BLOG STARTUPS, VENTURE AND THE TECH BUSINESS
Posts Tagged ‘Information Technology’
April 12 2012
by Scott Johnson
On Selling Your Company
The most important financial decision you will ever make as an entrepreneur is when to sell your company. What amount of money to raise at what price from whom pales in comparison. For venture capital firms, picking companies that will grow fast is much easier than deciding when to sell them. Misjudging exit timing can ...
March 1 2012
by Scott Johnson
Why I Invested in YieldBot
YieldBot takes the largest advertising demand pool on the internet (search), and plugs it into publisher inventory, the largest source of supply. Advertisers add YieldBot to their keyword buys, and YieldBot delivers high performing, intent driven clicks, just like a search engine. They do this with exceedingly clever analytics that reveal intent, the currency of ...
January 27 2012
by Scott Johnson
2012: Smartphones are now a social necessity
My last post, outlined five things to be excited about as we enter 2012. Number one on this list was smartphone ubiquity. I am not sure on what day last year this occurred, but the smart phone went from luxury to social necessity. Has the smart phone eclipsed the television in our hierarchy of needs? ...
July 4 2011
by Todd Hixon
A Tale of Three Cities
In the past month I’ve been to venture conferences in three cities: New York, San Francisco, and Boston. (I rarely go to so many; events conspired this year.) This invites a comparison. The New York conference (TechCrunch/Disrupt) stropped its edge and trumpeted media, personalities, and disrupting everything, not least venture capital (more here). There were ...
May 31 2011
by Scott Johnson
Way Too Early – On Market Timing
Market timing is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for venture success. Obvious, right? The problem is that timing is obvious only in retrospect. Predicting how markets will evolve is an art, and probably is the single most important job of a venture firm. Boiled down to its essence, our role is to help companies ...
January 3 2011
by Scott Johnson
Thank You – Cloud!
These Microsoft cloud commercials are everywhere – showing people using the cloud to improve their lives. And I could be the source of one. This weekend I was reading email at home and suddenly my laptop froze. I tried to reboot in safe mode. Not happening. Looks like a disk failure. Virus induced? No way ...
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 ...
February 26 2010
by Scott Johnson
Speculating on Apple’s “Big Bold Moves”
Apple said yesterday in its shareholder meeting that it is not going to dividend any of its cash. Rather, Steve is planning some “Big, Bold Moves” for the $40 billion mountain of green he sits atop. He either said this because he needs good World Cup tickets from investment bankers, or he is actually planning ...
November 30 2009
by Scott Johnson
Tom Tom and Garmin In Serious Trouble
Personal Navigation is being disrupted. Garmin and Tom Tom, as their share prices show, are being Googled. That is, their expensive consumer service is suddenly free from Google. Can they survive? There is a great deal of speculation about this in the press. So I thought I would add mine, as I am an investor ...
November 24 2009
by Scott Johnson
Is the EU actually right about something?
> Update on 11/30. I spoke to several of my companies, and learned that MySQL from Sun is not something they can’t live without. They would prefer Oracle didn’t own it, but the premise that Oracle will harm startups as an owner of MySQL is not true. The argument that Sun/MySQL is the preferred vendor ...
