Archive | January, 2004

Mydoom and securing the perimeter

Jan 30, 2004
in Security

As I said before, if you want to stop blended threats like Mydoom and others, the best way to do so is to secure the perimeter by preventing an attack before it has a chance to infiltrate your network. That is best done on the edge, IN FRONT OF THE ROUTER, but for a number [...]

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Reading the tea leaves-correlation between employment growth and IT capital spending

Reading the tea leaves-correlation between employment growth and IT capital spending

Jan 24, 2004
in Economy

As you know, I like to stay abreast of the economy and IT spending, searching for leading indicators of how the markets and my companies may perform in the future. It is clear that given the current market, people are quite excited about the prospects of IT spending growth in 2004. Given that backdrop, I [...]

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Sales Forecasting-a blend of art and science

Jan 20, 2004
in Entrepreneurship

I was quite frustrated recently when one of my portfolio companies presented the board with a 2004 revenue forecast which was not based on reality. While I am not a sales expert or spreadsheet jockey, there are 2 important factors to consider when building a sales forecast-ground it in reality and use a handful of [...]

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Great web-based news aggregator

Jan 16, 2004
in Web/Tech

Like many of you, I suffer from information overload. I have a hard enough time keeping up with email, let alone the increasing volume of news and blogs. During the last 6 months, I have been experimenting with a number of RSS readers to aggregate my news. Some of the products include client software like [...]

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CES-Show me the money!

Jan 11, 2004
in Digital Media

There has been lots of buzz at CES this past week. Trust me, I am a huge fan of all of the new consumer gadgets that are coming out in the market this year. I still, however, ask the question, “where is the money for the tech industry.” From a profit perspective, should we be [...]

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Impact of Outsourcing/Offshoring on IT

Jan 7, 2004
in Globalization

Ephraim Shwartz of Infoworld has a great piece on offshoring and implications for IT shops in the US. I couldn’t agree with him more that while there are cost benefits there are also other factors to consider when moving development offsite. In the end, it will require IT shops and professionals to redefine their roles. [...]

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Companies are bought and not sold (continued)

Jan 7, 2004
in Venture Capital

Fred Wilson has some good commentary on an earlier post. We seem to agree that at the end of the day if you build a real business with sustainable cash flow, the exit will take care of itself. I seem to have oversimplified the “IPO potential” comment for the sake of keeping my post short. [...]

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VOIP/Messaging in 2004

Jan 6, 2004
in On Demand

So I was at a New Year’s party recently and overheard a great grandmother and grandmother waxing poetically about the wonders of Net2phone and VOIP. Both of them happened to also have children/grandchildren living abroad and the cost savings from using VOIP is tremendous. While the penetration of VOIP is still quite modest compared to [...]

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