I did something this morning that falls into the category of ‘seemed like a good idea at the time’ but which upon reflection (or more accurately, upon understanding reality) falls into the category of “you dumb mother-fucker”. Put another way, I unleashed Plaxo on all my contacts this morning as I calmly sipped my first cup of coffee sitting comfortably in my pajamas at my kitchen island – oblivious to the hell I was setting free. I’ve been waiting years to do this, but something always held me back. I finally broke down and decided that I really did need to clean up my contact database (I keep a lot of contacts and its helpful to know what’s up to…
Posts By / seth levine
More from the corporate development perspective
With VC blogs and technology blogs a dime a dozen these days, I’m always interested when I come across a new blog from a corporate development type. Just such a blog came to my attention yesterday – Lorne Groe’s Confessions of a Corporate Dealmaker. Check it out – very well written and thought provoking.
Some follow up to “When should you sell your business?”
There was a lot of traffic on my recent post on the best time to sell your business (comments link here), including a few points that I wanted to highlight. Chris Zook sent me a graph with the following note that I think sums up the underlying driver of what I was describing in that post. focusing more on the idea that while companies generally increase in value as they grow in size/revenue/customers (per your chart), there is often a period of accelerated value that diverges from the standard trajectory as a function of “strategic value perception” or “buzz” about a specific segment or product. The thought being that a given company would optimally want to sell at or around…
A few Links
Brad . . . if you’re reading this, I really am working today . . . honest . . . Yes, yes video drunk-dialed lazy monday (from chris)
Don’t mess with me
Greg Galanos, one of the Mobius partners, likes to joke around by creating tee-shirts with people’s images superimposed into a theme. He created an extremely amusing Jack Bauer tee shirt for Brad (see Brad’s post on it here), which reminded me that I had been meaning to post my own Greg tee-shirt. This is me as the angel of death. I’m a bad-ass <g> Be sure to click the image to see it in all its glory. Thanks Greg
M&A – Do your research
I’ve had an ongoing series running on my blog dealing with various topics related to mergers and acquisitions (link to the full serieshere). As part of that group of posts, Daniel Benel wrote a guest column from his perspective as an m&a professional at Verint. Yesterday he dropped me the following note: I was in a negotiation last week where the bankers on the other side had googled me and found my blog posting on your site and then started complaining that I NEVER believe projections! I thought it was pretty funny — not sure if it helped or hurt. While it’s amusing that this happened it brings up a good point about preparing for any negotiation (or fundraising pitch…
How to make a good VC pitch – an entrepreneur’s perspective
Among the companies I poked fun at yesterday was Fleck. Turns out they have a blog. Also turns out that their latest post was a really good one – an entrepreneur’s perspective on how to give a good venture pitch. I wrote a post about a year ago on the same subject. This is a great companion to that post – from the perspective of someone on the other side of the table. By the way, be sure to take a look at the description of the business on their splash page – very amusing!
Follow up to “What’s in a name?”
You can see from the comments to my post on company names yesterday that I actually heard from many of the companies listed (a few wrote me directly and don’t show up on the comments roster, but 3 commented directly). I was actually highly amused by the e-mail exchanges I had on the topic – everyone took it in stride (and thought it was extremely funny). It did get me thinking about how fast information travels in a WEB2.0 world. With one exception that I’m aware of, the people who contacted me were not a regular reader of this blog (despite my wishing that my reach was really that far . . .). Still within a few hours, they had…
What’s in a name?
At the risk of throwing stones from a glass house, what’s up with the names of next generation web companies? Catching up on some of my TechCrunch reading this morning I was struck by how crazy the company names were. Here are just a few from posts in the last week: YouTube Kaboodle Tinfinger Fleck YubNub Podzinger Eurekster Nuvvo As Charlie Wood points out – say them together and these names sound “like an incantation.” Now I know that it’s hard to find domain names these days, but wow – these names are really out there. Remember the good old days when company names actually told you something about what they did?
More information = good
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.