Seeing that I’m in the data business, thought it’d be interesting to check out the new Silicon Valley CloudCenter at a Meetup event - OpenStack Swift – The State of the Project - organized by Dave Nielsen, et al. Only in Silicon Valley can you pack a room with 60+ engineers to learn about these things.… [Read more…]
November 19, 2011
Question recently posed on Twitter spurred a few thoughts: “Georgia start-ups need to grow outside of Georgia to build great companies and big valuations. Thoughts?” It’s not whether they need to grow, but whether Georgia-based start-ups are able to grow outside of Georgia. But where does this begin? Certainly not in local government, as the… [Read more…]
January 10, 2011
Interesting analysis on TechCrunch yesterday – “Can Google Get Its Mojo Back?“ It wasn’t too long ago that the world feared global domination from Microsoft, followed by the red hot years of Google, and now all the talk is about Facebook’s $50 billion valuation. That’s the beauty of it all – market players with innovation… [Read more…]
January 4, 2011
Big news early in 2011 with Goldman Sachs raising and investing up to $1.5 billion in Facebook. To do so, Goldman is setting up a “Special Purpose Vehicle” (SPV). Because Facebook is a privately-held company, it can have no more than 499 individual investors due to SEC regulations. This SPV enables Goldman to make highly… [Read more…]
October 3, 2010
Came across this post on Marc Hedlund’s blog – “Why Wesabe Lost to Mint.” I’ve never heard of until reading his post this week. It’s a look at why his company – Wesabe – failed to beat out Mint.com for market supremacy. Wesabe shut down earlier this summer, while Mint.com was acquired for $170 mln… [Read more…]
October 27, 2009
Came across an interesting presentation today on The Business Insider that they posted back in September – “The Google Brain Drain Goes On And On.” Interesting because it augments what I wrote back in June 2008 about Google’s Employee Retention. The mental infrastructure of Silicon Valley encourages this behavior to the betterment of the technology,… [Read more…]
August 10, 2009
Just saw that Facebook is acquiring FriendFeed. Found this interesting since the Google tree is expanding. Paul Buchheit is one of FriendFeed’s founders and the brains behind Gmail. After watching him speak on a panel last Spring, I wrote about Google, employee retention, and entrepreneurship. FriendFeed is a small shop with only 12 employees according… [Read more…]
June 15, 2009
Given Google’s new found paranoia, it gives me a certain amount of comfort to know that the laws of the free market and capitalism are still alive and well, even during a time where government programs and institutions are pushing a more socialist environment on the social side of our country’s development. Back in September,… [Read more…]
November 13, 2008
From PWC’s report “Exit slowdown and the new venture capital landscape”: “In the second quarter of 2008 there were zero VC-backed exits – on the heels of five in the previous quarter which raised a thin $283 million. In the first half of 2007, by comparison, 43 VC-backed IPOs collected $6.3 billion.” From the Q3,… [Read more…]
September 11, 2008
Just a quick plug for our work at Altos Research. Mike Simonsen, our CEO, was interviewed on FOXBusiness News this week with a focus on potential bright spots in the US Housing market. Always cool to see our little shop get some national exposure. Here’s a link to the video interview. (There’s a short commercial… [Read more…]
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December 8, 2011
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