via With High-End Meal Perks, Facebook Keeps Up Valley Tradition – NYTimes.com.
I like that.
Social Media Gurus Are Multiplying Like Rabbits
Performance Of 2009’s VC-Backed IPOs Boosting Investor Optimism
Unless you haven’t been paying attention, there is definitely a change in sentiment in the tech community:
Going into next year, venture capitalists are feeling more optimistic about the chances of exiting their portfolio companies. Much of this optimism comes from the successful, albeit few, public offerings of venture-backed companies this year.
via Performance Of 2009’s VC-Backed IPOs Boosting Investor Optimism – Venture Capital Dispatch – WSJ.
Whining customers
When I started to get to know twitter, one of the big things that stood out for me was all the whining going on on twitter.
the goal should be to get your customers to share their dreams, not their peeves.
Revamping the venture capital model – Crain’s New York Business
Typical criticism heard of smaller funds
Still, the Founder Collective’s strategy is not without risks. Most important, according to Mr. Greeley, are its inherent limitations. Because they're committed to making only small investments, it’s unlikely the partners will be able to invest in potentially lucrative startups in such cash-intensive industries as clean technology. “There’s a risk in not being able to include companies that require more capital,†he says.
via Revamping the venture capital model – Crain’s New York Business.
if a tech trend has happened in Korea, yes, it will happen in the US and Europe a few years later.
Mobile TV, online shopping, paid content, cyworld, mobile broadband… there’ s a lot more where the US is lagging.
I consider it now proven. if a tech trend has happened in Korea, yes, it will happen in the US and Europe a few years later.
The Challenge to Search will come in the form of a Status Update #SEO #SEM #SM
I enjoy reading positions such as these. It sounds like a big statement but is it really that far from what our expectations should be? Not if you look at the digital analogs that exist today. Finding information is important, but is that what will drive value online ten years from now?
Search will continue to exist, but we can and should build a smarter system to get collective knowledge from the web than that.
via The Challenge to Search will come in the form of a Status Update #SEO #SEM #SM.
Spot Instances are ideal for Amazon EC2 customers who have workloads that are flexible as to when its tasks are run.
via Expanding the Cloud – Amazon EC2 Spot Instances – All Things Distributed.
Business innovation is alive and well in the land of technology.
Binary Pricing « Five Years Too Late
via Binary Pricing « Five Years Too Late.
A very excellent post on how the risks have changed in the online venture game, and how the economics of venture capital have adjusted accordingly. The entire post is written generally but ends with a justification for RRE’s investment in hot potato, and some insight into the pricing of that deal.
In my view, the best possible deals from a pricing perspective are deals like the one we just did with Justin Shaffer called Hot Potato. We funded Justin at a seed round price because we believed in Justin and thought that traction would occur. But the price reflected the lack of traction (and even a launched product) at that point.
The importance of job listings to Craigslist
The way the contracts were structured between eBay and Craigslist shows just how important job listings were at the time for Craigslist.
Craigslist on eBay: “Untrustworthyâ€; eBay on Craigslist: “Amateurish†– GigaOM.
Craig Newmark testified that then-eBay CEO Meg Whitman assured him that eBay would not use the confidential information about Craigslist it had access to as a shareholder to compete with the site, however the contract the two companies signed in August 2004 for 28 percent of the company at a price of $32 million did allow eBay to compete, with the exception that it would lose shareholder rights if it offered online jobs postings in the U.S.