One thing I hated about being a corporate lawyer at Wilson Sonsini back in the day - we got to work on really cool deals (the last deal I worked on before leaving for a startup was the AOL/Netscape merger), but we were only brought in at the very end to paper everything. We fought over the fine print in the contracts after the meat of the deal was ironed out by CEOs. Skinning and dressing whatever the hunters bring back to the cave is fine for some people. But it’s not exactly being in the middle of the action. PR firms today aren’t much different than corporate lawyers. They are…
-
TechCrunch
-
The Reality Of PR: Smile, Dial, Name Drop, Pray.
4 Jul 2009 | 5:34 pm -
Twitter + World Of Warcraft=Tweetcraft
4 Jul 2009 | 4:00 pmFor all of you World of Warcraft fans out there, there’s a new Twitter client that is worth checking out. TweetCraft is an in-game Twitter client for WoW that lets you send and receive Tweets within a game. If you are busy in the middle of a WoW match, you can put Tweets in a queue to send when it’s more convenient. The client also lets you upload in-game WoW screenshots using TwitPic and will automatically send out Tweets when you log in, enter an instance or get an achievement. Tweetcraft also caught the attention of Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, who blogged about the client… -
Amazon Applying For In-Book Advertisement Patent
4 Jul 2009 | 1:33 pmBefore everyone gets in a huff, let's consider Amazon's intentions with these patent applications. Surely they would never allow advertisements to be placed in books which you have purchased legitimately at full price, so let's put that out of our heads. But what if you could take a few bucks off the cover price at the cost of a few contextual ads relating (if possible) to the book's content? Personally, I wouldn't mind — partially because I don't use a Kindle or intend to any time soon, but more because it's a no-lose situation. Amazon wouldn't risk alienating its loyal Kindle base… -
Interview: Karen Dyer, video game actor
4 Jul 2009 | 12:51 pmDearest CrunchGear readers: I recently had the honor and privilege of speaking to Karen Dyer, who is not only the voice of Sheva Alomar, from Resident Evil 5, but who also did said character's motion capture. I hope you enjoy it on this day, our day of freedom. Obviously, “K” is for Karen, and “N” is for Nicholas. With that... N: Well, first off congratulations. Resident Evil 5 was a big hit. It sold something like 4 million copies. K: That's what I hear! N: Excellent. But before we get into the game, I just wanted to bring up something I saw on your bio. It says here you're known for… -
PollDaddy Traffic Soars, Releases Ratings Widget With Possible Digg Competitor On The Horizon
4 Jul 2009 | 11:04 amIt’s no secret that bloggers love their polls — they’re a great way to increase user engagement, and sometimes you can even get some useful data from them. But most people probably don’t realize just how popular these polls really can be. PollDaddy has just released some of its latest stats, and they don’t fail to impress: the company is now serving 430 million poll impressions per month, with a reach of over 74 million people worldwide, giving it a Quantcast rank equivialent as the 22nd most visited online service in the world. That success is due in no small part…
-
The Funded
-
TheFunded.com Discussion: Coast Ventures in Los Gatos
3 Jul 2009 | 9:39 am -
TheFunded.com Discussion: Presenting to VC Who Needs to Be Present
2 Jul 2009 | 2:45 pm -
TheFunded.com Advice: 24/7 Game Face
2 Jul 2009 | 2:14 pmEntrepreneurs always talk about the pitch. A Mike Tyson knock out pitch can get you another meeting, but what about after the pitch? How about before? Hell, how about from the moment you step off your front porch to the second you return?. A 24/7 game face will drive you to the promise lands 3x faster than simply wielding the magic when you've got the mic. Here are 3 tips I've found to work wonders before, during, and after the pitch. 1. Smooth entry. VC's and angel's alike will judge you from the second the tip of your polished shoes crosses that door jam. Chin up, calm stride, and eye… -
TheFunded.com Discussion: Raising Fund Via Otc
2 Jul 2009 | 11:02 am -
TheFunded.com Discussion: Can I Learn Hiring/Managing Skils with Trust Issues
2 Jul 2009 | 9:31 am
-
Demo.com
-
DEMO meetups bring veterans and new comers together
1 Jul 2009 | 1:52 pmJuly 1, 2009 DEMO meetups serve two purposes: they introduce DEMO to new entrepreneurs and they reunite DEMO with past participants. The Boston meetup on Monday served both purposes in one encounter. One of the first people through the door at VOX Monday evening was Mike Robbins, who demonstrated a stock quote application at DEMO ’99. Mike was 13 years old at the time. Read more -
DEMOfall09 Conference.. Preferred Pricing deadline 6/30
30 Jun 2009 | 4:22 pmDEMO event, Sept. 21-23 in San Diego! Preferred reg. rate of $1995 expires today, 6/30. Don't miss new Alphapitch program, DEMO Lifetime Achievement award winners and more. http://www.demo.com Read more -
DEMO Meetup with Chris and Matt on 7/1 in Austin
30 Jun 2009 | 4:16 pmJoin Matt Marshall and Chris Shipley for a DEMO Meetup tomorrow, July 1 at Lanai in Austin, TX from 6-8 p.m. Register now at http://demoaustin.eventbrite.com/ Read more -
VentureBeat presents MobileBeat 2009
24 Jun 2009 | 3:11 pmJuly 16, San Francisco: Join Matt Marshall, co-executive producer of the DEMO conference, along with influential investors, mobile industry executives, entrepreneurs, press and analysts at MobileBeat 2009 for one-day of in depth discussion, debate and networking. Read more -
What’s in an Innovation Ecosystem?
24 Jun 2009 | 3:09 pmThere is the inevitable question that arises during these DEMO meetups we’ve been holding around the country. Matt Marshall and I both hail from Silicon Valley, and here we are in New York, D.C., Seattle, L.A., and next week Boston and Austin. More than once a night at any of these events, someone is bound to ask what we think of their entrepreneurs or want to know how their city stacks up to the Valley and other stops on our tour? Read more
-
Both Sides of the Table
-
Sitting on Panels
1 Jul 2009 | 4:54 pmLast night I spoke on a panel at UCLA for the German American Business Association (GABA) talking about the state of monetization in the online video market. The truth is that I hate attending panel discussions (although I enjoy speaking on them). I have ADD and I can’t easily sit through people mindlessly promoting their companies and not giving out relevant information. I can usually tolerate sitting on panels because if I’m bored I can just say something controversial to stir the cat amongst the pigeons so it can be a bit of fun. I learned this technique while living… -
I emailed a VC and never heard back
29 Jun 2009 | 10:24 pmI was reading Brad Feld’s blog tonight about how he likes to try and tell people “no” within 60 seconds and about how he handles meeting management and email. I even remember hearing that he manages a “zero inbox” policy and people that I know have written Brad with questions asking for help have been surprised that he has written back and offered advice. And then there’s the rest of us. I struggle with email. I’ve always endeavored to respond to everyone that writes me and I genuinely feel mortified when somebody tells me that they wrote me and… -
NINAs and Egg Breakers (Pitching a VC)
28 Jun 2009 | 5:24 pmNINA After a debate that several of us had at a recent DealMaker Media event in Los Angeles, my friend and fellow SoCal venture capitalist Peter Lee wrote a post recently about the different roles within a VC and spent much time on the role of an associate. VC’s keep different titles but the most common that I’ve come across that are investment professionals are (in ascending order of seniority): analyst, associate, principal and partner. These are the permanent members of a VC. Then there is the EIR (entrepreneur in residence) who is usually at a VC for a temporary period… -
Pitching a VC – Dealing with Competition
23 Jun 2009 | 6:38 amThis is a post in the ongoing series about how to pitch a VC. If you want to to see an overview / table of contents of the series go here and if you just want to see what the first slide in the pitch deck should be go here. Competition This is the slide that most presenters handle very easily so I won’t spend too much time on it. For the first-timers I’d like to tell you the two most common approaches that I see and for everybody else I’d also like to add a section on the common pitfalls – even for experienced presenters. 1. Harvey Balls One of the most common ways… -
Building Apps in a Cloud World
22 Jun 2009 | 12:13 amI run a monthly meeting called the SoCal VCA (Venture Capital Alliance) in which we have great technology leaders present to the best VC’s in Southern California so that we can better understand the trends and develop tighter relationships with our local technology leaders. In recent sessions we have had Dmitry Shapiro (founder of Veoh), Ian Rogers (CEO of TopSpin Media) and David Sacks (founder of Geni and Yammer, former COO of PayPal). I hadn’t yet restarted my blog so notes from those meetings are still scratched in my yellow notepads. This month we had an equally…
-
VatorNews.tv
-
What am I Missy - What Am I MIssy? Episode 25
3 Jul 2009 | 12:01 pmYahoo slims down; You Tube's Journalism school; No one is a visionaryAfter being bloated with under-performing assets, Yahoo is definitely going on a strict diet. CEO Carol Bartz has been shutting down units left and right. The latest is its video advertising unit, which was created through the acquisition of Maven Networks for 160 million dollars last year. Seems Bartz is sending a message to the world:Yahoo time to slim down.See: Yahoo shutters video ad network YouTube launched an online Journalism school of sorts for anyone wanting to learn how to be a reporter. The “YouTube… -
Pageviews required for $1 mln in ad revenue
3 Jul 2009 | 5:30 amIt will probably take a new revenue approach to make many social network sites profitableFacebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Beebo, Plaxo, Orkut, and MSN Spaces are the biggest well known social network spaces. But what about the 800 other sites scrambling for audiences in the social network space? Can they generate $1M in advertising revenue per month, or even per year? Will they ever be profitable? USA Today says "Social Network Sites Work To Turn Users Into Profits" and summarizes the problem with this quote; "Short of striking it rich with online ads or creating a new revenue stream, how can so… -
YouTube doubles upload limit to 2GB
2 Jul 2009 | 12:24 pmLatest update targets big studios to dismay of ordinary usersYouTube announced this week in a blog post that it would be increasing the maximum upload size from 1GB to 2GB. Revealing this upgrade alongside tips for sharing and embedding HD videos, the announcement clearly targets users focusing on HD video uploads.In fact, seeing that the site is maintaining its old restriction that limits videos to 10 minutes or under, we can pretty plainly see that this update is intended only for users uploading HD content. And while people are slowly transitioning to HD cameras, the high cost of such… -
Bling Nation goes "bling-bling" with $8 mln
2 Jul 2009 | 11:59 amStartup is enabling consumers to make purchases using their cellphones as debit cardsImagine a day when you won’t have to carry around a wallet anymore. Everything you need is digitally stored in your Smartphone, including your cash. So you walk to a register with some groceries, scan your phone at the checkout, and receive a text message receipt with transaction information, an updated account balance and rewards balance. Startup, Bling Nation, is well on the road to bringing this to a widespread reality, receiving $8 million in Series A funding today. The round was… -
Murdoch doesn't think CNBC talent is good
2 Jul 2009 | 9:37 amRupert Murdoch on business media, Twitter and buying the the New York TimesAs the leading media figure in the world, Rupert Murdoch is one to listen to when it comes to views about old and new media. TheStreet.com landed an interview with the king of media. Here are some highlights:On buying The New York Times: "That's nonsense... But I would imagine that it would be legally and politically almost impossible, so I'm not thinking about it."On MySpace shakeup: "The business sort of grew out of control and really out of size. I blame myself and it had to be brought back in size... it will…
-
VentureBeat
-
Entrepreneurs: Cash in on non-English search engines and more
4 Jul 2009 | 8:00 amIn case you’ve missed any of our recent advice for startups over at VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner, here’s a wrap up of the must-read stories. Be sure to click through and check them out: Market research vs. gut instinct — Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm Computing and inventor of the Palm Pilot, discusses how to balance market research with your intuition. Cashing in on non-English search engines — Global consumers are over five times more likely to buy from a website with content in their native language. Here’s how to outwit your competition and quickly… -
Roundup: Cyberdefense SNAFU, Twitter ad scarcity, what’s a jailbreak?
3 Jul 2009 | 5:33 pmThe flagship defense system for U.S. government computer networks is stalled — Einstein, as its called, began rollout seven years ago. A Wall Street Journal report says Homeland Security officials are saying Einstein won’t be fully installed for at least another eighteen months. iPhone “jailbreak” excites nerds, confuses normals — Business Insider explains that in theory, a jailbroken iPhone — that means it can do stuff neither Apple nor AT&T want it to, like run on Verizon’s network and install App Store applications without paying for them… -
New version of Foursquare reminds you where your friends are — constantly
3 Jul 2009 | 5:32 pmFoursquare just released a new version of its mobile application for sharing your location with friends — including a new feature that should make the app a much bigger presence in users’ lives. Taking advantage of new options in the iPhone’s operating system, Foursquare 1.3 includes push notification, delivering a message whenever your friends check in at a new location whether you’re using the app or not. New York City-based Foursquare is run by the same team that created Dodgeball, a location-based social-networking service that was acquired and then neglected by… -
Augmented reality startups petition Apple for live video interface
3 Jul 2009 | 4:36 pmAugmented reality startups, which superimpose graphics and information on live camera feeds, say they are having difficulty releasing applications on the iPhone and may turn to Google’s Android platform instead. More than a dozen companies and research institutes have signed a petition asking Apple to offer an iPhone application programming interface (API) for manipulating live video. Ori Inbar, who published the petition and has founded two augmented reality gaming startups (Ogmento and Arballoon), says the companies need the API so they can overlay graphics or information on the… -
Startups looking to make money by enhancing reality
3 Jul 2009 | 4:22 pmAugmented reality (AR) technology, which overlays 3-D graphics or information over a live camera feed, isn’t a brand-new idea. But now that smartphones are penetrating the mass market, AR may be on the cusp of wide adoption. Imagine traveling to a foreign country, pointing your camera at a building and having it up pull up a trove of historical information, video and images of the place over the past century. Two early AR services are SPRXMobile’s Layar (in the Netherlands) and Tonchidot’s Sekai Camera (in Japan), which dig up real estate, job listings or user-generated tags…
-
A VC
-
Freemium and Freeconomics
4 Jul 2009 | 5:43 amThis week we saw the release of Chris Anderson's book Free and reviews from the New Yorker (Malcolm Gladwell) and the Financial Times. I'd like to talk a bit about the firestorm that freeconomics (fed by Chris' book) has unleashed but first we need to clarify something. The FT piece says:The most plausible contender for an "entirely new economic model" made possible by the internet is what Fred Wilson, the New York venture capitalist, has dubbed "freemium".There was no dubbing by me. In March 2006, I wrote a post called My Favorite Business Model in which I outlined the freemium concept and I… -
HeyZap's Looking For A Strong Software Engineer In SF
3 Jul 2009 | 6:04 amOur newest portfolio company, HeyZap, is looking for the fourth member of their team. HeyZap is a platform for game developers to get wide viral distribution for their flash games and monetize them.They are looking for:a talented engineer with extensive experience; hopefully you have made one or more sites that clearly illustrate your capabilities. You should be a technical generalist, meaning you are comfortable and eager to work on what is needed and learn what is necessary,in a fast-moving, dynamic environment.The job spec is here and if you are interested please email them at… -
Hacker News and the NoSQL Movement
2 Jul 2009 | 3:44 amI love Hacker News (aka news.ycombinator.com). I read it at least once a day and it sends this blog more traffic than anything other than Google and Twitter. This is the refer log for AVC for the past month.But like every great web service out there, it's the community at Hacker News that makes it so great.This morning I read a Computer World article about the "NoSQL" movement. It was interesting to me because we have an investment in this market sector, an open source cloud based document store called MongoDB (which is mentioned in the computer world story).There are three… -
A Shorter Post Than I Planned
1 Jul 2009 | 4:20 amI just spent a half hour composing a longish thoughtful post on the art of saying no in the venture capital business. It was inspired by Brad Feld's post on the same topic a few days ago. However, when I hit save, Typepad forced me to re-login and after I did that, my post was gone. So I can't get back that half hour today and that post is gone for good. Maybe I'll try to do it again another day.But in the interim, please do go read Brad's post. I agree with what he has to say about saying no. It's a big part of the VC business and doing it right is critically… -
What VCs Are Worrying About
30 Jun 2009 | 3:54 amA survey of VCs by Polachi Inc. has been making the rounds of the internet the past couple days. I was asked to participate in this survey but did not (not for any reason in particular).I looked over the results (click on that link above to see them) and this slide caught my attention: Surprise, VCs are not worried about deal flow and the management teams they work with, are a bit worried about their portfolio, and are a lot worried about exits.We've talked about this issue endlessly here on this blog and elsewhere. The problem with the VC industry is that there is too much money in it,…
-
Union Square Ventures
-
The Mobile Challenge
25 Jun 2009 | 3:33 pmWe are fascinated by the disruption underway in mobile applications. Carriers seem to have lost their role as gatekeepers for applications as smartphone sales are rapidly ramping and "app stores" or direct downloads are the new distribution models. This is exciting as it opens up a whole new arena for startups to compete in. Here is some of our early thinking about this with the goal of getting a discussion going. The challenge for startups (and investors!) has been identifying opportunities that are "native" to the new platforms. By "native" we mean opportunities that simply did not exist… -
Bring the world to your event
15 Jun 2009 | 7:50 amUnion Square Ventures hosted an event called Hacking Education that sparked conversations far beyond the day of the event, and did so in a way where we gave up control of the conversation and allowed it to spread. Steven Johnson recently wrote his thoughts about how Twitter will change the way we live, and within that article explained the process by which we shared our small event with anyone who was interested, and explained its impact: Injecting Twitter into that conversation fundamentally changed the rules of engagement. It added a second layer of discussion and brought a wider audience… -
Heyzap
27 May 2009 | 7:19 amOnline casual games are a large and rapidly growing form of entertainment. According to Comscore over 85 million people play casual games every month in the US alone and minutes spent playing grew a staggering 42% from 2008 to 2009. Casual games originated as downloadable PC games. Based mostly on free trials with payment for full play, the industry grew to over $1 billion (published numbers vary widely and some estimates are significantly higher). The move to online has come with a fairly pronounced decline in the price for downloadable games. One of the reasons for this price decline of… -
Hacking Education
8 May 2009 | 1:13 pmIt has been two months since we hosted a great group of academics, entrepreneurs, educators, and administrators at our Union Square Sessions Event, Hacking Education. Fred posted his initial thoughts immediately after the event and in a great example of peer production, Alex Krupp curated the Twitter stream that captured the thoughts of folks inside and outside of the event. I finally found some quality time to spend with the transcript that is now online, and thought I would try to expand on Fred's initial thoughts and develop a couple of the key themes that came out of the conversation. -
Open Spectrum is Good Policy
3 Apr 2009 | 5:38 amFred wrote a post earlier this week advocating for more "open spectrum". Fred argues in his post that freeing up more open spectrum will have a much larger impact than spending $7.2B in stimulus money to run wires to rural constituents. He also references our friend Tom Evslin who has been thinking and writing about telecom policy for 30 years. I'd like to flesh out the argument here and at the risk of coming off as a total fanboy, link to a couple of Tom's other posts here and here on the subject of spectrum policy. The first question to ask about spectrum policy is "are we using spectrum…
-
Xconomy
-
Prometheus, $10M in Hand, Poised to Deliver Alternative Fuel for Shell Technology Ventures
3 Jul 2009 | 8:47 amenergy, deals, Analysis Gregory T. Huang wrote: Kirt Montague is the Comeback Kid of the Seattle cleantech community. We saw the fire in his eyes back in March when he rocked the room with a killer presentation on waste-to-energy at Xconomy’s cleantech forum in Seattle. And we see it again now that his company, Redmond, WA-based Prometheus Energy, which produces liquid natural gas from waste, has just closed $10 million in financing—with another $10 million to come upon reaching certain milestones—from Shell Technology Ventures Fund, which is managed by Netherlands-based… -
Happy Fireworks Day; See You Next Week
2 Jul 2009 | 9:01 pmXconomy, Jefferson, Revolutions Editors wrote: When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for bloggers to temporarily dissolve the bonds which have connected them with their readers, and to assume among the powers of the earth the long weekend to which the laws of nature entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. Simply put—and with apologies to Thomas Jefferson—we need a break. So we’ll see you again on the 6th of July. If you’re looking for some reading… -
Advertisement:
2 Jul 2009 | 7:54 pm -
Google Voice Opening, Slowly
2 Jul 2009 | 7:54 pmIT, telephony, google Wade Roush wrote: Google Voice, a phone line unification and voice mail transcription service created by Grand Central and being revamped by Google, is gradually being opened up to people on its extensive waiting list, according to Twitter posts this week from the Google Voice team. “Still sending invites, many more today, but the list is long. Thx for your patience,” a post tonight read. Google began sending invitations to people on its reservations list on June 25. Xconomy reviewed Google Voice in March and published reviews from beta users in late June. -
Intellikine, Chasing Hot Cancer Drug Target, Raises Big Venture Round
2 Jul 2009 | 6:07 pmBiotech, cancer, VC Luke Timmerman wrote: La Jolla, CA-based Intellikine, a company developing drugs against one of the hottest targets in cancer biology, has nailed down $16 million in venture capital out of a round that could be worth as much as $38.5 million, according to a regulatory filing. Intellikine got the capital infusion from its founding crew of investors—Sofinnova Ventures, Abingworth Management, and CMEA Ventures—as well as four new investors, says David Kabakoff, an executive in residence with Sofinnova in San Diego. The company, founded in September 2007, is…
-
Ross Mayfield's Weblog
-
Free Social Software & SocialCalc Release
23 Jun 2009 | 4:35 amToday we announced something I'm pretty proud of. Socialtext is now free for up to 50 users. And we're finally taking SocialCalc out of beta. From the press release:Socialtext, the leading provider of Enterprise 2.0 solutions, today announced the availability of Socialtext Free 50, a new free offering aimed at mainstream use for up to 50 people within an organization to collaborate using Socialtext's social software platform. Employees can join or create their own private collaboration networks by using their work email address at Socialtext.com. In addition to the new free…
-
Web 2.0 Venture Capital Update
-
YuMe Receives $2.9 Million
11 Jun 2009 | 2:00 pmYuMe Seed: $9 B Round: $2 Founded: Industry: Advertising Networks More Here YuMe is a video advertising network, particularly web video. They state they have the ability to identify, classify and track content to ensure brand safety, contextual relevance, controlled syndication and consistent delivery across all screens - PC, Mobile, TV - whether streamed or downloaded. Funding Funding Total: $2,900,000 Round Date Amount Pre Amount Post Amount B 06/2009 $2,900,000 – – Investors: Accel Partners, BV Capital, DAG Ventures, Khosla Ventures See all fundings here Founders -
SendMe Mobile Received $12 Million for Mobile Subscription Services
5 Mar 2009 | 1:00 pmSendMe Mobile C Round: $15,000,000D Round: $12,000,000 Founded: 06/2006 Industry: More Here SendMe mobile received another round of funding. Originally SendMe appeared to link to other mobile services and now it looks like, unless I am wrong, that they are now providing mobile services themselves. This is round D with a large amount of money being raised. Someone believes there is a business here. Funding Funding Total: $12,000,000 Round Date Amount Pre Amount Post Amount D 03/2009 $12,000,000 – – Investors: True Ventures, Spark Capital, GrandBanks Capital, Amicus Capital,… -
AdWhirl Received $1 Million in Seed Funding
29 Nov 1999 | 1:00 pmAdWhirl Seed: $1,000,000 Founded: 04/2009 Industry: Advertising Networks More Here AdWhirl is an iPhone advertising network rotator. While there are multiple advertising networks for iPhone advertisements you may not know which is best for your iPhone application. Instead of using each one at a time you can use AdWhirl to rotate ads from each network to optimize the ads and compare them. Funding Funding Total: $1,000,000 Round Date Amount Pre Amount Post Amount Seed 06/2009 $1,000,000 – – Investors: Foundation Capital See all fundings here Founders -
RotoHog Received $2 Million for Their Fantasy Sports
29 Nov 1999 | 1:00 pmRotoHog A Round: $6,000,000B Round: $2,000,000 Founded: 01/2006 Industry: Gaming More Here RotoHog is a software developer and operator of fantasy sports games. RotoHog has developed fantasy games for NBA.com, LG Electronics, GoDaddy.com, Pro Football Weekly, Fathead and Grupo RBS and others. They not only create fantasy games, but casual games and social network applications as well. They have a stock exchange game which has a traditional points scoring system with a stock market-style trading floor to make a very exciting and addictive game. Funding Funding Total: $2,000,000 Round… -
Zoosk Social Dating Network Receives $6 Million
29 Nov 1999 | 1:00 pmZoosk Seed: $4,100,000B Round: $6,000,000 Founded: Industry: Community More Here Zoosk is a social dating network. This social online dating destination is for singles to interact and search for their matches. Zoosk integrates with the most popular social networking sites including Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, and Hi5. Funding Funding Total: $6,000,000 Round Date Amount Pre Amount Post Amount B 06/2009 $6,000,000 – – Investors: Canaan Partners, ATA Ventures See all fundings here Founders
-
DEMO.com Top News Stories
-
DEMO meetups bring veterans and new comers together
1 Jul 2009 | 1:52 pmJuly 1, 2009 DEMO meetups serve two purposes: they introduce DEMO to new entrepreneurs and they reunite DEMO with past participants. The Boston meetup on Monday served both purposes in one encounter. One of the first people through the door at VOX Monday evening was Mike Robbins, who demonstrated a stock quote application at DEMO ’99. Mike was 13 years old at the time. Read more -
DEMOfall09 Conference.. Preferred Pricing deadline 6/30
30 Jun 2009 | 4:22 pmDEMO event, Sept. 21-23 in San Diego! Preferred reg. rate of $1995 expires today, 6/30. Don't miss new Alphapitch program, DEMO Lifetime Achievement award winners and more. http://www.demo.com Read more -
DEMO Meetup with Chris and Matt on 7/1 in Austin
30 Jun 2009 | 4:16 pmJoin Matt Marshall and Chris Shipley for a DEMO Meetup tomorrow, July 1 at Lanai in Austin, TX from 6-8 p.m. Register now at http://demoaustin.eventbrite.com/ Read more -
VentureBeat presents MobileBeat 2009
24 Jun 2009 | 3:11 pmJuly 16, San Francisco: Join Matt Marshall, co-executive producer of the DEMO conference, along with influential investors, mobile industry executives, entrepreneurs, press and analysts at MobileBeat 2009 for one-day of in depth discussion, debate and networking. Read more -
What’s in an Innovation Ecosystem?
24 Jun 2009 | 3:09 pmThere is the inevitable question that arises during these DEMO meetups we’ve been holding around the country. Matt Marshall and I both hail from Silicon Valley, and here we are in New York, D.C., Seattle, L.A., and next week Boston and Austin. More than once a night at any of these events, someone is bound to ask what we think of their entrepreneurs or want to know how their city stacks up to the Valley and other stops on our tour? Read more
-
Yahoo! Finance: Venture Capital News
-
China VoIP & Digital Telecom Virtualization Project Endorsed by Governmental Fund (Business Wire)
3 Jul 2009 | 5:30 amJINAN, China----Jinan Yinquan Technology, the wholly owned subsidiary of China VoIP & Digital Telecom today announced that its data center virtualization technology project has received 500,000 yuan from Shandong Economic and Information Technology Committee. -
ION Media Networks Receives Final Court Approval for $150 Million Financing (Business Wire)
2 Jul 2009 | 7:43 pmWEST PALM BEACH, Fla.----ION Media Networks, Inc. , owner and operator of the ION Television network, today announced that the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York has granted final approval for the Company's $150 million debtor-in-possession financing being provided by a majority of its first lien senior secured lenders. -
Executive Briefing (Investor's Business Daily)
2 Jul 2009 | 3:10 pmA survey says more than half of venture capital executives or 52.9% consider their industry "broken" by the effects of the financial crisis. -
Omega Announces New $200 Million Credit Facility (Business Wire)
2 Jul 2009 | 1:05 pmHUNT VALLEY, Md.----Omega Healthcare Investors, Inc. today announced that it has entered into a new $200 million revolving senior secured credit facility effective June 30, 2009. -
Tesla Gets Loan Approval from US Department of Energy (Business Wire)
2 Jul 2009 | 12:55 pmSAN CARLOS, Calif.----Tesla Motors has received approval for about $465 million in low-interest loans from the US Department of Energy to accelerate the production of affordable, fuel-efficient electric vehicles.
-
Venture Capital
-
Venture funding for clean-tech rebounds
2 Jul 2009 | 4:02 amAfter two sharp quarterly declines, worldwide venture funding for clean technologies rebounded in the second quarter of 2009, due mostly to recovering confidence in the venture capital community — particularly in Silicon Valley and throughout California.
-
Venture Capital Access Online
-
VCPro Database 2009
16 Jun 2009 | 5:00 pmVCPro Database 2009 (12th Edition) is a downloadable venture capital and private equity directory with complete profiles of over 4,100 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 mid-year update in July 2009) Click the above link to learn more. -
ILPA General Partner Summit 2009
15 Jun 2009 | 5:00 pmILPA General Partner Summit 2009 November 3-4, 2009 Click the above link to view this event. -
MidAmerica Healthcare Venture Forum
15 Jun 2009 | 5:00 pmMidAmerica Healthcare Venture Forum November 11-12, 2009 Click the above link to view this event. -
Private Equity Analyst Conference 2009
15 Jun 2009 | 5:00 pmPrivate Equity Analyst Conference 2009 September 16-17, 2009 Click the above link to view this event. -
Cleantech Forum XXIII, Boston
15 Jun 2009 | 5:00 pmCleantech Forum XXIII, Boston September 8-10, 2009 Click the above link to view this event.
-
VC & Angel Investor Profiles
-
Investor Profile: The MAG Fund / Ben Franklin Technology Partners
4 Jul 2009 | 1:35 pmChris Starr, VP of Investments / Founder, The MAG Fund / Ben Franklin Technology Partners Mr. Starr is the Executive Director and Founder of the Mid-Atlantic Angel Group Fund, I L.P. (MAG), the largest angel group and first structured angel fund in the Mid-Atlantic region. The MAG Fund has over $4.4 million under management and includes 89 institutional and individual accredited investors Mr. Starr is responsible for all aspects of administration and operations of the Fund and is the primary contact for both entrepreneurs and the funding community for the fund's membership. Most recently, he… -
Investor Profile: Altos Ventures
4 Jul 2009 | 1:35 pmHo Nam, General Partner & Co-founder, Altos Ventures Ho Nam is a General Partner and co-founder of Altos Ventures, focusing on investments in the areas of networking, storage and semiconductors. He currently serves as a director of Billeo, Vapro, WhiteHat Security, and Yosemite Technologies and works closely with CrownPeak, Enwisen, and Xignite. Ho led the firm's prior investments in Axis Systems (acquired by Verisity), Evolve Software (EVLV, acquired by Primavera Systems), Inzap, Listen.com (acquired by Real Networks), Nishan Systems (acquired by McDATA), Pixo (acquired by Sun Microsystems),… -
Investor Profile: Applied Ventures, LLC
4 Jul 2009 | 1:35 pmAnnette Finsterbusch, Director, Applied Ventures, LLC Annette Finsterbusch is a director for Applied Ventures in the Corporate Business Development group of Applied Materials since 2004, responsible for identifying, recommending and managing venture capital investments. She is also a Kauffman Fellow. Prior to joining Applied Materials, Ms. Finsterbusch was the CEO at MindShadow.com, a technology spin-out of DaimlerChrysler's Research and Technology Center. Prior to that position, Ms. Finsterbusch was an investment manager for DaimlerChrysler Venture Capital since 2001, responsible for… -
Investor Profile: Band of Angels
4 Jul 2009 | 1:35 pmNicola Corzine , Deal Manager, Band of Angels Nicola Corzine is deal manger for the Band of Angels; she is also the founder and executive director of Financing Partners, an organization offering specific programs designed to help entrepreneurs and investors reach their mutual objectives. Nicola has a broad background in investor relations and marketing at both startup companies, such as Digital Integrity, and financial institutions, including Credit Suisse First Boston. Prior to joining Financing Partners, she was the director for Fundraising Forum where she grew their Silicon Valley investor… -
Investor Profile: Rustic Canyon Partners
4 Jul 2009 | 1:35 pmNeal Hansch, Principal, Rustic Canyon Partners Neal Hansch brings over a decade of experience in venture capital, technology operations and investment banking. Before joining Rustic Canyon, Neal worked in the Corporate Development group at Macromedia, where he was responsible for executing worldwide M&A transactions and strategic equity investments. Prior to Macromedia, Neal was at Technology Crossover Ventures, where he focused on investments in the software, networking infrastructure and e-commerce industries. He has also worked in Product Marketing at webMethods (Nasdaq: WEBM), a leading…
-
VentureWoods
-
Facebook Announces Developer Contest for India
4 Jul 2009 | 4:08 amNew Delhi, India, July 3, 2009: The day for which the Indian developer community had been waiting has finally arrived. Facebook, whose mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected, announced today the launch of ‘Facebook India Developer Contest’ – a contest for Indian developers to showcase their web development skills by creating Facebook applications and Facebook Connect Integrations. The contest began on July 2 and ends on September 11, 2009 and is located at www.facebook.com/developercontestindia. This is the first time Facebook is… -
Support for Green Businesses
3 Jul 2009 | 11:58 pmNew Ventures India inviting business plans from green entrepreneurs for its 2009 cycle Eco-entrepreneurs should hurry and submit their business plan to the following email addresses: hemant.nitturkar@cii.in or vamshi. krishna@cii.in Upon short-listing, twenty potential green companies will receive special mentoring from a team of experts. They will then be showcasing their business proposal and pitching their case for investment before Angel Investors, Private Equity Investors, Institutional Investors, Venture Capitalists, Bankers at the 4th edition of Investor Forum to be held on 29-30… -
LUCK? RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME? DIVINE INTERVENTION?
29 Jun 2009 | 6:53 amWe hear all the time about the amount of money that’s available to fund startups. For example, that private equity funds invested over $ 3.3 billion in just the first 3 calendar months of the current year. That VCs are always looking out for good deals as most of the plans they see merit little or no attention. That they invest in about 5-10 a year out of the 500-1000 business plans they get. And so on…But the truth is that a majority of deals that get funded are those that come through a referral or because the VC knows (of) the entrepreneurs; its natural because VCs don’t have the… -
Governance
29 Jun 2009 | 6:50 amGOVERNANCE Sanjay AnandaramThe young founders of the young company looked happy. They had just finished a long meeting with a top class candidate for CEO of one of their soon-to-be-launched businesses. They had decided to bring on board seasoned professionals to help them achieve their long term goal of building a nationally admired and respected company. The CEO candidate too felt energized after the meeting with the founders and was excited by the passion and drive exhibited by the founders. He was impressed by their open style, frank assessments of themselves, their understanding of the… -
BUZZ WORD COMPLIANCE
25 Jun 2009 | 10:01 amBUZZWORD COMPLIANCE Sanjay Anandaram A friend narrated this to me this morning. He was on a business trip to Taiwan and bumped into a colleague from a much larger division of the same company at Taipei airport. After exchanging some chit-chat, the colleague told my friend that he was likely to be now based out of Taipei as it was an important part of the division’s “China strategy”. On further enquiry it transpired that instead of long distance phone calls and faxes and emails to Taiwanese vendors and partners from Bangalore, he would now be able to visit them and make local phone…
-
topix: venture capital news
-
Unlike US, UK Venture Firms Welcome Gov't Rescue Funds
4 Jul 2009 | 10:51 amWhile the U.S. venture capital industry struck down the notion of the federalA government handing over money to venture capital firms to bail out start-ups,A the mood is quiteA different overseas. -
Venture capital is dead! Long live venture capital
4 Jul 2009 | 2:43 amDan Primack sited a study on PE Hub today that found that over 50% of VC professionals believe that the VC industry is "broken". My response: WHO CARES? Seriously. -
SpineGuard Raises $4 Million from Delta Partners, and Elects Two New...
3 Jul 2009 | 1:32 pmSpineGuard Raises $4 Million from Delta Partners, and Elects Two New Directors: Maurice Bourlion and Dr. -
Apple's Borchers makes the leap to venture capital
3 Jul 2009 | 5:29 amOn June 19, I sat down with Bob Borchers, senior director of worldwide product marketing for the iPhone, to talk about the launch of the iPhone 3GS. -
Wisconsin kicks our butt
2 Jul 2009 | 10:27 pmPosted on July 2nd, 2009 10:51 AM By Thomas Lee Yee gads!A We already know that Wisconsin has superior angel tax credits than Minnesota but this is getting ridiculous.
-
VCCircle Feeds
-
Tata Capital's PE Head Shailendra Bhandari Quits
4 Jul 2009 | 1:25 amShailendra Bhandari, the head of Tata Capital's private equity business, has quit less than a year after he joined the firm. Bhandari, who was former managing director and CEO of PE-controlled Centurion Bank of Punjab (CBoP), will leave to pursue other opportunities by the end of July 09, a Tata Capital statement said. It is not yet known where Bhandari is headed. Bhandari had earlier worked with HDFC Bank, and thereafter became the CEO of ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund. He later became the CEO of Centurion Bank, and spearheaded its acquisitions like Bank of Punjab and then Lord… -
Clear the Air on Tax Holidays
4 Jul 2009 | 1:04 amHistorically, tax policy in India has been used as an effective tool to channel investments into the desired sectors, by way of tax holidays. Nonetheless, at times the relevant section of the Income Tax Code does not (or is made not to) make a reading consistent with the objective of providing the holiday. This results in the industry facing surprises in tax assessments leading to protracted litigation. Given the laudable and purposive objective, the government would do well to clear the air on the key issues faced by the industry in availing the exemptions/deductions,… -
SEBI Asks For Rs 5 Cr Firm Commitment From Foreign VCs
3 Jul 2009 | 11:14 pmMarket regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has said that it is mandatory for foreign venture capital investors (FVCIs) to get a firm commitment of at least $1 million (Rs 5 crore) from their investors for registration. This step by SEBI would bring the regulations for foreign funds at par with those of domestic funds. The order stated that "“Each scheme launched or fund set up by a venture capital fund shall have firm commitment from the investors for contribution of the minimum stipulated amount before the start of operations by the… -
Govt Defers Orix Corporation's FDI Proposal; Dubs It As Round-Tripping
3 Jul 2009 | 11:02 pmThe Department of Revenue, part of the Finance Ministry of India,has objected to a proposal by Japan-based Orix Corporation to invest in an Indian trust. The IL&FS Orix Trust, which bought 2% stake in Multi Commodity Exchange, was to issue units to Mauritius-based Orix Mauritius Trade Winds Investment Company. The proposal is facing objections as the department of revenue belives that the proposal is taking advantage of the India-Mauritius Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement, reports Economic Times. The department has dubbed the investment as… -
News Roundup: Emaar to Try IPO Route Again
3 Jul 2009 | 10:07 pmTata Capital Private Equity Head Shailendra Bhandari Quits - Before the closure of its maiden fund, Private Equity head of Tata Capital Shailendra Bhandari has resigned. Bhandari will be leaving the company to pursue other opportunities by the end of July 09. Bhadari earlier headed Centurion Bank of Punjab which got merged with the HDFC Bank in 2007. (The Economic Times) Godrej Industries Acquires 100% Stake in Subsidiary NBL - FMCG major Godrej Industries has acquired the entire stake in its step down subsidiary Natures Basket Ltd (NBL) for an undisclosed amount. The company has acquired the…
-
Seeing Both Sides
-
Do VCs Take The Summer Off? Entrepreneurs Say Yes. The Data Says No.
26 Jun 2009 | 7:53 amWith the 4th of July approaching, the unofficial summer is about to begin. In almost every board meeting with portfolio companies and other entrepreneurs who are raising money, I'm hearing the same refrain: "The VCs are about to shut down for the summer". Phone calls and emails won't get returned, partners meetings won't be held, and you might as well put your head down and build your company as best you can and then show up after Labor Day rather than wasting time knocking on VC doors. I admit this is only my 7th summer as a VC, so I'm still new to this… -
Start-Up Mentoring Program - First Growth Venture Network
16 Jun 2009 | 4:49 amWe announced today a mentoring program for New York-based start-ups alongside a number of other VCs and Lowenstein Sandler. More information can be found at: www.firstgrowthvn.com. I was excited to be a part of starting this effort to provide more support and resources for fledging young start-ups in NYC and contribute to the start-up ecosystem. I have been impressed with the quality of entrepreneurs and companies in NYC for a number of years now and have dedicated a day or two a month to get to know some of the players and leaders in the community. When Ed Zimmerman of Lowenstein… -
New England's Top 10 Innovators
3 Jun 2009 | 7:55 pmJune is innovation month in New England and it has started off with a bang. A few weeks ago, Business Week named Boston the 3rd most inventive city in the world. This week, The Deal declared that Route 128 is well-positioned to continue its leadership in innovation, despite the economic crisis, due to its diverse economy and robust enterpreneurial environment. All month, there are numerous high-quality events going on, including an Unconference run by Mass TLC, MIT Deshpande Center's IdeaStream and MITX 2009 Awards night. Much thanks to Scott Kirsner for catalyzing this… -
Terry Time at the NVCA
26 May 2009 | 12:17 pmAmid the hoopla a few weeks ago at the annual NVCA meeting, where the focus was rightly on improving liquidity, it was barely noticed that a new chairman was elected – Polaris co-founder and managing general partner Terry McGuire, one of the leading life sciences investors in the industry. In normal times, the NVCA chairman is hardly an earth-shaking position (although certainly of higher value than FDR’s Vice President John Garner felt about his office). But these are hardly normal times and the NVCA chairman is bound to find himself in the middle of many interesting policy… -
What Rehab Is Teaching Me About Making Bad Investments
9 May 2009 | 12:13 pmFor as long as I can remember, I have been an enthusiastic participant in sports. To be clear, I'm not a great athlete (in fact, I'm the only one of the five Flybridge General Partners that wasn't a varsity athlete in college), just good enough to participate passionately and aggressively like the prototypical weekend warrior. During any of my amateur sports efforts -- whether competing in mini-triathlons, tackling hard ski runs, or trying to jump the wake while Water-skiing -- I've always enjoyed pushing myself and approaching the task fearlessly. This week, for…
-
Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing
-
Business plans, business models, who needs them?
4 Jul 2009 | 12:15 pmFor a long time I have wanted to write a post about the irrelevance of business plans. Twitter got VC funding with no business plan and no business model. Three years later they still have no revenue model, but their investors are very happy. I confess it took me a while to figure out Twitter. I rarely use SMS or texting either. These mediums strike me as one way bursts of irrelevant chatter for the ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) crowd. Twitter users have evolved from simple updates of what they had for breakfast to more insightful quotes, inspiration, and pointers to interesting pictures,… -
Page views required to generate $1M in ad revenue?
1 Jul 2009 | 9:47 amFacebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Beebo, Plaxo, Orkut, and MSN Spaces are the biggest well known social network spaces. But what about the 800 other sites scrambling for audiences in the social network space? Can they generate $1M in advertising revenue per month, or even per year? Will they ever be profitable? USA Today says "Social Network Sites Work To Turn Users Into Profits" and summarizes the problem with this quote; "Short of striking it rich with online ads or creating a new revenue stream, how can so many sites leverage their vast audiences? In many respects, it is the same query that… -
Why do Fast Followers often beat the First Mover innovators?
26 Jun 2009 | 8:06 pmInnovation drives our industry, attracts the best talent, attracts VC money, and wins fame for its leaders. Innovation leaders burst onto the scene, win early market leadership, but sometimes can't sustain the pace. Why do "fast followers" often jump in later and make fortunes? Is management responsible for the success or failure? Or, are these innovation leaders acquired by larger players before they have a chance to evolve into successful stand alone companies? I have been on the leading edge, sometimes bleeding edge, of technology for most of my career. I have been fortunate to be part… -
Why VCs say no 99% of the time
25 Jun 2009 | 4:15 pmVenture Capital investing is a very tough game...and very lucrative if you are good at it. Part of my job at Microsoft is working with VCs, so I have learned a lot about the way they think...and why they say No to 99% of the deals they see. This blog post by Jeff Bussgang, of Flybridge Capital Partners explains why VCs want to see every new startup...but say no 99% of the time. "As one wise old VC once told me, "the trick in this business is to spend very little time on a lot of deals, and then a lot of time on very few deals." In other words, see everything to be a better investor, but… -
Boston startup events
23 Jun 2009 | 11:09 amBoston has a vibrant startup community with lots of events to connect with VCs, Angels, and other startups. Here are several events for the coming weeks. Xsite:2009 The Recovery Starts Here – June 24, 8:00AM – Organized by Xconomy. High-tech, life-sciences, and energy innovation may well hold the key to the nation's economic health and long-term competitiveness. And as a hotbed of American innovation, New England is poised to become a key driver of economic recovery in the U.S. What’s Next In Tech – Exploring The Growth Opportunities of 2009 And Beyond – June 25, 6:00PM - Organized…
-
Bizjournals.com: Venture Capital
-
Georgian Bank leadership changes part of strategy shift
3 Jul 2009 | 8:41 amThe new CEO of Atlanta's second largest, locally headquartered bank said his appointment signals a strategic shift in the midst of the worst financial industry crisis in decades. -
Report: Bank M&A activity declines
3 Jul 2009 | 8:15 amThe Texas banking merger and acquisition market that slowed to a crawl in 2008 has virtually come to halt. -
Georgian Bank founder and CEO Teel replaced
2 Jul 2009 | 3:41 pmThe founder and driving force behind the Atlanta’s second largest, locally headquartered bank has been replaced as chairman and CEO of the $2 billion institution and its holding company, in a move effective late Thursday. -
Millennium State Bank of Texas fails
2 Jul 2009 | 3:21 pmThe Texas Department of Banking on Thursday closed Dallas-based Millennium State Bank of Texas, the first bank failure in Texas this year and the first in the Dallas area in more than a decade. -
AuburnBank added to national stock index
2 Jul 2009 | 2:31 pmThe parent company of AuburnBank, Auburn National Bancorp. Inc., is being added to a national stock index in the “small cap” category.
-
PE Hub Blog
-
peHUB Rewind
2 Jul 2009 | 3:00 pmHere’s a look at the past two weeks of scoops, opinions and analysis from the peHUB blogging team. LBO-Backed Bankruptcy List: On Pace to Double Last Year’s Total [Quarterly Stuff] Fund Performance Data Dump [Quarterly Stuff] Fund Performance Data Dump (Part Deux) [Quarterly Stuff] VC-Backed IPOs Rise Infinitely in Q2 [Quarterly Stuff] Private Equity Activity Falls in Q2 [Quarterly Stuff] Global PE Fundraising Rises in Q2 [Quarterly Stuff] PCG Pays $2 Million To Escape New York Probe [Buy Yourself Out of Trouble!] Escape from New York (Part II) [It's That Easy!] 88% of PE Firms Have… -
This is Going to Be Big (I Think): A Look at Numerate
2 Jul 2009 | 2:16 pmIn recent weeks, I’ve heard a few VCs talk about the promise of “biocomputational” startups, biotechs that are more quickly than ever collecting, processing, and making use of genomic data. Gene Security Network, which produces a test used to screen chromosomes during the in-vitro fertilization process is one that’s raised $10 million in the last couple of years, including from Sequoia Capital, Claremont Creek Ventures, and Alafi Capital. Another that looks to hold potentially even more promise is a drug-design technology firm called Numerate, whose technology — from what I… -
Private Equity Group To FDIC: Try Again
2 Jul 2009 | 1:33 pmThe Private Equity Council isn’t going to let federal regulators off so easily this time around. Last month, the private equity lobby supported the government’s requirement that buyout firms register with the SEC, even while arguing that “private equity firms do not create systemic risk.” Today, however, the PEC came out against proposed FDIC guidelines for buyout firm investments in banks, saying that they go to far and would be counterproductive. “We hope that the comment period yields changes that facilitate the flow of private capital into the banking… -
peHUB Second Opinion 7.2
2 Jul 2009 | 12:26 pmHappy July 4th! Bloggers Gaining Steam: Goldman Sachs responds directly to blogger Zero Hedge. (Zero Hedge) Lists: Dumbest Moments in Business, Mid-Year 2009. I think we could add a few buyout moves to this list as well… (Fortune) Fighting Fund of Funds? “Private equity funds of funds are increasingly under fire. Not only do they reduce returns, but they do not minimise risks” (IP&E) Hours Versus Heads: The decline in aggregate hours worked has been frighteningly consistent over recent months. (Freakonomics) Student Loan Horror Story: How a law school grad that passed… -
Weekly Downgrade Wrap-Up (Two More Withdrawals)
2 Jul 2009 | 9:06 amAs usual, we have a week’s worth of ratings actions on buyout-backed companies from Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investor Services. This week was slow with two little downgrades and two withdrawals. Company: Yell Group PLC Sponsor: Apax Partners Downgrade: S&P lowered its long-term corporate credit ratings to ‘B’ from ‘B+’. Highlights: “The downgrade reflects our concerns about the faster-than-expected deterioration of Yell’s operating performance and liquidity profile, which is no longer commensurate with a ‘B+’ rating,”…
-
LINKEDIN ANSWERS: VC AND PRIVATE EQUITY
-
WHERE Is The BEST PLACE To SECURE SEED CAPITAL For GREEN & DIGITAL SPORTS RESORTS?
4 Jul 2009 | 11:36 am -
Closed Question: WHERE Is The BEST PLACE To SECURE SEED CAPITAL GREEN & DIGITAL SPORTS RESORTS?
4 Jul 2009 | 11:34 am -
If QIPs were available as a investment option since 2006, why have they been in news all of a sudden...an explanation will be appreciated
4 Jul 2009 | 7:48 am -
Are investors from the US interested in startup companies in Brazil?
4 Jul 2009 | 5:16 amHow does it work? Is the crisis affecting it too much? -
What is a Term Sheet? Is there a limit on the amount that can be invested through term Sheet?
3 Jul 2009 | 8:49 am
-
Northeast VC Funding
-
ActiFio raises $4M in VC funding - Weston, MA
2 Jul 2009 | 5:49 amActiFio Inc., a Weston, Mass.-based stealth storage startup, has secured $4 million of an $8 million Series A round, according to a regulatory filing. The company's only listed executive is Ash Ashutosh, a partner with VC firm Greylock and former StorageWorks chief technologist. Listed as a board member is James Goldstein, a partner with North Bridge Venture Partners.http://actifio.appspot.com/ -
CloudSwitch Raises $8M - Burlington, MA
30 Jun 2009 | 9:07 amCloudSwitch, Inc., a developer of an innovative software appliance that delivers the power of cloud computing seamlessly and securely so enterprises can dramatically reduce cost and improve responsiveness to the business, today announced that it has added John McEleney as its Chief Executive Officer and President, and completed a second round of financing from top-tier venture capitalist firms. Led by Commonwealth Capital Ventures, the $8 million series B round includes initial investors Matrix Partners and Atlas Venture and brings the Company's total funding to more than $15… -
XyEnterprise Acquired by SDL - Wakefield, MA
29 Jun 2009 | 12:50 pmXyEnterprise, a Wakefield-based developer of XML component content management software, announced on Monday that it has been acquired by SDL, a U.K.-based provider of information management software that has its U.S. headquarters in Waltham and San Jose, Calif. Financial terms between the two privately held firms were not disclosed. XyEnterprise was founded in 1998. SDL said that the acquisition significantly expands its own product offering and technical capabilities.http://www.sdltrisoft.com/en/landing-pages/acquisition/ -
ClickFuel Raises $2.5 Million in First Round
25 Jun 2009 | 8:24 amClickFuel, a Boston-based provider of Internet marketing services to small and mid-sized businesses, said on Thursday that it has raised $2.5 million in its first round of funding, led by Baird Venture Partners. The company said that it will use the proceeds to further expand its sales and marketing efforts, as well as extend its product line. ClickFuel was founded last year by Steve Pogorzelski, a former senior executive at Monster Worldwide, and Colby West, the co-founder of AuctionPal. "We secured this funding based on our ability to differentiate our services from those currently… -
Beaumaris Networks raises $5.3M in VC Funding - Waltham, MA
17 Jun 2009 | 6:17 amStealth mode telecom startup, Beaumaris Networks, has raised $5.3 in venture capital funding from Charles River Ventures. Former CRV entrepreneur in residence, Conrad Clemson, is heading the company as president and CEO.
-
GigaOM
-
America’s Secret Innovation Weapon: Immigration
4 Jul 2009 | 9:00 amWhen I was 8 years old, my father explained to me the secret to American prosperity. Immigrants come to the United States and take menial jobs so that their children have a chance at a better future, he told me. While the jobs they take are below their intrinsic capabilities, they’re focused on giving their children a better life, not personal job satisfaction. Second-generation children, seeing how hard their parents work to give them an opportunity, in turn work hard at school, where, he noted, they often focus on mathematics and science in pursuit of the economic returns promised by… -
Android This Week: Flash Coming to the Browser
4 Jul 2009 | 6:00 amThe biggest news in the Android world this week came from embedded systems developer BSquare, which said it’s developed a version of Flash Lite for the Google phone OS. The BSquare Flash module will be distributed to OEMs as a browser plug-in for inclusion on devices running on the ARM platform. This Flash module would make it possible to play streaming video inside the browser, a capability smartphones have been sorely lacking. Most online video sites (such as YouTube and Hulu) use Flash technology to stream video; the lack of Flash support has kept mobile browsers from sharing in… -
Why the Mobile Web Won’t Save Sirius XM
3 Jul 2009 | 9:00 amThings may finally be turning around for troubled satellite radio venture Sirius XM. Following a long and costly merger, the company became desperate for new financing just as credit dried up, and managed to avert bankruptcy only by selling 40 percent of itself to John Malone in exchange for a loan paying 15 percent interest. Last week, Sirius secured another half-billion dollars in high-interest debt, and CEO Mel Karmazin got a 20 percent raise and the option to buy 120 million new shares to celebrate his success. Success, that is, if you define the word as simply avoiding failure. Things… -
VentureBeat Presents MobileBeat 2009
3 Jul 2009 | 8:59 amJoin the most influential investors, mobile industry executives, entrepreneurs, press and analysts at MobileBeat 2009 for one day of in-depth discussion, debate and power networking, held on July 16 at the Parc 55 Hotel in San Francisco. MobileBeat will focus on apps: the people who use them, the people who make them, and the people who fund them. MobileBeat will also have a Top Startup competition and is actively soliciting submissions from startups younger than 3 years old and in two categories. These companies will get to pitch in front of a high-level audience: some 400 top mobile… -
Maybe “Paid” Is the Future of Online Business
3 Jul 2009 | 6:00 amIn 1988, “Saturday Night Live” aired a parody commercial deriding clumsy business models. “At First CityWide Change Bank, our business is making change,” said actor Jim Downey, portraying a naive “service representative.” After listing various ways in which his company could break a five, he explained how money is made. “The answer is simple: volume.” More than 20 years later, I wonder if some digital entrepreneurs think the same. “Simple: we’ll make money on volume of traffic, at some future date,” they promise, even if the…
-
EzineArticles.com
-
What is Venture Capital? What is Convertible Preferred Stock Funding and Financing?
2 Jul 2009 | 11:51 amA Series A round or Series A financing refers to a first round of venture capital or private equity investment where certain investors (e.g., private equity funds and/or individuals) invest in a company by injecting capital and the company issues certain (convertible preferred) shares (known as Series A shares) to the investors in return. -
Series A Round, Financing and Convertible Preferred Shares in a Venture Capital Investment
2 Jul 2009 | 9:08 amA Series A round, or Series A financing refers to the first round of venture capital or private equity investment where certain investors (e.g., private equity funds and/or individuals) invest in a company and the company issues certain (convertible preferred) shares to the investors in return. The shares issued are called Series A shares. -
Working With Private Investors and Venture Capitalists
1 Jul 2009 | 11:29 amMoney available to businesses from conventional banking sources has become very limited over the last year or so. At the same time the amount of private capital in the market has been increasing. More and more business owners are finding it necessary to seek money from alternative sources such as venture capitalists and private investors. This type of capital is especially useful when starting a new company. -
How to Calculate Pre Money and Post Money Valuations in a Venture Capital Financing Term Sheet?
29 Jun 2009 | 2:32 pmThe pre-money valuation of a company refers to the valuation of the company before an investor injects capital into the company. The post-money valuation of a company refers to the valuation of the company after an investor has injected capital into the company. Therefore, the post-money valuation of a company is always equal to the pre-money valuation plus the amount of capital injected by the investor. Both pre-money valuation and post-money valuation are expressed in terms of dollars. -
Merchant Funding
29 Jun 2009 | 2:13 pmMerchant funding can be a daunting but necessary task. By doing your homework and asking tough questions you can find what you need. Making a list of your needs will keep you on the objective.
-
Recent Buzzes - VC Experts, Inc.
-
Interview with Glenn Yago, Director of Capital Studies at the Milken Institute
1 Jul 2009 | 12:00 amThis week we are joined by Glenn Yago, Director of Capital Studies at the Milken Institute and a leading authority on financial innovations, capital markets, emerging markets and environmental finance.? Glenn's research and projects have contributed to policy innovations fostering the democratization of capital to traditionally underserved markets and entrepreneurs in the United States and around the world.? He is a visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.? His opinions appear regularly in The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal. Sound off on this week's buzz in the… -
Investor Abilities and Financial Contracting - Evidence from Venture Capital
30 Jun 2009 | 12:00 amIn the paper, "Investor Abilities and Financial Contracting: Evidence from Venture Capital," Berk Sensoy and Ola Bengtsson study how the use of contractual provisions in VC contracts varies with characteristics of VCs. Data for the report came from VC Experts Private Equity Data Center, and their sample includes more than 1,200 unique U.S. venture-backed companies. The statistical analysis they provide shows that older, more experienced, more successful and better networked VCs use contracts that have fewer investor-friendly provisions (e.g. cumulative dividends, participating preferred,… -
Interview with David Weild and Edward Kim, Senior Advisors to Grant Thornton (Part 2 of 2)
24 Jun 2009 | 12:00 amThis week, we welcome back David Weild and Edward Kim of Grant Thornton. We are continuing our two-part discussion and debate on their paper entitled,?"Why are IPOs in the ICU?" Read Part 1 of the inteview here. Sound off on this week's buzz in the Comments Section. -
What Kills Startups?
23 Jun 2009 | 12:00 amWe have good news to share with entrepreneurs mired in the bleak survival rate statistics for startups. Akira Hirai, Founder and Managing Director of Cayenne Consulting, reveals some very valuable risk management insight in the following buzz entitled "What Kills Startups?" Sound off on this week's buzz in the Comments Section. -
Interview with David Weild and Edward Kim, Senior Advisors to Grant Thornton (Part 1 of 2)
17 Jun 2009 | 12:00 amWe welcome David Weild and Edward Kim, co-authors of the recent Grant Thornton study, "Why are IPOs in the ICU?"? David and Edward will offer their candid and provocative views on the IPO market in this first segment of a two-part series. David is a Senior Advisor to Grant Thornton, a Global Six Firm.?He is the former vice-chairman and executive vice-president overseeing the more than 4,000 listed companies of The NASDAQ Stock Market.? David spent 14 years in a variety of senior investment banking and equity capital markets roles at Prudential Securities.?He was recently invited to…
-
Frank Peters Show
-
Wellington Partners' Ram Srinivasan
19 Jun 2009 | 7:00 pmHow do angels fit into clean tech? Solar? Is it too capital intensive for angels? I ask Wellington Partners' Ram Srinivasan his opinions. We met during EBAN's tour of the Valley last month. He was an engineer then moved into marketing, eventually becoming an entrepreneur with a taste for risk, but once he was pretty comfortable at HP. Show #233 (39:56) Listen -
Relocation Recommendations
12 Jun 2009 | 8:43 amIt was a standing-room-only crowd yesterday at the OC Business Growth Forum hosted by the Digital Media Center in Santa Ana. My keynote may have surprised the local politicians in the audience: "Relocation Recommendations: Where to Find the Money", but not those of you who listened to Liddy Karter talk about her efforts to influence public policy for angel investors. I shared the highlights from Liddy's remarks, so we'll see if these entrepreneurs in attendance pack off for Honolulu or Milwaukee to find more welcoming tax policies and therefore more investment dollars. -
Angels Influence Public Policy: Liddy Karter
4 Jun 2009 | 3:31 pmCould you use a tax break? Do you feel that your early-stage investments are good for the economy and should be encouraged? So does Liddy Karter. Sandwiched between Boston and New York you'll find the Angel Investor Forum in Connecticut. Liddy sees a lot of activity in both cities and it's led to a year where "we've invested more in 2009 than ever before!". You haven't heard that on the show lately, so who better to be leading the Angel Capital Association's Committee for Public Policy? Another $30 billion for General Motors as they enter bankruptcy, unbelievable! What would $1B do if it were… -
Venture Capital: Counting the Corpses
4 Jun 2009 | 8:42 amPenny Herscher editorializes in the Huffington Post on "The Death of Venture Capital as We Know It". Will only 1 in 10 survive? Read the article... -
Stepping Down at TriTech
3 Jun 2009 | 8:43 amThere's new leadership in Washington at the SBA and new sensitivities on potential conflicts of interest. I've served on the TriTech Small Business Development Center Advisory Board for at least 3 years, first in Orange County then followed them when they moved to Riverside. Early in my career I was a consultant and I remembered the thrill of making that kind of contribution. I started working on getting invited onto their Advisory Board.
-
Feld Thoughts
-
Watching People Come of Age
3 Jul 2009 | 2:38 pmOne of the most satisfying parts of what I do is getting to work with people over a long period of time, starting early in their careers. It’s one of the things I love about TechStars, but it’s not limited to that as I have many other relationships with young and first time entrepreneurs. Last night, at Ignite Boulder 5, I had a permagrin on my face as I thought about the amazing job Andrew Hyde was doing. I first met Andrew a few years ago when we started TechStars – he basically volunteered to hang out with a video camera for free all summer to film stuff and learn. … -
Gnip Is Hiring Software Developers
3 Jul 2009 | 9:07 amYesterday I posted that Trada is looking for a Test Engineer. Gnip is also looking for software developers – three in fact: Senior Software Developer Senior System Adminstrator Senior Web Developer If you are Boulder-based and fit the qualifications, email Jenny-Lynne Elledge. -
Trada is Hiring for a Test Engineer + Support
2 Jul 2009 | 9:34 pmTrada, one of our portfolio companies in Boulder, is looking to hire. They’re looking for a tech-skilled individual who thinks they can do just about everything, because they might be asked to. Primary role is testing their online advertising app but there’s a huge opportunity to contribute much more. There’s dev work; cloud systems admin; operations tasks; end-user support; and customer facing account management tasks that can be added to the mix for the properly skilled (and properly motivated) individual. While still in stealth these guys are already rocking. -
The Unbearable Stupidity of Some Patents
2 Jul 2009 | 4:17 pmIf I told you that I had just filed a patent for “a system to sell equity in domain names”, I’d expect you to laugh at me. I haven’t ranted and raved against software (and business method) patents for a while because I got bored of doing it. The PTO has gotten so far behind on responding to patent applications that the whole notion of a four year cycle to get a software patent approved just underscores how ridiculous the whole thing is given the pace of innovation in software. But – today’s silly patent popped up somewhere and I just couldn’t resist poking fun at it. -
Make Me Happy – There’s An App for That
1 Jul 2009 | 5:06 pmI’ve been a delighted iPhone user since they upgraded the software to have mail / contact / calendar sync with Exchange. With the 3.0 version of the software, I’m even more delighted. I’ve had an iPhone 3GS since the day they came out (thanks Ross for standing in the non-line at the AT&T store for me) and – with the exception of the crappy AT&T 3G network – I find new little magic happy things every single day. As my app portfolio continues to radically expand and I endlessly fiddle with placement, I thought it might be useful to reflect (and…
-
Ask The VC
-
How To Cold Call A VC
20 Jun 2009 | 10:55 amMark Suster of GRP Partners in LA continues to crank out great posts, including today’s titled Getting Access to the Old Boys’ Club (how to approach a VC). I like investing in LA (we’ve got three investments there – Oblong, Topspin, and Memeo) and I’ve got a long term evil plan for the city. In the mean time, I’m going to be speaking at Twiistup 6 in LA on July 30 in case you are interested in coming and hanging out with a bunch of startups in the LA scene. -
Betting on A Big Wave
16 Jun 2009 | 8:54 amMark Suster of GRP Partners is blogging like a fiend and has the best VC post of the day titled Sorry Guys – It’s the Size of the Wave, Not the Motion of the Ocean. Entrepreneurs – wander over and take a look. Plus, he’s got some title alliteration. -
When Failure Is An Option
7 Jun 2009 | 10:56 pmToday’s great post is from David Cowan of Bessemer Venture Partners and is titled Israeli Venture Keynote: When Failure Is An Option. Embedded is his keynote presentation from last week at the Israeli Venture Association Annual Conference. While David focused on lessons for venture capital in Israel, they apply broadly to venture capital anywhere in the world, including the United States. -
Key Characteristics of a Great Startup Culture
30 May 2009 | 8:06 pmToday’s great VC post is by Greg Gottesman (a managing director at Madrona Venture Group) and is titled Thirteen key characteristics of a great startup culture. It shows up in John Cook’s column in TechFlash – the article is solid and the comments (all 66 of them at this point) are priceless. I’m baffled by the super-negative anonymous commenters as they add absolutely nothing to the conversation. If you are going to be critical (which is fine – and often helpful in sharpening up the ideas), be bold and comment with your real identity! -
Start-up Cost Projections For First Time Entrepreneurs
25 May 2009 | 7:12 pmQ: At a pub in Los Gatos, CA a casual conversation with some young, first time entrepreneurs lead to an interesting comment: "...the business plan outlines our estimated (operational) expenses but how do I know an investor is not going to look at these numbers and say...'are you f'ing kidding me' and right then and there we can loose this guy (his interest)..."How can an entrepreneur build these projections most accurately and in a way that will maintain credibility with potential investors? What could be defined as the "best practice" for entrepreneurs dealing…
-
Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog
-
New Media companies should emphasize “media” over “new”
29 Jun 2009 | 4:12 pmAdAge has a good article today about how AOL has been attacking web publishing where it notes: In the heady days of early 2000, the megamerger of AOL and Time Warner heralded the web-based future of publishing. It would create a digital platform for Time Inc., the biggest, most-prestigious magazine group in the world. Needless to say, that didn’t pan out, and here’s where it gets ironic. Just as Time Warner is unwinding that mistake, AOL is figuring out the future of magazine publishing on the web. And it’s doing so without Time Warner’s content assets. The model goes… -
Social Gaming Summit panel writeups
23 Jun 2009 | 8:19 pmI moderated two panels at the Social Gaming Summit 2009 today. The first was about building social games at scale and featured the CEOs/COOs of the top three social game companies; Mark Pincus of Zynga, John Pleasants of Playdom and Sebastien de Halleux of Playfish. Gamasutra has an excellent writeup of the panel. Inside Social Games also liveblogged the panel. Second panel was about social games “in the wild” – i.e. off of social networks. Andrew Bussey of Challenge Games, Daniel James of 3Rings, Matt Mihaly of Sparkplay and Jim Greer of Kongregate were the panelists. I… -
“Wars” style social games placed in context of other web based massively single player games
19 Jun 2009 | 7:58 amWorlds In Motion plays Mafia Wars and compares it to other web based massively single player games, including ForumWarz, Kingdom of Loathing and Urban Dead: There are plenty of other MSOs … but the successful ones all have some attributes in common: –All are based on stats, money, loot, rank, and clans or guilds –The best extent to which players can communicate with each other is through messages, forums, or chat, all of which don’t occur “in game” –All require alternative and creative revenue streams, and must be free to play. Methods include microtransactions,… -
Focusing on copy can dramatically improve user response
18 Jun 2009 | 2:03 pmA couple of years ago I posted about how improving copy is an easy way to increase user interaction. Bokardo recently posted on a similar topic, about how microcopy can improve your user interface: Microcopy is extremely contextual…that’s why it’s so valuable. It answers a very specific question people have and speaks to their concerns right on the spot. And because its so contextual, microcopy isn’t always obvious. Sometimes you have to hunt to find the right words. (or create an error notification service like I did) How to discover these hurdles? Talk to people! Why aren’t they… -
10% of ecommerce sites convert at better than 8%
17 Jun 2009 | 10:42 amInternet Retailer shares a bunch of interesting ecommerce stats from the E-tailing group. Notable for me is the conversion rate for retailers in 2009: Conversion Rate: % of retailers <1%: 4% 1-3%: 44% 3-5%: 21% 5-8%: 17% 8-20%: 9% >20%: 1% Don’t know: 6%
-
Florida Venture Blog by Dan Rua
-
Dystonia Cure Within Reach for Tyler's Hope
11 Jun 2009 | 11:35 amI've blogged here before about Tyler's Hope and wanted to share a big day for Tyler and his family. This morning CNN.com posted the video below and TylersHope.org is getting bombarded with people wanting to help find a Dystonia cure. How can you help?1) Watch this video;2) Learn more at TylersHope.org;3) Join the Tyler's Hope Facebook Cause; and4) Help Tyler find a cure by giving and inviting friends to help!Tyler Staab is a classmate of my daughter's and I'd personally appreciate anything you can do to help...Embedded video from CNN Video Let's get to know each other, Join FVB, my venture… -
When Marketers Collude, Bloggers Lose
3 Jun 2009 | 12:39 pmAs an active investor in social media, I've followed the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) since it's founding by a handful of marketers back in 2004. The growth of marketers in the organization is a testament to the power unlocked by consumer generated content. The core of that power rests with the content creators such as bloggers, podcasters, vloggers and even to the granularity of social network participants. I think WOMMA understands that, but I fear they've been led astray by a minority of marketers who want to dictate payment terms when engaging bloggers. Sure, they want the… -
Spymaster Game on Twitter
29 May 2009 | 10:44 amAn area I've been digging into lately, Twitter Games, got a boost today with the launch of http://PlaySpymaster.com -- created as a "side project" by the iList team. First impressions are good, quality implementation, but I wonder how the tweet noise will impact users as more games hit the stream. Luckily SpyMaster is early so game-fatique hasn't set in...yet.Strength in the game comes from the size of your "spy ring" so if you'd like to join the fun comment here or follow/@ me on twitter. Let's get to know each other, Join FVB, my venture capital blog community! -
Top Tech Trends 2009 and Beyond
21 May 2009 | 2:19 pmRafe's coverage of the Churchill Club Top Tech Trends is worth sharing. Jurvetson's observations about distributed search are very similar to some I've been investigating. For every explicit action people take on the web (e.g. creating a link that GOOG indexes), there are 10X+ implicit actions (e.g. browsing, scrolling, video abandons) that are not being indexed for intelligence today. There are distinct efforts happening within content indexing, social feeds and webmaster analytics (largely implicit action data) that, when combined, will deliver maximum search intelligence. Much of the… -
NVCA Four Pillar Plan to Restore IPO Market
29 Apr 2009 | 7:13 amThe National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) annual meeting kicks off today with a great mix of sessions and speakers. At a policy level, NVCA Chairman Dixon Doll is also announcing a four pillar plan to help increase liquidity via IPOs.Pillar I - Ecosystem Partners: consolidation and attrition has limited the number of mid-tier accounting/legal/i-banking firms who can help smaller companies reach the public markets -- at least at a manageable cost. The NVCA is encouraging a new set of ecosystem participants and partnering with the largest players in the industry to do the job…
-
Clean Ventures
-
Clean Sweep 66
3 Jul 2009 | 6:50 amA round-up of recent news in clean technology and cleantech investment. DealsNext-gen solar cell developer QuantaSol has closed a funding round at just under £2m from existing investors Low Carbon Accelerator and Imperial Innovations. LCA is investing £1.175m in two rounds, and also converting an existing £400k loan into equity. QuantaSol, a spin-out from Imperial College London, also announced -
Clean Sweep 65
25 Jun 2009 | 11:02 pmA round-up of recent news in clean technology and cleantech investment. DealsCambridge solar tech start-up Enecsys has raised a £6m first round led by Wellington Partners. Denmark's BankInvest New Energy Solutions also joined the round. A spin-out from the University of Cambridge, Enecsys is commercialising a micro-inverter for solar PV modules. By getting rid of components such as electrolytic -
Clean Sweep 64
16 Jun 2009 | 4:34 amA round-up of recent news in clean technology and cleantech investment. DealsAlertMe, a Cambridge-based producer of domestic energy monitoring systems, has raised an £8m second round from Good Energies, Index Ventures, SET Venture Partners and VantagePoint Venture Partners. The money goes towards product development and establishing distribution links with retailers and utilities.AlertMe provides -
Top ten VCs
11 Jun 2009 | 7:00 amTo mark the second anniversary of Clean Ventures, here's an informal ranking of the most active equity investors in UK cleantech companies.The VCs are primarily ranked by the number of investments from June 2007 to date, as identified from the 'Clean Sweep' deal round-ups on this website. Where two or more investors had equal numbers of deals, I've given preference to large deals and leading -
Clean Sweep 63
5 Jun 2009 | 3:36 amA round-up of recent news in clean technology and cleantech investment. DealsLondon-based waste-to-energy firm Advanced Plasma Power has raised $10m from US investor Leveraged Green Energy. APP was founded in 2005 to commercialise the Gasplasma incinerator process, developed by plasma arc tech group Tetronics, which converts waste into syngas and a vitrified solid. The firm currently has a pilot
-
Guy Kawasaki
-
Why I'm More of a Believer in GM
4 Jul 2009 | 3:44 pmWhat better pictures to post on the 4th of July than ones of a good ole, red-blooded Corvette. My buddies in the GM PR department loaned me one to drive for a week after we connected on Twitter—yet another frequently overlooked of tweeting! This guy shows up at my house with the keys for a 2009 Corvette. I had never driven a Corvette before, and it’s not what you would call subtle. But then again, it’s not designed to be subtle. This is the essence of the Corvette: a big, bad-ass engine. But I was amazed that the car is rated for 26 mpg on the freeway. Popular Mechanics even got 32 mpg… -
How I Tweet: Just the FAQs
4 Jul 2009 | 7:57 amGeneral Question: How can you follow so many people? Answer: I don’t read the timelines of all the people that I follow. Instead, I only deal with @s, Directs, and tweets that contain “guykawasaki” and “alltop.” I am not reading everything everyone I follow tweets, but I answer almost every @ and Direct. Question: Then why do you follow everyone? Answer: I follow everyone for two reasons: first, common courtesy; second, so that anyone can send a Direct to me. I like Direct messages because they are so much more efficient than email. Question: Why do you use… -
How to Achieve Revenue
1 Jul 2009 | 10:59 amThe harsh reality of the startup scene today is that revenue is the best, and maybe only, form of funding. While many conferences focus on gaining the attention of investors, we’ve put one together that focuses on generating revenue. It’s called Revenue Bootcamp. It’s on Friday, July 10th, at the Microsoft Mountain View, California campus. Click here to learn more about it and to register. The topics include increasing traffic, selling advertising, and utilizing other revenue streams. There is also a keynote and booksigning with Chris Anderson, the author of Free: The Future… -
Reality Check Now Available in French
28 Jun 2009 | 7:39 pmVient de paraître en français: La réalité de l'entrepreneuriat Le guide irrévérencieux pour dépasser, devancer, distancer vos concurrents de Guy Kawasaki Publié en français par les Editions Diateino, avec l'aimable autorisation de Portfolio, Penguin Group. 26 euros. Ce livre, traduit par Marylène Delbourg Delphis, fait suite à L’art de se lancer, le bestseller de Guy Kawasaki traduit en 10 langues, paru en 2006 aux Editions Diateino. La réalité de l’entrepreneuriat, comme L’art de se lancer, est un livre de chevet pour tout entrepreneur, où qu’il vive. Ce livre vous… -
Sites Used at San Diego Venture Group Speech
25 Jun 2009 | 11:19 pmThese are the sites and applications that I used in today’s San Diego Venture Group speech about using social media as a marketing tool. Making Connections LinkedIn LinkedIn: Find References LinkedIn: Companies LinkedIn: Answers: Home LinkedIn: Jobs Home Jigsaw Spokeo Social Networking Facebook | Alltop Twitter / Home Twitter Corporate Examples JetBlue Dell Outlet Virgin America Amazondeals CirqueLasVegas Comcastcares Kogibbq Twitter Search Examples Monitor: guykawasaki OR alltop Monitor: comcast OR Directv Monitor: Starbucks VIA Search.twitter.com/ Camaro Camaro within 100 miles…
-
deal architect
-
Weekend Stuff: Neuschwanstein 20 years later
2 Jul 2009 | 9:11 pmMargaret and I first visited exactly 20 years ago Ludwig II's homage to Richard Wagner. We were back yesterday with our teenagers. Amazing the changes. No, not in the castle which is frozen in time. In the world. It was... -
Cloud: Seven Clear Business Models
2 Jul 2009 | 3:51 am“It seemed silly for a software company to own a data center but after six months on the job I realized this was really a fundamental shift in the economics of software” What do you say about a guy who... -
More New Florence
1 Jul 2009 | 1:43 amOn the innovation blog “Wicked Problems of a New Global World” Technology at Wimbledon Sheraton: Putting Social Back in Networking PC less web printing 3-D “Augmented Web” Magazine cover -
Heart of the Matter
30 Jun 2009 | 2:24 pmDon Henley starts his hit on YouTube with the comment "it took 42 years to write, 4 minutes to sing" As Oracle kicks off its "100 days of innovation", I hope they like Don have spent the last few years... -
Why so difficult to declare victory?
29 Jun 2009 | 3:18 amThe one advantage you have with a category with Enterprise in the moniker is you get a wide berth. You can claim successes in customer centric areas, product development or human resources areas or generally around team collaboration. So, it...
-
PureVC
-
Why Commercial RE May Not Crash
26 Jun 2009 | 2:18 amMany 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
23 Jun 2009 | 8:48 pmOne 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
19 Jun 2009 | 8:48 pmEvery 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… -
The Best Prop Show You'll Ever See In Your Lifetime
11 Jun 2009 | 5:19 pmMost of you know my views on what has been happening to our financial system. Ken Lewis' testimony today on being pressured by Bernanke and Paulson further confirms that the government is running the best damn prop show you will ever see in your lifetime. Not only are we printing money like there is no tomorrow in order to prop up our sad banks who destroyed themselves on bad bets, we are propping up the notion that our financial markets are sound and fair.For those of you that don't know the deal with Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, essentially, the government told Ken Lewis… -
We are #53 - Thanks PureVC Readers
30 May 2009 | 11:27 pmNot that I really care or that I even keep track, but today someone informed me that TechCrunch has posted the top 100 VC blogs based on number of Google Reader subscribers. This blog came in at #53 and I thank all the readers who continue to enjoy its content.When this blog started it was more of an experiment to help me flush out my thoughts and post on interesting topics specifically in the field of venture capital. Over time, I really couldn't help myself but post on all areas of private equity that I am involved in including real estate, hedge funds, leveraged buyouts, and general…
-
VentureWoods
-
Facebook Announces Developer Contest for India
4 Jul 2009 | 4:08 amNew Delhi, India, July 3, 2009: The day for which the Indian developer community had been waiting has finally arrived. Facebook, whose mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected, announced today the launch of ‘Facebook India Developer Contest’ – a contest for Indian developers to showcase their web development skills by creating Facebook applications and Facebook Connect Integrations. The contest began on July 2 and ends on September 11, 2009 and is located at www.facebook.com/developercontestindia. This is the first time Facebook is… -
Support for Green Businesses
3 Jul 2009 | 11:58 pmNew Ventures India inviting business plans from green entrepreneurs for its 2009 cycle Eco-entrepreneurs should hurry and submit their business plan to the following email addresses: hemant.nitturkar@cii.in or vamshi. krishna@cii.in Upon short-listing, twenty potential green companies will receive special mentoring from a team of experts. They will then be showcasing their business proposal and pitching their case for investment before Angel Investors, Private Equity Investors, Institutional Investors, Venture Capitalists, Bankers at the 4th edition of Investor Forum to be held on 29-30… -
LUCK? RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME? DIVINE INTERVENTION?
29 Jun 2009 | 6:53 amWe hear all the time about the amount of money that’s available to fund startups. For example, that private equity funds invested over $ 3.3 billion in just the first 3 calendar months of the current year. That VCs are always looking out for good deals as most of the plans they see merit little or no attention. That they invest in about 5-10 a year out of the 500-1000 business plans they get. And so on…But the truth is that a majority of deals that get funded are those that come through a referral or because the VC knows (of) the entrepreneurs; its natural because VCs don’t have the… -
Governance
29 Jun 2009 | 6:50 amGOVERNANCE Sanjay AnandaramThe young founders of the young company looked happy. They had just finished a long meeting with a top class candidate for CEO of one of their soon-to-be-launched businesses. They had decided to bring on board seasoned professionals to help them achieve their long term goal of building a nationally admired and respected company. The CEO candidate too felt energized after the meeting with the founders and was excited by the passion and drive exhibited by the founders. He was impressed by their open style, frank assessments of themselves, their understanding of the… -
BUZZ WORD COMPLIANCE
25 Jun 2009 | 10:01 amBUZZWORD COMPLIANCE Sanjay Anandaram A friend narrated this to me this morning. He was on a business trip to Taiwan and bumped into a colleague from a much larger division of the same company at Taipei airport. After exchanging some chit-chat, the colleague told my friend that he was likely to be now based out of Taipei as it was an important part of the division’s “China strategy”. On further enquiry it transpired that instead of long distance phone calls and faxes and emails to Taiwanese vendors and partners from Bangalore, he would now be able to visit them and make local phone…
-
Southeast VC
-
Want to Get Plugged into North Carolina? Best Way: Join CED
29 Jun 2009 | 8:24 pmI have to put in a plug for CED and the timing is good because I just heard they are $3,500 away from reaching their 2009 membership goal! As extra incentive, if you join today or tomorrow (Tuesday), you will be entered into a drawing to win this. If you want to join, call Lilith Anderson, associate director of development directly at 919-226-0468. Or, just fax this form to 919-549-7405. They also have an ad on their home page. Questions about CED? Let me know! I am on their board and our firm has been active with them for years. So, just call or email me if I can help. -
Recent Observations
29 Jun 2009 | 10:19 amAs we go into a new week, some random comments: - Too good to be true. I am tired of seeing these charts from companies pitching us how they have the complete product offering, but their competitors have all these holes. You have met all your customer's wishes? Would your competitors report similar findings? Money is still out there especially for companies with traction. There are few quality companies out there. When one pops up, there is often heavy competition from the VCs and yes, even today the entrepreneur can still be in the driver's seat. Think about the big picture. -
Calling All Entrepreneurs - Atlanta!
1 Jun 2009 | 10:07 amDavid and I will be down in Atlanta next week on June 10 and 11. We were an original sponsor of CapitalLounge and will be at that the night of June 10th. On June 11, we will have Calling All Entrepreneurs in Atlanta from 7-10am. We will find a place close to the ATDC. Again, any entrepreneur or aspiring entrepreneur is welcome to set up a time to come meet with us for 10 minutes. We will try and pack in as many meetings as possible and the coffee is on us! Read my prior post on this so you understand the structure and background. We did this down in Atlanta a while back and filled it up… -
Calling All Entrepreneurs - RTP
28 May 2009 | 11:12 amIts back! We're having Calling All Entrepreneurs next week - Wed, June 3. My partner David Jones and I will be camped out at Carolina Cafe on Harrison Ave in Cary, NC from 7 to 9am. We're happy to meet any entrepreneur or aspiring entrepreneur. The only thing we ask is that you have to be in one of these industries: e-commerce, software, healthcare IT, digital media or wireless. Those are the industries we focus on. So, email me and set up time to grab a quick cup of coffee with us. To fit in as many people as we can, we are setting up time in 10 minute blocks. You will have to… -
Open Source Law
27 Apr 2009 | 1:26 pmI never thought that I'd see this come from a law firm, but Wilson Sonsini built a Term Sheet Generator, which allows entrepreneurs to answer an online questionaire and build out a term sheet for financing. I went through all the questions and it includes a nice tutorial and explanations of different terms, trends and market data. Are you a 1st time entrepreneur and want to familiarize yourself with terms? Or a repeat entrepreneur that wants to brush up? Whatever the case, this could be a really great tool to save you some $$$ when starting out. Thanks to Altgate for posting a story…
-
Israel Venture Capital 2.0
-
Milk and Honey and High-Tech
28 Jun 2009 | 1:05 pmIn 1993 I was barely half way through my BA studies at Tel-Aviv University, highly focused on improving my pool game. I didn’t realize it was one of the more important years of my life – Gemini opened it’s doors on January 1st, 1993, lead by Ed Mlavsky, one of the key people in the history of the local high-tech. Ed’s story is an amazing one. Born and raised in the UK, he moved to the US and held key executive positions in companies like Tyco and others. He landed in Israel in 1979, almost by accident, planning to stay for no more than 2 years. Plans changed, and Ed lead the Bird… -
Gemini Round Table - Robert Swerling from Google
24 Jun 2009 | 6:48 amYesterday we hosted another round table event at Gemini. We have done these round tables in the past (Few examples include: Cloud Computing, Future of the Internet, and many many others). Our main guest today was Robert Swerling, New business development principal at Google. I never met Rob before, but it turned out he is a great guy, with a great sense of humor. He has also been an entrepreneur in the past, so he related to the crowd, which mostly consisted of current Internet entrepreneurs (Or in other words, young and very energetic). Overall we had a great turnout, with almost 40 people… -
IVA 2009 Business as Usual?
19 May 2009 | 1:30 pmMy last IVA conference was 3 years ago, back in Spring 2006. Since then, A lot has changed for me personally, mostly on the gain side (gain more companies, and probably more weight). Still, everything looked very familiar at the 2009 IVA today, and pretty much as expected. In other words, business as usual Why do I say that? It was pretty much the same ritual, entrepreneurs looking for money, VCs discussing existing deals and some new deals. We had guests from the US and Europe, journalists writing and taking pictures, and even some active twitter postings. Overall, the eco-system is holding… -
Nahum 2 Weeks After
13 May 2009 | 12:00 pmIt's been 2 weeks since the accident, and a week since the Funeral of Nahum and Nava, and I have been thinking about them a lot. Clearly, Nahum was not a close friend of mine. We interacted a lot around eSnips, and some point (late 2008) we spoke on a daily basis. However, there is much I didn't know about him. Still – his sudden death made me think about his legacy, and I now know that I have learned a lot from Nahum. Not all things can be written, but still, there are few things I took from him that will always be with me. First of all, Nahum looked at the business in a very unemotional… -
Back
12 May 2009 | 12:44 pmI left Silicon Valley on April 1st. I travelled through the Northwest, visiting California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada. I spent a few days in Atlanta (mostly shopping). I landed in Israel 2 weeks ago, and been running around trying to organize our new life, and get back into the work action. But today I decided to make it official. I am back. Going forward, it will be much easier to write about Israel Venture Capital 2.0.
-
Babbling VC
-
Are VC's "Eating their own dogfood?"
26 Jun 2009 | 1:59 amThis article from GigaOM reminded me of many discussions we've had internally. A panel of VC's were asked how many of them were actually using cloud based services to run their own businesses. Very few of them raised their hands, although I bet all of them said they were investing in the space. I would presume this is the case in regards to many firms as well as the many sectors they say they are investing in. For example, are all the Cleantech guys driving a Prius? I'd bet money that the majority actually have gas guzzlers in their garages. At the same time, the case is the same within my… -
Personal Metrics - Potentially a Space for Investment and Innovation
23 Jun 2009 | 3:07 amI twittered today about two interesting articles in Wired. Check em out here and here. Both have to do with technology to basically track every facet of your life, using available technology. We've all seen this creeping up on us. We have shoes, in combination with our iPods, telling us how far we've run. We have websites where we can track what we've eaten. We can basically figure out what mood we were in at what time of the time. And, most importantly, we can use this information to optimize our lives. I find myself tracking more and more in my day to day life. I can already use my iPhone… -
It's All About the Entrepreneur
22 Jun 2009 | 11:18 pmHad a chat this past weekend with one of the entrepreneurs whom we have already successfully backed twice. It was a rare opportunity to have a longer discussion about the start-up market and Germany in general when it comes to venture capital. Without going into detail, one of the points which was again hammered home was how it's all about the entrepreneur. Again and again, I read what makes start-ups successful. There are thousands of theories but at the end of the day, my experience and observation tells me that it's always the founders who make a company great. It's not the product or the… -
VC's Don't Sign NDA's
16 Jun 2009 | 3:14 amThis is basically all over the web if you search a bit. I thought it made sense to re-address it briefly here. VC's don't sign NDA's when looking at new investment targets. On the rare occasion that they do, it's an extreme exception to the rule. I basically rather skip seeing a deal than signing an NDA. The reason is pretty simple: there is no way for us to make sure we stick to the rules of the NDA and there is no way to manage the risk involved. We see too many deals and are invested in too many companies to not infringe somewhere upon an NDA. Hence, we would never put ourselves in the… -
Looking forward, we're all dumb money. Looking back, we're all smart money!
6 Jun 2009 | 3:28 amBoth Howard and Fred posted on this topic and I wanted to add my two cents to the discussion. Go ahead and read both Fred's initial post and then Howard's take. Basically, what I take away from these two posts is that you end up making a lot of your decisions based on your gut. Sure, you have experience and the hard work put into diligence to back up your gut feel but one way or another, it comes down to a gut decision. I've heard this often and it's been spoken highly of as well as completely bashed. Well think about it this way. It's inevitable that a certain number of people will get…
-
Buzztracker.com
-
Apple, Acer and...Arrington?
Michael Arrington, the founder of the TechCrunch blog, says he will begin selling the CrunchPad, a touch-screen tablet for Web surfing, later this summer. -
Freemium and Freeconomics
This week we saw the release of Chris Anderson's book Free and reviews from the New Yorker (Malcolm Gladwell) and the Financial Times. -
History's About To Change......
-
Dotcom Crash-era Startup Reanimates By Trending On Twitter
It's not often that Internet companies last 10 years, but Moonfruit in the UK has proved pretty resilient. -
Oh, So Now There Are No Green Shoots?
-
DataGrant Venture Capital News
-
La Jolla’s New Headquarters In Irvine
3 Jul 2009 | 3:45 amLa Jolla Group Inc. that makes cloth under O’Neill Clothing, Lost Clothing, Metal Mulisha and Rusty North America has opened its new headquarters in Irvine. The new corporate space is double La Jolla’s old headquarters in Irvine Spectrum and it features an advanced distribution center complete with 20 dock doors, more than a dozen high-tech conference rooms and meeting areas, a photo studio, a 2,000 sq. ft model retail store and an indoor skate park with quarter pipes and rail hits. La Jolla employs about 350 people in the office. La Jolla sells clothes inspired by surfing,… -
Drug Maker Spectrum’s Shares Fall On Stock Sale News
2 Jul 2009 | 3:40 amIrvine-based drug maker Spectrum Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s shares fell on Wednesday, reportedly after the drug maker was planning to sell shares of its stock and raise $21 million. The shares closed down 14 percent on a market value of $217 million as investors worried that the stock sale would dilute their stake in the company. Spectrum expects to sell 2.9 million shares and warrants to buy an additional 1.5 million shares of stock to institutional investors. Reportedly, Spectrum sold 1.7 million shares of its stock to institutional investors and received $10 million in proceeds just… -
Coastline Community College To Build Learning Center In Newport Beach
30 Jun 2009 | 2:10 amCoastline Community College plans to build a 60,000-square-foot learning center in Newport Beach. The preliminary estimates for the project are about $24 million. The new learning center will replace the college’s learning center in Costa Mesa. With its administrative offices in Fountain Valley, Coastline has learning centers in Costa Mesa, Garden Grove and Westminster. “It will be an aesthetic improvement in the community and bring a higher-education learning center to the city that will be a real asset,” said Kevin McElroy, vice president for administrative services… -
US Regulators Close MetroPacific Bank
29 Jun 2009 | 4:45 amThe U.S. Bank regulators closed Irvine, California-based MetroPacific Bank last Friday. This marked the 44th U.S. bank to fail this year, owing to the struggling economy and falling home prices. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., MetroPacific had $80 million in assets and $73 million in deposits, as of June 8. The failure is expected to cost the FDIC deposit insurance fund an estimated $29 million. Sunwest Bank, of Tustin, California, agreed to assume all deposits of MetroPacific, but those from brokers and virtually all of the bank’s assets. MetroPacific’s sole… -
Thousand Oaks-based Radio Station To Move To Irvine
26 Jun 2009 | 3:20 amA Thousand Oaks-based radio station, named “Jill FM” will move to Irvine, reports the Ventura County Star newspaper. KJHL-FM that broadcasts at 92.7 in the Conejo Valley as adult contemporary rock station Jill FM is slated to relocate to Orange County by late August or early September. The station is relocating its main offices and studios to Irvine, however they are keeping a small office and auxiliary studio in the Conejo Valley with five people for producing commercials and broadcasting in emergencies, said Bob Visotcky, station’s marketing manager. The station is likely…
-
DealBook
-
Repsol Acknowledges Offers for YPF, None Certain
3 Jul 2009 | 4:31 amRepsol YPF, the Spanish oil company, told the S.E.C. that it had received a number of proposals for its Argentine assets, though none of them firm offers, after reports of a bid from CNPC of China. -
Merkin Claims Investors Knew About Madoff
2 Jul 2009 | 5:45 pmJ. Ezra Merkin, whose investors lost more than $2 billion in Bernard L. Madoff's Ponzi scheme, is asserting that his clients knew their money was being invested with Mr. Madoff. -
F.D.I.C. Rules May Hinder Private Equity Bank Deals
2 Jul 2009 | 3:29 pmThe F.D.I.C. issued preliminary guidelines that analysts said could stymie further plans by private equity firms and hedge funds to purchase failed banks. -
No 'Bernie in the Morning' for Howard Stern
2 Jul 2009 | 2:11 pmA frequent guest on his show might nearly have escaped the sentencing with a recording, but she was arrested inside the courtroom. -
Marshals Seize Madoff Penthouse
2 Jul 2009 | 12:34 pmFederal marshals took possession of the $7 million Manhattan penthouse apartment of the convicted swindler Bernard L. Madoff, an action that has forced his wife Ruth to move.
-
Ann Arbor USA Blog
-
It’s Hard to Raise Money Today
30 Jun 2009 | 5:43 amUnfortunately there is not much new, or anything you don’t already know, about how difficult it is for a start-up to raise capital in 2009. That makes it even scarier for a corporate executive interested in transitioning from the BIG world to the SMALL world. Our friend Jim Price over at the Ross School at U of M was interviewed for the school newsletter. He discusses the differences between the two cultures and the paradigm shift these corporate managers need to make in their thinking about innovation and change. He confirms our belief in how best to pursue non-dilutive financing… -
Presentation on state incentives and capital programs
26 Jun 2009 | 9:05 amOn July 14 we will be presenting a program on the many programs funded by the state that put cash in the bank accounts of start-ups and early stage growth companies. When you look around at the incentives other states are providing technology and other innovative entrepreneurs you will be hard pressed to find one that has as many creative programs providing capital than Michigan. We have programs for university based commercialization opportunities, SBIR/STTR recipients, micro loans, tax incentives to collaborate with established companies, investment matches, and more. There are grants,… -
MLSIC Incubator Company Profile: Milad Pharmaceutical Consulting, LLC
22 Jun 2009 | 9:06 amMichigan Life Science and Innovation Center (MLSIC) — southeastern Michigan’s newest home for innovation-based business — welcomes Milad Pharmaceutical Consulting, LLC to its life science incubator. Milad offers clients pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic analysis. Pharmacodynamics explores what a drug does to the body, whereas pharmacokinetics explores what the body does to the drug. The company also offers clinical pharmacology expertise and drug development strategy. With 15 years of experience, Milad streamlines drug development to improve a business client’s efficiency in… -
Dexter Research & Axiobionics Expand in Ann Arbor, Create New Jobs
16 Jun 2009 | 10:21 amAxiobionics and Dexter Research are expanding in Ann Arbor with MEGA tax credits from the State of Michigan. approved today. Dexter Research, founded in 1977, is a leading global manufacturer of infrared thin-film thermopile and silicon detectors that are used in OEM products in the automotive, gas analysis, medical, military and defense industries. The company plans to expand at its current location and renovate existing lab environments and clean rooms to support high-tech microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). To support its expansion and renovations, Dexter Research will invest $3… -
SBIR Training
12 Jun 2009 | 10:29 amHaving trouble raising money or finding investment? If you are a start-up it is very hard to find capital today. It’s not impossible and I know of companies who have been able to close a small round of Angel investment recently, but it’s hard. We are telling all entrepreneurs these days they need to plan on ‘boot strapping’ their growth for awhile longer. Michigan has some great investment and incentive programs that can help intice investors, but for your own sanity, look at all options for funding your development and growth. For many technology based…
-
Venture Chronicles
-
Remembering Independence Day
4 Jul 2009 | 2:35 pmOn Independence Day I often think of Lincoln’s speech dedicating the battlefield cemetery at Gettysburg. Brief by any standard, Lincoln’s words derive their potency not from prose but from the substance of what Lincoln was affirming, in particular the final paragraph. “But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it… -
Facebook Connect Is A Huge Success
2 Jul 2009 | 12:55 pmI’d go with that assessment. Connect has made identity/authentication so much easier for third party app providers and at the same time has struck a serious blow to Google in that these relationships are not transactional and it is a zero sum game. With FB adoption where it is and so much momentum on the Connect initiative, there is little incentive for third party service and app providers to go with any alternatives. As much as Beacon was Facebook’s low point, that service’s replacement, Facebook Connect, is vaulting the company to new heights six months after its November… -
Protect the Abusers By Punishing the Rule Following Majority
2 Jul 2009 | 8:35 amThere’s a lot of this going around this year. An FDA panel’s recommendation to withdraw Vicodin, Percocet, and other opioid-plus-acetaminophen painkillers seems calculated to “sacrifice the interests of consumers who follow instructions for the sake of consumers who don’t”, says Jacob Sullum.[From “”If you keep track of what you’re taking, none of this is an issue for you”] The Federal government has pushed for mortgage bailouts for people who borrowed money they could not afford to pay back, as evidenced by Fannie’s recidivism rate of 70% on their HomeSaver… -
Why Did I Unfollow You
1 Jul 2009 | 4:18 pmI’ve been cleaning up my Twitter-roll and unfollowing a bunch of people, here’s why: 1) You don’t tweet. I don’t think anyone really needs to pump out 50 tweets a day to be interesting… but the corollary is true as well, if the only tweet you have posted in the last 2 months is “going for lunch, indian food” don’t be surprised if you get unfollowed. Twitter is a stream, not a feed. 2) You pimp your company, and then do it some more. A lot of people seem to think that Twitter exists solely for them to tweet out press releases about their company,… -
Tyrannosaurus Debt
1 Jul 2009 | 2:57 pmvia The Corner
-
Fred Destin
-
Vodafone femtocells inside your house soon ?
19 Jun 2009 | 9:17 amVodafone has just put up an unassuming little note on their website touting femtocells are "safe" wireless devices. The big picture is what interests me: "Vodafone is developing femtocells to enhance the connection to our network from inside our customers’ homes or small office locations." Given that they have been in trials with Alcatel and Huawei for a while, are they about to launch a UK femtocell product ? A Qatar deployment has been announced, but are we about to see the first UK operator deploying at home ? Wireless coverage is a real headache for 3G operators and… -
Seatwave raises $17M Series D led by Accel Partners
31 May 2009 | 3:21 pmSundayTimes brings home the good news: the team is back together! Sonali de Rycker, my former partner in crime, is back on the Seatwave board as lead investor on the Series D financing for Seatwave. Together with Mangrove Capital Partners, Fidelity Ventures and Adinvest, we are adding $17 million to the balance sheet. I am not saying we are the Harlem Globe Trotters of venture here or anything, but it's simply great to be back with Sonali on a project we have been working on together for over 3 years and for which she provided the original impetus. <--- Sonali (as seen by… -
Singularity: rise of the ignorant e-commerce geniuses and their lean machines
29 May 2009 | 6:58 amI think we know a few things about the future shape of startups by now. They will: Remain focused on core expertise and outsource everything else; Ignore customer focus groups and rely on tight expertise groups at their core to design differentiated products Launch fast and iterate at speed Be run according to facts and not opinions Test and iterate continuously Make decisions quickly and constantly Keep capital intensity low Beyond that, here is a fascinating phenomenon that I have seen happen recently and that seems to be getting prevalent: Ignorant founders do it better. Yes I am… -
Europe Media companies becoming extinct in the Digital World
22 May 2009 | 9:45 amBack in the day, Europe used to line a few of the most powerful media brands. But the digital migration is not kind to the old continent. Right now, with the exception of a handful of upstarts, Europe is essentially not existent beyond its own borders. Case in point: the latest Comscore lists just came out. G/M/S clearly top the list, followed by WikiMedia and Facebook. The first Chinese site (Baidu) clocks in at #15, whilst Sina corp is at #18. The first European sites are Orange and DailyMotion at 34 and 37 ... although if you add the traffic we get from… -
Showing Nipples is worse than denying the Holocaust
12 May 2009 | 3:28 amFacebook finds itself under attack today with another aggressive post from Arrington. The reason ? They will not ban Holocaust Denial groups (Facebook Remains Stubbornly Proud Of Position On Holocaust Denial). Explosive stuff. The argument against banning is that Facebook cannot get involved in what its users are saying, as a guarantor of free speech. The argument in favour is that clearly all Denialists I have ever listened to believe that humanity should finish what the Nazis started -- and there is the rub. I would not want to rank people's suffering…
-
Get Venture: Venture Made Transparent
-
Being International On July 4th
3 Jul 2009 | 9:06 amTomorrow is the anniversary of America's independence - a great time to be thinking about how to be a better citizen both at home and globally.With that spirit in mind, as of yesterday this blog has become internationalized. I added (per the recommendation of my rock star intern Wayne) Google translator. If you don't read English well, fear not - you can now read this blog in dozens of languages. Hopefully this content will be able to help entrepreneurs everywhere. -
Alex's News Picks: July 2nd
2 Jul 2009 | 7:54 amMourning Angels: What Went Wrong With Your Investment? (Case Study #1) The Joost Story: Sometimes, Good Projects Also Fail One graph to rule them all … Exit market warms with five IPOs in Q2 Cities Where They're Hiring (Slideshow) -
Not Everyone Can Be On The Board - Observer Rights
1 Jul 2009 | 4:29 amIn my post, Don't Let Your Board Get Too Crowded, I made the point that large boards can become cumbersome - early stage firms generally should limit the board to 5 to 7 directors. There are, however, situations where there are more than 7 people who feel entitled to having a seat on the board. This might arise when there are numerous founders, angels or VCs involved with the company. When this happens you will need to help your constituents negotiate against this constraint. One way to keep some of the involved parties engaged without giving them a board seat is to give them observer… -
Alex's News Picks: June 30th
30 Jun 2009 | 7:23 amTen unconventional wisdoms for funding startups Brazil: Venture Capital's Next Hotbed? Why Bit.ly may beat Digg StartupTicker Launches to Track Startup Activity Does a venture capitalist’s size — and network — matter? -
Penalties For Not Selecting An Independent
29 Jun 2009 | 5:15 amWhile identifying prospective independent board members will help make VCs slightly more comfortable investing in your startup, they may still be concerned about getting an independent approved.Selecting independent board members is often done by a process of mutual approval, whereby both the directors representing the management team and the investors must approve them. This selection process is designed in spirit to ensure that the independent director does not favor one side or the other (they should remain independent of the influences of either party). Nobody wants the other side to…
-
Will Price
-
Widgetbox Hits 100m Uniques
22 Jun 2009 | 8:28 amWidgetbox recently hit an important milestone - 100m monthly uniques as measured by Quantcast. To put 100m into perspective, Widgetbox is now the web's 19th largest network.It is tremendously rewarding to work on a technology platform that touches tens of millions of people a month, and Widgetbox's continued growth is huge validation that the atomization of the web and the rise of widgets as a valuable medium for content syndication, web page construction, and personalization continues apace.In addition, Widgetbox's focus on self-service solutions and the freemium model is driving tremendous… -
The Education of an American Dreamer
16 Jun 2009 | 5:10 pmIn 2005, I wrote about Pete Peterson's wonderful book, Running on Empty. I just finished is autobiography, The Education of An American Dreamer and highly recommend it.Running on Empty indicts both Republicans and Democrats for ignoring two troubling twin deficits - the the trade deficit and the budget deficit - which, he believes, may ultimately bankrupt the country. The hard-hitting book highlights the off-balance sheet, unfunded entitlement program liabilities that will fall due in the coming decades. With trillions of dollars in Medicaid, social security, and drug benefits promised to… -
There's No Need to Bat .900
6 Apr 2009 | 11:29 amThis Sunday's NYT included an interview with John Donahoe, eBay's CEO.When asked how his management style has evolved, he pointed to a lesson from an early mentor."Another part of my management style I learned from Kent Thiry, who was another one of my early bosses, and is now CEO of DaVita. I did not know it at the time, but I was suffering from a real fear of failure. Kent said, "you know John, your challenge is that you're trying to bat .900." And he said: "when you were in college, you got a lot of As. You could get 90 to 95 percent. When you took your first job as analyst, you were… -
Widgetbox Turns 3
1 Apr 2009 | 2:01 pmToday, Widgetbox turns three.On April 1, 2006, Ed Anuff, Dean Moses, and Giles Goodwin formally started Widgetbox.Here is a copy, thanks to archive.org, of the first front door.The site promised to "change how the world thinks about syndicating functionality on the web."And so it has!Since launch, Widgetbox has helped tens of thousands of publishers syndicate their content, service, and applications via widget technology. The company continues to ride the web widget syndication wave and we just finished our most successful month ever - serving over 740m widgets to over 89 million… -
Widgetbox Update
26 Mar 2009 | 2:34 pmOn Jan 22nd, Widgetbox launched its first subscription service, Blidget Pro.Since launch, CBS, eBay/Kijji, the Golden State Warriors, LA Lakers, the Michigan Times, Lockheed Martin, Steve Spangler Science, and hundreds of other content providers and marketers have become Widgetbox customers.Get the THE OFFICIAL SITE OF THE GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox!Get the Lakers.com RSS widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox!While the widgets are all unique, some important commonalities exist. Content providers, e-commerce companies, and brands…
-
VCball
-
Bookend Your Dream
25 Jun 2009 | 9:02 pmAs my friends and colleagues know, there are few times I am truly speechless. One is when the SEC orders it to be so during a "quiet period". The other is when I remember why I got into this entrepreneur backing VC business in the first place in 1998, after starting and selling my own tech business. Both are in full force today and the last few months due to the Medidata IPO which occurred today, so I will be brief. Medidata is a New York based startup pharma software company that I led the first institutional round on for my fund, Silicon Alley Venture Partners (now Greenhill SAVP)… -
Begin Right with a Prologue
10 May 2009 | 6:41 pmEarlier last week, I got back from a late company board call, and unwound by watching a dvr of Charlie Rose's interview of J.J. Abrams, the director of the new Star Trek movie, released Friday. The movie is a successful attempt to restart the Star Trek brand, by retelling the past; it's a prequel or prologue to the original Star Trek series. It's something VCs and entrepreneurs know all about as a source for inspiration. (I think Tim Draper is still hunting for a Holodeck to back.) Interestingly, JJ's core interview message was that in movies today, while technology driven special… -
Surf's Up! Swim with your clothes ON!
11 Feb 2009 | 8:59 amThe last couple weeks I've been obsessed with Warren Buffet's recent biography, Snowball. I am about halfway done but so far, it's been very interesting read, and I highly recommend it. One might ask: What does Warren Buffet have to do with venture capital and entreprenuerialism? Mr. Buffet is the king of what's known as "value" investing,investing in undervalued hard assets and cashflowing assets. As his wealth outgrew the opportunties, Buffet has goten deeper into branded products as he got older, like Coca Cola, McDonalds, American Express, etc, but he's still at heart a deep… -
Spend Imagination
16 Nov 2008 | 4:20 pmI have been getting some feedback on my prior post on "Peanutbuttering" which was on how to change direction in the current environment. It made me think a bit more and I came up with 6 more specific ways to do that from some of that feedback: 1/ add a new product line to serve the market that your currently serve (ie. start selling solar panels if you are in the home improvement business) 2/ take an existing product to a new or adjacent market or industry vertical 3/ upgrade management and staff team toward more hard ROI roles (sales vs administration) 4/ hire less staff, outsource more… -
Try Peanutbuttering
29 Oct 2008 | 6:56 pmLast week while I was coming back from a board meeting I ran into Andrew Duncan, a serial entrepreneur, and SVP at Scalent, a data center virtualization company. We were stuck at an airport, watching realtime the last Obama-McCain debate streaming on our computers' broadband cards (how fricking cool is that!), and got to talking about the debacle our country has gotten itself into. Then we got to talking about business strategy in these times. Andrew mentioned that Scalent not that long ago realized they couldn't rely on one industry vertical like the financial sector, and began …
-
VCinJerusalem
-
19 Comments And Counting: the "power" of Facebook
8 Jun 2009 | 1:34 amI have writing a blog now for almost 2 years. From time to time get comments, sometimes an email (or even an old fashioned phone call, usually from Elie Wurtman) complimenting me on a blog posting. The feedback is nice, reminds me that I am not only writing for myself (which I am) but also for others. While I am not the world's greatest fan of Facebook, or its bloated valuation, it definitely has created a public commons, a place where people feel free to express their opinions. Perhaps, like Wikipedia, it should be turned into a massive non-profit. Throw a search box in there, share the… -
Packing Up "Stuff"
26 May 2009 | 5:22 amIn part of my professional life I spend a lot time talking about, and dealing with, virtual stuff. Web sites, avatars, twitter feeds, blogs, etc., lots of virtual/digital stuff. In my "real" life I am overwhelmed just now by physical stuff. The real kind. Right now in the process of packing up our "stuff," in advance of our move to the Galil (don't mean to shock loyal readers of this blog, which obviously has Jerusalem in the title...more on this subject in posting to come!). Only a little bit into the process, and already can't believe how much stuff we actually have. Do we "need" all this… -
Fred, You got it right. Things will pick up again. Question is when...
6 May 2009 | 6:37 amFred Wilson gets it head on in his posting (see below) on the coming revival of the IPO market for "venture backed companies," which for me is a euphemism for young companies starting to show promise but not controlled by a single investor (who could simply live off profits/dividends). The exit path for investors, option holders, etc. has traditionally been IPO, and M&A (if acquired for cash or by a public company with liquid shares). I completely agree with Fred's analysis, but like many messianic prophecies, the question is not if, but when. On behalf of all of us in… -
Living History in the Moment
21 Apr 2009 | 6:57 amReading through reports of Ahmadinejad's appearance at the UN sponsored event in Geneva yesterday, and of course reflecting on Yom Hashoa and it's juxtaposition to Pesach, I thought back to another "world leader" who attempted to us the UN to whitewash his true face. I am talking about Kurt Waldheim, an unrepentant Nazi who managed to shield himself so well that he rose to the position of UN Secretary General and President of Austria before concerned members of the human race began to unmask him (I had the honor of being one of those concerned humans). On Pesach we are… -
If A Man is Killed in Jerusalem, Do We Care?
8 Apr 2009 | 5:00 amAs usual, the Israeli government and security apparatus, in their infinite wisdom, chose the day before Pesach to finally carry out the destruction order on the house of one of the "tractor" terrorists in the village of Tzur Bacher, just 2 kilometers from my house, on the Southern edge of Jerusalem. Putting the issue of the timing (I can't even begin to write about that), and even putting aside the proven uselessness of house demotion as a deterent against future terrorism (numerous ISRAELI GOVERNMENT panels have concluded hosue demolitions have zero deterant value), want to…
-
Red Herring
-
Startup Acquisitions Hit Ten-Year Low
1 Jul 2009 | 8:06 amThe number of startups purchased in the second quarter of this year by other companies hit its lowest point in 10 years, according to an NVCA report. -
LogMeIn Leaps 29 Percent in IPO
1 Jul 2009 | 5:55 amRaising $107 million in its initial public offering, venture-backed LogMeIn marks the sixth startup to stage a successful IPO this year. -
Wii Sports Resort Sells Big in Japan
30 Jun 2009 | 7:33 amThe next Wii Sports compilation sells over 350,000 in Japan in only 4 days. -
Global IT Spending to Plunge Lower
30 Jun 2009 | 7:01 amSpending on information technology worldwide is forecast to decline even lower than previously expected, according to an industry researcher. -
Facebook Friends New CFO
29 Jun 2009 | 8:56 amThe world's leading social-networking Web site announces it has picked a former Genentech exec as its new CFO.
-
Jason Ball's TechBytes
-
Opera reinvents the web?
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
7 May 2009 | 11:23 amToday 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… -
European Startups... Still alive and kicking
16 Apr 2009 | 11:56 amJust in case you thought innovation was dead (or maybe non-existent) in Europe, the guys over at Mashable have pulled together a short list of European startups. If you missed the The Next Web conference and are interested in monitoring the space, The Next Web is a great resource (with pretty swell twitter too). -
Five Steps to Music Nirvana
24 Mar 2009 | 12:11 pmStep 1. Get SpotifyStep 2. Sign up for an account at last.fmStep 3. Enable scrobbling inside the prefs pane in SpotifyStep 4. Check this site to find new artists based on your las.fm recommendations http://lutt.se/lastfm+spotify+new/Step 5. Enjoy your new found music nirvana -
The Future of Search
16 Mar 2009 | 12:20 pmI've been blogging about the search space for a couple of years, and this has to be one of the most promising developments I've seen: Wolfram Alpha. While Nova Spivak has an excellent overview of what Wolfram Alpha is trying to achieve, this will give you an idea:Where Google is a system for FINDING things that we as a civilization collectively publish, Wolfram Alpha is for COMPUTING answers to questions about what we as a civilization collectively know. It's the next step in the distribution of knowledge and intelligence around the world -- a new leap in the intelligence of…
-
Seth Levine's VC Adventure
-
The Hajj in 3 Minutes
30 Jun 2009 | 9:36 pmIn case you don’t have 12 hours to actually do the Colorado Hajj yourself, Walker has conveniently condensed the trip into a ~3 minute video. Enjoy! -
Venture capital is dead! Long live venture capital!
29 Jun 2009 | 9:37 pmDan Primack sited a study on PE Hub today that found that over 50% of VC professionals believe that the VC industry is “broken”. My response: WHO CARES? Seriously. It seems like the venture industry these days spends more time lamenting its future than actually working towards a future that’s different. And they couldn’t be more short term in their perspective. VC sentiment has started to become like consumer sentiment – something that moves on a monthly basis. Are we forgetting that our business is about spotting long term trends and funding business cycles that… -
Sounds of silence
29 Jun 2009 | 9:27 pmYears ago I wrote a post about M&A negotiations in which I stressed the importance of using listening in the negotiation process. Last week I was talking about the importance of listening with Micah (not in the context of M&A – just in the context of life in general) when he said to me that he felt that listening, like many things in business, was an acquired skill (i.e., the harder you practice it the better you get). I couldn’t agree more. There’s a real art to listening effectively and completely – one that’s harder to do effectively than it seems but can be pretty… -
Denver to the top of Mt. Evans take II
25 Jun 2009 | 5:21 pmLast year was my first joining Walker on his annual "Colorado Hajj" trip riding from the state capital building in Downtown Denver to the top of Mt. Evans (a 14,000ft mountain west of town) and back. It's a pretty insane ride, but extremely fun and the kind of challenge that once you've tried it, it's hard not to crave doing it again. This year's ride came significantly earlier in the season's than last year, meaning that legs and lungs were that much less prepared for the massive undertaking. Last year, Walker and I did the ride alone, but this year we had a gang of 8 to make things more… -
Foggy
23 Jun 2009 | 12:26 pmClear announced last night that they had shut down. The note on their website says the following: Clear Lanes Are No Longer Available. At 11:00 p.m. PST on June 22, 2009, Clear will cease operations. Clear's parent company, Verified Identity Pass, Inc. has been unable to negotiate an agreement with its senior creditor to continue operations. It goes on further to say that customers will not be able to receive a refund "because of it's financial condition". With over 250,000 customers (each paying between $100 and $200 annually) it's a little surprising to me that they couldn't figure…
-
Media VC
-
Wow! I knew Q1 was bad, but...
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
30 Apr 2009 | 3:24 pmIn 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
29 Apr 2009 | 10:18 pmToday 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… -
Financial Pornography
15 Dec 2008 | 12:53 pmIn his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce asserts his views on Proper and Improper Art. The latter according to Joyce appears in two styles: Didactic and Pornographic. He defines Pornographic Art as anything designed to inspire the observer to possess the object being rendered. All advertising art is by definition pornographic according to this construction. With the arrest of Bernard Madoff, we are seeing the financial equivalent of Joyce’s formulation, where the observer is the investor and the art is his forever-reliable fund and its wondrous returns. Investors… -
Dems: FCC Chairman Fails Congeniality Test
10 Dec 2008 | 10:20 amToday Network World, the Washington Post and several other outlets reported that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin failed to play nicely during his tenure and hurt the feelings of several members of the House Energy and Commerce committee and their staffs. The Committee report further accuses Martin of behaving in a political manner in executing the Commission's business. Finally, and most damming of all, he stands accused of not telegraphing every controversial policy priority far enough in advance to give opponents an opportunity to kill his initiatives. This would all be comical if…
-
Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
-
Solving the Peter Principle? One Word: "Darts"
3 Jul 2009 | 4:19 pmThere is a fun new working paper out from some Italian scientists that models the Peter Principle. The principle says, of course, that people climb in an organization until they reach their level of maximum incompetence. How would that happen? Well, the authors argue it should be expected in any organization where the following two conditions hold: The best member are rewarded with promotions Competence in a new position is not highly correlated with competence at a prior level The authors simulated the preceding in a pyramidal organizational form using a mathematical agent model. Here is the… -
When is a Failure Not a Failure? When It's an Iraq Oil Auction
3 Jul 2009 | 4:00 pmThe failed Iraq oilfield auctions this week have become a litmus test for Iraq, for oil analysts and for the ever-nervous global oil market. Iraqi officials refuse to see the disappearance of most bidders and the completion of only auction (with a single bidder) as a failure. Instead, they are hawking the crowd-pleasing idea that multinational oil companies are greedy mouth-breathers that balked at the hard bargain being driven by righteous Iraqis who control so much valuable, marginal oil supply. For their part, of course, oil companies think that the Iraqi oil auctioneers are nuts. The… -
QOTD: Sampling the Future
3 Jul 2009 | 3:05 pmThe following innocuous sampling theory comment from Andy Gelman set me thinking in a bunch of dimensions today. The question had to with how to handle statistical analysis when your sample population is the entire population, and Andy's answer is important and instructive: So, one way of framing the problem is to think of your "entire population" as a sample from a larger population, potentially including future cases. Precisely right, and a point that many naive hypothesis-generators might keep in mind, whether in financial markets or elsewhere. More here. -
Farmworkers: Go to New York City, Young Man
3 Jul 2009 | 2:59 pmI've been messing about with this tool that tries to compare supply and demand for various jobs by geography throughout the U.S. You have to be careful how you interpret it, as the following chart suggesting farmworkers (and animals (sic.)) should race to New York City and San Francisco shows, but it's still interesting. -
Wells Fargo Gives California July 10 Drop-Dead Date
3 Jul 2009 | 1:50 pmNice to have a firm date for when California must have a budget and stop shopping IOUs. Here is Wells Fargo from a release yesterday: Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC) said today it will accept registered warrants issued by the State of California from its retail and business customers for a limited time. It will begin accepting the registered warrants for deposit on July 2, 2009 and stop accepting them no later than July 10, 2009. “We’re very disappointed, as are many Californians, that California has taken the unfortunate step of issuing IOUs in lieu of its payments to some…
-
Globes
-
Cleantech co EmefCy in talks on large pharma plant pilot
2 Jul 2009 | 2:34 pmCEO Levy: EmefCy technology gives an economically feasible solution for highly concentrated and saline wastewater. -
Toyota considering Israeli high-tech investments
30 Jun 2009 | 7:02 pmA delegation from the Japanese automaker will visit Israel in two weeks to meet start-ups. -
Govt biotech fund tender set for September
30 Jun 2009 | 5:43 pmThe government hopes to raise up to NIS 1 billion for the new fund. -
Virtualization co Neebula raises $5 million
30 Jun 2009 | 1:38 pmNeebula was founded this year, which makes the investment unusual. -
Bioline jumps on reports of licensing agreement
30 Jun 2009 | 1:08 pmTalk of an impending licensing agreement also boosted trade of BiolineRX shares as its rights issue took place today.
-
BeyondVC
-
Lessons from Joost
1 Jul 2009 | 4:53 amI 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… -
I want it NOW, I want it REAL TIME
16 Jun 2009 | 8:14 amI was recently asked by a friend if he should get his son the new Nintendo DSi. This would be an upgrade from the current DS and also add the photo capability. As I thought about my own son's usage of the device, I said no. Once my son got an IPod Touch for music and now games, he never looked back. While he loves the music, the real reason is because of the App Store and ability to instantly download any game for free instantaneously. While the DSi does have a Wi-Fi connection, the IPod Touch is just so easy and frictionless. And as evidenced by the rise of the Internet and the… -
Occam's Razor and the current state of venture
2 Jun 2009 | 6:41 amI have made many posts in the past about focus and doing more with less, and as I continued on this path it reminded me of Occam's Razor, the idea that the simplest explanation to any problem is the best explanation. Of course Occam's Razor can get more complex but over the years it has been associated with the idea that "less is more." And when I apply this philosophy to the current state of venture, I can see many applications of this theory.From a VC fund perspective, there has been much discussion about how venture funds have become too large to deliver outsized returns. First with… -
Inspirational video for entrepreneurs
12 May 2009 | 7:47 amJonathan Kay from Grasshopper sent me a great video on entrepreneurship. First I love the inspirational message. Secondly, I like the use of a viral video to cleverly promote his virtual PBX numbers for entrepreneurs. Take a look and hopefully it will brighten up your day. What I love about the message is that entrepreneurship is not about making money but about pursuing a passion and doing your part to make great products to make the world a better place. OK-it may sound a little hokey but I remember during the bubble how entrepreneurs would come in talking about how much money they… -
Pioneers get arrows in their backs
29 Apr 2009 | 12:21 pmPioneers get arrows in their backs - I have experienced it firsthand from an active investor's viewpoint and written about it in the past. Being early in a market is great but being too early can be deadly. Just like the settlers in the westward migration, entrepreneurs who are too early will get arrows in their back. It doesn't matter if you have a rock star CEO (Bill Coleman who founded BEA) and $100mm of funding from some great investors. If you are too early and have to spend lots of money educating a market and get engaged in long protracted sales cycles and pilots, you are not…
-
Venture Capital and Angel Investor Questions
-
Angel Capital
4 Jul 2009 | 1:45 pmWhat is Angel Capital? How can I get a list of Angel Capital groups? Angel capital is money given to a company by Angel Investors (wealthy individuals). This is not institutional money, rather money earned (usually) by former executives of companies or by other means. It's cash from their own bank account. Its often known as risk capital because of the high risk in giving it to start-up companies. In fact, from what Angel Investors tell me and the audience at my Venture and Angel Events, they typically expect 60%+ of the companies that they invest in to go out of business!! They only expect… -
NYC Venture and Angel event May 13
4 Jul 2009 | 1:45 pmOur next early-stage VC and Angel event in NYC is on May 13, 2009 from 2-6pm! Moderator: John Hempill, Partner, Morrison & Foerster Speakers: Larry Chaityn, President, Keiretsu Forum NY Owen Davis, Managing Director, NYC Seed Matt Turck, Principal, Bloomberg Ventures Charlie Federman, Angel Investor, Crossbar Capital Kyle Harris, Managing Director, Liquidity Works, Inc. Amish Jani, Managing Director, FirstMark Capital The event is 50% filled already (as of 4/23). Go to: http://www.fundingpost.com/breakfast/reg1.asp?event=155&refer=iq for more details and to register. Got a Question, Ask it… -
Dallas VC and Angel Event - June 4 2009
4 Jul 2009 | 1:45 pmOur next Dallas, TX Venture Capital and Angel Investor event will be on Thursday, June 4, 2009. We will have 4 Angel Investor Groups and VC Funds participating: John Filla, Angel Investor, Houston Angel Network John C. Adler, General Partner, Silver Creek Ventures Dan Klein, Director, Hunt Ventures Ben Doherty, Angel Investor, The Fat Cat Club Go to: http://www.fundingpost.com/breakfast/reg1.asp?event=154&refer=iq for more details and to register. Got a Question, Ask it here -
Interview with 4 Investors -Listen anytime!
4 Jul 2009 | 1:45 pmWe recently interviewed 4 early-stage VCs and Angel Investors, who will be speaking at our November 3 and 4 conference in NYC. It was a Live call with over 1000 people listening in. Investors on the call: Ron Thompson, Corporate Angels; Ross Goldstein, DFJ Gotham Ventures; John Filla, Houston Angel Network; Warren Haber, Jr., Crossbar Capital More information on the Perfect Venture Conference in November with 50+ VCs and Angels: www.FundingPost.com/pvc Got a Question, Ask it here -
VCs setting your valuation
4 Jul 2009 | 1:45 pmIn response to the FundingPost email for the event on June 5, 2008: The event will focus on best practices in raising capital.... how they determine your valuation. This one caught my attention... you never let a VC tell you how to determine your valuation. Lol. It's like letting you home buyer tell you how much you should sell the house for!! I notice the tone of this e-mail focuses on Entrepreneur sucking up to VC. I am an entrepreneur and the way I see it is, it's a privilege for VCs to invest in my company that i bust my chops to make it happen (and not the other way around). VC and…
-
alarm:clock
-
Brought to You By:
2 Jul 2009 | 12:15 pm -
Shopping Site Gilt Group Raises $40M at $400M Val
2 Jul 2009 | 11:20 amNYC's private shopping firm Gilt Groupe has raised $40M from General Atlantic and Matrix Partners at a $400M valuation. Gilt Groupe provides access, by invitation only, to men’s, women’s and children’s fashion and luxury brands at discount prices. Each sale lasts 36 hours and features products from a single designer. Guilt is also set to launch a travel offering. Founded just two years ago, Gilt Group told Henry Blodget that it saw $25M in revenue last year and expects to do about $150M in revenue this year and plans on more than $500M next year. (We note that Blodget is taking some… -
AH Belo Joins $2M Investment In Real Estate Search Tool Sawbuck
2 Jul 2009 | 8:38 amAH Belo (NYSE: BLC) has led a $2M investment in online real estate brokerage Sawbuck Realty. Sawbuck is an online real estate broker that connects consumers with local real estate agents. Sawbuck takes a cut of any commissions. The company’s service only operates in the greater Washington D.C. area and Southern California but it plans to use the new funds to expand into additional markets, including North Texas and Rhode Island. The Dallas Morning News (an AH Belo site) will launch Sawbuck. We took the service for a spin and it does indeed seem to be well designed, although most visitors… -
Trench Angel Funded For Fantasty Football
2 Jul 2009 | 8:27 amSeattle's Trench Fantasy has raised an angel round of funding for its fantasy football online business. Backing comes, from of all places, a Sacramento electrical contractor called Elite Power. The $250K funding came about as the owner of Elite Power is high school buddies with Trenches founder and former Microsoft exec Eric Koivisto. There does not seem to be much different or special about the trenches site and sports is a poor performing ad sector that requires huge traffic numbers to earn any real dollars. Trenches suggests that fantasy players are open to playing on multiple sites and we… -
StrongMail Buys Social Media Marketing's PopularMedia
1 Jul 2009 | 8:52 amRedwood City-based StrongMail has acquired San Francisco-based PopularMedia. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. PopularMedia was venture backed with $18M by Sequoia Capital, Steamboat Ventures, and DAG Ventures. PopularMedia sells a product to advertisers and publishers that it claims multiply the impact of their online ad campaigns and significantly increase user engagement by wrapping standard online display ad units with social media. The deal gives StrongMail's 450 customers a way to publish then track content on social media sites. Marketers will have an option to send…
-
VC Cafe
-
In Israel Next Week
3 Jul 2009 | 10:40 amI will be in Israel next week on vacation. While I won’t be holding a Start up Roundtable this time around, I will be happy to casually meet for coffee in Tel Aviv on Sunday July 12th. I would love to hear original ideas and talk to people with passion. If you have something interesting to discuss and you’d like to meet, please ping me on Twitter at @ediggs or contact me through VC Cafe. -
Kampyle Adds User Feedback To Google Analytics (CEO Interview)
30 Jun 2009 | 12:29 amShopping websites are extremely sensitive to deserted shopping carts. In some cases, 60-70% of their users would add items to their cart but suddenly close the window – leaving the site owner with little information about their reasons for leaving and more importantly, without revenue. Kampyle, the Israeli start up developing SaaS feedback analytics, offers an easy integration of fully-branded and customizable feedback forms for website owners. The feedback forms are displayed to the user either by clicking on a feedback button, or automatically pop up when the user is leaving the… -
VMWare Behind You: Neebula Raises $5 Million for Virtualization Software
29 Jun 2009 | 2:34 pmNeebula Systems, developer of management tools for virtual computer environments, has raised a first round of $5 million for from Genesis Partners and Pitango Venture Capital. Jonathan Saacks, a partner at Genesis, joined the company’s board as a result of the investment. Neebula was founded in 2009, and still doesn’t seem to have a website. One explanation for this unusual early stage investment at a time when most first round companies are struggling to raise funding is the founding team. Neebula was co-founded by CEO Yuval Cohen, the former CEO of Marvell Israel and the… -
Exclusive: TodaCell Raises $1 Million for Mobile Ad Optimization Platform (Interview with CEO Moshe Vaknin)
26 Jun 2009 | 1:34 amToda!cell (www.todacell.com), an Israeli ad optimization platform, has raised an A round of $1 million led by Afterdox (see previous coverage on VC Cafe) the Fore Group and several other angels. The company had previously raised an undisclosed seed round, when it was founded in March 2007. TodaCell’s platform matches premium mobile ad campaigns with users, based on territory, carrier, timing, user response, pricing and other parameters. The company is currently present in Israel and Tokyo and plans to expand to the US next. VC Cafe had a chance to get some comments from CEO Moshe… -
Today Boxee Starts Competing with Hulu, On Windows
24 Jun 2009 | 2:09 pmWe told you about Boxee’s app dev challenge a few weeks ago, where 40 apps were developed with great innovation. Yesterday the results have been unveiled in San Francisco but the big winner was… Boxee! The Israeli media center start up is loved by the open source development community and is about to roll out some major league upgrades today, including (drum roll please…) Boxee for Windows. The Windows version not only opens Boxee to a much larger market, but also gets the media center software into the living room. Unlike Apple TV users, most media center PC users hook up…
-
Silicon Alley Insider
-
CHARTS OF THE WEEK: Google Isn't As Big Or "Helpful" As You Think
4 Jul 2009 | 6:31 amIn case you missed them, here's this week's CHART OF THE DAY highlights. CHART OF THE DAY: Search Ads Aren't As "Helpful" As Google Suggests CHART OF THE DAY: See, Google's Not That Big After All! CHART OF THE DAY: A Small Payment For A Huge Upgrade Can Be A Barrier CHART OF THE DAY: People Spend Less Time On Newspaper Sites Follow the Chart Of The Day on Twitter: www.twitter.com/chartoftheday Get This Delivered To Your Inbox You can get this dropped in your inbox every afternoon as The Chart Of The Day. It's a simple. It's convenient. It's free. All we need is your email address (though we'd… -
Harvard Fails Jobs And Adobe Shuts Down -- This Week's Most Popular Posts
4 Jul 2009 | 6:20 amZuckerberg Takes The Gates Approach To Twitter 10 Blogs AOL Could Buy Tomorrow Malcolm Gladwell: Chris Anderson Is Wrong About "Free" Adobe Shuts Down For A Week To Survive The Recession Hats Off To Microsoft For Adding Twitter Search To Bing! Uh-Oh: Apple's New iPhone 3G S Has An Overheating Problem Michael Jackson's Will Harvard Business School Gives Steve Jobs An "F" US Magazine Screws The Pooch Gilt Groupe Raising $40 Million At A Huge Valuation Join the conversation about this story » -
The Year The Newspaper Died
4 Jul 2009 | 4:00 amAs you may have noticed, newspapers have had a rough 2009. But you may not quite appreciate the magnitude of the collapse. So far this year: 105 newspapers have been shuttered. 10,000 newspaper jobs have been lost. Print ad sales fell 30% in Q1 '09. 23 of the top 25 newspapers reported circulation declines between 7% and 20%. What happened? Read the rest of this story » -
Dailymotion CEO Demoted After 3 Months
3 Jul 2009 | 3:27 pmCedric Tournay will replace Ian Brotherston as DailyMotion CEO, reports Mediapost. Ian got the job less than three months ago. Tournay joins Dailymotion from Doctissimo, one of Europe's largest health and medical websites. Brotherston will continue with the company as of EVP International Strategy. Read the rest of this story » -
Hackers Jailbreak The iPhone 3GS
3 Jul 2009 | 3:12 pmThe iPhone 3GS jailbreaking app Purplera1n is here, reports CNET. Teenage hacker Geroge Hotz, who was first unlocked the iPhone, released Purplera1n yesterday in a blog post titled "I make it ra1n." Technicallly, this is bad news for AT&T and Apple -- for AT&T (T), since people can use their jailbroken on any phone service, and for Apple (AAPL) because users won't have to go to the app store to buy add new ones to their jailbroken phones. Read the rest of this story »
-
The Private Equity Data Center Buzz
-
Private Company Valuations: CrossLoop, Inc.
1 Jul 2009 | 5:00 pmThere have been a few IPOs in the last few months. In the spirit of the IPO for LogMeIn.com, this week we are going to take a look at a similar company that is still in the early stages of development. CrossLoop, Inc. is headquartered in Monterey, CA. The company's product is a free desktop sharing software application which allows users to remotely collaborate with others over the Internet. The company closed a Series B round in late 2008 for approximately $6 MM. Some of the participants in the round were Venrock Associates and El Dorado Ventures. The Deal Terms for this latest round were: -
Private Company Valuations: AdMob, Inc.
23 Jun 2009 | 5:00 pmAd revenue, both online and mobile, is still a viable part of income for many companies. There are some very large players in this market, and with the influx of apps for the iPhone and other mobile devices, this seems to remain a volatile sector. This week we are going to take a look at one of the companies involved in the mobile advertising sector. Admob, Inc. was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in San Mateo, California. The company states on its website that it is "...the world's largest mobile advertising marketplace." Earlier this year in a blog posting, Omar Hamoui the CEO &… -
Private Company Valuations: Ze-gen, Inc.
17 Jun 2009 | 5:00 pmWhere can all the waste go? Waste that is the result of construction and demolition projects. Waste that would, in the past, sit in a landfill and over time decay, or not, depending on what it was. There are several new companies that have seized opportunity and created the technology to make the most of this waste. This week we are going to take a look at one of these companies and their latest round of financing. -
Private Company Valuations: Green Dot Corp.
10 Jun 2009 | 5:00 pmThere has been an increase in the methods of payment for goods. One of the popular methods is the prepaid debit card. Ever wondered where they come from or how long they have been around? Green Dot Corporation states on their website that they invented the retail prepaid debit card service. There have been many followers, and more and more companies are issuing rebates and credits to customers via this method of payment. I recently received one from a phone carrier for a rebate on a new phone. This week we are going to take a look at Green Dot Corporation's latest round of financing. -
Private Company Valuations: Deeya Energy, Inc.
3 Jun 2009 | 5:00 pmClean Technology is still receiving a fair amount of money from investors this year. Although we are not seeing as many $100 MM investments into a single company, there are still several higher 8 digit deals being done. This week we are going to take a look at one of these Clean Technology companies that has received one of the largest investments, so far this year, for this sector.
-
DubaiBeat.com
-
MENA Infrastructure Fund acquires stake in UPC for $26.5 million
4 Jul 2009 | 5:34 amMENA Infrastructure Fund, the infrastructure equity fund sponsored by HSBC, Waha Capital and Dubai International Capital, has acquired 32.8% of United Power Company UPC) for $26.5 million. UPC is listed on the Muscat Securities Market, with 40% of its equity capital being publicly traded. MENA Infrastructure Fund has acquired 32.8% of the founders' shareholding in the company from GDF Suez, the French energy giant MENA Infrastructure Fund is a $500m infrastructure equity fund established in 2006. At its first close in September 2007, it raised commitments aggregating $300m. (Our directory of… -
Presentation - Implications of a PE/VC investment on a company
2 Jul 2009 | 6:37 amSo you have closed the deal, or thinking about closing a deal with a Venture Capital or Private Equity investor for your firm. What are the implications of a PE/VC investment on a company? Here is a good presentation from the recent DIFC Private Equity Forum by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Enjoy! -
Middle East Business of a Giant Pharma Acquired for $23.2 million
2 Jul 2009 | 4:23 amIn a deal between two multi-billion dollar companies, a part of the Middle East business of one large pharmaceutical giant changed hand to another giant pharma. GlaxoSmithKline plc (GSK), the world's third largest pharmaceutical company, today announced that it has acquired the branded generics business of Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Libya and Yemen for a cash consideration of $23.2m. The reason: "extending its product portfolio in the Middle East and North Africa and accelerating growth in emerging markets". Developed markets are quiet and everyone wants a part of… -
Silicon Valley company acquired by Arabic language specialist Sakhr Software
1 Jul 2009 | 7:12 amTechCrunch, the leading tech blog, starts its headline with "Say What?" and continues with "Bet you didn’t see this one coming". Sakhr Software, the Arabic language tech specialists just acquired the Silicon Valley based company Dial Directions for an undisclosed amount. Sakhr Software was established in Kuwait in 1982 as an affiliate of Alalamiah Group. They have presence in US through Sakhr Software USA which itself dates back to 1992 and a company called Digitek. Long story, but the story of a successful Middle Eastern company now shopping in the US. (Check out this cool video as an… -
Abu Dhabi group buys 51% stake in Atlantis and Ski Dubai Contractor
30 Jun 2009 | 8:32 amWouldn't a company that has been behind themed construction projects like Madinat Jumeirah, Ski Dubai and Atlantis Dubai be a nice target for investment? Well, it just received some. Construction Week Online just reported that Abu Dhabi based ANC Holdings and its partner, Flag Holdings, have together bought up a controlling 51% stake in themed contractor Amusement Whitewater AWW. (The amount is not yet disclosed. They are reporting that they have "put aside up to US $272 million for the development of themed projects over the next 12 months". Big money!) They used to make good money as well:…
-
VentureDig
-
Effeciency and Effectiveness
4 Jul 2009 | 5:00 amI remember it as if it were yesterday. In fact, I probably will never forget it. It was January 2007 and I was sitting in a business school class titled, “Management 480: Behavioral Organization Management.” It was the usual academic, qualitative jargon that students just ate up. I did, too, at the time. And my grade showed it. The typical lessons included organization chart structures, conflict management and a-type conflict (affective, emotional conflict) vs. c-type conflict (cognitive, logic-based conflict). We were in the middle of a lesson that focused on the theoretical… -
Visualization of Bill Gross’ July 2009 Investment Outlook: “Bon” or “Non” Appétit?
2 Jul 2009 | 8:03 amBill Gross, Managing Director at PIMCO, released July’s Investment Outlook. Bill Gross’ articles are one of the most entertaining and informative pieces on the market. Obviously, I strongly recommend reading the entire piece here. To summarize, though, Gross reasons that “Greed will come again. But for now, the trend is the other way and it promises to persist for a generation at a minimum.” To also help you visualize the article, I created the depiction below, which is quite interesting (click the image to enlarge): -
“Yazzem” — Microblogging With a Topical Twist
2 Jul 2009 | 5:00 amMicrotopicing website that allows each member to create topics that they enjoy or would like to talk about http://www.yazzem.com One line pitch Yazzem is a Microtopicing website that allows each member to create topics that they enjoy or would like to talk about. Team The Yazzem team consists of two 14 year olds one from Michigan and the other from New York. Together they have 6+ years with web designing and development. Pain Until Yazzem there was no web service that allowed people to share their thoughts about anything that interests them by starting and joining topics. Solution Yazzem is… -
The New Venture Capital Model
1 Jul 2009 | 9:11 amAs you probably know, a wiki is an unusual communication mechanism that enables the organization of contributions to be edited in addition to the content itself. The current VC model is closed and to VC’s, their process cannot be edited. Each VC is running on a different program. To counteract this, I wrote about the idea of a Wiki Fund a while back (link here). Unlike the current venture capital model, the Wiki Fund proposes to open up these lines of communication. Essentially, creating a Stock Market For Startups. In the past couple of months, I’m excited to tell you that this idea has… -
A Big Picture Look at Venture Capital’s Transformation
29 Jun 2009 | 9:58 amIt seems that every other day there’s a new story that surfaces regarding the venture capital model. The argument can range from the completely pessimistic point: “Venture capital is dead,” to an optimistic look, “Venture capital isn’t dead, entrepreneurs just aren’t performing.” Usually the optimistic view is hammered with data and angry individuals declaring this view absurd. Really, no one knows what’s going to happen. However, there are some stealth and early stage models soon to be released that will forever change the venture capital model…
-
Unstructured Thoughts by Taylor Davidson
-
Can nuanced discourse compete against “strategy by soundbite”?
3 Jul 2009 | 12:21 amSimplified strategies that can be condensed and packaged into soundbites spread into society’s collective conscious and accepted wisdom far faster than nuanced, complex ideas under the economics of today’s media. While the clamor for heuristics, stereotypes and easy answers isn’t new, if we demand thoughtful discourse and nuanced answers can we reshape the economics of media? I’m less interested in Chris Anderson’s new book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” than I am over the actual debate over the concept. If you want to dig into the debate over… -
Change or be changed.
30 Jun 2009 | 1:45 amIt’s all about the numbers, Las Vegas, Nevada, 2004 On change, systems, influences, uncertainty and defining goals… Seth Godin: I hope all of you are doing something that makes your grandparents uncomfortable (via Jay Parkinson, who is working on something making many grandparents uncomfortable.) Zoë Westhof (@zoewesthof), Why I’m Not Realistic: I choose to embrace change and uncertainty, because I don’t think any of us can rely on certainty anymore. If realistic means sticking to the conventions that are quickly falling into irrelevance, then I choose to be unrealistic. -
Transcript, Penny For Your Thoughts with Umair Haque
29 Jun 2009 | 5:27 pmContinuing with Umair101… Video: Sander Duivestein, Penny For Your Thoughts with Umair Haque from the VINT Symposium. Since I couldn’t find a transcript, I decided to do it myself; click here to view the video (embedding not allowed); or read my transcript below (all errors are mine, not Umair’s…) Penny For Your Thoughts – Umair Haque from Sander Duivestein on Vimeo. Umair Haque: What’s really different about the world today is the fact that we’re much more interconnected. And when we’re more interconnected, we’re more interdependent. And… -
Privacy is a cultural context, not an immutable law.
29 Jun 2009 | 2:31 amWatching, Boston, Massachusetts, 2006 A couple related notes on privacy: Joseph Bonneau on The Economics of Privacy on Social Networks: The most interesting story we found though was how sites consistently hid any mention of privacy, until we visited the privacy policies where they provided paid privacy seals and strong reassurances about how important privacy is. We developed a novel economic explanation for this: sites appear to craft two different messages for two different populations. Most users care about privacy but don’t think about it in day-to-day life. Sites take care to avoid… -
“You never want to be an agenda item at a meeting to which you’re not invited.”
25 Jun 2009 | 5:55 amCorner, Arlington, Virginia, 2009 Disparate thoughts… Craig Calcaterra: “One of the most important things I’ve learned in my life is that you never want to be an agenda item at a meeting to which you’re not invited.” (via Rob Neyer) Jan Chipchase, Practices around Privacy, 10 practices related to mobile phone privacy from around the world: 8. Increasingly the choice of whether to adopt, or opt-in to a technology is one of whether to opt-out of society. Consider: how many “meetings” are you missing because you’re not engaging? Geoff Manaugh,…
-
Don't Go South
-
5 Lifelines For Your Startup
19 Jun 2009 | 2:40 pmNorth was recently quoted dropping some knowledge in the article, 5 Lifelines For You Startup on Entrepreneur.com. Here’s an excerpt: Evan Solida was stuck. Solida, founder of Cerevellum, which sells digital rearview mirrors for bicycles, had posted his business plan on several websites promising to connect him with investors in exchange for a few hundred dollars. Time passed. Investors never came. It’s a familiar dilemma for many startup companies: Solida knew he needed help but didn’t know where to find it. “You almost feel like you’re at a used car… -
FAIL: 12 WAYS TO BLOW YOUR INVESTOR PITCH
12 Jun 2009 | 4:35 pmWhile there’s no shortage of reading about “how to pitch for funding”, from what we can tell, a lot of what’s written isn’t soaking in too well. So we thought we’d try a more unconventional approach with our latest constructive prose. Hot of the presses is FAIL: 12 Ways To Blow Your Investor Pitch. Our team shares our collective insights and experiences we’ve accumulated over the years to point out the noteworthy wipeouts, awkward moments, and empty handshakes of new venture pitching. By first revealing what doesn’t work, this quick read hopes to activate the other side of… -
Congrats DealBase!
5 May 2009 | 11:44 amDealBase.com, an online database devoted to aggregating hotel deals and packages, has secured $1 million in Series A funding from angel investors including Russ Siegelman, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Read the rest of the good news on TechCrunch. The entire North team would like to congratulate Sam Shank, CEO of DealBase.com, as Sam and his team went through our Venture 360 due diligence process earlier this year. Cheers guys. Well done! -
Venture 360 Analysis Software & Report Output
29 Apr 2009 | 1:17 pmSneak Peek It’s time we let everyone get a glimpse of what we’ve been working so hard on for the past few months. This is the official roll-out of the new software tool used by our in-house analyst team which, due to popular demand, is now available for use by interested investment groups. If you’re looking to take a test drive, shoot a note to northventure360@dontgosouth.com, and we’d be happy to give you the keys. -
Join Us
28 Apr 2009 | 3:57 pmCalling all Potential MBA Interns North is rapidly expanding and is currently seeking smart, hard working, 1st year MBA interns as potential additions to our team of superheros. Below is a formal job description. Early-Stage Venture Analyst – MBA Internship Position North is seeking top MBA talent to provide support for our analyst team. Our interns will work closely with our team of analysts and will be exposed to a broad range of responsibilities in the venture analysis process. This is a highly selective role and top summer interns will potentially be brought on as full-time analysts…
-
Continuations
-
Board Effectiveness Tip #2: Board Package
2 Jul 2009 | 6:34 amThe thought of putting together a board package seems to instill a lot of apprehension in founders/management of startups. That’s a shame, because — if done right — the board package will create hardly any additional work and will be an incredibly useful tool not just for making the board effective but also for managing the company. Here are some suggestions that may help: 1. Choose a format and order and stick with it. Good to start with a “what’s working and what is not”, together with or followed by KPIs. 2. Pick no more than one big topic to go into detail on. This could be… -
Mobile (App) Development: Android's Missed Opportunity?
1 Jul 2009 | 4:11 amThe post on the USV blog about the challenge of creating native mobile apps (meaning ones that can on exist on the mobile platform) has created a lively discussion with by now over 60 comments. A good chunk of that discussion was about the relative merits of just sticking with the mobile browser versus developing apps. For instance, Fred observes: I’m a big fan of the mobile browser too but it does seem like the prevailing delivery package today is the mobile app, not the browser. That and a conversation yesterday at lunch got me thinking: Why doesn’t Android make the browser an equal… -
The Continuing Confusion About Free
30 Jun 2009 | 4:51 amLast night I read Malcolm Gladwell’s review in the New Yorker of Chris Anderson’s new book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” followed by Chris Andersons’s response on his blog. I have not yet read the book, so my initial reaction is based on and to Gladwell’s review: there seems to be profound and ongoing confusion about critical economic concepts including marginal and total cost, marginal and total benefit, and price. I tried to clarify these in my posts on the Economics of Abundance and on Name-Your-Price for Digital Goods. Since Youtube is apparently one of the… -
The Mobile Challenge
29 Jun 2009 | 3:20 amToday’s post is over at the Union Square Ventures site on the challenge of creating native mobile applications. We are fascinated with the disruption that is taking place in mobile. The big question is what “native” applications will emerge based on the unique technical capabilities of the mobile platform and the emerging behaviors around those capabilities. Head on over there to read some of our early thinking. There are likely to be some big opportunites for startups! -
Heyzap Introduces Payments
26 Jun 2009 | 4:36 amThe team at Heyzap yesterday launched payments to enable virtual goods for Flash games. This is really neat because it is exactly the kind of thing that is difficult to do for an individual game developer or publisher but delivers value to the whole system. By difficult I don’t mean from a technical perspective, but from a social and network perspective. For long-tail casual games, endusers would not necessarily trust an individual game with a payment and the incentive to buy currency that can only be used in a single game is much smaller as you are much more likely to tire of a…
-
Venture Capital Firms - VCgate
-
VC Firms, Goldman Sachs & Company and Malaysia’s Khazanah Nasional Berhad Invest $108 Million in Series D Funding for Small Bone Innovations, Inc.
30 Jun 2009 | 7:32 amOrthopedics innovator, Small Bone Innovations, Inc. has completed a whopping $108 million in series D funding from Goldman Sachs & Company and Malaysia’s government vc arm, Khazana Nasional Berhad providing the investment. This funding comes on the heels of a $36 million in series C funding from Viscogliosi Brothers and Trevi Health Ventures in 2008, raising a total of $144 million for Small Bone Innovations. Small Bone’s existing investors also participated in the series D funding. Existing investors include Trevi Health Ventures, NGN Capital, 3i Group, and TGap Ventures. This… -
VC Arm of Volvo Leads $14 Million Investment in Series B Funding for SDCmaterials, Inc.
30 Jun 2009 | 7:26 amSDCmaterials, Inc. has announced today that it has closed $14 million in series B funding with Volvo Technology Transfer leading the funding. VTT is the venture arm of Swedish car maker, Volvo and it manly invests in companies that Volvo has an interest in. VTT also has an industrial arm together with Volvo, manufacturing trucks, and VTT is the second largest truck maker in the world. Other investors participating in this round of funding include Invus Financial Advisors, BASF Venture Capital GmbH., and other private investors. SDCmaterials is a company that is based in Temple, Arizona and… -
Investors, Soffinova Partners and Scottish Equity Partners Invest Over $22 Million in Series B Funding for Stentys
29 Jun 2009 | 9:23 amBased in Paris, France, a pioneer in medical devices pertaining to cardiac stents, Stentys has closed over $22 million in series B funding with Soffinova Partners and Scottish Equity Partners, or SEP leading the funding. During this round of funding, Stentys also acquired a new investor, Crédit Agricole Private Equity. Founded in 2006, Stentys is a medical device company that is devoted to develop the next generation of stents to treat acute myocardial infarction and coronary artery bifurcations. Stentys has its headquarters in Paris, but it also has a presence in the United States, with… -
Menlo Ventures Leads $22 Million in Series C Funding for ParAccel
29 Jun 2009 | 9:20 amBased in Cupertino, California, analytic database parallel provider, ParAccel announced today that it had just received $22 million in series C funding from Menlo Ventures. As part of the agreement with this round of funding, Menlo Ventures managing partner, John W. Jarve will join the company’s board of directors. Mr. Jarve has over 25 years of experience in the industry to the already top-noched board of directors. ParAccel is a company that has developed and is the provider of the ParAccel Analytic Database, which is a high-speed parallel for data warehousing. Besides its headquarters in… -
VC Firm, Lightspeed Venture Partners Invest $30 Million Series D Funding for MailExpress
26 Jun 2009 | 12:58 amBased in Atlanta, Georgia, large private small parcel and non-letter currier, MailExpress announced that it had secured a whopping $30 million in series D funding with Lightspeed Venture Partners leading the funding round. Other vc firms that also participated in this round of funding include CMEA Capital, Logispring, XAnge Capital, and Adams Street Partners. MailExpress is one of the largest private curriers and provides formidable competition for the United States’ other major curriers, such as UPS and FedEx. MailExpress is a currier and shipping company that mainly delivers large…
