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The Gartner Magic Quadrant – a necessary evil in IT

Feb 4, 2010
in Uncategorized

Lately, I feel as if I have been spending an inordinate amount of time with my companies talking about marketing. Related to this, one of my portfolio companies recently received a number of nice emails from the board related to its new positioning in Gartner's Magic Quadrant. We were all quite excited since we made [...]

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Market positioning for startups – focus, focus, focus

Jan 22, 2010
in Entrepreneurship

I was on a call yesterday with an inspired and talented management team. As we walked through the deck, one point particularly struck me as I listened to their well-honed pitch. The company was trying to boil the ocean and do everything for its customers. While it was great that the team seemed to understand [...]

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When to ramp sales

Jan 14, 2010
in Entrepreneurship

While 2009 was a tough year, I must say that it was nice to see a number of our portfolio companies have blow out 4th quarters for bookings and growth. Despite that, I am still taking a cautiously optimistic approach to 2010. There are still conflicting reports on the growth of the economy and it [...]

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Startups and financial models for SAAS companies

Dec 10, 2009
in Entrepreneurship, On Demand

The other day I met with an entrepreneur I was advising as he prepared to raise his next round of funding. In the meeting, he wanted me to narrow in and focus on his financial model. Financial models for startups are important from a big picture perspective, but I never like to get mired in [...]

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Google acquires portfolio company Gizmo5

Nov 13, 2009
in Venture Capital, VOIP

Congratulations to Michael Robertson and team at Gizmo5 for all of their hard work and perseverance! There is not a lot I can tell you about the future plans for Google Voice, but I do believe it is important to look back to see how we got here. We made our investment in Gizmo5 (aka [...]

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The Googlization of IT

Oct 27, 2009
in Infrastructure, On Demand

Today I took a sales team from a portfolio company to meet with a couple of senior IT executives at a major retail company. Towards the end of the meeting, it started to become quite clear to me the effect that Google and the web has had on IT to date and where it was [...]

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Washers, dryers and secret sauce – why naming your technology is important

Sep 16, 2009
in Entrepreneurship

Our washer and dryer was on the fritz today, and as I started to do some research on large capacity stackable units I started to get overwhelmed with all of the new terminology and features. After all, isn’t a washer a washer and a dryer a dryer. How many different combinations and features could there [...]

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Future of television advertising (continued again!)

Aug 5, 2009
in Digital Media

My first post about portfolio company Visible World and the future of television advertising was in October 2004 (see here). In the post, I wrote about how television advertising needed to change and how the advertisers and those with inventory had to adapt to the rising online threat and offer new technology to make their [...]

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Lessons from Joost

Jul 1, 2009
in Entrepreneurship

I am not going to rehash Om Malik's excellent summary of "What went wrong with Joost" but I did want to dive deeper into a few points. As I have always said, raising too much money can be a curse and not a blessing. Here is an excerpt from my post in 2006Trust me, I [...]

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I want it NOW, I want it REAL TIME

Jun 16, 2009
in Entrepreneurship, On Demand

I was recently asked by a friend if he should get his son the new Nintendo DSi. This would be an upgrade from the current DS and also add the photo capability. As I thought about my own son's usage of the device, I said no. Once my son got an IPod Touch for music [...]

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