BLOG STARTUPS, VENTURE AND THE TECH BUSINESS

Posts Tagged ‘Innovation’

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 ...

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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 ...

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February 14 2012
by Scott Johnson

2012 Continued: My Take on The Cloud and Innovation

I know – blogging about the cloud has long ago jumped the shark.  But I will press forth regardless, because I said I would in a previous post, and because both the smartphone and cloud computing are under-hyped.  Properly hyped, the situation sounds something like this:  Smartphones accessing cloud services comprise the greatest platform for ...

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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? ...

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January 26 2012
by Scott Johnson

No Better Time, Ever, To Be An Entrepreneur

I am often asked “what is new and exciting” by pretty much anyone that knows what I do for a living. And it is a great question that I relish answering – usually. Of late, however, I have been responding in a way that needs polish. I will say “smartphones” or “Health IT” or “the ...

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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 ...

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June 15 2011
by Thanasis Delistathis

Think Different: Apple Retail Stores

A couple of months ago my Mac Air’s operating system was fried.  The Finder was malfunctioning and I couldn’t get an anything done.  I took it to the Apple store around the corner from our office.  The rep at the Genius Bar hooked it up to a hard drive and asked me to come back ...

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June 8 2011
by Thanasis Delistathis

Feature-Not-A-Company

I wrote a post yesterday about the general euphoria in the tech market.  One of the signs of things are heating up is the large volume of startups that are pursuing niche product strategies.  Consumer internet is a busy space and in a race to differentiate themselves, startups are positioning themselves in tighter product spaces. ...

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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 ...

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May 2 2011
by Scott Johnson

Waste = Opportunity

Waste is something I abhor.  Waste of time, waste of resource, I love funding businesses that help others be more efficient and stop waste.   Time wasters are fertile ground for new business ideas.  If anyone is wasting your time, think about how that happened and create a solution for it. Resource wasters are also ...

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