President Obama Will Headline DNC Fundraiser Hosted By YC’s Sam Altman And Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer

This May 8th, Y Combinator’s Sam Altman and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer will hold a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee headlined by President Obama. The fête will take place at Y Combinator’s offices in Mountain View.

This is certainly not the first time technology types have dived into political waters, and it’s a sort of thing that we should expect to happen more frequently as time passes — the intersection between government and technology is increasingly busy.

Want to hit up the event? It isn’t a cheap do: $1,00 to attend, $5,000 to attend and get a picture, $7,500 for a couple to get a picture with the President, and up.

According to SFGate, the event was originally intended to take place at Mayer’s home in Palo Alto, which would have afforded space for around 200 attendees. However, high demand led to the venue change.

The Bay Area, where the above-listed fundraiser will take place is almost comically Democratic territory. Here’s the New York Times, following the presidential election of 2012:

Mr. Obama won the nine counties of the Bay Area by margins ranging from 25 percentage points (in Napa County) to 71 percentage points (in the city and county of San Francisco). In Santa Clara County, home to much of the Silicon Valley, the margin was 42 percentage points.

Over all, Mr. Obama won the election by 49 percentage points in the Bay Area, more than double his 22-point margin throughout California.

That said, the money flowing from some technology companies has an interesting pattern of being nearly on parity when compared on a party-versus-party basis.

The technology world has had a very political last year, with events ranging from the explosive, chronic NSA revelations involving government overreach, to the controversial exit of Mozilla’s CEO over a donation made years earlier in opposition to marriage equality. Throw in a bucket of Zuckerberg cash when it comes to immigration reform, and the ever-present discussion of cybersecurity, and you have our current mix.

So to see Washington D.C. hit up the area for cash is about as surprising as Silicon Valley’s willingness to host, and show up with checkbooks.

Motorola names Rick Osterloh as its new President

There seems to be a fair share of uncertainty brewing over at Motorola these days. Not only did Google catch most of us off guard when it announced its plans to sell Motorola to Lenovo earlier this year, even their CEO Dennis Woodside recently announced he was jumping ship to work for Dropbox.

Rick Osterloh is officially taking Woodside’s place as the top-dog at Motorola

Despite the upcoming change of hands from Google and the loss of its CEO, Lenovo remains confident that it can help turn Motorola around quickly and has previously hinted about its plans to expand the brand into emerging markets in a more meaningful way.

As Motorola marches forward, it’s going to need a strong leader if it wants to keep up the momentum that it has generated over the last year or so. To that end, Motorola has now announced that Rick Osterloh is officially taking Woodside’s place as the top-dog at Motorola.

We are pleased to learn that Motorola has named Rick Osterloh to lead Motorola Mobility, effective today. Rick has a strong track record of success and delivering outstanding innovation for customers. He is a trusted, proven leader. We’re confident in his ability to not only manage a smooth transition at Motorola from Google to Lenovo but also to lead the business forward for continued growth.
Liu Jun
Lenovo executive VP

It’s important to note that Osterloh is not titled as CEO, however, and is instead the president and chief operating officer of the company. Osterloh is no stranger to Motorola, and previously headed up the company’s product management group.

It’s hard to say whether or not Lenovo plans to keep Osterloh as Motorola’s head once the dust fully settles, though their initial comments seem to suggest it is certainly a possibility that Osterloh will continue to be a key part of Motorola during and after the transition to Lenovo.

Motorola still has a long road ahead

For Osterloh and company, Motorola still has a long journey ahead of it, and it’s still hard to say exactly what the company will look like a year from now, let alone five or ten years out.

To Motorola’s credit, they seem to be on the right path, even if it’s a slow-going one. In particular, Motorola has seen a great deal of success with its budget-oriented Moto G. Recently Motorola revealed the Moto G was the best-selling smartphone in the company’s history, beating out popular Droid devices even. Additionally, the Moto G has done very well in select European markets, with Motorola now controlling about 6% of the smartphone market in the UK.

Although the Moto 360 won’t arrive until sometime later this year, the initial excitement generated by the announcement of the company’s unique round smartwatch also seems like a good sign for the company.

What do you think, are you cautiously optimistic about the future of Motorola under Lenovo? Do you think that Osterloh is the right man to lead, or do you wish Woodside would have stayed on? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

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Y Combinator’s New President Sam Altman To Take The Stage At Disrupt NY

We’re very pleased to announce that Sam Altman, the newly appointed president of the renowned Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator, will be joining us onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt NY in May to talk about how he plans to lead YC into the next phase of its growth.

There’s no question that Y Combinator has become one of the most powerful entities in the tech startup ecosystem since its launch nine years ago in March 2005. The unique way that YC approaches startup investment and advising has changed the way Silicon Valley does business. The results speak for themselves: Dropbox, Reddit, Airbnb, and Stripe are just a few of the companies that launched out of YC.

Building something as impactful as Y Combinator in fewer than 10 years is hard. Taking that to the next level is even harder. So when Y Combinator founder Paul Graham announced last month that he had found the perfect person to do just that in the 28-year-old Altman, it was a bold statement. Graham will officially be stepping aside from day-to-day duties at YC next week, with Altman taking over in the role of president.

Altman is himself a Y Combinator alum, having founded a startup called Loopt in YC’s inaugural class back in 2005. (Loopt was acquired by payment technology firm Green Dot in 2012 for $43.4 million in cash.) Altman’s talents as an entrepreneur and insightful adviser have garnered him high praise among some of tech’s most influential people. In a 2009 essay, Paul Graham named Altman one of the “five most interesting founders of all time,” alongside Steve Jobs, and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Peter Thiel recently sang Altman’s praises to Re/code, saying: “Silicon Valley is full of smart people, but Sam is in a league of his own. When he speaks I pay close attention, because his insights are usually spot on.”

Under Altman’s leadership, YC is positioning itself for growth and long-term relevance. The goal is to emulate longstanding universities, rather than traditional companies. “It’s rare for a company to last 100 years, but for a university it’s nothing,” Paul Graham told me in an interview last month.

Building YC into something that stands in the same league as Harvard, Stanford, and Yale is certainly a big vision. To hear Altman speak about how he plans to make it a reality, make sure to join us in New York City in May.

Disrupt NY will take over the Manhattan Center in New York City on May 5-7. Tickets can be purchased here, and if you’re interested in being a sponsor, please contact our sponsorship team here.