Archives / June, 2005

Wouldn’t it be great . . .

Wouldn’t it be great if you could subscribe to the comments of certain blogs (or better yet, to certain posts) in your reader?  I’m going to add it to my wish list (we’re actively working through these sorts of ideas at both Newsgator and Feedburner). I must have reached some kind of critical mass in my readership where I’m actually getting a reasonable number of comments and trackbacks to my posts.  It got me to look at the comments to some of the other blogs that I read (I rarely visit sites directly – rather I read them in Newsgator).  Turns out that there are great comments out there that I’m completely missing.  The solution for the moment is to…

M&A – A Corporate Development Perspective

I recently asked my friend Daniel Benel if he’d consider contributing to my M&A series. Daniel was a banker with Lehman Brothers (in NY and Tel Aviv) an  is now a corporate development exec at Verint Systems (NASDAQ: VRNT). Despite having never bought one of my companies, he’s a great guy with a smart corporate development mind (rim shot). I thought he could add a corporate development perspective to the series. I’ll make sure he gets copies of any comments that get sent back, or feel free to reach him at the hyperlink attached to his name above.______________ Below are three topics on my mind related to acquisitions from a corporate development perspective (perhaps the beginning of a series): The Hockey Stick Projections –…

Bike to work day

Today is bike to work day in Boulder. I’ve been meaning to ride my bike into work for a while, so today seemed like a good day to start. Here are a couple of observations from the road: – Riding in is a fantastic way to start the day.  I got to work and felt great.  I was completely energized and awake after my roughly 15 mile ride in.- Leave your computer at home. I forgot to do this last night and as a result had to lug my laptop on my back (along with a change of clothes, which would have also been a good thing to have brought into the office the day before my ride). What didn’t…

Thinking of taking venture capital? Don’t!

Here’s a thought for those of you considering taking venture capital – don’t do it. Seriously. It’s not worth it. Ok – so I’m not 100% serious. I’m trying to make a living investing in companies and would therefore be out of business if everyone followed this advice, however I think that for the majority (50%? . . . 80%?) of entrepreneurs taking venture capital money is a mistake. As I explain why this is the case, please read from the perspective of someone who is actually trying to encourage people to go into the process with their eyes open more so than I’m truly trying to scare people off from raising venture money. The worst thing you can do…

Here’s how you do it

I got a great postcard today from Ben Casnocha. It said: Yay, summer has come Business, reading, deep thinking Time to change the world I LIKE YOU! Ben understands networking. He’s thoughtful. He posts comments to blogs that are relevant and interesting.  He sends private e-mails in response to things he reads. He forwards articles of interest that are targeted to the people he interacts with.  He clearly thinks networking is a priority and does it well. Ben also just graduated from high school, which I think puts him light-years ahead of his peers in his understanding of human interaction (ok – lets face it – it puts him light-years ahead of people of any age in his understanding of…

Your Exit

Here’s an interesting stat from a M&A update I received in my inbox a few days ago: Since 2000, the ratio of technology companies sold vs. going public is 10:1 (1,300 m&a deals vs just 125 IPOs).  The moral of the story – be realistic.  If you run a software company you are WAY more likely to sell your business than to go public.  Time to start planning . . . now.

Morality and China

Tony Perkins posted a cautionary piece on China yesterday to AlwaysOn entitled “Chinese Youth, Unite  A moral view of China”  In it he argues that we (silicon valley) are being perhaps too quick to look past some of the moral and ethical issues with the Chinese government while we give them what he terms a “gigantic money-fisted hug”. My parents just returned from a two week vacation in China and dad sent around his reaction to Perkins piece with his recent on the ground observations as his perspective. I’m printing it here, with his permission. __________________________ I’d like to offer a (limited) bottoms-up view to complement Tony’s top-down view. I strongly agree that the economic, political, and ethical issues are…

M&A Part III – Getting Bought vs. Selling

Perhaps I’m stating the obvious, but one thing that I’ve noticed over the years (and have talked about extensively, particularly with Brad who very much shares this view) is that it’s much easier to have a company get bought than it is to sell a company. Getting bought means that someone comes to you. Selling means you go to them. The former results in a more motivated buyer, an easier (and faster) process for rounding up competitive bids and a higher price. The latter is a pain in the ass, tends to result in fewer options and generally a lower purchase price. When you are getting bought, you by definition have other options (since you don’t necessarily need to sell);…

Podcasting on the rise

I wrote a post last month on my way back from some meetings at Feedburner about some trends in the RSS world.  In it I noted that Podcasting was on the rise and promised to link to more details once Feedburner posted them.  They did that today  – you can check out their report here.  Clearly podcasting is taking off.  To quote from the report: It took us [FB] nine weeks to manage our first thousand podcasts, and we added our most recent thousand podcasts in under a month. As you can see, the rate of growth changes in bursts. We added about 800 podcasts per month initially, then 1000 a month, and now we’re adding about 1400 a month…

Making your threats real

I wrote a post about a month a go in my M&A series about drawing lines in the sand (see the original post here).  In it I argued that people negotiating m&adeals are too quick to dig in and make statements that they can’t/don’t intend to back up.  I was reading Ben’s blog today – his latest post references a HBS article on a similar subject that is worth a read.  Here’s the quote that Ben pulled from the article that pretty much sums up its contents.  When you look at the article pay attention to their point # 5 – it’s exactly what I was talking about in my earlier post. “In the classic game of Chicken, two drivers…