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@Dropbox is excited to welcome Bono & The Edge as investors. Thanks for the support and look forward to great things!
Revealed: Bono And The Edge of U2 Are Dropbox Investors In the annals of celebrities investing in tech startups, this one’s looking especially smart. Bono and The Edge, the singer and lead guitarist of Irish rock band U2, got into Dropbox’s $250 million second round last year, they said in a tweet today. It’s the first individual, publicly announced startup investment for the vocalist, to our knowledge. And unlike grandly-conceived social media startups or late-stage investments that celebrities have gone after in recent years, Dropbox is still in its early days. I imagine some khakis-and-blue-shirt VCs are a little jealous of the multiples ahead. Bono, of course, has something of a track record in tech investing already. He’s the co-founder and managing director of Elevation Partners, which has bet widely over the years with money in Palm, Forbes, gaming companies, Yelp and Facebook. Never mind some of those others, results from the last two have inspired the team to go raise a new $1 billion investment fund, according to reports. But until now, Bono’s role has been more high-level, not so much in sourcing deals with the latest startups growing out of the Valley floor. The Dropbox investment — and the backstory — suggest that this is could change. Bono and The Edge seem to have gotten into the deal via a relationship that developed years ago, in a different era. Back in 2007, entrepreneur brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi had just launched a fast-growing music app called iLike on Facebook. They had a new feature they wanted to launch, a way for artists to post videos to fans through the app, so they went through some mutual friends to reach out to U2. The result: a video interview with Bono and the band about a previously-unreleased track, Wave of Sorrow. The relationship has developed from there, it appears. The Partovis were early angel investors in Dropbox, and have maintained contact. Judging from the photo recently posted to Twitter, they introduced the band members to founders Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi. Even if Bono doesn’t get deeper into other early-stage companies, he has a lot of work left here — doing follow on rounds on Dropbox, possibly via Elevation. Dropbox@Dropbox @Dropbox is excited to welcome Bono & The Edge as investors. Thanks for the support and look forward to great things! pic.twitter.com/17lpnfx2 2 Apr 12 CRUNCHBASE DROPBOX Company: Dropbox Website: dropbox.com Launch Date: June 1, 2007 Funding: $257M Dropbox was founded in 2007 by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi.
Frustrated by working from multiple computers, Drew was inspired to create a service that would let people bring all their files anywhere, with no need to email around attachments. Drew created a demo of Dropbox and showed it to fellow MIT student Arash Ferdowsi, who dropped out with only one semester left to help make Dropbox a reality.
Dierks Bentley Performs ‘Home’ After an Intro From Bono at 2012 ACM Awards
Ethan Miller, Getty Images
Dierks Bentley has friends in high places. No, seriously. The singer performed his smash hit song ‘Home’ at the 2012 ACM Awards tonight (April 1), but not before he was introduced by none other than Bono. Yes, that Bono, of U2 fame.
Bono delivered a pre-taped intro, gushing that Bentley’s music makes him feel patriotic about America. Mind you, Bono is a tried and true Irishman. The singer said, “America is not just a geography or a country, but an idea.” That is pretty much country music in a nutshell, that’s for sure. And with that, Bentley began his song, after Bono called him a friend. We told ya Bentley has A-list pals.
Performing on the part of the stage that jutted out into the crowd, Bentley turned in a perfect rendition of the song while strumming his acoustic guitar. The crowd connected with Bentley as he soared through the song, which is the title track of his latest album, which recently hit No. 1 on the radio airplay charts.
We are left to wonder, though, Maybe we can expect a Bentley + Bono duet at the 2013 ACMs?
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Bono\’s homage at the CMA\’\'s
VIDEO LINKED ABOVE!
Source : By: Amy Sciarretto | Yesterday
U2 frontman Bono believes the chart-topping band will stick together until they die.
The quartet – still going strong 35 years after they formed – are “unemployable” beyond their roles in the band, the singer said.
He and guitarist The Edge were attending the Toronto Film Festival to launch a new documentary, From The Sky Down, about the making of their 20-year-old album Achtung Baby.
Bono said the group – which headlined Glastonbury Festival this summer – were united by “a kind of belligerent respect” for each other. He added: “We’re unemployable, you know, it’s like the priesthood, there’s only one way out, in a coffin.”
The film – made by director Davis Guggenheim – examines the making of the album in Berlin, Germany, which helped to reinvent the band. But Bono said he found it difficult to trawl through the past.
“I found it very hard to watch to be honest with you. We’re not very good at looking back at things. I mean Edge – when he put together our Best Of collections – forced me, actually had to physically force me, to listen to it before it went out.”
“I’m just not interested in what we’ve done, I’m always more interested in what we’re about to do. But you know, for this album, we made an exception.”
The millionaire rock star said he is intrigued about why someone would want to see how the LP was assembled.
“It’s like a load of songs and they turned out pretty good in the end, and this is a film about how they nearly didn’t. I don’t know why anyone would watch it, I really don’t,” Bono said.
The Edge – whose real name is Dave Evans – added: “I think it’s not a movie about us, per se, it’s really about how bands function, or in this case, don’t function.”
Source: Press Association
September 1, 1979: U2 releases their first EP, Three
Three years after they formed in drummer Larry Mullen’s kitchen, U2 released their first EP in Ireland. It was a modest success for the teenage lads, reaching Number 19 on the Irish singles charts and paving the way for their first shows outside their native Dublin.
Three (also referenced occasionally as U2-3) was named quite literally: It featured the trio of songs “Out of Control,” “Stories for Boys” and “Boy–Girl,” which the band played faithfully in their early days. Side A’s choice of “Out of Control,” a succinct punk-influenced track, held sentimental significance as it was written on Bono’s 18th birthday; the song reappeared with “Stories for Boys” on Boy, U2′s 1980 debut album.
U2 fans can still hear these formative jams occasionally in the globe-trotting group’s current live repertoire – the band chose “Out of Control” to close their headlining set at this year’s Glastonbury Festival in England.
Source: Rolling Stone
U2 are finishing up the highest grossing tour of all time: the 360° Tour. When the band closes out their North American leg on July 30 in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, U2 are projected to rake in around $700 million total. That easily bests past champions The Rolling Stones, who earned $558 million on the A Bigger Bang tour of 2005-07.
Perhaps nobody knows the guys of U2 better than tour director Craig Evans. After all, he’s traveled with them on literally thousands of shows across the world.
“They’re family men,” Evans said of Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. “As the band has gotten older, they feel the need to maintain a good sense of family, and they’re sincere. They realize the voice they have, and they take that with a sense of responsibility. This is not reckless rock ’n’ roll.”
Speaking before a recent tour stop, Evans checked in with Gibson.com to talk about his experience on the 360° Tour and the 164-foot-tall in-the-round set known as “The Claw.”
This isn’t your first tour with U2. How does the 360° Tour compare to PopMart, Vertigo, Elevation and the others?
I have to say, by far, it’s the most ambitious. I don’t know a better word to use. We took a giant leap of faith. We had to look at taking a touring model and ramp it up to point where you’re not just going to do a stadium, you’re going to build an entire stadium and play around with production, sound and video. This kind of set-up has certain complications and challenges, and to play these types of large crowds takes custom engineering. Our goal was to make the stadium actually look small, since the touring stage is so big.
How involved were U2 on the stage design and overall tour concept?
Everything is custom built, and it was a huge financial leap of faith. We needed to know the demand would be there. So, all of these things the band needed to make decisions on. After the success of Elevation and Vertigo, we decided to take it to another level. Bono is the one who came up with the “Claw” design for the stage. We were eating dinner towards the end of the Vertigo tour, and he put up four forks and placed them vertically and said, “Is there a way the stage could kind of look like this?” So, it took a custom stage design. In the end, you ask, were all these chances worth it? Well, we’ve surpassed the record for the highest-grossing tour of all time, and that’s an indication the risk was worth it.
When the show was envisioned, what was the main objective?
Our goal was to be different from any other stadium tour. Wherever U2 played, we wanted them to connect and be in the middle of the crowd. When we went to Willie Williams for the design of the stage, we wanted the stage to be so big that it would feel bigger than the stadium and, because of that, create a sense of intimacy. That way, every seat in every stadium would have a terrific view. That’s what makes this an unrivaled event: that intimacy.
Tell us about the elliptical main stage, “The Claw.”
Bono had the idea to actually play a full stadium, instead of the usual set-up where you play to part of the stadium. On the Vertigo tour, Bono looked around after a show in Honolulu and said, “Could we play to everyone?” That brings a community of people who are going to experience it in a different way. You’re in the middle of a community, and that brings emotion and excitement. Fill the stadium and have people on the field, and you’re the voice in the center of a sea of people.
What’s your favorite aspect of being U2’s tour director?
I love the mathematical complication of puzzle making. I love putting a bunch of pieces together and seeing them fit together in a bigger picture. I love creating a business plan that we can put forth logically and achieve. I work with a lot of incredibly talented people on tour that, in my view, are the best tour professionals out there.
You’ve seen thousands of U2 concerts. Do you ever get tired of the shows?
Honestly, never. Before every show, even with all the thousands of shows I’ve been at, I get that same feeling when the lights go down and the crowd starts screaming and the lights go on. Feeling the connection that’s instantly made between the band and audience, every time, makes the hairs on the neck stand up.
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