BLOG STARTUPS, VENTURE AND THE TECH BUSINESS
Posts Tagged ‘Information Technology’
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 ...
November 19 2009
by Todd Hixon
The Death of B2B Venture Capital?
At the October 21 Xconomy “Global Vision for Venture Capital …” forum, Terry McGuire remarked that Polaris has stopped taking risk on commercial/industrial technology start-ups, as the recent experience has not been good. That’s a consequential thing. “Commercial/industrial technology” encompasses enterprise software, most of telecom and datacom, and large parts of clean tech. Note that ...
June 23 2009
by John Backus
So, you have a meeting with a VC? Are you meeting for Dough or just for Show? 5 ways to find out
If you read the numbers from the NVCA, you know that venture dollar investments in the first quarter of 2009 were down by almost half. Logic would suggest that the number of companies receiving venture capital financing is down as well. Although you can still get a meeting with a VC – can you still ...
