Over the weekend, I spent some time at the Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA. The annual festival, hosted by Maker Media, which publishes Make Magazine, brings thousands of people to the Bay Area peninsula to indulge in robotics, crafts, software, and DIY culture.

The festival had some marquee exhibitors and speakers, like 3DRobotics CEO and former Wired editor Chris Anderson. Organizations like the X-Prize and startups like Sifteo and Helios had booths in the main concourse.

And there were 3D printers. Lots of 3D printers.

So many 3D printers.

But as a first-time Maker Faire attendee – and I’ll admit I’m a newbie, since the festival has been around since 2006 – I was surprised to see just how much of a family affair it was. The startups and high-powered speakers are standard fare for your typical tech gathering. But the charm of the festival was everything else, on the outskirts of the main concourse.

There were organizations like the Oakland, CA-based Hacker Scouts. The idea is for young people ages 4 to 17 to earn badges for learning specific technical or programming skills – like a soldering badge, or an Android badge, or a sensors badge. Samantha Cook and Garratt Gallagher, a former Boy Scout himself, cofounded the organization. “These are things completely essential for the next generation,” says Cook.

This is Lee Rodgers, who tells me he is 10 and a half, with an enclosed circuit board he built.

Then there was this Human Body Recharge Station that was decidedly low-tech. (They didn’t have a website, but a nifty flyer.)

The idea is to hold a copper rod filled with carbon in your right hand, and a zinc rod filled with magnets in your left hand, and to place them on tense parts of your body. The combined effect is supposed to create an electric charge in your body to boost energy. I tried it, and didn’t feel much, though I didn’t give it the suggested five to 15 minutes. But, “the charge is working, even if it is not felt,” the flyer assures me. The idea isn’t all granola. At least one startup is banking on it, too. At HAXLR8R’s demo day last week, Focus, a company from London, debuted a headset that sends a jolt to users’ brains that is supposed to boost cognitive abilities, like alertness, in gamers.

Last, there was the “peddle-powered stage,” apparently a familiar staple of the Maker Faire, presented by the Berkeley-based sustainability organization Rock the Bike. A jazz band played on stage while close to a dozen bicyclists generated electricity to power the sound system.

These are the kinds of quirks that make up a family event like the Maker Faire. Demonstrations like this might seem kitschy to high-minded technologists, but it’s not kitschy to anyone who sees the 100-watt smiles on kids’ faces. 

BONUS: Here is a fleet of R2D2s built by various robotics groups.

Richard Nieva

Richard Nieva is a staff writer at PandoDaily, covering technology and startups in Silicon Valley. He’s worked as a reporter for Fortune Magazine, and wants you to follow him on Twitter.

The first step in the adoption of “the Internet of things” – where Web capabilities are implemented into everyday objects – entails making sure there are even products in the first place. But as that ecosystem fills out, one of the next steps is addressing matters of market approach and distribution.

During a panel discussion yesterday at a conference hosted by Techonomy, venture capitalists and executives mused about the model the Internet of things would take as the landscape takes shape. And the question is: horizontals or verticals?

Horizontals, here, can be understood as a platform – something more open and vast, akin to Android. For something with as many untested possibilities as the Internet of things, having more voices, and more engineering minds at work building on a platform could be helpful for the landscape.

A vertical is more tightly controlled – specialized, individual companies with tighter focuses. The breakthrough vertical in the Internet of things, the panelists unanimously agreed, was the smart thermostat Nest. Horizontals have traditionally been a safe bet in the Valley, or so thinks Trae Vassallo, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers (one of the firms that invested in Nest), because consumers initially need success stories to latch onto. “Especially in emerging, new areas, verticals are needed to pave the way,” she said. “People don’t buy platforms.” They buy products and services that are helpful to them, she continued.

Sarah Lacy argued in March that the sharing economy may be the first category where verticals work better than horizontals. She mentions Marc Andreessen’s initial inclination toward shunning investments in verticals at Andreessen Horowitz. Though early on, the firm decided against an absolute prohibition of verticals, and has invested in both.

So it’s interesting that the firm is once again considering the pros and cons of each, regarding the Internet of things. “That’s the most active debate that we have going on internally right now,” said Frank Chen, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “It’s an open question.” Right now, though, the firm looks to be going with its proverbial gut. In December, the firm led a $7 million investment in IFTTT, short for “if this, then that,” a horizontal platform that lets users connect Web services with other Web services. For example, using IFTTT, you can track your sleeping patterns with the Jawbone up and have the information automatically compiled onto a spreadsheet in Google Drive.

In the early goings of the Internet of things, the answers aren’t so defined. Andreessen Horowitz also contributed to a $1.1 million round in Osito, a personal assistant app, which CEO Bill Ferrell eventually wants to turn into a platform for location-based connected devices. For example, if a user is on his way home, Osito can ask you if you want the heat in your home turned on, or your front door unlocked when you get there. This one’s has got a narrow focus on location-based services. So even as platforms emerge, there are niche ones among them. (Unlike a platform that’s broader, like Facebook or Android.)

But regardless of horizontal versus vertical, the challenge ahead of device makers is still finding out what people first want in a connected product. “Ultimately, it’s about creating solutions that resonate with groups of people that are excited by it,” says Vassallo.

[Frank Chen is a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Marc Andreessen, who cofounded the firm, is a personal investor in PandoDaily.]

[Illustration by Hallie Bateman]

Richard Nieva

Richard Nieva is a staff writer at PandoDaily, covering technology and startups in Silicon Valley. He’s worked as a reporter for Fortune Magazine, and wants you to follow him on Twitter.

Amidst all of the buzz surrounding connected devices and ubiquitous computing, there’s Facebook, which wants to move beyond connecting mere humans. Cory Ondrejka, Facebook’s director of mobile engineering, says the social network is in a unique position to tie together all of the disparate devices that make up the Internet of things – the category of everyday objects, like scales, toasters, watches, glasses and whatever else you can think of, having wi-fi and data-collecting capabilities. Along the way a number of questions will need to be answered, such as who will receive this information, what usefulness will it have, and how will privacy play out.

Take the who part. For devices that send out updates to social networks – like, say, the Nike FuelBand tweeting out how fast you ran a mile — one big question going forward will be discriminating who gets those updates. “How do you think about where that info goes, and how you want to share it?” asked Ondrejka at Techonomy Media’s “Man, Machine and the Network” event last night.

The success of those products’ social sharing functions on Facebook will depend on finding the right use cases, and the right audience. Ondrejka uses the Nest learning thermostat as a prime example. The device is wi-fi enabled, and, among other things, automatically changes the air temperature in a home according to a user’s preferences, and allows him to control it remotely. The notion of sharing the temperature of one’s home on a social network sounds pointless until you take into account certain contexts, he says.

For example, if your aging parents own one, getting thermostat updates could be a lightweight way to make sure they’re safe and healthy, with the temperature fluctuating as the result of people inhabiting the house. (Of course, you could also give your folks a call to make sure they are fine, but the example gets the point across, and it does function as an odd type of push notification.) Even more useful, if the temperature rises so high that you can presume the house is on fire, it would be helpful for the neighbors to get that temperature update.

For Facebook, it’s a dive back into the oldest contentious discussion in the company’s history (even before people started squabbling over the IPO): privacy. Author David Kirkpatrick, who interviewed Ondrejka during the fireside chat – and wrote “The Facebook Effect” – was quick to point out that Facebook was the first major Internet property to focus on bringing privacy controls to the forefront. Of course, given the backlash that often surrounds issues of users’ privacy, that will do little to mitigate users concerns.

Ondrejka said that one of the stats that Facebook watches most closely is how often people change the privacy settings on individual posts – tailoring what audience gets to see the update. That indicates how simple the privacy controls are, and provides insight into user behavior. “The natural extension of that is with devices, and information on things like how healthy you are,” he said. “You want to know who gets access to that.”

He admitted that no developers or brands have used a connected device’s sharing features in any prominent way yet on Facebook’s platform, but claimed it’s only a matter of time before more devices become connected devices, and users will operate them through Facebook. Tailoring the audience for such posts seems in line with the company’s recent strategies. More broadly, Facebook has made a big bet on private messaging, and has crowed that messages sent on Facebook Messenger have quadrupled since last year. It’s also the reason the company  put Chat Heads on both iOS and Android, when it was initially introduced as part of the Facebook Home suite.

So the company has been working on improving the experience of small-audience messaging and posting. That’s probably a good idea when your bathroom scale has the ability to tell all your Facebook friends that you put on 10 lbs.

Richard Nieva

Richard Nieva is a staff writer at PandoDaily, covering technology and startups in Silicon Valley. He’s worked as a reporter for Fortune Magazine, and wants you to follow him on Twitter.

Those who have seen Twitter CEO Dick Costolo speak know he’s a joke machine. But lately, he’s been getting a bit more love for it, thanks to a video of a one-liner-filled commencement address at the University of Michigan that has gotten a lot of attention in tech circles.

Costolo is, after all, an improvisational comedian. But Costolo isn’t just some guy who took a few acting classes in college (though he did), or even just perform at a few comedy clubs (but he did that too). He studied improv with Chicago’s venerable Second City troupe, famously a farm system for Saturday Night Live players. He mentions Steve Carell, Horatio Sans, and Rachel Dratch as a few of his troupemates.

Now, when you typically think of a CEO, you don’t usually associate it with the term “hilarious.” (Unless it’s something like, “hilariously inept,” but that’s a subject for another post.) But perhaps comedy is an under-utilized management style. The traits associated with being a good comedian – timing, adaptability, creativity – are certainly traits celebrated at great companies. At the very least, a comedic touch can bring lightness to a frazzled startup or corporate environment when things go wrong and are falling apart all around you. (Which is every day.)

There are workshops, like one called Business Improvisations, that teach improvisational skills to business students and executives. But not many CEOs of high-profile companies are known for employing such techniques in a big way. Costolo spoke yesterday at the National Venture Capital Association’s VentureScape conference, where he talked about a number of things, including managing a company as large as Twitter.

His comedic chops were on display, even during the fireside chat with Jason Mendelson, managing partner of Foundry Group. Costolo knows a crowd always enjoys a light roast, and it could be indicative of his management style at Twitter. “What’s your favorite thing about VCs?” asked Mendelson. “Paying for the second dinner,” Costolo replied.

Then Mendelson’s follow up: “What’s the worst thing about VCs?”

“Dinner.”

Raucous laughter from the audience. “I’m sorry, you set me up for that one,” Costolo told Mendelson. It helps to have a quick wit, especially when your entire company trades on quickness. Twitter’s great feat, after all, is its speed in disseminating information – as a makeshift breaking news outlet, or an emergency response vehicle.

But beyond that, it’s that approachable air that seems to work for a comedian in charge. When asked, Costolo said one of his best qualities as a CEO is how present he is with his employees, which he attributes to his background in theatre. Specifically, he says it’s a function of his improv training, in that it requires you to focus on what’s happening in the moment, and not just what the next thing will be. Doing that, he says, extends to really knowing your employees, and not just the managers that directly report to him.

“The view from the top is totally distorted. If you only spend time with people directly below you, you have no idea what’s going down in the trenches,” said Costolo.

As such, he mentioned teaching a class on management, so all the leaders across the company could learn how to manage in the same spirit. One thing he teaches is mixing it up. For example, he says, if he’s in a meeting and there’s some contention, he’ll get two people who don’t often work together – like the general counsel and VP of product engineering – and have them brainstorm a solution to suggest to the group at the next staff meeting.

Sounds a bit like improv comedy class to me.

Richard Nieva

Richard Nieva is a staff writer at PandoDaily, covering technology and startups in Silicon Valley. He’s worked as a reporter for Fortune Magazine, and wants you to follow him on Twitter.

New York State’s Department of Financial Services today ordered car-sharing company RelayRides to suspend service in New York state, issuing a cease and desist letter to the company, alleging “repeated false advertising and violation of insurance law” and “putting the public at risk.” The agency also issued a consumer alert, warning New Yorkers that the insurance that RelayRides offers is “illegal and inadequate,” which could leave consumers personally financially liable for an accident.

RelayRides, which allows consumers to list their cars on an online marketplace to rent out to strangers instead of letting a car go unused, has said that consumers would not be responsible for out-of-pocket expenses if cars are stolen or are in accidents. The investigation is ongoing, and the state has demanded RelayRides provider, Hudson Insurance Company, turn over all information about its business dealings with RelayRides.

“RelayRides sold New Yorkers a false bill of goods,” said Benjamin M. Lawsky, Superintendent of Financial Services, in a statement. ”Despite RelayRides’ assurances to the contrary, their New York customers could get left holding the bag financially for an accident.”

The relationship between car sharing companies like RelayRides and Getaround and traditional insurers has been contentious. Geico has already re-written its policies to specifically ban car-sharing, while others, like Allstate, have warned that such behavior could put current coverage in jeopardy.

RelayRides will insure consumers for up to $1 million in the event of an accident. But questions regarding the messiness of insurance liability became even more pronounced during a court case filed last February, when a Boston renter was killed while driving a RelayRides car, seriously injuring four others in a collision with an oncoming car.

The cease and desist announcement comes one day after RelayRides acquired competitor Wheelz for an undisclosed amount.

CEO Andre Haddad offered this comment in a company blog post:

Innovation, by its nature, does not always fit within existing structures. Although we’ve been careful to ensure the protections offered to our member community comply with legal frameworks around the country, we learned in conversations with the NY Department of Financial Services that it believes there is noncompliance with certain unique aspects of NY insurance law.

We are actively working with the Department to address these concerns. While we’re cooperating with the Department on these changes, we will be suspending activities that it considers non-compliant. All existing reservations in NY will be honored.

We reached out to the company via phone and email, but Haddad was unavailable for further comment.

[Image courtesy pndy]

Richard Nieva

Richard Nieva is a staff writer at PandoDaily, covering technology and startups in Silicon Valley. He’s worked as a reporter for Fortune Magazine, and wants you to follow him on Twitter.

If you’re a startup worried about surviving the Series A crunch, my colleague Erin Griffith has said maybe you should bark up Yahoo’s tree. Tony Stanco, executive director of NCET2, also suggests exits for certain companies. But his rationale is a little different.

I met Stanco at the National Venture Capital Association’s Venture Scape conference today. NCET2, or the National Council of Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer, is a Washington DC-based organization that seeks to connect startups born out of university research projects with Fortune 1000 companies. The organization works with many of the large research universities, such as MIT, Harvard, and Yale.

This fall, the organization is holding a conference in San Francisco called Exit: Startups, an event that seeks to shop startups spun out of university research projects to potential acquirers. The organization, founded out of George Washington University, has been holding conferences annually since it was founded seven years ago, but the focus of this year’s event is different. It was previously called the University Startups conference, and those events were focused on making connections between startups and big companies, and doing things like teaching best practices. This year’s event is more direct – aiming to actually facilitate transactions.

That model is different from that of many venture-backed startups. Many companies that have had successful exits once had the intention of going it alone as an independent company, but considered an exit for a number of reasons: the direction of the business had changed, or their products felt like features and not companies, or a bigger company made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.

But for many companies born out of universities, the goal from the very beginning is an exit, says Stanco. That’s because many of those companies are not consumer software companies with relatively lower costs. For some of the more ambitious projects, like one ultrasound technology company that came through NCET2, a single unit can cost thousands of dollars to make. Companies like that, Stanco says, often have no hope of mass producing without selling to a bigger company with more considerable resources, or raising a ton of venture capital.

For the big companies who attend a conference like Exit: Startups to shopping around for a purchase, the goals tend to be narrower as well. While companies often look at acquisitions as a chance to purloin a startup’s teams or customers, Stanco says companies looking into university startups often do it for “industrial” reasons. For them, buying a startup is like outsourcing research and development in lieu of having their own labs. “But with an entrepreneurial bent,” adds Stanco.

It’s hard to say whether devoting an entire conference to exits is a sign of the Series A crunched times, or if it’s just a case of an organization finally being able to execute its mission. Stanco argues that it’s the latter, but he does offer that he thinks, “The market is just not there for IPOs.” He also mentions again that the specific goals for companies born out of university research projects are different than most companies.

The goal of the conference is to free up some of the startups’ angel investors financially, so their companies can exit, and they have more funds available to invest in new university companies.

Then it’s lather, rinse, repeat.

[Image courtesy: mtellin]

Richard Nieva

Richard Nieva is a staff writer at PandoDaily, covering technology and startups in Silicon Valley. He’s worked as a reporter for Fortune Magazine, and wants you to follow him on Twitter.

Today the car-sharing startup RelayRides announced its acquisition of former rival Wheelz for an undisclosed amount.

RelayRides will subsume the acquired company, taking over its team, customers and intellectual property, in an attempt to expand its own car-sharing reach. Both companies allow users to rent out their cars to strangers via an online marketplace, instead of letting the vehicles go unused.

Wheelz founder and CEO Jeff Miller will help oversee the transition then leave the company to pursue other entrepreneurial interests, though he says he does not know what his next move will be. The 10-person Wheelz team will join RelayRides existing 45 to 50 employees at its San Francisco headquarters.

The big gain for RelayRides appears to be in acquiring Wheelz’s “DriveBox” technology, which enables a renter to unlock a vehicle using a smartphone, so renters and car owners don’t have to meet in person to hand off the keys. Competitor Getaround already uses that kind of technology. Right now, RelayRides has a deal with GM to make keyless entry available through the OnStar system, but those cars only represent 10 to 15 percent of the market, says CEO Andre Haddad.

Wheelz was founded in 2011 as a car-sharing company serving university students at campuses like Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley, before it launched to the general public.

The tie-up is a significant move for an industry still trying to congeal. It’s been largely a two-horse race for some time now between RelayRides and Getaround, and the consolidation suggests the market leaders will only get more powerful. RelayRides declined to say how many cars are in its fleet, but said there are “thousands” of cars across 1,450 US cities. Wheelz declined to share that information as well.

But while the individual players are jockeying to get a clear lead, the industry itself needs to mature to gain legitimacy in the eyes of insurance companies. Most have taken a hesitant – if not all out prohibitory, like Geico has — line towards car-sharing. RelayRides has itself been embroiled in a court case involving a fatal car-sharing accident that has only caused insurance companies to proceed with more caution.

Some companies have said they will not realistically entertain the idea of insuring a car-sharing policyholder until there is quantifiable traction, such as having a certain number of claims filed collectively. Haddad hopes the Wheelz acquisition will be a sign to insurers that the car-sharing industry is maturing. “I think the insurance community is watching [the car-sharing] phenomenon closely. I think the wait-and-see attitude is expected from an industry like that,” Haddad says. “But the act that they haven’t embraced us hasn’t stopped us from growing.”

Gaining a new crop of customers overnight does increase the pool of data the company can draw from. But it’s still likely too small a sample for the insurers to take any meaningful notice. Haddad says, though, that the data could be helpful internally, to “help build a better product.” He also said that in the long term, he is open to using the data to help build insurance products that could help decide RelayRide’s rental rates or protection coverage, based on someone’s driving data, though he says nothing is planned at the moment. “It’s a very important step in getting the industry to innovate,” Haddad says.

Richard Nieva

Richard Nieva is a staff writer at PandoDaily, covering technology and startups in Silicon Valley. He’s worked as a reporter for Fortune Magazine, and wants you to follow him on Twitter.

Today the accelerator HAXLR8R held its second-ever demo day in San Francisco. Two things separate it from the usual incubator event. First, it focuses solely on hardware products. Second, HAXLR8R is based in Shenzhen, China, bringing founders and mentors to the city for about three months to learn how to work with factories and manufacturers.

So that means a group of entrepreneurs from places as diverse as the United States to England to Singapore has just returned from what is essentially hardware boot camp from halfway around the world. Many of the founders had never been there before. I caught up with a few  to see what advice or rules of thumb they could offer to budding hardware entrepreneurs.

***

Spark Devices – Makes a circuit board that hobbyists, startups, and big companies can integrate into any product to turn them into connected devices.

“When people hear “China,” they think “cheap.” But “cheap” really means “fast.” We would move really quickly. We would redesign a circuit board, and get it back in less than 24 hours,” says cofounder Zach Supalla.

***

Focus – a headset that sends a current of electricity to the brain to help improve a gamer’s cognitive ability, like making him more alert.

“Look both ways when you cross the road. Seriously. That’s my advice. There are cars, motorbikes. I’m from London, and Hong Kong is like London. But Shenzhen is like the Wild West,” says cofounder Michael Oxley. 

***

Helios – Makes connected bike handlebars, with a built in headlight and blinker system. The iOS app also adds features like a visual speedometer.

“You’ve got to stay on top of the factories. When communicating with them, be simple and concise, and try not to confuse them. For example, once we sent them an email with 10 specifications, and they only did two or three of them. And it’s not because they don’t want to. Part of it is a language barrier. They might have Google Translate and not get the whole thing,” says cofounder Seema Zandipour

“Convince the companies they can do it. A lot of times, you’ll ask a factory to do something and they’ll say ‘no’ because they think they can’t do it,” adds cofounder Antonio Belmonte.

***

Vibease – Makes a “smart vibrator” for Android. A user can choose fantasies from an app, and the sex toy reacts accordingly.

“People are usually afraid of people copying their product in China. But most people don’t have to worry. If you’re not famous, people won’t care about you. And if they do copy you, it’s a bad copy. People talk about Apple copies in China. But there aren’t any good ones,” says founder Dema Tio.

Richard Nieva

Richard Nieva is a staff writer at PandoDaily, covering technology and startups in Silicon Valley. He’s worked as a reporter for Fortune Magazine, and wants you to follow him on Twitter.

Whatever your feelings may be toward the Peter Thiel Fellowship, its focus on fostering young tech entrepreneurs can’t be denied. The program takes 20 young people under the age of 20 and grants them $100,000 to build companies for two years as an alternative to attending college. That’s sparked a debate about the benefits versus the shortcomings of university education.

Beyond that debate, what the crop of young, overachieving applicants decides to focus on says something about the big ideas that are capturing the imaginations of the world’s up-and-coming entrepreneurs. As PandoDaily this month explores the ways software is changing the rest of the world, what does it say about the Thiel fellows that a quarter of them are focusing on hardware and connected-device projects?

“To some extent, it’s easier to run a software startup,” says Jonathan Cain, president of the Thiel Foundation, citing things like higher costs and finding manufacturers. “But I think we’ve reached the point where people are starting to understand you can apply software across other industries.”

It may not be surprising — considering the Founder’s Fund has famously demanded flying cars – that at least $500,000 ($100,000 for each fellow) of funding from the Thiel Foundation is going toward hardware and connected-device projects. That suggests the foundation sees some significant innovative potential beyond software. For a venture firm, that amount may be a drop in the bucket, but it’s still a good chunk of the funds stipulated for the fellowship.

The Thiel Foundation says there is more hardware in this class than before, but added that the fellowship has also seen a healthy interest in hardware in each of the past two classes. Cain also mentions that the foundation didn’t seek to fill any hardware or software quota or strive to create any balance between the two.

Riley Ennis, a 19-year-old fellow from Virginia, is building a consumer device that analyzes sweat and aims to improve diagnosing and monitoring diseases. His efforts are further along than most, having spun out of a research project he did with Georgetown University while still in high school. The sensor itself is a disposable sheet of paper that clips onto a person’s waistband, and Ennis plans to sell it to consumers starting this summer. “The future is in incorporating hardware with your phone, or things like your car, to monitor your body,” he says. “That’s the future. That’s how we’re going to lower healthcare costs.”

Among other fellows in this class, one is working on a 3D printer that prints circuitry. Another is building a sensor that enables multi-touch technology everywhere. Still another is working on his own pair of augmented reality glasses, akin to Google Glass.

Of course, as with any startup in the technology business, the Thiel Fellowship projects are subject to change. Last month, I caught up with some of the fellows from the inaugural class. Most of them said they tweaked or changed completely what they were working on. That’s just the nature of the process in a program like this.

But the connected market is a lot harder to change courses when dealing with hardware. They say you iterate ad nauseam early on, then have to commit, because things like manufacturers and licensing and inventory come into play – things that software companies generally don’t have to deal with. So while many of the fellows’ projects might change, they are likely to still remain in connected hardware.

And because the operations process is more complicated for a hardware company, the Thiel Fellowship is actually optimal for supporting them, says Mike Gibson, the vice president for grants at the foundation. That’s because the program is not an incubator, and instead of having about three months to work with the program organizers, you have two years.

Another indication that the market is headed in the connected-hardware direction: Gibson says that a group of fellows from previous classes – who focused on consumer software while in the program – have joined together to work on a hardware product for the consumer market. It’s still in stealth mode, however, so he declined to give details.

Maybe it’s finally one of those flying cars.

[Peter Thiel is a personal investor in PandoDaily]

Richard Nieva

Richard Nieva is a staff writer at PandoDaily, covering technology and startups in Silicon Valley. He’s worked as a reporter for Fortune Magazine, and wants you to follow him on Twitter.