Get the most out of your Inc. online experience by registering and joining the Inc. community today. Get access to all Inc.com content and priority invites to free Inc. networking events in your area.

Login using:


Or login directly through Inc.com

The Ticker

Entrepreneurial comings and goings, featuring Sunset Tan, Bebo, and more.

By Jason Del Rey |  @DelRey   | 
 

Sunset Tan, the Los Angeles--based tanning business featured on E!'s reality series of the same name, says it plans to add 500 salons over the next five years, through franchising. Co-founders Devin Haman and Jeff Bozz (last we saw them, they were firing a pair of hard- partying friends named Holly and Molly) will be back for a new season on E! later this year....AmieStreet.com, a music-downloading start-up that raises the price of a song as it gains popularity, hit the jackpot when users found recordings on the site by Ashley Alexandra Dupré, the woman linked with former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. "We're lucky," says co-founder Josh Boltuch. "This showed how anyone can use Amie Street to showcase their music."...Rod Beckström, founder of CATS Software, a 1991 Inc. 500 firm, will head a new cybersecurity center at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Beckström co-authored the 2006 book The Starfish and the Spider....Philip Rosedale, the CEO of Linden Lab (and our February 2007 cover subject), has resigned, three months after the company's CTO left. Linden Lab operates the virtual world called Second Life....Bolstering its rep for brash-to-the-point-of-crazy dealmaking, AOL purchased Bebo, the third-largest social network in the U.S., for $850 million. That's $270 million more than News Corporation paid for MySpace, in 2005....Richard Burke, the founder of Milwaukee-based Trek Bicycle, died on March 10. Trek provided Lance Armstrong with the bikes he rode to seven Tour de France titles. Burke's son John, who is Trek's president, recalls that when his father "believed in something, that was the deal. You couldn't knock him off course."...Finally, Facebook No. 2 Owen Van Natta has quit the company to seek a top job elsewhere.

Read more:

  • What You're Not Doing to Maximize Profit (But Should Be)
  • Redbox's Smart Move: What You Can Learn
  • What Makes a Company Resilient?

    • Jason Del Rey

    Senior reporter Jason Del Rey covers technology, branding, and company culture for Inc. magazine and contributes to the From the Reporters daily blog. Before joining Inc., his work appeared in Newsday, The (Newark) Star-Ledger, and the Staten Island Advance, and on ESPN.com. He lives in New York City.


    Sign-up for our Small Business Success Newsletter