Venture Capital

TechCrunch
Gmail Creator Thinks Email Will Last Forever. And Hasn’t Tried Google Wave.

MG Siegler

20 Nov 2009 | 5:30 pm

“Email is not going to disappear. Possibly ever. Until the robots kill us all.” – Paul Buchheit, creator of Gmail, co-founder of FriendFeed, currently doing vague infrastructure things at Facebook. Today, at our RealTime CrunchUp event in San Francisco, Buchheit and Threadsy founder Rob Goldman sat down for a chat with our own Steve Gillmor and Erick Schonfeld. The topic was: Can We Kill Email Already? All Aboard The Micro-Message Bus. So can we kill email? Well if Buchheit’s quote didn’t tip you off, the consensus was “no.” Though there are some…
RealTime CrunchUp: Where’s The Money In RealTime?

Jason Kincaid

20 Nov 2009 | 5:15 pm

For our last discussion at the RealTime CrunchUp, we’ve got a panel on actually generating revenue from these services. Participating in the discussion are some of the Valley’s top VCs and veterans of the space. Brian Singerman — Founders Fund Ron Conway — Angel Investor Dan’l Lewin — Corporate VP for Strategic and Emerging Business Development at Microsoft George Zachary — Charles River Ventures Paul Buchheit — Facebook/FriendFeed Andrew Braccia — Accel Partners Michael Arrington — Editor and Founder, TechCrunch Moderated by Steve Gillmor and Erick…
RealTime CrunchUp: The Rise Of Geo Streams

Jason Kincaid

20 Nov 2009 | 4:36 pm

Today at the RealTime CrunchUp, representatives from some of the top companies involved in location based services came together to talk about the current state and future of geo-based services. Participating in the panel were: Matt Galligan, co-Founder of SimpleGeo Ryan Sarver, Director of Platform at Twitter Tristan Walker, VP of Business Development at Foursquare Steve Lee, Group Product Manager Google Maps for Mobile and Google Latitude Justin Shaffer, Founder of Hot Potato Elad Gil, CEO of Mixer Labs Moderators were our own Erick Schonfeld and MG Siegler. Video by Ustream Early in the…
Rippol’s Video Discovery Engine Launches To The Public

Jason Kincaid

20 Nov 2009 | 3:22 pm

Rippol, the video discovery site that combines both complex algorithms with user suggestions to surface interesting content, has launched to the public at today’s RealTime CrunchUp. We recently took an in-depth look at the service, but for those who haven’t seen it yet, here’s a recap: Rippol looks at your video watching activity on the site, as well as that of your friends and people in your demographic. It then looks at meta data from video content ingested from sites like YouTube and Hulu, and uses machine learning to identify videos it thinks you’ll like. From…
RealTime CrunchUp: Media Streams As The Ultimate Marketing Vehicle

Leena Rao

20 Nov 2009 | 3:13 pm

At our Real-Time CrunchUp today in San Francisco, we are hosting a panel titles “Media Streams: Are These The Utlimate Marketing Vehicle?” Panelists include Sean Rad, CEO of Ad.ly; Ryan Amos, co-founder of DailyBooth; Jesse Engle, CEO of CoTweet; Robin Bechtel, a celebrity agent and Philip Nelson, SVP of strategic development for NewTek. Below find my live notes (paraphrased): ES: What are celebrities doing to leverage the social streams? RB: I oversee Britney Spears’ digital properties and we are using Twitter to build up buzz around her concerts. Using Twitter, we were…

The Funded
HealthCare Ventures: Substance Over form

20 Nov 2009 | 1:24 pm

| Fund Rated 3.9I am the CEO of a biotechnology company that recently entered into a major transaction with a large pharmaceutical company. Healthcare Ventures invested in us a year and a quarter prior to exit. Before Healthcare Ventures we had gone through multiple pitches with several other VC groups (sound familiar anyone?) and had significant interest because we had already received a favorable term sheet for a licensing deal. However, we did not find the right chemistry (read valuation and control) with any of the VC groups we had spoken to and in addition had the luxury of a phenomenal…
TheFunded.com Term Sheet: Middle East / Africa Electronics First Round Terms

19 Nov 2009 | 10:22 pm
Aberdare Ventures: Aberdare: Well Led ... Klingenstein's Experience Counts

19 Nov 2009 | 2:49 pm

| Posted by Earl Fender | Fund Rated 3.9Aberdare is one of our early investors (VertiFlex Spine), led by Paul Klingenstein. I had lunch with him this week, and what I told him personally, I thought I'd share with you here. In my 1.5 years as CEO here, I've routinely sought Paul's advise, and listened to his valuable counsel. The point is: he's insightful, experienced, trusted, smart and intuitive - his guidance on multiple isses has been spot on. Others of my investors feel the same about him. If you're a CEO, I hope you have such a " go to" guy. Earl Fender
Sequoia Capital India: Good Experience

19 Nov 2009 | 3:43 am

| Fund Rated 2.6Have good experience with them both during pre-closure and also as current board members. Time from initial pitch to termsheet was about 4 weeks - found them quick and responsive. Got help in attracting senior management talent, quite prompt in doing needed introductions, good network. Good guys, humble, nice to work with.
TheFunded.com Discussion: 4 Years Self Funded, How Do I Structure the First Round?

19 Nov 2009 | 2:22 am

Demo.com
Join Us: December DEMO Innovation Meet-Ups in San Francisco, Seattle, NYC and Austin

DEMO Staff

30 Oct 2009 | 1:32 pm

The DEMO Innovation tour where Matt Marshall, DEMO Executive Producer and the DEMO team travel around the globe to connect with the DEMO community in search of the best innovation to showcase at DEMOspring 2010 is making it's way across the U.S. in December. Read more
DEMO’s visits to London and Boston show California is great place to launch

DEMO Staff

30 Oct 2009 | 1:28 pm

Matt Marshall, DEMO Executive Producer I’ve been on the road lately, in a continued effort to find and meet with the best companies around to launch new products at the DEMO conference, and have been developing some cool ideas for DEMO’s next conference in March. I’ll share more about those ideas in future posts. Read more
DEMO rocked! Now the party starts again

DEMO Staff

13 Oct 2009 | 7:25 am

From: Matt Marshall, Executive Producer, DEMO Conferences and Editor-in-Chief, VentureBeat It’s been two weeks since the end of DEMO. I’m awestruck by the experience, both by all of the incredibly talented people that convened there in San Diego, and by the traction 70 entrepreneurs were able to get during those short few days. Thank you to all of the people who came and make it such a terrific event. Read more
DEMO 2010 starts now

DEMO Staff

7 Oct 2009 | 2:58 pm

We're fresh off DEMOfall 09 where two weeks ago, 70 companies launched products and announced innovative business plans. If you haven't taken a look, check out the class of DEMOfall 09 at www.demo.com. Read more
DEMOfall 09 starts today.. Watch live coverage

DEMO Staff

22 Sep 2009 | 6:41 am

Didn't make it to San Diego for DEMOfall 09? Watch it live on www.demo.com home page starting Tuesday, 9/22 at 8:30am. PT, thx BitGravity! Read more

Both Sides of the Table
What Makes an Entrepreneur? Four Letters: JFDI

Mark Suster

19 Nov 2009 | 7:26 am

This is part of my Startup Advice series. I had a picture in the office of my first company with the logo above and the capital letters JFDI. (In case it’s not obvious it’s a play on the Nike slogan, “Just Do It.”) I believe that being successful as an entrepreneur requires you to get lots of things done. You are constantly faced with decisions and there is always incomplete information. This paralyzes most people. Not you. Entrepreneurs make fast decisions and move forward knowing that at best 70% of their decisions are going to be right. They move the…
Don’t Roll out the Red Carpet on the Way out the Door

Mark Suster

16 Nov 2009 | 5:14 pm

This is part of my Startup Advice series. Before I started my first company in 1999 I worked for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). One of the things I noticed was that when really talented people – The “A players” – wanted to quit, the firm would quickly scramble to try and keep that person from resigning. Suddenly it was star treatment and all sorts of promises about the future. In my observation this seldom worked. When you’ve reached a boiling point where you feel mistreated or under-appreciated you tend to leave regardless of the newly created…
How to Deal with Skeletons in your Closet

Mark Suster

12 Nov 2009 | 8:04 am

This is part of my series with Advice on Raising Venture Capital. I recently wrote a post on how to Deal with your Elephants in the Room during your VC meetings. Elephants being big issues that the VC will be thinking whether you bring it to his/her attention or not. My advice with Elephants was that you need to take them head on in your first VC meeting because the VC is already thinking about the issue whether you bring it up or not. But what about issues that might have a slightly negative connotation that the VC couldn’t know in advance? Skeletons in the Closet are these types…
Deal with Your Elephant in the Room

Mark Suster

9 Nov 2009 | 5:46 pm

This is part of my series on Raising Venture Capital. There’s an old saying that if I’m talking with you and I start the conversation by saying, “whatever you do, DO NOT think about Elephants” then you can’t help but thinking about elephants while we’re speaking. There’s a lot of truth in this adage. It’s sometimes called “The Elephant in the Room” because even when you don’t mention not to think about an Elephant there are certain issues that you just can’t stop thinking about whether they are brought up or not. Many…
VC Funding Season Ends Next Week

Mark Suster

7 Nov 2009 | 9:27 pm

This is part of my series on Raising Venture Capital. I’m sure I’ll spark the ire of some VC’s for saying so, but there is certainly such a thing as black-out days in venture capital. It’s worth you knowing this so you don’t waste your time. It’s also very important to understand so that you can properly plan when you raise money. Let me first tell you the black-out periods and then I’ll explain why. It is very difficult to raising venture capital between November 15 – January 7th. It is also very hard to raise VC from July 15 –…

VatorNews.tv
Hot Potato serves up social event stream

20 Nov 2009 | 1:22 pm

Launching today, this startup's iPhone app geo-locates you and geo-locates the partyHot Potato, a startup focusing on an iPhone app that streams updates from friends at events in your area, launched on Friday, just one month after the completion of its Series A round of funding. The Brooklyn-based early-stage startup has raised $1 million so far for its mobile brand of social networking via events.Backed by Vimeo co-founder Zach Klein, Hot Potato's iPhone app will be one which facilitates a conversation that revolve around events: who's going where, who's enjoying what, what's happening (as…
Social networking sites are media portals

20 Nov 2009 | 9:45 am

Time spent viewing video on social networking destinations up 98% year-over-year, reports NielsenOne of the things I love about Facebook is how simple it is to view videos on your live feed. For the most part, videos from sites like YouTube, Vimeo, or those uploaded directly to Facebook play right in the feed without ever having to stray away to another destination. It just works. It makes sense that this ease of viewing could be one of the reasons why time spent viewing video on social networking has increased 98 percent year-over-year, according to a report by Nielsen…
Facebook shares rise 42% in 4 months

20 Nov 2009 | 7:04 am

Common stock is trading at $21/ share on SecondMarket, giving the company a $9.5 billion valuation.Facebook’s valuation has been all over the map. In 2007, a $240 million investment from Microsoft pegged the company at a whopping $15 billion. After Wall Street imploded, the company plummeted to $3.7 billion in its own estimation, according to court documents discovered by the AP in February of this year. By May it climbed back to $10 billion with an investment from Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies. DST then offered to buy up to $100 million in common stock from shareholders…
Adobe to release Acrobat.com for smartphones

20 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

After a couple weeks worth of mobile news, Adobe keeps the updates comingAdobe revealed Thursday that this weekend it will be launching a new version of Acrobat.com, an online platform which allows for PDF conversion, web conferencing, and more. Included in the announcement is the news that Adobe will likewise be releasing both iPhone and BlackBerry applications for Acrobat.com.The new Acrobat.com, which launches this Saturday, Nov. 21 at 3:00am PST, consolidates all of the user's files--documents, spreadsheets, presentations--into one central hub, for easier access. Both free and premium…
Twitter's new question: What's happening?

19 Nov 2009 | 11:38 am

Biz Stone says "What are you doing?" was never the most important questionFrom the beginning, Twitter has asked its users one simple question: "What are you doing?" The original idea assumed the network would be a place for people to keep in touch with each other and the occurrences in their day-to-day lives.But, as co-founder Biz Stone acknowledges in a Twitter Blog post today, that question has taken a backseat to a more important question.According to Stone:The fundamentally open model of Twitter created a new kind of information network and it has long outgrown the concept of personal…

VentureBeat
Now anyone can try Brizzly’s app for Facebook and Twitter

Anthony Ha

20 Nov 2009 | 4:28 pm

Brizzly, an application for managing messages in Twitter and Facebook, expanded its beta test today — now you don’t need an invite code, so anyone can use it. The application was created by San Francisco-based Thing Labs, and includes features like expanding links and photos, the ability to “mute” people who you want to stop seeing updates from temporarily, and recently-added support for Twitter Lists. In addition to opening the beta, Brizzly also added a new feature today, the ability to translate tweets with a single click using Google Translate. Thing Labs also…
Tweetmeme launches buttons for re-tweetable advertising

Kim-Mai Cutler

20 Nov 2009 | 4:14 pm

Twitter said it’s planning a large-scale advertising network soon, but U.K.-based Tweetmeme beat them to the punch with a monetization effort of its own today. The startup, which creates those green ‘Retweet’ buttons you see everywhere (including on this site), is rolling out the same feature for ads. They’re partnering with Federated Media to insert retweet buttons into their advertising two weeks from now, enabling people to share compelling ads with others. Advertising in social streams has historically been a touchy issue (see: Facebook Beacon in 2007). Users…
GreenBeat: Big thank you and media roundup

Camille Ricketts

20 Nov 2009 | 3:30 pm

Thanks to everyone who made it out to GreenBeat 2009 yesterday and Wednesday! We were thrilled with the turnout, and couldn’t be more grateful for all the support we received from attendees, speakers, sponsors and the press. It’s clear that the Smart Grid has gained the momentum it needs for serious work to be done, and we are excited to play a big role in this conversation going forward. With Al Gore, and several of the biggest utilities and brightest entrepreneurs leading the charge, 2010 should be a big year for smart metering initiatives, regulatory reform and consumer…
GreenBeat: Al Gore says Smart Grid part of ‘the single largest solution’ to climate change

Anthony Ha

20 Nov 2009 | 2:43 pm

Nobel Prize winner and former vice president Al Gore gave a wide-ranging, passionate talk at VentureBeat’s GreenBeat 2009 conference yesterday in San Mateo about combating global warming. We already liveblogged Gore’s talk, but for folks who don’t want to read the blow-by-blow description, here’s a summary. Perhaps the most significant point: That energy efficiency is “the single largest solution to the climate crisis,” and the Smart Grid will “play a crucial role” in achieving that efficiency. The Smart Grid will have a number of advantages,…
New speakers, sponsors for DiscoveryBeat; today is last day for early-bird discount

Dean Takahashi

20 Nov 2009 | 1:28 pm

We’ve got some great momentum for VentureBeat’s upcoming DiscoveryBeat event, which will attack the problem of how to get attention for an app in the midst of a lot of noise. One of our newest speakers is Randy Breen, chief operating officer at Social Gaming Network, where he oversees game development, business development, strategy and executive management. He has worked in the game industry since 1986 at companies such as Electronic Arts, LucasArts and Emotiv Systems. Today is the last chance to get DiscoveryBeat tickets at the early-bird rate of $114. That’s a 25 percent…

Photostream from Daylife

A VC
The Story Of My Avatar

Fred

20 Nov 2009 | 2:36 am

I saw this tweet when I got up this morning:hey @fredwilson - whats the story behind ur avatar? While longtime readers know it, I figure many of you don't. So here it goes. Starting about four years ago, Howard Lindzon started commenting actively on this blog. He was funny, he was smart, and I enjoyed our banter in the comments. One march vacation, our family made a short stop in Phoenix, where Howard used to live. He emailed me and offered my son and me two tickets to the Suns game. We took him up on that and that's how we met for the first time. It turned out Howard was…
Ten Meetings Per Day

Fred

18 Nov 2009 | 3:44 am

I was explaining how I go about finding deals yesterday to a friend of mine and I thought I ought to explain it to everyone.I write this blog. It's like a broadcast channel of "what is interesting to me." I market it every way I know how and I get somewhere between 70k to 100k unique readers of it every month between web, rss, and mobile.As a result, I figure entrepreneurs and others have a pretty good idea of what I want to see and what I don't. And I believe they can self select. And for the most part, they do a great job of that.Given that dynamic, I take meetings, as…
The Power Of Instant Approval

Fred

16 Nov 2009 | 3:51 am

Back in the early days of web video, it wasn't clear who would win the competition for video upload to the web. There was YouTube, Vimeo, and the big dog was Google Video. I tried all of them. YouTube was by far and away the best experience.Google Video required you to wait for days to see the video you uploaded. It was so annoying that I wrote this post exactly four years ago today (how's that for a coincidence?). This line sort of sums it up:Posting stuff to the Internet has to be instantaneous. What if wrote this post on Tyeppad and it took me 10 minutes to see the…
My Social Recruiting Summit Keynote Talk

Fred

15 Nov 2009 | 8:10 am

On Friday I posted some of the key themes I'll be addressing tomorrow in my keynote. I spent this morning assembling them into a deck that I'll use in my talk tomorrow. Here's a final draft. Please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions/critiques/copy edits, please leave them in the comments. Social Recruiting SummitView more presentations from fredwilson.
Social Recruiting

Fred

13 Nov 2009 | 5:43 am

I'm giving the keynote talk at the Social Recruiting Summit in NYC on Monday. I've been working on my presentation over the past few days and some themes are worth talking about.1) Since we started Union Square Ventures in 2003/2004, we have only been involved with one retained search. Our portfolio companies have certainly used search firms, but our use of them has been extremely rare. We prefer to source candidates ourselves using our networks, and increasingly our social networks.2) We sourced both of our junior investment professionals, Andrew Parker and Eric Friedman, with blog…

Xconomy
Ironwood Files to Go Public, Seeks to Raise as Much as $172.5M

Luke Timmerman

20 Nov 2009 | 5:43 pm

Biotech, deals, startups Luke Timmerman wrote: Ironwood Pharmaceuticals is gearing up for the possibility of an IPO. The Cambridge, MA-based developer of a new treatment for bowel disorders like for irritable bowel syndrome and chronic constipation said it may raise as much as $172.5 million from investors through the deal, according to a prospectus filed late today. The proposed offering would be underwritten by JP Morgan Securities, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, and Wedbush PacGrow Life Sciences. The prospectus doesn’t list how many shares it hopes to…
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20 Nov 2009 | 5:43 pm
Blue Marble Snags $2M State Grant

Luke Timmerman

20 Nov 2009 | 4:10 pm

cleantech, Biofuels, startups Luke Timmerman wrote: Seattle-based Blue Marble Energy, the developer of renewable energy and specialty chemicals from biomass, said it has received a $2 million state grant through a partnership with the Odessa Public Development Authority. The company plans to use the grant, from the Washington Community Economic Revitalization Board, to build a refinery in Lincoln County that will turn organic biomass from around Eastern Washington into as much as 858 metric tons of biochemicals and 700 metric tons of green ammonia per year, says CEO Kelly Ogilvie, in an…
Google Demos Chrome OS, Microsoft Links Into LinkedIn, Amazon Ramps Up for Holidays, & More Big Company News

Gregory T. Huang

20 Nov 2009 | 1:16 pm

Public Companies, startups, trends Gregory T. Huang wrote: It’s been a busy week around here for the big tech companies. At Xconomy, we don’t usually report on things like product releases from Microsoft or sales figures from Amazon—our main focus is on new ideas, models, and companies—but readers need to understand where the big players are heading so they can see the gaps and opportunities for new businesses. So, for each of these pieces of mainstream tech news, I’ll tell you why savvy innovators and business leaders should care. —Google (NASDAQ: GOOG)…
Day Software, Web 2.0 Content Management Specialist, Moving U.S. Headquarters to Boston

Wade Roush

20 Nov 2009 | 11:32 am

IT, Software, Web 2.0 Wade Roush wrote: Wails of lamentation spread across the local tech community every time an entity like Zendesk or Greylock or Y Combinator departs Boston for parts west. But today we have a different tale to report. Day Software (SIX: DAYN) a Zurich, Switzerland-based content management software specialist that builds interactive websites for Fortune-1000 giants like Adobe and General Motors, is about to move its U.S. headquarters from Newport Beach, CA, to Boston. When it comes to the software platforms and interactive content that define the world of Web 2.0 commerce,…

Ross Mayfield's Weblog
Why Twitter Implemented Retweets

Ross Mayfield

12 Nov 2009 | 7:56 am

In a thoughtful post, Ev explains the thoughts behind why twitter implemented Retweets. There are a lot of good reasons for adapting this user generated convention into mainstream use. MG Siegler, Sean Bonner and others provide some insight into how this adaptation may have gone to far, but I wanted to explore why this feature was implemented the way it was. Two weeks ago Twitter partnered with Bing and Google to provide the real time firehose for inclusion in their search indexes. Most likely these deals are providing the majority of Twitter's revenue to date. Form follows funding,…
From Enterprise 2.0 Adoption to Business Value

Ross Mayfield

2 Nov 2009 | 10:13 am

In 2006, Enterprise 2.0 gained a definitional framework with Andrew McAfee's seminal article. But then the conversation quickly shifted to adoption frameworks. In part this was needed for something that was both new and powered by people. But unfortunately it has caused a perception problem, to the detriment of the industry. It's time to elevate the conversation from adoption to business value.There isn't a shortage of budget for Enterprise 2.0, but quipping the I in ROI is nominal doesn't cut it. At Socialtext, we've been hard at work combing through our customer…

DEMO Conference Blog
Join Us: December DEMO Innovation Meet-Ups in San Francisco, Seattle, NYC and Austin

DEMO Staff

30 Oct 2009 | 1:32 pm

The DEMO Innovation tour where Matt Marshall, DEMO Executive Producer and the DEMO team travel around the globe to connect with the DEMO community in search of the best innovation to showcase at DEMOspring 2010 is making it's way across the U.S. in December. Read more
DEMO’s visits to London and Boston show California is great place to launch

DEMO Staff

30 Oct 2009 | 1:28 pm

Matt Marshall, DEMO Executive Producer I’ve been on the road lately, in a continued effort to find and meet with the best companies around to launch new products at the DEMO conference, and have been developing some cool ideas for DEMO’s next conference in March. I’ll share more about those ideas in future posts. Read more
DEMO rocked! Now the party starts again

DEMO Staff

13 Oct 2009 | 7:25 am

From: Matt Marshall, Executive Producer, DEMO Conferences and Editor-in-Chief, VentureBeat It’s been two weeks since the end of DEMO. I’m awestruck by the experience, both by all of the incredibly talented people that convened there in San Diego, and by the traction 70 entrepreneurs were able to get during those short few days. Thank you to all of the people who came and make it such a terrific event. Read more
DEMO 2010 starts now

DEMO Staff

7 Oct 2009 | 2:58 pm

We're fresh off DEMOfall 09 where two weeks ago, 70 companies launched products and announced innovative business plans. If you haven't taken a look, check out the class of DEMOfall 09 at www.demo.com. Read more
DEMOfall 09 starts today.. Watch live coverage

DEMO Staff

22 Sep 2009 | 6:41 am

Didn't make it to San Diego for DEMOfall 09? Watch it live on www.demo.com home page starting Tuesday, 9/22 at 8:30am. PT, thx BitGravity! Read more

Yahoo! Finance: Venture Capital News
Keating Capital Enters into Letter of Intent with Industriaplex (Business Wire)

20 Nov 2009 | 2:20 pm

GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo.----Keating Capital, Inc. announced today that it has entered into a letter of intent to serve as lead investor in a pre-public round of financing to Industriaplex, Inc., an Alpharetta, Georgia provider of outsourced supply chain management solutions to small and medium enterprises.
Bibby Financial Services Supports Acquisition with $750,000 Facility (Business Wire)

20 Nov 2009 | 1:59 pm

CHICAGO----Bibby Financial Services said today it provided a $750,000 accounts receivable financing facility to a Chicago-based manufacturer of personal care products such as shampoos, conditioner, and lotions, as well as over-the-counter pharmaceuticals including hand sanitizers and liquid soaps, industrial products and cleaning supplies.
Alliance HealthCare Services Announces Pricing of Private Offering of $190 Million of Senior Notes and Receipt of Commitments for $460 Million Senior Secured Term Loan and $120 Million Revolving Credit Facility (Business Wire)

20 Nov 2009 | 1:00 pm

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.----Alliance HealthCare Services, Inc. announced today that it has agreed to sell $190 million in aggregate principal amount of its 8% Senior Notes due 2016 in a private offering.
Chegg.com Secures $112 Million to Fund Explosive Growth in Online Textbook Rentals (PR Newswire)

20 Nov 2009 | 12:31 pm

Chegg.com, the No. 1 online textbook rental company, announced today that it has successfully closed $57 million Series D equity funding, led by Insight Venture Partners. In addition, Insight Venture Partners also led a syndicate that has provided a $25 million credit facility, adding to the $30 million in debt facility recently secured from Pinnacle Ventures and TriplePoint Capital.
The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas Moves One Step Closer To Funding First Round of Research Awards (Business Wire)

20 Nov 2009 | 12:23 pm

AUSTIN, Texas----The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas announced today that 403 of the nearly 900 proposals submitted are still in contention for CPRITâs inaugural cancer research funding awards.

Venture Hacks
The ignorant VC

Supporting Author

20 Nov 2009 | 7:30 am

Thanks to Atlas Venture for supporting Venture Hacks this month. This post is an interview of Fred Destin — one of Atlas’ general partners — by David Woodward, a journalist and blogger. If you like it, check out Fred’s blog and tweets @fdestin. A few days ago, I had an interesting chat with Fred Destin, Atlas Venture’s ebullient technology partner. Atlas bought a stake in the property website Zoopla at the beginning of 2008, which wasn’t exactly a fun time to be involved in the property game. It was also a pretty difficult period to source capital in any sector — all…
The sultans of startup marketing

Nivi

19 Nov 2009 | 8:35 am

I recently re-connected with an up-and-coming venture capital Associate who thanked me for introducing her to the masterworks of Steve Blank and Eric Ries. I told her to check out Sean Ellis’ blog, and mentioned that I’ve learned just as much from Sean. Later that night, she sent me a note: “Sean Ellis is awesome. Thanks so much.” Let me tell you why Sean is awesome. First, Sean lead marketing from launch to IPO filing at LogMeIn and Uproar. He later worked with Xobni (Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital), Dropbox (Sequoia Capital), Eventbrite (Sequoia Capital),…
Extrapolating computing

Naval Ravikant

18 Nov 2009 | 9:07 am

Remember when mainframes did all of the computing? And workstations were dumb terminals docked to the mainframes? The terminals had less power, but were more “mobile”. Then everyone got a desktop. And the desktop is where you did most of your computing. And you carried around your underpowered laptop, which had to be synced with your desktop, or docked to a big screen, keyboard and mouse to be usable. The laptop had less power, but it was more mobile than the desktop. Now most early adopters have a laptop as their main computer. And they’re carrying around their underpowered…
How to pick a co-founder

Naval Ravikant

12 Nov 2009 | 8:32 am

Picking a co-founder is your most important decision. It’s more important than your product, market, and investors. The ideal founding team is two individuals, with a history of working together, of similar age and financial standing, with mutual respect. One is good at building products and the other is good at selling them. The power of two Two is the right number — avoid the three-body problem. Think Jobs and Wozniak, Allen and Gates, Ellison and Lane, Hewlett and Packard, Larry and Sergei, Yang and Filo, Omidyar and Skoll. One founder companies can work, against the odds (hello,…
The long tail of VC twitterers

Nivi

11 Nov 2009 | 8:28 am

We previously posted about the long tail of VC blogs. A few VC blogs capture most of our attention. The rest slog it out in the long tail. And now, for the first time in the history of mankind, we present the long tail of VC twitterers (click to zoom in): The underlying data is from Venture Maven’s list of 217 VC twitterers. I removed Chris Sacca, Om Malik, and David Pakman from the dataset because they have too many followers (they were on the Twitter suggested users list). This widget aggregates all 217 VC twitterers: (Widget: VC twitterers) Thanks to Venture Maven for aggregating the…

Venture Capital Access Online
A New Addition to Entrepreneur Showcase

17 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm

Venture ID: 681 N.B. The above and other venture listings are reserved for members (accredited investors) only. Register for free membership (Accredited Investors Only) http://www.vcaonline.com/showcase/register Login to Entrepreneur Showcase http://www.vcaonline.com/showcase/login Showcase Your Business Plan or Executive Summary to Accredited Investors Entrepreneur Showcase provides a fast, simple and cost-effective way to showcase your business plan or executive summary to every accredited investor of our network. This is the best way for accredited investors to see your venture. Post Your…
Fenwick & West's Silicon Valley Venture Capital Survey Reveals Increase in Valuations in Third Quarter of 2009

10 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., November 11, 2009-- Fenwick & West LLP, one of the nation's premier law firms providing comprehensive legal services to high technology and life science clients, today announced results of its Third Quarter 2009 Silicon Valley Venture Capital Survey. Click the above link to read the news story.
VCPro Database 2009

8 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm

VCPro Database 2009 (12th Edition) is a downloadable venture capital and private equity directory with complete profiles of over 4,200 venture capital firms worldwide. Compiled by a veteran VC researcher, VCPro Venture Capital Database is available in both Windows and Macintosh formats. (includes a FREE annual update in January 2010) Click the above link to learn more.
2009 The New England Venture Summit

5 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm

2009 The New England Venture Summit December 8, 2009 Click the above link to view this event.
12th Annual Corporate Venturing & Innovation Partnering

5 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm

12th Annual Corporate Venturing & Innovation Partnering February 23-25, 2010 Click the above link to view this event.

VC & Angel Investor Profiles
Investor Profile: Rho Ventures

20 Nov 2009 | 1:39 pm

Habib Kairouz, Managing Partner, Rho Ventures Prior to joining Rho in 1993, Habib worked in investment banking and leveraged buyout in New York with Reich & Co. and Jesup & Lamont. He received an MBA from Columbia University. His current and former board seats include: Avolent, Innerwireless, Intralinks, iVillage, ReachLocal, Tripod, Tacoda, Travel Ad Network, Waterfront Media, and Yantra. Habib is a Managing Partner of Rho Capital Partners and Rho Ventures and serves on the investment committee of Rho Fund Investors and Rho Canada. Subscribe to FundingPost's InvestorVideo Clip Channel on…
Investor Profile: Brand Building Ventures

20 Nov 2009 | 1:39 pm

Parker Gilbert, Angel Investor, Managing Partner, Brand Building Ventures Parker Gilbert is the Managing Partner of Brand Building Ventures, based in Westchester County, New York. Brand Building Ventures, founded in September, 2004, is committed to investing in emerging consumer goods and services companies that possess unique selling propositions. Mr. Gilbert has thirteen years of classic consumer packaged goods marketing experience across a range of product categories. Over the course of his career, Mr. Gilbert has won two sales awards and one national advertising award. He has a track…
Investor Profile: Contour Venture Partners

20 Nov 2009 | 1:39 pm

Matt Gorin, General Partner, Contour Venture Partners Matt Gorin is a general partner and co-founder of Contour Venture Partners and has experience in technology operations, start-ups and turnaround management, with a focus on the financial services and applied technology sectors. Matt was previously part of the launch team at Promontory Interfinancial Network and before that worked at Red Hat. Earlier in his career Matt was at Morgan Stanley within its financial services focused venture capital fund and was a turnaround consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Some of his investments include…
Investor Profile: Edison Venture Fund

20 Nov 2009 | 1:39 pm

Tim Foster, Business Development Manager, Edison Venture Fund Tim Foster serves as Manager of Business Development. Tim is responsible for managing and expanding Edison's referral source network of service provider professionals and financing sources in the Mid-Atlantic region (PA, DE, MD, VA, DC, NJ, NY, CT, MA) Tim identifies and builds new relationships for mutual referral opportunities. This includes trading deal flow and facilitating lead sharing with referral network contacts and sourcing Edison deals and portfolio company opportunities to service providers. In addition Tim represents…
Investor Profile: FirstMark Capital

20 Nov 2009 | 1:39 pm

Amish Jani, Managing Director, FirstMark Capital Amish Jani, a Founder and Managing Director of FirstMark Capital, focuses on software and systems investments in the enterprise, communications and digital media sectors, and serves on FirstMark Capitals Investment Committee. Amish also leads FirstMarks investment strategies for the Indian marketplace. Prior to founding FirstMark Capital, Amish served as a Partner with Pequot Ventures. *Come meet with Amish in this exclusive New York City speaking engagement: Perfect Venture Conference V on November 12, 2009 FirstMark Capital Some invest in…

VentureWoods
Barcamp Chandigarh @ 22 Nov

Sameer

18 Nov 2009 | 4:33 am

The startup ecosystem in Chandigarh, the city beautiful, is buzzing with activity. On 12 November the results of Business plan competition, Enterprize - organized by TIE Chandigarh & Chandigarh Administration, were announced. The winners got place in the EDC setup by the Chandigarh Administration, in the IT park. Continuing the good news for start-up folks, Fountainhead School of Business is organizing BarCamp Chandigarh - an extreme popular unconference, on 22 November. It will be a day long event that provides you the opportunity to attend some interesting sessions, meet like-minded…
Book Review - Getting to Plan B

Alok Mittal

12 Nov 2009 | 10:48 pm

Just finished reading this book by John Mullins and Randy Komisar. It outlines the importance of iterating on the business to evolve the plan continuously - in many cases, the initial plan that entrepreneurs start with doesn’t work as it is. This is something that people in the venture space have known intuitively. John and Randy do a good job of motivating it with examples, and outlining a broad framework of what to watch out for. In some sense, the book is broader than just getting to Plan B - the initial portions on analogs and antilogs (as ways to find patterns that can fit your…
Israel: Leader in Business Innovation

Alok Mittal

1 Nov 2009 | 7:30 pm

CNBC has this interesting video on what makes Israel business innovation tick
Will angels dirty their hands?

Alok Mittal

28 Oct 2009 | 9:47 pm

I was speaking to a successful entrepreneur and angel investor yesterday about the evolving angel investment climate in India. He voiced a concern that seems to strike a chord - that while many successful entrepreneurs in India are involving themselves in angel funding, and even setting up early stage funds, there is a tendency to “rise above” building companies and a resistance to acting as a peer to budding entrepreneurs. Many successful entrepreneurs seem to graduate over, and consider it below themselves to roll up their sleeves with a rookie. Conference speeches take over…
Last date for nominations extended till 20th October 2009 for the NASSCOM Innovation Awards

Avinash

12 Oct 2009 | 3:23 am

The NASSCOM-BCG Innovation Report 2007 detailed the imperative for companies to significantly increase innovation to develop path-breaking services/products and delivery mechanisms, etc. Since then, there has been a transformation in the character of the Indian IT-BPO sector, which has embraced innovation. Participating in the innovation movement have been multinationals, who have set up captive R&D centres and offshore development facilities in India, indigenous IT-BPO companies, who have rapidly recognized and adopted an innovation led approach to service the IT off-shoring and domestic…

topix: venture capital news
Electric-car maker Tesla preparing IPO

20 Nov 2009 | 1:50 pm

U.S. electric-car maker Tesla Motors plans to go public soon, two sources familiar with the matter said, amid growing interest in green technology and battery-powered vehicles.
Warner Chilcott Prices Secondary Stock Offering

20 Nov 2009 | 7:26 am

Warner Chilcott PLC, which makes women's health and dermatology products, said a secondary offering of 20 million shares priced at $22.25 per share.
eBay Completes Skype Sale At $2.75 Billion Valuation

20 Nov 2009 | 2:19 am

The investor consortium who is the buying party and will control an approximately 70 percent stake is a group led by Silver Lake Partners and includes Joltid and "certain affiliated parties", the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and VC firm Andreessen Horowitz .
The 2009 VC 100 Winners

19 Nov 2009 | 9:56 pm

The last 15 months have been highly uncertain for both the venture capital industry and the companies they fund, but history shows that funding entrepreneurs takes patience and endurance.
Kramer Says NBC Universal Deal Would `Test' Regulators: Video

19 Nov 2009 | 5:27 pm

Nov. 19 -- Larry Kramer, an adviser to Polaris Venture Partners, talks with Bloomberg's Betty Liu about plans by General Electric Co.

VCCircle Feeds
Sahara Realty Arm In Talks With PE Firms To Raise $215M

Madhav Chanchani

20 Nov 2009 | 4:45 am

Sahara Prime City, the real estate arm of the Lucknow-based Sahara Group, is in talks with private equity funds to raise $215 million. The company's CEO Sushanto Roy told Bloomberg that "global funds are keen to invest in India." Sahara had filed its draft red herring prospectus in September to raise around Rs 3,450 crore in an initial public offering (IPO). Sahara Prime City's IPO is expected to be the second largest public offering in the real estate sector after DLF went public in 2007.
Abhijeet Biswas Joins Equirus Capital As Director

Madhav Chanchani

20 Nov 2009 | 4:30 am

Abhijeet Biswas has been appointed as a Director at mid-market focused investment bank Equirus Capital Pvt Ltd. He will lead the practices of industrial, energy, healthcare and FMCG. Biswas, who joins Equirus from Singhi Advisors, will also work on building of international M&A networks for the firm. Biswas has a done B.E., M.B.A and is a CFA charter holder. He has also worked in the US with BDO Seidman, LLP and with Ernst & Young LLP.
Network 18 Merges Two Channels

Madhav Chanchani

20 Nov 2009 | 4:25 am

Network 18, the Raghav Bahl-owned media conglomerate, has decided to merge the logistics, back-end and broadcast operations of two of its business channels, CNBC TV 18 and CNBC Awaaz, to derive cost savings of up to Rs 65 crore. In a filing to the stock exchanges, the company said, the move will result in optimisation of around 20% in annual operating costs. The shares of Network 18 Media & Investments closed at Rs 80.70 today, up by over 5%. The move follows the rights offer of TV18, which will lead to debt reduction of Rs 300 crore. “Both moves will help the company return to…
Peninsula Land Gets Rs 275Cr From Alok Realtors

Sarimul I Choudhury

20 Nov 2009 | 3:24 am

Peninsula Land Ltd, a Mumbai-based real estate developer and part of the diversified Ashok Piramal Group, has received a sum of Rs 275 crore from Alok Realtors Pvt Ltd, which bought 6.41 sq feet space at Peninsula’s business park in Mumbai’s Lower Parel area. The total value of the deal is Rs 1,100 crore and, so far, Peninsula has received a sum of Rs 465 crore from Alok Realtors, it said in its filing to the BSE. Peninsula Land is present across the real estate spectrum including residential, commercial and retail. It develops residential projects under the brand name…
Edelweiss Capital To Foray Into Life Insurance

Madhav Chanchani

20 Nov 2009 | 3:09 am

Edelweiss Capital is forming a life insurance joint venture with Tokio Marine Holdings (Japan) to tap the domestic insurance business. The JV firm Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance will soon approach the sector regulator Insurance Regulatory & Development Authority (IRDA) to obtain a life insurance licence. Edelweiss and Tokio Marine have together committed an aggregate initial capital of Rs 550 crore in the first phase. The entry of Edelweiss will take the total tally of life insurers in the country to two dozen. Although the market continues to be led by public sector insurer LIC (the only…

Seeing Both Sides
Time for Massachusetts to Pass Education Reform

bussgang

14 Nov 2009 | 7:43 am

I've been blogging for five years about the start-up, innovation economy and I almost never write about politics. But this week is different. This week, the Massachusetts Legislature is about to vote on a bill to (finally) reform education in Massachusetts - to lift the cap on charter schools, empower commissioners to reform the worst-performing schools and create "Readiness Schools" that get around the usual bureaucracy and drive towards academic excellence. The importance of passing this legislation cannot be over-stated. I've been somewhat involved with education…
What Makes Boston's Start-Up Scene Special?

bussgang

13 Nov 2009 | 5:59 am

(follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bussgang A few weeks ago, Fred Wilson posted a presentation he delivered on What Makes the NYC Start-Up Scene Special. I was inspired to deliver a similar presentation today to a group of Harvard Business School students who are interested in entrepreneurship in Boston. There's been alot of chatter in the community about a start-up renaissance in Boston. Don Dodge of Microsoft had a great post listing out all the amazing start-up resources in the Boston community that's worth reviewing as well. Yahoo's ex-president (and fellow HBS EIR)…
What Makes Boston's Start-Up Scene Special? - video

bussgang

11 Nov 2009 | 2:50 am

Here's the video from the talk I gave at HBS on what makes the Boston start-up scene special.
The VC Gender Gap - Are VCs Sexist?

bussgang

5 Oct 2009 | 8:31 pm

I find the preponderance of males in VC an annoying and stubborn phenomenon. When I first entered the start-up game as an entrepreneur in the mid 1990s, I didn't think much of the "VC gender gap" as there were plenty of women executives around. In fact, between one third and one half of the executive teams at my two start-ups (Open Market and Upromise) were women. As the father of a capable, ambitious daughter, perhaps I'm over-sensitive to the issue, but since becoming a VC seven years ago, I find it amazing that only 5-10% of the VC industry is made up of women. …
Healthcare and Entrepreneurship

bussgang

10 Sep 2009 | 4:17 am

President Obama's compelling healthcare speech last night made the case for acting now. In a follow-up email that he sent to millions, he urged action to finally address this pressing issue, positing that we are "closer now than we have been in 60 years." Here's my question - where can I find an analysis of the impact of the plan on entrepreneurship? Why has this major engine of job growth been silent or ignored in the debate - or have I just missed it? Anything that creates friction in entrepreneurship is a bad thing for our innovation economy. I have seen aspiring…

Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing
Moving to the Cloud is not an all or nothing proposition

DonDodge

20 Nov 2009 | 6:57 am

The Enterprise Cloud Summit panel at the Interop Conference yesterday discussed some of the challenges and concerns of large enterprises and government agencies in moving their applications to the cloud. While there are some regulatory and compliance concerns for some applications, it isn’t an all or nothing proposition. Moving your email, calendar, spreadsheet, word processor, and other productivity apps to the cloud now can save big money, and free up your IT resources to focus on more strategic issues. InformationWeek says “The vendors argued that cloud computing offers enough real…
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen diagnosed Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma

DonDodge

17 Nov 2009 | 6:26 am

Paul Allen, the 56 year old co-founder of Microsoft has been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, a form of cancer of the lymphatic system. Paul is a tough guy, he already beat Hodgkin's Disease 25 years ago, and he will beat this too. Paul is one of the good guys. Everyone who knows him loves him. Say a prayer for Paul today. It is tragic when anyone is struck with cancer, but it seems only the celebs and rich people get noticed by the media. It is those less fortunate, those without adequate health care, that we should focus more attention on. Health insurance for all Americans must be…
Thanks Microsoft, Hello Google

DonDodge

16 Nov 2009 | 5:58 am

Thanks to all the fine people at Microsoft. It was an interesting ride. Four years, 11 months, and 20 days, and I enjoyed every one of them. Well, except for the last few days, that was not fun at all. I hope I played a small part in making Microsoft more approachable, friendly to startups, and easier to work with. Microsoft is a different company, a better company, than when I joined 5 years ago. There are more new people who joined Microsoft in the last 5 years than all the previous employees combined. However, laying off 5,000 people when you have $37B in cash and huge profits is not cool.
Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter the new communication modes

DonDodge

12 Nov 2009 | 7:43 am

Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter have become my main communication channels since leaving Microsoft. They are always open on my laptop and cell phone. It is somewhat surprising to me how effective these tools are at reaching individual people or thousands of people at the same time. The corporate email system seems oddly out of touch now. Strange now fast that happens. I have used Facebook and Twitter for a long time. But now that I am outside the corporate wall they have taken on new importance. Gmail is new to me, but I can already see why people have been raving about it. It is email, but…
Pay It Forward, Give and you shall receive

DonDodge

9 Nov 2009 | 12:57 pm

I want to publicly say thank you to all my friends. You know who your friends are when times are tough. I heard from hundreds of friends last week and it meant a lot to me. Social media has created a whole new set of “friends” who know a lot about you and care about you, even though you may have never met in person. Hundreds of these friends took the time to write to me. Over 400 emails on my new Gmail account. There were also hundreds of comments on blogs and news sites that carried the story of my separation from Microsoft. It was almost like I had died, but got to read my obituary and…

Bizjournals.com: Venture Capital
Nonprofit director pleads guilty to fraud

20 Nov 2009 | 6:15 pm

The former director of housing for NOAH Development Corp., a nonprofit in Belle Glade, and his fiancée pleaded guilty on Friday to charges they stole public money.
Global Defense goes public

20 Nov 2009 | 3:53 pm

Global Defense Technology & Systems Inc., a defense contractor that focuses on national security agencies, went public Friday on the Nasdaq stock market with an offering price somewhat below expectations. (GTECH)
Stimulus-fueled SBA loans may run out

20 Nov 2009 | 3:10 pm

Say goodbye to the 90 percent guarantee and reduced fees that sparked a rebound in Small Business Administration lending.
Gates Foundation made $2.8B in awards in 2008

20 Nov 2009 | 2:53 pm

On Friday, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust posted their annual tax filings on the foundation’s website. The documents can be found here.
Hawthorn Bank promotes Turner to president, COO

20 Nov 2009 | 2:50 pm

Hawthorn Bank has promoted David Turner to president and COO, a new position, effective Jan. 1.

PE Hub Blog
Companies Led By Women Are Greener

Deborah Gage

20 Nov 2009 | 5:36 pm

This is one conclusion of a study from UC Davis and the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives in Palo Alto, which looked at 400 of the largest publicly held companies in California to see how many of them had women board members or executives. They didn’t find many — women hold only 10.6% of the board seats and executive jobs at these companies, and only 15 of the companies have women CEOs. At 30% of the companies, both board members and executives were all male. One of the counties that ranked the lowest for women-led companies, by the way, was Santa Clara, which is in the…
peHUB Second Opinion 11.20

Erin Griffith

20 Nov 2009 | 2:33 pm

Wacky Business School Traditions: Including pants-free pub crawls, Olympics, human castles, mustache competitions…. (BusinessWeek) Daily Dose of Snark: The Wall Street Journal Tackles the Important Stuff. (Cityfile) Rising Renminbi: Chinese private equity funds are emerging in big cities as China promulgates new regulations aimed at creating a homegrown private equity industry, one that Beijing hopes will strengthen the country’s capital markets and fuel private sector growth in an economy overly dependent on government investment. (NY Times) Keep It Classy, Ohio: My home state…
How TCW Met Magic Johnson, Formed “Capital Assist”

Erin Griffith

20 Nov 2009 | 2:28 pm

At yesterday’s Buyouts West conference, Deborah Gage interviewed Mark L. Attanasio, managing director at TCW. As Dan noted in this morning’s peHUB Wire, the Milwaukee Brewers owner said he wouldn’t trade Prince Fielder. More closely related private equity, he discussed the formation of TCW’s new joint venture with Magic Johnson. How does a mid-market mezzanine lender get hooked up with a former L.A. Lakers great? This is how: “I went over to Ron Burkle’s place to visit the Stanley cup. Ron owns the (Pittsburgh) Penguins, and they won the Stanley Cup, and I…
NVCA: The Tweets Are In

Deborah Gage

20 Nov 2009 | 1:46 pm

All week, Startuphire.com and the National Venture Capital Association have been sending out press releases highlighting the U.S. jobs created this year by venture-backed companies — more than 35,000 to date. They also asked employees of these startups to submit 140-character testimonials on what inspires them to get out of bed and go to work each day. Here are some of them: “Our CEO is wearing gym shorts and a T-shirt right now. At bulbstorm.com, we’re too busy innovating to iron!” Bart Steiner, CEO, Bulbstorm “A bad thing about working for a startup is everyone…
Why Chegg.com Was Financed With Credit And Debt

Deborah Gage

20 Nov 2009 | 10:14 am

Or at least partially with credit and debt… Insight Venture Partners led a $57 million Series D round of equity funding into the company this week, plus helped provide a $25 million credit facility. In addition, Chegg.com got a separate $30 million debt facility from Pinnacle Ventures and TriplePoint Capital. Total equity funding is now over $90 million, according to Thomson Reuters. Chegg.com bills itself as the Netflix for college textbooks — students order books from its website and receive them in the mail, along with a prepaid envelope to return them — and it needs…

Technosailor.com
WordPress and PHP 5: Be the Change You Want to See

Aaron Brazell

18 Nov 2009 | 10:46 am

The other day, I wrote the popular 10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.9. As usual, most people are very excited about the new release which is now in beta and available for testing. In the article, I made a few fundamental errors which I have since corrected. Notably, I mentioned that WordPress 3.0 would be going to PHP 5. This was based on conversations I had with a core developer which I now realized I misunderstood. Kinda. WordPress will probably not be dropping PHP 4 support in WordPress 3.0 but as core developer Mark Jaquith suggests: Some things already require PHP 5, like…
The WordPress Bible: A Writing Redux

Aaron Brazell

17 Nov 2009 | 11:07 am

Back in July, I noted that I had accepted and was beginning the process of writing The WordPress Bible for Wiley Publishing. You can read that post here. It’s now November and almost everything is in the bag for me. I’ve written the book with an average of 20-30 pages per chapter. I’ve gone through Author Review (A.R.), more commonly called “editing”. I’ve taken screenshots. Wrote code. Sifted through pages and pages that have so many changes, from three different editors, that the page appears to bleed. I’ve survived. Sometimes barely. I want to talk…
10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.9

Aaron Brazell

11 Nov 2009 | 2:36 pm

Gentlemen, start your engines! WordPress 2.9 is just around the corner. Unlike WordPress 2.8, which Mark Jaquith describes as the Snow Leopard of WordPress since most of the basis of the WordPress 2.8 upgrade was complete rewrites and optimization of the infrastructure that ran WordPress instead of providing lots of new features in the same way Apple’s new OS X release is a focus on improved performance instead of features, WordPress 2.9 brings major new “bling” to the table. As a reminder of WordPress 2.8, you can see the writeup that Jonathan Dingman brought us last time…
Will the Real Tech Community Please Stand Up

Aaron Brazell

30 Oct 2009 | 11:39 am

Our world today is diluted. The lines have blurred. Everyone has bought into this concept of community – that everyone has something for everyone and we’re one big happy family. Specifically, the concept of the “technology community” which is a term that has come to mean anyone who has a blog, uses social media or Twitter and engages online in some way or another. Though this has been a trend that is akin to the frog happily boiling in an ever increasing pot of hot water, the reality struck me today as I saw this Wall Street Journal article about how Facebook and…
Payola, Extortion and Market Correction

Aaron Brazell

19 Oct 2009 | 12:52 pm

For the last two weeks, I’ve been mulling this concept of market correction as it pertains to the web. There are a variety of stories that have been related, in addition to signatory bubble characteristics that I have observed for some time, but it’s all coming into a lot more focus as time has gone on. A market correction is an economic term describes a natural occurrence when a certain market sector becomes “over sold” or hyperinflated, or when a sector becomes irrelevant to the market and is put out of its misery, or re-capitalized. It is a “coming to…

LINKEDIN ANSWERS: VC AND PRIVATE EQUITY
What SEC concerns should I have when raising outside capital for my business

20 Nov 2009 | 11:57 am

I have a client who is raising capital for her business. We were told by a potential investor that if we get "passive" investors we will have to file a bunch of stuff with the SEC and it could cost $50,000 in legal fees. But, if we get "active" investors who are members of board or "managers" in the LLC then we would be exempt. Trying to verify or get more info on this.
List of Angel Investor Groups

20 Nov 2009 | 5:43 am

Can someone recommend a list of Angel Investor groups in northern New Jersey? The business that's seeking funding involves networking software and storage.
CALLING ALL EXPERTS!! Which are the most prevalent solutions in each of the following categories? [ See Bob's Guide links below ]

20 Nov 2009 | 2:02 am

1. Derivatives Systems - bobsguide.com: http://bit.ly/1btsU2 2. Trading Systems - bobsguide.com: http://bit.ly/1HbrKE 3. Wholesale / Commercial Banking Systems - bobsguide.com: http://bit.ly/1D7OOm 4. Treasury Management Systems - bobsguide.com: http://bit.ly/1oJ6Y8 5. Global Payments & Transfers - bobsguide.com: http://bit.ly/1llEQg 6. Middle and Back Office Solutions - bobsguide.com: http://bit.ly/ceEd2 7. Asset Management Systems - bobsguide.com: http://bit.ly/47Sq9X
web 3.0

19 Nov 2009 | 1:45 pm

I have a theory what will be the next generation Internet web 3.0, new search engine and how to monetize social networking web sites. I tried to find VCs and Investors but could get their attention, they do not read the project. any advice ? now I am publishing this project on the web http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddt9fjnn_147dqb48qgz<br>Clarification added November 19, 2009 2:27 PM: What will be the indicator of the new Web 3.0 internet era? Simply put, it will be a downturn in search a ...
What is the best way to find companies that need financing now?

19 Nov 2009 | 1:34 pm

GigaOM
Green Computing Needs a Data Center Whisperer

Stacey Higginbotham

20 Nov 2009 | 5:05 pm

As compute demand increases, demand for power in data centers is soaring. To help IT professionals halt the spread of watt-consuming servers, the industry needs to develop software that can communicate the ways in which the various layers of the data center perform and interact. They need a binary version of Cesar Millan — a data center whisperer. Speaking at a panel held Wednesday night in Austin, Texas, several folks from the large server shops and a distinguished engineer who runs a data center for IBM spoke about the challenges of keeping power consumption down in a world where…
Thanks to Our GigaOM Sponsors!

Edit Staff

20 Nov 2009 | 5:00 pm

We’d like to say thanks to this week’s GigaOM sponsors: PEER 1: Fully Scalable Hosting Solutions Concentric: Hosted IT Services Mozy: Simple, Automatic, Secure Online Backup SoftLayer: SoftLayer delivers on-demand virtual data center services and solutions. Salesforce: Force.com Cloud Platform PayPal: Innovate 09 – The Intersection of Ideas and Money
12 Offbeat Resources for Landing a Tech Job

Sebastian Rupley

20 Nov 2009 | 3:10 pm

Layoffs are cropping up all over the tech industry, with workers at companies ranging from AOL to Adobe to Microsoft getting pink slips. But while most people know to turn to the big online job boards and social networks ranging from LinkedIn to Facebook to help land a new gig, there are a lot of off-the-beaten-track online paths that can be taken as well. Below are 12 proven tech job search resources that you may not be using yet. Good luck! TwitterJobSearch searches Twitter for posts on who is hiring. The posted jobs range from full-time to part-time work-at-home to one-off hired gun…
4 Big Gambles Google Is Taking With Chrome OS

Sebastian Rupley

20 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm

You’ve gotta hand it to Google: The company is never shy about throwing the proverbial spaghetti against the wall to see if it will stick. Over the years, it’s introduced countless projects that have gone through long beta cycles only to fail miserably — or achieve a degree of success far below what was expected. Google Docs, for example, was supposed to topple Microsoft Office, and is still predicted to do so, but if that ever happened, I missed it. Next year, Google will introduce one of its most ambitious projects yet: Chrome OS (GigaOM Pro, subscription req’d).
Air Canada Will Offer In-Flight Wi-Fi, Too

Stacey Higginbotham

20 Nov 2009 | 11:48 am

Air Canada is testing an in-flight Wi-Fi service from Aircell on its flights between Toronto and Los Angeles and Montreal and L.A. From now until Jan. 29, passengers can plunk down $9.95 per flight to surf on a laptop and $7.95 to access the Internet on smaller devices such as a smartphone or WiFi-enabled media players like the iPod touch. AirCell also provides its GoGo in-air Wi-Fi service on Delta and American Airlines flights in the U.S. And because Aircell currently only has regulatory approval and the antenna coverage that enables airlines to offer Wi-Fi in the U.S., Air Canada…

EzineArticles.com
Can a Factoring Company Help Your Company?

20 Nov 2009 | 12:06 pm

Does your Canadian business have cash flow problems? Read this article to learn how a factoring company can help improve the cash flow of your company.
Finding Capital in Asia and the Search For Angel Investors

20 Nov 2009 | 4:29 am

Asia provides an excellent location to develop a business. However, access to capital is a key requirement for many projects and the key question for many entrepreneurs in Asia is where to find it.
Turnaround Engagement - Part I

19 Nov 2009 | 6:08 pm

I recently completed a turnaround engagement with a mid-market company. The effort was successful and the story of the turnaround was typical of many. My initial foray into any company identifies those threats that are likely to bring it down.
How to Not Leave Money on the Table When Raising Equity

19 Nov 2009 | 2:16 pm

There you are, you're drafting the term sheet for your private placement memorandum and you come to the warrant section. You know, that part of an equity security offering that states how much of the equity you're willing to part with. You can't just throw out a number - "20%", "40%", "anything under 50%". If you offer too little in warrants, your prospective investors will never become your investors; the return is not sufficient to compensate for the risk. Offer too much, and yes, you'll get investors, but at the expense of leaving money on the table. It needs to be a win-win. That's great,…
Find the Capital You Need Through a Small Business Investment Company (SBIC)

18 Nov 2009 | 11:29 am

The Small Business Administration (SBA) was created by the United States government in 1958 to provide a clear and efficient path for small businesses to acquire capital. The SBA raises capital by selling SBA Guaranteed Certificates to various public and private investors. The capital acquired is then dispersed as debentures to licensed Small Business Investment Companies (SBIC's), who in turn invest in small business portfolios with the intent to stimulate the flow of private equity capital and long-term loans to small businesses.

Ventureblogs
Berkman Center Reception This Wednesday

David Hornik

17 Nov 2009 | 7:36 am

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell talks about the power of circumstance. He explains that Bill Gates and Bill Joy had unprecedented access to the earliest computers and, as a result, they built a couple of the most important computer companies in the history of computation. A quick look at the folks who graduated from law school with me at the dawn of the Internet age (it sounds so long ago when you put it that way) and you can see the power of circumstance at work again. In my law school class were four of the most well-respected Internet scholars: Professors Jonathan Zittrain, Yochai…
Monetizing Twitter -- Bring on the Ads!

David Hornik

9 Nov 2009 | 8:00 am

True, no one asked me. But here's my two cents anyway. Twitter should open up its platform to advertising. That's right, advertising. Forget all this hoo-ha over selling data or paid business accounts or dashboards . . . Twitter has everything it needs to build a wildly-successful ad driven business model. It should get on with it. The two hallmarks of successful advertising-driven businesses are 1) massive scale and 2) abundant context. How has MySpace built such strong advertising revenue atop their social media platform? Huge scale and a ton of context. Same is true of Facebook and Yahoo…
Welcome Reid Hoffman to the VC Side of the Table

David Hornik

5 Nov 2009 | 2:40 pm

First came the announcement earlier in the year that Marc Andreessen was joining the ranks of "capital" -- a welcomed defection from "labor." And now my friend Reid Hoffman has jumped into the fray as well, joining Greylock Partners in their new fund (although he is not quite abandoning "labor" -- for the time being he will continue on as Executive Chairman of LinkedIn). Having two superstars like Marc and Reid join the venture business is excellent news at a time when the press is gleefully touting the demise of our profession. While the venture business is, no doubt, under serious pressure…
Lessons from Rajeev Motwani's and Craig Johnson's Lives

David Hornik

12 Oct 2009 | 4:07 am

In the past three weeks, I have attended 2 memorial services and 2 brises. The brises celebrated the births of two future superstars -- the sons of four of the smartest entrepreneurs and venture investors in the Bay Area. The memorial services celebrated the lives of two recently deceased superstars -- both entrepreneurs and venture investors in their own right. As I listened to the stories of the lives these great men had lived, and listened to the toasts and prayers for these great men-to-be, it struck me that there were lessons to be learned for entrepreneurs and venture investors alike.
Pen and Paper are Mightier Than the Laptop

David Hornik

29 Sep 2009 | 7:37 pm

Relatively recently I hosted a meeting of the advisors to one of my portfolio companies. It was an impressive group of tech veterans. Each of them had been involved in the building of multi-million dollar high tech companies. Yet, what struck me about this summit was how many of these computer gurus carried with him a good, old fashioned notebook. Two varieties seemed to dominate the gathering -- the classic, leather-bound Moleskin and the pocket-sized graph paper Rhodia. I was surprised to see so much scribbling and so little typing. Since that meeting, I have kept my eyes out for this…

Recent Buzzes - VC Experts, Inc.
In a Leveraged Buyout With a Controlling Stockholder, Loyal Directors Must Actively Negotiate

17 Nov 2009 | 11:00 pm

Louisiana Municipal Police Employees' Retirement System v. Fertitta A recent decision by the Delaware Court of Chancery reinforces the responsibility of a board of directors to assertively defend the interests of the noncontrolling stockholders when negotiating with a controlling stockholder in order to satisfy the board's duty of loyalty. Sound off on this week's buzz in the Comments Section.
Venture Capital Survey - Silicon Valley Third Quarter 2009

16 Nov 2009 | 11:00 pm

Fenwick & West LLP., a national law firm that provides comprehensive legal services to technology and life sciences clients of national and international prominence, has analyzed the terms of the venture financings in the Bay Area for the third quarter of 2009. In this week's Buzz article you will be able to take a closer look at the results of the Fenwick & West survey by Barry J. Kramer and Michael J. Patrick which found up rounds exceeded down rounds in 3Q09, 41% to 36%, with 23% flat. This was the first time that up rounds have exceeded down rounds in 2009 and the percentage of inside…
Applicability of Delaware Income Tax

10 Nov 2009 | 11:00 pm

The Delaware income tax applies to domestic and foreign corporations, other than those specifically exempted, deriving income from business activities carried on and from property located within Delaware during the income year. The applicability of the Delaware corporate income tax to limited liability companies (LLCs) is determined by the LLC's classification for federal income tax purposes. Therefore, an LLC will be classified as a partnership, unless otherwise classified for federal income tax purposes. Sound off on this week's buzz in the Comments Section.
New York State Enacts Changes Impacting the Creation and Potential Uses of Powers of Attorney

9 Nov 2009 | 11:00 pm

On September 1, 2009, broad changes to the laws governing powers of attorney became effective in the State of New York. These changes impact both the creation and potential uses of powers of attorney and apply not only to New York residents, but also to individuals who execute powers of attorney while conducting business in New York. Sound off on this week's buzz in the Comments Section.
Note on Preparation and Content of Placement Memorandum ('PPM')

3 Nov 2009 | 11:00 pm

The early rounds of financing entail the issuance of securities in "private placements," transactions exempt from registration under the Securities Act of 1933 in accordance with one or more statutory exemptions, as discussed in "Reg. D and Other Exemptions from Registration". Most source materials suggest that the use of private placement memoranda is essential in private placements. Sound off on this week's buzz in the Comments Section.

Frank Peters Show
Bankruptcy! Philadelphia's Rob Bovarnick

20 Nov 2009 | 5:50 pm

What's the difference between a wind-down and bankruptcy? Philadelphia-based Rob Bovarnick knows and he shares that and more in today's show. Fox Business, Forbes, he's an expert on bankruptcies and he's building an audience in traditional media. Will an appearance on the show open his eyes to podcasting? Or, more likely, I'll be learning something from Rob. Show #260 (27:57) Listen Register Now 8 Dec 2009 the Puerto Rico Venture Forum in San Juan
Wilson Sonsini: Shut Off TweetPhoto Interview

18 Nov 2009 | 9:18 am

I was astonished to receive this somewhat threatening letter from this well known and highly respected Silicon Valley law firm. To me, as a journalist, the letter appears to limit my ability to conduct candid interviews and to report them. Since I am not an attorney, I would appreciate any suggestions from my readers and listeners in regard to this most amazing letter. How would you respond? Notable commentary: TechCrunch, Why I Laugh by Chris Lindsey, Amateur Hour at James Hatch and Podcasting News.
TweetPhoto Update: Wilson Sonsini Threatens

17 Nov 2009 | 8:32 pm

Who would've thought Wilson Sonsini would threaten a blogger? They're famously smart people who've contributed hugely to the success of Silicon Valley and the venture capital industry, so why would they kick sand in my face over a split-up at TweetPhoto? Read their complaint below. Of course, the whole issue is a joke. How do you remove a podcast from the internet?
Dan Caulfield, TweetPhoto

16 Nov 2009 | 2:56 pm

BANNED BY WILSON SONSINI Photos for twitter? Sounds like a natural, so that's what former Tech Coast Angel Dan Caulfield has jumped into: TweetPhoto. Is it another case of "it's more fun to be an entrepreneur than an angel"? Well, not exactly, because now he's ex-CEO and there's trouble in paradise. TweetPhoto works with TweetDeck, which is on my desktop already, so I tried it. Works great, and for a photographer like me, I can see myself tweet'ing out lots of my favorite shots. So, if you're a former Tech Coast Angel, I'd assume you take your deal back to your friends, right? No, Dan has…
The Villalobos Memorial Celebration

11 Nov 2009 | 11:57 pm

At Luis' memorial celebration, Howard Miller is one of the first to speak. Show #258 (08:56) Listen Register today 8 Dec 2009 the Puerto Rico Venture Forum in San Juan

Feld Thoughts
TechStars, StartUp Visa, iRobot Looj, and Cornell

Brad Feld

19 Nov 2009 | 4:07 am

You may be thinking “what do these things have to do with one another?” Well – they are all in my browser this morning after I returned from my run with Reece Pacheco of Overtime Media. And in case you are wondering, Reece is an ex-lacrosse star who is now running Overtime – which makes HomeField. They are a young company, but are working with about 200 sports teams at colleges across the country to get the video of their games online. Reece met me at the NY Entrepreneurs Roundtable Event that I spoke at on Monday, sent me an email about running, and off we went this…
Living Life While Working Hard

Brad Feld

18 Nov 2009 | 5:29 am

I had a 19 hour day yesterday – it started when I woke up at my hotel at 26th Street at 5am and ended when I hit the sack at midnight. I had a bunch of meetings, a few scheduled phone calls, was on a panel, and stayed on top of my email throughout the day. I even managed to keep my FishVille fish fed and got my Cafe World food served before it spoiled. When I crawled into bed, I was toast. However, when I woke up this morning, I had this deep happy feeling from yesterday. As I took a shower, I remembered four great things that I did in the midst of a very busy day.
Zeitoun

Brad Feld

17 Nov 2009 | 5:12 am

Over the weekend, I read what I think is going to be my “best book of the year.” It’s Zeitoun by Dave Eggars of McSweeney’s fame. Some people just know how to write. And Eggars is one of them. Wow. As I ran around downtown Manhattan this morning thinking about how radically different my run today was from my typical runs around Eldorado Springs and Boulder, I couldn’t help drifting back to Zeitoun. It’s a stunning story about one man – Abdulrahman Zeitoun – and his family before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. But Katrina was only the…
How I Use The Gist Dashboard View

Brad Feld

17 Nov 2009 | 3:05 am

I’m in NY all week with a jam packed schedule so I thought it would be a good week to talk a little about how I use Gist since I’ll use it every day to help me deal with a shortened daily information routine. As you probably know, we are investors in Gist and I’m on the board so – while this is fanboy stuff – there are also a few other goals of this post including (a) helping you understand the promise of Gist, (b) enticing you to give it a try, and (c) eliciting feedback from those of you that have given it a try and want more / better / different (e.g. feedback of any kind…
DIA Backlit By A Rising Sun

Brad Feld

14 Nov 2009 | 11:16 am

Another awesome APOD photo. I wonder how evil and scary the blue horse looks when backlit like this.

Ask The VC
Why Don’t Venture Capitalists Tell You Why They Won’t Invest?

16 Nov 2009 | 9:54 am

Today, we were asked the following question: '”Why don't VCs tell you the reason why they don't invest? Any feedback would be useful. It's just plain rude.” I (Jason) figured that this is really a personal question, so I thought that I’d post on my personal blog, as I certainly can’t speak (or even guess) the response for the entire VC industry. You can see Jason’s thoughts here.
Preparing to Wind Down a Business: What information do you need?

10 Nov 2009 | 5:50 am

We continue to work our way through wind downs in the third part of the series from Roger Glovsky. Roger, you have the floor… The primary responsibility for shutting down operations and liquidating assets falls on the managers and/or owners of the business, at least until or unless the creditors or court system takes over. This could come as a nasty shock to some investors. Many angel investors or even venture capitalists enter a transaction with the intent of just contributing money. They may be surprised to learn some day that the management team for the company…
When to Shut Down Your Company

19 Oct 2009 | 9:02 pm

Last week we started the blog series (written by Roger Glovsky), How to Wind Down Your Company. The response and comments were great! Keep them coming. This week we tackle the hardest problem of all: deciding when to shut down your company. It is not easy an easy decision, especially for entrepreneurs. Starting a company is about creating a vision, persuading others to believe in the vision, turning an idea into reality, and pursuing a dream. The last thing an entrepreneur wants to do is to shut down his or her dream. So, how do you make the decision to shut down…
Know Your Communication Strategy When Raising Money

19 Oct 2009 | 7:26 am

Today’s interesting post is from Matt Eventoff and talks about how startups need a communications strategy while raising money – not all that dissimilar from a disgraced politician. Thanks Matt!
How To Wind Down Your Company – New Series

7 Oct 2009 | 9:51 am

Of the most popular posts that Brad and I have created are our series on Term Sheets, Compensation, and Mergers and Acquisitions. One of the subjects that we've wanted to tackle has been the dissolution of companies. It's never fun to think about failure, but it happens a lot. Unfortunately, we haven't gotten around to it yet, so it was with great joy that my friend Roger Glovsky elected to write the series himself. This is post one of the series and I'm really excited to introduce Roger to our readers. Take it away, Roger. This is a follow-up to Jason Mendelson's…

Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog
Lessons from leaders in virtual goods

jeremyliew

30 Oct 2009 | 7:34 pm

Worlds In Motion has a good summary of my panel today from the Virtual Goods Summit, where leaders in Asian and Western virtual goods social networks shared what lessons they had learned.
Speaking at Virtual Goods Summit – 15% off code

jeremyliew

8 Oct 2009 | 4:45 pm

I’m speaking at the Virtual Goods Summit on Oct 29-30th. I’m moderating an all star panel including Min Kim from Nexon, David Wallerstein from Tencent, Bill Wang from Perfect World and Dai Watanabe from DeNa. Between them, these four companies generate around $1bn in annual revenues through virtual goods sales. So we should be able to learn something from the discussion! The full program is here. If you’d like to join me at the summit use the code “LSVP” to get a 15% discount
Birthday greetings as a proxy for how communication is becoming more public 3.0

jeremyliew

29 Sep 2009 | 3:20 pm

This is the third year that I’ve tracked my birthday greetings as they have moved from private channels to public channels, primarily facebook. As I noted previously, in 2007 and 2008; Social networks have changed the dynamic – it isn’t enough to wish someone a happy birthday, but it is also important to be SEEN to wish someone a happy birthday. Equally, it is important to be SEEN to have a lot of people wish you a happy birthday too! This year the shift continued but was much less pronounced, as the graph below shows: It’s somewhat notable that despite the huge increase of…
Where will the next ad network breakthrough come from?

jeremyliew

24 Sep 2009 | 6:36 pm

I’ve noted in the past that the four core competences of ad networks are: Aggregating Inventory Aggregating Data Targeting Sales Better targeting has historically been one core area of competition for ad networks, especially those focused on direct response advertising. However, as Anand Rajaraman (co-founder of Kosmix, a Lightspeed portfolio company) points out, more data usually beats better algorithms. Andrew Chen recently noted that after three years of work, Netflix awarded its $1m prize to a combined team of experts for an algorithm that only improved targeting by 10.5%: This…
Awesome stats on social game purchasing

jeremyliew

23 Sep 2009 | 11:23 pm

Andrew Chen has a guest post from Gambit that breaks down who is buying virtual goods and how much they are buying. The summary is that while teens spend substantially less per capita than people older than 20, they more than make up for it in volume. Read the whole thing and see the pretty charts here.

Clean Ventures
Clean Sweep 73

Tim Chapman

4 Nov 2009 | 7:40 am

A round-up of recent news in clean technology and cleantech investment. DealsUK cleantech specialist Ludgate Environmental Fund has made a follow-on investment of Euro2.3m in portfolio company agri.capital. The investment bring's Ludgate's total investment up to Euro7.3m.Münster-based agri.capital produces biogas from manure and silage feedstocks, and currently operates at 44 sites with total
Clean Sweep 72

Tim Chapman

16 Oct 2009 | 7:56 am

A round-up of recent news in clean technology and cleantech investment. DealsWaste treatment group New Earth Solutions secured £5m from Ludgate Environmental Fund as part of an ongoing £15m fundraising round. The Dorset-based group provides waste services, including a proprietary temperature-controlled composting process, for local authorities across southern and central England. Its New Earth
Clean Sweep 71

Tim Chapman

5 Oct 2009 | 7:40 am

A round-up of recent news in clean technology and cleantech investment. DealsWave power developer Aquamarine Power raised £10m to support offshore testing of its Oyster device. Investors include Scottish & Southern Energy and Sigma Capital, who previously backed Aquamarine in 2007.The Oyster is a hydro-electric wave energy converter, which uses the motion of the sea to pump high-pressure water to
Clean Sweep 70

Tim Chapman

17 Sep 2009 | 4:13 am

A round-up of recent news in clean technology and cleantech investment. It's been a while since the last one, and there's been plenty happening. DealsEnergy-efficient electronics developer Nujira raised a £10m fourth round from new investor Environmental Technologies Fund, Bank Invest, 3i, Amadeus, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital and private investors. The Cambridge-based firm provides a range of
Clean Sweep 69

Tim Chapman

25 Aug 2009 | 5:08 am

A round-up of recent news in clean technology and cleantech investment. DealsGreen cement developer Novacem raised something over £1m from Imperial Innovations, the London Technology Fund and the new Royal Society Enterprise Fund. A spin-out from Imperial College London, Novacem is developing a cement which absorbs more carbon dioxide over its lifetime than is emitted in its production.

Guy Kawasaki
The 19 bloggers Inc. thinks you should read

GuyKawasaki

6 Nov 2009 | 6:20 pm

Inc. named 19 bloggers that you should read. We’ve aggregated them all in one place: Inc19.alltop.
How to Get Found

GuyKawasaki

4 Nov 2009 | 3:29 pm

The reality is that people and technology is getting better and better a blocking out unwanted interruptions—aka, “marketing.” Brian Halligan is the CEO of HubSpot, and he explains in my post on the American Express Open Forum “how to get found.” It’s all about creating great stuff and letting Google et al do what they do: find great stuff.
How I tweet

GuyKawasaki

2 Nov 2009 | 8:47 am

By popular demand (and some complaints), I’ve done a FAQ with myself about how I tweet. Hope this helps you use Twitter for your business too. I explain how I use ghostwriters and why I repeat my tweets among other “unusual” practices.
Current Twitter Demo Script

GuyKawasaki

28 Oct 2009 | 2:26 am

This is the set of links that I used to demo Twitter by going down through this list to show why Twitter is such a valuable marketing tool. Introduction Home page Profile page Monitor Search Guy Kawasaki or Alltop Starbucks VIA introduction Search for “Prius” or “Civic” Sell Dell Outlet Kogi BBQ Support Comcast Cares Engage JetBlue Virgin America Fandango Prospect Camaro Camaro near Palo Alto Advanced searches Surfing or skateboarding (shows how to eliminate extraneous results such as “surfing the web” How I Tweet - Find Alltop MyAlltop helped me find this.
How to Avoid Twitter Cluelessness

GuyKawasaki

26 Oct 2009 | 4:24 pm

Over at the American Express Open Forum blog, I explain how to not look clueless on Twitter. The first five ways are: Don’t tell other people how to tweet. Don’t tell the world that you unfollowed someone. Don’t ask people why they unfollowed you. Don’t constantly tweet mundane updates and babble. Don’t use a small picture for an avatar. To read all ten and why they impugn your intelligence, click here.

deal architect
Where there are clouds, there is often a rainbow

20 Nov 2009 | 2:29 pm

Marc Benioff likes to talk about how salesforce is "democratizing" technology by making large enterprise class IT infrastructure and application management affordable for even the smallest companies. But at Dreamforce this week, I saw a much wider view of his...
The maturing of salesforce.com

17 Nov 2009 | 5:42 pm

So, I am walking near Moscone Center - in town for Dreamforce - and the guy tempts me with the offer of a free convertible. Got my attention - see the sign "work for a consulting company whose name you...
Sapience 2009: TCO Management Event for SAP customers

17 Nov 2009 | 4:45 am

"Sapience 2009, an event for CEOs, CIOs, CFOs, and IT Decision makers seeking to escape the limitations of a strongly vendor controlled application landscape will take place December 8-9, 2009 at the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, MA." says the PR Several...
HP, the disruptor?

16 Nov 2009 | 5:29 pm

Why would Cisco move down into 25% mainstream server margin business when its networking business has yielded it 65%? That is the question many asked as Cisco announced its Unified Computing System in early 2009. Its marketing said it “..represents...
Dont take a Coke can into Pepsi HQ

16 Nov 2009 | 4:48 pm

I wrote earlier “if you are Steve Ballmer's (Microsoft) kids you dare not use Google or try an iPod. I imagine his salesfolks dare not use salesforce.com...” Zoli writes about Don Dodge moving from Microsoft to Google: Thanks Microsoft Outlook,...

PureVC
Trading Currency For Yield

James Chen

30 Oct 2009 | 7:51 pm

Most investors don't realize this but investing is a simple exercise is trading one currency for another. In the foreign exchange market in order to buy a currency you must sell another one in a pair. For example to buy the US Dollar you must sell another currency such as the Euro. The system is built this way because all markets are dynamic and all instruments are relative to each other.The stock market is another example of this. In the US, we pay US dollars for a share of a public company's stock. In essence you must short the US Dollar and go long the equity of the company you…
Don't Bite The Hand That Feeds

James Chen

13 Jul 2009 | 1:26 pm

One key concept in business is to take good care of your best customers. In the startup world, a marquee customer can lay the pipeline for further deals with that company as well as serve as a reference to get your foot in the door of new leads. In business when times get rough and the economy is in recession, it is important to hunker down and to think of creative ways to add revenue. Generally, you don't increase fees and rates to increase revenue. Doing so is a great way to get customers to stop using your product. When your customers are having tough times, you don't want to…
Why Commercial RE May Not Crash

James Chen

26 Jun 2009 | 2:18 am

Many market commentators have been predicting that commercial real estate is the next shoe to drop in the credit crisis. I've seen a handful of presentations with whopping statistics on the amount of outstanding debt that will need to be revolved in the upcoming years. However, there has not been the massive apocalypse in commercial RE. At least not yet.And there actually may not be. At least for a long while. The reason is that early this year the IRS changed some rules to allow REITs to pay some or all of their dividends in the form of stock. Typically a REIT pays its dividend in 100%…
When Your Investor Owns the Marketplace

James Chen

23 Jun 2009 | 8:48 pm

One reader has commented that I seem to be going on a lot of tirades about the economy and the bailout and that this blog has seemingly taken a political bent. That comment is well taken and so I will post this final post about the bailout and the excessive governmental tampering with the free markets now. I promise to leave the topic alone after today and move on.So now that it appears that the economy has bottomed, banks are paying back their TARP loans. This is good news but it seems that now banks are negotiating with the government to buy back the warrants owned by the government. These…
The Private Equity Grind Down

James Chen

19 Jun 2009 | 8:48 pm

Every industry has its own "Grind Down". Perhaps it goes by another name, but our firm refers to a "Grind Down" as a negotiating tactic that occurs in deals when one party or the other at the last minute tries to achieve more favorable terms for itself or threaten to back out of the deal at a time so late in the game that the other party cannot find another transactor.Most homeowners have experienced the common retail mortgage grind down where when you go to buy a house and the deal is about to happen that the lender has some funny stuff fees in the transaction that you…

VentureWoods
Barcamp Chandigarh @ 22 Nov

Sameer

18 Nov 2009 | 4:33 am

The startup ecosystem in Chandigarh, the city beautiful, is buzzing with activity. On 12 November the results of Business plan competition, Enterprize - organized by TIE Chandigarh & Chandigarh Administration, were announced. The winners got place in the EDC setup by the Chandigarh Administration, in the IT park. Continuing the good news for start-up folks, Fountainhead School of Business is organizing BarCamp Chandigarh - an extreme popular unconference, on 22 November. It will be a day long event that provides you the opportunity to attend some interesting sessions, meet like-minded…
Book Review - Getting to Plan B

Alok Mittal

12 Nov 2009 | 10:48 pm

Just finished reading this book by John Mullins and Randy Komisar. It outlines the importance of iterating on the business to evolve the plan continuously - in many cases, the initial plan that entrepreneurs start with doesn’t work as it is. This is something that people in the venture space have known intuitively. John and Randy do a good job of motivating it with examples, and outlining a broad framework of what to watch out for. In some sense, the book is broader than just getting to Plan B - the initial portions on analogs and antilogs (as ways to find patterns that can fit your…
Israel: Leader in Business Innovation

Alok Mittal

1 Nov 2009 | 7:30 pm

CNBC has this interesting video on what makes Israel business innovation tick
Will angels dirty their hands?

Alok Mittal

28 Oct 2009 | 9:47 pm

I was speaking to a successful entrepreneur and angel investor yesterday about the evolving angel investment climate in India. He voiced a concern that seems to strike a chord - that while many successful entrepreneurs in India are involving themselves in angel funding, and even setting up early stage funds, there is a tendency to “rise above” building companies and a resistance to acting as a peer to budding entrepreneurs. Many successful entrepreneurs seem to graduate over, and consider it below themselves to roll up their sleeves with a rookie. Conference speeches take over…
Last date for nominations extended till 20th October 2009 for the NASSCOM Innovation Awards

Avinash

12 Oct 2009 | 3:23 am

The NASSCOM-BCG Innovation Report 2007 detailed the imperative for companies to significantly increase innovation to develop path-breaking services/products and delivery mechanisms, etc. Since then, there has been a transformation in the character of the Indian IT-BPO sector, which has embraced innovation. Participating in the innovation movement have been multinationals, who have set up captive R&D centres and offshore development facilities in India, indigenous IT-BPO companies, who have rapidly recognized and adopted an innovation led approach to service the IT off-shoring and domestic…

Southeast VC
Internet Summit Attracts Over 1,200 People to Raleigh

Jason Caplain

9 Nov 2009 | 8:44 am

The second annual Internet Summit was last week in Raleigh and co-presented by TechJournal South and Southern Capitol Ventures. You can see all the details, speakers, sponsors here. Over 1,200 people attended, which was almost double last year's event. The conference exceeded all my expectations and as a firm, we were proud to be involved. When I sat down with Eric Gregg and Scott Hedrick at TechJournal South a year and a half ago and we came up with this idea, I never thought it would get this big, this fast. The goal of the conference was to put on a more national internet…
Why Showing Up to a Meeting is Not Enough

Jason Caplain

6 Nov 2009 | 12:24 pm

Over the last few weeks, I have been giving greater thought to how people perceive our firm after a first meeting. And this is happening because during that same timeframe, I've had two very different experiences with companies I have met with. And that made me think more about my personal interactions with people that meet me or my partners. I thought I'd share my experiences here from those 2 meetings hoping you and I can learn something from this as well. To set this up properly, it is important to mention that: 1. Our firm could be a customer for both companies I talk about. 2.
Happy Halloween!

Jason Caplain

30 Oct 2009 | 12:19 pm

Wow, the folks at ChannelAdvisor really went all out for Halloween this year. Looks like fun. Check out all the pics of their employees today. I wish I could have made it over to see in person!
Best Buy, Google, ChannelAdvisor & Pier 1 Share their Holiday Strategies

Jason Caplain

27 Oct 2009 | 8:01 pm

Retailers: here is some good advice for the holiday season offered by some experts. Video features Lorraine Twohill and Eric Schmidt from Google, Jeff Haddox from Pier 1, Brad Smith from Best Buy and Michael Jones from SCV portfolio company, ChannelAdvisor. If you want to learn more, check out the Google Retail Advertising Blog, which highlights this video.
Internet Summit - Save $50

Jason Caplain

25 Oct 2009 | 9:24 am

Internet Summit is next week Nov4 and 5 in Raleigh, NC. Our firm, Southern Capitol Ventures is co-presenting along with TechJournal South. Friends of SCV can receive a $50 discount when registering by using the VIP code "SCV50." That will bring the cost for you down to $245. Register here. We have a fantastic lineup of 75 speakers including brands such as Google, Pandora, Expedia, ESPN, Digg, Lending Tree, Technorati, comScore, Huffington Post, Meebo, AOL, Gannett, IBM, Goldman Sachs, SAS and Microsoft just to name a few. Last year was sold out. This year we expect north of 1,000…

Israel Venture Capital 2.0
Founder CEO, CEO Founder

Daniel Cohen

16 Nov 2009 | 3:47 am

Last week I had an interesting call with one of the founder/CEOs in my portfolio. This is someone I highly trust, and I truly believe he has the potential to take his company all the way, from zero phase to a successful IPO. During our conversation, we talked about the stage of the company: A working product, growing distribution, a good team, and some initial revenues. We both agreed that it’s time to take the company to the next stage. Leverage the existing foundation of the venture and build a real company: Roles & responsibilities, clear processes, scalable models. It’s time to…
Self Interview

Daniel Cohen

9 Nov 2009 | 12:13 pm

Since no one is really interested in interviewing me, I decided to do a self interview. This is my version of “self portrait”, especially since I can’t draw (or sing. or dance. Shows something about the qualities of VCs) Why haven’t you blogged for since mid September? Can’t really say. For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to write. It’s not that I didn’t have anything to say. I actually had a lot to say, but my typing hands were heavy. Do you think you are now officially back to blogging? I can’t promise anything. But I will try. I will also be blogging at the Gemini…
Shana Tova תשע

Daniel Cohen

16 Sep 2009 | 10:00 pm

Here it is, another Rosh Hashanah arriving, and the previous one still seems so recent. I looked back at my wishes from last year, and some of them came true. Obama won and showed the world what Leadership 2.0 is all about. Hapoel Haifa won, made it to the Israeli premier league, and did that with a lot of passion, commitment and style. This year I decided to be a bit more specific, something beyond just general health and world peace. So, here are my 3 wishes for the new Jewish year: 5 great deals: When I talk about deals, I mean it in the most broad sense. Some combination of exits,…
Crazy MA Week

Daniel Cohen

16 Sep 2009 | 1:42 pm

There are rumors floating around that Google is in the process of acquiring Brightcove for $500M-$700M. In addition, Adobe already announced the acquisition of Omniture for $1.8bn. In the “mid-range” deal category, Intuit swallowed Mint.com for $170M. Aren’t we supposed to be in a downturn? Isn't the venture model seriously broken? Give us 52 more weeks like that and we will be just fine. But still, this is not good news. A few years back I saw Paul Deninger speak at an Always On conference. Paul is a very smart guy, and extremely knowledgeable about the Venture Business. He said that…
A Journey to the land of the North

Daniel Cohen

14 Sep 2009 | 1:22 pm

For some reason, this post got a bit of a bombastic title, a choice of words that reminds me the Lord of the Rings. In reality, I spend all of today in the Northern part of Israel, visiting 3 exciting companies that are operating in the Galilee. As I am a VC, you would expect to hear now about some great portfolio companies, or at least about exciting product companies. That wasn’t the purpose of this trip. Together with 2 good friends, I went to visit Babcom Centers, Galila Line technologies, and Galil Software, three leading companies in the new emerging sector – the IT services…

Sarah Tavel / Adventurista
Measuring churn for recurring revenue businesses

10 Nov 2009 | 2:55 pm

For any recurring revenue company, churn is almost always one of the key metrics the company (and their board) tracks. Why work hard to get new customers if you can’t keep the ones you’ve got? Moreover, low churn means you have a stronger recurring revenue base and therefore more money to spend acquiring new customers. Thus, having low churn creates a virtuous cycle for the company in more ways than one. While churn may seem like a straight forward concept, I’ve found that recurring revenue companies often only measure monthly or annual churn in terms of customer count. While this is…
What Twitter has meant for FourSquare, and what I think Twitter should learn from Four$quare

28 Sep 2009 | 6:09 am

That FourSquare has benefited tremendously from Twitter is obvious. I can’t sign into my twitter account without finding out so-and-so got some badge or became the mayor of some place. In fact, I first learned of FourSquare thanks to Twitter and to seeing these announcements, and I would be willing to bet that a huge majority of FourSquare’s current users also found out about FourSquare thanks to Twitter.Sites like Twitter and Facebook are fantastic word of mouth conduits. Whereas FourSquare once would have had to grow by asking users to email their friends and sign up, Twitter provides a…
"Installed applications are going away in five years"?

17 Sep 2009 | 2:52 pm

Recently, I got into a heated argument with someone at a cloud computing-related meeting where a person I was speaking to swore up and down that within five years people would no longer install applications besides their browser.I swore up and down that that’s not happening any time soon in mainstream USA.I may feel like a dummy in five years, but I have to say, I recently received a new PC and I’m amazed by how many applications I’ve installed so far (not including what was pre-installed on my computer -- thank you HP bloatware!). My list so far (day #2 of computer):Adobe ReaderBunch…
My "ista" take on Larry Cheng's VC Blog Ranking

9 Sep 2009 | 6:01 pm

Larry Cheng updated his popular VC Blog Ranking and included some fun analysis, particularly on how Fred Wilson continues to lead the VC blogging show. If you haven't already, take a look.Because I initially started my blog with the intention of blogging from the perspective of a female, junior professional (hence the “ista” in Adventurista), I’ve created two sub-sets of Larry’s: 1) Junior (i.e. non-dealmaker) professionals and 2) females.#dos is pretty straight forward, but I might need some user generated editing for #uno. My rule of thumb was that if a person didn’t have the…
Is the OS the new QWERTY keyboard?

6 Jul 2009 | 4:30 pm

It never ceases to amuse me that the layout of the QWERTY keyboard was first designed to slow down typists.Although we no longer type on typewriters and a more efficient keyboard layout has since been designed, we are still (and probably always will be) stuck with good ole, inefficient QWERTY.The QWERTY is reinforced by hardware (keyboards), software (the default setting in Windows and other OSs), but mostly, it is reinforced by habit: people around the world have grown up typing on a QWERTY keyboard, and we continue to train people today on the layout of the QWERTY.Habits (and cultural…

Babbling VC
You Hardly Ever Fail Because of Your CTO

Paul Jozefak

15 Nov 2009 | 7:29 am

This has been said many times before but I'll say it again. It's not about technology or innovation. It's all about customers and sales. I've noticed recently that you have lots of entrepreneurs always pitching their newest "mousetrap". Unfortunately, the discussion about how you're going to find customers for your product and sell it to them comes late or never. If you're going to send your business plan to a VC or pitch their partnership make sure you address this issue right up front. Convince them that you first know who your customer is. Second,…
It's Not About Paychecks. It's About Equity!

Paul Jozefak

5 Nov 2009 | 2:46 am

I've often made the dating reference when it comes to VC's and entrepreneurs. Well, there's one further point which I want to make clear, although to many it's obvious. After we invest, we want to eventually sell our stake. Be it via an IPO or a trade sale, we eventually want out. This means that our premise for investing is taking the money we initially invest and increasing it tenfold or better. You're scratching your head asking yourself why is Paul writing this? It's obvious! Well, not to everyone. We are not looking for businesses which get to break even and…
Why Are There Simply Deals We Won't Do

Paul Jozefak

1 Nov 2009 | 8:40 am

I'll keep this one short but it answers a question often asked. As is probably the case with most VC's and their LP contracts, there are industries we can't invest in. Very simply put, we won't invest in gambling, porn, first-person shooter games and anything having to do with alcohol, drugs or tobacco. All LP contracts vary but it's pretty clear why some of these areas are taboo for VC funds. Hence, if your company is in one of these industries, you will most likely have difficulty finding a venture fund to back your business. Note that I am not making any judgement…
As in any profession, most VC's are full of shit!

Paul Jozefak

26 Oct 2009 | 1:35 am

I read the following line in Paul Graham's essay"The reason VCs seem formidable is that it's their profession to. You get to be a VC by convincing asset managers to trust you with hundreds of millions of dollars. How do you do that? You have to seem confident, and you have to seem like you understand technology."I don't mean to imply with my blog title that all VC's are idiots. Simply put though, even if they are, they sure as hell can hide it well. It's funny how much that sentence from Paul's essay stuck in my mind. Having recently been out in the…
A VC's Perspective: Blogs I'm Reading Now

Paul Jozefak

19 Oct 2009 | 12:35 am

I bang out a post like this every now and again as it needs updating. I read a bunch of blogs every day but there are always a couple I come to first. These are usually the core of my reading and tend to drive what else I read as I discover new ones via links in posts. Below is the core of blogs which make up my daily reading now. Tune in 12 months from now to see if this list has remained the same:A VCFred's blog has been on this list for a long time. I am presuming it'll remain on this list for a while longer. I simply like how Fred writes and the best part of his blog is the…

Buzztracker.com
Apple's Mistake
Start-Up Employees Tell All … In 140 Characters Or Less [Voices]

Working for a start-up is hard enough.
Matt: This Week in Startups

Last week I was on This Week in Startups with Jason Calacanis and Joel Spolsky. Here’s the show:
Norwest Venture Partners Goes Big [Voices]

Norwest Venture Partners on Wednesday announced that it had closed a new venture-capital fund sized at $1.2 billion.
Seesmic Launches Mobile Apps for Android and BlackBerry

Hot on the heels of the launch of the Windows desktop app preview, Seesmic has brought its Twitter client to the mobile arena as well with the launch of clients for the Android and BlackBerry ...

DataGrant Venture Capital News
Awards for family businesses

FrancisLinton81

20 Nov 2009 | 8:17 am

Fullerton’s Family Business Council, the Business Journal and California State University hosted a luncheon event on a grand-scale. At the event, prizes were distributed to family businesses for their enterprise right from a designer of clothes inspired by mixed martial arts to a mortuary. The surprise winners were Irvine-based Silver Star Casting Co., designers of T-shirts, hats and accessories with gothic, tattoo-style artwork. The company is owned and run by Luke Burrett and wife Charis and it recently moved from San Clemente to a larger space in Irvine. No joke-the longevity award…
Primoris set to acquire James Construction Now

FrancisLinton81

20 Nov 2009 | 8:15 am

On Thursday, James Construction Group LLC, a Baton Rouge, La.-based construction company was acquired by Primoris Services Corp., a Lake Forest-based construction and engineering company for $135 million. James Construction was founded in the year 1998 and worked for both government and private clients extending from Texas to Florida. Last year only, it generated revenue of $410 million. According to reports, it saw a profit of $33 million last year. James Construction is being acquired by Primoris for $7 million in cash, a five-year $53.5 million promissory note and shares of Primoris with…
LPL and Pacific Life Heading For Legal Battle

FrancisLinton81

19 Nov 2009 | 6:55 am

The Boston-based stock brokerage company LPL and the Newport Beach-based Pacific Life Insurance Co, are expected to be caught in a legal fight sometime soon. According to a story in the trade publication Investment News, fraud suits against a broker who sold stakes worth millions of dollars in a hedge fund that collapsed in the year 2007, could arise to determine which company is liable for the damages. Pacific Life was associated with three stock brokerages for selling LPL stock. The stock brokerage called Associated Securities Corp., was the one with which the broker was actually affiliated…
Hyundai Moving Up With Mexico Plant

FrancisLinton81

19 Nov 2009 | 6:46 am

South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co. has a chance of coming up with its third North American plant in Mexico. It is the largest automaker with operations in Orange County. Santa Monica auto Web site Edmunds.com Inc. reported that there is a great probability of the Mexican gulf state of Veracruz being the site for the new plant. There is a chance of incorporating 150,000 additional vehicles to the automaker’s North American output, bringing it closer to Japan’s strength in the market of North America. The automotive site reported that the negotiation process between officials from…
El Pollo Loco Faces Third-Quarter Loss

FrancisLinton81

18 Nov 2009 | 5:26 am

El Pollo Loco Inc., which is a Costa Mesa-based Mexican fast food chain operator, posted a third-quarter loss and also a fall in revenue. According to the Chief Executive Stephen Carley, it happened because the promotions failed to deliver effective results in their most challenging quarter till date. Based on the reported results for the debt holder, the privately held company lost $5 million in the quarter in comparison to a loss of $48,000 reported a year ago. The revenue of the company was reported down by 8.5% to $68.5 million and the sales at restaurants open for one year showed a…

DealBook
Ron Paul Defends His Plan for Fed Oversight

By CYRUS SANATI

20 Nov 2009 | 3:26 pm

Defending himself against critics, Representative Ron Paul of Texas played down concerns on Friday that his amendment to give Congress sweeping new oversight powers over the Federal Reserve would compromise the central bank's political independence.
Hershey Considers a Counterbid for Cadbury

By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED and ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

20 Nov 2009 | 2:59 pm

Hershey is considering bidding for Cadbury, a proposal that would top the $16.7 billion hostile bid from Kraft, people briefed on the matter told DealBook on Friday.
Morgan Stanley Reaches Deal on Barclays Loan

By DEALBOOK

20 Nov 2009 | 11:24 am

Morgan Stanley is handing over Crescent Real Estate Equities to Barclays Capital, winning forgiveness of a $2 billion loan that financed its acquisition of the real estate business in 2007.
BofA's Ideal Chief: the One Who's Leaving?

By CYRUS SANATI

20 Nov 2009 | 10:02 am

Richard X. Bove, the outspoken bank analyst, believes that the best person to lead Bank of America is the man who's leaving the chief executive post.
CF Claims 3 Seats on Terra's Board

By CYRUS SANATI

20 Nov 2009 | 8:48 am

CF Industries announced Friday that all three of its nominees were elected to the board of rival fertilizer maker Terra Industries, potentially ending an 11-month takeover battle.

Ann Arbor USA Blog
Construction begins again on Upland Green’s apt units in Ann Arbor

admin

20 Nov 2009 | 2:37 pm

The Upland Green project is in much more start than a fit these days, now that work has begun again on the multi-use development on Ann Arbor’s north side. New investors out of New Jersey have taken over the project –which has been on-again / off-again since 2004– with plans to finish off the residential section by the end of the winter. Model units should be open by the beginning of the new year, bringing more life to the Plymouth Road corridor, adjacent to the University of Michigan’s North Campus. The 20 units have been switched from condos to apartments, ranging in…
Cross St streetscape project moves forward in Ypsilanti

admin

20 Nov 2009 | 2:37 pm

Ypsilanti’s Cross Street streetscape project is at a crossroads, ready to put actual shovels in the ground. The $1 million project would improve Cross between the Water Tower and Depot Town. That means adding bump outs, redoing sidewalks, planting trees and shrubs, installing benches and other street furniture and putting in crosswalks. The bottom line is it will improve the corridor for both motorized and non-motorized traffic. “We’re trying to improve the pedestrian experience,” says Theresa Gillotti, one of the organizers behind the project. “It should also…
EMU teams up with Chevron to make campus more sustainable

admin

20 Nov 2009 | 2:37 pm

Eastern Michigan University intends to tighten its energy belt by forming a partnership with Chevron Energy Solutions. The two will conduct energy audits of the university’s 16 buildings. Some of these buildings are a 100 years or older, but most were built in the mid 20th Century. Many have gone decades without updating their infrastructure, if it was upgraded at all. “We’re looking at more than $30 million in potential savings> And that is just in our housing buildings,” says Steven Moore, energy and sustainability manager for Eastern Michigan University, a post…
Single-stream recycling expected to produce big gains in Ann Arbor

admin

20 Nov 2009 | 2:37 pm

All of the little streams of recycling in Ann Arbor are about to be combined into one big river, and that river is expected to grow exponentially. The City Council has approved switching from the traditional sorting method of recycling (papper, plastic, etc.) to what is called single-stream, which allows homes to throw all of their recycling into one container. The material is then sorted out at the recycling plant, making the process more user-friendly. Among the other cities that use single-stream recycling are Austin, Texas and Baltimore, MD. “We expect to basically double recycling…
Development News

admin

20 Nov 2009 | 9:30 am

News from Concentrate

Venture Chronicles
Get Ready for the Much Smaller AOL

Jeff

19 Nov 2009 | 8:55 am

AOL’s strategy, the latest new one, is to shift away from being an ISP to being a “next generation publishing” entity. Without parsing what it means to be “next generation” when you are doing what Yahoo has been doing for years, this sounds like a reasonable strategy but the anchor that weighs it down is that the bulk of AOL’s traffic comes from AOL’s ISP customers and there is no data that suggests a meaningful shift in where site traffic is coming from. People login to AOL and follow links to AOL sites which generates the traffic that underpins the…
Reporting from the Echo Chamber

Jeff

18 Nov 2009 | 7:02 am

I read this short Reuters piece on President Obama’s Fox interview last night and simply thought “who are these people?” Here’s my edited version of the full piece: BEIJING, Nov 18 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama gave his sternest warning yet about the need to contain rising U.S. deficits, saying on Wednesday that if government debt were to pile up too much, it could lead to a double-dip recession. His crack team of economic advisors made the previously undiscovered link between deficit spending and negative economic consequences on Tuesday night and defended the $3…
Three Card Monty at GM

Jeff

17 Nov 2009 | 12:33 pm

I read this and shook my head in amazement at the limited financial acumen of reporters covering business. General Motors, encouraged by its improving financial situation, could repay all of its $6.7 billion in loans from U.S. taxpayers by the end of next June, the company’s top executive said Monday.[From With $42B, GM moves ahead | freep.com | Detroit Free Press] Let’s recap what is going on at GM. The Federal government - aka “us taxpayers” - gave GM $57.6 billion in exchange for equity in the company and a debt instrument for $6.7 billion, which is referenced in…
Every Day is a Bonus

Jeff

11 Nov 2009 | 2:44 pm

This is really nice.
Co-opting UPS’ Whiteboard Ads

Jeff

10 Nov 2009 | 12:18 pm

Brilliant.

Fred Destin
How a great entrepreneur deals with complexity

FredDestin

19 Nov 2009 | 7:33 am

I aksed Joe Cohen at Seatwave how he deals with the ongoing complexity and varied demands on his time that come from managing a hypergrowth company, and I thought I would share the thoughts he jotted down for me: Oversimplify and execute well. If you make a mistake in strategy you can generally correct it by executing well even if you execute something else Only do what only you can do - this is really hard but if anyone in your company is able to do something the CEO should not, by defnition, do it Ignore the first request for everything. If it's really important then they will…
The one-sentence e-mail turndown

FredDestin

31 Oct 2009 | 2:49 pm

Image via Wikipedia If you have pitched VC's, you have probably received one of those: Thanks Company X for sharing your proposal, this is not one for us, best of luck with the fundraising and stay in touch. Best, VC Y You are probably thinking, WTF. After all, aren't VC's paid to look at pitches and business plans ? Actually, we are not. Here are reasons why I regularly write the above: If I won't invest in you, I can't spend time with you. And before you ask, of course there are plenty of exceptions including some really naive entrepreneurs who I really like…
The Ignorant VC as counterpart to the Ignorant Entrepreneur

FredDestin

26 Oct 2009 | 7:43 am

I decided to fully republish a great post by David Woodward that was fuelled by an interview we did together but which captures the views I previously developed here better than I could express them. Hope you enjoy ! A few days ago, I had an interesting chat with Fred Destin, Atlas Venture's ebullient technology partner. Atlas bought a stake in the property website Zoopla at the beginning of 2008, which wasn’t exactly a fun time to be involved in the property game. It was also a pretty difficult period to source capital in any sector—all in all an investment climate fit to make…
DailyMotion raises EUR17M and defies expectations

FredDestin

22 Oct 2009 | 12:02 am

Image via CrunchBase DailyMotion today officially announces its new round of EUR17M, defying the fate that has befallen most video sharing startups (see: Veoh's hail mary) as it breaches through 60M Uniques Users. Atlas Venture participates above pro-rata in this round and grows ownership. As for most video-sharing sites it's been a rollercoaster four years of hypergrowth, legal woes, scaling challenges peppered with some great moments of exhilaration. The segment remains challenging, not least because your main competitor is not an old school media business but a fast-moving…
The problem with VC Motivation

FredDestin

12 Oct 2009 | 11:10 am

Many VC's, particularly in Europe, are disappointing in their (lack of) intensity. They are not 24/7, passionate advocates of the businesses they fund; neither do you meet them at random conferences scouting for new companies; nor do they necessarily come across as particularly engaged at board meetings. Why is that ? Let's talk VC compensation and motivation for a second. My motivation as a VC Introspection is as good a place as any to start. Here are my top motivations for being a VC (leaving out the personal stuff): Company building: every VC is different, some like…

Get Venture: Venture Made Transparent
Alex's News Picks: November 19th

Alex Horn

19 Nov 2009 | 12:04 pm

How a great entrepreneur deals with complexity Diary of a Geek VC The Six Entrepreneurs You Meet in China, Part Two Finding a buyer for your start-up MySpace Acquires imeem Social Music Service for a Song
Signs That Your Team Might Be Deterring Investors

Mark Davis

18 Nov 2009 | 6:20 am

Image Provided by ShutterstockVCs pass on investment opportunities for a whole host of reasons having to do with the business, personal experiences or the makeup of the existing portfolio. The reason that VCs are least likely to cite, however, is likely to be one of the most common reasons for deciding not to invest: entrepreneur competency. It’s important for entrepreneurs to consistently try to demonstrate competency throughout the fundraising process. This is critical because the team is a key part of the investment decision; VCs are investing in more than an idea, they are investing in…
Alex's News Picks: November 17th

Alex Horn

17 Nov 2009 | 11:50 am

How many Employee Stock Options? Passion For Your Business (video) Meet the Entrepreneurs of the Year Opportunities created by the growth in data After VC cash? Show ‘em what you’ve learned
Active vs. Passive Sourcing

Mark Davis

16 Nov 2009 | 5:55 am

Image Provided By ShutterstockVCs source deals both actively and passively. Active sourcing entails identifying concepts or sectors that are of interest and then scrubbing the marketplace to identify potential investment opportunities in the relevant sector(s). In the passive sourcing strategy, investors rely on relationships and reputation to bring investment opportunities to them. You could say that VCs that leverage a passive sourcing strategy don’t always know what they’re looking for - they’ll know it when they see it. It’s worth noting that both of these strategies can work for…
Alex's News Picks: November 12th

Alex Horn

12 Nov 2009 | 11:57 am

The Winning Young Entrepreneurs, 2009 Does Page Rank matter? "No Brainer" Startup Acquisitions Boxee Device Coming Next Year Getting the competitor analysis right when pitching

Will Price
Why Blog?

Will Price

26 Oct 2009 | 7:57 pm

I am reading Warren Bennis' seminal work on leadership, On Becoming a Leader.The book profiles scores of business leaders and seeks to identify common abstractions that help reveal "truths" about leadership.Early in the book, I came across the following passage, which perfectly describes why I blog and the benefits of structuring your thoughts via a post:"Faulker said, "I don't know what I think until I read what I said." That's not just a joke. You learn what you think by codifying your thinking in some way. Codifying one's thinking is an important step in inventing oneself. The most…
Scott Cook - Wisdom

Will Price

7 Oct 2009 | 11:01 am

On Monday, Widgetbox and I were invited to attend and present at Intuit's inaugural entrepreneurship day. Intuit's founder, CEO, CTO, and senior management hosted twenty plus companies to share ideas on innovation and to explore avenues of partnership.For me, the highlight proved to be an impromptu talk by Scott Cook on lessons learned from 28 years with Intuit.He boiled down this advice to the following observations:The Power of Word-of-Mouth81% of Intuit's customers are driven by WOM WOM remains the #1 driver of customer acquisitionBe Where the Customers AreUnderstand where customers buy…
Last Child in the Woods

Will Price

28 Sep 2009 | 5:32 pm

Last Friday, my wife and I went to see Richard Louv speak. Richard is the author of Last Child in the Woods, Saving Our Children From Nature Deficit Disorder.His book and talk center on a series of alarming developments in the lives of America's children:increasing divide between the young and the natural worldloss of freedom and time alone for children to explore the woods, local creek, etc.growth in structured "play dates" and the decline of time to create play, particularly play outside fear of traffic and strangers that keeps kids inside rather than outside running around and…
Living History: Larry Ellison

Will Price

22 Sep 2009 | 2:00 pm

Last night, Ed Zander (ex-CEO of Motorola) interviewed Larry Ellison at the Churchill Club.The interview proved to be fascinating, with Ed Zander a perfect choice to push and prod Ellison on topics ranging from ORCL's early years, his motivations for buying Sun, to politics, sailing, and the prospects for the US economy.The title of the post "living history" hit home last night. We are fortunate to not only live in a place where monster companies are born and scale, but also to work in an industry where many of the pioneers remain active - Ellison, Jobs, Ballmer, Dell....While the story…
Now

Will Price

18 Sep 2009 | 2:54 pm

There is a real challenge in being present - that is enjoying right now, this moment. Modern technology and life makes it very easy to be distracted and the stress and pressure of Silicon Valley provide ample opportunity to ponder the past or project the future.The problem is that such ponderings and projection limit the ability to enjoy right now and sap your energy and effectiveness.Books on wisdom share a common refrain - the past is the past, the future is uncertain and a projection of anxiety or fantasy, and the only sure thing is right now. Too often people live in their heads -…

VCinJerusalem
Israel: Both High-Tech Wunderkind and Slave Economy, Go Figure

Jacob Ner-David

9 Nov 2009 | 3:57 am

Two clashing stories flashed across my screen this past week. The first was the launch buzz surrounding the new book by my friend Saul Singer and his brother-in-law Don Senor, entitled "Start Up Nation ." Essentially tackling the question many have asked over the past twenty years -- how did those guys living in a desert, with no natural resources, cut off from their region, turn their country into an economic power house? Well, part of the answer is most certainly the high-tech wave of the past twenty years, which I have been privileged to ride in and benefit from, and still am…
No time for Blogging? Yes and No

Jacob Ner-David

4 Nov 2009 | 10:22 pm

As many of "you" might have noticed, I have not posted anything new in quite some time. Is it because nothing is happening? Absolutely not. In fact at times too much is happening. Is it because I don't have enough time? No. I could "make time." But making time is a question of prioritization. Do I spend ten more minutes with my kids on their homework or write a blog posting? Do I focus on my life partner and talk to each other or write a blog posting? Do I go for a run or a bike ride or write a blog posting? As I have stated in the past, I am not the world's…
Twitter Humor: Twittelah for Your Jewish Mother

Jacob Ner-David

24 Sep 2009 | 2:27 am

During this holiday season, when we repent, then jump back into family tension, then repent again, enjoy this twitter humor (thanks to Barry Pasikov for sharing):
Is Twitter Worth Billions? Jeff Thinks So. I'm still not convinced.

Jacob Ner-David

21 Sep 2009 | 3:22 pm

See this interview with my good friend Jeff Pulver on the "State of Now" and the "Real Time Internet." Oh, and by the way, Jeff thinks Twitter is worth billions. Now. Well, good thing Jeff is public that he is a shareholder, we wouldn't want him to be objective about this company... Watch the latest business video at FOXBusiness.com
Asaf Ramon, Of Blessed Memory

Jacob Ner-David

13 Sep 2009 | 2:00 pm

No words can describe the tragedy that has befallen the Jewish people and the Ramon family. Asaf Ramon, the son of the legendary Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut, who followed his father's footsteps in the Israeli Air Force, died today when his F-16 fighter jet broke apart over the southern Judean desert. We can only hope that the Ramon family finds some solace knowing so many mourn along with them. May they never be the victims of horrible statistics again, and only know joy. And may the memory of Asaf Ramon be a blessing to us all, reminding us of the selflessness that still…

Red Herring
Red Herring Asia 100 Winners List

20 Nov 2009 | 9:23 am

The 100 most innovative Asian startups in this emerging market have been announced by Red Herring.
Innovation on Wheels: Tesla IPO Coming

20 Nov 2009 | 8:09 am

Silicon Valley maker of Roadster electric sports car is planning to soon file documents detailing its much-anticipated initial public offering, according to a report.
Did Twitter Find Business Model?

20 Nov 2009 | 6:34 am

The much-hyped personal syndication startup -- RSS anyone? --- that's taken gobs of VC cash with little sign of a business model finally comes up with one.
NVP Supersizes Fund to $1.2 Billion

18 Nov 2009 | 10:12 am

Silicon Valley venture firm closes giant global fund for early to late stage investments as well as growth equity, a move that comes amid growing industry concerns over monster-sized management fees.
Analyst: Nokia-Palm "Premature"

18 Nov 2009 | 4:04 am

Amid continued speculation that Finnish phone maker, needing a hit in smartphones, might find a match in the struggling handheld computing pioneer, industry analysts says such a match-up is unlikely at this time.

Jason Ball's TechBytes
Venture's Back

Jason Ball

9 Nov 2009 | 4:08 pm

I'm sure everyone has been seeing what's happened in the US Equity markets- NASDAQ is up 30%+ YTD, with many stocks like Apple showing 131% gains this year. Strong earnings reports mean public companies have cash to deploy...I attended GP Bullhound's Mobile Sector Breakfast two weeks ago, where Manish reported some positive liquidity stats (available here): M&A activity in the mobile sector has seen a 77% increase in transaction value and an increase in transactions over $50M (AT&T's acquisition of Plusmo is one example) Today's announcements that Google is buying AdMob for $750M and…
Entrepreneurial Leadership Speaker Series

Jason Ball

15 Sep 2009 | 12:24 pm

Hussein Kanji has organized a venture capital and entrepreneurship lecture series starting in October, which will be held at London Business School. Current speakers announced are:Robin Klein, The Accelerator Group, Thursday Oct 1Stan Bowland, Icera, Thursday Nov 5Stefan Glaenzer, Last.fm, Thursday Dec 3Bernard Liautaud, Balderton, Thursday Feb 4Jos White, MessageLabs, Thursday March 4Herman Hauser, Amadeus, Thursday, May 6Mike Hedger, KVS, Thursday June 3Other speakers will be announced in the near future.If you're interested in venture capital and entrepreneurship; then this is the series…
Feeds 2.0 and the Netflix Prize

Jason Ball

19 Aug 2009 | 1:30 pm

I've blogged about my friends at Feeds 2.0 many times over the past few years; I've followed the Netflix prize out of interest since it was covered in Wired back in 2007, mainly because I was rooting for the Feeds 2.0 team...For those of you who may not spend your weekends and evenings reading up on artificial intelligence, here's an overview of the Netflix competition: Netflix released a large movie rating dataset and challenged the data mining, machine learning and computer science communities to develop systems that could beat the accuracy of their in-house developed recommendation system…
Opera reinvents the web?

Jason Ball

23 Jun 2009 | 1:39 pm

"Opera today (well, last week. I've been a little slow getting this post out) unveiled Opera Unite, a new technology that shakes up the old client-server computing model of the Web. Opera Unite turns any computer into both a client and a server, allowing it to interact with and serve content to other computers directly across the Web, without the need for third-party servers.Opera Unite makes serving data as simple and easy as browsing the Web. For consumers, Opera Unite services give greater control of private data and make it easy to share data with any device equipped with a modern Web…
Qualcomm Ventures - Business Plan Competition

Jason Ball

7 May 2009 | 11:23 am

Today we announced the Qualcomm Ventures Business Plan Competion. It's open to startups in the US, Europe, China and India. Semi-finalists from each region will win $100k, and then compete for a further $150k at the Qualcomm Ventures CEO Summit in November.We're looking for companies that impact the wireless space in the following areas: Consumer/enterprise applications and services Communication devices Semiconductor and component technologies Mobile platforms Digital media and content Healthcare technologies and services CleanTech Additional details on the Qualcomm Ventures' QPrize…

Redeye VC
VC - Back to the Future?

Josh

28 Oct 2009 | 3:35 pm

I just came across a great report by Industry Little Hawk entitled the Venture Capital Rebound (pdf). In the report, the authors reach a similar conclusion to Paul Kedrosky (read Paul's great research for the Kauffman Foundation here) -- that too much capital has gone into venture capital. Paul has argued that we need to shrink the amount of venture funding by 50% -- a statistic that almost every VC agrees with. (Ironically, 100% of VCs would argue that their fund should be in the half that survives).What is refreshing about the Industry Little Hawk white paper, however, is that…
Company Math vs VC Math

Josh

15 Oct 2009 | 8:40 am

Fred Wilson has a great blog post today entitled The 'We Need to Own' Baloney. In it he discussed the fact that many VC's apply arbitrary ownership thresholds to investments. I couldn't agree with Fred more - but I'd take it even further. This is not just limited to ownership requirements. Rather, VC's often impose "VC math" on companies in three areas: The amount VC's "need" to own The amount VC's "need" to invest The return VC's "need" to generate certain exit returns These "requirements"…
First Round Capital to open NYC office

Josh

1 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am

I believe that as the world has gotten “flatter” over the last decade, it’s created a big opportunity for venture investors who recognized that great entrepreneurs can come up with great ideas in almost any location. Indeed, over the last several years, First Round Capital has invested nationally and has funded companies in over a dozen states. However, I do believe that certain ecosystems provide real leverage when it comes to the hard work of turning those ideas into reality. Take acting for example. Despite the fact that Philadelphia has some great theaters (like the Kimmel…
A deal that was "mint to be..."

Josh

14 Sep 2009 | 8:42 am

I’m super excited by today’s news that Intuit has acquired Mint.com for $170 million. It’s been amazing to watch Aaron Patzer and the entire Mint team transform a rough prototype to a world-class product over the last three years. As my partner, Rob Hayes (who led our investment in Mint and served on their board of director’s) wrote this morning: "It has been a short 3 years since we met Aaron Patzer at a STIRR dinner in the Valley. Seven days after we met, he had a term sheet for his seed round and off he went. During that time we have had a…
Help me rename "Lifestyle Business"

Josh

8 Jul 2009 | 6:12 pm

While venture capitalists pass on companies for many reasons, one of the most common reasons is that they don't think the opportunity is "big enough". What does this mean? It means that even if the company executes as planned, the VC doesn't think the exit will be large enough to generate the VC-sized returns. This determination is based on the venture capitalist's "fund math" and their expected returns model. It means that VC doesn't think he will make a big enough return by investing here.What doesn't this mean? This doesn't mean…

Seth Levine's VC Adventure
Putting entrepreneurs first

9 Nov 2009 | 12:12 pm

Shout-out to Sequoia for featuring Omar Hamoui on their home page today (he’s the CEO of AdMob which was acquired by Google today for $750M). Well done!
The “real” America

3 Nov 2009 | 7:34 pm

I’ve generally avoided political issues on this blog, but this isn’t something I can keep my mouth shut on. Yesterday Meb Keflezighi became the first American to win the New York City Marathon in 27 years. Born in Eritrea on the east coast of Africa, Keflezighi moved to the US when he as 12 (more than 20 years ago), is an American citizen and has raced for the US Olympic team. Still, there are some who are calling his achievement diminished because he’s not “technically” an American by virtue of having been born outside of the United States – chief among them Darren Rovell of…
How long should your “trial” period run?

30 Oct 2009 | 2:43 pm

I’ve had this running debate with a handful of friends – I’d love to throw it out there for comment. The questions at hand are 1) whether companies should offer a “free trial” period for their software/web service; 2) if they do, how long should it last; and 3) what information should you ask for before starting a trial (specifically should you ask for credit card information up front). Here are a few thoughts. I’d love to hear your opinion. While you know that your web service is the greatest thing since sliced bread, it’s really really hard to convey the chocolaty goodness…
Looking forward to Defrag

28 Sep 2009 | 6:59 am

I’m really not a big fan of conferences. I go to a small number every year and like most people I find that for the most part, the best part of most conferences happens in the hallways and lobby where there’s a chance to connect with other attendees. The conference itself simply becomes the framework to support making those connections. Defrag, however, is a rare exception to this widely held view in the conference world – it’s a conference worth attending not only for the connections you’ll make in the hallway but also in the insight you’ll gain inside the presentation rooms.
ESPRIT 2009

22 Sep 2009 | 2:42 pm

I’ve been involved with the Boulder ESPRIT Awards for the the last 8 years. ESPRIT is put on by the Boulder Chamber of Commerce to “celebrate entrepreneurship” in Boulder county. Each year ESPRIT honors a handful of entrepreneurs who embody the best attributes of the Boulder business community. This year is the 25th anniversary of the awards and the program will celebrate the last 25 years of innovation in Boulder valley and look forward to some of the people and programs that are serving as catalysts for innovation for the next 25 years. I’m the event chair this year, which means for…

Media VC
Sezmi Launches Commercial Pilot and Raises $25 Million

TK

18 Nov 2009 | 12:13 pm

Image via CrunchBase Shameless portfolio promotion: Sezmi raises $25 million and launches commercial pilot in LA. Light Reading wrote:Personalized video services provider Sezmi Corp. signaled its intent to enter the highly competitive U.S. commercial entertainment services market today by launching a free, direct-to-consumer pilot service in Los Angeles.The move should help showcase the key assets that recently helped Sezmi land a Light Reading "Top Pick" Consumer Services award: the nationwide broadband and digital broadcast service delivery platform it has built out during the…
Happy 28th Birthday, PC

TK

11 Aug 2009 | 9:53 pm

Image via Wikipedia Twenty eight years ago today IBM announced the PC, ushering in a new era of mainstream computing. Check out this post from Dan Bricklin of Visicalc fame commemorating an earlier anniversary where he shares his thoughts on what it all means. Hard to imagine life without it, although since that day our "PC's" have come untethered from the desktop and IBM has moved on to other things. Related articles by Zemanta Bricklin On Technology: Words of Wisdom from a Tech Guru (wileyptnews.com) 30 Years After VisiCalc, Socialtext Unveils SocialCalc &…
Wow! I knew Q1 was bad, but...

TK

16 Jun 2009 | 10:11 am

...I had no idea how tough it really was. An investment bank that we work with shared some internal data which showed that over 85% of deals that got done in Q1 were at either flat or down valuations. That's off of approximately 50% the prior quarter. Averages are 30%-40%. And of course, the "protective" provisions got even tougher for issuers (multiple liquidation preferences, etc.) When I asked the banker to rate the health of the financing market right now on a scale of 1-10, he said 2.0 - 2.5, up from 0 to 1 in Q1. I rate it higher, based on the activity levels…
The New 4 P's

TK

30 Apr 2009 | 3:24 pm

In a recent seminar,friend and Legend advisor "Growth Guy" Verne Harnish offered his replacement concepts for marketing's traditional 4 P's, opting instead for the 4 E's: Product has been replaced by Experience Price is now Exchange, or lifetime value Place is Everyplace Promotion has been replaced by Evangelism The threads underlying these changes are consistent with the rise of Web 2.0: real time feedback, deeper connectivity, nearly complete reduction in the cost to distribute information, and citizen influencers.
It's Official: The Model is Broken

TK

29 Apr 2009 | 10:18 pm

Today the National Venture Capital Association released its long-awaited answer towhat ails the venture capital industry. In a four pillar plan presented here: NVCA 4-Pillar Plan to Restore Liquidity in the U.S. Venture Capital Industry View more presentations from NVCA. the association hopes to jumpstart a recovery in the IPO market, which has been dismal and shows no consistent signs of recovery. They are also promoting alternative forms of liquidity such as Second Market. Notwithstanding all of the thoughtful commentary and analysis, I couldn't help focusing on…

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
The Rise and Fall of Empires

pk

18 Nov 2009 | 6:39 pm

Visualizing empires decline from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo
Everything is Viral -- Even the Things That Aren’t

pk

17 Nov 2009 | 11:59 am

With virality continuing to be all the rage, whether it’s swine flu, happiness, or Internet services, it’s worth considering whether many things that seem viral actually are. Here is a 2008 BMJ paper on the subject that deserves wider attention: Detecting implausible social network effects in acne, height, and headaches: longitudinal analysis Results Significant network effects were observed in the acquisition of acne, headaches, and height. A friend’s acne problems increased an individual’s odds of acne problems (odds ratio 1.62, 95% confidence interval 0.91 to 2.89). The likelihood…
Readings: Zero, Forgeries, Yeast, and Climate Change

pk

17 Nov 2009 | 10:05 am

Coxe on the power of zero (ZeroHedge) Vermeer forgeries and AD shocks (Money Illusion) The Fate of the Yeast People (Kunstler) Climate change catastrophe took just months (Times)
Research Roundup: Debt and Innovation, Short-selling, Creativity, & Subways

pk

16 Nov 2009 | 2:14 pm

A debtor-friendly bankruptcy system is better for innovation (Review of Financial Studies) Short-selling bans around the world in 2007-09: All bad (CEPR) How Creative Should Creators Be To Optimize the Evolution of Ideas? A Computational Model (arXiv) On the Efficiency of Underground Systems in Large Cities (arXiv)
Readings: Chocolate, Trends, Trade, and Roger Federer

pk

16 Nov 2009 | 10:34 am

U.S. Import Trends for chocolate (Panjiva) The World in 2010: forecasting the year ahead (Economist) South African gold on final deathwatch as top grade scientist finds residual gold is more than 90% less than claimed (Mineweb) Roger Feder on loving winning vs. hating losing (Times)Tear down this wall: The Berlin Wall as a natural experiment in trade (Voxeu)

Globes
Multicore processor co Plurality raises $12m

19 Nov 2009 | 2:06 pm

Plurality is one of several start-ups seeking to improve the performance of multicore processers.
Text messaging co Zlango raises $3m

19 Nov 2009 | 10:11 am

Benchmark Capital led the company's second round.
Norwest Venture Partners closes on $1.2 billion fund

18 Nov 2009 | 5:00 pm

The global VC firm has an office in Hertzliya.
Mobile browsing co InfoGin in Japan's Goo portal

18 Nov 2009 | 1:11 pm

InfoGin CEO Eran Wyler: According to recent industry reports, more than 69.2 million Japanese are accessing the Internet from their mobile devices,
Data recovery co Axxana raises $9m

18 Nov 2009 | 12:56 pm

Carmel Ventures led the round, alongside Gemini and a private investor.

BeyondVC
Google acquires portfolio company Gizmo5

Ed Sim

13 Nov 2009 | 7:28 am

Congratulations to Michael Robertson and team at Gizmo5 for all of their hard work and perseverance! There is not a lot I can tell you about the future plans for Google Voice, but I do believe it is important to look back to see how we got here. We made our investment in Gizmo5 (aka as sipphone and gizmo project) in early 2006. What Michael and I shared was a vision of openness for the VOIP and IM World. As I wrote on a blog post in January 2006, consumers want what Google and Gizmo5 will hopefully provide in the near future:At the end of the day consumers don't care about protocols,…
The Googlization of IT

Ed Sim

27 Oct 2009 | 12:55 pm

Today I took a sales team from a portfolio company to meet with a couple of senior IT executives at a major retail company. Towards the end of the meeting, it started to become quite clear to me the effect that Google and the web has had on IT to date and where it was going. In an oversimplified way, it seems that there have been 3 distinct phases to how the web and Google have impacted the enterprise, first starting at the app layer and increasingly diving deeper into the core infrastructure.Phase 1 - Consumerization of IT - all internal corporate users are consumers first and then…
Washers, dryers and secret sauce - why naming your technology is important

Ed Sim

16 Sep 2009 | 2:36 pm

Our washer and dryer was on the fritz today, and as I started to do some research on large capacity stackable units I started to get overwhelmed with all of the new terminology and features. After all, isn’t a washer a washer and a dryer a dryer. How many different combinations and features could there be? As I dug deeper I found myself thinking about these appliances less from a consumer’s viewpoint and more from a marketing one and appreciating how these various companies could make a commodity product sound so exciting and differentiated. Sure, all of the competing products had…
Future of television advertising (continued again!)

Ed Sim

5 Aug 2009 | 3:42 pm

My first post about portfolio company Visible World and the future of television advertising was in October 2004 (see here). In the post, I wrote about how television advertising needed to change and how the advertisers and those with inventory had to adapt to the rising online threat and offer new technology to make their ads more targeted and measurable. Visible World has been pushing this vision for quite awhile and over the years it has built momentum through investments and relationships with Time Warner and Comcast. And just recently the company announced a deal with Google TV Ads…
Lessons from Joost

Ed Sim

1 Jul 2009 | 4:53 am

I am not going to rehash Om Malik's excellent summary of "What went wrong with Joost" but I did want to dive deeper into a few points. As I have always said, raising too much money can be a curse and not a blessing. Here is an excerpt from my post in 2006Trust me, I love having well capitalized companies. However, having too much money can be a curse, not a blessing. More often than not, I see management lose financial discipline and avoid making hard decisions when capital is abundant and not scarce. To many executives, money does solve all problems. And yes, having money allows…

alarm:clock
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Pheedo

20 Nov 2009 | 11:35 am
UK's picoChip Hitches $20M from Cautious VCs

honeil

20 Nov 2009 | 8:57 am

At a time when venture investors are cautious, picoChip today announced that it has completed a $20M (€13M) round of funding. The round points not only to the confidence of investors but also to the leadership, strength and game-changing technology of picoChip, which has been a first mover in femtocell technology since 2005. Atlas Venture, Highland Capital Partners, Pond Venture Partners, Scottish Equity Partners, and Rothschild are some of the principal investors in picoChip, along with strategic investors AT&T, Intel and Samsung. picoChip is a pioneer and unsurprisingly the dominant…
Lead Gen's QuinStreet Files $250M IPO

jgb

20 Nov 2009 | 7:36 am

Foster City-based lead generation giant QuinStreet has filed for a $250M IPO. The company saw $260M in revenue for the fiscal year ending June 30 (an uptick of 35% over the prior year), with net income of around $17.2M. QuinStreet has raised nearly $60M in funding, from VC firms led by Split Rock Partners, Sutter Hill Venture, Granite Global Ventures, and Catterton Partners. The biggest shareholder is CEO Douglas Valenti, who owns an 18.33% stake. QuinStreet is similar to something like InternetBrands in that it grows mainly through acquisitions, generally of fairly small lead generation…
Brought to You By:

Pheedo

20 Nov 2009 | 6:54 am
EIB Loans €80M to Gemasolar Project

honeil

20 Nov 2009 | 6:51 am

GEMASOLAR 2006 SAU, flagship project of Torresol Energy Investment SA, brightened up with the announcement by the European Investment Bank (EIB). The bank will provide a €80M ($118M) loan to finance construction and commissioning of a concentrated solar power (CSP) plant in Fuentes de Andalucía (province of Seville). The finance contract was officially signed by Carlos da Silva Costa, EIB Vice-president and Enrique Sendagorta, Chairman of Terresol Energy. Twenty-five thousand households will be supplied with clean and secure energy by the Gemasolar plant, which will also diminish CO2…

VC Cafe
Global from Day One: Aragon Networks Promises to Make the Web Faster, Secures Seed Funding from Genesis

gmugliston

19 Nov 2009 | 9:22 am

The speed of internet access available to the average citizen of a country is now widely recognized as a key economic indicator. This is not surprising as, with faster access to information, knowledge workers are able to work more productively. And for consumers, there is clear value in being able to explore the increasingly rich web at faster speeds. Aragon Networks, an early-stage Israeli startup based in the HaSharon area, is on a mission to ensure that the web user experience is as fast as possible. I recently caught up with Yaniv Shemesh, Founder & CEO, to discuss his startup, which…
Zlango’s Second Round Will Fund Global Expansion

Eze Vidra

19 Nov 2009 | 8:08 am

Benchmark Capital led the $3 million round of investment in Zlango, an Israeli start up developing graphic icons for text messaging. This is the second round of financing for Zlango, who has raised $16.5 to date. Previous investors include Benchmark, Accel Partners, Brooks-Keret Group, Israel Angels Management, and private investors. As described by on Zlango’s EMEA Sales Director (on his LinkedIn profile): Zlango is a Rich-Media messaging service over SMS infrastructure that is combining the good of the two worlds; The ubiquitous SMS on one axis, and the rich-media on the other axis.
Norwest Venture Partners establishes new fund with plans to invest in Israeli startups

gmugliston

19 Nov 2009 | 5:42 am

In what is widely considered to be a difficult fund-raising environment, Norwest Venture Partners has raised a $1.2 billion fund, NVP XI, following on from the $650 million NVP X Fund which it raised in 2006. Managing Partner, Promod Haque, indicated that he sees this larger fund positions the firm to diversify along three axes: 1) Geography – increasing deal flow in China, India and Israel; 2) Sector – extending focus into healthcare information and medical systems; and 3) Stage – increasing focus on growth equity (later stage) investments in mature companies.
Axxana Secures Series B Funding to Accelerate Uptake of Phoenix

gmugliston

19 Nov 2009 | 5:37 am

Data protection software startup Axxana has secured a $9 million Series B investment led by Carmel Ventures. The investment proceeds will be used to help accelerate greater adoption of Axxana’s Phoenix System. The Phoenix System is a data lossless system and the self-proclaimed “holy grail of disaster recovery systems”. The company’s Phoenix System™, which is targeted at storage vendors, consists of multiple components: the Black Box, which holds the data at the main site; the Collector, which processes, encrypts and stores the data onto a SSD contained in the Black Box; the…
Qlipso Real-Time Flash Content Sharing Client

Eze Vidra

18 Nov 2009 | 1:45 pm

Today, in order to share a video or a slideshow with friends, users have to copy a link and either post it on a social network or paste in an email. The sender has no idea on whether his contacts actually consumed the content, nor can he tell what was their immediate reaction. Qlipso (formerly known as iContaqt) is working on a new tool for real-time sharing of flash-based content (videos, games, slideshows and music) while simultaneusly interacting with social network contacts through webcams, voice and text chat. The product is essentially a browser client (available for free…

Silicon Alley Insider
Gmail Creator Thinks Email Will Last Forever. And Hasn’t Tried Google Wave.

TechCrunch

20 Nov 2009 | 5:30 pm

“Email is not going to disappear. Possibly ever. Until the robots kill us all.” – Paul Buchheit, creator of Gmail, co-founder of FriendFeed, currently doing vague infrastructure things at Facebook. Today, at our RealTime CrunchUp event in San Francisco, Buchheit and Threadsy foun... Continue reading » Read the rest of this story »
Glenn Beck To Unveil Mystery "Plan" Tomorrow

Erin Carlson

20 Nov 2009 | 3:14 pm

Glenn Beck has a plan, and he's deadly serious about it. The mega-popular Fox news host/evangelist will unveil an initiative called "The Plan" in Florida tomorrow while on tour to promote his book, "Arguing With Idiots." Read the rest of this story »See Also:Now Even Glenn Beck Is Freaking Out About The Dollar Carry TradeGlenn Beck Becomes Publishing Legend With Creepy Children's Book (NWS)What's Wrong With Glenn Beck?
Verizon Droid Price Drops To $120

Alaska Miller

20 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm

Proclaimed iPhone-killer the Droid has been out for a week and it's already seeing price cuts from some retailers. Verizon is still selling the phone for $200 but Amazon.com has a new Droid with contract for $150. Dell is taking the aggressive stance and offering the Droid for $120.00. Read the rest of this story »See Also:Google Giving Verizon Droid Rare, Massive Promotional Push (GOOG, VZ, MOT)UPDATED: Tiny Droid Lines Around The Country (MOT, GOOG, VZ)Mossberg On The Droid: The Best Verizon Has To Offer (VZ, MOT, AAPL)
ESPN Suspends Superstar Writer Bill Simmons From Using Twitter

Jay Yarow

20 Nov 2009 | 2:55 pm

ESPN is suspending its hotshot writer Bill Simmons from Twitter for two weeks. The reason: He started mouthing off at Boston sports station WEEI on Twitter. WEEI is an ESPN partner. Read the rest of this story »See Also:The Next Twitter: Pay Attention To Hot Potato, A New 'Real-Time' StartupHere Come Twitter Ads, Says Twitter COOTwitter Users Are Surprisingly Receptive To Ads
CHART OF THE DAY: YouTube's Top Money Makers Are Record Labels

Jay Yarow and Kamelia Angelova

20 Nov 2009 | 2:34 pm

Music videos from Sony and Universal on YouTube have more advertising sold against them than any other group, according to analysis from TubeMogul. Below is an approximation of the daily share of YouTube's monetized views based on the number of videos that carry ads in YouTube's daily top 100 most-viewed. This is why Sony, Universal, and YouTube are teaming up to launch Vevo, the big web music video site, December 8th. According to TubeMogul, 3.94% of YouTube's daily views come from the two labels. Read the rest of this story »See Also:CHART OF THE DAY: The Journal Has The Richest…

The Private Equity Data Center Buzz
Private Company Valuations: Blekko, Inc.

17 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm

There have been numerous search engines that have come and gone over the lifetime of the internet. These days there are the obvious (Google, Yahoo, Bing), and there are also others that you might not realize are still around (Cuil, Lycos, AltaVista). There is one company operating in "stealth mode" that is currently creating a new search engine . This week we are going to take a look at the latest round of financing for this company. Blekko, Inc. was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in Redwood City, California. The company is developing an internet search engine. Recently they reported…
Private Company Valuations: Amyris Biotechnologies, Inc.

10 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm

Clean Technology continues to receive a great deal of attention from VC firms, and so was true with the Q3 2009 deals. One company that has raised a significant amount of capital in this space is Amyris Biotechnologies, Inc. This week we are going to take a look at their latest financing round. Amyris Biotechnologies, Inc. is located in Emeryville, California. The company operates as a synthetic biology company developing renewable hydrocarbon biofuels. Last quarter, the company secured approximately $24.8 MM of a $62 MM Series C round. Some of those participating in this round were Kleiner…
Deal Terms and Returns: Antidilution Protection

28 Oct 2009 | 5:00 pm

This week we are going to take another look at how terms can affect returns. What if your company had raised $7MM in Series A and Series B rounds , but now you are looking to raise one last round. The problem is that this round will be a "Down Round" priced at $.75 per share as compared to the previous Series B round price of $2. So what would the effect be of Weighted Average Anti-Dilution vs. Full Ratchet Anti-Dilution for the founders and investors?
Private Company Investments: FourSquare Labs, Inc.

21 Oct 2009 | 5:00 pm

We have covered many of the up and coming or already "here" companies that provide social networking. One of the newest that has recently launched is not from California, yet rather they call the East Coast home. This week we are going to take a look at the first round of financing announced for FourSquare Labs, Inc. FourSquare Labs, Inc. is headquartered in New York, NY. The company provides online mobile social networking services by using LBS (Location Based Service) application technology that allows users to receive information and entertainment services via mobile devices through a…
Deal Terms and Their Impact on Returns, Part 2

13 Oct 2009 | 5:00 pm

Last week we discussed the impact that the Deal Terms have on Returns, and how tweaking some of them might help in negotiating a new round of capital. This is something that could be applied to both sides of the table. We previously showed how the Return would react when the Participation Cap is changed from 0 to 3x. This week we are going to look at a different term, the Liquidation Multiple, and see how it can affect the return.

DubaiBeat.com
Middle East Investors Directory Updated - 31% additional data

18 Nov 2009 | 7:18 am

In the latest update to DubaiBeat's "Directory of Venture Capital and Private Equity in the Middle East", we have included 22% additional investment firms and 35% additional contacts from those investment firms. You can check all details and download your copy from here. (If you have downloaded your copy in the past three months, you are eligible for discount. Please contact us for details.)
Abu Dhabi fund invested $75 million in Turkey's logistics firm

16 Nov 2009 | 4:48 am

Abu Dhabi-based Invest AD has agreed to invest $75 million to take a significant minority stake in Ekol Lojistik A.Ş. (EKOL), one of Turkey's integrated logistics companies. The transaction is the first by the Abu Dhabi government-owned financial services company for its new private equity fund - Invest AD Private Equity Partners II. It was structured in the form of a capital increase to assist EKOL fund its expansion plans. (To see more Abu Dhabi investors like Invest AD check our investors directory) Their full press release follows:
Dubai-based private equity firm Saffar launching a PE fund

14 Nov 2009 | 8:09 am

Dubai-based private equity firm Saffar Capital is launching a private equity fund focusing on financial services in the Middle East to take advantage of an improving outlook in the sector, the company's chief executive Al-Usaimi said - according to the Reuters. The fund is starting with seed capital of $15 million but is looking to have $150 million under management, Al-Usaimi said. It is the first to be launched by Saffar, which specialises in taking stakes in private equity financial services firms in the region.
Jordan Dubai Capital signed MoU with Kazakhstan sovereign wealth fund

12 Nov 2009 | 8:00 am

Jordan Dubai Energy & Infrastructure - the investment arm of Jordan Dubai Capital in the energy and infrastructure sectors - announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding with Kazyna Capital Management (KCM), the private equity arm of the Kazakhstan soverign wealth holding company, Samruk-Kazyna. both JDE&I and KCM agree to utilize their respective expertise to jointly invest in and establish private equity and infrastructure funds, as well as to develop various investment and infrastructure projects and activities in both Jordan and the Republic of Kazakhstan.
Irish oil and gas firm acquired by Emirates National Oil Company

11 Nov 2009 | 8:03 am

Dragon Oil, the London listed Irish oil and gas company has agreed to a full takeover by shareholder Emirates National Oil Company. Emirates National Oil Company already holds 51.5% of Dragon Oil, having first acquired a stake in 1998. This purchase values the Irish gas-and-oil exploration and development firm at around $3.9 billion. Dragon Oil is a single-asset company and develops the Cheleken contract area in the Caspian Sea, offshore Turkmenistan. Read more on the MarketWatch.

VentureDig
Monetizing Social Networks: The Four Dominant Business Models and How You Should Implement Them in 2010

VentureDig

1 Nov 2009 | 9:45 am

The business models within the social media realm are much different than traditional businesses. In social networking, they’re ever-changing, backed by eye-opening revenue and have very little documentation. Reason: as soon as someone sits down to outline ways social networks can be monetized, another model emerges, and another model ceases. For this reason, this piece will be routinely updated with new models and new feedback from your comments. Below are the Four Primary Business Models in the social networking space that I’ve experienced–they primarily are concerned with…
How To Calculate Number of Shares to be Offered to Existing Investors

VentureDig

14 Aug 2009 | 5:00 am

I attended a venture finance event a while back in Palo Alto, which was put on DLA Piper. They had a nice segment on legal aspects of venture finance and law. While this post is geared towards the investor, venture capitalist and angel, if you’re an entrepreneur, you will obviously gain value from understanding this overall concept. Calculation of Number of Shares To Be Offered to Existing Investors Pursuant to Preemptive Rights: To determine the number of shares to be offered to a current shareholder pursuant to preemptive rights to maintain ownership percentage, you must first…
How Questions Give a Glimpse Into One’s Mind

VentureDig

12 Aug 2009 | 5:00 am

The concept of “listening” is thrown around quite frequently in everyday life. Some old greybeard will declare, “It’s all about listening in business,” or, “I’ve been married for 50 years because I learned to listen.” Certainly true; yet, many fail to follow this action up with the most important thing: asking intelligent questions. Below is a picture where you can view how prefacing your questions statistically indicates smarter questions: [Click to enlarge...]
The 9 Rules For Successful Investing

VentureDig

3 Aug 2009 | 5:00 am

I can’t even count the number of investing books I’ve read. The problem with most investing books revolves around the fact that they’re, well, books. The stock market can be extremely confusing. It suddenly becomes much more clear when you set aside a certain amount of money and just invest. Of course, you don’t want to go in blind. Thus, if you decide to go all in (with a small pot), check out these nine tips: Don’t invest like a hedge fund manager Don’t quit when you get back to even There’s always a chance for take-overs Don’t let short-term…
Facebook Layouts: How To Change Your Facebook Background

VentureDig

22 Jul 2009 | 9:48 am

While Facebook has clearly become the ideal social network for those wishing to stay in touch with their friends, one thing has always been missing: the ability to change your facebook background with layouts. Some protest, “But I don’t want any backgrounds–I don’t want to sacrafice speed and simplicity.” That’s fine. You don’t have to change; however, the lack of ability to actually style your facebook experience is ridiculous. And, finally with PageRage, the ability to style your facebook is now achievable. I’ve personally looked through a…

Unstructured Thoughts by Taylor Davidson
Marketing through culturematics

Taylor Davidson

19 Nov 2009 | 3:29 am

Related thoughts about how individuals can create businesses by living their lives and creating meaningful, culturally resonating experiences. Marketing through living, in a way. Starting with an old thought from Business Models and Life Models, Interconnected: Business models based on creating value and expanding the pie are more powerful than business models based on allocating and extracting value; lives focused on creating, aggregating and directing value to others are more powerful than lives focused merely on the extracting value for the self. Examples, click here. John Hagel, Pursuing…
Working Nowhere and Everywhere: The Zen of Running A Virtual Studio

Taylor Davidson

17 Nov 2009 | 6:31 am

A presentation about “Working Nowhere and Everywhere: The Zen of Running A Virtual Studio” by Christopher Natsuume, focusing on eight tips on how to run a virtual office. You probably already know that creating better organizational and incentive structures for collaboration and value creation is a big interest of mine; below is a presentation that provides eight tips for how Christopher Natsuume puts it into practice for Boomzap, a casual game development studio headquartered in Singapore that leverages a distributed, virtual workforce to tap into quality games developers and…
Creating the Intention Economy

Taylor Davidson

17 Nov 2009 | 2:01 am

Continuing the line of thinking about personal APIs and personal RFPs, components of the broader trend in using algorithms to aid human decision-making. Wings, Outstretched, Margaret River Mouth, Western Australia Continuing a line of thinking from Powering Social Search through Personal APIs, referencing Scott Adam’s note on broadcast shopping, Doc Searls, Advertising in Reverse: Here in the VRM development community we’ve been talking (and in some cases working) for several years on the Personal RFP. Technically an RFP is a “buyer-initiated procurement protocol” for businesses…
Powering Social Search through Personal APIs

Taylor Davidson

16 Nov 2009 | 8:52 am

How can social search be improved? By maintaining a standardized, publicly accessible database of the information and knowledge in people’s heads, and creating an easy way to access that information. In other words, a personal API. * Damon Horowitz on the Aardvark company blog, The Real-Time People Web, discussing search and the web of people and information: What really matters is the increased accessibility of people online, not just information online. … This becomes pretty compelling if we remember that the amount of information in peoples’ heads positively dwarfs the amount…
Financial Models Are (Still) Always Wrong: Create One Anyway

Taylor Davidson

12 Nov 2009 | 2:05 am

In January I released a free financial model to help entrepreneurs model and understand the story behind their business. After a lot of interest from entrepreneurs for a simplified version of that model, today I’m releasing a streamlined version that will make it easier for entrepreneurs to start understanding the equation underlying their businesses. Download the free, completely functional Excel financial model below: Basic Financial Model created by Taylor Davidson Right-click to download. Zip file, 244 KB. This streamlined financial model is intended to help entrepreneurs: Create…

The North Blog
Hey Brands…Give Your Fans A Show

Brody

9 Nov 2009 | 6:36 pm

Okay, we’ve heard it before. Social media is so much more than just a numbers game. It doesn’t matter how many fans, followers, or friends you’re able to rack up…it’s about the quality of the experience you provide them. You see, you want your loyal fans holding up their lighters (phones) at the end of the show, not rushing for the exits so they can go see another feature act. Remember, the key to successfully leveraging social media as a brand marketing platform is putting forth memorable ideas and content that inspire consumers to respond > share > and…
9 Ways Your Business Could Be Using Social Media, But Probably Isn’t

North Blogger

3 Nov 2009 | 4:36 pm

This just in, consumers are now spending more time on social networks than any other form of website, including porn. The time is now to make the most of this newly emerging opportunity to connect with your consumer, to shape your brand, and develop long-term customer relationships at a fraction of ‘above the line’ media costs. In 9 Ways Your Business Could Be Using Social Media, But Probably Isn’t, the team at North Social outlines all of the ways that you can leverage social media to achieve your branding and business goals. Happy Reading. Share this on FacebookTweet…
Top Custom Brand Facebook Pages

Brody

3 Nov 2009 | 10:59 am

Customfacebookpage.com is a great resource for anyone that is in the process of figuring out how to make their brand’s facebook presence more impactful. Whether you’re a developer, designer, brand manager, or social media strategist, you can learn a lot from this site. It’s a great opportunity to explore, comment upon, and interact with some of the best custom Facebook Pages out there. In addition, if you’ve had a hand in developing or designing any kick-ass Facebook applications, custom pages, or campaigns, just click on the submit a page button and they’ll post…
A Guy Walks Into A Pool Hall With Harpoon Gun…

North Blogger

3 Nov 2009 | 10:31 am

Okay, we talk about this a lot but it bears repeating. No company or brand can be successful if the product or service offered isn’t first attractive to the target consumer. Then we look at four key questions for a winning product to answer; 1) Does it have the ability to scale to a large consumer market?; 2) Does it solve a significant consumer pain?; 3) Does it create the opportunity for additional sales revenues for follow on transactions (ongoing consumer relationship)?; and 4) Is it within the consumer’s comparative threshold for pricing? Well, in the case of this new venture called…
Skating Toward The ‘Sports Gene’

Brody

30 Oct 2009 | 10:20 am

The new North venture Athleticode was featured in today’s San Francisco Business Times. Excerpt: Athleticode will scan the genetic code in a sample of a player’s spit to test for myriad characteristics. They hope to indicate whether an athlete has a high propensity for concussions, heat stroke, heart arrhythmia, torn tendons or other injury. It also plans to identify whether the player has genes associated with advanced agility, endurance, nutrient absorption or flexibility. Armed with this information, athletes can tailor workouts to minimize chances of getting hurt while boosting…

Continuations
New York City Is Rocking For Startups!

20 Nov 2009 | 5:19 am

Here is just a small sampling of all the awesome events that took place in NY City this week (I realize I should have posted this at the beginning of the week). Just to name a few, there was Web 2.0 Expo, the net neutrality debate on Tuesday night and New York Entrepreneur Week. There was also the UK digital mission to New York and I am sure many others that I am forgetting or did not know about. Last week saw the announcement of Founders Collective, a great addition to the seed funding available in New York City. Over the last two weeks I have had meetings with some awesome folks…
The Open Web is Under Attack: What To Do (Part 2)

19 Nov 2009 | 6:16 am

Following up to yesterday’s post, here is what I think folks should do about the threat of platform lock-in at the application/content layer. First, recognize that this is directly related to net neutrality. The ability of existing platforms and content owners to try to force the web back into walled gardens is limited by the ability of entrepreneurs to start open competitors and reach people directly and on a level playing field. Second, start voting with your mouse. At the moment we have enough variety on the web in most categories that if any one provider is over-reaching, you…
The Open Web is Under Attack: What To Do (Part 1)

18 Nov 2009 | 6:34 am

Yesterday, I wrote about why the open web is under attack. Today, as promised, the follow up on what to do about it. I believe the single most important thing is to let Congress know that people actually care about this. Big companies are spending a lot of money lobbying, but good old fashioned calling and faxing (yes, faxing, at least so I am being told by folks from DC) can make a difference.Now “net neutrality,” while somewhat descriptive, is not a great term from a marketing perspective. It sounds a bit like one is supporting blandness. So what might you say to your…
The Open Web is Under Attack

17 Nov 2009 | 6:51 am

Yesterday, Tim O’Reilly published a provocatively titled post: “The War for the Web.“ In it he discusses the dangers to the web as an open platform from the attempts by the biggest players to own more and more of the user experience: We’re heading into a war for control of the web. And in the end, it’s more than that, it’s a war against the web as an interoperable platform. Instead, we’re facing the prospect of Facebook as the platform, Apple as the platform, Google as the platform, Amazon as the platform, where big companies slug it out until one is king of the hill. I share…
Content Capital

16 Nov 2009 | 2:34 am

Had a great discussion at dinner last night about the future of publishing and the role of authors and agents. My believe is that agents have to start providing content capital. The idea behind content capital is pretty much the same as that behind venture capital. Content capital puts up the money, the author creates the work(s) and all proceeds are shared. These would be what the music world has started calling “360 deals,” where many different revenue streams are generated. In publishing, this might well include fees from the author’s speaking engagements. The mechanism…

Startup Expedition
You Name It

stephens

12 Nov 2009 | 12:58 pm

These entrepreneurs were not going for a global image when they chose their business name: I wonder if they have a Fook Yoo rewards program?
Photo Op

stephens

11 Nov 2009 | 9:43 am

Here is a photo from my Entrepreneurial Journey talk at Lawrence Technological University last month. LTU President Dr. Lewis Walker is on the left, I am in the center, and Prof. Don Reimer is on the right. Note that my hair was dark brown the day I started my startup. And now is it nearly all gray. I am reasonably satisfied with my presentation after reviewing the DVD. I will carve it up and post online soon.
Of All Time

stephens

7 Nov 2009 | 9:47 am

Fortune magazine got it wrong. They recently named Steve Jobs as CEO of the Decade. How about Steve Jobs as greatest Entrepreneur of all time? Yes, they nailed it when they said he changed the world of music, movies, and mobile phones. Where they fell short is Steve Jobs also changed the way we think. He changed the way we think about insanely great products. How we think about innovation. How we pitch. Present. How to change human behavior with disruptive technologies. Apple is one of the greatest startup stories ever. How about Steve Jobs for President. Perhaps he could change the way we…
Patience

stephens

2 Nov 2009 | 5:43 am

[This is part 5 in a 5 part series about the 5Ps of Entrepreneurship from my Entrepreneurial Journey lecture at Lawrence Tech Entrepreneurs must be patient. The more you are changing the world with your startup, the longer it will take to reach critical mass.I believe entrereneurs are born and not made. That said, I had to learn to be patient. In the beginning, I really felt my startup would take six months to reach revenue. That was 7-1/2 years ago. Mark Burnett, who changed the world with reality television, patiently waited a decade for his vision to reach critical mass. Howard Schultz,…
Persistence

stephens

30 Oct 2009 | 6:46 am

[This is part 4 in a 5 part series about the 5Ps of Entrepreneurship from my Entrepreneurial Journey lecture at Lawrence Tech Entrepreneurs must be persistent on their startup expedition. The hardest thing in the world is to create something from nothing and change the world. Startups take time. Very few are overnight successes. With Speedraft, I endured over 1,300 rejections in a 5-1/2 year period before we got to the first “yes”. I am not alone in the persistence game. Mark Burnett changed the world of television programming with so-called Reality Television. It took him ten…

VC Deal Lawyer
FashInvest Conference and Presenting to Angel Investors

Chris McDemus

12 Nov 2009 | 10:07 pm

On November 10, 2009 I attended the inaugural FashInvest conference in New York entitled “From Concept to Capital.” Karen Griffith-Gryga and David Freschman, the founders of FashInvest, put on a wonderful event and are definitely heading in the right direction to bring venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and branded and fashion company executives together under one roof. The conference had a great panel consisting of: Jon Brilliant from the Atelier Group; Adam Burgoon from KarpReilly LLC; Shira Sue Carmi from Launch Collective; Mark Friedman from Trilea Partners; John Nowaczyk…
Should you Take Money from a Strategic Investor?

Chris McDemus

26 Oct 2009 | 10:56 pm

The fact that anyone is offering you money is a good thing, at least in times like these. But wipe the smile off your face and realize that you have some tough decisions ahead of you - you need laser focus! Not all money is good money, or smart money for that matter. This issue is not limited to strategics – there are good and bad angels, good and bad VCs, good and bad private equity players, and the list goes on. The financing sector is a microcosm of life – you get all sorts and types. So never dismiss money just because it comes from a strategic. All things…
Being the First Mover or Having No. 1 Market Share Isn’t Everything

Chris McDemus

25 Oct 2009 | 7:28 pm

I don’t care if your company is bigger than the competition or has what some like to call the “first mover advantage,” beating out the competition is all about differentiation and playing to your strengths. What recently got me thinking about this was an older podcast I was listening to from Stanford University’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leadership program. The speaker was Greg Ballard, CEO of GluMobile, and his talk was titled “Confessions of a Serial Silicon Valley CEO.” Amongst many of his other great points, Ballard made the following comment…
Hiring the Right Start-Up Lawyer – No Posers Allowed!

Chris McDemus

21 Sep 2009 | 8:04 pm

If you are an entrepreneur or the founder of a start-up or emerging growth company, one of the most important decisions you will make is hiring the right lawyer. Like all things in life, there are good lawyers and bad lawyers and telling the difference up front can be difficult. The service they sell (advice) is, at its core, intangible. It’s not a consumer product that you can pick up off the shelf and hold in your hand or a car that you can take for a test drive. Lawyers trade mostly off of reputation (which, itself, can produce contradictory results). Also, lawyers can be…
Intuit Buys Mint.com for $170M

Chris McDemus

14 Sep 2009 | 10:18 pm

I was surprised today to hear that Intuit bought Mint.com for $170M. Maybe surprised is the wrong word. From a deal and synergy perspective, I can certainly understand why Intuit would want to do the deal. Reportedly, Mint.com had 1.4M users, tracked $175B in transactions and $47B in assets and identified $300M in potential savings for its users. So not only does Intuit get access to Mint.com’s fluid and simple design but also all of the data they’ve aggregated on people’s spending/savings habits. That’s priceless. What did surprise me was the timing. I…