Startups and The Magic Number Seven
Keith Rabois really knows his stuff and I find his answers on Quora to be some of the best, especially when it comes to early stage company building. To be truly successful on the Internet, you need to build something that becomes one of seven sites that a large swath of users will regularly use […]
Notes from Peter Thiel’s Singularity Summit Talk (2009)
Today was the first time I’ve had a chance to hear Peter Thiel talk live and he did not disappoint. I spent Saturday and Sunday at the 2009 Singularity Summit, held for the first time in New York. Michael Vassar, Singularity Institute’s president, did an exceptional job of assembling an all-star cast of speakers. Talks […]
Private Equity Plus Andreessen Horowitz Buy Skype: The Deal
Priavte Equity firm, Silver Lake Partners along with Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures has acquired a majority of Skype for ~$1.9 billion. This is a massive deal and perhaps shows that VCs are increasingly willing to play in later stage markets. It’s also interesting to me in that Private Equity and Venture Capital are teaming […]
Business Plans 2.0 Presentation
Yesterday I gave a talk with Kam Khare at the Carey Business School of Johns Hopkins University titled, “Business Plans 2.0.” The idea is that business plans have evolved, especially the type of business plan a venture capitalist or angel investor expects to see from a founder. First Kam presented on the traditional business plan […]
2009 Web 2.0 Expo And Customer Validation
I’m getting excited to attend the upcoming Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco hosted by O’Reilly Media and TechWeb. While there are many great sessions in the works, two standout as particularity relevant to readers and speak directly to the changes taking place in the world of early-stage startup funding. First Alastair Michell is doing […]