With isocket, programmatic is taking a bite out of the big side of the pie
For about the past 18 months I’ve been talking about the coming of programmatic technologies (machine to machine buying and selling) to the premiums side of the display ecosystem. It was one of my “2012 AdTech Predictions” published last year in AdExchanger and I expanded on that prediction in a piece earlier this year, also in AdExchanger. The basic idea is simple. Programmatic technology has made a huge difference in online advertising – bringing down transaction costs, allowing for better audience and content targeting, enabling publishers to better manage their inventory while at the same time allowing advertisers to make better buying decisions (not to mention spot ad buys). It’s been a great addition to the ad stack and for Foundry a solid area for investment (our two companies that play directly into this trend are AdMeld, which was purchased by Google late last year, and Triggit, the leading onramp to the Facebook exchange and growing extremely rapidly). Both AdMeld and Triggit – as well as almost all of the other companies that play in programmatic – are focused on non direct sold or remnant inventory. This was a logical place for programmatic technologies to be first applied. Publishers were more focused on the direct sold side of their business since that was where the large dollars were. And the marginal cost for a single impression (and therefore the cost of getting something wrong) was relatively low. At the same time, there was a huge volume of remnant impressions that were available to this ecosystem and because of the way these impressions had traditionally been grouped together for buys by the ad networks, there were significant targeting efficiencies to be gained by adding a software layer to this buying process (allowing more impression and user level information to pass through the system as well as opening up those impressions to multiple bidders through real time bidding). …
October 31, 2012· 4 min read
Introducing Colorado Entrepreneurial By Nature
logo_black_text_transparent_background_LARGEWhen it comes to the question of nature vs. nurture for entrepreneurs it’s clear that both are important. While great entrepreneurs are born with at least the seed of that entrepreneurial spirit, it takes some encouraging – as well as plenty of guidance, help and support – to see that seed blossom. I’ve had the great fortune to experience the evolution and transformation of Colorado into a community that I believe is one of the most supportive of entrepreneurs anywhere in the country. In fact, Colorado has always had an entrepreneurial spirit – from before its founding as a state as a frontier territory supporting prospectors and pioneers, through its history of ranching, the oil and gas boom, as a hub for telecommunications start-ups, to its leadership in LOHAS businesses and the burgeoning green-tech field, to Internet and related technologies. Surrounding these business trends has been a Rocky Mountain lifestyle that has attracted entrepreneurs to our state since the 1800’s. These factors, combined with a support structure and philosophy of paying it forward, has turned Colorado into one of the best places in the country to start a business. …
October 22, 2012· 2 min read
Accomplishment vs. Success
I had a great conversation with an entrepreneur the other day talking about the difference between accomplishment and success. Accomplishment is what happens on the road to success, but declaring something a “success” vs. recognizing that it’s simply one of a handful of requirements to get to success. And of course viewing something this way changes the lens through which you consider that accomplishment and can significantly change decisions you make because of it. Think of it like drawing a line through a single point (or even a couple of relatively closely grouped points) – it’s easy to delude yourself into thinking you’re on one path before you actually have the data to prove it. And for a start-up, this can mean spending precious resources inefficiently, before you realize what line you’re really on. I’ve lived through this so many times (as has the entrepreneur I was talking with), plowing full speed ahead without recognizing that we had blinders and only later realizing (after wasting a bunch of money) that we misinterpreted some early accomplishment as successfully having figured something out (which we hadn’t).
October 15, 2012· 1 min read
That convert you raised last year is a part of your cap table
When it comes to convertible debt, I’ve had a few instances recently where “out of sight, out of mind” has created some misunderstandings around deal structures. Seemed like a good topic to cover here. Given the prevalence of convertible debt as a seed financing instrument, an increasing number of companies we look at have some kind of convert in place. This is typically reflected on cap tables in a completely separate tab to the spreadsheet that shows the debt total by investor and then some kind of interest calculation. Of course many entrepreneurs naturally focus on the main tab of their cap table spreadsheet that shows ownership by founder, investor, etc and for them this is the starting point of negotiating a round. The problem, of course, is that their convert is already a part of their capitalization – even though it’s not reflected on the cap table. There’s nothing nefarious here on the part of entrepreneurs, but I’ve recently been involved in a few situations where this key fact was skipped over and as a result their expectations for their ownership/total dilution of a subsequent equity round was completely wrong and because of that a deal (at least with us) didn’t come together (in one case the entrepreneurs viewed the convert as a post equity deal event, meaning that they thought they were negotiating a round with us that would then layer on the debt conversion – exactly the oppositie of how it actually works!). …
October 8, 2012· 3 min read
SideTour’s Ultimate NYC Weekend
Today is the last day to enter SideTour’s contest for the ultimate New York Weekend. It’s a great chance to win a really unique weekend in New York from a company whose business is built around helping people find cool and unique experiences (SideTour is a Foundry portfolio company – in case that wasn’t obvious). Screen Shot 2012-10-03 at 2.01.45 PM
October 5, 2012· 1 min read
#3010
slovenia-flag If you’ve been following me on social media I’m sure you noticed a bunch of posts tagged with #3010 at the beginning of September, along with some stunning photos of Slovenia. While it was fun to document the trip this way, it was such an amazing experience, I thought it deserved a full post. This was a trip for my 40th birthday (thus the #3010 hash) and it was truly a once in a lifetime experience. …
September 28, 2012· 6 min read
Process vs. outcome
I’ve had a few conversations recently about the right balance between process and outcome. I’ve been involved with a group that’s been very (very) process focused- which has lead to some great discussion, but has hampered action/outcome and it’s got me thinking about where the balance lies between the two. When I was younger (and apparently somewhat more patient) I was much more process oriented. Outcome alone as the measure of success wasn’t enough – there needed to be a solid process behind it. I’m reminded of my days at a Quaker camp in Vermont where we’d hold lengthy “town meetings” to make decisions. All decisions were made by consensus and often discussions on relatively mundane topics extended for hours. But it was truly the process that mattered the most –the outcome was secondary. …
August 23, 2012· 2 min read
How much should a start-up CEO make?
I was asked this question at a talk I gave to the recently graduated TechStars Boulder class and thought it deserved wider dissemination than to just the group in the room at the time. This is a loaded question and while there are many variations I do actually think there are some general norms that are followed in most cases. So here goes with some guiding principals and then below that some numbers. Keep in mind that I’m talking about Seed and Series A stage businesses. …
August 22, 2012· 3 min read
Linking around with LinkSmart
At the core of the Internet is the ability to connect together content. It was really this hyperlinking between pages that in many ways defined the difference between the early Internet and the bulletin boards and Usenet that preceded it. Google clearly saw the value of links, which they interpreted as people “voting” on the online content which they saw as most valuable. At the core of their search engine is the measurement of that linking activity. However while a huge amount of attention and investment has gone into tools to support publishers’ ability to create and post content and, of course, to create advertising around that content (literally around, by surrounding it in ads), publishers have lacked tools to properly support inserting, analyzing, managing and optimizing links in their content. Inserting links has remained a highly manual activity and a very static one – once a page has been created the links that were initially inserted are the links that remain. …
June 27, 2012· 3 min read
The most important provision of the JOBS Act
When the JOBS Act was passed several months ago there was much fanfare about the key provisions. Especially the raising of the number of investors that a private company could accumulate before being forced to report as a public company and the so-called “crowdfunding provision” which allows companies to raise up to $1M of private capital from an unlimited number of investors (regardless of whether they are accredited or not). The Act also changed the rules around general solicitation and advertising for certain private capital raises and eased the regulatory burden on some newly public companies. …
June 12, 2012· 2 min read