Cracking the Code

JULY 6, 2007

Cracking The Code. Thoughts from a Venture Capitalist on Software, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Internet and more. Friday, July 06, 2007. SaaS business metrics: why are they different? I was surprised today when I went through the NetSuite IPO filling (S1) to see that it looked very much like any Enterprise software document - not a single mention of churn or % of recurring revenues.

Software Review 66

Software Review Metrics Valuation Technical Review 66

SoCal CTO

JULY 12, 2007

Interesting attempt to create a start-up over the course of a weekend. They failed to get it done in time and they make it sound like they are surprised that it might take longer than a day of programming to build something. It's funny how this expectation around start-ups persists that things can magically be built much, much faster. They also ignored that a large group of developers can't necessarily build something much faster than a small group.

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Startup Programming Developer Product 150

Genuine VC

JULY 23, 2007

Being in the venture capital industry, I find that sometimes it is worthwhile to take a step back from the day-to-day to take a look at the large impending trends which are just beginning to affect us. With many frequent headline predictions desensitizing our understanding of their relative importance, those in the industry (including myself) sometimes forget to (or can’t) see the forest through the trees.

Green 100

Green Bandwidth Startup Venture Capital 100

aweissman.com

JULY 31, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar. aweissman.com. Maximizing the serendipity around you. Jul 31, 2007. Venture Capital. Rarely have I read a more interesting essay about the psychology of venture investing than this piece written by Todd Jaquez - Fissori. I dont know Todd, but his post is a most welcome take written with a rare honesty and rich in both substance and fact: "Point of this rambling was that there are a 1000 reasons to say no to a deal, and only one reason to say yes.

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Venture Capital LP Technical Review Deal Flow 20

Speaker: Nick Noreña, Innovation Coach and Advisor, Kromatic

Every startup and innovation project exists within an ecosystem that either helps or hurts that project. As innovation managers, we need to keep a pulse of that ecosystem and make sure we're helping those innovation projects we're managing every step of the way. In this webinar, Nick Noreña will walk through an Innovation Ecosystem Model that he and his team at Kromatic have developed to help investors, heads of product, teachers, and executives understand how they can best support innovation in

Startup

Occam's Razor

JULY 31, 2007

I am a NPR junkie (and support my local station KALW ). Driving to the airport last Monday I was surprised to hear a segment about "behavior marketing" NPR covers everything of course but for some reason it was surprising to hear of the current technology cool thing on NPR! Now that NPR has covered this I feel I am late to the party!! Behavior targeting has been the news a lot recently.

Analytics 68

Analytics Web Customer Algorithm 68

BeyondVC

JULY 31, 2007

I am not here to pile on the Amp’d Mobile situation, but I find it is always important to learn as much as you can from your mistakes and from other people’s mistakes. Rafat Ali has a great interview with Peter Adderton, the former CEO of Amp’d Mobile. Here are a couple of interesting points that Peter says helped to ultimately bring the company down: — You don’t raise $400 million in 18 months by spending time inside the office.

Mobile 60

Mobile Finance Partner Operations 60

Tim Keane

JULY 20, 2007

'Startups and angels: Along the way to success. By Tim Keane, Angel Investor, Golden Angels Investors, LLC. Home. Archives. Profile. Subscribe. « A New old Idea: Direct Marketing Revisited | Main. | Is Business Model Analysis Important To You? » July 20, 2007. Thoughts for New Angels. I was in Italy a couple of weeks ago at the request of the US State Department to discuss angel investing with IBAN, the Italian Business Angels Network.

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Italy Angel Investor Wisconsin Harvest 60

Jason Ball

JULY 23, 2007

It appears that Google is going head to head with seed investors (like Y combinator) with its Google Gadget Ventures : Google Gadget Ventures is a new Google pilot program dedicated to helping developers create richer, more useful Google Gadgets. Inspired by the success of iGoogle, which has been driven by the creation by 3rd-party developers of a broad range of gadgets, Gadget Ventures provides two types of funding: 1.

Programming 28

Programming Developer Business Plan Venture Capital 28

aweissman.com

JULY 27, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar. aweissman.com. Maximizing the serendipity around you. Jul 27, 2007. Revenues kill the dream. Paul Kedrosky : Whatever your feelings about Twitter, business plans are overrated, and profits perhaps even more so. Why? Two reasons. First, because VCs are professional nit-pickers. Give them something to find fault with, and theyll do it with abandon.

Revenue 20

Revenue Naming Business Plan 20

BeyondVC

JULY 23, 2007

The Wall Street Journal announced another Nokia mobile internet purchase today of a company called Twango which allows users to share photos, video, and media. According to the WSJ, the Twango service will be integrated into Nokia phones and will start with a free and premium based subscription model. While this acquisition in and of itself is not mind blowing, the fact that Nokia has made a number of acquisitions over the last 18 months encroaching on possible carrier revenue does make the stor

Internet 60

Internet Acquisition Vertical Software 60

BeyondVC

JULY 16, 2007

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article today about how the resurgence of tech IPOs have really come from "less glamorous, business-focused companies selling such products as telecommunications equipment and computer storage." In fact many of these companies have market caps > than $1b each. The article is right in that alot of buzz gets centered on consumer Internet companies like Google or YouTube and that on absolute market capitalization many of the big returns are fou

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B2B IPO Valuation Internet 60

BeyondVC

JULY 16, 2007

Congratulations to the Answers.com team on the announcement of this deal! Since I am a board member and it is a public company (NASDAQ: ANSW), there is not much commentary I can add except that I wholeheartedly agree with Bob Rosenschein’s assessment of the transaction (see press release) : "The acquisition of Lexico is a transformative event for us," explained Robert S.

Acquisition 60

Acquisition Algorithm Web Engineer 60

Tim Keane

JULY 16, 2007

'Startups and angels: Along the way to success. By Tim Keane, Angel Investor, Golden Angels Investors, LLC. Home. Archives. Profile. Subscribe. « When is the time? | Main. | A New old Idea: Direct Marketing Revisited » July 16, 2007. Whats the Best Use of Your Borrowing Power? I just talked to a business owner the other day who has grown her startup nicely - 15% a year or so - up to revenue of a bit over $2.5MM.

Wisconsin 60

Wisconsin Angel Investor Bootstrapping Startup 60

Tim Keane

JULY 6, 2007

'Startups and angels: Along the way to success. By Tim Keane, Angel Investor, Golden Angels Investors, LLC. Home. Archives. Profile. Subscribe. « Nothing is a Proxy for What You Dont Know | Main. | Whats the Best Use of Your Borrowing Power? » July 06, 2007. When is the time? Heres a great comment from Ryan that I just posted: "My fellow angel network managers say that they usually wont talk to inventors because the company anticipated is usually not ready for angel investment.

Wisconsin 60

Wisconsin Angel Investor Bootstrapping Startup 60

Jason Ball

JULY 16, 2007

The slide to the left is from a Morgan Stanley presentation from 2005. They were doing some crystal ball gazing about the wireless internet… There are two key “?”s on the slide: a killer 3G handset and a killer mobile app. I think Apple has nailed both: the iPhone and Safari. The iPhone has gotten loads of coverage, but the services that are popping up in Safari (in the form of widgets currently) seem to be flying under the radar.

Widget 28

Widget Mobile Internet Email 28

Jason Ball

JULY 3, 2007

I’ve recently left behind my Skype headphones for the ease of use and reliability of Jajah. <– I see that Jajah have now released an “iPhone friendly” version of their service here. Because Jajah is inherently a web app, and not a local client like Skype, this could put them streets ahead of the competition. Plus, there’s the added benefit that jajah call quality is pretty high in my experience.

Web 28

Web Software 28

aweissman.com

JULY 24, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar. aweissman.com. Maximizing the serendipity around you. Jul 24, 2007. Seed Investing. I wrote a piece for the new Silicon Alley Insider site about seed investing in New York. It is about the fact that while venture funding statistics show larger funds and more later stage investing, there are still a wealth of early ventures being formed, and getting funded.

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Later Stage New York Naming 20

aweissman.com

JULY 17, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar. aweissman.com. Maximizing the serendipity around you. Jul 17, 2007. Quote of the week. Seth Goldstein : Netscape browsed the Web. Yahoo! organized it. Google searched it. And now Facebook has made it social. Right or wrong, its an interesting characterization. Plus, it implies myriad opportunities around each point -- browsing, organization, search and social community.

Search 20

Search Community Web Naming 20

aweissman.com

JULY 13, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar. aweissman.com. Maximizing the serendipity around you. Jul 13, 2007. Deadliest Catch Media Distribution. The traditional approach to content distribution has been "if you build it they will come." Distribute quality content in one place, buying the shelf space for that place, then market it to drive users/viewers to that place.

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Distribution Media Audience Web 20

aweissman.com

JULY 9, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar. aweissman.com. Maximizing the serendipity around you. Jul 9, 2007. Ads on "social nets". Great analysis from Umair at Bubblegen on advertising on social nets: "The point is - ads on social nets are seriously underperforming at the moment. Its unlikely that naive ads will be the b-model that lets them capture a share of the massive value they have created.

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.Net Advertising Distribution Naming 20