Archive | March, 2006

Remember Long Term Capital?

Mar 24, 2006
in Web/Tech

In 1994, the smartest guys in the financial trading and academic world got together to start Long Term Capital.  John Meriwether from

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Grid 2.0

Mar 23, 2006
in On Demand

The hype cycle for grid computing started many years ago, and today it is mostly relegated to uses in bioinformatics, financial services, and 3d modeling (think crash testing, oil discovery, etc.).  With yesterday’s announcement, Sun is making this grid infrastructure available to anyone, anytime, and on demand at Network.com.  As Jonathan Schwartz points out, consumer [...]

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Eat when dinner is served

Mar 20, 2006
in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

There is an article in the Wall Street Journal (sorry-requires subscription) today on pre-emptive financings or financings that happen when a company is not actually looking for capital.  It is common wisdom amongst the investment community for entrepreneurs to "eat when dinner is being served."  In other words, companies should take cash even if they [...]

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Advisory Boards

Mar 14, 2006
in Entrepreneurship

I can’t tell you how many companies come in and present and inevitably, somewhere in the deck, is a list of advisors.  Of course, as I dig in to understand what these advisors actually do for the company, 9 times out of 10 they are just high profile names that are thrown on a list [...]

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The next generation web, scaling and data mining will matter

Mar 2, 2006
in Open Source, Web/Tech

We are all enjoying the benefits that come with the commoditization of existing hardware and software infrastructure.  It is true that it costs exponentially less to launch a business today versus five years ago.  We are all smarter, broadband penetration is reaching critical mass, and open source and commodity hardware have become reliable alternatives to [...]

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Having too much money can be a curse, not a blessing

Mar 1, 2006
in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Trust me, I love having well capitalized companies.  However, having too much money can be a curse, not a blessing.  More often than not, I see management lose financial discipline and avoid making hard decisions when capital is abundant and not scarce.  To many executives, money does solve all problems.  And yes, having money allows [...]

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