Good point, Jeff
Maybe this is the reason for so many amusing company names.
February 9, 2006· 1 min read
The old paradigm
It’s funny that network news programs remain popular. Why get your news from such a limited source – and to boot, one that knows nothing about what you’re really interested in? Take, for example, the nightly reporting of the Dow and Nasdaq. Is that actually relevant to most people’s lives? The answer is no – but it’s a proxy for something more specific that you’d otherwise want but the new isn’t in a position to give you. Same thing with the news – you don’t really get what you want, but it serves a proxy for what you do. …
February 9, 2006· 1 min read
Welcome back
I guess it was inevitable – the government started selling the long bond again today. First time since 2001. Guess that’s what deficit spending leads to . . .
February 9, 2006· 1 min read
etcetera
I’ve put up a back page on my blog where I can play around with new stuff — called etcetera. There’s a permanent link to it just below the ‘e-mail me’ on the top of the left nav bar. I’m just starting to put some things up (tag cloud, a swicki and my del.icio.us cloud). If you bump into stuff that looks fun, send me a note about it. I’ll put up some reminder posts as I populate the page with new ideas.
February 7, 2006· 1 min read
Slowing down
Check out the 10 mph project. I bumped into them when they passed through my neighborhood (attracted by its funky architecture and bright colors). They spent a couple of months traveling across the country on Segways and filming their experiences. Browsing their site is a kick. You can also check out a clip from their video by clicking on the big ‘trailer’ link at the top of the page. It’s a great reminder that slowing down often gives you a completely new perspective.
February 7, 2006· 1 min read
What your business does in fewer than 5 sentences
I had a chance to sit through the practice session for a handful of the companies that are presenting at this year’s VC in the Rockies conference (not too late to register, by the way – it’s a great showcase of Colorado venture deals, not to mention world class skiing). Many of them had one common trait: they sucked at actually describing what it is their business does. Som just seemed to forget to mention it, while others appeared to try, but either get bogged down in the complexity of it or just fell short of the mark. This was surprising but amazingly consistent. Maybe they had all practiced their pitch too much or perhaps they were just too close to their company to be objective about how people hear their business description, but whatever the reason I found myself scratching my head and wondering how it could be that we were on slide 8 without any real idea of exactly what the presenting company did. …
February 6, 2006· 2 min read
Behind the Oracle Fusion Noise
Newmerix CTO Niel Robertson has an excellent (and amusing) post that tries to decipher all the spin coming out of Oracle about their Fusion platform (they are 1/2 way to completing it towards a release date in 2008, although with the PR energy they are putting behind their recent Fusion “update” event in San Francisco you’d think they actually had some real news to share . . .). Here’s a link to Niel’s post – I pity the fool. …
January 30, 2006· 1 min read
Unleashing Plaxo Hell
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 date and what’s not). So if you are in my contacts and I have your valid e-mail address, this morning you received a cheerful note from me asking you to update your information. THIS WAS NOT A GOOD IDEA. While I got some useful information back, there were some second order effects that I had not thought about. Here’s a few: 1)ont-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;”> I basically just spammed my entire contact list. I wasn’t really thinking about this as spam at the time, but that’s essentially what it was 2)ont-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;”> I got several hundred e-mails from Plaxo itself, clogging my inbox as people updated their information (fortunately Plaxo lists people in groups, so one notice would have 20 or 30 updates announcements in it – so I suppose it could have been even worse). 3)ont-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;”> I got a bunch of e-mails from people telling me they hate Plaxo (mostly because they don’t trust it) and then giving me their contact information in e-mail form (which I had to enter manually – pretty much what I was trying to avoid). 4)ont-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;”> Plaxo errantly sent some update requests to a few mailing lists that I’m on (and have permission to send to) – that was a bit embarrassing. 5)ont-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;”> I reached out and touched a lot of contacts at one time, which resulted in a lot of people reaching out and touching me – I now have about 30 ‘catch-up’ lunches/coffee/meetings scheduled over the next month as a result (don’t get me wrong – I’m happy to catch up with these people – just not all at once) 6)ont-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;”> I have a long list of contacts that couldn’t be reached. While this is what I was looking for when I set out on my Plaxo mission this morning, seeing them all listed out makes me wonder exactly what I though I was planning on doing with all this information in the first place (perhaps ignorance really is bliss) What I should have done was install the program and not sent out the update request (Plaxo has a reasonably nice way to manage your contacts as e-mails come in) – this would have gotten me about 98% of what I now realize I was looking for without any of the annoyance. …
January 26, 2006· 3 min read
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.
January 26, 2006· 1 min read
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. Company_value_spikefocusing 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 “s__trategic value perception” or “buzz” about a specific segment or product. The thought being that a given company would optimally want to s__ell at or around the peak of the buzz period, as it would take them some time to get to a point where they could realize the same value after the buzz wears off. I’ve always thought this effect is particularly evident in acquisition activity within certain technology segments where a few dominant players are in a continuous battle to stay on top with the next new thing – thinking not only in relation to GYM but also security software (Symantec, McAfee, Computer Associates) or networking (Cisco, Juniper, Nortel). Always tend to see those companies scrambling for the same new technologies, and thus bidding up the other remaining technology providers, which tends to increase th__e value of public and private offerings for the rest… at least for a time. function of a normalized value curve (perhaps it looks more like a I agree, although I think that this is a cycle that repeats itself over time (i.e., there are several times in a company’s life where their perceived value accelerates away from some more linear stair step, but generally runs in the up and right direction for businesses that are executing reasonably well). Sometimes this acceleration is driven by external factors (i.e., buzz around Web2.0 technologies), sometimes its driven by internal factors (i.e., technical validation of a product, signing of certain new customers, etc.). If you’re a seller, the key of course is to try to figure out how to create that buzz around your company (Brad refers to this as ‘becoming a bright shiny object’) either with a specific partner or more broadly in a market such that potential buyers see you as unique, scarce, critical to some aspect of their business, likely to be bought by someone they don’t want to own you, etc. In this way you can accelerate your deviation from the normal slope and sell for maximum value. Along a similar thought process, Nate Redman pointed out in an email exchange that: as a company moves from proof of technology to proof of business, valuation metrics shift from “strategic value” (which equates to an internal business case and defensive maneuver) to more classic multiples. In between is no-man’s-land. The other piece to this, of course, is the buy-side. $25-50MM is an amount that can be initiated, if not approved, by business units. Once you close in on $100MM and above, the CEO/Board and staff get involved; even Wall Street takes a critical eye. …
January 25, 2006· 4 min read