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  • Who Are the Power Players in New York City?

    The first annual Power Players New York City competition has begun! Nominate your favorite New York-based champions of Internet and mobile entrepreneurs and check out the list of players that have already been nominated.
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    Behind every successful Internet and mobile technology startup is a handful of power players guiding the founders. Smart and savvy investors like Eric Hippeau or the celebrated Bob Pittman may give you a kick start, super attorney Victor Boyajian might draw up and help you ink your Series A financing, or Union Square's Fred Wilson might chip in some expansion capital and join your board. In celebration of these key insiders, AlwaysOn is seeking nominations for your favorite New York City Power Players.

  • Internet and Intellectual Property Clash at CES

    IEEE's John Blyler returns from CES and some sharply divided opinions on intellectual property, wondering if there really is a way to protect the needs of creators without stifling ingenuity.
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    Recent events at the Consumer Electronics Show highlight the divide between intellectual property creators and the Internet giants that need them.

    The English-language Wikipedia page on January 18, 2012, illustrating its international blackout in opposition to SOPA.

    If you mention the term “intellectual property” (IP) in connection with the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES), most folks will assume you’re referring to Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). As most users of the Internet know, the technology community has made considerable efforts to stop Hollywood-backed proposed copyright bills SOPA and Protect IP. As a result, passage of these bills in their present form looks dim.
  • Resegment If You Aren't In The Top Three

    Foundry Group's Brad Feld revists an important topic and reminds emerging startup company leaders to develop an aggressive strategy to get into the top three.
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    Six months ago I wrote a post about how I think about competition which included a list of topics that summarizes my philosophy. I covered the first item, Be The First Mover, but then went on to other things, like thinking about competitors every single day. I’m back today with the second topic, “Resegment If You Aren’t In The Top Three.”

    If you look at the Foundry Group portfolio, you’ll notice a lot of market leaders. Zynga is the obvious one, but I’ll assert that there are many others, including AdMeld (now part of Google), Cheezburger, Fitbit, Gnip, Makerbot, Oblong, SendGrid, Topspin, Trada, and Urban Airship.

  • Facebook Launches Actions, Driving Social into Everything

    DFJ Esprit's Nic Brisbourne watches as Facebook's Actions leads the next big wave for social by spreading into everything we do to make it just a little better.
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    Last night Facebook announced a bunch of new partners that are using ‘Actions’, a Facebook feature which lets developers make just about any action a verb. We can now expect Facebook buttons to pop up everywhere inviting us to declare our relationships to all sorts of things by clicking buttons with verbs such as  ‘Want’, ‘’Listen’, ‘Own’, ‘Watch’, ‘Read, or ‘Pin’. As I’ve said numerous times now I think the next big wave for social is when it spreads into everything that we do to make it just a little better. I’m not talking about new sites or apps, or even necessarily spending more time on Facebook, but rather the apps we currently use incorporate social data to get better.

  • The Management Team - Guest Post From Matt Blumberg

    Union Square's Fred Wilson continues his series on building a startup management team with a guest post from Return Path's CEO Matt Blumberg on how he builds his teams.
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    Now that I've completed three posts on The Management Team over the last three MBA Mondays, it's time for four or five guest posts on this topic. The first one is from Matt Blumberg, CEO of our portfolio company Return Path. I've been on Matt's board for over a decade and I've watched him develop into one of the finest managers I've had the pleasure to work with. Here are Matt's thoughts on this topic.

  • Nemertes Predicts Colocation Crunch

    Vantage Data Center's Greg Ness takes a closer look at the impending colocation crunch that's due to hit as growth continues for larger, newer data centers, and traditional, less efficient centers shrink.
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    For a fresh perspective on data center obsolescence check out The Coming Colocation Crunch by Nemertes Principal Analyst Ted Ritter writing for Data Center Knowledge this week (Jan 18, 2012):

    “Nemertes Research predicts a shortage of colocation space in the U.S. beginning this year, growing to a $1.9 billion facilities gap by 2015.”

  • My World Is A Network

    Foundry Group's Brad Feld looks at how his life has shifted from a hierarchy model to a network model and what it means to be the rat that escaped from its cage.
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    This post should be sung to the tune of The World Is A Vampire by the Smashing Pumpkins

    “the world is a vampire, sent to drain
    secret destroyers, hold you up to the flames
    and what do i get, for my pain
    betrayed desires, and a piece of the game
    even though i know-i suppose i’ll show
    all my cool and cold-like old job

  • Apple Launches iBooks 2.0 and iBooks Author

    Google missed street expectations in Q4, causing a sharp decline in share price, while Apple has a good week, announcind iBooks 2.0 and iBooks Author. Could it appear as early as Q1 2012? Check out this week's best and worst performers.
    X_Fund_art_smooth_200x102.jpgThe AlwaysOn X Fund portfolio advanced 0.7% last week, while the NASDAQ was up 2.8%, and the S&P 500 was up 2%. For the year, the AO X Fund is up 5.4%, the NASDAQ is up 7%, and the S&P 500 is up 4.6%.

    Google reported Q4 results below the street's expectations, which caused GOOG to drop 8.4% on Friday. For the quarter, Google saw its revenue grow 25%. EPS was up 9%, and traffic acquisition cost was at 24% vs. 25% a year ago. Cost-per-click dropped 8%, which could be the result of increasing traffic going to Facebook and Twitter.
  • Sundance Film Festival. Hi, I'm Remmy Oxley

    Remmy is taking his "out of the box" thinking right out to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, UT, where he is experiencing the entrepreneurial spirit in the cutthroat world of the film industry.
    sundance_300x260.jpgLike many VCs, some of my deal flow comes from out of left field.

    It's because we VCs spend a decent amount of time in left field. One such left field is the Sundance Film Festival.

    I'm here now in Park City, Utah, at Sky Lodge, and it starts today.

    Sundance was the film festival where independent films jumped the shark into the main stream. Now, Sundance is the straight-to-DVD festival.
  • Why Startups Shouldn't Hire PR Firms

    Guest Blogger Mark Cuban maintains that a startup can accomplish much more with direct relationships than by using an expensive intermediary.
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    A quote from my book, How to Win at the Sport of Business got picked up in multiple stories. In the book I stated effectively that “Startups should never hire a PR firm”. As you would expect, the PR Industry was not over-joyed at the comment. Articles were written about how incredibly valuable a good PR person can be to a startup.

    Actually, I have no doubt that a smart PR person can add value to a startup. The problem is that all things considered, it’s not enough value.

  • How Can I Tell When VCs Won't Invest When They Aren't Saying "No?"

    DFJ Esprit's Nic Brisbourne's answer is to be ruthlessly honest about the chances of success and not hold on too long.
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    Venture capitalists are notorious for not telling companies when they won’t invest, and worse, being enthusiastic about the company and the prospects of a deal for an extended period and then simply going quiet. It is unfair on startups when VCs behave like this as it wastes time (an entrepreneur’s most precious resource) and makes it harder to know when a fundraising process is failing and the company should change tack. Giving up on a fundraising process too late can be fatal for a business if it then doesn’t have enough cash left to pursue a different strategy.

  • The AlwaysOn OnMobile 100 Top Company Competition

    The second annual OnMobile 100 private company competition has begun! Nominate your favorite mobile technology companies and check out the list of companies that have already been nominated.
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    AlwaysOn has officially kicked off its second annual OnMobile Top 100 Private Companies Competition. We're looking for the top emerging mobile companies that are creating new business opportunities in the high-growth mobile markets. This includes private companies that are demonstrating significant market traction and pursuing game-changing technology in the following sectors:

  • How to Develop Your Fund Raising Strategy

    GRP Partners' Mark Suster provides a detailed tutorial on the difficult task of raising capital, which, like much of life, is just another kind of sales pitch.
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    Raising money is hard. And when you’re relatively new to the process it’s easy to be confused by the process. There is all sorts of advice on the Internet about how to raise capital. Of course much of it is conflicting.

    I’ve raised money as a “hot company” and I’ve raised capital when no one would return my phone calls. I’ve raised in boom markets and when everybody thought the Internet was a fraud. I’ve raised seed rounds and A-D rounds. I raised money as an entrepreneur, like you, in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2005 for two different companies.

  • Redefining the Concept of Shared Services in the Cloud

    THINKstrategies Jeff Kaplan believes that today's generation of cloud services is finally expanding the meaning of shared services and bringing tangible benefits to organizations of all sizes.
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    The concept of “shared services” has been bandied about the IT industry for over 50 years. Yet, past iterations of this concept have often failed to meet the needs of corporate executives and end-users from a functional and economic standpoint.

    This is because previous generations of shared services were too often built upon cumbersome and costly systems and software which could not scale to give corporate customers greater cost advantages or added features than they could gain from optimized inhouse resources. As a result, only highly specialized shared services, such as payroll processing and basic hosting, prospered in the past.

  • The AlwaysOn OnDemand 100 Top Company Competition

    The third annual OnDemand 100 private company competition has begun! Nominate your favorite on-demand technology companies and check out the list of companies that have already been nominated.
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    AlwaysOn has officially kicked off its third annual OnDemand Top 100 Private Companies Competition. We're looking for the top emerging on-demand and SaaS companies that are creating new business opportunities in high-growth markets. This includes private companies that are demonstrating significant market traction and pursuing game-changing technology in the following sectors:

  • The TV Business Keeps Getting Stronger

    Guest Blogger Mark Cuban exposes the big lie that Internet video is telling consumers: Online video views equals number of TV viewers.
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    Back in my broadcast.com days we had a saying that “bits are bits”. That once content becomes digital, it is naturally going to become available on any and all digital devices. Based on this, we always made the point to be platform and device agnostic. We didn’t care where or how people saw our content, as long as they saw it and we had the chance to monetize it.

    We also knew that our core value proposition to consumers was that on broadcast.com they were able to get content that they couldn’t get on TV. We had Yoga channels, we had cricket live and on demand, we had sports , music, movies, tv, comedy and anything else you could think of available.

  • Over the Top TV

    DFJ Esprit's Nic Brisbourne finds that the promise of web-controlled TV is a far cry from the early hopes that content owners and consumers would eliminate their gatekeepers.
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    Netflix, Hulu, Youtube and Amazon, companies at the forefront of web delivered TV are increasingly resembling the traditional TV companies they seek to displace. They are now all complementing aggressive licensing strategies with large budgets for developing original content in recognition of the age old truism of TV – content drives subscribers. This leaves us in a situation where, like the old guard of TV, the new guard controls both content and distribution, but unlike the old guard they don’t bundle access (i.e. cable or satellite) in with the package. The access element is now commoditised and adds nothing to the package.

  • Managing The Startup-Big Company Relationship

    Guest Bloggers Ben Smith and Doug Kilponen outline some valuable tips on how to get your startup in front of big-company execs whose attitudes initially exude hesitation, but can turn into a lucrative commitment.
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    Every entrepreneur has met them. Big company executives with big company swagger. They ignore you. They dismiss the business problem you spent your life solving. They think they can crush you.

    Then the tables turn. They push for strategic relationships. They want to give you money, frequently at irrationally high valuations. Finally they shell out enough scratch to buy you.

  • The Management Team - While Building The Business

    Union Square's Fred Wilson finishes his three-part series on startup management teams by looking down the road to building the management team out as the business starts to thrive.
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    This is the third and final post on the subject of the management team. The final phase of company development I am going to cover is "building the business." Building the business largely means building the management team. They are one and the same.

    Many founders are naturally talented at building product and building the user base. But building the company comes harder to them. I once discussed this with Roelof Botha and he made a fantastic suggestion.

  • The AlwaysOn OnHollywood 100 Top Company Competition

    The sixth annual OnHollywood 100 private company competition has begun! Nominate your favorite digital entertainment companies and check out the list of companies that have already been nominated.
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    The sixth annual OnHollywood 100 competition has begun! Disruptive technology is forcing big changes in Hollywood: new contracts, new genres, new stars. As the behemoth industry steps into the digital era, entertainment execs will be paying even closer attention to the global Silicon Valley—especially the startups that are writing the rules and creating the tools for the digital entertainment age.

    To help identify these startups, we'd like your help. We're looking for the top emerging private companies that are creating new business opportunities in digital entertainment.