Beyond the end of the Crunchpad
Many people with much dismay were surprised to see an entry from Michael Arrington about the end of the Crunchpad. With the aftermath of this, the real question is who is ever going to do business with Fusion Garage in the future? Shareholders aside deciding to do something against the desire/wish/ability of a partner when [...]
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 [...]
Microsoft Azure Brings on Some Support for Open Source
As Azure gets closer to its release date of 01 January 2010 – the biggest question is what kind of support can you get for open source systems or programs like PHP. With AWS (Amazon Web Services) you can get Linux and native PHP support, and you can do the same with Rack Space Cloud [...]
Facebook Hacked for Real This Time
Control your info has taken administrative rights to hundreds of groups on Facebook this morning – which is going to prompt a stampede of fear across the Facebook landscape. Looking at the security of social networking – this is going to be a bad day for many groups on Facebook. The group Control your Info [...]
VC Funding Season Ends Next Week
This is part of my series on Raising Venture Capital. I’m sure I’ll spark the ire of some VC’s for saying so, but there is certainly such a thing as black-out days in venture capital. It’s worth you knowing this so you don’t waste your time. It’s also very important to understand so that you [...]
My Google Dashboard is not as cool as my FBI File
The good news in looking through my Google Dashboard is that overall is a dull testament to my lack of Google use and that it is not like looking at my FBI file, if anything my FBI file is really cool – it is amazing what people will say about you for a federal background [...]
Are Business Plans Still Necessary?
This is part of my ongoing series of posts and I need to file this one under both Raising Venture Capital and Startup Advice. I remember going to an Under the Radar conference in 2006 in the heat of the Web 2.0 craze. There were tons of young entrepreneurs showing their latest Web 2.0 wares. [...]
Who Should you Hire at a Startup?
This is part of my ongoing posts on Startup Advice. There are people who tell startups that they should hire the most senior people that they can find. I’m not one of those. I believe that you should always hire people are are looking to “punch above their weight class,” which means to hire people who [...]
Good Times Ahead for VC-backed Tech Companies?
Montgomery & Co Projects Deal Volume to Grow by 167% in Just 2 Years with No End to Growth in Sight On the third Wednesday of every month I co-chair a meeting called the SoCal VCA (venture capital alliance), which represents participants from all of the top venture capital firms in Southern California as well [...]
The Emotional Investment of FriendFeed
Johnny Worthington who is one of the more dynamic and interesting people on FriendFeed issued an open letter to the developers of FriendFeed to find out what is happening with the web site. Many of the FriendFeed users (myself included) have an emotional and time investment in the system that is not easily replaced or [...]
Industry Expert Panel Discussion on Data Privacy
We all have a vested interest in how data and data privacy is enacted by companies, regardless of the environment, cloud, mobile (laptop, cell phones), private Data Center, or anything else that is a combination of the above. Companies have a vested interest in keeping their customers data private and clear of distortion or error. [...]
Retro: My Favorite Blog Post on Raising VC
On December 2nd, 2006 I wrote the blog post published later in this post when I was CEO of startup Koral about my experiences in pitching VCs. After my company was acquired by Salesforce.com I was asked to stop blogging and they took over my blog as an asset in the sale of the company. [...]
Reverse Brain Drain to India and China
America is a great place to start a company, there are no questions about that, and when Governments were busy making it harder to start a company, many immigrants came to America. Reports state that 52% of all Silicon Valley companies were started by Immigrants, and we have HP and Google as prime examples of [...]
The Lego Internet
Jessie Stay over at Staynalive brings up the idea of the Lego internet, where large companies are busy making widgets, API’s and other building blocks that designers and developers can leverage in their own applications. Jessie mentions that the Building Block internet might just be a way to visualize Web 3.0 which is not a [...]
Crunchpad Hitting the Market by the End of 2009?
In what we pray is not another view into vaporware hardware, rumors are abounding this morning that the much anticipated Crunchpad will be available by the end of 2009. This is definitely a hope and pray issue as we have seen this rumor before in July, August, September and now October. The only sure guarantee [...]
