May 2007

The Archives

05.21.07

Why MBAs Suck at Creating Startups (Hint: It’s not all their fault)
Campus Chatter, Entrepreneurship, My Experiences, Venture Capital
Darren Herman recently blogged about his experience of attending the DFJ East Coast Venture Challenge at Columbia University. The awards for the winners included $250k in seed funding (with the option for more) and many other perks such as office space at Sunshine Suites. Damn! Darren’s take was that while some of the ideas were good, he was shocked ’that many of the companies presenting had little to no traction.’ Darren goes on to say ’lots of people in the digital media space always talk about how cheap it is to start a company for $50k, why couldn’t any of these folks ...
05.20.07

Curt Schilling: Loudmouthed Self-Promoter, or PR Genius?
Pop Culture, Social Media
I have been a Sox fan forever having grown up in Maine. Right now I’m loving the punishment Boston has been doling out to opponents, especially the Yanks. While I was not paying attention, Curt Schilling the Red Sox ace (and resident loudmouth) has gone off and created his own blog (WordPress) called 38 Pitches. In addition, Shilling has started a video game company called Green Monster Games. While many athletes have personal home pages and some celebrities have blogs, these traditionally tend to be censored by PR agents and used more as marketing ploys than anything else. Schilling on the other ...
05.17.07

Thinking Retirement: FedEx and UPS
My Experiences, Tech'nomics
If I was not just graduating from B-school and short on cash, I would be thinking about where to invest my annual Roth IRA contribution. Don’t know what a Roth IRA is? You better get in the know fast. This weeks’ announcement that online clothing sales have surpassed computer sales for the first time ever, prompted me to think’ who is the real winner here? Is there a stock worth looking at? No matter how I slice it, the real winner seems to me to be shipping ’“ not shopping. Fact: more and more people are buying things off the internet. As more ...
05.17.07

It’s Connections Not Age that Counts
Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital
Bloggers have gone off on a tangent this week over several posts concerning the age of VC backed entrepreneurs. Valleywag put out the following graphic suggesting the optimal age for a ’homerun-level’ idea to be 26. I think it is important to note several points. These points should help to reassure any readers over 30 whose hopes for acquiring venture financing were discouraged. -Type of business. The Valleywag list primarily features disruptive technology companies. Of course youth will have an edge here since they are the ’early adopters’ and tend to have more time’ -Time. How many 40 year olds with a ...
05.14.07

WallStrip Joins CBS
Social Media, Venture Capital
Apparently CBS has purchased WallStrip. The announcement broke on Jossip and the deal is said to be valued at $5M. WallStrip is not thought to currently generate any revenue. According to Michael Arrington the deal is said to be focused on signing Lindsay Campbell: ’CBS was keen to have Campbell on board and a cast iron contract meant that acquiring WallStrip was the only way they could get to her. Campbell has talent but if this was the driving reason behind the buy, they’d better hope she can tap dance as well.’ Even if the deal is primarily to sign Lindsay, I think ...
05.10.07

Tech Event Mania In DC!!
My Experiences, Social Networking
Well actually only two events in one week, but hey, we’ll take what we can get! In addition to tomorrow’s DC OpenCoffee Event from 9-11am at Caribou on 17th Street (See details here), it seems there is another great event next Wednesday, the 17th sponsored by TECH cocktail. TECH cocktail was co-founded in July 2006 by Eric Olson and Frank Gruber in Chicago and the boys will be in DC for their inaugural event with DC resident and co-sponsor, Nick O’Neill. Sign up for TECH cocktail DC 1 now! The purpose is ’to better connect the local technology and entrepreneurial community’ and will be ...
05.08.07

The New Real-Estate Boom: SEO Optimized Names
Brands and Marketing, Pop Culture, Social Media
Interesting reading from today’s Wall Street Journal. In the article, You’re a Nobody Unless Your Name Googles Well, author Abigail Wilson looks at the importance of unique human names as a means of achieving high ranking search results. The idea: the internet and in particular search results are such valuable 'identity real-estate' that human names are being judged by their SEO potential. The article presents a few anecdotes about families who insist on naming their children with very unique names (Kohler) so that they will be raised ’optimized’ for Google. The best point of the article is that if someone switches ...
05.07.07

Smarter Inventories & Bargains
My Experiences, Social Media
Here’s a free business idea...I frequently go to the same stores in downtown DC trolling for a sale. I take a size medium in most things and I don’t like spending over $30 for just almost type of clothing (yep, it really limits me!). Why don’t stores like Gap, JCrew, Banana, etc have a text messaging service that alerts shoppers [who sign-up] to sale items matching the specifications selected, e.g. Male, Tops, Medium, Under $30? In fact if Twitter was smart, they could create partnerships with stores to alert customers in real-time to great new bargains over mobile phones or on ...
05.07.07

M4S&W: Man Seeking Sofa and Wife
Pop Culture, Social Networking
I have really enjoyed reading the Forbes 90th 75th Anniversary edition on Networks. The magazine features 28 articles by leading gurus on a range of topics all dealing with the role that networks play within modern society. One essay in particular hit close to home. The Dating Game by Chris Ayres is a thought provoking piece on modern love, but also on the economics of Generation X and Y. The gist is that Chris ends up meeting his wife through Craigslist while he attempts to sell a sofa ’gifted’ to him by his Grandmother. What I really relate to is the idea ...
05.05.07

Simply Hired: A Business Model that is too Simple?
Social Media, Venture Capital
According to Techcrunch, Google is now in talks to acquire SimplyHired.com, a job listing website that works by searching across many websites such as Craigslist and Wetfeet.com and aggregating all the results. Venturebeat also has a first-hand account of the breaking news. According to these articles, SimplyHired recently raised $13.5M for a $40M post investment valuation from NewsCorp. I find this amazing because it seems the barriers to entry for an aggregating website are so low’ the business model to me seems too simple. What if in a year a new security device comes out capable of blocking these aggregating/scraping sites ...

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