BeyondVC

DECEMBER 23, 2003

Besides taking a brief time out to celebrate the Expertcity deal , I have spent a fair amount of time interviewing VP candidates for one of my portfolio companies. As with any smart executive who cares about the value of equity, the question I am often asked is, “What is your exit strategy.” My answer is quite simple-every company we invest in must have IPO potential (IPO potential as defined by non-bubble metrics) but along the way if someone makes an offer for the company because i

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BeyondVC

DECEMBER 30, 2003

As we increasingly move to a connected world where all of our devices and products have embedded chips in them communicating with a wireless network to share information and data, we will become more susceptible to privacy and security issues. The New York Times has a great article (must log on but free to join) on automobiles and how products like Onstar from GM, EZPass, and even tires from Michelin can share data about you and where you have been.

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BeyondVC

DECEMBER 18, 2003

Congratulations to Expertcity and Andreas, John, and Klaus. It has been great to work with you from a board level over the last 4 1/2 years. When the transaction closes, I look forward to writing a little more about how you were able to persevere through some tough times, launch new product, stay focused on leveraging the core screen sharing technology, and build a high growth business in a completely new market.

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BeyondVC

DECEMBER 16, 2003

So Checkpoint is going to buy Zone Labs for $205mm. Here are my thoughts on the deal. Zone is expected to do around $28mm of revenue in 2003 and $42mm in 2004. The revenue multiple is 7x for 2003 and 5x for 2004. That is pretty much in line with existing security multiples of 6-8x revenue. The more significant point is that Checkpoint made its first, meaningful acquisition.

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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

Startup

BeyondVC

DECEMBER 10, 2003

Om Malik (ex-senior writer for Red Herring) has been writing about the commoditization of hardware. In a recent article in Business 2.0 titled “The Rise of the Instant Company,” Om talks about how hardware has become commoditized to the point where hardware expense as a cost of goods sold is de minimis. In other words, companies can now cobble together off-the-shelf-hardware with proprietary software to create companies that can quickly and cost-effectively go after large incumbents.

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BeyondVC

DECEMBER 4, 2003

There were 2 conferences yesterday addressing cybersecurity. One was the National Cyber Security Summit in Santa Clara and the other was a smaller event in DC. While I was not in attendance, I did speak with a couple of people who participated in the events. The takeaway is that 85% of the critical infrastructure in the US is owned and controlled by the private sector.

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BeyondVC

DECEMBER 2, 2003

Hackers like to go where they can cause the most pain. As 3G rolls out in the US, you can bet that hackers will go there as well. There was a great article last Friday in the New York Times about viruses and other security issues on cellphone and hand-held devices in Japan (free site but registration required). It is clear that we should look at how Japan is dealing with this issue as their wireless infrastructure is much more advanced than ours at this point.

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