A quick thought on the venture capital diligence process: As I’ve dug in on hundreds of companies in the last year and a half of working in this job, I’ve found there are two mindsets that I get into when performing research or diligence on a company. The diligence process is one in which I [...]
@cdixon on the TripAdvisor IPO: Big win for the “golden age of SEO”. By which I’m referring to roughly 2001-2008 when “demand” for content (people typing in search queries) far outpaced supply (good content). Companies like Yelp and TripAdvisor (along with Wikipedia, IMDB, etc) grew huge during this period, almost entirely through SEO. They did this [...]
Bryce from OATV’s post a while back stirred up some debate over Angel List. It was an important post in my opinion, but one line really stuck out to me. Given that most companies seeking funding at this stage have little to no revenue, low user numbers and light usage data AngelList puts a tremendous amount of [...]
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the classic ‘chicken and the egg’ problem that network businesses face every day in the early stages of the corporate lifecycle. As I noted in my post “The power of a simple business model,” when network effects are present in a business, the value of the business [...]
I’ve long been a huge fan of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger – their words of wisdom often go beyond the narrow confines of ‘value investing’ and into every day life. Contrary to the tone of what you might read on the front page of newspapers or on CNN.com, Buffett’s latest Berkshire Hathaway annual letter [...]
One of the tenets of investing is similar to what any company or sports team strategically attempts to do every day: find a competitive advantage. In investing, an advantage can come in three forms: analytical, psychological or informational. Analytical advantages come from being able to analyze data better than others, which is very hard to get. [...]
Rafael Corrales’ post about reaching out to his Professors to get their top papers (in order to find great ideas) pointed out a glaring shortcoming (and therefore opportunity) in academia. I posted in the comments to his post that there are two major shortcomings: Content is primarily behind walled gardens. It’s a pain to get access [...]
In many cultures – but unfortunately not to the same extent here in the United States – being an engineer is one of the highest status positions one can have, on par with being a medical doctor. Even the US, rewards are reaped as engineers command far above average salaries. Statistics show that the college major [...]
Just two quick tidbits that show how/why the marketing/distribution world is changing. Both I feel are fairly telling without much explanation. The first I found in a presentation from Drew Houston of Dropbox and Adam Smith of Xobni: The second comes from Conan O’Briens recent talk at Google; fast forward to the 15 minute mark [...]
There is an interesting debate raging right now about software patents – which fall under the purview of “business process patents.” Fred Wilson posted this video recently to AVC.com and I feel it sums up the issue succinctly. It’s well worth a watch if you have a free half hour. (Also don’t worry about the [...]
