David Jackson, who is the author of The Internet Stock Blog (as well as a series of other blogs on investing and technology), was kind enough to add me to his recommended VC blog list. As part of our exchange about this I noticed that he hadn’t ‘burned’ his feeds through Feedburner (which is a Mobius backed company). I asked him why he hadn’t done this and he replied with some really good questions about their service. I thought I would reprint them here, along with my responses with the idea that if David, as a sophisticated blogger, had these questions other people probably do as well. David writes: I’ve resisted using Feedburner, because: 1. It’s not clear to me…
Archives / May, 2005
Why blog?
Paul Kedrosky writes on his blog: Here is a puzzler: Why are there so many venture capital blogs? It is hard not to notice that there a host of such things out there, from Brad Feld’s to Fred Wilson’s, and everyone in between. Here are five possible hypotheses: 1. Professional service firms are highly branded by individual, so it makes sense to get out there and present yourself as a way of attracting deal flow. 2. There are just as many legal/financial/other blogs, but those people aren’t as good at getting media attention. 3. Venture capitalists don’t have enough to do. 4. Having a blog as a technology VC is a way of demonstrating your technical competencies. 5. Having a…
M&A Part II – A few thoughts on negotiating skills
This is the second in a series of posts on the art of mergers and acquisitions. See the first post in the series here. I think the most important part of being an effective negotiator is not being a persuasive talker (although that is a skill that is helpful) – but rather being a very good listener. Its tempting to spend your time in a negotiation thinking about all the great points you can make and concocting elaborate strategies for getting your views across to the other party, but one can’t really do that and effectively hear what someone else is saying at the same time. The best negotiators spend the time when someone else is talking to listen intently…
Factiva says ‘yes’ to RSS
Yesterday Factiva and Newsgator announced a deal that will allow Factiva customers to access their Factiva content via RSS (specifically through Newsgator’s Outlook reader and on-line system). This is a great milestone in the development and adoption of RSS – here’s my take on the deal: First, for those of you who are not familiar with Factiva, it’s a joint venture between Reuters and Dow Jones that provides their users with customizable content (from news articles to D&B reports to other types of company profiles). The idea is to allow their customers to stay up to date on news that is relevant to their business (customers, competitors, etc.). The deal with Newsgator marries specialized and proprietary content (Factiva) with a…
The days of yore
Credit to Brad for this one – I had completely forgotten about it when he sent it to me (I waited for him to blog it, but he’s been out of town so I thought I’d put it up). Remember the wayback machine? www.waybackmachine.org. It lets you search for old versions of web sites. Want to know what Yahoo’s site looked like in October of 1996 – here you go . How about Netscape that same month (makes you wax nostalgic, doesn’t it?) . Google beta anyone? Miss the Nasdaq at 4,800? Here it is. Enjoy!
Taking 100% responsibility one step further
Sandy Hamilton (one of the key execs at Newsgator) did a nice follow-up post to the note I wrote about taking 100% responsibility. In it he talks about what that actually means – how we present ourselves and the importance of taking responsibility not just for what you are saying, but also for what other people are hearing. What a powerful concept. Thanks Sandy for taking this to the next level. In case the link above isn’t working, here’s the full URL of his post: http://sandyhamilton.blogs.com/sandy_hamilton/2005/04/did_i_say_that.html
One more reason to like Freakonomics
I forgot to mention this in my post on Freakonomics a couple of day ago. Hold on while I climb onto my soap box [clump] [clump] As if I needed another reason to really like this book, I was happy to note that the authors – Steven Levitt and Steven Dubner – correctly use the word data (as a plural, rather than singular noun). It’s used all over the book and their correct use of the word truly enhanced my reading enjoyment. Now I just need to figure out how to get down off this damn box without falling . . .