Chris Yeh
VP Enterprise Marketing for PBworks, first investor in and previously interim CEO of Ustream.TV. Chris is an active angel investor and the founder and Chairman of the Harvard Business School Technology Alumni Association (HBSTECH). Chris earned two degrees from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. His personal blogs are Adventures in Capitalism and Ask the Harvard MBA.
Silicon Valley: The "Ultimate Meritocracy"
My fellow denizens of Silicon Valley are fond of referring to our happy little ecosystem as the ultimate meritocracy. It’s definitely true that in comparison to the rigid and/or corrupt regimes that prevail in other industries and geographies, Silicon Valley is a meritocracy, but it is far from perfect. I often joke with the female/minority/over-30 [...]
The Real Odds That Your Startup "Succeeds"
Henry Blodget is a smart journalist who knows how to drive pageviews. He certainly got me to click through when he picked the headline, “DEAR ENTREPRENEURS: Here’s How Bad Your Odds Of Success Are” Blodget riffs on a tweet by Paul Graham to estimate the odds of startup success: “Graham says that 37 of the [...]
Why "Enterprise SaaS" may soon be a misnomer
One of the most exciting developments to hit the enterprise software world in decades was the rise of SaaS. Companies like Salesforce.com blazed a trail that built enormous amounts of wealth and improved the lives of end-users. Prior to SaaS, most enterprise software was sold based on perpetual licenses, to CIOs and IT departments, with [...]
Three foolproof ways to price your startup’s product
One of the big questions entrepreneurs ask me about is how to price their product. 99% of the time, I tell them that their product is underpriced. But this begs the question, how should I price my product? The advice I tends to be very specific to the product and industry. For example, I urge [...]
Why most startups have to fail, and why that’s a good thing
Some people think I’m a pessimist for pointing out the long odds against any particular startup succeeding. It’s not fun to hear that even venture-backed startups have a 90% chance of failure. But startup failure isn’t just reality; it’s also a necessity…and even a benefit. 1) The number of companies getting started far exceeds the [...]
If Tumblr is worth $1.1 Billion, is Pinterest worth $19 Billion
My friend Adam Rifkin, who runs the awesome PandaWhale (where I get a ton of my news), recently wrote about the Tumblr acquisition for AllThingsD. It’s a smart and well-reasoned essay, which is well worth reading. His basic argument is that Tumble is valuable because it is a massive interest graph: “Tumblr is one of [...]
Yes, Android is winning (at least by what Google cares about)
John Kirk recently took issue with the spate of stories about Android’s increasing share of the smartphone market. In his polemic, “Android’s Market Share Is Literally A Joke“, he argues that Apple is actually winning the smartphone battle because it has a majority of the profits: “Not only do the high priests of market share [...]
Dear Entrepreneur
Like many investors, I was entertained by Andy Dunn’s recent rant, “Dear Dumb VC” His essay lays out his criticism of VCs by citing the following facts: * You don’t realize you are going out of business * You think you can help entrepreneurs * You spend a ton of an entrepreneur’s time before deciding [...]
Is Microsoft doomed? I’ll let you know when Windows 10 comes out.
A lot of folks believe that the Microsoft empire is doomed, and that the rise of touchscreen computing and mobile devices will lead it its inevitable downfall. This may very well be true; it certainly is true that to date, Microsoft’s attempts to enter the touch and mobile markets have been poorly received. Yet much [...]
Want better support? Then make that part of your buying criteria.
I was very entertained when I read a recent blog post complaining about the crappy customer service you get from big internet companies. The writer titled it, “Hey internet giants, you’re no longer startups, get some customer service.” I was entertained for two reasons. The first is that it’s quite possible for a startup to [...]
Why I hate acquihires (unless I’m doing the selling)
The always insightful Mark Suster recently tackled the subject of acquihires–the practice of large companies buying small startups simply to acquire their people. Mark lays out an excellent argument for why the acquiring companies are actually losing out when they make acquihires: “You have been at Google, Salesforce.com, Yahoo! for years. You have worked faithfully. [...]
The rise of the bros, and the fall of the geeks
One of my favorite movies when I was growing up was the 1984 classic, “Revenge of the Nerds.” If you haven’t watched it yet, take two hours to do so–yes, it’s available on Netflix: The movie really spoke to me–a guy so nerdy that the kids at my private school for gifted children nicknamed me [...]
Sexism in tech is like an onion–it has many layers and makes people cry
The big topic of discussion last week was the fallout from the PyCon conference. At the conference, former Adria Richards, who, at the time, worked in developer relations for SendGrid, heard two conference attendees behind her making jokes about “forking” and “dongles” in the sort of juvenile way that often happens in the tech industry. [...]
The one number (45) that explains Constant Contact’s success
The Business of Software Conference sounds like a phenomenal event. I haven’t attended it, but I did recently run across one of the sessions from their 2012 conference, a talk by Gail Goodman, the CEO of Constant Contact: For those who don’t know, Constant Contact is a publicly traded online marketing company with over 500,000 [...]
Marissa Mayer and Yahoo’s telecommuting policy: Right motivation, wrong execution
When Yahoo! hired Marissa Mayer, I supported the move, believing that the board needed to shake things up, and that given the dismal state of the business, Mayer was probably a better candidate than they could ever have expected to attract. I also supported the move on Mayer’s part; she wasn’t ever going to become [...]
