BLOG STARTUPS, VENTURE AND THE TECH BUSINESS
June 16 2010
by Scott Johnson
iPhone 4.0: This Must Be Important
I just read that early iPhone 4.0 sales are ahead of 3Gs sales. This is impressive, but I am not surprised. Anecdotally, I am hearing that iPhone owners all want this phone immediately. This is not just from well-heeled VCs. It is from babysitters and people in line at the bagel store. And it is ...
June 11 2010
by Todd Hixon
The View From The Dark Side #2: Participating Preferred
Entrepreneurs often dislike participating preferred stock. It can be a contentious term at investment time, and I often sense resentment at exit time when investors “get $XX million off the top”. “Participating preferred” refers to convertible preferred stock with a special liquidation right: preferred stock holders receive return of their investment, and then they share ...
June 11 2010
by Scott Johnson
Arrogant Companies
If there is one thing that success inexorably leads to in a company culture, it is arrogance. Arrogance in turn leads to complacency, blindness to threats and a loss of touch with reality. Further, it motivates your competitors to join forces against you. I believe arrogance is a big part of why it is so ...
May 26 2010
by Scott Johnson
Brand Advertisers: Not Stupid At All
On the face of it, when you look at old vs new media ad spend, the big dollars go to the old media while the bulk of the time and attention goes to new media. “The advertisers must be crazy or stupid or both” is the quick, logical conclusion to this paradox. Not true!
May 19 2010
by Todd Hixon
Venture Lite
The “Cloud” and other forces have slashed the cost of starting an IT company and produced a surge in seed investing. We discussed this in a segment of our annual meeting last week, which was attended by professional limited partners (“LPs”), individual LPs, and entrepreneurs, as well as the NAV partners. There was strong energy ...
May 18 2010
by Geoff Mamlet
All You Need Are Jobs, Jobs, Jobs Are All You Need
All you need are jobs, all you need are jobs, All you need are jobs, jobs, jobs are all you need. My apologies to the Beatles, but the tune that the Congress is singing in Washington these days is really off. With the official unemployment rate verging on 10%, you would think that Congress would ...
May 9 2010
by John Backus
Facebook: Every Website is now a Facebook App
Web 3.0 has arrived. Facebook changed the entire character of the Internet on April 21, 2010. Come on! A little “like” button? What could be more trivial? Let me explain. Before 4/21/10 there was Facebook. And there was the web. They did not intersect. Oh, sure, you could use your Facebook credentials to log on ...
April 23 2010
by Todd Hixon
The View From The Dark Side: #1, Why VCs Are Greedy
[This is the first of a series of posts that attempt to explain how the venture capital business looks from the VC side.] VCs are often characterized as greedy, eg: “vulture capitalists” or (the more contemporary phrase) “not founder friendly”. Like any broad characterization, there is truth and untruth here, and good and bad reasons ...
April 22 2010
by Thanasis Delistathis
Is Facebook trying to take over the internet? Implications for startups
Facebook announced some big initiatives at their developers’ conference yesterday and they have big implications for the internet and internet startups. Facebook has already surpassed 400 million users and is becoming the defacto social networking site for the world. It’s now the world’s virtual town square where we all get to hang out with our ...
April 16 2010
by Thanasis Delistathis
iPad: a revolution in personal media consumption
After getting a chance to play with it for a couple of weeks, I believe this is the dawn of another computing revolution, centered around new ways to consume media.
