Archive | December, 2003

Life in a connected world…

Dec 30, 2003
in Security

As we increasingly move to a connected world where all of our devices and products have embedded chips in them communicating with a wireless network to share information and data, we will become more susceptible to privacy and security issues. The New York Times has a great article (must log on but free to join) [...]

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Companies are bought and not sold

Dec 23, 2003
in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Besides taking a brief time out to celebrate the Expertcity deal, I have spent a fair amount of time interviewing VP candidates for one of my portfolio companies. As with any smart executive who cares about the value of equity, the question I am often asked is, “What is your exit strategy.” My answer is [...]

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Citrix buys GoToMyPc maker, Expertcity-great day for ASPs

Dec 19, 2003
in Investing/Markets, On Demand, Security, Venture Capital

Congratulations to Expertcity and Andreas, John, and Klaus. It has been great to work with you from a board level over the last 4 1/2 years. When the transaction closes, I look forward to writing a little more about how you were able to persevere through some tough times, launch new product, stay focused on [...]

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Check Point makes first meaningful acquisition

Dec 16, 2003
in Investing/Markets, Security

So Checkpoint is going to buy Zone Labs for $205mm. Here are my thoughts on the deal. Zone is expected to do around $28mm of revenue in 2003 and $42mm in 2004. The revenue multiple is 7x for 2003 and 5x for 2004. That is pretty much in line with existing security multiples of 6-8x [...]

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Software packaging

Dec 10, 2003
in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Om Malik (ex-senior writer for Red Herring) has been writing about the commoditization of hardware. In a recent article in Business 2.0 titled “The Rise of the Instant Company,” Om talks about how hardware has become commoditized to the point where hardware expense as a cost of goods sold is de minimis. In other words, [...]

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Building Sales Teams

Dec 4, 2003
in Entrepreneurship

Jeff Nolan from SAP Ventures has some interesting insights on building sales teams. One other I would add is pay commissions when you get paid.

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Securing Cyberspace-the Government vs. the private sector

Dec 4, 2003
in Security

There were 2 conferences yesterday addressing cybersecurity. One was the National Cyber Security Summit in Santa Clara and the other was a smaller event in DC. While I was not in attendance, I did speak with a couple of people who participated in the events. The takeaway is that 85% of the critical infrastructure in [...]

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Hand-held device security

Dec 2, 2003
in Security

Hackers like to go where they can cause the most pain. As 3G rolls out in the US, you can bet that hackers will go there as well. There was a great article last Friday in the New York Times about viruses and other security issues on cellphone and hand-held devices in Japan(free site but [...]

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