Archive | October, 2007

NYC 2.0 (continued)

Oct 18, 2007
in Entrepreneurship

I never made it to the Web 2.0 conference yesterday, and you know how I feel about that label .  Anyway, I happened to be in San Francisco for a portfolio company board meeting and some other events.  After a Nokia boat cruise with many of the team that launched the awesome Nokia Internet 810 [...]

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Are there enough ad dollars for the thousands of small startups?

Oct 13, 2007
in Digital Media, Entrepreneurship

as i have said before the big keep getting bigger and the low barriers to entry mean more and more small guys are fighting for crumbs. the only way to sustain is if dollars continue to flow from old media to new media and the pie continues to get larger. if it does not, watch [...]

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Should I flip or should I build?

Should I flip or should I build?

Oct 11, 2007
in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

It seems that everyday there is a new annoucement of a tiny startup being bought by a large company.  Two days ago it was Jaiku being bought by Google and this morning CBS announced that it is buying Dotspotter, a 10 month old gossip blog.  Put yourself in these entrepreneurs’ shoes – you launch a [...]

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On performance based earnouts

Oct 1, 2007
in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

I am sure you remember the ebay-Skype deal where ebay coughed up $2.6b upfront for Skype and offered an earnout of up to another $1.7b for hitting performance numbers.  Besides the value of the deal, what struck me most was that 40% of the total potential deal size was based on performance-based milestones.  Fast forward [...]

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