BLOG STARTUPS, VENTURE AND THE TECH BUSINESS
Posts Tagged ‘Venture Capital’
September 19 2011
by Scott Johnson
Direct Marketing 3.0 – The Social Era
One place where there is growth aplenty thesedays is good old direct marketing, which search reinvented last decade. This decade, social media is reinventing it once again. Picture this: You’re playing a social game like Mafia Wars on Facebook and you want more “credits.” So you type “Drink Dr. Pepper” into a box, and then buy a ...
September 14 2011
by Todd Hixon
What the Downgrade Means for Entrepreneurs: Part 1, What’s Happening
A downgrade of the U.S. sovereign credit rating has never happened before, so it’s worth examining what it means for entrepreneurs. This is the first of three posts, focused on what’s happening. Part 2 will look at the impact on entrepreneurs and the venture market, and Part 3 will suggest how entrepreneurs can survive and ...
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 ...
June 7 2011
by Thanasis Delistathis
Pinch me: is it 1999?
I attended TechCrunch Disrupt a couple of weeks ago and the scene was abuzz with talk of a new tech bubble following the LinkedIn IPO, on the heels of privately traded Facebook shares at exorbitant valuations. The Groupon IPO filing last week helped reinforce the feeling that things are heating up. So, are we living ...
June 6 2011
by Todd Hixon
Tech = Media?
I attended TechCrunch Disrupt New York recently. A few observations: Web/mobile advertising and “flash commerce” were sliced and diced on several panels. Google and Facebook execs advocated for their new products. Most interesting comments: from Mark Walrath/RightMedia founder: “The Meeker Gap (% time versus ad dollars spent on web media) exists because web advertisers have ...
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 ...
May 20 2011
by Todd Hixon
The More Things Stay The Same
… the more they will soon change. This inversion of the famous saying applies very well to venture capital. The VC business has long, strong cycles. Everything goes in one direction for a few years, and the momentum seems inevitable, until it sharply reverses. 2011 is a time of extremes in VC. The industry has ...
May 12 2011
by John Backus
E-Commerce 2.0: The Birth of Companies Worth $50B in Market Value
A new wave of e-commerce is upon us, but most people do not yet understand it. No, I am not talking about fashion flash sales here (though Gilt, Moda Operandi and Zulily are building very valuable businesses here.) And no, I am not talking about the wave of discount group buying that Groupon, LivingSocial and ...
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 ...
April 27 2011
by Scott Johnson
Color, Valuations, and the Winner’s Curse
My friend Kevin Lewis is a professor at Duke Business school and he sends out a feed of interesting abstracts describing recent research that I sift through every day or so. Today I found this one: The Bidder’s Curse Ulrike Malmendier & Young Han Lee, American Economic Review, April 2011, Pages 749-787 Abstract: We employ ...
