Archive | March, 2004

Personalized Search

Mar 31, 2004
in Web/Tech

Google just launched a new version of personal search based on user preferences. In early 2000, we seeded a Xerox PARC spin-out called Outride (formerly called Groupfire) which aimed to bring personal search to the web by learning from a surfer’s prior searches or his workgroup or community’s prior searches. For example, if you searched [...]

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A tale of two IPOs

Mar 25, 2004
in Investing/Markets

So while I was at PC Forum, my partner, Ned Carlson, sent me an email on the recent IPO filing of Seven Networks. Having talked to a number of bankers, we always thought that one needed $6-8mm of quarterly revenue, profitability for at least 1-2 quarters, and good visibility for the rest of the year [...]

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Thoughts from PC Forum-going into attack mode

Mar 23, 2004
in Entrepreneurship

Once again, I am not going to blog the panels at PC Forum, but you can find some good commentary on the conference via other bloggers from my post yesterday. Other good posts can be found from Dan Gillmor, Jason Calacanis, or the PC Forum Eventspace. However, what I would like to share with you [...]

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PC Forum 2004-Monday morning

Mar 22, 2004
in Entrepreneurship

PC Forum is off to a great start this year with an interview with Eric Schmidt from Google and a panel with the CEOs of AOL, Yahoo, and Google. I do not plan on taking detailed notes so I suggest you view Ross Mayfield’s blog and posts to stay current on the conference. I also [...]

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The Globalization of Education

Mar 22, 2004
in Globalization

Jerry Colonna and I had an interesting dialogue on the topic of utilizing offshore resources. In the end, Jerry and I advocated that education is the key to long-term success for the US. Offshoring of jobs will continue to happen, and it makes sense economically. However, in order to maintain our lead in the US, [...]

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Lunch with Pat Cox-thoughts on offshoring

Mar 19, 2004
in Globalization

On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of attending a small group lunch in honor of Pat Cox, President of the EU Parliament. It was quite a treat as I got to hear his viewpoint on Spain, terrorism, immigration, and offshoring amongst other things. Since I tend not to write about politics, I thought I would [...]

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Open source Router? Open source moves up the stack?

Mar 17, 2004
in Open Source

I finally got a chance to catch up on some trade rags and came across this interesting blurb from Network Magazine about XORP, the Linux of Routing. While an early project from UC Berkeley, I encourage you to take a look and keep it on your radar. This is yet another example of the potential [...]

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Staying close to your customers with blogs and RSS

Mar 10, 2004
in Entrepreneurship

As I have said a number of times, I am a big believer that companies should start looking at how to use new technology and standards like blogs, wikis, and RSS/Atom from a product perspective and not solely for news publishing and aggregation. What do I mean by that? In response to a post I [...]

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Hiring Talented Sales People

Mar 5, 2004
in Entrepreneurship

As you can see, I have been spending alot of time with my portfolio companies hiring in a number of functions to create growth. That is obviously a good sign. Hiring is such an important skill, there is no science to it, but research and common sense help. I am sure you remember the old [...]

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Building your business around customers (continued)

Mar 2, 2004
in Entrepreneurship

Forgive me for being obsessed with customers, but after all, without them, how can you have a business. Anyway, I was interviewing a VP of Engineering candidate for one of my portfolio companies, and when I asked a question about the most significant lesson that he learned from one of his prior jobs, this was [...]

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