In times of fiscal challenge you can always count on government to come up with some pretty bad ideas to fund deficits. House Bill 1192 is a particularly egregious example of one such boneheaded idea. The bill as it is currently constructed would place a tax on all software purchased or installed in Colorado. This is a tax not just on the software industry but on every business that uses software. And it’s an incredibly stupid idea. According to the Colorado Software and Internet Association there are more than 5,500 software, hardware and IT businesses in the state and approximately 175,000 IT professionals (with a total payroll of nearly $5Bn). Across the sate there are thousands of additional businesses that…
Posts By / seth levine
Immigration policy for recent grad school grads
I made reference to the issue of immigration policy in a post last week (see “Want more jobs? Support Entrepreneurship”). In that post I referenced a WSJ OpEd piece that my partner Brad Feld wrote last week with Paul Kedrosky about the Start-up Visa Movement (the idea that we should make it easier for foreign born entrepreneurs who are starting their companies and who have obtained financing to stay in the United States to build their businesses). In my post I went on to say: But let’s take this idea further. For example, how could it possibly make sense to deport a recent graduate school graduate (someone with the kind of technical degree that we so badly need here in…
Want more jobs? Support Entrepreneurship
There’s a great CNN opinion piece out today by Amy M. Wilkinson that argues strongly (and correctly) that the government needs to do more to support entrepreneurship and small businesses. I whole heartedly agree. Quoting from the piece: “According to the Census Bureau, nearly all net job creation in the U.S. since 1980 has been generated by firms operating less than five years.” This conclusion is backed up by the National Venture Capital Association which tracks the impact of private companies who receive institutional venture financing. You can read the recent NVCA report on the impact of venture capital on the overall economy here (the quick take-away is that this impact is extremely significant). With that as a backdrop, why…
Our StockTwits Investment
This is a cross-post from our Foundry blog entry on our latest investment – in the microblogging company StockTwits. I’ve been working closely with Howard and Soren from the company as well as StockTwits investors Roger Ehrenberg and Tony Conrad as we’ve looked at the investment and worked on the financing. These guys are fantastic! For me it’s the chance to work with this team that’s the most exciting thing about today’s announcement. If you haven’t tried the service I’d encourage you to do so – there are links in the post below to grab the desktop client or directing you to the site. Give it a try and let me know what you think! Today StockTwits announced (release here)…
Revolutionary Angels – Round II
Online technology magazine Xconomy wrote an article yesterday that focused on the controversy surrounding Boston based Revolutionary Angels – the angel group that is sponsoring a business plan competition in which companies are charged a $4,995 “entry fee” and vie for a $250k investment from the group. I wrote extensively last week about my distaste for the “pay to pitch” practice in general and Revolutionary Angels’ spin on that practice in particular. The Xconomy article picked up that post and used it to effectively represent one side of the story. They also talked to Chris Hurley, the CEO of Revolutionary Angles, who defended the group and their practices. Clearly this question has struck a chord with VCs, angels and entrepreneurs…
$5k to pitch your business? Who falls for this??
The NY Times is reporting today on the question of entrepreneurs paying to pitch their companies to prospective investors – “Should Start-Ups Pay to Pitch?”. Highlighted in the piece is a Boston-based group – Revolutionary Angels – that charges companies $4,995 to enter their “business plan competition” (the winner of the competition receives an investment from the group). To be clear on my view of this: THERE IS NO CIRCUMSTANCE IN WHICH ENTREPRENEURS SHOULD PAY TO PITCH THEIR BUSINESS TO PROSPECTIVE INVESTORS. PERIOD. END OF STORY. This kind of activity makes me absolutely sick. And the fact that Revolutionary Angels calls their scheme a “business plan competition” is reprehensible. In the Revolutionary Angels setup they are asking 100 companies to…
News Corp is spoiling Google’s fun (not to mention ours)
So it’s really come down to this? News Corp is thinking about inking a deal with Microsoft/Bing whereby not only will Bing get access to News Corp data (WSJ, Fox, etc.) but they’ll also prevent Google from indexing their sites. This sounds like a lose/lose/lose/lose proposition. News Corp loses – fewer page views, less revenue for their online content, and to the 90% of Internet users who use Google for search their properties will effectively stop existing. Google loses (sort of) to the extent people miss the data (not sure what will happen when you force a search on Google to a News Corp domain – will they simply return no results?). The rest of us lose because universal search…
The VC Model is “broken” (again? yawn!)
In the latest lob into the morass that has become somewhat of a sport amongst journalists and those that follow the venture capital industry, Carl Schramm and Harold Bradley write in BusinessWeek about “How Venture Capital Lost Its Way”. The evidence? Venture capital funding is down – from an “astonishing” 1.1% of US GDP in 2000; and in the 3rd quarter of 2009 down 33% from the same period a year earlier. To add to Schramm and Bradley’s collective horror, “two areas crucial to American progress cry out for capital-intensive investment: clean energy technology and biotech. And the VC industry isn’t delivering it. (Info tech, which by now requires few capital investments, still accounts for the lion’s share of those…
Putting entrepreneurs first
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!
The “real” America
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 of Africa, Keflezighi moved to the US when he as 12 (more than 20 years ago), is an American citizen and has raced for the US Olympic team. Still, there are some who are calling his achievement diminished because he’s not “technically” an American by virtue of having been born outside of the United States – chief among them Darren Rovell of CNBC. Rovell writes: It’s a stunning headline: American Wins Men’s NYC Marathon For First Time…