Archive | September, 2006
Globalization and the world economy

Globalization and the world economy

Sep 20, 2006
in Economy, Globalization

I remember 2 years ago the brouhaha over globalization and how every startup needed to adapt or it would die.  I truly am a fervent believer in globalization and how offshoring some development work can make a ton of sense from a cost and time advantage (24×7).  As I look across our portfolio, what is [...]

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Live homework help for your kids

Sep 19, 2006
in Entrepreneurship, Web/Tech

Congratulations to George Cigale and his Tutor.com (full disclosure – portfolio company and my partner Dan DeWolf is on the board) team for the launch of their direct-to consumer service which offers live homework help and online tutoring.  This is the culmination of a mission that George set out to realize over 8 years ago.  [...]

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Getting too big too fast

Sep 15, 2006
in Entrepreneurship

I encourage you to read what Evan Williams has to say (courtesy of Gigaom) about some of the mistakes he made at Odeo.  Evan is one of the founders of Blogger which he sold to Google and is also founder and CEO of Odeo, a podcasting company.  He goes on to outline a number of [...]

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Podcast with Heather Green of Businessweek

Sep 14, 2006
in Venture Capital

I recently had the opportunity to do a podcast with Heather Green of BusinessWeek and Blogspotting.  If you have a desire to hear about some of the areas I find interesting and to learn about pitfalls to avoid for startups, I suggest that you download the show.  My only regret is that we did not [...]

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Add Startup Review to your blogroll

Sep 13, 2006
in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Nisan Gabbay of Sierra Ventures recently contacted me with respect to his new blog, Startup Review.  According to Nisan: Startup Review will be a blog that profiles successful Internet start-ups in a case study format. The case studies will analyze the key factors that made the companies successful, with an emphasis on strategy and product [...]

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Take care of the little things

Sep 13, 2006
in Entrepreneurship

As an entrepreneur, you are most likely spending most of your time building your product and getting it to market.  in other words, you are focusing on the big picture which is what you should be doing.  I do want to share with you a couple of anecdotes about not forgetting to take care of [...]

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Facebook and product development

Sep 7, 2006
in Entrepreneurship, Web/Tech

While reading the Wall Street Journal this morning, the Facebook story caught my eye.  Facebook has clearly built a huge community and is one of the leading social networks on the web.  However, I was mystified about the backlash the company received about its new service allowing users to better keep track of their friends [...]

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Hiring great talent (continued)

Sep 6, 2006
in Entrepreneurship

As you know, talent is the lifeblood of any company.  Given that, I have written a number of posts on hiring (see here and here).  I recently saw Joel Sposky’s (Joel on Software) post on hiring great developers and thought that I would share it with you.  He makes a number of great points and [...]

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Google and enterprise SAAS

Sep 2, 2006
in On Demand

There has been lots of discussion about Google going after Microsoft with a focus on collaborative office tools vs. siloed, desktop-oriented ones.  I can definitely see a need for some of what Google has to offer particularly with the ease of use of unlocking data and analysis and sharing it with others.  All that being [...]

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