Here’s a great idea: David Jackson has started posting transcripts from company conference calls on his web site (he’s actually been this for a while, but now has pretty extensive coverage of tech company earnings calls). I try to listen to a handful of earnings calls each season, but invariably I get to fewer than I want to, or miss the key moment of a call – even when I’m listening to the replay (which is almost always what I end up doing). I’d much rather peruse the transcripts. Much easier to consume quickly. Much easier to search. Much easier to quote from (if you’re into that sort of thing). Thanks David. Nice work.
Archives / January, 2006
Tops of 2005
My friend Daniel (sorry no link – he’s not a blogger) pointed me to the BlogPulse 2005 Year in Review. I particularly enjoyed the Top Wikipedia References (especially #5 – nice to see that Wikipedia made its own list). Enjoy.
When should you sell your business?
Last week’s news that CA purchased Wily Technologies for $375m reminded me of a working theory that I’ve had for a while (which generally seems to be supported by market experience over time), which is that there are generally two time frames in a company’s life where it can extract the most value from being acquired. Below is my version of the ‘exit value curve’ for a software/technology business where the x-axis is time and the y-axis is value:The drop in value should probably be a lot sharper after the initial euphoria phase (but this image took me long enough to produce and I didn’t want to redraw it), but the basic idea is that companies are generally most valuable…
Stanford is for geeks!
A friend of mine (and Stanford alum) proudly sent me the following link to the Stanford Engineering Puzzle (apparently a regular feature on their web site). Despite neither going to Stanford, nor frankly having had any shot of even getting into the school should I have thought to apply, I found the puzzle rather amusing. I think Macalester is the Stanford of the mid-west . . . or something like that. Thanks to Chris for the link. (ok – just spell-checked this and am humbled to let you know that Stanford is in the TypePad dictionary while Macalester is not)
Saying Goodbye
As much time as VCs spend with our portfolio companies, it’s important to remember that our jobs are actually to see them move on to greener pastures. Of course working closely with these companies – often over several years – one can’t help but get attached to some of them. So it’s often with mixed emotion that I see companies move on to the next chapter in their lives. It’s the natural lifecycle of investing and is absolutely key to the performance of our jobs (performance which is measured solely by the amount of money we return to our LPs). Still, it’s a bummer to stop working on a daily basis with some of the great people that run these…
Some Venture Math
I’m in the middle of writing a few posts on the economics of venture investing (actually on venture “exiting”) and was therefore pretty interested in the VentureWire 2005 venture m&a stats that came out last week (there were a bunch of articles recapping the 2005 venture exits if you want to Google for them). Here’s some of what was reported: – m&a dollar volume rose 17% to $27.4bn -ont-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;”> the number of companies bought fell to 356 (from 407 last year) -ont-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;”> IT companies accounted for $11.73bn of this amount across 221 companies So if you do the math, of the venture backed companies that were…
The Song Tapper
I wrote a post last year about conveying information effectively in which I talked about how difficult it is for someone to guess a song that you are tapping out with a finger (but how easy is feels like it should be when you are the one doing the tapping). Its a true phenomenon, although I meant it as a metaphor for (or perhaps just an example of) how easy it is for people to overestimate their ability to clearly communicate their thoughts/ideas with others. The internet being what it is, however, someone has actually put together a website that lets you tap in a song with your keyboard while it tells you what song you are tapping. Its designed…
Colorado Rocks
I imagine you’ve noticed that I’ve been silent over the past few weeks – taking some time off from work and blogging over the holidays.Not to gloat (WARNING: I’m about to gloat), but Colorado is a great place to live. In the same two week period I was skiing in deep fresh powder (multiple times), snowshoeing and cross country skiing with amazing mountain vistas and (here’s the really great part) mountain biking (in shorts!). Unbelievable. I love this place!
Should you be a good employee?
When I worked at Morgan Stanley there was a running debate among the analysts about whether it was better to be a good analyst or a bad analyst. The theory went that if you were a great analyst you were rewarded with more work (but not much more pay, given how few analysts actually made it to the “outstanding” category at bonus time) and if you were a mediocre or bad analyst you were passed over for projects and had a much much better lifestyle (i.e., you worked 60 hours a week instead of 90 or more). Banks never really fired analysts, so one could pretty easily coast by for the time of their indenture.My own views on this are…