eBay Now

Overview
Products
Competitors
Cluster Contribution
eBay Now
eBay Now is a new service from eBay which provides a local shopping service with the promise of delivery in under an hour. eBay Now began as a service called Milo, with the goal of making shopping local easy. Milo was at roughly 25 employees before its acquisition. Their relationship with eBay started off as a partnership, allowing eBay and Milo's services to integrate at a technical level. Eventually eBay decided to purchase Milo for $75 Million in 2010. Ted Dziuba was a Co-Founder and Software Engineer for Milo, and we had the pleasure of getting to speak with him. Ted shared his insight of starting up a company, and shared his story of struggling to find investors, raising money, and finally being acquired.
Local Delivery
eBay Now offers applications for your mobile device, plus a website which is found at now.ebay.com. To use eBay now simply find a product you want to purchase, and order it. When you place an order, it gets sent to the ‘valet driver.’ The valet will then go to the nearest store selling your product and purchase it for you. The valet then delivers the product to the customer within an hour. All the customer pays extra is a five dollar fee for delivery. Currently eBay Now is only offered in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens areas of New York. The service will soon be coming to Chicago, and other markets.

Locations
- San Jose
- San Francisco
- SF Peninsula
- NYC Queens
- Manhattan and Brooklyn
Amazon Local
Amazon offers a Local Express Delivery system similar to eBay Now. Amazon Local promises same day delivery for orders placed before a certain time, say 11a.m. local time. While a competitor to eBay Now, Amazon Local only works when the order is placed before a certain time. eBay Now works whenever you like, within an hour.

Google Shopping Express
Google promises delivery within a few hours while using their Google Shopping Express. Currently this service is in beta, and is only available to customers in San Francisco. Google Shopping Express works similarly to eBay Now. You search for a product, find the best price, order. You can specify delivery times from ‘Any Time Today’ to between a range of hours. Google plans on using a subscription model to charge $60 - $70 a year for the service.
Silicon Valley
eBay’s offices are located in San Francisco. This is outside the majority of the ‘Silicon Valley’ area, but still located in an area close enough to keep up with other local competitors and innovators within the cluster. For example, because of their close proximity to Google, the accusation of Milo for eBay, into eBay Now is likely a reason Google has felt the need to offer a same day delivery service to compete. And because competition leads to more innovation, it is good for both parties they are located in the same region and compete for the same customers.
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Evernote

Overview
Products
Competitors
Cluster Contribution
Evernote
Evernote is a mobile application company that develops productivity products for android and iOS. Their applications are mostly used for note taking and archiving. This is apparent through their company tag line “Remember everything”. These notes can be sorted, and searched within the application as well as exported to a desktop computer. Evernote’s products have the capability to sync with mobile and desktop devices. The company was founded by Stephan Pachikov in 2008 and reached 11 million users by 2011. The data created by the users can be stored in secure servers or on the users local machine. The company’s profit comes from their premium apps where the user has a monthly fee. However, Evernote also offers a free version of their app that doesn’t have the benefits of the paid version but it still a fully functioning app.
Evernote
The company’s flagship product, allowing text, photo, and audio notes; accessible from a multitude of platforms including desktop applications, smartphones, tablets, and web. Easily searchable, and synced automatically across all platforms.

Penultimate
Handwriting app for iPad. Converts handwritten notes into text, and integrates with Evernote. Requires special stylus for text writing.

Hello
iPhone and Android Smartphone app that scans business cards, and creates a searchable database of people you have had business or social interactions with.
Google Keep
Google’s online notetaking service, offered as a part of the google suite of services. Does not offer as many features as Evernote.

Springpad
Springpad is a small startup that is very similar to Evernote. It is also a smart-note taking app but instead of your own notes, is more focused around finding content online and keeping it for later reading and usage. A good example is if you find a recipe while on the go, you can save it for later. It was listed in TIME Magizine’s “Top 50 Apps of 2013”.
Silicon Valley
Evernote hosts an event called “The Evernote Conference” every year for people who develop and design Evernote, as well as avid community users. One of the main attractions of this event is the Evernote Devcup. During this time people design and implement potential add-ons or new features for Evernote. Six finalists get to pitch them to an audience. There are up to $20,000 in prizes as well. In addition, some people who have entered this in the past have been hired to work at Evernote. The product Evernote Food has come from this competition.
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Facebook

Overview
Products
Competitors
Cluster Contribution
Facebook
Facebook was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and his colleagues from Harvard University. Facebook grew from the necessity of an online social media site for students at the university so that they can network and communicate. From there, they realized their website had potential to grow beyond its intended use by becoming an online networking site for people across the globe. Facebook has translated their website in over 70 languages, advocating the use of their website for a global audience. They have found their success by having a large user base totaling over 1 billion users and most of their revenue comes from advertisements on their website and apps. Facebook has over 5,000 employees across 30 locations in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. Their main headquarters is located in Silicon Valley with over 1,600 employees.
Facebook.com
Facebook’s online social media site is the bread and butter of the company. There are 1.15 billion users and 699 million active users across the globe. It has become the largest social network site where it makes most of its profits from ads. The company releases new versions of the popular social site media on a weekly basis with hotfixes and new features.

Facebook App
Facebook’s online social media site is now accessible on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets. As of September 2012, Facebook has accounted for 192 million Android users and 147 million iOS users. Facebook took advantage of the mass growth in smartphone and tablet users and created a successful product on the mobile platform.

Facebook Messenger
a feature embedded in the website and app allows for private instant messaging between Facebook users and a new way for users to interact with each other. The messenger is host to a few features such as instant messaging and sending images and attachments of files.
Kik
Kik is an app that combines the use of text messages and social networking for smartphone users that utilizes internet data. Directly competes with Facebook because it is an alternative way in how you connect with friends when sharing messages, images, and videos.

Whatsapp
Whatsapp is another messaging app that competes with Facebook’s online social media site handling billions of messages a day from their users. It is reported to have over 300 million unique users.

LinkedIn
Linkedin is another online networking site that specializes in connecting one another through professional occupations. The site is host to over 255 million users and the site is available in over 25 languages.
Silicon Valley
Facebook HQ moved to Menlo Park, California so that they could collaborate and compete based on innovation and ideas. Facebook being within the cluster has brought about new innovations and ideas from the high entrepreneurial spirit in Silicon Valley. They have their engineers stationed at HQ so that their employees could network and improve their skills with the other talented people from surrounding technology companies. This allows them to exchange ideas and form new partnerships so that the next new thing can be developed. Being within the cluster has pushed competition with neighboring tech companies higher and as a result, pushes the company to become better and innovative.
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FreeWheel

Overview
Products
Competitors
Cluster Contribution
Freewheel
FreeWheel is a business to business company that figures out how to best monetized video content and puts that knowledge to work by putting ads onto that content. Their main goal is to allow companies to put their videos online and make a profit while doing it. They are a small startup with not many employees and have only been around since 2007. They have a large number of well-known customers including AOL, NBC Universal, Fox, AOL , The WB and DirectTv. Their main products strive to make the dealing with advertisers as easy on these companies as possible, as well as give them a wealth of information to make better business decisions in the future.
Monetization Rights Management
This tool was created by FreeWheel to help companies better deal with the large number of content hosting sites. This allows the companies to sell ads based on the content rather than where the content is being played from. It ensures that ad revenue is credited to the businesses who created the content. It also helps you to distribute content from more places and ensure that the experience across websites is shared. It further allows their clients to customize the ad sales at a very specific level. It also gives very specific data about how many people viewed the content and from where.

Revenue and Payments Management
This tool was created by FreeWheel to simplify the relationships between content producer, FreeWheel’s clients, and the people who are distributing your content as well as the people whose adds there are running. It allows advertisers and content producers to very easily connect, pay, and buy ad time. It also allows companies to show advertisers how many people viewed their ad so they can make better decisions on what kind of ads to run, where they are getting hits from the ads and what content is giving the best conversion to purchasing of their products. This information helps both parties. Content producers know what content is most viewed and best monetized, allowing them to make better content.
YuMe
is a company that has a similar goal to FreeWheel, to bridge the gap between content producers and advertisers. They were founded in 2004 when its founders realized that making and running advertisements is very different from monetizing videos. They do this with a number of different software for the different devices that content can be shown on including mobile, tablet, television and web. One of the main differences from FreeWheel is the advertisers set up this software rather than the content producers.

LiveRail
LiveRail is a company founded in 2007, who hosts ads for advertisements on videos. They have sent over 3 billion ads and about 25% of all online video ads. They have offices in New York, London and Romania. They work for both publishers and the people who host their videos, but don’t deal with advertisers, unlike FreeWheel. They have a number of big clients including MLB.com, Machinima, CBS Interactive, Sony Pictures and PBS.
Silicon Valley
Freewheel allows for other companies such as Google, facebook, Intel, Evernote ext all have the easy capability of advertising with freewheel. The goal in this cluster is to be one step ahead, and freewheel is able to show that next step to the rest of the world. Their unique Ruby on Rails system has revolutionized the industry and the cluster itself through innovative technology created in house.
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Google

Overview
Products
Competitors
Cluster Contribution
Google
Google is a company that usually needs no introduction when it comes to the tech industry. Especially when looking into the IT Cluster of Silicon Valley. Google though was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Stanford University students in 1998. Google started off as a search engine that’s sole purpose was to abide by the company’s mission statement, “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. Then throughout the 2000’s, Google started to grow and expand by acquiring many different services and smaller companies to expand to other markets in the tech industry. It now offers services such as email, office software, and social networking. The company then acquired possibly its biggest company and product, Android by Android Inc. in 2005. Then in 2007 Android mobile operating system was unveiled and Google began the sales of Android powered phones in 2008. The company also wanted to grow it’s infrastructure by acquiring YouTube, the world’s most used video based web site. Google continues to grow and aim to revolutionize the tech world. It recently acquired Motorola Mobility, the mobile devices section of Motorola and started to offer fiber-optic powered internet called Google Fiber.
Google Search
Where it all started. The search engine created to fulfill the company’s mission statement.

Google Glass
Wearable glasses powered by Android that allow users to do simple tasks by using glasses. Features such as taking pictures, video recording, GPS, web browsing, SMS, and email with more expecting to be implemented. Product is to be released in 2014.

Google Fiber
ISP that provides free – cheap high speed internet service. Uses a FiberOptic infrastructure and topologies. Data speeds run: free - 5 megabit/s, $70/mo -1 Gigabit/s + 1 TB Google Drive storage, and $120/mo – 1 Gigabit/s + TV, 2TB DVR storage, 1 TB Google Drive storage, and a Nexus 7 tablet.

Google Driverless Car
A project aimed to create cars that do not require a driver and use a GPS to navigate. Nevada is the first state that permits the operation of autonomous cars. Currently under development with no release timetable as of yet.

Facebook
With Facebook as the world’s number one social networking site, Google+ is second behind them. Lately there has been a decrease in Facebook users and an increase in Google+ users. With Google+ recently surpassing Twitter.

Apple
Android currently holds the world’s largest market share in mobile OS. iOS by Apple though is second and with Google updating their OS more frequently, Apple originally was the market leader until the last few years. More and more people start to compare idevices to Android powered devices with software and hardware design and features.

ISPs
With Google Fiber completely embarrassing the established ISP in the industry with pricing and service offered, Google has become a major competitor. Although with the extremely limited service areas, they still lack behind the leaders by a long shot and have not been looking to expand past the couple of states and cities currently serviced.
Silicon Valley
Google HQ is located in Mountain View, California. They are a major player in the cluster and strive to push and continue to innovate the industry. Google is also looked to by smaller startups so that if they have something that need financial backing they may be backed by a giant like Google or purchased and acquired. Google also offers really interesting programs for new graduates to help individuals get their foot through the door of the competitive tech industry. Google also competes well as partners with other companies to further themselves as well as the tech industry. The company has a lot to offer to the cluster and depends on the cluster for themselves to grow.
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Groupon

Overview
Products
Competitors
Cluster Contribution
Groupon
Groupon was launched in 2008 as a service offering discounts useable at local or national companies and businesses. Founded by Andrew Mason, Eric Lefkofsky, and Brad Keywell, the company has yearly revenues exceeding 1.6 billion dollars (fiscal year 2011) and nearly 11,500 employees. Originally known as ThePoint, the company pivoted to its “deal of the day” format after an initial investment from Lefkofsky. With its headquarters in Chicago, Groupon has led the build-up of the current generation of technology companies to call the Windy City home. The company currently serves 500 markets in nearly 50 countries (with 35 million registered users) and has continually acquired local companies to retain their brand in international locations, reducing the need to deal with a name change that may confuse consumers.
Deal of the Day
This is Groupon’s best-known product. By offering a personalized deal of the day via email to registered users, Groupon is able to harness the power of its large database of users. If a certain number of people sign up for the offer, it then becomes available all. Similarly, if the threshold is not met, the deal is rejected and inaccessible to anyone. Groupon benefits financially from the deal by taking half of the promotion. The merchant does not pay upfront for advertising on Groupon, a transaction only occurs when an actual deal is made.

Groupon Gataways
This service is Groupon’s venture into travel. The company offers vacation packages and travel deals. Groupon has partnered with Expedia to offer additional deals and promotions.

Groupon Live
This service from Groupon allows users to find deals and discounts on live events including concerts, sports/games, theater, etc. This services launched in partnership with Live Nation and focuses on specific events for specific cities – again, a local focus.
LivingSocial
Groupon’s biggest competition with markets in 27 countries. It also offers discounted gift certificates at a large selection of merchants. In 2009, LivingSocial launched a daily deals website, putting them in direct competition with Groupon.

Woot!
Woot’s business model is a bit different from Groupon’s but still relies on a daily deal concept. One item is usually offered for sale per day, with a heavy focus on electronics or computer hardware. Other subsites, such as Wine.woot and Sports.woot are focused on specific areas of retail, usually indicated by their name. In mid-2010, Woot was acquired by Amazon.com.
Chicago
Groupon, being based in Chicago, is located outside the Silicon Valley cluster. As mentioned above, Groupon is leading the charge to help build Chicago into a tech hub. They are important contributors to the build up of 1871, the digital startup space for Chicago tech companies, as the company holds entrepreneurship seminars, encourages cooperation amongst employees, and promotes causes (some technical) using their Grassroots branch. Additionally, with the assistance of Chicago’s municipal government and the local universities, the goal of building Chicago into a central hub for tech continues. Groupon is betting on being a big part of Chicago’s tech landscape and will do so long into the future.
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Intel

Overview
Products
Competitors
Cluster Contribution
Intel
Intel Corporation was founded in 1968, originally making SRAM and DRAM. Today, most of their business comes from manufacturing microprocessors, however they also make network controllers and their integrated circuits, flash memory, motherboard chipsets, GPUs and embedded processors. Intel is a big player in Silicon Valley, in fact, the name Silicon Valley is a nod to the silicon used in their chips. They are the world’s largest semiconductor producer and have made many innovations in the field, including the x86 series.They were founded in Mountain View California, by Gordon E. Moore, Robert Noyce, Arthur Rock and Max Palevsky. Two founders came from Fairchild Semiconductor. Intel’s main products are their microprocessors and they come in three main strains, the Atom for mobile devices, the ‘i’ series for midrange computing (laptops and desktops) and Xeon for servers.
Intel Atom
Intel’s atom possessors is the companies’ product for on-the-go computing. They are used in a number of devices ranging from smart phones to some small laptop computers, although a majority of them are used in tablets. They are meant to run well on devices that don’t require as much power. Some popular devices that use it are Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro, ASUS FonePad , Lenovo K900 and Casper VIA A6108.

Intel i Series
This series of Intel Processors are for what they consider ‘Midrange’ computing. These are the most common processors. These include the i3, i5 and i7 processors. The device generally thought of as a normal computer will usually have a variation of this series in it. The i3s are the lowest end, while the i7 is the highest end. The prices for this series range between $120 and $600.

Intel Xeon
These processors are made for servers and are very high end. These processors cost over a thousand dollars and very often a server will need many of these to run. Very high quality materials are used for these. There are very few companies that make a comparable product to these.
AMD
AMD is the second largest desktop chip manufacturer. They compete with the ‘i’ series and are generally seen as a cheaper alternative to those products. They are also located in Silicon Valley, more specifically Sunnyvale. They are Intel’s only real competition for the desktop possessors. They also do a lot of work with GPUs.

Qualcomm
Qualcomm is a competitor with the Intel Atom. They work mostly with mobile devices, an area where Intel is much weaker. They do not make any processor to be used in anything other than smartphones and tablets. Their most popular product is the Qualcomm Snapdragon, a processor that is in the HTC ONE, Sony Xperia Z Ultra, and Samsung Galaxy S4.

Samsung
Although Samsung makes some devices with Intel and Qualcomm, they also produce a lot of their own possessors. Most of the processor they make are for their mobile devices, and cannot be bought separate. The name of some of these processors are the Exynos 5 Dual and Exynos 5 Octa.
Silicon Valley
Intel also has a fund called “Intel Capital unit” that funds other companies. Since it started in 1991, this fund has put 10.5 billion dollars into 1,200 different companies. Intel is also a member of a large number of the Trade Associations in Silicon Valley including the InfiniBand Trade Association (an organization including big names such as HP, IBM and Mellanox) and OpenFabrics Alliance. Intel has 12,600 employees in California. They have also donated near 50 million to non-profits and schools in the area. In 2011 they were ranked 4th in corporate philanthropy in Silicon Valley by the San Jose Business Journal. In addition to the company, the employees also have contributed as well. In 2011, employees in California have volunteered more than 275,000 hours and generated 2.1 million in matching grants for schools and non-profits in California.
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Square

Overview
Products
Competitors
Cluster Contribution
Square
Square, Inc. was founded in 2009 by Jim McKelvey and Jack Dorsey (co-founder of Twitter messaging service). Square is based in San Francisco, CA, and provides mobile credit card payment processing services and electronic wallet payment services on Apple and Android smartphones and tablets. This service is currently available only in the United States and Canada. Square’s popularity has grown immensely in recent years for the ease of use of their service, and straightforward pricing plans. Square credit card processing services can be seen in use by small restaurants and coffee shops, taxicabs and limousines, dry cleaners, DJ’s and bands, craft show and fair vendors, and even your neighborhood babysitter.
Square Register
Square’s flagship product; which allows anyone with an Apple or Android smartphone or tablet to accept payment with any major credit or debit card. This is accomplished through the use of a free white square-shaped magnetic stripe reader that connects to the device through the headphone port. Unlike traditional credit card processing, no merchant account is required. Fees to accept credit cards are 2.75% per swipe, or 3.50% if the card number is manually keyed into the device.

Square Wallet
This is another app offered by the company; targeted towards ordinary consumers that patronize businesses using the Square Register platform to accept payments. This app allows the consumer to securely enter their payment information into the app, then pay their bill at a merchant or restaurant from their mobile device, without having to give their credit card physically to the merchant.

Square Market
The newest offering from Square, is an online marketplace introduced in mid- 2013, allowing merchants to sell products online through Square, in a fashion similar to Amazon or other online retailers, and pay the merchants directly from, their Square Account. After a slower start, the product is rapidly gaining popularity.
PayPal
PayPal, the originator of online payments, recently began offering it’s own mobile device based credit card processing software, and plug-in reader. This service has comparable rates to Square, and also includes a free reader.

Intuit GoPayment
Another offering on the mobile processing table is from Intuit. This is another “clone” if you will, generally matching prices and offerings, again with a free card reader.
Silicon Valley
First and foremost, square contributes to the cluster by offering jobs. Square employs people across many fields. First and foremost, they employ app developers and engineers to make their front end applications and back end servers functional. They also employ a significant amount of individuals in the information security and financial fields. Square also prides themselves on providing and promoting their services to hundreds of merchants and companies right in the Silicon Valley area, in addition to tens of thousands of businesses across the United States and Canada.
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Yahoo!

Overview
Products
Competitors
Cluster Contribution
Yahoo!
Yahoo! is a participant in Silicon Valley’s technology cluster, and its headquarters campus is located in Sunnyvale, CA. The company started in the 1990s, and was founded by graduates from Stanford University. Yahoo! attempted to address the concern of how users will navigate through and search for information available on the Internet. Yahoo! originally undertook this challenge by offering customers a web site that acted as a sort of directory service. Users were able to browse various topics and subtopics that would provide links to other web sites, but then Yahoo! changed course from offering a directory service for the Internet to focusing on search engine development. Recently, Marissa Mayer, formerly a high ranking executive at Google, took the helm as President and chief executive officer of Yahoo! Mayer has stirred controversy since taking command of Yahoo!, particularly in the prohibition of allowing employees to conduct remote work from home.
Yahoo! Search
The technology behind Yahoo!’s search engine makes it unique among the technology cluster of Silicon Valley. Yahoo!’s search engine has capacity to recognize certain aspects of language. The same searches may return different results to different users,mostly contingent on searches the user has conducted in the past. Yahoo!’s search engine is capable of determining results the user wants to see instead of web pages unrelated to user’s search.

Yahoo! Mail
Another popular product Yahoo! offers users is its email service known as Yahoo! Mail. Like its competitor Gmail, Yahoo! Mail is free to use and boasts considerable storage for account holders. It is feasible that expanding the storage and other capabilities on Yahoo! Mail afforded to its users is a response to its competitors and cluster participants.

Yahoo! News and Sports
Although also aggregating stories from other popular media outlets and services, Yahoo! News also distributes stories authored by journalists who write for Yahoo! Yahoo! Sports also offers its users a service to play fantasy sports, which is largely popular among users and is comparable with other fantasy services such as ESPN.
Google
Yahoo! and its competitor Google are rather comparable; both companies originated in Silicon Valley and offer their users technology services such as a search engine and email. However, differences between Yahoo! and Google are shown in how they gain a competitive advantage. While Yahoo! maintains its position in the Silicon Valley cluster by offering a wide array of services as well as original content, Google enters another market by producing mobile devices such as cell phones and tablets for its consumers.

Bing
Bing is a search engine service offered by Microsoft, as well as another competitor of Yahoo! Although either company can serve as a substitute for the other as a search engine, Bing and Yahoo! have a unique relationship that emulates a sort of cooperative competition. Bing conducts research for Yahoo! to implement into the products and services offered by the latter.

LinkedIn
Yahoo! currently shares traffic with the popular employment site Monster.com, after the latter acquired the web site Hotjobs owned by Yahoo! prior to acquisition. Through Monster.com, Yahoo! indirectly competes with LinkedIn, as the social media site more or less challenges the conventional notion of job search process.
Silicon Valley
The most significant contribution Yahoo! made to the Silicon Valley technology cluster is probably its early service as a directory to navigate information available on the Internet. Prior to Yahoo!, no service was available to do such a thing. The company has changed over the years and Yahoo! remains a titan among cluster participants. Aside from offering services such as a search engine and email, as well as original content in the form of news and sports stories, Yahoo! provides innovation, among other products and services, to participants of the technology cluster of Silicon Valley. This is indicative that Yahoo!, despite the apparent popularity of its competitors, is still an invaluable contributor of technological innovations and quite pertinent among technology companies based out of Silicon Valley.
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