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…]
September 4, 2008
With the launch of Google’s new browser – Chrome – I can’t help but consider one of the basic laws of market economics: Monopolies are good. Back in 1997, strategy+business published an interview with Paul Romer, a Stanford economist that has been a leader in the development of new growth theory. In the article, Romer… [Read more…]
September 1, 2008
It’s been about a year since I closed up my consulting shop – Economic Information Services. The company provided business consulting services, focusing on Central Asia and Ukraine. Basically, our job was to develop local projects in these regions and find investment capital for them from international sources. I occasionally find myself comparing work with… [Read more…]
August 9, 2008
I read about the recent $53 mln Bain Capital investment to LinkedIn and I was prepared to write an article again questioning the valuation of another social/business networking site. Like many, I’m not particularly enamoured with the current $15 billion valuation of Facebook, so my initial reaction to the $1.035 billion valuation of LinkedIn was… [Read more…]
July 11, 2008
Found this article on VC Experts (a great source for articles and analysis on a myriad of venture capital topics) a couple weeks ago. In short, Barry Kramer and Michael Patrick of Fenwich & West LLP analyze the venture funding terms for over 100 companies in the San Francisco Bay Area. For those number-crunchers, this… [Read more…]
July 8, 2008
Back in late 1990s, I travelled frequently to the Bay Area for work, and during that time, was convinced that I belonged in Silicon Valley working with one of the great new start-ups. It took me until 2001 to finally get here, just a bit past the prime years of gluttony for many-a-startups. One of… [Read more…]
June 5, 2008
About a year ago, I explored Google’s investment per employee during their growth phase, noting that the Google’s employee retention might suffer in the long term as a result of simple mathematics. As Google continues to grow its revenue and employee numbers, maintaining the investment rate per employee to pay for its innovation and development… [Read more…]
June 1, 2008
Traditionally, angel capital became known as “angel capital” because they were the first investors – the “pre-seed” funding, but with deals becoming more numerous and requiring more stringent expected ROI requirements, the entrepreneur in need of $50K or $100K in seed capital is left to bootstrap their business. If you are looking for that first… [Read more…]
May 27, 2008
Jessi Hempel’s article in the most recent edition of Fortune Magazine – “Finding Cracks in Facebook” – intends to uncover some new foundational flows with Facebook. The article itself doesn’t necessarily reveal any new revelations about Facebook, but further asserts some of the ongoing concerns that those in the technology arena have long had about… [Read more…]
May 13, 2008
Attending local Silicon Valley events always seems to provide great fodder for articles and conceptual gymnastics – I attended an SVASE event last week – “Startup Founders – New Kids on the Block” – where Eric Marcoullier, Founder & CEO of Gnip, served as one of the panelist. Eric developed MyBlogLog (I’m a member) which… [Read more…]
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September 11, 2008
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