects. First there was <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/61dc00e6-a1c1-11e4-bd03-00144feab7de">a rumoured speech-recognition startup</a>. That was followed by the idea for a networking startup. Then he converted a former carpet factory off Brick Lane into a futuristic office space filled with 2,000 plants and a 1.5 tonne U-shaped table that can rise and fall as needed.</p><p>Hanbury Street, just off London's Brick Lane, isn't known for being a technology hub. Visit Second Home and you may stumble upon a group of tourists huddled outside a car park just down the road. There's a big business in Jack the Ripper tours, and the body of Annie Chapman, generally considered to be his second victim, was discovered in the garden of 29 Hanbury Street in 1888.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Iwan Baan</span></p><p class="caption">Second Home Spitalfields.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>But Second Home has become a small tech cluster in its own right. Walk around the curved pods that companies rent and you may see well-known venture capitalists such as Christian Hernandez Gallardo of White Star Capital and Sonali De Rycker of Accel. Architect Thomas Heatherwick, former Chancellor George Osborne, and entrepreneur Richard Branson have all visited the space at some point as well.</p><p>Silva says that he's keen to include non-technology companies in Second Home, though. 80% of companies are selected from "diverse industries," he said in an interview at Second Home. "They're companies of different sizes and scales and geographies. You've got companies that are here from Israel, from Portugal, you've got government agencies, you've got charities."</p><p>The other 20% of companies at Second Home, Silva said, are selected because they do things that are useful to Second Home's members. "There's five venture capital funds here, there's a recruitment agency, there's a PR firm, there's branding agencies, there's a law firm, Taylor Wessing, there's an accounting firm, Ernst and Young. So the stuff you need, even if it's annoying stuff like legal advice, is all within the community."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Second Home</span></p><p class="caption">An architect's render of the fifth floor of Second Home Spitalfields.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Right now Second Home has four floors filled with companies, but it's planning to open a fifth floor in spring 2017. It will include <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/exclusive-second-home-is-expanding-2015-10">what was previously described by Silva</a> as a "huge indoor lake" (although he now characterises it as a "series of rivulets"). Silva says that around a third of the surface area will be water, and it will be home to aquatic plants such as water lilies.</p><p>The Hanbury Street office space is gradually being rebranded to "Second Home Spitalfields" as the company expands elsewhere. There's a new family-focused site on the way in London Fields, and a fashion space planned in the west London studio where the 1966 movie "Blow-Up" was filmed.</p><h2>Second Home is expanding to Lisbon</h2><p>A Second Home space will open in Lisbon on December 1, Silva said. Lisbon isn't often considered to be a leading European technology hub (most people would say London and then Berlin before Lisbon), so what made Silva decide to expand there?</p><p>"As with many entrepreneurial stories, it began with a night out drinking," Silva said. "I was out there with my wife [Shuffle Festival organiser Kate MacTiernan] , this was the summer of 2014, and we had been hearing about the art scene in Lisbon and the creative scene. We just went out just to hang out for a weekend. We were out on Friday night and it got to about four in the morning, and there's that great moment of epiphany/drunkenness when you realise 'hang on, this is really amazing.'</p><p>"We're out really late, there's no cops trying to shut the bar down. People are just having a drink on the street and it's all very mellow and great. It just felt really free. I think, unfortunately, music venues in London closing, late licenses being taken away and all that, London is sadly a less free place than it was 10 years ago."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Second Home</span></p><p class="caption">Second Home Lisbon.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Silva said he emailed his investors to say he was looking closely at Lisbon after he returned. Investors in Second Home include Russian internet billionaire Yuri Milner, the Zegna family, Bebo founder Michael Birch, VC firm Index Ventures, investor Robin Klein, and former Arts Council England chair Peter Bazalgette. <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/b5aa2f34-9dfc-11e6-9ade-40205ec87f4c">The company announced in October</a> that it has raised £20 million to fund its expansion.</p><p>Silva said his investors then got in touch with him to pass on useful contacts in Lisbon. One investor, Peter Dubens of Oakley Capital, told him about a space above Time Out's Lisbon food market that had been empty for months. "We were taken to this derelict first floor looking down on that market," Silva said. "And we like derelict weird spaces."</p><p>The Second Home office in Lisbon is already 75% full, and Silva said residents will include VC fund Faber Ventures, fashion companies, and a dentist and former television presenter who is starting a new dental company. Silva says the most expensive monthly price for a member in Lisbon is €220 (£187) per month, and he's considering introducing a Soho House-style pricing option where residents of one Second Home office could go and work in another location.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Business Insider/Jim Edwards</span></p><p class="caption">Second Home Lisbon is above the Time Out food market.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The Lisbon office space reached 75% capacity without any advertising, according to Silva. It's a contrast to rival office space providers like WeWork and Regus which do advertise their locations. Silva repeatedly criticised those companies during our interview, calling WeWork "a deeply cynical venture" that's "just about spam emails and Facebook ads."</p><p>One of the biggest hurdles for Second Home in Lisbon has been finding someone to manage the new office. Silva said he's moving to the city for two months, but the office needed a permanent manager. <a href="https://medium.com/@SecondHome/we-re-hiring-second-home-country-manager-portugal-63b2807962a5#.9w96lrg8s">Second Home published a Medium post in January </a>which said the company would pay a salary of up to €100,000 (£85,000) for a country manager in Portugal.</p><p>"We had 750 applications," Silva said. "But the guy we ended up hiring is this brilliant guy named Federico [Carneiro]. He's very Second Home in that he set up an art school in Lisbon and then went and worked for Microsoft for 10 years. So that blend of being an entrepreneur, being into art, and also technology, that's very Second Home."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Business Insider/Jim Edwards</span></p><p class="caption">Second Home Lisbon held a party to coincide with Web Summit.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Second Home plans to build living spaces in 2018</h2><p>Ask Silva about the threats faced by people back in London and he'll mention two things. First of all: The high cost of living. "It's really expensive to live in London and that makes life harder than it should be," he said. "Housing is the next big thing from Second Home," Silva explained, saying that he hopes to open living spaces for workers in 2018.</p><p>"Essentially what we're doing with Second Home is creative diverse communities, helping people live, helping people be more communal, integrating cultural life into the rest of your experience in the city," Silva said. "It'll be the same in a living space."</p><p>But the <keyword id="6354868" type="COUNTRY" weightage="60" keywordseo="UK">UK</keyword>'s planning system for building homes is something that Silva is clearly frustrated with. "The way that the planning system works, or in truth doesn't work in the UK, is that anything you want to do you can just add a year or two to it because the system is so broken and dysfunctional," he said.</p><p>"The planning system makes it almost impossible to build in London. The only way you can build is by paying planning consultants £100,000 ... by taking two years to get through a really uncertain planning process. That means that only really big companies with only really huge balance sheets can build housing, and it shouldn't be like that. We have to reform the planning system. It's a boring, nerdy, unsexy truth."</p><h2>Silva is worried about the effects of Brexit, but he won't go back into politics</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Rob Stothard / Stringer</span></p><p class="caption">Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has promoted the idea of a London-specific work visa.</p></div><p></p></div></div>The second threat to London, Silva said, is the UK's vote to leave the EU. "If we end up making London a place that's much harder for talented, creative people to come to then we're all screwed and that would be terrible.</p><p>"But also, of course, London and the area around it generates a third of all the tax revenue for the UK. While people might not care that much what happens to London if you don't live here, if you do care about your local hospital and your local school, it does matter that London's economy continues to grow."</p><p><a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/sadiq-khan-confirms-plans-for-separate-london-work-permits-to-stop-postbrexit-exodus-of-skilled-a3355466.html">One idea that has been floated by the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan</a> is a London-specific work visa that would ensure that people can come to live and work in the capital. Silva says it's an "incredibly sensible" idea. "The government can either decide that the economy will grow less quickly and there's less tax revenue, or London can get the kind of talent it needs. It's kind of up to the government."</p><p>Would Silva go back into government to help Theresa May negotiate Brexit and provide a voice for small businesses? "It's been really humbling to start a business because you do realise very quickly how hard it is and how you've got to be just completely, relentlessly focused to make headway. This is it for me. Second Home is my life and I'm not going to rest until we're in lots of cities."</p><h2>Second Home hopes to expand to the US</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Second Home</span></p><p class="caption">"Second Dome"</p></div><p></p></div></div>It's easy to lose track of the number of projects that Silva is currently working on. As well as the office spaces mentioned previously, he also owns the Libreria book shop on Hanbury Street opposite Second Home Spitalfields.</p><p>The shop has its own printing press in the basement, and has been producing promotional materials for Second Home. Silva says it will start printing magazines and books in 2017.</p><p>And Second Home also owns a giant inflatable structure dubbed "Second Dome" which can be inflated as needed. "We debuted it at <a href="https://ff.co/#/" target="_blank">Founders Forum</a> in the summer," Silva said. "We went from hosting an event in there with David Adjaye the architect, Tony Fadell the guy who is credited with creating the iPod, that was all very creative and proper, then a few weeks ago in London Fields hosting a free kid's day for the local community where we had 500 kids running around, bouncing off the walls and everything."</p><p>There's also the Serpentine Pavilion, a temporary giant sculpture that was erected outside the Serpentine Galleries in London's Hyde Park in 2015. <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/rohan-silvas-second-home-buys-2015-serpentine-pavilion-to-take-it-to-la-2015-6">Second Home announced in June 2015</a> that it had purchased the piece, designed by SelgasCano (the same Spanish architecture firm that designed Second Home Spitalfields), for a sum in the "big six figures."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/spanish-architects-jose-selgas-and-lucia-cano-of-selgascano-news-photo/478078518">Dan Kitwood/Getty Images</a></span></p><p class="caption"> Spanish architects Jose Selgas and Lucia Cano of SelgasCano pose for pictures outside the new Serpentine Summer Pavilion. </p></div><p></p></div></div>Silva hints that he has big plans for his colourful pavilion: "We're taking that to the states as part of a big announcement we're going to be making next year."</p><p>Throughout our interview, Silva hinted that he's going to expand Second Home to the US. We asked whether certain cities around the world could be too expensive for Second Home, but Silva said it's all about finding the affordable districts. "We love LA, for example," he said. "Even in a city like that, there's really expensive areas like Venice Beach in Santa Monica, but there are also much more affordable parts of LA that are often more interesting because actually that's where the artists can afford to be, it's where creative people can be. And that's where we want to hang out as well."</p><h2>Silva insists that Second Home isn't too expensive</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Second Home</span></p><p class="caption">Richard Branson with Rohan Silva at Second Home Spitalfields.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Everything Silva does feels tailor-made to the technology and creative industries. Second Home is invite-only, for example, and it has a fancy restaurant which recently started serving drinking vinegar. Sometimes it can feel rather isolated from east London and the people who are genuinely struggling because of the impact of the high cost of living.</p><p>San Francisco has seen <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/erin-mcelroy-and-san-francisco-anti-tech-gentrification-protests-2014-5">local residents protest against gentrification</a> caused by a rise in the number of highly paid technology workers who push up rent - does Second Home risk creating the same elitism? "We have San Francisco as a cautionary tale about how not to operate." Silva said.</p><p>"The reason that the restaurant at Second Home is open to the public, the reason that all our cultural programming is open to the public, is that we want to be open to the community and to be a civic space. If you go to visit a big company in San Francisco, unless you've got a pass you can't even get past the front door."</p><p>Business Insider asked Silva whether he's concerned about the pricing of Second Home. Unsurprisingly, this is something he's passionate about. "Every day there's a lunch that's £6 that's open to everyone. It's really popular with people who work nearby. There's not many places you can get a big box of healthy Ottolenghi-type food for £6 ... The talks are all free."</p><p>"I don't think there's many places in the world where you could have heard Stella McCartney or Nick Hornby or Richard Rogers or the Astronomer Royal for free, which was all here. So that's kind of great ... We're an accredited living wage employer. We have an apprentice through Hackney Community College, a really great guy called Ayo. We have multiple charity partnerships with the Prince's Trust and others. We're really, really conscious of the social responsibility that I think any entrepreneur should feel."</p><p>Silva is so fired up about Second Home's inclusivity that he asked to go back on the record straight after the interview had ended. "Our mission is to bring together a really diverse community, and the only way you can do that is by making it as affordable as possible. We've always known that we could charge double what we charge and still be full. But we choose not to do that because obviously you'd have a much less diverse community, you wouldn't have the charities that are here, you wouldn't have the arts organisations. And that would be really boring. It might make us more money, but that's not what we're doing it for."</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-block-contact-how-to-2016-11">Here's what happens when you block someone on your iPhone</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="kweDg2MzE6fu8Gh5mlcbzppfm5Dqk0ha" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

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