Bangalore Embodies The Silicon Valley
I spent a few days in Bangalore this month. This place amazes me every single time I visit it. Many people ask me whether I think Bangalore has potential to be the next Silicon Valley. I believe, it’s a wrong question. There’s some seriously awesome talent in India, especially in Bangalore. Don’t copy the Silicon Valley. [...]
Video: Cloud In The Eyes Of VCs
From time to time, we post videos from different vendors on their take about cloud marketplace. Below is a video of Okta CEO, Todd McKinnon, talking to two of their VCs Ben Horowitz (from Andreessen Horowitz) and David Weiden (from Khosla Ventures) about their take on where cloud is heading. While we take pride in [...]
What Should You Do with Your Crappy Little Services Business?
There’s a line of thinking in Silicon Valley that you should build product businesses rather than services businesses. This thinking is largely driven by the venture capital industry (and subsequently Wall Street) who are in search of high margin, highly scalable businesses. It’s nearly impossible to get a services company financed by VCs. You’re small fish.
Can We Ever Have Too Many Startups?
My recent post on the diatom bloom in the startup ecosystem prompted calls for me to dig deeper and provide more data. Far be it from me to disappoint!Chris Tacy asked, are we seeing too many startups? It’s a loaded question, but a good one.My instin…
Silicon Valley > Boston (The Data)
I love Boston. I lived there for five of the best years of my life, when I was working at D. E. Shaw & Co., and then when I attended Harvard Business School. If anyone asks, I always tell them, “if Boston had the same weather and career opportunities for me as Silicon Valley, I’d [...]
Software is Roadkill
The fastest way to become roadkill to venture capitalists is to become a software company. Software may not be inherently evil (it has created wealth for many people that is in proportion to the pain it has provided to many customers). Software and specifically on-premise enterprise software, however, is clearly…
Did Peter Thiel Make The Single Best Investment In History?
In 2005, Peter Thiel paid $500,000 for a 10% stake in Facebook.Today, with Facebook’s estimated value topping $33 billion, his stake is worth between $2-3 billion. That’s a 6,000x return on his capital in 5 years.I’ll put it this way–if you made a $2…
Yes, There Is A Superangel Conspiracy.
I have a confession to make. There is an angel conspiracy. It dark, it is devious, and it is far-reaching. The conspirators number amongst them many of the top people in the Valley, including angels, VCs, lawyers, and yes, even journalists. We have joined together despite our differences and conflicts for a single, sinister, self-interested [...]
While Entrepreneurs Scale On The Cloud The Angels Get Supersized
Cloud computing is disrupting the venture capital industry in a big way. One of the obvious changes we all have observed is the reduced up-front capital expenditure to start a new venture. Things that used to require an array of expensive servers and an army of people to maintain them have essentially been replaced by [...]
On Bootstrapping. And Big Bucks. And Organic Growth
Recently there have been a few posts about growth through funding and growth through organic means. Tony Hsieh from Zappos told his tale of woe about the expectations of VC’s in terms of good exits. On the other hand, Sridhar Vembu, Founder of Zoho (disclosure – Zoho is exclusive sponsor of CloudAve) wrote an excellent [...]
Launch Silicon Valley: 30 Startups Debut Tomorrow
Somewhat late notice, but there’s an exciting startup debut event in Mountain View tomorrow: Launch: Silicon Valley, co-presented by SVASE, Garage Technology Ventures and Microsoft, provides the next generation of emerging technology companies with the opportunity to pitch their products to, and network with, an audience of Silicon Valley’s top VCs, Angels, corporate business development [...]
Congratulations to Mark Suster, No 2. Top-rated VC Partner
Image by GRP Partners via CrunchBase Our readers know Mark Suster for his popular series on startups, getting funded, generally dealing with VCs but also on strategy, sales, management, presentations ..etc. In short as the very accessible all-around startup guy. I first met him as CEO of Koral, a startup later acquired by Salesforce.com. Considering [...]
What Can You Learn from the 4-Hour Workweek?
A couple of years ago I read the popular book, “The Four Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferriss. It was recommended to me by my friend, Net Jacobsson, who was trying to do some basic Life Hacking. If you’re not familiar with the term it’s basically trying to help all of us who are deluged with [...]
What we have here is a failure to plan
Well, it’s that time of year; the end of the year that is. Time for holiday cheer, budgets and for a rare few, strategic planning. I say for a few because I’m frequently surprised at how little I hear from the VC community and VC-backed CEOs about strategic planning. When I do hear about planning, it is [...]
Save Your Spin for Someone Who Cares
Handling PR with VCs This is part of my series on How to Raise VC but could equally be filed under Startup Advice more generally. I recently got a phone call from an entrepreneur whom I respect and who runs a company that I hope will do great things one day. He had pitched me [...]
