All posts by john

Hal Varian: Moore’s Law is also a coordination device

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I heard Hal Varian say this at Berkeley a few months before he left it as a comment here:

But here’s another angle on Moore’s Law: it is to some degree a coordination device. A computer system involves CPU, memory, disk, display, etc., and all the components have to improve at the rate to avoid a bottleneck. The system is only as powerful as its weakest link. If the semiconductor industry tries to double the performance every 2 years, then the disk, RAM, screens, etc can design to that benchmark. By this view, Moore’s law could be 2 years, or 3 years, or whatever —- what matters is the common expectation for component parts manufacture.

via The Technium: Was Moore’s Law Inevitable?.

Words of wisdom: Your growth always lies on the other side of your discomfort

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Your growth always lies on the other side of your discomfort. Whether it’s in the weight room or in career decisions, you’ll never develop yourself by staying in your comfort zone. People don’t become old when they reach a certain birthday; they become old when they decide to live life without crossing that line of discomfort.

via TraderFeed: Winding Down the TraderFeed Blog.

Source of capital for VC funds in 2009

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One of venture capital’s oldest and most reliable partners was hard to find in 2009, according to an annual survey that examines where the private equity asset class receives its capital.

Endowments and foundations saw their share of the overall venture capital pool fall to 3.2% in 2009 from 13.1% in 2008

The cutback partly contributed to the venture capital industry’s fund-raising slump last year. Venture firms raised $13 billion in 2009, down 54.6% from the $28.7 billion raised in 2008.

Where Venture Capital’s Money Came From In 2009 – Venture Capital Dispatch – WSJ.

On Teaching Entrepreneurship

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If you look at the entrepreneurship programs at various schools, you can figure out where those programs’ stances are on whether entrepreneurship can be taught.  That’s a post for another day.  Here’s a blogger who thinks its neither taught nor natural, and I really appreciate his position, although I might not agree completely:

Business schools and conferences have institutionalized entrepreneurialism as an avocation like law or medicine when it is more often a streak of temperament, luck and inspiration. Far from a program taught by somebody else, entrepreneurialism has always been for me my only shot at being myself.

via To Steve Or Not To Steve?.

VC’s flight to quality

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I think it’s pretty clear that there’s been a flight to quality in venture capital

There are two instructively contradictory data points out in venture capital land this morning:

* First-quarter 2010 VC fund-raising was the worst since 1993 (Source)

* Sequoia Capital's new $1-billion fund is oversubscribed by a reported $3-billion (Source)

How can that be?, some might ask. How can one fund be so wildly oversubscribed when the industry is in the worst fund-raising doldrums in modern memory?

via Growthology: VCs are Down! VCs are Up! The Compression of Risk Capital Commitments.