The Dreaded Predictions List
Ahhhh, December – how I love thee. I have this annual tradition in December where I completely suspend work for the last two weeks of the month, and I spend time assessing the past year (how I performed on personal goals; I’m big on writing down goals, etc), and plan out the coming 12 months [...]
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…
How to Discuss Stock Options with Your Team
I was thumbing through Twitter messages on my Blackberry on Monday (I use Twitter as a “mobile first, web second” product) when I saw the following Tweet (see graphic). I resisted the temptation to jump in with a response because I knew it was too complicated of a topic to discuss on Twitter. But I [...]
Atlassian: Fully Funded. By Customer Revenue. Oh, and the $60M T-shirt
It was 2006, the first Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco and I just met Jeffrey Walker, President of Atlassian. I had followed the company for a while (OK, I admit, had been a fan), met Mike, but this was the first time with Jeffrey, so we took our box lunch to a cozy little [...]
From the Archives: Personal IPO
Going all the way back to 1995, I’ve speculated that promising young people should be able to sell a claim against their future income stream. Back then, I called it the Personal IPO. The original idea came to me after rock star David Bowie sold the infamous “Bowie Bonds,” backed by the royalties from his [...]
Twitter Valued at $1B? Peanuts! 37Signals Worth $100B!
37signals is now a $100 billion dollar company, according to a group of investors who have agreed to purchase 0.000000001% of the company in exchange for $1. Founder Jason Fried informed his employees about the new deal at a recent company-wide meeting. The financing round was led by Yardstick Capital and Institutionalized Venture Partners. In [...]
Marketing Costs for SaaS Companies
A few weeks ago I posted comparing two start up strategies for SaaS businesses; one being the slow, organic growth and bootstrapped route, the other being the well funded route. I summarised my posting saying that it was very much a case of horses for courses saying that; There’s no black and white answers I’m [...]
