BeyondVC
MARCH 25, 2004
So while I was at PC Forum, my partner, Ned Carlson, sent me an email on the recent IPO filing of Seven Networks. Having talked to a number of bankers, we always thought that one needed $6-8mm of quarterly revenue, profitability for at least 1-2 quarters, and good visibility for the rest of the year in order to go public. It seems that the filing for Seven Networks goes against the grain.
BeyondVC
MARCH 31, 2004
Google just launched a new version of personal search based on user preferences. In early 2000, we seeded a Xerox PARC spin-out called Outride (formerly called Groupfire) which aimed to bring personal search to the web by learning from a surfer’s prior searches or his workgroup or community’s prior searches. For example, if you searched on the word “Java” how does the engine distinguish Java the computer language, Java the coffee, or Java the island.
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BeyondVC
MARCH 23, 2004
Once again, I am not going to blog the panels at PC Forum, but you can find some good commentary on the conference via other bloggers from my post yesterday. Other good posts can be found from Dan Gillmor , Jason Calacanis , or the PC Forum Eventspace. However, what I would like to share with you is some conversations I had with some VCs and entrepreneurs over the course of the day yesterday.
BeyondVC
MARCH 22, 2004
Jerry Colonna and I had an interesting dialogue on the topic of utilizing offshore resources. In the end, Jerry and I advocated that education is the key to long-term success for the US. Offshoring of jobs will continue to happen, and it makes sense economically. However, in order to maintain our lead in the US, we need to make sure to educate our children and workforce to move up the value chain so we can continue to innovate, design, create, and own our core Intellectual Property.
Speaker: Nick Noreña, Innovation Coach and Advisor, Kromatic
Every startup and innovation project exists within an ecosystem that either helps or hurts that project. As innovation managers, we need to keep a pulse of that ecosystem and make sure we're helping those innovation projects we're managing every step of the way. In this webinar, Nick Noreña will walk through an Innovation Ecosystem Model that he and his team at Kromatic have developed to help investors, heads of product, teachers, and executives understand how they can best support innovation in
BeyondVC
MARCH 22, 2004
PC Forum is off to a great start this year with an interview with Eric Schmidt from Google and a panel with the CEOs of AOL, Yahoo, and Google. I do not plan on taking detailed notes so I suggest you view Ross Mayfield’s blog and posts to stay current on the conference. I also suggest visiting David Weinberger and Brett Fausett for more notes.
BeyondVC
MARCH 19, 2004
On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of attending a small group lunch in honor of Pat Cox, President of the EU Parliament. It was quite a treat as I got to hear his viewpoint on Spain, terrorism, immigration, and offshoring amongst other things. Since I tend not to write about politics, I thought I would share Pat’s thoughts on offshoring. As you know, in the US, there is increasing political pressure on offshoring and a movement to put legislation in place to prevent and slow this down.
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BeyondVC
MARCH 10, 2004
As I have said a number of times, I am a big believer that companies should start looking at how to use new technology and standards like blogs, wikis, and RSS/Atom from a product perspective and not solely for news publishing and aggregation. What do I mean by that? In response to a post I wrote about why I blog as a VC and the benefits of it, Brandon Wirth sent me a link to a piece he wrote about the future of customer relationships.
BeyondVC
MARCH 5, 2004
As you can see, I have been spending alot of time with my portfolio companies hiring in a number of functions to create growth. That is obviously a good sign. Hiring is such an important skill, there is no science to it, but research and common sense help. I am sure you remember the old adage, hire slow, fire fast. Anyway, when it comes to sales people, let me give you a rule of thumb-never hire sales people that have stuck around in a declining business for too long.
BeyondVC
MARCH 2, 2004
Forgive me for being obsessed with customers, but after all, without them, how can you have a business. Anyway, I was interviewing a VP of Engineering candidate for one of my portfolio companies, and when I asked a question about the most significant lesson that he learned from one of his prior jobs, this was his thought-while the core technology is important, focus on providing the customer with an unbelievable user experience straight out of the box.
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