Is There A Social Media Bubble?
Of course there’s a social media bubble. All over the map, everyone ranging from seed-stage investors to the public markets are paying inflated prices for social media assets. But while the current frenzy is a bubble, it doesn’t even come close to the magnitude and madness of the Dot-Com bubble. Back in those days, “eyeballs” […]
Evernote Celebrates Birthday by Joining the Billion Dollar Club (Really?)
Evernote has recently celebrated their third birthday. I also recently had my 21st birthday – it feels good to be able to legally grab a drink finally. (Hey, if Evernote can lie about their age, so can I…). Joke apart, I have no idea why a company would pretend to be half as young as […]
On Bubbles … And Why We’ll Be Just Fine
I recently spoke at the Founder Showcase at the request of Adeo Ressi. I asked what the audience most needed to hear. He said, “They need an unbiased view of the fund raising environment because there is too much misinformation and everything seems to be changing fast.” This was […]
Startup Lifecycle a’la ABBA (Are We in a Bubble?)
Wow, who would have thought 1970’s supergroup ABBA were such good predictors of the Startup Economy:-) No kidding… it all started with a tweet by Box Lead Magician Aaaron Levie: @levie We must be in a tech bubble given how much ABBA I’m listening to. 24 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply My first though was: […]
It’s 1999 Again: The Bubble 2.0 And Talent Wars Of The Silicon Valley
I have been living in the Silicon Valley for a while, and sure enough I haven’t forgotten the dot com days. A few days back, on my way to the San Francisco airport, I saw a billboard by aol advertising that they are cool (again!). I also observed that …
The Art of Riding the Bubble
People are increasingly asking whether there is a Bubble underway in the tech business. The answer is that by the time you know there is a Bubble it’s probably too late to do anything about it. But if all you’re doing is asking whether there is a Bubble, the Bubble is probably not here, yet. […]
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…
Please let there be another internet bubble because this time I won’t screw it up
Internet Bubble 2.0 is firmly entrenched, with stupid valuations of companies that have never turned a profit. For those that remember the halcyon days of 1998 through 2000 where every half-baked idea would get stupid amounts of funding, it is interesting to see the lessons from then not applied to today. At this point I […]
Invest in Lines, not Dots
Everyone seems to be in such a rush to get shacked up these days. In normal times investors will look for “traction” before investing. We want to make sure we’re in love. This sometimes frustrates entrepreneurs who just want to “get back to running the business.” But if you understand it you’ll see that it […]
How Software Can Be Resilient to Recession
Are we heading into Recession? The “Big R” talk of early this year quickly subsided, economic growth returned, the markets appeared to vindicate the optimists. US Presidential Candidate John McCain repeatedly said the economy was fundamentally strong… until just days ago, when he quickly switched to declaring a crisis. The Wall Street Journal says we’re […]
