» 3 customer development case studies
22/11/09 20:53 from Nivi
If you're trying to implement customer development at your startup, you'll learn more from these 3 case studies than anything else I've seen. I consider each of these a “must-read”. I've quoted some great bits from each case st..
» Weekend Reading: Tesla, Cycles, Chinese Real Estate, Credit, etc.
22/11/09 19:44 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
A few links from my weekly Weekend Reading column: Electric-car maker Tesla said to be planning stock offering ( LA Times ) Riding the waves of market cycles ( TIME ) The Henry Ford of Heart Surgery ( WSJ ) Like New Yorkers, Chinese people..
» Can A Soundtrack Make or Break a Tech Conference?
22/11/09 17:23 from Feld Thoughts
I’ve been to my share of tech conferences that either don’t have any music playing or have some horrible mix that the hotel supplies turned up either a little to much or not quite enough. In contrast, I know that Eric Norlin obsesses..
» BlogTalkRadio Interview on the Startup Visa Movement
22/11/09 17:11 from Feld Thoughts
Last week I did an hour long interview with Jon Hansen on the Startup Visa Movement titled Diminishing Prospects: How U.S. Policy is Undermining Entrepreneurial Vision . The interview is embedded below and Jon has a longer post up on his b..
» China Leaps to Second Spot in Global Science
21/11/09 20:50 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
The latest Thomson ISI science data shows that China has leaped to second-spot worldwide in academic science, as measured by papers produced. The U.S. still leads the way, at 340,000 publications per year (not shown), but China could surpa..
» Weekend Readings: Chess, Rhodes Scholars, Trade, etc.
21/11/09 20:32 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
Zipf law in the popularity distribution of chess openings ( arXiv ) Losing Rhodes scholars to Wall Street's siren call ( WashPost ) China and the U.S. lecturing each other on trade ( Pettis ) Staking out the middle ground on energy supply ..
» Weekend reading
21/11/09 16:37 from Nivi
Some weekend reading culled from our most popular tweets this week. Steve Blank and I have a good discussion about his and Eric Ries' new customer development overlay. Regarding the Atlas Developer Beta, John Gruber says that “Access..
» Readings: Lawyers, Wealth, and Rare Earths
21/11/09 09:20 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
How Much Is Enough? ( Skidelsky ) Rare earth: The New Great Game ( BBC ) Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be...Lawyers ( SSRN )
» Isildur1 and the Week That Changed Online Poker
21/11/09 04:58 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
This has been an epochal week in online poker. A new playing force has emerged, someone named Isildur1, and his arrival has shaken up this world of massive cash pots in an unprecedented way. …we have just witnessed a monumental event in th..
» The ignorant VC
20/11/09 15:30 from Nivi
Thanks to Atlas Venture for supporting Venture Hacks this month. This post is an interview of Fred Destin — one of Atlas' general partners — by David Woodward, a journalist and blogger . If you like it, check out Fred's blog and tweets @ f..
» The Story Of My Avatar
20/11/09 10:36 from A VC : Venture Capital and Technology
I saw this tweet when I got up this morning: hey @ fredwilson - whats the story behind ur avatar? While longtime readers know it, I figure many of you don't. So here it goes. Starting about four years ago, Howard Lindzon started com..
» The sultan of startup marketing
19/11/09 16:35 from Nivi
I recently met with a venture capital Associate who thanked me for introducing her to the masterworks of Steve Blank and Eric Ries . I told her to check out Sean Ellis' blog and mentioned that I've learned just as much from Sean. Like all ..
» TechStars, StartUp Visa, iRobot Looj, and Cornell
19/11/09 12:07 from Feld Thoughts
You may be thinking “what do these things have to do with one another?” Well – they are all in my browser this morning after I returned from my run with Reece Pacheco of Overtime Media . And in case you are wondering, Reece is an ex-lacr..
» The Rise and Fall of Empires
19/11/09 02:39 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
Visualizing empires decline from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo
» Extrapolating computing
18/11/09 17:07 from Nivi
Remember when mainframes did all of the computing? And workstations were dumb terminals docked to the mainframes? The terminals had less power, but were more “mobile”. Then everyone got a desktop. And the desktop is where you did most of y..
» Living Life While Working Hard
18/11/09 13:29 from Feld Thoughts
I had a 19 hour day yesterday – it started when I woke up at my hotel at 26th Street at 5am and ended when I hit the sack at midnight. I had a bunch of meetings, a few scheduled phone calls, was on a panel, and stayed on top of my em..
» Ten Meetings Per Day
18/11/09 11:44 from A VC : Venture Capital and Technology
I was explaining how I go about finding deals yesterday to a friend of mine and I thought I ought to explain it to everyone. I write this blog. It's like a broadcast channel of "what is interesting to me." I market it every way I know how ..
» Everything is Viral -- Even the Things That Aren’t
17/11/09 19:59 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
With virality continuing to be all the rage, whether it’s swine flu, happiness, or Internet services, it’s worth considering whether many things that seem viral actually are. Here is a 2008 BMJ paper on the subject that deserves wider atte..
» Readings: Zero, Forgeries, Yeast, and Climate Change
17/11/09 18:05 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
Coxe on the power of zero ( ZeroHedge ) Vermeer forgeries and AD shocks ( Money Illusion ) The Fate of the Yeast People ( Kunstler ) Climate change catastrophe took just months ( Times )
» Berkman Center Reception This Wednesday
17/11/09 15:36 from VentureBlog
In his book Outliers , Malcolm Gladwell talks about the power of circumstance. He explains that Bill Gates and Bill Joy had unprecedented access to the earliest computers and, as a result, they built a couple of the most important computer..
» Zeitoun
17/11/09 13:12 from Feld Thoughts
Over the weekend, I read what I think is going to be my “best book of the year.” It’s Zeitoun by Dave Eggars of McSweeney’s fame. Some people just know how to write. And Eggars is one of them. Wow. As I ran around downtow..
» How I Use The Gist Dashboard View
17/11/09 11:05 from Feld Thoughts
I’m in NY all week with a jam packed schedule so I thought it would be a good week to talk a little about how I use Gist since I’ll use it every day to help me deal with a shortened daily information routine . As you probably know, w..
» Research Roundup: Debt and Innovation, Short-selling, Creativity, & Subways
16/11/09 22:14 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
A debtor-friendly bankruptcy system is better for innovation ( Review of Financial Studies ) Short-selling bans around the world in 2007-09: All bad ( CEPR ) How Creative Should Creators Be To Optimize the Evolution of Ideas? A Computation..
» I'm gonna sing about baby Jesus!
16/11/09 22:06 from Who Has Time For This?
Nothing says "Holiday" better than the rich a capella sound of 72 Christians, four Jews and an atheist. Under the direction of Dr. Greg Lyne, Voices in Harmony will perform a variety of traditional seasonal works including "It’s the Most W..
» Readings: Chocolate, Trends, Trade, and Roger Federer
16/11/09 18:34 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
U.S. Import Trends for chocolate ( Panjiva ) The World in 2010: forecasting the year ahead ( Economist ) South African gold on final deathwatch as top grade scientist finds residual gold is more than 90% less than claimed ( Mineweb ) Roger..
» The Power Of Instant Approval
16/11/09 11:51 from A VC : Venture Capital and Technology
Back in the early days of web video, it wasn't clear who would win the competition for video upload to the web. There was YouTube, Vimeo, and the big dog was Google Video. I tried all of them. YouTube was by far and away the best experienc..
» Gladwell's Igon Value Problem
16/11/09 02:26 from Who Has Time For This?
For years I've felt quite alone in my opinion that Malcolm Gladwell is a fake (merely one rung above Victoria Knight-McDowell and Kevin Trudeau , and only because Gladwell probably believes his own claptrap). After all, he sells a gazillio..
» My Social Recruiting Summit Keynote Talk
15/11/09 16:10 from A VC : Venture Capital and Technology
On Friday I posted some of the key themes I'll be addressing tomorrow in my keynote. I spent this morning assembling them into a deck that I'll use in my talk tomorrow. Here's a final draft. Please let me know what you think and if you hav..
» The Best F**king Book About the Financial Crisis?
14/11/09 21:16 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
I get asked all the time what the best fucking book is about the financial crisis. Well, here it is: A list of books about the past year’s financial crisis, sorted in decreasing order by the number of times the word “fuck” appears. In the ..
» DIA Backlit By A Rising Sun
14/11/09 19:16 from Feld Thoughts
Another awesome APOD photo . I wonder how evil and scary the blue horse looks when backlit like this.
» QOTD: Poker and Capitalism
14/11/09 19:14 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
Poker exemplifies the worst aspects of capitalism that have made our country so great. -- Walter Matthau (cited in NYT 11/15/09)
» Books of the Week
14/11/09 19:10 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
A few books that are newly on my reading list this week: The day Wall Street exploded: A story of America in its first age of terror ( Amazon ) Cowboys full: The story of poker ( Amazon ) Power struggles: Scientific authority and the creat..
» Time for Massachusetts to Pass Education Reform
14/11/09 15:43 from Seeing Both Sides
I've been blogging for five years about the start-up, innovation economy and I almost never write about politics. But this week is different. This week, the Massachusetts Legislature is about to vote on a bill to (finally) reform educati..
» Detroit vs. Rest of U.S. in Unemployed Per Job Posting
14/11/09 03:45 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
Unemployed per job posting in the top 50 U.S. metros. Click for a larger version. [via Indeed ]
» The Price of Gold in Gold
14/11/09 00:13 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
From price , the price of gold in gold. This is awfully suspicious. Where is the outrage?
» Surprise (Not): Madoff’s Results Were Generated Via a Randomizer
13/11/09 20:51 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
I’m so clever. Back in December I wrote here that Bernie Madoff’s results, far from being pulled from his hat, showed every sign of having been generated by a randomizing algorithm. My analysis suggested that – based on Benford’s Law fit –..
» Where the Jobs Aren’t: Everywhere Except Education
13/11/09 20:37 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
While U.S. jobs are few and far between in many sectors, this year-over-year data shows that if you really want to be sure your applications get no response you need be sure to avoid education. [via Indeed ]
» Superstar CEOs Suck
13/11/09 19:12 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
From a new Quarterly Journal of Economics paper: Superstar CEOs Compensation, status, and press coverage of managers in the United States follow a highly skewed distribution: a small number of “superstars” enjoy the bulk of the rewards. We..
» Readings: Fox Biz, Bill Gross, Real Estate, etc.
13/11/09 18:43 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
Fox Business News, Where Green Arrows Turn Brown Eyes Blue ( Vanity Fair ) Is Fox Business a lost cause? ( Vanity Fair ) Bill Gross Says Value Diminishing in Credit Markets ( Bloomberg ) Commercial Real Estate ‘Crisis’ Looming for U.S.: Ch..
» I Want More Information, Not Less
13/11/09 15:35 from Feld Thoughts
I spent the last two days at the Defrag Conference . It was awesome on so many levels including the content, the venue, seeing a bunch of great friends, and meeting a bunch of new people. The conference originated out of an email exc..
» Google acquires portfolio company Gizmo5
13/11/09 15:28 from BeyondVC
Congratulations to Michael Robertson and team at Gizmo5 for all of their hard work and perseverance! There is not a lot I can tell you about the future plans for Google Voice , but I do believe it is important to look back to see how we g..
» Social Recruiting
13/11/09 13:43 from A VC : Venture Capital and Technology
I'm giving the keynote talk at the Social Recruiting Summit in NYC on Monday. I've been working on my presentation over the past few days and some themes are worth talking about. 1) Since we started Union Square Ventures in 2003/2004, we h..
» Exciting news
13/11/09 02:58 from Cleantech Investing
Long-time readers will know that in my spare time (ha) I've been serving as President of the Renewable Energy Business Network, a non-profit I and Andrew Friendly of ATV officially co-founded last year (although read below for more backsto..
» Diversions: Powers of Ten
12/11/09 21:39 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
Fantastically cool powers of ten visualization. Click to try: [via judell ]
» Readings: Dollar, Dinosaurs, Deficits, etc.
12/11/09 21:11 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
Dollar knocked by China renminbi hints ( FT ) Google launches searchable access to WorldBank data ( Google ) Spanish Wind Power Tops 50% of Electricity Demand ( Source ) Interesting new complexity events at Santa Fe Institute ( SFI ) A New..
» How to pick a co-founder
12/11/09 16:32 from Nivi
Picking a co-founder is your most important decision. It's more important than your product, market, and investors. The ideal founding team is two individuals, with a history of working together, of similar age and financial standing, with..
» Tracked.com Gets More Social
12/11/09 12:16 from A VC : Venture Capital and Technology
I posted about our portfolio company Tracked.com a few weeks ago . In that post, I said: Tracked.com is social. Users have a profile in the service and can send messages to each other in the service (and via twitter and facebook very short..
» The Dow in Gold: Pricing Yo-yos in Meerkats?
11/11/09 18:07 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
I’m always uneasy about these “Let’s price Thing X in Commodity Y” exercises (hey, let’s price yo-yos in meerkats!) – if thing X was supposed to be priced in commodity Y, it would be priced in commodity Y – but this one is at least semi-us..
» The long tail of VC twitterers
11/11/09 16:28 from Nivi
We previously posted about the long tail of VC blogs . A few VC blogs capture most of our attention. The rest slog it out in the long tail. And now, for the first time in the history of mankind, we present the long tail of VC twitterers (c..
» Board Meeting Lessons From The Supreme Court
11/11/09 13:23 from Feld Thoughts
My amazing day at the Supreme Court continued to bounce around in the back of my mind all day yesterday. I was at a board meeting for a company that I’ve been on the board of for almost a decade – it was the best (as in most producti..
» Hacking Robots – iRobot Roomba Pac-Man Game
11/11/09 12:57 from Feld Thoughts
The Boulder Camera highlighted a few CU Boulder students and their newest project in the article CU-Boulder students create Pac-Man Roomba game . For anyone that played Pac-Man as a kid (as I did) or anyone that loves robots, it’s sh..
» What Makes Boston's Start-Up Scene Special? - video
11/11/09 10:50 from Seeing Both Sides
Here's the video from the talk I gave at HBS on what makes the Boston start-up scene special.
» Conferences (continued)
11/11/09 10:24 from A VC : Venture Capital and Technology
I don't like to go to conferences. I explained why in this post . But every once in a while I do attend one. Ideally it's a smallish gathering on a specific topic that I am interested in. I'm doing that over the next couple days in Denver ..
» In Case You Were Wondering What I Look Like In A Tie
11/11/09 01:07 from Feld Thoughts
Sorry – I couldn’t help myself. I doubt this will be repeated anytime soon. I know it’s a little self-referential for me to put this on my blog, but it is my blog after all.
» Books: The Greatest Trade Ever
10/11/09 22:01 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
Lots of chatter about Greg Zuckerman’s new book about John Paulson’s subprime trade. Titled The Greatest Trade Ever , the book chronicles how Paulson’s risky trade came together and how it paid out, controversies, warts, timing and all. I ..
» A Few Good IPOs?
10/11/09 21:44 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
There is a new Grant Thornton report out arguing that the U.S. is suffering from an IPO drought caused by high-frequency trading and broken market microstructure (but not SarbOx). The alleged consequences? 22-million fewer jobs in the U.S...
» Dying Dollar Dings Exporters? Not So Much
10/11/09 21:08 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
Pace my Marketplace radio comment on the dollar's decline yesterday, this graph from Bloomberg of the recent stock market outperformance of U.S. exporters is noteworthy.
» Uptick in October Trade Data
10/11/09 20:58 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
[via Panjiva ]
» My Field Trip To The Supreme Court
10/11/09 13:48 from Feld Thoughts
I had an incredible experience yesterday. My friend Phil Weiser , who is now the Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the US Department of Justice, Antitrust Division (I prefer to call him America’s Top Cop on Agriculture) invited me..
» Saturn Is Beautiful
10/11/09 12:35 from Feld Thoughts
I continue to love the Astronomy Picture of the Day . As a result of looking at it first thing in the morning, I insure that I’ll learn at least one thing each day.
» Startup Ecosystems Take Time
10/11/09 11:23 from A VC : Venture Capital and Technology
Saul Klein, co-founder of Seedcamp and one of the top VCs in europe, has a long and thoughtful post up on the evolution of Seedcamp . In it he says: In my mind, helping to bring some cohesion to our region's distributed network of talent, ..
» The Edwards Strikes Back
10/11/09 08:16 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
The indefatigably bearish SocGen strategist Albert Edwards made some entertainingly grumbling comments in Hong Kong today. Here’s a summary: Market will hit new lows in 2010 as we go back into recession Faith in growth stories is a “sick j..
» Can Startups Save the World? Startups vs. GDP/Capita
09/11/09 22:27 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
For a recent presentation, I graphed gdp/capita against ease of starting a company in more than 100 countries around the world. Here is the result for countries with GDP/capita more than $20k: And here is the result for countries wi..
» Stock Option Vesting Calculator
09/11/09 21:42 from Feld Thoughts
Simeon Simeonov , the Founder & CEO of FastIgnite , has put together a nice Stock Option Vesting Calculator . It works just fine for stock vesting as well. Sim is a dynamite entrepreneur who has also done a tour of duty as a VC..
» Readings
09/11/09 21:18 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
The great securities delisting machine: A wake-up call for America ( Grant Thornton ) Life After the End of History ( NYT ) Second Quarter 2009 Cambridge Associates Private Equity and Venture Capital Benchmark Commentaries ( PE Hub ) Biase..
» Putting entrepreneurs first
09/11/09 20:12 from VC Adventure
Shout-out to Sequoia for featuring Omar Hamoui on their home page today (he’s the CEO of AdMob which was acquired by Google today for $750M). Well done!
» Monetizing Twitter -- Bring on the Ads!
09/11/09 16:00 from VentureBlog
True, no one asked me. But here's my two cents anyway. Twitter should open up its platform to advertising. That's right, advertising. Forget all this hoo-ha over selling data or paid business accounts or dashboards . . . Twitter has everyt..
» The long tail of VC blogs
09/11/09 16:00 from Nivi
Many VCs use blogs to share advice, wisdom, and other thoughts. A few of these blogs capture most of our attention. The rest slog it out in the long tail. This chart shows the Google Reader subscribers of 131 VC blogs (click it to zoom in)..
» Startup Boy is back
09/11/09 16:00 from Nivi
Naval's personal blog, Startup Boy , is back. His posts, like The 80-hour Myth and VC Bundling , were an inspiration to me when I first moved to Silicon Valley. His latest post, The returns to entrepreneurship , is a return to form: “..
» The New USV.com Launches In Beta
09/11/09 12:02 from A VC : Venture Capital and Technology
Taking a cue from the advice we give to companies all the time, we've just launched the new USV.com in beta form last night. It still has a few kinks to get out, but it is mostly there. When Brad and I first thought about our firm'..
» Unsettled in Washington DC
08/11/09 21:28 from Feld Thoughts
I’ve felt unsettled since we landed in DC on Saturday. During my run this afternoon on the Washington Mall, I decided to attribute some of it to the redeye I took from Seattle mid-week and some of it to Washington DC itself. Let’s st..
» Weekend Reading: Goldman, Gold, Vegas, Sex, and Commercial Real Estate
08/11/09 19:00 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
A few links from my weekly Weekend Reading column: Just doing God’s work: Inside Lloyd Blankfein’s Goldman Sachs ( Times ) Inside the Global Frenzy for Gold ( NYT ) Las Vegas construction nears standstill ( Las Vegas Sun ) The Technology B..
» Add-on-Con09
08/11/09 16:14 from Feld Thoughts
My friends at OneRiot and Adaptive Blue are organizing the second annual Add-on-Con . It is being held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA on Dec 11. If you are involved in a company that makes browser add-ons o..
» The AVC Reader Census: A Day Later
08/11/09 12:45 from A VC : Venture Capital and Technology
Almost 750 people took the AVC Reader Census/Survey in the past 24 hours. That's a decent sample size. So if you want to know what the readership of this blog looks like, go here . I'm sorry to say that it is overwhelmingly male, 92% of th..
» Checking Gold’s Hotness
08/11/09 06:40 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
A daily heatmap of gold performance – as proxied by GLD – over the last four years. Remarkable change in behavior since 2005.
» Credit Default Swaps: Proudly the Tool of the Devil Again
07/11/09 20:00 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
Lots of people are staking out positions around (and mostly against) investor David Einhorn’s FT-reported anti-CDS musings in his latest investor letter. I agree with David in many ways – and his writing is as fun as usual – but I don’t ac..
» Protectionism and the Chinese Box of the Renminbi
07/11/09 18:24 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
I have a commentary piece on Marketplace this coming week arguing that the U.S. dollar must be allowed by Asian central banks to depreciate against more currencies than the Euro. All of the longstanding trade and flow imbalances cannot be ..
» QOTD: John McCain’s 15% U.S. GDP Cut
07/11/09 02:54 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
No idea how I missed this wonderfully inflammatory Paul Samuelson quote from a few weeks back, but it’s a contentious keeper: Had John McCain won [the 2008 election], the present G.D.P. in the United States would have been even lower than ..
» Who Files for Bankruptcies?
07/11/09 02:49 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
» Books of the Week
06/11/09 21:23 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
Some books I’ve been reading during my travels this week and that others might like – an eclectic list. Scroogenomics . The name more or less says it, but why you shouldn’t buy people presents for the holidays. The Great Cities in History ..
» Readings: Wind, Tools, Complexity, and Ship-Tracking
06/11/09 19:15 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
Denmark a global leader in wind power ( FP ) Companies lining up for IPOs ( E&Y ) Live Ships Map - AIS - Vessel Traffic and Positions ( MarineTraffic ) Prezi - The zooming presentation editor ( Prezi ) 18 truths: The long fail of complexit..
» Friday follies
06/11/09 15:00 from Cleantech Investing
Some random links and observations on a Friday: Apparently not every reader picked up on the fact that my last post was tongue-in-cheek. Guess you had to be there. Fortunately, Scott was in fact there ... David Gold wrote recen..
» Valuation and Option Pool
06/11/09 11:31 from A VC : Venture Capital and Technology
One of the more contentious things in the negotiation between an entrepreneur and a VC over a financing, particularly an early stage financing, is the inclusion of an option pool in the pre-money valuation. As my friend Mark Pincus likes t..
» Why is the Boston Marathon More Volatile Than the NYC Marathon?
05/11/09 23:26 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
As readers know, I’m fascinated by volatility and our response to it. In capital markets a little volatility is important, and a lot is dangerous – it can result in things flying apart, with unpleasant financial consequences. In sports it ..
» Welcome Reid Hoffman to the VC Side of the Table
05/11/09 22:40 from VentureBlog
First came the announcement earlier in the year that Marc Andreessen was joining the ranks of "capital" -- a welcomed defection from "labor." And now my friend Reid Hoffman has jumped into the fray as well, joining Greylock Partners in the..
» Great Meetup Last Night
05/11/09 12:21 from A VC : Venture Capital and Technology
About a hundred readers of this blog gathered last night in the cafeteria of Washington Irving High School just off of Union Square in Manhattan to meet each other and celebrate the generosity of this community in the recent Donors Choose ..
» QOTD: Lawyered Up
05/11/09 02:42 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
For a substantial portion of the American business and professional class, a book entitled "Life Without Lawyers" must surely conjure some of the same feelings evoked in faithful readers of the Harlequin romances, a sort of vicarious fanta..
» More Ws in the L Column?
05/11/09 00:22 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
Looks another W Hotel may be going into the L(oss) column. Joining the San Diego W, which defaulted on its loans this summer , may soon be the Manhattan Union Square W. Debt backed by the W New York Union Square hotel in Manhattan, named b..
» Conventional wisdom and cleantech venture capital
04/11/09 22:02 from Cleantech Investing
I had the pleasure of speaking as part of a panel this morning at the Mid-Atlantic Capital Alliance's conference in Philadelphia. Here's a taste of what I told them: 1. Cleantech only happens in Silicon Valley and MIT. If..
» Readings
04/11/09 22:01 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
Chaotic evolution defines the market economy ( FT ) Bloomberg.com may charge up to $1,000 a year for some web content ( PaidContent ) Spotlight on eastern European currencies and gold ( Mish )
» Front-Running in Domain Bids
04/11/09 20:20 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
I wonder why Wall Street didn’t think of this first? Front-running taken to the domain name market: Recently, SnapNames discovered that an employee had set up an account on the SnapNames system under a false name and, under this name, bid ..
» Best of the startup blogs
04/11/09 16:31 from Nivi
We read the startup blogs so you don't have to. Jason Cohen explains how to hire employee #1 (practical, tested advice). Fred Wilson explains how to make an email intro without making yourself look bad (this is how I do it). Bill Gurley ex..
» The Ether and the Scrum
04/11/09 06:49 from Feld Thoughts
Every day I get emails from entrepreneurs that make me think. In this case, it’s from a friend who is on the fundraising trail. He started off the email with “I felt compelled to share this with you as someone who would appreci..
» The “real” America
04/11/09 03:34 from VC Adventure
I’ve generally avoided political issues on this blog, but this isn’t something I can keep my mouth shut on. Yesterday Meb Keflezighi became the first American to win the New York City Marathon in 27 years. Born in Eritrea on the east coast..
» What Makes Boston's Start-Up Scene Special?
04/11/09 02:16 from Seeing Both Sides
(follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bussgang ) A few weeks ago, Fred Wilson posted a presentation he delivered on What Makes the NYC Start-Up Scene Special . I was inspired to deliver a similar presentation today to a group of Harvard..
» Lean startups aren’t Cheap Startups
03/11/09 16:03 from Nivi
This post is by Steve Blank , a serial entrepreneur with eight startups under his belt, including t wo large craters (Rocket Science and Ardent), one dot.com bubble home run (E.piphany), and several base hits. Steve is also the creator of ..
» The Double Opt-In Introduction
03/11/09 11:55 from A VC : Venture Capital and Technology
I'm sure everyone out there gets email intros. Someone who knows you sends you and someone you don't know an email suggesting you meet. I send emails like that a lot. I might send a half a dozen or more every day. I get even more emails li..
» Market P/Es: Seven Canadas for One ChiNext
03/11/09 08:15 from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
In a quick look around the world at market price/earnings multiples after the launch of the ChiNext wild-wild west exchange in China, the league tables have really changed. The impossible has happened, with the outrageously expensive Shang..
» Pretending You Are Luggage
03/11/09 07:04 from Feld Thoughts
At dinner tonight we started telling miserable airplane travel stories. Everyone has a least one (or 7,321) so it’s fun to hear some of the really abysmal ones, especially the night before I head to the airport to catch an early morn..
» Customer development: By-the-book
02/11/09 16:00 from Nivi
Ash Maurya 's blog documents his journey through customer development . This is a by-the- book application of customer development. I am following this blog very closely; it's thoughtful and well written. Some highlights: Is AdWords the ri..