Bessemer's Top 10 Laws Of E-commerce: Introduction

Sarah Tavel — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 01:22:17 +0000

In the late 1990s, the conventional wisdom was that the transformation from “bricks to clicks” for retailers would happen almost instantly. Yet over the past ten years, it’s become clear that the shift to the Web was not a two- to three- year revolution, but a 15-20 year evolution.

Convertible Notes Cheatsheet

Andrew Bellay — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 00:50:54 +0000

Every few weeks there's a topic that just rampages through the venture capital blogosphere. Last week it was the topic of convertible notes and their future. I pulled out the most pertinent quotes so that readers could quickly see the main points. If you're an entrepreneur, investor, or just interested in more, the links have been included for more indepth reading.

The Hummus Manifesto: Part 3

Michael Eisenberg — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 23:47:02 +0000

Thanks again to all the commenters, Facebook posters, tweeters and retweeters on this blog, SeekingAlpha and the Hebrew Version on Themarker.com. Now we need to turn this e-army into an army for change.

I want to try to lay out 3 framework principles for the fix:

1. What is at stake is national competitiveness and the Israel that we will ready for the 21st century, or not. It is not the success of individual companies but the economy and country as a whole.

Searching For Greatness Vs. Avoiding Mistakes

Rob Go — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 23:34:23 +0000

I was having coffee a few weeks back with a friend who is at a large, very successful VC. We were chatting about one of the senior partners at his firm, one that I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know (but not as well as I would like). I’ve never really been able to articulate why I’ve enjoyed my interactions with this investor so much, but my friend put it this way:

Measuring Churn For Recurring Revenue Businesses

Sarah Tavel — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 23:33:12 +0000

For any recurring revenue company, churn is almost always one of the key metrics the company (and their board) tracks. Why work hard to get new customers if you can’t keep the ones you’ve got? Moreover, low churn means you have a strong recurring revenue base and therefore more money to spend acquiring new customers. Thus, having low churn creates a virtuous cycle for the company in more ways than one.

3D TV and Vendor Push

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 23:24:39 +0000

It is common in the tech industry for a new technology to be hyped up by industry insiders who hope it will transform their business. The mobile industry’s attempt to push “WAP” to the mainstream back in 2000 is perhaps the example that stands out most clearly in my mind, and I think the TV industry is now doing it with 3D TV.

I saw a demo of Sky’s 3D TV at the Rewind Music Festival earlier this summer and at the time I tweeted “Just seen 3 min demo of Sky 3D. My view – it’s quite cool, but not enough to go prime time” – and today Henry McCracken has a post up saying much the same thing. He is at the IFA tech show in Berlin, which is apparently all about 3D, and according in Henry’s words:

A Beer Drinker's View Of The Venture Industry

David Beisel — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:22:31 +0000

Forgive me if I start a bit theoretical. The famed business strategist Michael Porter described a set of successful general strategies which firms employ to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage: differentiation strategy and cost leadership strategy for those firms with a broad market scope, and a segmentation strategy for those with a narrow market scope. In other words, for a company looking to compete across the entire marketplace in a specific industry, it must either develop a unique product offering (along the lines of brand, design, featur

CEO Showcase: Vuuch

admin — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 00:24:52 +0000

Vuuch is revolutionizing the way people in businesses deliver results and share information. Using Vuuch, work that has been trapped in silos is now available to all. By applying social technology to business, Vuuch lets people work in dynamic teams, using their preferred tools, while Vuuch coordinates the work products the team is charged with delivering.

With Vuuch, e-mail "noise" is eliminated. Issues, tasks, and activities are known to all, accessible by all, directly in the content the team is managing. Institutional knowledge-the very how and why things are done-is visible to everyone Existing task management tools lack a connection between a task and the work or deliverable the task is about.

Who Will Champion Entrepreneurship?

Jeff Bussgang — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 23:39:23 +0000

I love Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It is one of the most extraordinarily beautiful settings in the world. One cannot help being in a good mood when observing the breathtaking wildlife, open sky and the awe-inspiring Grand Tetons.

The Powers & Limitations Of HTML5

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 23:19:31 +0000

Back in July I wrote about Google’s HTML5 initiatives on mobile – including their YouTube HTML5 mobile site and their Google Maps HTML5 mobile site.&nb

What A CEO Does: Part II

Fred Wilson — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 23:13:42 +0000

Matt Blumberg, who is one of the finest CEOs I've had the pleasure of working with, wrote a follow-up post on the topic for his blog. I asked him if I could run it as a guest post here on MBA Mondays and he agreed:

What Does a CEO Do, Anyway?

Apocalypse & Bubbles

Fred Wilson — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 22:57:42 +0000

Peter Thiel, entrepreneur, VC, angel, Facebook board member, and hedge fund manager, penned a long and thoughtful piece about the possibility of an impending apocalypse and how that might lead to financial bubbles. It was written in 2008 but I only came across it yesterday (on Hacker News). He calls it The Optimistic Thought Experiment.

The Big Company Versus The Bootstrap

Bijan Sabet — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:21:58 +0000

Yesterday, Nike launched an iPhone app that no longer requires a separate sensor in your running shoes. The new app is a direct shot at RunKeeper. A few weeks ago, Google lanched Priority Inbox which is a direct shot at SaneBox. The idea of big companies going after self funded startups is nothing new. Happens all the time and always will.

The founders of RunKeeper and Sanebox both wrote excellent blog posts about their motivation in a world where the 800 pound gorilla is the direct competitor now. They are both excellent and worth a read.

CEO Showcase: Veritrix

admin — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:58:12 +0000

Veritrix creates irrefutable and foolproof identification solutions to fight cybercrime and protect consumers. Cybercrime and identity crime rates are soaring. Companies desperately need trustworthy identification that can't be tricked or spoofed, and is compatible with common hardware. Veritrix's Sovay uses an identification technology that mirrors human identification and provides irrefutable proof of identity, by analyzing a user's face, voice, and movement as well as decoding a secret pass phrase.

How To Discuss Stock Options With Your Team

Mark Suster — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:22:45 +0000

I was thumbing through Twitter messages on my Blackberry on Monday (I use Twitter as a “mobile first, web second” product) when I saw the following Tweet (see graphic).

I resisted the temptation to jump in with a response because I knew it was too complicated of a topic to discuss on Twitter. But I thought I should do a quick post on the topic.

Chamillionaire, Big Studio Execs and Even Miley Cyrus's Producer Will Be At OnHollywood

Tony Perkins — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:06:27 +0000

Seats are selling out fast and we aren’t surprised. With the influential cast of entrepreneurs and investors we have lined up for OnHollywood and the exciting and lucrative opportunities emerging in the digital entertainment space, it’s no wonder. Since seating is limited and a sellout is expected, we urge you to purchase your discounted pass now before our prices increase. Our team is currently hard at work putting the finishing touches on the 2010 program and we wanted to reach out to you with our latest updates.

Coworking Spaces

Fred Wilson — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 22:37:48 +0000

I've never been much of a fan of incubators. Some have made the model work. My favorite of the bunch is Betaworks, based here in NYC. Betaworks is more than an incubator, but they have shown that they can make the incubation model work with projects like bit.ly and chartbeat.

Trends And Money With Woody

Andrew Bellay — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 22:11:46 +0000

Prism's goal is to build substantial businesses around disrupting the status quo. Prism VentureWorks has only been around since 1996 but has raised 5 funds and manages $1.25 billion currently. Each of the 10 partners focuses on different industry sectors within technology and life sciences. These industry sectors in technology include digital media and software & services In life sciences, Prism focuses on medical devices, therapeutics, and breakthrough diagnostics.

Woody Benson On Markets And Scaling VC

Andrew Bellay — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 21:53:24 +0000

Don't miss part I of this interview with Woody on trends enabling start-ups right now, how these trends are affecting the VC market, and Woody's position on the angel market.

AlwaysOn: So what markets do you think are hot right now?

Woody: Distressed European assets. No – that’s a good question. I think innovation markets are hot. Really innovative new ideas that take advantage of the consumer being in charge, time shifting, society trends, and that have a mobile element are hot. It’s really based on the ingenuity and creativity of the entrepreneurs.I think the things that are hot are bigger ideas. The thing to be careful about taking less capital to start something is that there are a lot of very thin ideas out there - too many small ideas that can actually get to the market place because of the lower capital requirements. The really innovative things happen when there’s a bigger idea at play.

John Melo, Kevin Surace, and Greentech's Hottest CEOs will be at GoingGreen

admin — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 21:39:08 +0000

The program is filling up and the tickets are selling fast. Don't miss your opportunity to be in on the greentech solutions that are delivering on the promise to clean up pollution and restore ecosystems and bring abundance and prosperity to everyone on earth.

This year's emerging crop of greentech innovators and the power brokers of big business will be at GoingGreen Silicon Valley, this year's most influential greentech event. While the speaker line-up is still being finalized, we can promise a high-voltage combination of speakers and topics.

Who Else Is Investing In This Round?

Bijan Sabet — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:34:58 +0000

Paul Graham just wrote a very interesting post on why YC startups are seeing more and more convertible notes instead of straight equity financing where the valuation is set up front.

First to be crystal clear, I’m a big fan of Paul and Jessica and the program they built. I use YC portfolio products every day (ie disqus, dropbox, bump, etc) and we invested in omgpop which also came out of YC. I hope we make more investments in YC companies. And I was crushed when YC decided to leave Cambridge a few years back.

CEO Showcase: Sustainable Minds

admin — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 07:48:18 +0000

Sustainable Minds is the first on-demand, Web-based software and information service providing a comprehensive system for companies to credibly estimate, evaluate, and track their products' lifecycle environmental performance -- and to enable rapid iteration and comparison of product concepts in early-stage design. Easy to understand and use, it is affordable for small and large businesses and educational institutions to develop the skills and knowledge to grow revenue and markets through greener product innovation.

The GoingGreen Top 100 Competition

admin — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 00:20:23 +0000

AlwaysOn has officially kicked off its fourth annual GoingGreen Silicon Valley Top 100 Private Companies competition. We are looking for the top emerging private companies that are creating new business opportunities in green technology. This includes private companies that are demonstrating significant market traction and pursuing game-changing technology in the following sectors:

Touch Screen UI To Kill The Browser?

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 22:39:19 +0000

I got up this morning to find the world going crazy about the new Twitter iPad application – see this glowing Engadget review and the Techcrunch titled Twitter Just Killed Something Else: Their Own Website – the title gives a hint of where I’m going with this post. (Apologies for the fact this link is to the shortened post on TC – the full one seems to be currently unavailable).

So I installed the Twitter iPad app on the iPad I have in my kitchen at home, and – I loved it too. I won’t go into the features here (check out the Engadget review for that), but I will say that I got lost clicking around my timeline, user profiles and the tweet history of individuals in a way I haven’t done for a while. Put simply, the Twitter iPad app is a much more engaging way to use the Twitter service than any other interface I’ve seen.

Serious Questions For Super Angels

Brad Feld — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 21:52:30 +0000

As individual angel investors made more and more investments, they became super angels. One day a super angel woke up and thought to himself, “Gosh, I could do a lot more investments if I had a fund.” And so the super angels became micro-VCs (or “institutionalized super angels”). Everyone was excited and on the seventh day they did another deal instead of resting.

Apple TV for $99

Michael Moe — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 21:42:16 +0000

The AlwaysOn X Fund portfolio advanced 3.6% for the week, while the NASDAQ was up 3.7%, and the S&P 500 was up 3.8%. For the year, the AO X Fund portfolio is up 6.9%, the NASDAQ is down 1.6%, and the S&P 500 is down 0.9%.

Apple presented its new iPod lines with the iPod Touch 4G now having Facetime video calling. Also introduced was the new Apple TV for $99 that lets users watch shows for 99 cents and also connects to Netflix and YouTube. For the week, AAPL advanced 7.1%.

Mafia Sourcing: How Insiders Game User Generated News For Money

Mark Suster — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 21:40:44 +0000

I originally came from the entreprise software world (for 10 years) and before that I was in mobile & telecoms (8 years) so the last three years of immersing myself in consumer Internet, digital media & advertisings has been very eye opening. I arrived on this scene wet behind the ears assuming that the web was, as it seemed to me as a user, powered by the masses for the masses. Ah, the joys of youthful naivete.

CEO Showcase: AuthorsGlobe

admin — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 17:43:24 +0000

AuthorsGlobe, an award-winning MIT venture, connects thought-leading authors with a global community by hosting live virtual master classes in partnership with professional organizations (trade, industry, and alumni), subscription-based magazines, and Web communities and bloggers. AuthorsGlobe is playing in the high-growth online education market at the forefront of publishing, online education, e-commerce, and digital media with a very unique metric-driven and customer centric model.

The Venture Summit Mid-Atlantic Top 100 Competition

admin — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 21:58:42 +0000

AlwaysOn has officially kicked off its first annual AlwaysOn Mid-Atlantic 100 competition. We're looking for the top emerging companies from the mid-Atlantic region 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 OnMedia Top 100 Company Competition

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:07:21 +0000

AlwaysOn has officially kicked off its fifth annual OnMedia Top 100 Private Companies competition. We're looking for the top emerging technology companies that are creating new business opportunities in the worlds of media, advertising, marketing, branding, and public relations. This includes private companies that are demonstrating significant market traction and pursuing game-changing technology in the following sectors:

What's Enough Traction?

Mark Peter Davis — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:28:24 +0000

The answer is: it depends.

The level of adoption required to make a given investor comfortable varies from company to company and investor to investor. There are, however, some guidelines based upon the type of customer that the company is targeting.

Why Product Managers Wear Sneakers

Steve Blank — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 22:36:11 +0000

I gave a talk last night to the Silicon Valley Product Management Association. It’s a San Francisco Bay Area forum for networking, jobs and education for over 500 Product Management professionals. This is one of the Silicon Valley organizations that remind you why this is a company-town whose main industry is entrepreneurship, (and a great example of an industry cluster.)

Go Earn Your Silicon Valley MBA

Greg Gretsch — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:39:01 +0000

I don't have an MBA, but I have earned my SIlicon Valley MBA. Let me explain. When I was a few years out of college, I considered going back to get an MBA. I liked working in the valley and knew that I wanted to spend my career in tech and ultimately around startups - at that point I had only worked for Apple. So I asked around to a lot of people I knew well and respected. People who I thought had been successful in their careers and whose path I wanted to learn from. Many of them had MBAs and some did not. I wanted to hear their perspectives on the value of a traditional MBA.

CEO Showcase: oDesk

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:02:25 +0000

oDesk is the marketplace for online workteams, with the best business model for both employers and contractors. Our unique approach guarantees to employers that an hour billed is an hour worked, while guaranteeing to contractors that an hour worked is an hour paid.

The Nexage Of Mobile Advertising: Part III

Andrew Bellay — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 06:09:10 +0000

Don't miss part I or part II of this interview with Nexage CEO. Let's jump right back in:

Andrew: I totally agree with you that this industry is changing very rapidly, even in the online advertising sector. Can you talk about some of the changes you're seeing and how you are responding?

Ernie: Sure. If you look at things in the mobile world, it's similar to what was happening online in the late 1990's when there were no standards and multiple browsers, kind of like the wild wild west. Compare that to the mobile world right now and it makes that seem like a pretty calm sea. The reason for that is the fragmentation of platforms on the handset side and no standardization across platforms. There are even different browsers from platform to platform and publishers have a real challenge managing that complexity. Part of what we bring to the publishers in value is removing significant layers of that complexity by managing those layers.

Bootstrapping - The Secrets Of Great Entrepreneurs You've Never Heard Of

Rob Go — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 23:30:32 +0000

Probably too much ink is spilled over VC funded companies. It’s curious… given that these companies represent such a small minority of the entrepreneurial activity in this country. Perhaps it’s because the stories of ambitious entrepreneurs pitching their dream to mysterious VC’s make for good, sexy fodder.

Angel Liquidity

Fred Wilson — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:42:06 +0000

If you look at how much money has been raised by venture firms, including the seed and super seed categories, versus how much money has been returned in the past ten years, the ratio is not good. At some point the investors who fund the venture capital asset class will not be able to keep funding it.

The asset class needs to focus on liquidity. M&A continues to be the one bright spot and although I have not seen the data, I suspect M&A activity around venture backed companies in the past ten years has not shrunk and may have actually increased (if you take out the bubble years of 98-2000).

US Economic Risks (Sept 2010): Impact On Investors & Entrepreneurs

Mark Suster — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 03:26:19 +0000

This post was originally published in a shorter (more sensible) format in the Wall Street Journal online. If you’re short on time click on the WSJ link and read the 990 word version there. Otherwise, grab a cup ‘o coffee …

Clicking on any graph below will take you to that article.

The Future Of The Facebook Like Button

Mark Cuban — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:53:28 +0000

I hit the like button on pages all the time. I like your picture. I like the fact you had fun on your vacation. It doesn’t mean I want to get into a long involved conversation or see all your vacation pictures.

I like the jeans you are selling on your website . I like them because I already own a pair. I am not giving you permission to contact me and try to sell me something or to suggest to my friends that they should buy them because I like them.

CEO Showcase: Marketo

admin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:24:00 +0000

Marketo is a revenue cycle management company that is transforming how marketing and sales teams of all sizes work-and work together-to accelerate predictable revenue. Marketo's solutions provide explosive revenue growth throughout the revenue cycle from the earliest stages of demand generation and lead management to deal close and continued customer loyalty.

Boys Rules, Girls Lose: Women At Work

Steve Blank — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:42:04 +0000

My two daughters are now in college and have put their toes in the working-world with summer jobs. As they’ve grown older, they’ve heard their parent’s advice about women in the workforce.

This post is not advice nor is it a recommendation of what you should do. It’s simply my interpretation of what I observed watching my daughters grow up. Our circumstances were unique, times have changed, and your conclusions and opinions will most certainly differ.

What Should You Do When Your Web Service Blows Up?

Brad Feld — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:41:41 +0000

Every major software or web company I’ve ever been involved in has had a catastrophic outage of some sort. I view it as a rite of passage – when this happens when your company is young and no one notices, it gives you a chance to get better. But eventually you’ll have one when you are big enough for people to notice. How you handle it and what you learn from speaks volumes about your future.

CEO Showcase: Cooliris

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:33:44 +0000

Cooliris has created a portfolio of free and easy-to-use products that provide consistent content experiences across different screens. The company offers a unique value proposition to consumers, website owners, content providers, and advertisers. Cooliris for the desktop is a browser add-on that is the fastest and most stunning way to browse, search, and discover Web and desktop media, using the immersive and cinematic Cooliris 3D Wall.

Paying For Content And The Honor System

Bijan Sabet — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:43:38 +0000

And as a lover of music, I’m happily paying my share for music. I pay for it in many ways right now - Rhapsody, Pandora premium, Spotify, Amazon and iTunes. In the world of music, DRM is dead.

I happily pay for music although I can get it for free through the wide range of free torrents or invite-only torrent aggregators.

Symbology

Fred Wilson — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:27:38 +0000

When you want to look up information on publicly traded companies, it helps to know the ticker symbol. Microsft's ticker is MSFT, Google's ticker is GOOG, Apple's ticker is AAPL. Every publicly traded company has a ticker.

But private companies don't have tickers. And as more and more private companies are attaining status and drawing the attention of mainstream media and the investment community, it is time for that to change.

Yesterday Stocktwits and Second Market proposed a set of tickers for popular privately held companies. The proposed list of tickers is here.

Learning How A Bill Becomes A Law

Brad Feld — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:20:39 +0000

Well, I’ve learned a lot about how a bill becomes a law on my journey to try to turn the Startup Visa idea into a law. And yes – it’s a lot like how I learned about it on Schoolhouse Rock about 35 years ago.

It’s been a little less than a year since I wrote the post on 9/10/09 titled The Founders Visa Movement. This evolved into the Startup Visa initiative, resulted in a bill in the House (HR 4259 sponsored by Polis (D-CO)) and a bill in the Senate (S. 3029 co-sponsored by Kerry (D-MA) and Lugar (R-IN)). We’ve made steady progress building support and have numerous endorsements, including most recently the American Bar Association and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. In addition, the co-sponsors for the various bills are starting to appear: for example, Udall (D-CO) recently signed on to co-sponsor S. 3029, Jackson-Lee (D-TX), Owens (D-NY), and Wu (D-OR) have co-sponsored HR 4259. I’m also aware of a few more that are about to announce.

Living in a Merit-Based World

Ed_Lambert — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 01:02:53 +0000

I was scratching my head after the most recent Summit at Stanford for a theme. It was a great conference, marked for many by the preponderance of companies that originated in other countries. There was a dinner for the winners one night, and I don't think it an exaggeration to say that half the people in the room were immigrants or from Europe, Asia, and Central and South America as well as Australia and New Zealand. The CEO pitches were remarkable in the number of companies that are pushing toward profitability and actually discussing next steps—including IPOs!

CEO Showcase: Fluffy Spider

admin — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 00:28:44 +0000

Fluffy Spider Technologies has been developing embedded software since 1995. A pioneer in the industry, FST has a background in real-time systems, defense, and telecommunications. Between 1995 and 2000, FST translated this fundamental knowledge into producing outstanding solutions for some of Australia's leading process monitoring and control installations (BHP), defense subcontractors (GEC), and later within the emerging mobile telecommunications industry (Vodafone, Optus, and Telstra).

Profitable Streaming Services: Movies Will Get There Before Music

Nic Brisbourne — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 17:26:00 +0000

Netflix, the US DVD rental video streaming business is out cutting $1bn deals with movie studios for streaming rights and Hulu is contemplating an IPO – both developments which suggest the premium video streaming business is starting to reach maturity. The music streaming business, by contrast, is still finding its way, and is characterised by conflict between the record labels and streaming service providers, none of whom are cutting $1bn deals or preparing to IPO.

Why VCs Blog

Andrew Bellay — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 16:11:14 +0000

And I thought it was just because VCs didn't want to do real work...

I love this idea of scaling VC through blogging. Find out how Fred Wilson has become a better VC through blogging in this video.

That or you could do what Tim Draper did to scale VC...

YouTube Expands in the U.K.

Michael Moe — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 15:24:50 +0000

The AlwaysOn X fund portfolio was nearly flat at -0.1% for the week, the while NASDAQ was down 1.2%, and the S&P 500 was down 0.7%. For the year, the AO X Fund portfolio is up 3.2%, the NASDAQ is down 5.1%, and the S&P 500 is down 4.5%.

Guess? reported 12.5% EPS growth and 10% sales growth in Q2, beating expectations by 4 cents. Same store sales rose 1.7% in local currency and 3.5% in U.S. dollars. Management guided below expectations for the year and sent shares down for the week 14.8%.

The CEO Mentor & Coach

Fred Wilson — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 00:57:16 +0000

I've written about this topic before. I think many people with the ambition and the opportunity can become excellent CEOs. But it takes a lot of work and a commitment to self improvement. It is a very hard job. It is lonely. And it requires discipline and decisiveness. Most of these traits can be learned.

But who do you learn them from? Certainly not me. I have never been a CEO and never will be. I can help entrepreneurs with many things. But there are some aspects of running a company that I can't help with.

The 1/9/90 Rule Of UGC & Why It’s OK To Have Lurkers

Mark Suster — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 00:53:50 +0000

Two days ago I wrote about Quora. I’ve been loving the product even if it sucks up some of my time. I prefer my time go into a very focused Q&A website than into a more generic Facebook. What Quora has done is wrap social networking around Q&A with the more clever next-gen UX I’ve seen.

Is This A Privacy Or Behavior Issue?

Andrew Bellay — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 00:33:12 +0000

Colbert, in his absurd way, drills home an excellent point: "If you're not careful, your online past could destroy your offline future." While this segment is certainly humorous, people have lost jobs, and lives have been altered forever. Some of this is simple abuse of those who aren't savvy to online social networks. Some of it is just dumb people finding a new platform on which to be dumb.

One thing is for sure. If you screw up, your mistake will reach a much broader audience much faster than it would have 10 years ago. Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google had the following advice, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

Fight When it’s Time to Fight

Mark Suster — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 17:37:12 +0000

There are times to fight. I must admit it’s part of my DNA to enjoy a good fight (not as much as Jason Calacanis does, mind you ahem: Facebook. Er: Comscore, Cough: Angel funding payola).

Party Like It's 1998!

Chris Douvos — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:58:22 +0000

So there I was, reading the announcement of the Skype IPO filing and scratching my head. After all, a $100 million offering doesn't sound like all that much when the current investors bought in at a $2.75B price a little while back. How tiny a share of the company were they going to offer? Two percent? Three percent?

CEO Showcase: Advantech US

admin — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 21:33:00 +0000

Advantech US is a development-stage company that's pursuing a disruptive roll-to-roll fabrication technology for producing thin-film electronic circuits at very low cost. The company will exploit this technology to manufacture active matrix backplanes for OEM sale and licensing in the developing organic light emitting diode (OLED) display industry.

So You Want an iPhone 4G?

Tony Perkins — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:26:08 +0000

The video portrays an electronics store employee trying to convince a person wanting an iPhone 4 to buy an HTC EVO 4G instead. The video has had about seven million views.The video was made by Brian Maupin, a 25-year-old from Kansas City, Mo. For the past three and a half years he worked at Best Buy selling mobile phones, something he may decide never to do again. This comes after he was suspended from work and faced threats of being fired. Maupin explained Best Buy felt it disparaged a brand they carried (iPhone/Apple) as well as the store itself and were fearful of stockholders and customers being turned off to Best Buy Mobile. But if you watch the video, you will see there is not any mention of Best Buy at all. The cartoon employee identifies the store as Phone Mart. The characters are not wearing anything that resembles the Best Buy uniform and are standing in an outdoor field with a pink tree. Best Buy recently announced they will not fire Maupin.

Google Acquisition Graphic

Andrew Bellay — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:14:29 +0000

This infographic speaks for itself. My real question (in response to Daniel Branscome's question) is in the comments below and pasted here:

I think Daniel has nailed the real issue here. What's Google done lately? Buzz, Wave, Gears, Orkut and dozens of others that I've never played with are ... all failures.

Don't get me wrong, I love my Gmail (and some of the recent improvements). And Google search is a very necessary thing (I'm sooo glad they finally fixed Image search...it's not perfect but now I don't have to use the slower and buggier CoolIris - soory CoolIris, it might be time to pivot again?). And YouTube is a great way to waste a lifetime...

BUT many of these improvements/features are results of the acquisitions illustrated above. Has Google lost it's Mojo? Is Google a One-Hit-Wonder (search/ads)?

The OnHollywood Top 100 Company Competition

admin — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:17:23 +0000

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.

The Nexage Of Mobile Advertising: Part II

Andrew Bellay — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 02:17:45 +0000

Don't miss Part I of this interview with Ernie Cormier, CEO of Nexage and be sure you're caught up on the industry as a whole.

The IRL Social Graph

Andrew Parker — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 21:53:59 +0000

Knowing who is *actually* friends with whom IRL (and not just accepting a friend request out of social guilt or apathy) would be a valuable data set to own. The IRL social graph has existed for as long as humans have formed friendships, yet throughout that history I can’t think of any really high quality historical attempts to map it. I’d go so far to say the IRL social graph is so important that the social graphs of many popular web services are valuable based largely on their ability to proxy the IRL social graph.

Musings On App Stores, Portals & Search

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 21:53:30 +0000

Reading this Techcrunch piece on Chomp, a provider of search and discovery for iPhone apps, prompted me to explore a question that has been circling in my mind in a somewhat unstructured fashion for a couple of weeks now – namely what is the difference between an app store and a portal?

Nexage: The Next Age Of Mobile Advertising

Andrew Bellay — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 02:13:05 +0000

As the mobile device space continues to mature there are still a number of wars being waged on the devices themselves. One of them is in mobile advertising. If you missed the AlwaysOn take on the industry and MobClix, one of the lead start-ups out there, check it out before diving in here.

CEO Showcase: FunMobility

admin — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 00:04:18 +0000

FunMobility delivers a unique, integrated mobile entertainment experience through mobile multimedia applications that let users connect and express themselves through mobile photos, videos, music, graphics, and slideshows. FunMobility distributes applications through every North American carrier as well as direct to consumers through FunMo.com. FunMobility builds America's largest mobile content community through some of the wireless industry's most popular applications.

So You Want an iPhone 4G?

Tony Perkins — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 18:14:19 +0000

Do You Really Know Your Customer?

Beth Ferreira — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 00:00:27 +0000

How well do you really know your customer and her needs? How do you really understand how she is using your service? Who are the heavy spenders? An understanding of fundamental questions like these will help your entire team make better decisions on products, features, partners, and overall priorities.

Quick Hack To Make You More Productive

Mark Suster — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 21:55:16 +0000

Yesterday I wrote a post about the “Urgency Addiction” and how many people start important tasks late and then motivate with a huge wave of productivity and inspiration driven by deadlines and commitments to others. In the comments section Bill DAllesandro offered some insight that he had seen from Microsoft on “interruptions”

Oblong's g-speak Operating Environment

Brad Feld — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 21:54:26 +0000

We’ve got a few new investments in our human computer interaction theme that we are in the process of closing so HCI has been on my mind lately.

I just watched a great video from our first HCI investment, Oblong. It’s a 30 minute presentation by Mary Ann de Lares Norris, the Managing Director of Oblong Europe, that is an excellent overview of Oblong’s technology.

Using Open Source to Bootstrap Your Data Service

Brad Feld — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 21:49:17 +0000

Last week SimpleGeo and their partner Stamen Design jointly released a project they have been working on together called Polymaps. It’s absolutely beautiful and a stunning example of what you can do with the SimpleGeo API.

The Power Of Quora & Why Benchmark Was Right To Pay Up

Mark Suster — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 21:09:29 +0000

I was an early user of Quora and like all new technologies they take a bit of playing with them for a while, discussing them with others and reflecting on them to let them sink in. I’m no wall flower so when something doesn’t resonate I’m usually pretty vocal about it.

With Quora, it was the opposite – something has always felt right but it took me a while to
really understand it. I now do.

The Expanding Birthrate Of Web Startups

Fred Wilson — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:54:07 +0000

There is a general consensus that web startups are being created at a faster rate than ever. The impact of accelerator programs like Y Combinator, Techstars, Seedcamp, and dozens more are one factor. The expanding pool of angel, seed, and super seed funds is another. And the most important factor is how cheap it is to build and launch a web service these days. You can bootstrap your way into existence.

Regulating Technology

Bijan Sabet — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:16:15 +0000

Back in the day, there were many folks that wanted to the government to break up Microsoft because they had a dominant position on the desktop and could control everything else on top of the desktop stack and then control the web.

At the time, I was living in Silicon Valley where the anti-Microsoft beat was particularly strong. I never felt like that was a good idea. First, the web was open and startups and large companies would create alternatives and existing incumbents get stuck.

The Singularity Is Near: Part V

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 19:50:17 +0000

Kurzweil begins his chapter titled ‘The Impact…..’ with the sentence “A Panopoly of Impacts”, which makes the point that the range of impacts is extremely far and wide, with the potential to change almost every part of life as we know it. I will give a small number of examples of positive impacts in this post, before turning to a brief discussion of the downside.

I have held off much discussion of the impact until now because many of the potential scenarios seem fantastical, and might serve to reduce confidence in the other arguments and predictions. Most of the things I have discussed in this series up to now have had a 20-30 year time horizon. These scenarios go beyond that.

The Freemium Myth - More Data

Seth Levine — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:58:44 +0000

My last post with some thoughts on product pricing has received a ton of traffic, comments and email. Clearly this topic is one that a lot of entrepreneurs care about (and struggle with).

Backing Winning Teams

Jeff Bussgang — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:15:43 +0000

A large venture capital firm was recently looking at investing in a follow-on round at one of my portfolio companies and shared an interesting data point with my CEO - the single most highly correlated factor that they found in analyzing hundreds of portfolio companies was actually a very obvious and simple one. If the team had previously been successful and made money as a team, they were significantly more likely to be able to do it again.

CEO Showcase: dataguise

admin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 23:57:23 +0000

Dataguise provides automated and advanced database security solutions to help ensure regulatory compliance and protect against data theft. Dataguise's dgdiscover focuses on sensitive data discovery and classification across the enterprise, while the dgmasker product solution provides secure masking of database content with unprecedented flexibility and functionality across heterogeneous environments.

The Lean VC

Dave McClure — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:39:39 +0000

Below are slides from my talk at the GROW conference (Vancouver, August 2010) on changes in the venture capital industry.

For more info on this topic, read my blog post "Moneyball for Startups".

Here's the summary from that article:

In summary, you should be thinking about stages for risk-reduction & company value creation that look like this:

1) Product: $0-100K, 3-6 months to develop basic MVP that's functional & useful for at least a few customers. Get to small product/market fit.

2) Market: $100K-$2M, 6-12 months to test marketing & distribution channels, understand scalability & customer acquisition cost, conversion to some non-zero revenue event. Get to large product/market fit.

3) Revenue: $1-5M, 6-24 months to optimize product/market fit and get to cash-flow positive.

I might edit this a little bit, as i'm in a rush to finish publishing and get back to other projects, but i think this has captured most of what i wanted to say for now.

read more

CEO Showcase: Coraid

admin — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 23:40:42 +0000

Coraid's EtherDrive solutions deliver a flexible tier of high-performance, scale-out storage. Designed from the ground up for simplicity and virtualization, Coraid enables lower OPEX and a five- to eight-times price-performance advantage over legacy fibre channel systems. The company is redefining storage economics with its breakthrough line of EtherDrive storage solutions. EtherDrive delivers scale-out performance, Ethernet simplicity, and price-performance advantages over legacy storage.

read more

Good Financials from Financial Providers

Michael Moe — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 23:12:53 +0000

The AlwaysOn X Fund portfolio advanced 1.4% for the week, while the NASDAQ was up 0.3%%, and the S&P 500 was down 0.7%. For the year, the AO X Fund portfolio is up 3.9%, the NASDAQ is down 3.9%, and the S&P 500 is down 3.9%.

Chinese water treatment and purification leader Duoyuan Global Water posted 39% sales growth and 3% EPS growth in Q2. By segment, DGW's water treatment revenue grew 45%, purification treatment grew 36%, and conservation equipment revenue was up 28% vs. last year. The company is turning its focus increasingly to desalination, and estimates indicate that the Chinese desalination market will grow by 15% CAGR during the next five years. For the week, DGW was up 0.5%.

read more

30-30: A More Pure Engagement Metric

Andrew Parker — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 22:43:20 +0000

I attended the Capitalize event thrown by DartBoston last night. It featured Google Ventures (specifically, Rich Miner) assessing the pitch by Hello Vino.

The most interesting point of the night came when Rich described his favorite way to measure Active Users: the 30-30 statistic. Most startups measure their Active Users based on some activity over the past X days (where typically, X = 30). By contrast, 30-30 is where Active Users are measured by counting all users who have used the product in the last 30 days who also signed up longer than 30 days ago.

The purpose behind the 30-30 methodology is that everyone who signed up in the past 30 days is an Active User by definition in the more common 30-day window definition of Active User, which is needless noise when you’re trying to determine engagement. 30-30 is a more pure measure of true engagement that doesn’t include people that visited your site once and never returned… it’s a great way to cut out the noise in a typical 30-day Active User window. The people who are left in 30-30 are the ones that are truly engaged.

read more

Do You Suffer From Urgency Addiction?

Mark Suster — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 22:10:33 +0000

I suffer from the “urgency addiction.” I know it sounds like one of the falsely humble things like telling somebody in a job interview that your weakness is that you’re too much of a perfectionist. But the urgency addiction is a bad thing that I’m fortunate enough to get away with. When I first discovered the concept I found it enlightening. Here’s what I learned.

read more

CEO Showcase: Berkeley Design Automation

admin — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 23:58:03 +0000

Berkeley Design Automation produces technology related to analog, radio-frequency, and mixed-signal integrated circuit verification. Its analog FastSPICE unified circuit verification platform combines the accuracy, performance, and capacity needed to verify GHz designs in nanometer-scale silicon. Design teams from top-10 semiconductor companies and leading startups use the AFS Platform to efficiently verify their AMS/RF circuits.

read more

Is The Web Dead?

Fred Wilson — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 22:32:30 +0000

My friend Howard Lindzon DM'd me on Twitter last night. He asked if I would agree to be interviewed on Skype next week on a series he is doing titled "The Web Is Dead." When I saw the DM, I shuddered. My good friend the web is dead? No way.

But then I thought about a conversation I had with Saul Klein when I was in London a few weeks ago. Saul told me he is using the web a lot less and his iPad and iPhone a lot more.

read more

The Singularity Is Near: Part IV

Nic Brisbourne — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 00:51:33 +0000

Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity and the accelerating pace of progress,

Kurzweil predicts personal computers with the power of the human brain by 2025, and

Kurzwil predicts we will create software that emulates the human mind by reverse engineering the human brain

read more

CEO Showcase: iPipeline

admin — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 09:39:12 +0000

iPipeline provides a next-generation suite of sales distribution software as a "clean technology" to the insurance and financial services markets through its on-demand service. iPipeline's channel solutions for carriers, distributors, and producers automate activities for quoting, forms processing, illustrations development, agency management, requirements ordering, contracting, and content distribution, letting the insurance industry market, sell, and process faster.

read more

We’re All Frogs Boiling In Water

Mark Suster — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:04:29 +0000

There’s an old (semi true) parable about frogs boiling in water. While not literal it’s a fun and instructive metaphor for change.

It goes like this: if you put a frog in boiling water it will sense the hot water and immediately jump out yet if you put it into cold water and very gradually turn up the temperature in the water the frog won’t notice and will stay in until it has boiled to death.

There’s some metaphorical truth to this in our everyday lives. When we’re faced with shocking changes the societal impact becomes immediate and obvious. An example would be an economic shocks that causes mass job loss and unemployment as happened after the dot-com crash, 9/11 and again in Sept 08. In times like these we reflect more about life in general and about the impacts technology has on our lives and on our society.

read more

Hiring Managers For Your Startup

Bijan Sabet — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 20:02:05 +0000

Within 12-18months a venture backed startup will expand from the founding team, to a larger core team and then the need for management in different parts of the organization are required as the company expands.

Hiring strong executives is critical to a company’s success over time. But it’s not easy to do.

read more

The Singularity Is Near: Part III

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 19:50:19 +0000

The previous posts were: Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity and the accelerating pace of progress and Kurzweil predicts personal computers with the power of the human brain by 2025.

Computer hardware by itself is, of course, little use to anyone, so after arguing that we will have personal computers as powerful as the human brain by 2025 Kurzweil goes on to discuss the software that will run on this amazing platform. His contention, in a nutshell, is that we will reverse engineer the workings of the human brain and emulate the salient parts in software and that the resulting machines will be interact with us in a way indistinguishable from humans. Further, for all practical purposes, a machine whose interactions are indistinguishable from a human will need to be treated as a human and therefore regarded as conscious, and I guess alive.

read more

The Singularity Is Near: Part II

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 19:50:16 +0000

This is the second post in a series summarising the key arguments of Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is near: When humans transcend biology. The first post entitled Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity and the accelerating pace of progress can be found here.

The second idea I’m going to pick out from The Singularity is Kurzweil’s prediction that by 2025 personal computers (I think costing less than $1,000 in today’s money) will have the power of the human brain.

read more

The Perils of Follow-On Financing Decisions

Rob Go — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 00:26:44 +0000

I’ve been reading the book “The Black Swan” recently on the recommendation of my two partners. I had heard about the book for years, but it never made it off my “to-read” list until now.

One of the concepts that the book discusses is the way we think of risk differently when we are generating profits vs. when we are minimizing losses. The simple illustration goes something like this:

read more

Regulation Strangulation

Fred Wilson — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 01:47:43 +0000

I've written a bit about net neutrality on this blog in the past few years. Every time I do, I hear about problems with regulating the Internet. The readers of this blog are a fairly "laissez faire" bunch. Guess what? So am I.

read more

I Buy Dead Magazines (AKA: The Art Of The Intro)

Mark Suster — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:41:16 +0000

It starts in a crowded room at a conference or networking event. You bump into the person you’ve always wanted to chat with or your perfect business development partner who can “make” you. What are you going to say in the moment?

I can tell you from years of experience that most people waste that moment. You have to count on somebody interrupting you within 60 seconds so if you’re impactful you ought to at least be remembered. I’ve written about the “elevator” pitch before. If you haven’t read that post I suggest you do since it’s such an important topic. I also did a very short video on the topic. [if you're in a rush or ADHD you can skip to end of this post for the "to do" list]

read more

The Singularity Is Near: Part I

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:32:33 +0000

Over the last 6-9 months American inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil has had a profound influence on how I see the future and how I run my life today. His theories on the evolution of technology and its impact on society, and the impact technology can have on our health and longevity today have been around for a while, but it is only this year that I have become familiar with them, largely through reading two of his books (Transcend and The Singularity) and taking the weekly newsletter from his website, KurzweilAI.net.

I have only just finished reading The Singularity, which I found The Singularity to be so profound and thought provoking that I’m going to summarize it over a series of blog posts, of which this is the first. (Regular readers will know I occasionally write single posts about books I have like very much. This is the first time I will write a series.)

read more

Observing The Typical Internet User

Andrew Parker — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 23:59:48 +0000

I’m concerned I’m losing touch with the behaviors of a typical internet user. It’s arguable whether or not a “typical” internet user even exists… but when I use that phrase my intentions are to get at:

What needs does the internet fill for people, on average?

Where do they go to fulfill those needs?

How long do people spend online, on average?

What are the means of access?

I know these questions can be answered quantitatively with service like comScore or industry reports from people like Mary Meeker at Morgan Stanley, but data alone is really insufficient to really feel in touch with how people use the web. This is my concern… I know the data and read it regularly, but I have not spent enough time with users directly lately.

read more

The Power of Ignorance

Tony Tjan — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 21:28:43 +0000

If desperation is the mother of innovation, then ignorance might be its father. In the early stages of a company, being protected from external influences can be a powerful stimulant for creativity and innovation. Why? For the same reason that we often see some of the most creative and entrepreneurial insights coming from younger people. Wisdom and experience help to grow and sustain a company, but generating novel ideas requires a certain amount of naïveté. In the context of entrepreneurship and idea generation, ignorance equals open-mindedness. An empty mind is an open one — it is empty of bias, empty of past experience, and empty of external critique.

read more

Congrats To The Hot Potato Team

Emily Hickey — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 05:03:49 +0000

There was some pretty relevant news announced a couple weeks ago that was met with a surprising lack of discussion on the NYC Tech Twitter/Blogosphere – the news that Facebook plans to acquire Hot Potato for ~ $10m in a ‘talent’ sale. I was especially surprised at the lack of response because Justin Shaffer & his crew are so active and well-liked around town.

So why the silence? I’m assuming that maybe people thought the sale was a less-than-desirable outcome.

read more

TV and Entertainment Deals Sweeten the Mix

Michael Moe — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 19:20:54 +0000

The AlwaysOn X portfolio dropped 2.9% for the week, while the NASDAQ was down 5%, and the S&P 500 was down 3.8%. For the year, the AO X Fund portfolio is up 2.5%, the NASDAQ is down 4.2%, and the S&P 500 is down 3.2%.

Netflix reached a deal to add movies from Paramount Pictures, MGM, and Lions Gate, increasing the company's competitive strength vs. cable companies and traditional TV providers. For the week, NFLX advanced 11.8%.

read more

Seattle Board Day

Brad Feld — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 13:18:58 +0000

I’m on a six week rhythm in Seattle for the three boards I’m on up here – Gist, BigDoor, and Impinj. While I don’t have them perfectly synced up, I’m hopeful that I will in 2011. In the mean time, today full of BigDoor and Gist.

It was an absurdly beautiful day in Seattle. When the sun is out, this place shines. The day started out at the new Founders Co-op office where BigDoor is located. It’s about 33% full but that’s going to change next week when TechStars Seattle begins and fills out the place. It’s great space, in a great location (near the new Amazon campus), and is covered with IdeaPaint.

read more

The Open Media Revolution Is Over: Are We Better Off?

Andrew Bellay — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 22:31:56 +0000

This was, without a doubt, the best panel of the whole conference. Not only was everyone a rock star but the discussion got pretty heated too. This panel is a must watch so I'm not even going to summarize it for you. I will highlight two of my favorite moments though: The first is when Chamillionaire laid it all out on the table and shut everyone up. The second was when the founder and editor of one publication called the founder and editor of another publication an extortionist. What made it better was that the accused then agreed to the claim. Maybe the open media revolution isn't all that open after all?

read more

Why You May Not Be Charging Enough For Your Product

Seth Levine — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 06:04:04 +0000

I’ve been pulled into a number of product and pricing meetings recently (for reasons unknown I’ve become the Foundry pricing and productization guy). I thought it would be helpful to put some of my thoughts into a blog post and hopefully spur some conversation in the comments and over email. With any broad topic, there are always exceptions to the general rules. There are also few absolutes and much of this advice varies depending on your specific product and market.

read more

The Rise Of The Lean VC

Steve Blank — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 05:39:55 +0000

Consumer Internet investing seems to have split off from traditional Venture Capital, and is creating a new category of VC’s: Lean VC’s. I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it.

Here’s why.

Electron-based Venture Capital
When I first came to Silicon Valley the world of Venture Capital looked pretty simple. VC’s invested in things that ran on electrons: hardware, software and silicon. While individual VC’s inside venture firms specialized in particular domains (PC’s, peripherals, semiconductors, test equipment, operating systems, applications, etc.,) their investments had roughly the same time horizon and were focused around things that used electrons – primarily computing and computing infrastructure.

read more

Alignment Between Entrepreneurs and VCs

Jeff Bussgang — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 05:34:21 +0000

Alignment.

You hear this word thrown out frequently in business conversations. It is a wonderful thing to aspire to, but very hard to achieve. Perhaps even harder to achieve in entrepreneurial settings between the venture capitalist and the entrepreneur, where the stakes are so high and the ever-present risk of dysfunctional behavior leading to a "Start-Up Soap Opera".

Ever since I began the research for my book, I have been spending time thinking about why VC-entrepreneur alignment is so elusive. And so when the Kauffman Foundation asked me to give a presentation to their recent class of young VCs, I decided to take the opportunity to develop a few thoughts that teed up the key issues.

read more

How to Ask for Help, Favors and Intros

Mark Suster — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 13:34:50 +0000

An entrepreneur recently sent me an @ reply message on Twitter asking for some help with a decision coming up in his business. I get these frequently via Twitter, Facebook or email.

I don’t mind. I can’t always get to them. Basically a request like this is stacking on top of my already large to-do list. But I do like to try and make time for some and I’ll admit I’m a bit random about it. I do it when I’m in the mood, am avoiding something else or have a bit of free time. I wish I could do more.

I provided my email address and he sent me a 688 word email (i.e. loooong) with a very broad question. I felt I had committed so I read and responded to the email.

read more

"Don't Tweet This. Don't Blog This."

Andrew Bellay — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 00:08:00 +0000

Here are two keynotes you cannot miss. In the first, our very own Tony Perkins gives us ten graphs to describe the past and help us gaze into the future. Then, after an excellent introduction by Jamis MacNiven, Jaron Lanier, named 2010 Time Magazine top 100 most influential people, gives a talk entitles You Are Not a Gadget that is guaranteed to leave you thinking something. Check out one of the best...and most bizarre set of keynotes below.

read more

Solidarity Not Charity

Fred Wilson — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 23:40:23 +0000

Our portfolio company Zynga has been running campaigns in their games to raise money for Haiti and a number of other causes. Mark Pincus, Zynga's founder and CEO, calls this "solidarity not charity." Zynga describes this approach to giving back in this way:

Solidarity not charity is a culture that is not seeking a handout but instead is seeking a partnership, and a culture that had demonstrated by its past that it is worthy of our respect, of our collaboration and our sustained commitment.

read more

Four Signs You're In A Good Neighborhood

Emily Hickey — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 17:50:39 +0000

I posted yesterday about the sale of Hot Potato to Facebook and why this represented a victory of sorts. I also mentioned that I thought they were able to get a relatively high 'talent' multiple in part because of the NEIGHBORHOOD they were in as a start-up.

Neighborhood’ is a handy metaphor roughly equating to ‘market.’ Not in a Porter’s 5 Forces kind of a way - but more casually - are you in a market that has enough heat to tangibly increase your odds of success?

read more

Zuckerberg on Privacy and Control

Tony Perkins — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:21:10 +0000

When you watch the video clip below of Mark Zuckerberg being interviewed by the feisty Kara Swisher and consumer technology's most influential critic, Walt Mossberg, you can't help but notice how Mr. Zuckerberg starts progressively perspiring throughout the questioning. He was certainly on the hot seat when the subject of privacy came up, given the repeated questions and Facebook's recent public relations challenges. But quite frankly, Walt Mossberg comes off as a bit of a curmudgeon. The bottom line is the social media cat is way out of the bag.

read more

Steve Jobs On AT&T - Can I Expect Relief Soon?

Andrew Bellay — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 01:56:34 +0000

What is Apple going to do about AT&T's network problems? One iPhone fan, desperate for a solution, asked if someone from Apple is working on the problem. Jobs, as usual, keeps his cards close to his chest and gives a carefully crafted response, but not a real answer. The bottom line seems to be that the Apple-AT&T partnership is still worth more than the headaches AT&T's network is causing for Apple.

read more

Trada: From The Beginning

Seth Levine — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 23:49:17 +0000

Brad has a lengthy post up describing how we think about seed investing at Foundry Group. In it, he describes our philosophy around seed investing and differentiates it from what others (but not everyone) in the market is doing. Importantly, he notes that:

read more

Understanding A VC’s Seed Funding Policy Is Critical

Mark Suster — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 23:23:24 +0000

I’ve written about it myself (Is VC Seed Funding Dead?) and (Is There Really a Signaling Problem with VC Seed Funding?).

Short summary of my posts:
1. There is a structural reason that VCs are investing at early stages,
2. Many (Union Square Ventures, Foundry Group, True Ventures, GRP Partners, Mike Hirshland at Polaris Ventures) do it the right way – we treat it as a normal investment and we don’t have a “options” strategy with our investment. I’ve done 4 seed investments in the past year and they are 100% referenceable.
3. Many firms do it in a way that can be more detrimental to entrepreneurs. They either do too many seed investments (for which they can spend no quality time with any) or they treat it as an option (“if you succeed come back and see us and we’ll match any term sheet you get”) – they view it as a sort of “right of first refusal.”

read more

Angels Take Flight In New England

Jeff Bussgang — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 21:57:43 +0000

Here at home, the angel community in New England is really starting to flex its muscles. Thanks to Scott Kirsner's arbitrary declaration (and admirable leadership), June is Innovation Month in New England and there is a ridiculous amount of activity going on.It started off on June 1st with Angel Boot Camp, a confab that gathered over 200 angels, VCs and start-ups. Last night was Tech Stars Boston Investor Night, which continues to gain momentum heading into its second season, as well as the big annual the MITX Awards event. Every night this month, there is something going on. You can see the master schedule at www.neinnovation.com. Many of these venues didn't exist 3-4 years ago - Mobile Mondays, Web Inno, Open Coffee, etc. New events are coming to Boston this month, including the Open Angel Forum, which is June 18th.

read more

Here's Why You Need A Liquidation Preference

Fred Wilson — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:15:19 +0000

I get a lot of heat every time I mention that I won't invest without a liquidation preference. People say that it means I don't want to take a risk. I am happy to take a risk. We do it every time we make an investment. We lose money on some of them and I can live with losing money. It is the price you have to pay for the opportunity to make money.

What I am not OK with is an unfair deal. And investing in common stock when the founder controls the company and the exit is not a fair deal.

read more

NextView Takes Culture Seriously

Rob Go — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:04:05 +0000

The NextView team went away for a couple days recently for a strategy off-site. One of the major topics we discussed was firm culture. It’s an elusive idea. Usually, culture happens TO you. You inherit it when you join a firm based on the personalities and decisions of those who came before you.

Even if you are a founder, I think culture can still happen to you. Without knowing it, you can establish a firm culture that might reflect some of the undesired idiosyncrasies of your personality or the incentive systems that are in place within the founding team.

read more

Seed Funds Are Emerging In The US, But What Of Europe?

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 17:57:52 +0000

On holiday over the last week or so I have been reading a lot of the chatter about seed funds/smaller VC funds in the US and I planned to sit down and digest all of it today and produce some thoughts on parallel developments in Europe. Unfortunately my day has totally run away from me and this post is reduced to a series of rambling observations….

The debates in the US are centred around two things – changes to the nature of startups and the implications for venture capital, and whether large VC funds can be good seed investors. It is the former question that interests me the most, but for the latter read Brad Feld and Mark Suster who cover the issues thoroughly (and they are the same here in Europe as in the US).

read more

Did Steve Ballmer Call The iPad A PC?

Andrew Bellay — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 08:10:18 +0000

Steve Jobs recently said that fewer people will be using personal computers in the next 5-10 years than today. Steve Ballmer disagrees and says that PCs will continue to shift in form factor but are here to stay. Is this just an issue of semantics? Is the iPad a PC as Ballmer suggests? Either way, what's Microsoft's role in an post-iPad world?

read more

Sigma's Greg Gretsch Part 2: Recession, Super Angels, & Advice For Entrepreneurs

Andrew Bellay — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 01:24:31 +0000

If you missed part one, where Greg explains Sigma's unique approach to world class investing while maintaining a low profile, check it out here.

AlwaysOn: How did Sigma view this last recession?

read more

Apple Tweaks the Faithful

Michael Moe — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 19:45:05 +0000

The AlwaysOn X Fund portfolio advanced 1% for the week, while the NASDAQ was up 1.5%, and the S&P 500 was up 1.8%. For the year, the AO X Fund portfolio is up 5.6%, the NASDAQ is up 0.6%, and the S&P 500 is up 0.9%.

Online restaurant reservation provider OpenTable continues its momentum with strong Q2 results, beating expectations by 3 cents and posting 150% EPS growth and 27% sales growth. Its US EBIT margin improved by 85%, and diners seated in the U.S. were up 52%. While its international business is still small, diners seated were up 125%. The company also raised its Q3 guidance. For the week, OPEN advanced 7.8%.

read more

How To Give Good Phone

Sarah Tavel — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 21:58:29 +0000

A couple weeks ago, Fred Wilson posted a blog post on his strong dislike for phone pitches. While I agree with Fred that in person meetings trump phone calls, for most, avoiding phone “pitches” is not a practical reality. So if a phone call is unavoidable, how do you make the most of them? Here are a few ideas I have… any additions?

read more

Invest Before Product/Market Fit, Double-Down After

Dave McClure — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 21:30:10 +0000

My apologies... this is a long piece (~2500 words). Not for the faint of heart. If you want the short story, read the abstract below & 3 core assertions, then cut to the conclusions at the bottom.

Abstract: VC funds are getting smaller (good), & angel investors are growing (also good), but both need to get smarter & innovate. Startup costs have come down dramatically in the last 5-10 years, and online distribution via Search, Social, Mobile platforms (aka Google, Facebook, Apple) have become mainstream consumer marketing channels. Meanwhile acquisitions are up, but deal sizes are down as mature companies buy startup companies ever earlier in their development cycle.

read more

Myspace: Bring Back The Top 8

Andrew Parker — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 21:20:54 +0000

Myspace was a juggernaut back in 2005/2006. To understand the importance of Myspace back then, remember that YouTube built its audience on Myspace’s back. Then Myspace ceded their lead in social networking, in part because of a strategic mistake to keep their platform semi-closed, instead of opening up like Facebook, who unlocked hundreds of millions of dollars of free app development.

read more

Excellent Summary of Berkeley Patent Survey Results

Brad Feld — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 23:10:44 +0000

In 2008 I was invited by Pamela Samuelson, who I met through several Silicon Flatiron events, to be on an advisory board at the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology. I attended the one meeting that we had and a subsequent symposium and wrote about it in the post Entrepreneurial Companies and the Patent System.

read more

For Micro VCs, Quick Diligence Is Not Less Diligence

David Beisel — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 23:02:15 +0000

Critics of Micro VCs have been quick to point out one primary difference vs. the traditional VC model as a significant flaw: the rapid capital deployment velocity. In other words, if Micro VCs are investing in an accelerated pace where they make at least a handful of investments each year per investor, then perhaps they aren’t doing the sufficient amount of diligence to truly vet these opportunities. Is the Micro VC approach merely just “spray and pray”?

read more

Lead Investors, Dipshit Companies, and Funding Every Entrepreneur

Fred Wilson — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 22:41:10 +0000

Sounds like a great conversation yesterday at Y Combinator's AngelConf in Silicon Valley. Anthony Ha of Venturebeat had a couple posts on it that I just read, one on Paul Graham's comments, and another on Ron Conway and Mike Arrington's comments. I would have enjoyed being part of that discussion so I'll join in now.
read more

Incubating The Stanford Student Incubator

Andrew Bellay — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 22:36:47 +0000

This panel discusses what these new models look like, how they're different from the failed model of the late 90's, and what this might mean for the traditional VC model. We brought in Dan Ha, the director of Stanford's SSE Labs which gives students money to see if their ideas have any legs (without taking any equity!). Ricky Yean, founder of Conversely, shared his experience with the Y-Combinator model. Ooshma Garg, Founder and CEO of Anapata serves in mentorship roles for SSE Labs and has first hand experience with the rebirth of the incubator. Finally, Greg Gretsch, serial entrepreneur turned successful VC helped us answer the big question: how does this shift towards small seed rounds affect the venture capital business model. Our conclusions may shock you so check out the video below.

read more

Entrepreneur Super Hero Archetypes

Rob Go — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:38:16 +0000

I was a huge fan of comic books growing up, but what I always found amusing is that there tended to be certain archetypes of super heroes that would keep showing up. For example - the “simple-minded strong dumb guy” is well represented by the Hulk, The Thing, Collossus, and Mr. Incredible.

read more

Keeping Score: The Custoemer Development Way

Steve Blank — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:33:05 +0000

Keeping Score
One of the key concepts of Customer Development is writing down your initial hypotheses (guesses) of all the parts of your business model, then updating them with the facts you find outside the building.

Since I first wrote the book Four Steps to the Epiphany I’ve realized that an even better way to keep score is by diagramming each of your business model hypotheses on a whiteboard and updating them as your iterate and pivot. I’ve been experimenting with how to best teach this idea to students in classroom and with startups. My favorite book of how to diagram your business is Business Model Generation written by Alexander Osterwalder. It has the notion that any business model can be drawn with just 9 separate boxes. It’s a great idea.

read more

Bob Sutton: Good Boss, Bad Boss

Andrew Bellay — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:22:18 +0000

Bad bosses focus on their own needs, ignore the concerns of others, and act like the rules don't apply to them. Have you ever reported to someone or had people that report to you? Well then you've been on one side or both of the boss coin. Is your boss an asshole? If so, slip him Bob Sutton's The No Asshole Rule. If you just want to learn more about what makes a boss good or bad, then check out this talk by Stanford's very own Professor Bob Sutton. Also, head to Bob's frequently updated blog: Work Matters.

read more

Nexage Platform Upgrade Announced

Andrew Bellay — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 22:17:52 +0000

Nexage, a leading provider of mobile monetization solutions for publishers and application developers, today unveiled a major upgrade to its platform that will enhance performance and scalability for its clients, including some of the largest volume publishers and developers in the mobile industry. The platform enhancement is the first in a series of upgrades and new product offerings that Nexage will be unveiling this year.

read more

Transactions 2.0

Andrew Bellay — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 04:10:11 +0000

They may all be coming, but who's going to make money off of them and how? There wasn't exactly a consensus but that's because there's still no clear winner in the Transaction 2.0 spaces. One thing the panel agreed on was that there are serious inefficiencies in many payment processes. There are big opportunities for the companies that help close these gaps. While it may be really convenient to pull out a credit card for many transactions, there are others where the numbers show that people are more likely to buy and more likely to buy mores when even the small hurdle of pulling out the plastic is eliminated. Check out this awesome Summit at Stanford Panel to hear the details.

read more

Addictive Web Services

Andrew Parker — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 03:41:51 +0000

Paul Graham’s latest post on the acceleration of addiction is great. You can read what I’m about to write without the context of reading Paul’s post, but I highly recommend you take the time to read it. [Side note: I’ve been reading Paul’s book Hackers and Painters and am totally digging it too… it’s like one huge Paul Graham essay. It’s modern day light philosophy framed as social commentary on geeks in society.]

Being in the business of selling an addictive product is emotionally difficult, yet I’d argue that everyone in the internet startup community is in that business to varying degrees.

read more

Founders Make The Syndication Call

Josh Kopelman — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 03:04:22 +0000

Whenever First Round Capital holds a party, we sometimes get emails from a few of our guests asking if they can bring another person with them. Maybe a VC friend of ours wants to bring another partner with him. Maybe it’s an entrepreneur who wants to bring a new executive hire. Maybe it’s someone who works at Facebook and wants to bring a co-worker. Unless we’re dealing with a venue that has a limited space, we typically are fine with the extra guests. It’s a great way to expand our network – and meet new, interesting people.

read more

Business ByDesign

Andrew Bellay — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 02:11:20 +0000

As every small and midsize business knows, growth brings new challenges and bottlenecks that aren't exactly part of your core business. Large-scale ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems may not offer the flexibility companies need and is likely too expensive for most small companies.

So the folks that help solve problems for the world's largest companies made a solution for small and midsized businesses too. SAP's Business ByDesign is simplified and modular ERP with one easy to use interface. It's also software as a service and hosted on SAP's servers so that you don't have maintain a big IT department. Check out this video on how it all works.

read more

IPO Market Still Cold

Andrew Bellay — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:52:51 +0000

The 21 VC-backed IPOs raised a total of $1.9 billion in gross offering proceeds in the first half of 2010. While the number of VC-backed IPOs over the past 6 months is already twice as many as all of 2009 (there were 9 in total in '09), the market response wasn't as positive as many venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and LPs would have liked. As of 7/30/2010, only 6 of the 21 stocks were trading above their initial price. Clearly we will never return to the frothy days of the 1990's, but the low point in the IPO market may be behind us as well.

read more

Video: Survival Of The Fittest VCs

Andrew Bellay — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 23:49:23 +0000

In this panel, the top VCs in the industry share a few of their successful practices with the AlwaysOn audience. More importantly, the panelists share their world-view, which is really the basis for their decision making. Clearly they view things over the long haul. What is unclear to me whether the somber feel of the panel was a result of confidence in their strategy or, as one online viewer suggests, a "worried" feeling about the pending shakeout in the VC industry.

read more

Be a Beta Male

RemmingtonOxleyV — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 23:36:39 +0000

Fresh off the controversy of my last post, "How To Source Deals from Silicon Valley's Gay Mafia", I've listened to the feedback and gathered up a nice plan of articles.

"Be a Beta Male" is my article about getting ahead in Silicon Valley by being a non alpha male. Sure I'm the alpha in a room of alphas, but when I'm in a room of betas, I'm a beta male. Think about it.

My daddy always told me, "People that are like each other tend to like each other."

read more

Ideas Are Cheap

Andrew Parker — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 23:02:17 +0000

Sometimes I ask people I know in my life who I believe would be good entrepreneurs, “have you thought about doing a startup?” I common response to this question is, “Yes, but I don’t feel like I have a good idea.”

I typically let the conversation end right there, because I would never push someone to do a startup that is hesitant. A good entrepreneur has an undeniable drive, a hunger to bust through brick walls and make their startup successful. It’s not possible to try to convince someone with logic to adopt that often-irrational entrepreneurial frame of mind.

read more

How I Think About Seed Investing

Brad Feld — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 23:00:03 +0000

Last week saw an explosion of discussion around seed investing, including plenty of negative comments around VCs as seed investors. While I agree that many VCs are crummy seed investors, I think there are some that are excellent seed investors. This prompted me to write a post titled AngelList Boulder and Some Thoughts on Seed Investing where I promised to write up some of my thoughts on how and why VCs could be good seed investors.

read more

Bullish on SaaS

Michael Moe — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 17:48:32 +0000

The AlwaysOn X Fund portfolio dropped 1.2% for the week, while the NASDAQ was down 0.7%, and the S&P 500 was down 0.1%. For the year, the AO X Fund portfolio is up 4.5%, the NASDAQ is down 1.2%, and the S&P 500 is down 1.2%.

Acme Packet's Q2 results were better than expected, with EPS growth of 157% and sales growth of 62%. The company also raised its guidance for the year, however the stock dropped, as investors were unsatisfied with the "moderate" increase in guidance. We remain bullish on the stock, as it continues to show growth momentum, and we believe there is tremendous potential in the video conferencing and online communication space—where Acme is among the leaders. For the week, APKT dropped 12.7%.

read more

Announcing the 2010 AlwaysOn Global 250

admin — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:00:00 +0000

It's with great excitement that we introduce the eighth annual AlwaysOn Global 250 top private companies. The AlwaysOn Global 250 represent the top emerging companies in the Global Silicon Valley that are demonstrating significant market traction and pursuing game-changing technologies in on-demand computing, digital media, and greentech.

The AlwaysOn editorial team, along with partners at Manatt, Morgan Stanley, the Blackstone Group, KPMG, Silicon Valley Bank, Sonnenschein, and Bridge Bank, as well as industry experts across the globe, scoured the entrepreneurial community to identify the top 250 private companies that are taking old notions of doing things and forging solutions that will lead to industry shake-up and huge value-creation opportunities.

read more

The Future of Books

Andrew Bellay — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 01:39:43 +0000

Even though books have been around for well over 500 years, we're still dealing with a working definition for the word book. Tina Seeling (Executive Director of STVP, author, and Stanford professor) threw out the following definition: "A committment to a deep-dive on a topic using the written word." The panel took a deep dive (with the spoken word) on what a book is and what the future of the written word is, but only after Tina showed off some of her favorite students and their exploration of the future of the book publishing industry. Apple's iPad, the Nook, Amazon's Kindle, and the entire concept of ebooks have forever changed an industry that fell asleep at the wheel.

read more

The State of IPO, M&A, and Secondary Markets

Andrew Bellay — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:57:46 +0000

"IPOs are extremely important, they're just not relevant," says panelist Sam Schwerin. Are IPOs dead forever? Currently, with an average of 10.4 years from founding to IPO (for the few companies that make it), IPOs don't work for anyone - Angels, VCs, LPs, or Entrepreneurs. Secondary sales (done by panelist Barry Silbert and his company SecondMarket) are giving stakeholders stuck in no man's land a way out. This talk really gets into the nitty gritty of how things might shape up for the future of exit markets - both new and old.

read more

Keynote: The Future of the Mobile Cloud

Andrew Bellay — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:20:58 +0000

Communication is about the experiences we create, the devices we use, and the services are enabled. As the shift occurs from a few big players in the 70s to literally hundreds of choices, we are discovering that it’s really all about how you match service to devices to create the communication experience. Hard on the heels of HP’s acquisition of Palm, Phil talks about how the three fundamental building blocks of communication can all come together in the mobile cloud.

read more

Established Players Competing In Cloud 2.0?

Andrew Bellay — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:20:13 +0000

Key players have proven there's value in the cloud. But Cloud 2.0 is more about moving the fringe benefits of the cloud to the core of enterprise (and even consumer) applications. The discussions that potential cloud users are having is shifting from technical feasibility to business and economic discussions.

read more

The 2010 Top 25 Women in Tech to Watch

Tony Perkins — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:19:46 +0000

AlwaysOn is proud to announce its inaugural Top 25 Women in Tech to Watch list, presented by Accenture. These pioneers have been involved in creating innovative technology companies and securing venture capital deals, creating jobs and strengthening the Global Silicon Valley marketplace.

As the tech and VC industries recover from the recent credit crunch, these women are continuing to score big wins in terms of revenue, reach, innovation, and return on their stakeholders' investments. The AlwaysOn Top 25 Women in Tech to Watch is a collection of the most prominent and influential women in the global technology industries.

This is the inaugural year for the list, which was hand-selected by the AlwaysOn editorial team. The team looked at data from across the entrepreneur universe, examining contributions from hundreds of talented women who are changing the technology landscape. The AO team used five criteria for choosing this year's list: overall innovation, the ability to identify new market opportunities, commercialization of new products and services, creation of stakeholder value, and media buzz and awareness in the tech community.

read more

Hot Private SaaS Cloud Companies Shifting to Cloud 2.0

Andrew Bellay — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:09:53 +0000

What's going on with the infamous cloud? Is it actually catching on or it held up for security reasons? We start this great panel off with a debate about how secure the cloud is and get to the other key issues that have slowed the projected adoption of the cloud. Are the barriers psychological or technical? Is Amazon's AWS dead?

read more

How To Source Deals from Silicon Valley's Gay Mafia

RemmingtonOxleyV — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:45:31 +0000

I have a confession.

I'm in Silicon Valley's gay mafia.

No, I'm not gay. I just love sourcing deals where other VCs can't go, won't go, and don't even know about.

The gay mafia here has its fingers in EVERYTHING. Yes, some of them are mad that I'm the only straight guy, but I add value into the societies that I infiltrate.

For the record, I love gay entrepreneurs.

read more

Mobile Content Creation, Distribution and Consumption

Andrew Bellay — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:44:42 +0000

read more

Mobile Monetization - Billions for the Taking

Andrew Bellay — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:02:59 +0000

After watching the carriers rake in the cash, venture-backed companies are finally navigating this complex world, bringing value to consumers and positive returns on investments. These four panelists represent a wide range of perspectives in the mobile world, from monetizing apps through advertising to keeping the carriers in the game to smoothing the network path amongst myriad competitors to social networking on the small screen.

read more

Qualcomm's Matt Grob On Augmented Reality

Andrew Bellay — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:51:47 +0000

Two great videos here. One is a taste of Qualcomm's new game (with Mattel), a 3D augmented reality "rockem sockem robots" that we saw live during Matt Grob's talk, the second link below in red. Qualcomm is leading the way to bring pretty sophisticated augmented reality to your cell phone. They've developed a way to scan, compare, position, and render images 30 times a second to produce the "rockem sockem robots" game in the video below. Enjoy! Matt Grob is the Senior VP of Engineering and the Head of Corporate Research and Development at Qualcomm.

read more

Here Come the Super Angels!

Andrew Bellay — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:20:22 +0000

Everyone has an opinion about them. Many love them. Some hate them. Regardless of your opinion, Super Angels have really become a force recently. Most focus on consumer internet because the start-up costs are low (compared to green energy, semiconductors, and healthcare), but when you want to scale a company, when you need millions of users, then you need big capital...Except when sometimes you don't.

So how do the early stage VCs feel? Well there's one key thing to keep in mind: Big funds need big exits. Small funds don't. Enjoy the video, and online discussion!

read more

Co-Innovation In The Cloud

Andrew Bellay — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:42:45 +0000

We kicked off day 2 of the STVP/AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford with a keynote from Doug Merritt, EVP at SAP. The message from Doug about cloud computing was clear: Change will be constant, the OnDemand model will continue to perform, this is just the beginning, and SAP will be there for the longhaul. This talk starts off with Tony Perkins' intro for the day and rolls right into Doug's talk.

read more

Obama Slide

Tony Perkins — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:42:53 +0000

The Anatomy of a Successful Startup in 2010

Andrew Bellay — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:04:55 +0000

The Anatomy of a Successful Startup in 2010. This awesome panel, moderated by Guy Kawasaki, was all about the AlwaysOn Global 250 for 2010. We kicked things off by talking about how 2008-09 treated these start-ups. Generally, these CEOs saw only the upside and opportunities of the past 18 months. The panel moved on to discuss some of the details of how they got to be the best start-ups in their respective industries.

The Anatomy of a Successful Startup in 2010

read more

HP Unveils Fashionable Clutch Mini Netbook

Andrew Bellay — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:01:05 +0000

Tuesday's Stanford Technology Ventures Program & AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford 2010: Satjiv Chahil and Vivienne Tam unveil HP's newest sexy netbook. Satjiv, Global Marketing Whiz at HP, was Tony Perkins' first surprise. Vivienne Tam was Satjiv's surprise guest. If you want mobility, power, and fashion you'll find it here.

HP and Vivienne came together to make this hot mini netbook. Check out the video, slide deck, and live group discussion here.

read more

How to Outmanuever Another VC

RemmingtonOxleyV — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:27:26 +0000

Wow. I guess I didn't need to buy Digg to get onto the home page. Yes my first post got Dugg, was fBook liked, and was StumbledUpon. Anyway.

This new post is meant only for VCs ONLY. I'm a newish partner but I get the same deal flow as legendary VCs. I won't name drop, but I have some pretty big names with some pretty big exits under my watch. I got them because of two patented techniques...

Here is my second Digg home page submission, "How to Outmanuever Another VC."

(1) I talk to and woo retards.

read more

Positive Results, Strong Growth

Michael Moe — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:03:46 +0000

The AlwaysOn X Fund portfolio advanced 5.3% for the week, while the NASDAQ was up 4.1%, and the S&P 500 was up 3.1%. For the year, the AO X Fund portfolio is up 5.7%, the NASDAQ is flat and the S&P 500 is down 1.1%.

All our companies reporting last week posted positive results supported by strong growth. New Oriental Education beat expectations by 2 cents, posting 114% EPS growth and 45.8% sales growth. Apple beat expectations by 40 cents, posting 160% EPS growth and 61.3% sales growth. VmWare beat expectations by 2 cents, with Q2 EPS up 70% and sales up 48%. Management guides up for Q3. Baidu.com beat expectations by 4 cents, with EPS down 78%, while sales were up 74.4%. Management raised its Q3 guidance. F5 Networks posted 5 cents better-than-expected EPS results, up 65% YoY, and sales up 45.7%. FFIV raised its Q3 outlook.

read more

451 Group Analysis: AO250 M&A Bounces Back

The 451 Group — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:43:25 +0000

After weathering one of the most dismal years in recent history, tech M&A came roaring back this year for the AlwaysOn Global 250. This year, acquirers spent $5.7 billion to acquire 37 AO250 companies, more than six times the spending and three times the number of deals as in the prior—year period—and the highest number of deals we've seen since AlwaysOn began naming companies to its top 100 and top 250 lists. Last year, amid the turmoil of the credit crisis and its aftermath, acquirers spent just under $900 million to buy only 13 AO companies.

read more

Internet Sector Matured

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:46:42 +0000

A couple of weeks back I blogged that the increasing importance to startups of partnerships with companies like Facebook are making the internet more and more like traditional areas of tech like software and semiconductors and is a sign of the maturing of the internet sector. This morning I have been struck by a similar thought this morning reading two articles in the FT.

The first was a report on Domino’s Pizza UK’s first half results – Domino’s is a traditional offline business that was in existence long before the web rose to prominence and they now take fully 33% of their orders over the internet. Moreover they cite an increase in internet orders as one of two reasons their first half results came in ahead of expectations (the other reason was a boost from the World Cup).

read more

Terms, Term Sheets, and Terminal Value

Fred Wilson — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:44:07 +0000

Mark Suster has a great post on calculating valuation and the things that VCs can throw at you to make the deal better for them (I guess I should say us) than it actually looks. Go read it. It's complicated stuff but you should try to wrap your head around it. I've written a bunch about this as has Brad Feld and other VC bloggers have too. The VC world is changing. We are talking about this stuff, explaining it, and discussing it. That's progress.

read more

How To Raise Venture Money

Andrew Bellay — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 01:50:05 +0000

NOT ready yet...

For those interested, the presentation that I delivered to the members of the VANJ is embedded below.

read more

Private Equity, The Craps Tables, & The '86 Mets

Chris Douvos — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 01:45:57 +0000

So I've been working on a blog post called the Epistemology of Investing for about the past year. Now, epistemology is a ten-dollar word that those -- like me -- with five dollar brains rarely sling around, but sometimes I think investing could be called applied epistemology.

As investors -- specifically, investors in opaque, illiquid markets -- we spend our days asking the epistemological questions: what do we know about our investments, companies, markets, people? How do we come to know what we know? What are the sources and limits of our knowledge? How are our beliefs different from The Truth? Said another way: what investing hypotheses do we form? How do we form them? And how do we seek out, analyze, and integrate the data we use to test those hypotheses?

read more

CEO Showcase: uTest

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 06:44:45 +0000

uTest is the world's largest marketplace for software testing services. The company provides real-world testing services through its community of more than 25,000 professional testers from 163 countries around the world. More than 1,000 companies-from startups to global software enterprises-have joined the uTest marketplace to get their Web, desktop, and mobile applications tested. uTest lets customers launch higher-quality products, get their applications to market faster, and control the cost of testing.

read more

Gaming: Why It's The Future, Pt 1

Andrew Bellay — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 06:36:27 +0000

Tim brings a combination of operational, technical and international business experience to Norwest Venture Partners. He focuses on investments in mobile, gaming, digital media, and also leads NVP's investment practice in China and Asia-Pacific. Tim led NVP's investments in ngmoco, Lumos Labs, Brite Semiconductor and 3jam, Playdom, and PCH International. He's also a board observer for Borqs, deCarta, Double Fusion and Veveo.

Prior to joining NVP in 2006, Tim was a principal at Gabriel Venture Partners where he was actively involved in over a dozen wireless-related deals and led Gabriel's investments in Iridigm Display Corporation (acquired by Qualcomm), Sequoia Communications, Sandbridge, and Kajeet. He also contributed to the boards of Placeware (acquired by Microsoft) and Arula Systems (acquired by Raritan), TestQuest, NextG Networks, and IPWireless. Tim built Gabriel's wireless sector practice and helped establish business development capabilities through strong, strategic relationships across the wireless value chain, particularly in Asia-Pacific.

Few know the gaming sector better than Tim and that's why we grabbed an interview with him before this year's Summit at Stanford.

read more

Venture Capitalists Expect Industry To Shrink

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 23:10:17 +0000

You might have seen this graphic on Techcrunch last week [by Deloitte and the National Venture Capital Association]. It shows that VCs in the developed world expect their industry to shrink over the next five years.

read more

Where Are The Carriers?

Chip Davis — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 23:10:14 +0000

Step #1 - Become a Large Consumer of Oil

read more

Business Of Tech: Breaking In Early

Beth Ferreira — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 23:10:11 +0000

As a reformed corporate type, I often get asked by people with business backgrounds how to “break into” an early stage tech company. There is definitely no set path and it is highly dependent on the players already in the company. Occasionally, these jobs might be listed on LinkedIn, startup.ly or indeed. Keep in mind, however, that the earlier stage you want to go the more likely you will get your job through a networked search.

read more

VC Practices To Admire

Rob Go — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 00:06:05 +0000

It’s a little in vogue these days for seed stage investors to bash on larger VC’s. It’s kind of fun, and in many cases, the criticisms have merit. But most folks agree that having home run potential almost always means raising VC money to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. Large VC’s fill this capital need, and also can add a lot of value through the lifecycle of the company. Also, some of these partners and firms have been in the investing game for a long time and have had success in different economic cycles, so there is a lot to learn from them.

Here are a couple practices I admire. Full disclosure, I’ve worked at one VC firm (Spark Capital) and haven’t seen the inner workers of any of the others, so these thoughts come from my own external observations.

read more

The Hummus Manifesto - Part 2

Michael Eisenberg — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 00:03:06 +0000

Thanks to everyone for your thoughtful comments and retweets on Part 1 of the Hummus Manifesto. I received notes from representatives of our government as well as a note from someone who said they showed it to the Governor of Oregon! Most importantly, entrepreneurs read it and they are the ones who make a difference and together we can all make a difference.

read more

CEO Showcase: PowerHouse Dynamics

admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:46:08 +0000

PowerHouse Dynamics provides a total home energy management solution designed to manage all uses-and sources-of energy, integrating energy efficiency and renewable energy. The eMonitor uniquely monitors at the circuit level, delivering the level of granularity required for effective energy management, and combines that with thermostat and device control and ongoing analysis and proactive alerts.

read more

Narrative: Presentation Connective Tissue

Mark Peter Davis — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:10:49 +0000

The slide deck that you show to VCs in your meetings should do more than address the requisite topics. Your presentation should tell a story that helps investors understand why this is an attractive opportunity.

There are a few reasons why creating a narrative through your slides is important.

First, people (investors included) like stories – they’re more engaging than a string of seemingly unrelated facts. When done well, stories incorporate elements of suspense, insight and even a climax. These rhetorical tools can be incorporated into the presentation to make the materials more exciting and engaging. This is very important as conjuring an emotional response (even if a subtle one) in your audience can help them become more engaged with your venture.

read more

Thoughts On The Seed Fund Phenomenon

Fred Wilson — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:09:09 +0000

There have been quite a few posts written about this meme in the past few weeks. I think that Paul Kedrosky got the discussion started with this post. Chris Dixon wrote an interesting response. And yesterday John Boyd wrote a thoughtful post on the topic. John makes a point in his post that I want to second and add to. He says:

While many businesses require a lot less capital to start, they don't require less capital to grow.

John's comment made me think about a blog post I wrote three and a half years ago called "Web 2.0 Is A Gift, Not A Threat, To VCs." If you haven't read that post, I would urge you to go read it. I blog because it helps me think through a lot of issues we face in our business and that post was really useful to us over the past several years of investing.

read more

VC Rules Worth Breaking

Rob Go — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:07:07 +0000

Quick post today that came to me on the subway. During my time in Venture Capital, I was surprised to see how many “rules” there are that have become gospel in the industry. At the same time, I was surprised how little convincing evidence there was behind these rules aside from common industry wisdom.

But markets and businesses all change, and venture capital is no different. Rules change, and players that fail to adapt become obsolete. I remember when guys like Union Square Ventures and First Round Capital starting breaking some typical VC rules, I heard folks at other firms voice a bunch of criticisms that seem pretty silly in retrospect.

read more

The Hummus Manifesto - Part 1

Michael Eisenberg — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:05:00 +0000

This is the first in a multi-part series on the challenges facing the Israeli High Tech Industry and How We Can emerge stronger from both the global economic downtourn and the challenges facing our tech economy.

read more

CEO Showcase: Goozzy

admin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 19:42:46 +0000

Goozzy is an Internet Web application based in Russia. The company's product is in invite-only beta, but you can hear CEO talk about his vision of the meta-Internet, which he believes is the next big thing in the virtual Silicon Valley.

read more

The Fund Holds Steady

Michael Moe — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 16:38:12 +0000

The AlwaysOn X Fund portfolio dropped 1% for the week, while the NASDAQ was down 0.8%, and the S&P 500 was down 1.2%. Year-to-date, the AO X Fund is up 0.4%, the NASDAQ is down 4%, and the S&P 500 is down 4.5%.

Google missed its EPS estimates for Q2 by 7 cents, reporting 20% EPS growth and 24% sales growth. The weakening euro hurt earnings as a third of Google's sales come from Europe. Additionally, expense growth is accelerating with 2,000 new employees in the second half of the year, while sales growth is decelerating. The average price-per-ad click grew only 4%. Competition from Facebook is also pulling Web traffic and advertising dollars away from GOOG. For the week, GOOG dropped 1.7%.

read more

Majority Of Both Drivers & VCs Are Above Average

David Beisel — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 23:21:22 +0000

Whenever I am navigating through the notorious Boston traffic, I am often reminded of the cognitive bias of illusory superiority. That is, the “above average effect,” which “causes people to overestimate their positive qualities and to underestimate their negative qualities, relative to others.” The Wikipedia article on the subject cites the classic study where a full 93% of U.S. drivers put themselves in the top half of the driving population.

read more

Four Lessons on Culture and Customer Service

Tony Tjan — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 18:46:22 +0000

When I caught up with CEO Tony Hsieh in California a few months ago, we spoke about how his company's culture came to be, and about selling the company to Amazon for $850 million last summer (a deal now worth more than $1 billion with the appreciation of Amazon's stock). Here were the four lessons I took away from one of the great serial entrepreneurs of our time:

1. Company culture stems from intrinsic factors and needs to be established early rather than reverse-engineered.

read more

CEO Showcase: salesELEMENT

admin — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 06:41:41 +0000

salesELEMENT was founded in 2003 with a single-minded focus: to improve the painful proposal process. Today, the company's clients include large multi-national and publicly traded companies as well as small- to medium-sized businesses. salesELEMENT's SaaS product, seProposals, saves sales staff countless hours and lets anyone create great looking proposals in 65% less time than traditional methods-winning more sales and saving companies thousands.

read more

Google: Growth, Pricing Power & Valuation Multiples

Bill Gurley — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 01:01:23 +0000

Last night, Google reported financial results for the second quarter of 2010. While revenue growth was up 24% year over year, revenue was fairly flat compared with Q1 of 2010. Moreover, earnings fell short of average street estimates sending Google down $20 per share (4%) in the aftermarket. Based on current estimates (which might change tomorrow), Google currently trades at 18 times the street average for 2010 earnings, and 15.5 times the same number for 2011. These represent price/revenue multiples of 7.5 and 6.5 for 2010 and 2011 respectively. For a long-term tech investor, these valuation multiples seem surprisingly low for a proven market leader. What gives?

read more

Venture Capital Math Is Changing

Nic Brisbourne — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 00:59:36 +0000

If you have been reading this blog over the past couple of weeks you might have picked up that I’m a big admirer of Steve Blank and his thinking about how to build startups. Yesterday he wrote a blog post entitled Welcome to the Lost Decade (for Entrepreneurs, IPO’s and VC’s) which sets out the changes to the environment in which we are all working and explains how tough life is going to be for the startup ecosystem as a result. As I said I’m a big fan of Blank, but I think he over states his case this time. In the rest of this post I will pick out the salient points from Blank’s piece and then finish by saying why I think the situation isn’t as bad as he makes out.

read more

The Lack Of Women In Tech

Brad Feld — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 22:36:13 +0000

The meme of the lack of women in tech (or software, or entrepreneurship) appeared in several places today. Regular readers of this blog know that I’ve been the chairman of the National Center for Women & Information Technology for a number of years and deeply involved in this issue. It’s very satisfying for me to see a meme like this pick up speed and appear in a bunch of thoughtful articles and discussions. If you are interested in this issue, I have three articles from the last 24 hours that I encourage you to read.

read more

Has Apple Jumped The Shark?

Jeff Bussgang — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 22:36:10 +0000

There's a famous moment in 1970s television sitcom lore when the super-popular "Happy Days" lost its mojo. That moment is when the main character and hero, Arthur Fonzarelli ("The Fonze"), performs the improbable water-ski trick of jumping over a shark. Now, I'm an avid water-skiier, and I've been known to jump a Loon or two, but jumping over a shark is so absurd its laughable. The video clip, which I embed below, underscores how ridiculous the feat is with Fonzie still in his (dry) leather jacket.

read more

Watching Foursquare Cross The Chasm

Emily Hickey — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 22:36:06 +0000

Foursquare has clearly picked up a lot of traction in the past year, but there’s been some mounting evidence recently that they are really about to hit a big tipping point. Aside from all the high profile deals and user growth of late, here are some recent touch points just in my day-to-day life:

I noticed Luke’s Lobster has a Foursquare mayor offer on the counter

The new Tweetdeck features 4SQ on the welcome screen

I casually mentioned 4SQ in passing to a ‘non-tech’ friend and they’d just downloaded it the day before

These little touch points are important harbingers. When they get populous enough, they tend to be in the process of merging together into a mainstream brand that will display incredible inherent velocity.

read more

CEO Showcase: AuthorsGlobe

admin — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 03:42:43 +0000

AuthorsGlobe, an award-winning MIT venture, connects thought-leading authors with a global community by hosting live virtual master classes in partnership with professional organizations (trade, industry, and alumni), subscription-based magazines, and Web communities and bloggers. AuthorsGlobe is playing in the high-growth online education market at the forefront of publishing, online education, e-commerce, and digital media with a very unique metric-driven and customer centric model.

read more

Medical Entrepreneurship: A New Movement to Accelerate Cures

Tony Tjan — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:18:13 +0000

There is a new social entrepreneurial movement afoot, which seeks to find cures to some of the world's most challenging diseases. Medical entrepreneurship is, in my view, the very best hope we have for accelerating the pace of finding medical cures. A good example and arguably the pioneer of this movement is Michael Milken's Prostate Cancer Foundation. Milken has taken on a decidedly entrepreneurial approach to providing capital and human resources to accelerate the pace of research into cures for cancer, particularly that of the prostate.

read more

Virtual Goods & The “Rental” Model

Bill Gurley — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 23:18:19 +0000

American journalists and corporate executives have been slow to appreciate the beauty, brilliance, and consumer allure of the virtual goods business model. It’s not that they did not have data points – China is chock full of multi-US$billion market capitalization companies that are based on this business model. That said, many luddites predicted it was an “Eastern” fascination that would never spread to the West. They never fully understood it.

read more

Fat Startups, BMI & The Lorax

Chris Douvos — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 23:13:12 +0000

So, there I was hanging out in Denver airport again, reading the back-and-forth between Ben Horowitz and Fred Wilson on fat versus thin startups. They’re both cats that I respect and I think they both make carefully reasoned, nuanced arguments t

read more

The Problem With Talking to VCs

David Beisel — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 22:36:04 +0000

I had coffee with an entrepreneur friend the other day who is in the early stages of putting a company together, and he recounted how his informal conversations with a venture capitalist had quickly escalated into a full partner pitch in just a few weeks. That situation sounds very positive in theory, but the problem is that this founder wasn’t ready for this interest and is trying to play catch up in other capital raising discussions (with both angels and VCs).

read more

VC Industry Shrinks As Emerging Markets Grow

Tony Perkins — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:46:58 +0000

Venture capitalists in the United States widely expect their industry to contract while those in emerging markets, including China, India and Brazil, expect to see their ecosystem expand over the next five years, according to the 2010 Global Venture Capital Survey by Deloitte and the National Venture Capital Association. According to the survey results, more than 90 percent of U.S. survey respondents expect the number of venture firms to decrease between now and 2015, while a majority of venture capitalists in China, India and Brazil anticipate adding more venture firms in their country during the same time frame. Venture capitalists in Europe and Canada also expect an industry contraction in their respective countries though to a lesser extent than in the U.S.

read more

CEO Showcase: NearVerse

admin — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 06:41:38 +0000

NearVerse is a venture-backed, wireless IP networking company, improving the quality of mobile Internet experiences by unifying short-range wireless and carrier networks into an optimized system. NearVerse's technology platform accelerates mobile Internet speeds, demonstrating data transfer and content delivery rates that are five to ten times faster than those of 3G networks.

read more

Microcap Bubble? One Data Point.

Sarah Tavel — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 21:51:35 +0000

There’s been a bit of a brouhaha lately around “super seed” funds and speculation of whether we are experiencing a seed bubble. At least to me, it certainly has felt like there has been a ton of early stage activity, although whether this qualifies as a seed bubble or not, I think it’s too early to tell. But what is apparent is that there is a ton of new microcap firms that have emerged or closed a new fund in the past 6-12 months alone, and it feels like the pace of new microcap firms being funded is only accelerating.

read more

How The SEC Is Violating My First Amendment Rights

Brad Feld — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 21:48:53 +0000

Over the past 24 months, a deplorable activity in the money management business came to light. It got the name “pay to play” but was just another form of bribery. The common description of pay to play is “the practice of making campaign contributions and related payments to elected officials in order to influence the awarding of lucrative contracts for the management of public pension plan assets and similar government investment accounts.” Yup – sounds like bribery to me.

read more

Products Are Tactics

Kent Goldman — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 21:46:23 +0000

I care less about product everyday. I care more about people and markets everyday.

With seed stage companies, most everything is mutable. The founders are forever The Founders but the team will grow. The product will morph. And the name will probably change too. That this all happens is a good thing. It should be encouraged amongst both founders and company advisors. The best seed stage companies are creatures of learning. I’ve written about this before in a post on pivoting.

read more

CEO Showcase: CardStar

admin — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 19:40:31 +0000

CardStar's goal is to mobilize customer loyalty by connecting consumers and merchants through mobile rewards and memberships. CardStar is the ideal platform for mobile loyalty programs-the convenience for consumers increases membership use and rewards cards, and merchants strengthen customer loyalty with benefits like targeted offers and information. CardStar's SyncScan technology produces 1D barcodes that unlock the mobile coupon world by providing consumers with the right offer, at the right time, on the right device.

read more

What Is Yahoo! Up To?!

Andrew Bellay — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 22:17:08 +0000

I remain baffled by Yahoo!! Behind closed doors, I'm hoping that they've been working on their own secret Manhatten Project that they're going to blow us all away with one day. My gut says that's not going to happen. Kara Swisher from All Things Digital did some flip camera interviews at Yahoo! recently to get the inside scoop. Seems to me that Yahoo! is doing more of the same: trying to hang on to small verticals in the content space while surrendering more ground in novel spaces like social media and mobile. Check out these two videos to see what's "new" at Yahoo. As always, comment below if you agree or if you know what Yahoo's got up their sleeve.

read more

Gurley On Google's ITA Acquisition

Bill Gurley — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 21:11:40 +0000

On July 1^st, Google announced its intention to acquire ITA Software. ITA owns a primarily B2B airfare search and pricing system called QPX. Several of the leading online travel sites, like Orbitz, Kayak, and Bing Travel, use information from QPX to power their airfare search.

read more

Do Micro VCs Invest In The Same Companies As VCs?

Rob Go — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 21:08:03 +0000

This is a build off my last post which was a primer on the Micro VC market. Often, I hear investors talk about companies that are “venture scale”. These are usually the kinds of companies that have the potential to drive meaningful returns for a top VC fund. Because of the high risk of early stage companies, the performance of large funds are driven by discontinuous returns (ie: the home runs).

As a result, I think that most early stage VC’s tend to look at a similar profile of investment - big market, proven teams, potential for an outcome in the hundreds of millions or more, but realistically low probability that that outcome will be achieved.

read more

VC Fundraising Activity Remains Slow

Tony Perkins — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 19:51:24 +0000

Thirty eight US venture capital funds raised $1.9 billion in the second quarter of 2010, according to Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).   This level marks a 49% decline, by dollar commitments, compared to the first quarter of 2010, which saw 38 funds raise $3.7 billion during the period. This quarter represents the lowest by dollar commitments since the third quarter of 2003.

read more

Viacom vs. YouTube: What Was Won and Lost

Steve Rosenbaum — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 21:05:48 +0000

When Viacom filed suit against YouTube back in 2007 the web was a very different place. Video, which is likely to be 90% of web traffic by 2014, was a tiny blip on the radar screen. And YouTube, while backed by the highly regarded Sequoia Capital and growing quickly, was still very much a fragile entity that could have been crushed by a significant defeat.

You have to wonder if Viacom, in hindsight, now realizes that their billion dollar lawsuit drove the video startup into the arms of Google where it now has grown to become a powerful force in web video and likely challenger to the cable dynasty that is Viacom.

read more

CEO Showcase: FitnessKeeper

admin — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 19:39:05 +0000

FitnessKeeper, the company behind RunKeeper, provides a mobile fitness platform that leverages the location technology in smartphones to help runners and other fitness enthusiasts better track, measure, and improve their fitness. FitnessKeeper's flagship iPhone application has been downloaded millions of times and was named by TIME Magazine as one of the top 10 iPhone applications of 2009. The company recently launched on Android and has several additional smartphone and non-smartphone devices planned.

read more

Start-Up Metrics 4 Pirates

Andrew Bellay — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 18:00:10 +0000

If you're the type that's easily offended, you shold probably go watch Steve Blank's Secret History of Silicon Valley. At least close the door and have ESPN.com open in another window that you can quickly switch to it if someone walks in on you. I'm just kidding, it's not that bad. But I can easily say that this is the only deck I've ever quietly read to myself where I felt like someone was yelling the words at me.

But that's the point. Young entrepreneurs need to hear the Dave's message: "You suck, your product sucks, and you will fail hard." But there's hope. This ugly deck walks through how to make decisions based on measured user behavior (facts), why killing features should be your favorite past-time, and how Dave views different investment phases. Check it out below or here...

read more

The Market Advances

Michael Moe — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 17:05:35 +0000

The AlwaysOn X Fund portfolio advanced 6.2% for the week, while the NASDAQ was up 5%, and the S&P 500 was up 5.4%. Year-to-date, the AO X Fund is up 1.4%, the NASDAQ is down 3.2%, and the S&P 500 is down 3.3%.

Google announced that the Chinese government renewed its license to operate in the world's most populous country, but did not disclose which services it will offer. A few months ago, Google started redirecting users in China to an uncensored Hong Kong search site. For the week, GOOG advanced 7.1%.

read more

CEO Showcase: OPEN Sports

admin — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 19:37:38 +0000

OPEN Sports was founded in 2007 by veterans of leading sports, Internet, and new media companies. It aims to deliver a social-powered sports experience unmatched in the industry, with a combination of user-empowered content, betting-enabled fantasy sports games and contests, and the sports industry's first game platform with open APIs. OPEN Sports has developed innovative fantasy sports products to be unveiled this NFL season on FOXSports.com and OPENSports.com.

read more

I'd Rather Be Lucky Than Smart Any Day

Greg Gretsch — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 21:24:31 +0000

As I mentioned in my response to his comment, I am a huge fan of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's books - The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness. In Fooled by Randomness, NNT expounds at great length on how often times people confuse the fact that they have been lucky with a belief that they are really just smarter than everyone else. As he says, randomness plays a much bigger role in how successful you can be at some professions than others. For example, the degree of success of a nurse or a doctor has much less to do with randomness than say that of a venture capitalist (his example). It's difficult to argue with luck playing a part in the magnitude of any win. Anyone who was a part of the startup scene during the bubble knows well that there were many >$1B exits that in any other market may not have been able to make any money at all.

read more

One View Of The Future Of VC Allocations

Chris Douvos — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 21:13:00 +0000

So I'm working on a blog post with some fundraising tips for PE and VC pros that are making the rounds. The thesis is: you've got to come to meetings armed with better rhetoric, as many institutions have become wildly cynical about private equity strategies after feeling the acute sting of illiquidity during the downturn. Said another way, people realized that the cost of illiquidity was much higher than they had estimated and many asset allocators are now (re)asking the questions: "are we getting adequately compensated for the risk and illiquidity of privates?" and, m

read more

Augmented Reality Minus The Camera

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 22:29:04 +0000

I blogged about Dutch virtual reality business Layar last week and I spent 20 minutes last night playing with the app whilst I was waiting for a friend to come meet me for a drink in north London. As I mentioned in last weeks post they have an active developer community and what these developers do is write Layars which run within the Layar augmented reality browser. All Layars share the same underlying structure – when the Layar is opened the iPhone/Android phone opens up the camera and the screen shows the camera view augmented with content relevant to that Layar which is tied to a specific location and within a distance set by the user.

read more

Be Different Or Go Home

Rob Go — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 22:23:24 +0000

I’ve both given and received the feedback that a product or pitch isn’t “different enough”. It’s challenging feedback to receive because it’s completely open ended. You doesn’t necessarily know what it would mean to be different, but you know it when you see it.

It can be very very subtle elements that make a product different. When someone first hears about Tumblr or Posterous, the response is probably something like “how is that really any different from Wordpress or Blogger?” But the minute you use the product, something clicks and you realize that you are dealing with something different.

read more

Case Study: Universities & Entrepreneurs

Gideon Gartner — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 22:12:40 +0000

Last year, MIT Sloan School of Management published a study performed by Professor and head of MIT’s Entrepreneurship program Ed Roberts, and Professor Charles Eesley of MIT’s entrepreneurial impact, which may be typical of several of the country’s major universities.

The study was limited to entrepreneurs who founded companies, not including entrepreneurially motivated professionals who answer to their corporate responsibilities rather than to start their own business! But the points presented in the study implicitly suggest (if not helping to define) the rapid growth in entrepreneurship. While this study provides little data about E trends in the office, we certainly recognize the many corporations which have been including E factors in their organization charts, their promotion criteria, their reliance on outside entrepreneurs for assistance, and so forth.

read more

CEO Showcase: PeerIndex

admin — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 06:07:57 +0000

PeerIndex helps people maximize the professional and social capital they have built online and helps companies identify and reach these opinion formers. The PeerIndex platform provides topic-based authority rankings based on people's activities online. Launching its database in the summer of 2010, PeerIndex identifies and ranks experts in business and finance based on their digital footprints.

read more

Tim Draper And How He Scaled VC

Andrew Bellay — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 22:35:25 +0000

If you missed part I of our interview with Tim Draper, check it out before reading part 2.

AlwaysOn: What investments are you most excited about at DFJ right now?

Tim: I’m very excited about Tesla. I’m very excited about Glam. I always have an affinity for anything that has any sort of viral marketing element in it. Glam figured out a really interesting business model where it could sell ads for bloggers and split the revenue with them. Bloggers attached themselves to Glam, and it became a bigger and bigger business. That model has certainly taken off.

read more

Tim Draper On Big Problems, Big Opportunities & Big Vision

Andrew Bellay — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 22:01:19 +0000

AlwaysOn recently made another trip down Sandhill Road to visit Draper Fisher Jurvetson, one of the most prestigious venture capital firms there is. After checking out Steve Jurvetson's awesome space collection, I sat down with Tim Draper to pick his brain on the most important issues in venture capital and entrepreneurship today. Check out our interview below after a brief bio. Special thanks to Tim for being so generous with his time.

read more

The Secret History of Silicon Valley

Tony Perkins — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 17:29:12 +0000

Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience in high technology companies and management. He is a Consulting Professor at Stanford in the Graduate School of Engineering STVP Program. Steve has been a founder or participant in eight Silicon Valley startups since 1978. His last company, E.piphany, started in his living room. His other startups include two semiconductor companies (Zilog and MIPS Computers), a workstation company (Convergent Technologies), a supercomputer firm (Ardent), a computer peripheral supplier (SuperMac), a military intelligence systems supplier (ESL) and a video game company (Rocket Science Games). Steve is on the board of CafePress.com, an on-line marketplace, and IMVU, a 3D IM social network.

read more

Private Company Stock Market Update

Tony Perkins — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 17:05:12 +0000

Forget About Being A Lean Start-up, Focus On Building A Lean Company

Greg Gretsch — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 21:26:24 +0000

Much has been written about building lean start-ups. It's certainly possible today for many start-ups to get to a minimum viable product and early customer validation with a lot less than was possible 10 or even 5 years ago. But ultimately if you want to build a significant company versus having a flash-in-the-pan that you sell quickly, it takes time, work, and more than a few people. All of these resources take money.

read more

Some Good Signs For Android

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 21:15:52 +0000

The mobile press in the last week or so has been lavishing huge praise on Apple for the iPhone 4, which by all accounts is an awesome device, and I am particularly interested to see what apps developers will build using the new gyroscope, as well as excited by the new screen and the increased speed that comes from a faster processor and increased memory. In other words Apple who already had the best device in the market just took another big step forward and put more distance between them and the competition. There are of course a number of decent Android devices out there (and also on other platforms) and they are rapidly getting better, but I think it is hard to argue that Apple isn’t the clear market leader when it comes to device popularity/features/function/quality.

read more

Innovation: Harvard Style

Ed_Lambert — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 21:11:22 +0000

The first impression you get when attending Venture Summit East at Harvard Business School is a sense of Harvard's history, the beauty of its campus, and the accomplishments of its students, past, present, and future. While this was the third annual Venture Summit East, it was the first held at Harvard Business School. I surely hope there will be more to come, as I believe the kind of interactions Tony Perkins and his team encourage needs such an august venue. There is a great question to be addressed, and Harvard Business School and the Route 128 area have the resources to resolve it.

read more

Bijan Sabet: The Future Of Super Angels, MicroVCs & Venture Capital

Bijan Sabet — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 21:08:33 +0000

I’ve been struggling with writing this post for some time. I hope I can do it justice, something tells me that I won’t but I’m going to give it a shot nonetheless. There has been a lot of discussion about the future of venture capital especially in light of all the enthusiasm and support of super angels. Many have suggested there is a math problem with the VC business - specifically too much money in the industry given the exits in this climate and near term climate.

read more

CEO Showcase: XOS Digital

admin — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:57:31 +0000

XOS Digital provides digital technology and media management solutions to collegiate and professional sports organizations in the U.S. As such, it provides its clientele with advanced digital technology solutions to enhance organization performance and image to improve the management and monetization of their digital media assets. XOS Digital is the leading digital asset management provider for sports organizations and fans. The company continuously redefines the way people interact with and consume digital sports content.

read more

A Call For More VC Bloggers

Jeff Bussgang — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:10:03 +0000

A cry for more VC bloggers is crazy, right? There are already 150 or so who are actively blogging - which I estimate means 15% of all active VCs serve as bloggers. Yet, we need more. We need the life science and cleantech VCs to start blogging.

I was leafing through the NVCA's 2010 Yearbook last week while on vacation (go ahead, call me a geek) and was really struck by the amount of dollars that go towards the life sciences and cleantech portion of our industry as compared to IT. Of the $17.7 billion of venture capital invested in 2009, only $8.3 billion - less than half - went into IT-related companies. $6.1 billion (35%) was invested in life sciences companies and $3.3 billion in other companies. Industrial/energy investments represent 13% of VC dollars.

read more

Focus, Focus, Focus!

Greg Gretsch — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 21:54:22 +0000

One of the biggest advantages startups have over larger, more established companies, is that their inherent lack of resources forces them to do fewer things - to focus. Focus is important for all companies, but while a lack of focus in an established company can slow growth and lower returns, inability to focus in a small company will kill it. I've seen more companies die from indigestion than starvation.

read more

Foundry Funds Triggit, RTB Future Bright

Seth Levine — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 18:14:30 +0000

Clearly a hot topic in online ad-tech right now is the rise of exchange-based buying and the advent of real-time bidding platforms (RTB) that allow advertisers and publishers to transact on an impression by impression basis. Given all the focus on RTB I sometimes have to remind myself that true real-time trading is less than a year into its existence. And given its nascence, the landscape of companies (buy side platforms, sell side platforms, data providers, agencies, brands, publishers, etc.) that are playing a part in these exchanges is changing rapidly.

read more

Gideon Gartner's 10 Start-Up Innovations

Gideon Gartner — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 16:07:53 +0000

During my 1960s at IBM and 1970s on Wall Street, I was a subscriber or reader of research from several firms which were predecessors to the current Advisory Industry. The firms included IDC, Computer Intelligence, Dataquest, Yankee and Input. When on Wall Street, I joined the IBM user groups “Share” and “Guide”, The CCIA (Computer and Communications Industry Association), and SIM (Society for Information Management), presumably in order to be exposed to IT users’ perspectives.

read more

CEO Showcase: Phybridge

admin — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 08:02:57 +0000

Phybridge provides risk-free IP phone deployment infrastructure designed to run IP telephony without costly LAN upgrades. Phybridge's flagship product, the UniPhyer, is a VoIP enabler that is looking to set a new standard in IP phone infrastructure. Phybridge brings to market practical innovations that provides organizations with an easier way to deploy and manage VoIP solutions.

read more

Google Poised to Enter Travel

Michael Moe — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 20:18:03 +0000

The AlwaysOn X Funed portfolio dropped 7.2% for the week, while the NASDAQ declined 5.9%, and the S&P 500 was down 5%. Year-to-date, AO X is down 4.5%, the NASDAQ is down 7.8%, and the S&P 500 is down 8.3%.

Google purchased airline data company ITA for $700 million. In the last months, ITA had been the subject of interest among Microsoft, Kayak, and Expedia. With this purchse, it's obvious that Google will enter the online travel space very soon. For the week, GOOG dropped 7.6%.

read more

CEO Showcase: Aprigo

admin — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 18:30:01 +0000

Aprigo lets mid-market IT pros to tame their organizations' data deluge with a unique, low-cost SaaS offering that provides complete visibility and control of the security and costs of unstructured business data. Aprigo's NINJA is a SaaS solution that provides a unified data dashboard for unstructured data both on-premise and in the cloud. Only Aprigo lets businesses prevent data breaches, pass compliance audits, benchmark their data environments, and save on storage costs within five minutes.

read more

Fall Of The Super Angel?

Paul Kedrosky — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 00:20:24 +0000

Unnoticed by almost no-one, the startup financing landscape has been transformed: a combination of ease of entry, lower capital requirements, failing incumbent venture capital (VC) firms, and general fervor has driven the emergence of a host of new "super-seed" firms. These small-ish outfits -- usually running less than $20m -- specialize in seeding a bazillion companies, following on in very few, and generally trying to be fast-moving and networked.

read more

Paul Jacobs on Chips

Tony Perkins — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 23:54:40 +0000

read more

Don't Drop The G-Bomb

Greg Gretsch — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 23:50:58 +0000

One of the classic venture pitch mistakes is overselling. Overselling your idea can take many forms, but one of the more humorous occurs when the entrepreneur shows you a set of projections that are wildly optimistic and then drops the G-Bomb as a way to claim that the projections are actually quite realistic bordering on being conservative.

read more

"One of the Best Since 2007" for Private Equity and Venture Capital

Tony Perkins — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 17:51:38 +0000

Private equity and venture capital funds continued to show strength during the quarter ending December 31, 2009, with each asset class earning positive returns for the third consecutive quarter, one of the best since 2007. Overall, fourth quarter returns on private equity investments outpaced those in venture capital funds, though both continued to outperform the public markets over the long term, according to Cambridge Associates LLC, a provider of independent research and investment advice to institutional investors and private clients.

read more

Start-Ups Need Better Protection

Bijan Sabet — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 23:30:28 +0000

The Viacom vs. YouTube decision has been in my mind since last week. As many of you know by now, Viacom had sued YouTube for copyright infringement. YouTube believed they were protected under safe harbor under DMCA.

The judge in this case stated DMCA works well:

The present case shows that the D.M.C.A. notification regime works efficiently: when Viacom over a period of months accumulated some 100,000 videos and then sent a mass take-down notice on February 2, 2007, by the next business day YouTube had removed virtually all of them,” Judge Stanton wrote.

read more

Amazing, Smart, or Crazy?

Adam Fisher — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 20:31:50 +0000

My fondness for early stage investments often prompts me to develop a new method with which to filter, evaluate and pursue deals. One of my current methods is to group interesting early stage companies into the following buckets: “amazing,” “smart” and “crazy.” Many companies don’t quite meet the criteria I set to receive these labels, and occasionally, special companies will fall into more than one category. This is an imperfect framework, but nonetheless useful for me as I evaluate the worthiness of a given early stage project.

read more

Super Angels - A Primer

Rob Go — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 03:13:48 +0000

For better or worse, Micro-VC’s and Super Angels seem to be the new intriguing sub-segment within Venture Capital. Funds like First Round Capital, Floodgate, Lowercase, Founder Collective, IA Venture Partners, Harrison Metal, and Felicis and individuals like Ron Conway, Keith Rabois and others show up multiple times a day on TechCrunch and seem to be behind every high profile investment in the internet world. How did this happen? Are these groups just a new fad or is a fundamental and long lasting change happening in the early-stage financing eco-system?

read more

Chopping Up The Twitterverse

Mark Peter Davis — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 19:34:07 +0000

I have written about the rise of sliver businesses in the past. Sliver businesses are companies that replicate an existing model but differentiate themselves by targeting a narrower population or use case. Every time a new online category is created the sliver businesses are quick to follow. From auctions to social networking to group buying - once the category was created lots of players entered the fray by carving out a niche segment or new manner in which they provide the service.

read more

CEO Showcase: CoolPlanetBioFuels

admin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 19:09:41 +0000

Imagine driving high performance cars and large family safe SUV's while actually reversing global warming, and without using foreign oil. That is the vision of CoolPlanetBioFuels. CoolPlanetBioFuels is developing a revolutionary thermal/mechanical processor that directly inputs raw biomass, such as woodchips, crop residue, non-food fuel crops, algae, and so on, and produces multiple distinct gas streams for catalytic upgrading to conventional hydrocarbon fuels (gasoline).

read more

Mobclix: Cursed Or Blessed?

Andrew Bellay — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:36:09 +0000

There isn’t a single market that’s changing faster than advertising right now. Throw the rapid adoption of web enabled, mobile devices on top of the huge macro changes in the publishing industries and it’s no surprise that mobile advertising is red-hot right now.

read more

Curation Is King

Steve_Rosenbaum — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 23:39:20 +0000

"Content is King"—no longer. Today, the world has changed. "Curation Is King."

OK, I hear all the content-makers sharpening their knives to take me on. I'm ready.

First, why content is dead: Content used to be the high quality media that came out of the very pointed end of the funnel. Articles in the New York Times. Movies from Miramax. Thursday night comedy from NBC. Books published by Simon and Schuster. Creative folks wrote pitches, treatments, sample chapters, pilots, but only the best of the best got published.

read more

Three Roles of Great Entrepreneurs

Tony Tjan — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 19:00:00 +0000

Every start-up entrepreneur has an overwhelming amount to get done—the "to dos" are constantly outrunning the "dones." It is easy to get caught up in the day-to-day and endless hours, and you often forget that running really hard does not necessarily equate with running in the right direction. To paraphrase one of my partners, the good news is that you're making good time, and the bad news is that you're lost.

read more

VCs Have Mixed Feelings About Next 18 Months

Andrew Bellay — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 18:09:38 +0000

Ed Sullivan (Partner, KPMG) and Jeffrey McCormick (Managing General Partner, Saturn Partners) announced the results of 100 VC responses last week at Venture Summit East. Check out the video and results below.

Ninety-three percent of those surveyed noted that last year's credit crisis hurt the ability of venture capitalists to raise new capital. More than half feel that trend will last another year or longer.

read more

Yuan Depegs, China Advances

Michael Moe — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 21:24:47 +0000

The AlwaysOn X Fund portfolio dropped 3.4% for the week, while the NASDAQ declined 3.7%, and the S&P 500 was down 3.6%. Year-to-date, the AO X Fund is up 3%, the NASDAQ is down 2%, and the S&P 500 is down 3.4%.

Financial IT provider Longtop Financial secured a new contract with a rural commercial bank in east China—the first in that region—to provide CRM solutions. LFT is the Chinese market leader in that space, with a market share of 18/4% in 2008, according to IDC Research. For the week, LFT was nearly flat, down 0.1%.

read more

iPhones, Startups, and Angel Economics

Simeon Simeonov — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 21:00:34 +0000

Tomi Ahonen has collected a lot of good data about the iPhone app ecosystem and applies solid analysis to reach the conclusion that, from an economic standpoint, on average, it is a waste of developers' time to build iPhone apps. The data is good but the conclusion is dubious.

This is a case study for the classic "How to Lie with Statistics," in this case by accident. It's like asserting that because, from an economic standpoint, on average, startups can't raise money and startups fail it follows that entrepreneurs should pack up their bags and stop starting new companies and stop trying to raise money.

read more

CEO Showcase: Corent Technology

Tony Perkins — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 19:04:03 +0000

Corent Technology, Inc. is the provider of SaaS-Suite™ - the most advanced software development platform for rapid transformation of Software to SaaS. SaaS-Suite™ transforms stand-alone single-tenant software applications to turnkey, multi-tenant, cloud-compatible SaaS solutions - rapidly and cost-effectively. Applications leveraging Corent’s technology are easily portable across any public, private or hybrid clouds. In addition to being CEO of Corent, Feyzi is also Chairman of the Orange County Chapter of the Technology Council of Southern California. He was formerly Executive at HP, Jamcracker and other software/SaaS companies.

read more

New Apple Developer TOS

Andrew Bellay — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 17:11:52 +0000

In early June, Apple changed it's developers Terms of Service. Here's the important jargon:

3.3.9 You and Your Applications may not collect, use, or disclose to any third party, user or device data without prior user consent, and then only under the following conditions:

- The collection, use or disclosure is necessary in order to provide a service or function that is directly relevant to the use of the Application.

read more

Mastering the VC Game With Jeff Bussgang

Andrew Bellay — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:29:08 +0000

Make sure you don't miss part I of this interview with Jeff on trends and markets.

AlwaysOn: What about the fund raising market for venture capitalists right now? What’s it like out there?

read more

AO Guest Blogger Profile: Jeff Kaplan

admin — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:55:38 +0000

Founded in 2001, THINKstrategies is a strategic consulting company that helps its clients capitalize on the migration of the technology industry from a product-centric to a services-driven business model. THINKstrategies is dedicated to helping enterprises make better sourcing decisions, IT solution providers make better marketing decisions, and venture investors make better investment decisions to capitalize on the business benefits of today's on-demand services, including SaaS, cloud computing, and managed services.

read more

Seeing Both Sides With Jeff Bussgang

Andrew Bellay — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 01:29:03 +0000

Jeff Bussgang, who was a successful serial entrepreneur for 8 years, has been a general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners for the last 7. Before becoming a venture capitalist, Jeff was the co-founder of Upromise, the largest private source of college funding contributions in the United States. He serves as an entrepreneur in residence at Harvard Business School, where he earned an MBA with highest distinction. Flybridge is an early-stage venture capital firm in Boston, MA with $560 million under management.

read more

When The Cloud Goes Down

Jeff Kaplan — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:34:26 +0000

Intuit’s major outage last week served as a harsh, yet valuable reminder for all of us about the serious risks which underlie our growing dependence on third-party, ‘cloud’-based services.The irony about the timing of Intuit’s service failure is that the company has been escalating its marketing efforts to position it as a leading provider of cloud services. For instance, Intuit’s SVP/CTO, Tayloe Stansbury, was a keynote presenter at last month’s SIIA All About the Cloud Conference in San Francisco where he boasted about Intuit surpassing $1 billion in cloud-based service revenues.

read more

Why VCs Rarely Say "No"

Greg Gretsch — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 23:03:18 +0000

As an entrepreneur, I always got frustrated with the VCs who would take forever getting back to me if they ever did. When I was working on my third company, I used to tell people that I still hadn't heard back from a very famous venture capitalist on my first company after I'd pitched him and his partnership and jumped through tons of hoops for him. I was always happier to get a quick "No" versus a long drawn-out nothing. That's why, when I made the move over to the dark side, I planned to always give entrepreneurs a quick "yes" or "no."

read more

BigDoor Media Is Knocking

Brad Feld — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:54:29 +0000

We recently invested in a Seattle company called BigDoor Media. The founder/CEO Keith Smith wrote a wonderful love story about the deal which was picked up by the WSJ VC Dispatch in a post titled A Summer Romance Between Founder And Venture Capitalist.

read more

Introducing the Snappy VC

RemmingtonOxleyV — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:36:55 +0000

Hello Blogosphere,

I'm Remmington Oxley V

It is a pleasure to be blogging here. Of course, this is an alias as my venture firm would die if they knew I blogged.

Heck they'd be impressed if they saw me type on a keyboard. CONFESSION: I don't know how to login to my computer because I don't know the password.

I'm typing this on my blackberry with two thumbs.

Yes, I'm a VC in a venture firm somewhere in the bay area.

read more

Solving World Problems VC-Style

Tony Perkins — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 18:43:26 +0000

read more

Reigniting Innovation in the East

admin — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 21:52:24 +0000

The northeast has been an American hub for innovation for the past hundred years. The venture capital industry itself was born right here, with George Doriot's founding of American Research Development Corporation (ARDC) in 1946. In the mid-1950s and '60s, George and his colleagues put venture capital on the map alongside a company in which they invested called Digital Equipment Corporation. Their original $70,000 would be worth more than 500 times that investment when Digital went public in 1968. In many ways, Digital was the Google of its day.

read more

The Next Generation

admin — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 21:50:23 +0000

Welcome to Venture East Summit at Harvard Business School. It’s an honor to co-host this exciting event with AlwaysOn and Harvard Business School. The AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford has long been one of the preeminent events for the entrepreneur and venture capital communities, and I am thrilled to help facilitate that same type of university partnership with the Boston entrepreneur community here at HBS.

read more

The Entrepreneurial Spirit Moves East

admin — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 21:46:34 +0000

Welcome to Venture East Summit at Harvard Business School. We are thrilled to have you join us for our inaugural year as co-hosts of this exciting event. We have worked closely with the AlwaysOn team to assemble a stellar list of speakers who will cover a wide range of topics that highlight the significant economic, political, and technology trends impacting the global climate for entrepreneurship and venture capital. Although you may be familiar with Harvard Business School, you may not know about our deep roots in entrepreneurship, dating back to the 1930s and '40s when HBS graduate-turnedprofessor George Doriot became known as the "father of venture capital." Since that time, HBS faculty and alumni have been involved in some of the most successful and highly visible startups in history. Companies like Staples and Intuit had their origins right here.

read more

Optimism in the Northeast

admin — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 23:43:29 +0000

Venture Summit East in Boston is an opportunity for venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, bankers, and analysts to gather and discuss the state of the industry. We once again surveyed some of the key players to gauge their view on the current situation and venture capital's future prospects. We want to thank the respondents for taking a few minutes out of their busy schedules to provide their opinions. After a rough 2009, investors are cautiously optimistic for the prospects of northeast venture capital activity in 2010.

read more

A123

Tony Perkins — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 01:43:38 +0000

Attn: Congress, Re: The Economy

Mark Cuban — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 01:18:48 +0000

1. Carried Interest Taxes

read more

The AlwaysOn East Top 100 Companies

Tony Perkins — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:11:46 +0000

It's with great excitement that we introduce the third annual AlwaysOn East Top 100 private companies. The AOE100 represent the top emerging companies from the East Coast that are demonstrating significant market traction and pursuing game-changing technologies in on-demand computing, digital media, and greentech.

The AlwaysOn editorial team, along with partners at the Blackstone Group, KPMG, Silicon Valley Bank, Sonnenschein, and industry experts across the globe, scoured the entrepreneurial community to identify the top 100 private companies that are taking old notions of doing things and forging solutions that will lead to industry shake-up and huge value-creation opportunities.

read more

The 2010 Venture Capital East 50

Tony Perkins — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:11:45 +0000

The first annual AlwaysOn Venture Capital East 50 highlights the 50 individuals based in the eastern U.S. who have backed the most profitable winners during the last four years. To compile the first VC East 50, our editorial team sourced data from our research partners Morgan Stanley, VentureDeal, and the 451 Group on more than 700 active venture capitalists, 1,400 VC investments, and 1,000 technology liquidity events during the last four years, from October 1, 2005, to September 30, 2009.

read more

Greentech Leads the Run

Michael Moe — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:10:46 +0000

The AlwaysOn X Fund portfolio advanced 4.4% for the week, while the NASDAQ was up 3%, and the S&P 500 advanced 2.4%. Year-to-date, the AO X Fund is up 6.7%, the NASDAQ is up 1.8%, and the S&P 500 is up 0.8%. Demand-response smart-metering provider EnerNOC led the AO X Fund portfolio, up 15.1% for the week. On Monday, ENOC secured a 10-year contract with the Tennessee Valley Authority for the deployment of 560MW demand-response resources.

read more

Golden Age For Technology & Innovation

Jeff Bussgang — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:09:45 +0000

The news headlines are grim. Oil spills, sovereign defaults, choppy stock markets, tepid employment. It's no wonder that the global capital markets seem spooked.

Yet, here's the strange thing, many of us in the technology sector have never been more bullish about what lies ahead.

read more

You Are Not A Gadget

Tony Perkins — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 01:11:46 +0000

It keeps you honest to get shaken in your boots once in awhile. I had just proudly penned a blog post call the “Join The Open Revolution!” when I was confronted with the following passage in a book written by Jaron Lanier, the man who coined the phase “virtual reality” and made this year’s Time Magazine Top 100 most influential people. His new book is called You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto, and he expressed his fears and frustrations right up front.

read more

The AlwaysOn Global 250 Competition

admin — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:19:23 +0000

AlwaysOn and KPMG have officially launched the third annual AlwaysOn Global 250 Top Private Companies competition. The AO Global 250 is a competition for the top emerging private companies that are creating new business opportunities in the global technology industries. This includes private companies that are demonstrating significant market traction and pursuing game-changing technology. To assist us in this competition by nominating a company, please click here.

read more

GoingGreen Silicon Valley 2010

admin — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:18:23 +0000

The fourth annual GoingGreen Silicon Valley is a two-and-a-half-day executive event features CEO presentations and high-level debates on the most promising emerging green technologies and new entrepreneurial opportunities. Cutting-edge greentech CEOs will meet the movers and shakers from the biggest industries on earth. Green technology innovators are transforming trillion dollar industries-and the solutions they are delivering not only promise to clean up pollution and restore ecosystems, but also to bring abundance and prosperity to everyone on earth.

read more

OnHollywood 2010

admin — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:16:23 +0000

AlwaysOn's fifth annual OnHollywood is a two-and-a-half-day executive event features high-level debates on which forces are disrupting user behavior and creating new opportunities, content strategies and monetization schemes in the video, music, gaming, search, and mobile industries. Innovative technology CEOs from the back streets of Silicon Valley will meet up the Hollywood digital entertainment and media elite.

read more

Introducing The AlwaysOn East Top 100 Companies

Tony Perkins — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 22:51:47 +0000
It's with great excitement that we introduce the third annual AlwaysOn East Top 100 private companies. The AOE100 represent the top emerging companies from the East Coast and Europe that are demonstrating significant market traction and pursuing game-changing technologies in on-demand computing, digital media, and greentech.
read more

Elon Musk's Spaceship Takes Flight

Tony Perkins — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 19:19:42 +0000

Elon Musk is on a roll. In addition to SpaceX's successful launch, he was selected to the Time 100 2010 list of most influential people, and the IPO of his other favorite project, Tesla Motors, where he serves as CEO and Product Architect, has filed for it's IPO. Elon is a South African-American engineer, entrepreneur and philanthropist also known for co-founding PayPal and presiding as Chairman of SolarCity. According to Jon Favreau, director of the Iron Man movies, Musk is the inspiration for his and Robert Downey Jr.'s interpretation of Tony Stark.

read more

Cloud Services Raise Expectations

Michael Moe — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 19:18:42 +0000

Last week, the AlwaysOn X Fund portfolio was up 1.3%, while the NASDAQ was up 1.1%, and the S&P 500 advanced 2.5%. Year-to-date, the AO X Fund is up 2.1%, the NASDAQ is down 1.1% and the S&P 500 is down 2.1%. Yoga and sports clothing maker Lululemon reported continuing strong growth, beating expectations by 6 cents, growing earnings by 200% and sales by 69%. Same-store sales rose a robust 51% vs. a year ago. Goss margin increased from 42.9% last year to 53.8%. LULU also increased its full-year sales and earnings guidance.

read more

Gretsch On Hot Markets And Trends

Andrew Bellay — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 19:17:42 +0000

Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital may be the flashy VCs presiding on Sand Hill Road, but across town in Menlo Park, Sigma Partners is posting equal, if not better, returns for their investors. Throughout the last 25 years, Sigma Partners has funded over 100 early stage companies and is currently investing their eighth fund of about $500 million, bringing their total capital under management to over $2 billion.

read more

What Google Can Learn From Facebook

Mark Cuban — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:46:16 +0000

I’ve written multiple times about the value of independence from Google to Newspapers. Of course, each generated responses from many who disagreed with me. I just wanted to point out that Facebook, arguably the largest and most important website in the world has most of its content walled off from Google.

read more

Steve Jobs on AppleTV

Tony Perkins — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 17:38:31 +0000

I remember talking to Steve Jobs just after the iPod was introduced and asked him why he wouldn't push to put video on the new device. He responded by explaining how difficult it would be that to develop the iPod, they had to create a whole new operating system, and blah, blah, blah. It was all very fascinating to me, and as a guy who has not developed a single line of code, I was ready to take his word for it.

read more

The X Fund Holds Strong

Michael Moe — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 22:47:31 +0000

In a volatile week, the AlwaysOn X portfolio dropped 0.6%, while the NASDAQ was down 1.7%, and the S&P 500 was down 2.3%. Year-to-date, the AO X Fund is up 0.8%, the NASDAQ is down 2.2%, and the S&P 500 is down 4.5%.

read more

Lean Startups Coming to Harvard

Tony Perkins — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 16:52:47 +0000

AlwaysOn could not be more pumped up about our third annual Venture Summit East, co-hosted by Harvard Business School and the Blackstone Group. Hot on the agenda is a keynote that will be given by Eric Ries on the timely subject of preserving ownership by running a lean and mean machine. Ries is the creator of the Lean Startup methodology and the author of the popular entrepreneurship blog Startup Lessons Learned.

read more

Don't Let a Venture Capitalist Deflower Your Startup

Greg Gretsch — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 04:17:53 +0000

It was good advice when you were in high school, and it's good advice when you're out raising a seed round for your startup. Here's the scenario: You and a small team have been working on a great idea for a new business. You start talking to a few of your friends who have been successful before to get their feedback and advice.

read more

Join The Open Revolution!

Tony Perkins — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 05:09:19 +0000

A few years back, in an All Things Digital live interview, Steve Jobs confirmed that during the 2004 presidential elections, he offered John Kerry free marketing consulting services for his fledgling presidential campaign. Rather than jumping at this incredible offer, the Kerry team apparently never got back to Mr. Jobs and randomly added his name to the campaign’s “Economic Advisers” list and sent him a contribution envelope. More recently, Mr. Jobs is taking an even bigger jab from Barack Obama.

read more

X Fund's Week Ends in the Black

Michael Moe — Mon, 31 May 2010 17:24:53 +0000

In a volatile week, the AlwaysOn X Fund portfolio advanced 1.9%, while the NASDAQ was up 1.3%, and the S&P 500 was up 0.2%. Year-to-date, the AO X Fund is up 1.3%, the NASDAQ is down 0.5%, and the S&P 500 is down 2.3%.

read more

Harvard Professors Show Up For Venture Summit

Tony Perkins — Mon, 31 May 2010 16:48:30 +0000

ShakeOut In the "Cloud Rush"

Jeff Kaplan — Fri, 28 May 2010 22:05:30 +0000

The initial success and rapid growth of cloud computing is attracting a "cloud rush" of players, which is confusing IT and business decision-makers in the process. The inevitable shakeout of various startups is causing potential customers to rethink their cloud computing acquisition strategies in ways that will likely favor established tech companies more than emerging players.

Here are the basics as I see them.

How to characterize Cloud 1.0:

read more

Personality Counts Again With iPad

Jeff Kaplan — Fri, 28 May 2010 19:11:03 +0000

Let me roll this all up in the form of a prediction: the average person that has a device like the iPad, that displays book and magazine pages the way they are designed to look will end up reading more books and longer magazine articles.

read more

No Customers Leave Cable for Netflix

Mark Cuban — Fri, 28 May 2010 16:57:38 +0000

I’m a big fan of Reed Hastings. Not just of his vision, but his honesty as well. Reed posted his strategy deck on Slideshare.com . While we agree and disagree on a few items here and there, he does a great job identifying the risks created by Cable/satellite/telco (CST) . The key quote on this slide ( page 26) – ”almost no customers leave cable for netflix” Reed is one of the smartest guys in the space.

read more

Personality Counts Again With iPad

Tony Perkins — Fri, 28 May 2010 09:06:42 +0000

It’s ironic, because Steve Jobs was once cynical about the future of books, noting that the average kid’s attention span had dwindled so much that the new generation had all but abandoned the Great American Novel. Now, a few years later, his iPad may very well lead the renaissance of long-form reading. Analysts expect total worldwide iPad sales, including U.S. numbers, to reach anywhere between 5 and 8 million units by the end of 2010. The iPad’s Global Debut is doing very well.

read more

Meet the New AlwaysOn!

Tony Perkins — Mon, 24 May 2010 23:20:59 +0000

It is with great excitement (and relief!) that I proudly introduce you to the new AlwaysOn network! As any web publisher knows, re-launching a new website is an arduous task that never happens on time, never on budget, and is never exactly the way you want it to be on day one. But, hey, we’re up! And for those of you who joined our community and attended one or more of our events on the AO World Tour since we founded the company in 2003—thanks!

read more

Venture Summit East at Harvard

Tony Perkins — Mon, 24 May 2010 01:30:11 +0000

Venture Summit East is a two-day gathering that highlights the significant economic, political and technology trends impacting the global growth investor. Now more than ever, staying abreast of market conditions and innovations is crucial to financial success. Venture Summit East features the most influential institutional investors, venture capitalists, corporate buyers, investment bankers and research analysts in the Eastern U.S. in keynote presentations and panel debates.

read more

AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford

admin — Mon, 24 May 2010 01:06:17 +0000

The 8th AlwaysOn & STVP Summit at Stanford is a two-and-a-half-day executive gathering that highlights the significant economic, political and commercial trends affecting the global technology industries. The AlwaysOn & STVP Summit at Stanford features the most innovative companies, eminent technologists, influential investors and journalists in keynote presentations, panel debates and private company CEO showcases.

read more

test - delete me

Sun, 23 May 2010 03:20:35 +0000

test

The AlwaysOn East Top 100 Competition

admin — Sat, 22 May 2010 05:45:00 +0000

We're looking for the top emerging companies from the East Coast and Europe 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:

read more

The 2010 OnDemand Top 100 Private Companies

admin — Sat, 22 May 2010 05:15:00 +0000

It's with great excitement that we introduce the inaugural OnDemand 100. This batch of emerging Internet companies is disrupting the established enterprise and pioneering cloud computing and SaaS.

The overall winner of the “OnDemand 100” is Appirio, a cloud solution provider that offers both products and professional services that help enterprises accelerate their adoption of the cloud.

read more

Android or iPhone? Wrong Question

Bill Gurley — Sat, 22 May 2010 05:15:00 +0000

In a recent New York Times article, Kathryn Huberty, a Morgan Stanley analyst was quoted suggesting that Apple’s iPhone is the key catalyst for an important new technology trend. “Applications make the smartphone trend a revolutionary trend – one we haven’t seen in consumer technology for many years.” This argument rings true in that the “after iPhone” smartphone market is dramatically more interesting than the “pre-iPhone” smartphone market. Later, Ms. Huberty made an even bolder statement, “The iPhone is something different.

read more

Let's End the Mainframe Fantasy

Greg Ness — Sat, 22 May 2010 05:15:00 +0000

If you drew a triangle and placed Cisco, Microsoft and VMware, respectively, at each corner you would have a good idea of where the center of power is regarding the future direction of the IT industry and the emergence of cloud computing. And plenty of well-heeled tech companies would love to keep this status quo in tact for as long as possible, simply because they've run out of steam and are counting on complexity and lock-in to postpone the revolution.

read more

The GoingGreen East Top 50 Companies

admin — Sat, 22 May 2010 05:10:00 +0000

AlwaysOn is excited to announce the 2010 GoingGreen East Top 50 Private Companies. The GGE50 is comprised of companies developing game-changing approaches and disrupting technologies. As we enter a year of uncertain recovery, it is with great anticipation that we present the the second annual GoingGreen East 50. Along with our traditional criteria for selecting our winners-market size, disruptive potential, solid management team, product feasibility, and so on-this year, we asked one crucial question: Will this company experience success no matter what?

read more

The OnMedia Top 100 Companies

admin — Sat, 22 May 2010 05:05:00 +0000

It’s with great excitement that we introduce the 2010 OnMedia 100. This fresh batch of the hottest emerging companies in digital advertising joins illustrious alumni and gives us a great deal of insight into the coming trends in monetization. Last year was digital media’s trial by fire. Some online business models were forged in the flames; many more were burnt to a crisp. As we look out on 2010, we see a more hospitable landscape. Advertisers are increasingly selecting online surgical strikes over offline dynamite fishing.

read more

Introducing the 2009 Venture Capital 100

admin — Sat, 22 May 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Much of 2008 and 2009 were highly uncertain times for both the venture capital industry and the companies they funded, but history shows that funding entrepreneurs takes patience and endurance. The first annual AlwaysOn Venture Capital 100 highlights the one hundred individuals who have backed the most profitable winners in the last four years.

read more

How to Get to No

Tony Tjan — Sat, 22 May 2010 04:50:00 +0000

In the early 1980s Roger Fisher and William Ury authored what would become one of the best-selling business books of all time on negotiations, Getting to Yes. The book's theme was how to gain mutual agreement between parties in an objective non-adversarial manner. The core assumption behind the book (and most articles on the topic of selling or negotiations) is that both parties want a "yes." This post focuses on the importance of the "no."

read more

The Future of Google TV Is...

Mark Cuban — Sat, 22 May 2010 04:21:00 +0000

Google TV is going to be very interesting. It is far from a certainty that it will be more than Apple TV in terms of consumer sales.   From a first glance the Marketplace is the most important and interesting element of the announcement. As a development platform, Android creates the potential for untold unique and interesting applications that could capture users imagination. Early on, I don’t think TV oriented apps will have the most impact.

read more

More Up than Down In Silicon Valley

Tony Perkins — Sat, 22 May 2010 04:21:00 +0000

For the first quarter in 2010 Fenwick and West analyzed the terms of venture financings for 104 companies headquartered in Silicon Valley that reported raising money in the first quarter of 2010. For the third straight quarter, VC rounds that saw an increase in stock price exceeded down rounds by 49 percent to 32 percent. In fourth quarter 2009 up rounds exceeded down rounds 47 percent to 30 percent, with 23 percent flat. This was the third quarter in a row in which up rounds exceeded down rounds.

read more

How Much Is Hollywood in Trouble?

Bill Gurley — Sat, 22 May 2010 04:21:00 +0000

More often than not, we here in Silicon Valley are prone to idealism. We see a scenario the way we want to see it, and make predictions that fit our view of how we think the world should work, or perhaps even how we would like the world to be. This is especially true when it comes to technology. Outsider “luddites” who do not immediately grok the remarkable disruptive power of our latest and greatest technologies are doomed to the business trash heap – driven there by obsolescence and an obstinate refusal to accept their fate.

read more

Does More Money Motivate Higher Performance?

Brad Feld — Sat, 22 May 2010 04:20:00 +0000

One of my blog readers – Boaz Fletcher – sent me an awesome video this morning from RSA Animate. It’s 11 minutes long and is a fascinating lecture by Dan Pink about The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. I love the RSA Animate format – an artist animates the talk on a giant whiteboard in real time.

read more

Steve Jobs is Back!

Tony Perkins — Sat, 22 May 2010 04:20:00 +0000

Steve Jobs was happy to tell us that Pixar Animation Studios is "the only ?true digital studio in the world." Pixar gains this distinction, of course, by being the first digital effects house to actually produce a full-feature film entirely on a computer. Standing in front of a packed house at the San Francisco premiere of Pixar's new blockbuster, Toy Story, Mr. Jobs was at his best. He told a story of how his four-year-old son watches the Disney classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs over and over again.

read more

Don't Mess with VCs or Angels

Jeff Bussgang — Sat, 22 May 2010 04:20:00 +0000

Barney Frank was crystal clear in his briefing with a group of CEOs that I participated in this afternoon: he is going to make sure that the final Financial Reform bill that gets worked out with the Senate won't mess with the angel or VC communities. I came to Washington DC today with the Progressive Business Leaders Network (PBLN) group that I co-chair. It was our group's annual trek to DC where 80 CEOs and business leaders from Massachusetts had the opportunity to dialog with the leadership from the congressional and executive branch.

read more

Location in the Cloud

Josh Kopelman — Sat, 22 May 2010 04:20:00 +0000

I just read the news about Google's upgrades to Google Latitude—and boy is it a bold move with major implications. If done right, I think it could ultimately be as transformative as when Facebook opened up the social graph. Before Facebook opened up their social graph, if a web site wanted to know your relationships/friends it had to ask you. Each and every time. Then came Facebook Connect.

read more

The X Fund Is Poised for Growth

Michael Moe — Sat, 22 May 2010 04:15:00 +0000

For the week, the AlwaysOn X Fund portfolio dropped 3.5%, while the NASDAQ was down 5%, and the S&P 500 was down 4.2%. Year-to-date, the AO X Fund is down 0.5%, the NASDAQ is down 1.8%, and the S&P 500 is down 2.5%.

read more

A CEO Memo to the Board

Tony Tjan — Sat, 22 May 2010 04:00:00 +0000

It is hard to believe but yes, 2009 is winding down. Thanksgiving is around the corner, the holiday rush is almost palpable, and before you know it we'll be watching our TV screens for the ball to drop in Times Square. It is about this time of year that many businesses begin to feel the pressure of making Q4 work, budget planning for 2010 gets underway, and if there is any time left, to reflect on what this past year has meant.

read more

The Future of Google TV is...

Mark Cuban — Fri, 21 May 2010 01:18:55 +0000

Google TV is going to be very interesting. It is far from a certainty that it will be more than Apple TV in terms of consumer sales.   From a first glance the Marketplace is the most important and interesting element of the announcement. As a development platform, Android creates the potential for untold unique and interesting applications that could capture users imagination. Early on, I don’t think TV oriented apps will have the most impact. If I understood the announcement, in the beginning of 2011, there will be an Android Marketplace.

read more

Venture Summit East at Harvard

admin — Fri, 21 May 2010 00:46:41 +0000

Venture Summit East is a two-day gathering that highlights the significant economic, political and technology trends impacting the global growth investor. Now more than ever, staying abreast of market conditions and innovations is crucial to financial success. Venture Summit East features the most influential institutional investors, venture capitalists, corporate buyers, investment bankers and research analysts in the Eastern U.S. in keynote presentations and panel debates.

read more

The AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford

admin — Thu, 20 May 2010 21:26:48 +0000

The 8th AlwaysOn & STVP Summit at Stanford is a two-and-a-half-day executive gathering that highlights the significant economic, political and commercial trends affecting the global technology industries. The AlwaysOn & STVP Summit at Stanford features the most innovative companies, eminent technologists, influential investors and journalists in keynote presentations, panel debates and private company CEO showcases. The AlwaysOn & STVP Summit at Stanford's goal is to identify the most promising entrepreneurial opportunities and investments in the global tech industry.

read more

The AO X Fund: Week 63

Michael Moe — Sun, 09 May 2010 18:49:16 +0000

For the week, the AlwaysOn X Fund portfolio dropped 7%, while the NASDAQ was down 8%, and the S&P 500 declined 6.4%. Year-to-date, the AO X Fund is down 2.4%, the NASDAQ is down 0.2%, and the S&P 500 is off 0.4%.

read more

What's the Apple tablet going to be called?

Tony Perkins — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 04:24:36 +0000

Okay, we're pretty sure Apple's going to announce a tablet tomorrow, and now we're pretty sure it'll be running some version of the iPhone OS. (Thanks, McGraw-Hill CEO Terry McGraw!) But the one thing we don't have any inkling about -- even after nearly 10 years of rumors -- is what this thing is going to be called. Sure, there are some trademark applications floating around, and even some crowd favorites, but arguably the single biggest surprise coming tomorrow is what Steve Jobs has decided to officially name his mythical tablet. Honestly, we have no idea -- so we're putting it to you.

read more

GoingGreen East 2010

Tony Perkins — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 04:03:20 +0000

GoingGreen East is where cutting-edge greentech CEOs, along with movers and shakers from the biggest industries on earth, meet investors. This two-and-a-half-day executive event features CEO presentations and high-level debates on the most promising emerging green technologies and new entrepreneurial opportunities. At GoingGreen East our editors will honor the East Coast GoingGreen Top Fifty Private Cleantech Company CEOs. Additionally, up to 50 cleantech CEOs willl pitch their market strategies to a panel of industry experts in our “CEO Showcases.”

read more

Why Blame Jeff Zucker & NBC Over Leno ?

Mark Cuban — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 01:14:06 +0000

If you want to know why its going to take longer than people hope or expect to get out this great recession, look no further than media and corporate response to Jeff Zuckers move of Jay Leno to primetime. What Zucker and NBC did was the EXACT RIGHT MOVE. Business environments change. When they do, as broadcast network television has, and continues to, there are two basic choices. You can do it the way it’s always been done, or you can challenge yourself to change the game.

read more

Goodbye TV As We Know It

Tony Perkins — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:53:28 +0000

A very cool discovery that many of you may not yet tuned into is a new company founded by a team of Ask.com folks and backed by Benchmark and Redpoint called Clicker (clicker.com). With Clicker we finally have a video search service that has indexed only full-formatted, high-resolution video content produced by professional publishers. Clicker.com’s CEO Jim Lazone will be part of OnMedia’s opening night show and our “End of TV As We Know It” theme, so I won’t belabor its value proposition here. But let us suffice it to say that with innovation such as Clicker and Boxee, the full transformation of our video experience from broadcast to the Internet is in full motion—and there will be no turning back. The days of wasting hours navigating 500 cable channels and ending up empty handed are finally over—Hallelujah!

read more

The Real Time Infrastructure Ultimatum

Greg Ness — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 23:48:49 +0000

For months the infrastructure 2.0 blog has talked about the automation of IT from a network perspective, including the automation of the network itself. While few may question the need for network automation most businesses today still run their networks like they ran their “supply chains” decades ago, before the network.

This great irony is about to change. Here’s why: As virtualization entered the data center it became an accidental standard bearer for network automation. The power of virtualization helped to drive a cultural (including x as a service) shift in expectations, just as Nicholas Carr was declaring war on traditional “old world” IT with the help of Google, Amazon and a host of other cloud (and not so cloud) players.

read more

Advice on Pitching VC's

Tony Perkins — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 23:41:20 +0000

Its been almost five years now that I’ve been in venture capital. I finally know what i don’t know. The one thing I do know is how to give better advice on pitching VCs now that I’ve sat through hundreds of pitches and made 8 investments. I gave some advice in an earlier post—this one builds on it at a deeper level (three years later). I’ve mentioned in the past that there are some key things you should include in your presentation when you are pitching a VC. David Cowan’s post on what to include is a great starting point. I thought I would expand on this and add some of the nuances within each section. This may not apply to all types of companies but I think it works for internet-related businesses.

read more

Obama Bubble Log #1

Tony Perkins — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:19:59 +0000

In the aftermath of Scott Brown's win in Massachusetts, the Obama administration is now busy scrambling to find a way to dodge responsibility for its own reckless fiscal record. That much was on display recently when David Axelrod, a political strategist for the president, penned an opinion piece in the Washington Post. Mr. Axelrod wrote that no one is entitled to his own facts, even as he argued that George W. Bush is responsible for Barack Obama's deficits. He argued that Mr.

read more

Five Mind-Blowing Web Stats

bkabili — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:03:47 +0000

These five mind-blowing web stats should excite us all and continue to make life interesting in the world wide web of disruptive change and unpredictable innovation.

read more

The Ether and the Scrum

bkabili — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:02:42 +0000

Every day I get emails from entrepreneurs that make me think. In this case, it’s from a friend who is on the fundraising trail. He started off the email with “I felt compelled to share this with you as someone who would appreciate it.” I thought it was dynamite and asked him if I could share it since – in its unedited form – it captured so nicely what I expect many entrepreneurs feel.

read more

CNN, Latinos and Brand Values

bkabili — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:02:13 +0000

A few weeks ago CNN broadcast Latino in America, a two-hour documentary that explored “how Latinos are reshaping our communities and culture and forcing a nation of immigrants to rediscover what it means to be an American.” The documentary was reported by Soledad O’brien, a highly regarded CNN anchor and special correspondent who in 2008 reported the similar Black in America documentary.

read more

Back to the Future

bkabili — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:01:29 +0000

I just came across a great report by Industry Little Hawk entitled the Venture Capital Rebound (pdf). In the report, the authors reach a similar conclusion to Paul Kedrosky (read Paul's great research for the Kauffman Foundation here) -- that too much capital has gone into venture capital. Paul has argued that we need to shrink the amount of venture funding by 50% -- a statistic that almost every VC agrees with. (Ironically, 100% of VCs would argu

read more

Living Life While Working Hard

bkabili — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:00:48 +0000

I had a 19 hour day yesterday – it started when I woke up at my hotel at 26th Street at 5am and ended when I hit the sack at midnight. I had a bunch of meetings, a few scheduled phone calls, was on a panel, and stayed on top of my email throughout the day. I even managed to keep my FishVille fish fed and got my Cafe World food served before it spoiled.

read more

Top Tech Exits of the Last Year

bkabili — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:59:23 +0000

Each quarter of 2009 brought more news of reduced fundraising in the global Silicon Valley, and the liquidity drought became so acute that parallel stock exchanges self-organized into official companies. But the traditional exit market didn't run completely dry, and several companies managed to pull off impressive deals.

read more

Flexibility and Persistence

bkabili — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:58:39 +0000

The latest in his series of interviews with entrepreneurs, Tony sits down with former LiveOps CEO and chairman Bill Trenchard and discusses what pursuing opportunity really requires.

read more

VCs Predict exits up, fundraising down in 2010

bkabili — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:37:13 +0000

A panel of top VCs at the AlwaysOn Venture Summit in Menlo Park Tuesday morning said both IPO and M&A activity would bounce back in 2010, but that venture firms themselves should not expect an easier fundraising environment, as LPs will hold steady with a pullback from venture capital. DCM’s Dixon Doll suggested 40 to 50 venture-backed companies would IPO in 2010.

read more

A CEO Memo to the Board

bkabili — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:36:01 +0000

Creating a CEO memo isn't complicated or overly detailed, but it sets the big picture and creates an incredibly powerful mechanism for alignment between boards and CEOs.

read more

A Script for Entrepreneurial Success

bkabili — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:35:26 +0000

Tony interviews David Liu, co-founder and CEO of The Knot, one of the few entrepreneurs who has endured and prospered since the boom of the late 90s.

read more

Seek Out the Right Deal

bkabili — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:34:22 +0000

Perhaps the most important success factor for a venture firm is to ensure that it has a strong, high-quality deal flow.

read more

Debunking theWall Street Myth

bkabili — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:33:03 +0000

"The greatest economy the world had ever seen has been horribly mismanaged and virtually ruined by the decisions of presidents, Congress and the Federal Reserve. Main Street has been wiped out as Wall Street was bailed out."  —Pat Buchanan (12-13-09)

read more

'09 Best & Worst Software Stocks

bkabili — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:31:34 +0000

In 2009 Software Sector was up +49.0% vs. the NASDAQ's +43.9% gain and the S&P 500's +23.5% gain. This is a big improvement from 2008 when the sector was down 40.9%. The average software stock gained +91.1% indicating that small cap companies, particularly microcap companies performed very strongly. In fact, the average gain for software stocks that started the year with less than $100M in market cap (over 1/4 of the total) was 129.6%.

read more

Empire State of Mind

bkabili — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:30:44 +0000

read more

100 Tech IPOs in 2010

bkabili — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:29:59 +0000

After a brutal 2009, this year looks to be more promising for venture capitalists. About $12.2 billion was invested in startups during the first three months of the year, down from $22 billion from the same period a year ago, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers/National Venture Capital Association.

read more

A Sign of a Change in Times

bkabili — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:28:57 +0000

I confess to being a Shrek fan. My kids made me (well, sort of) buy the music CD to Shrek 2 and my favorite song on that CD is the Jennifer Saunders song - "Holding Out For A Hero". When they were little we would play it over and over again in the car.

read more

2010 Has Started Off Fast

bkabili — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:28:07 +0000

I’m at CES all day wandering the floor looking for additional devices to wear on my body to monitor all aspects of my life. In the mean time, there’s a bunch of great stuff in my world that has happened so far this week. Here are links with a little commentary.

read more

Advice on Pitching VC's

Tony Perkins — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:25:48 +0000

Its been almost five years now that I’ve been in venture capital. I finally know what i don’t know.

The one thing I do know is how to give better advice on pitching VCs now that I’ve sat through hundreds of pitches and made 8 investments. I gave some advice in an earlier post—this one builds on it at a deeper level (three years later)

read more

'Social TV' is Here

Andy Plesser — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:26:03 +0000

Facebook integration around video got its first high profile exposure with CNN and the Inauguration of President Obama, but the first was last year's collaboration with Joost. A spokesperson for Facebook has told Beet.TV: "Joost users who have connected their Facebook accounts continue to rank as most active group on the site. These users watch more videos, are more likely to participate in Joost.com's community, and are more likely to contribute comments about the site's video content."

read more

The AO X Fund: Week 45

Michael Moe — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:16:35 +0000

The AlwaysOn X Fund portfolio advanced 4.2% last week, while the NASDAQ was up 3.3%, and the S&P 500 was down 2.2%. Since inception, the AO X Fund portfolio is up 52.1%, the NASDAQ is up 40%, and the S&P 500 is up 20.9%.

Thin-film maker First Solar announced it will work with French EDF Energies Nouvelles to build a new manufacturing plant in Blanquefort, Frace. New plant construction is expected to begin in the second half of 2010, with annual capacity of 100MW (expected in 2012). Additionally, FSLR announced that it started commercial operations in Blythe, CA, for a 21MW solar power plant. For the week, FSLR dropped 1.4%.

read more

Top Tech Exits of the Last Year

Tony Perkins — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:07:06 +0000

Each quarter of 2009 brought more news of reduced fundraising in the global Silicon Valley, and the liquidity drought became so acute that parallel stock exchanges self-organized into official companies. But the traditional exit market didn't run completely dry, and several companies managed to pull off impressive deals. A213's rocking IPO revealed pent up demand for quality tech companies in the public markets, and acquisitions like Mint's $170 million windfall just three years after birth showed that high-growth marketplace can still generate companies too tempting for big corporations to resist. Below are the top venture-backed acquisitions and IPOs of the last year, a testament to the resilience of the innovation economy.

read more

AlwaysOn is Hiring!

Tony Perkins — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 22:50:42 +0000

AlwaysOn (alwayson.goingon.com) is the leading business media brand networking the Global Silicon Valley. AlwaysOn helped ignite the social media revolution in early 2003 when it launched the AlwaysOn network. In 2004, it became the first media brand to socially network its online readers and event attendees. AlwaysOn's preeminent executive event series includes the Summit at Stanford, OnMedia, OnHollywood, OnDC, OnDemand, Venture Summit Silicon Valley, Venture Summit East, GoingGreen, GoingGreen East, and GoingGreen Europe. The AlwaysOn network and live event series continue to lead the industry by empowering its readers, event participants, sponsors, and advertisers like no other media brand.

We're expanding and looking for talented, self-motivated, enthusiastic people to join our team. We offer competitive compensation, freedom and flexibility, and a chance to work with a top-notch group of more than two dozen media professionals.

read more

Great Entrepreneurs' Secret

Tony Tjan — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 00:09:41 +0000

As venture capitalists, my partners and I meet dozens upon dozens of entrepreneurs pitching their ideas and dreams. We love them—especially when their passion comes with capabilities and a good idea. I have been fascinated in understanding the "DNA" of great entrepreneurs in an effort to identify traits and markers that can serve as early clues for future success. I have come to conclude that great entrepreneurs share and need SGL: Smarts, Guts, and Luck.

read more

OnMedia NYC 2010

Tony Perkins — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 20:36:08 +0000

OnMedia NYC is where cutting-edge technology CEOs from the back streets of Silicon Valley meet the global advertising and media establishment. This two-and-a-half-day executive event features CEO presentations and high-level debates on which forces are disrupting user behavior and creating new opportunities in the marketing, branding, advertising, and public relations industries.

read more

Virtualization Will Cross the Chasm

Tony Perkins — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:38:36 +0000

It seems counterintuitive to suggest that the virtualization market hasn’t already crossed the chasm. After all, over the last three years we’ve seen a stellar VMware IPO, Citrix’s heady acquisition of XenSource, and Microsoft’s much celebrated entrance into the virtualization market. VMware's Q3 revenue was $490 million. What’s not to like? After all, virtualization has been a bright beacon of hope in an otherwise lackluster IT era. It is perhaps the most powerful enabler of true cloud computing, enabling new scales of efficiency and elasticity. Virtualization has been “all that” and more.

And Gartner recently predicted more problems for data centers in 2010. Couldn’t virtualization help to address these problems? If it does then it could become what Dr. Moore calls a de facto standard. We’re certainly not t

read more

Is DC the New Silicon Valley?

Tony Perkins — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:22:19 +0000
The president's Innovation Agenda very much mirrors where venture capitalists from Silicon Valley are investing their money. The investment community is looking at a unique opportunity to bring both the agendas together and see if this new partnership can create some jobs. Click here to hear the full interview and hear how this unlikely alliance is changing the way Washington and Silicon Valley are building a bridge toward a healthier, stronger economy.
read more

Company Math vs. VC Math

Josh Kopelman — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:59:41 +0000

Fred Wilson has a great blog post today entitled The 'We Need to Own' Baloney. In it he discussed the fact that many VC's apply arbitrary ownership thresholds to investments. I couldn't agree with Fred more - but I'd take it even further. This is not just limited to ownership requirements. Rather, VC's often impose "VC math" on companies in three areas: 1) the amount VC's "need" to own, 2) the amount VC's "need" to invest, and 3) the return VC's "need" to generate certain exit returns.

read more

OnMedia 2010 Top 100 Competition

Tony Perkins — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:37:50 +0000

AlwaysOn has officially kicked off its fourth annual OnMedia Top 100 Private Companies competition. We're looking for the top emerging technology companies that are creating new business opportunities in the worlds of media, advertising, marketing, branding, and public relations. This includes private companies that are demonstrating significant market traction and pursuing game-changing technology in the following sectors:

    •    Advertising Service Providers
    •    Community Platforms

read more

The Top 25 Women in Tech

Tony Perkins — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:12:35 +0000

AlwaysOn is proud to announce its first annual Top 25 Women in Tech list. These trailblazers have taken the technology industry by storm and been involved with some of the most innovative and lucrative companies in the past decade. The last 18 months have been especially challenging and, as you'll see from this list, the companies these women are driving are consistently scoring big successes, not only in terms of revenue, but reach, innovation, and return on stakeholder investments.

read more

VCs Forecasting Rebound in Tech IPOs

Tony Perkins — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:02:34 +0000

Even with talk that the venture capital industry still needs to shrink further, there was reason for some optimism on Tuesday. Amid an improving economy, the news circulated that at long last, a number of technology companies are working on initial public offerings in what may be the long-awaited return of the engine that drives Silicon Valley. "We are coming out of a very dry period," George Lee, a managing director at Goldman Sachs, said at the Venture Summit Silicon Valley conference. "I think you could see 50 tech IPOs next year."

read more

Google Redefines Disruption

Bill Gurley — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:50:37 +0000

I like to think of myself as an aficionado of business disruption. After all, as a venture capitalist it is imperative to understand ways in which a smaller private company can gain the upper hand on a large incumbent. One of the most successful ways to do this is to change the rules of the game in such a way that the incumbent would need to abandon or destroy its core business in order to lay chase to your strategy.

read more

A story with comments

anon — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 01:17:57 +0000

This is a body...

The AO X Fund: Week 64

Michael Moe — Tue, 23 May 2000 08:45:00 +0000

For the week, the AlwaysOn X Fund portfolio advanced 5.6%, while the NASDAQ was up 3.6%, and the S&P 500 was up 2.2%. Year-to-date, the AO X Fund is up 3%, the NASDAQ is up 3.4%, and the S&P 500 is up 1.8%.

read more