Category

General Business

Google News

In case you haven’t noticed yet, Google has made their news page customizable (see the  “customize this page” link on the right of the screen).   Not all that surprising a move (what took them so long?) . . .  they are a media platform after all – even  though they want us all to think they’re  really just focused on search . . .

Paying for what you get?

Ever notice that the nicer the hotel you stay in, the more you have to pay for? It seems to me that the more I pay for a room, the more likely it is that I have to pay for local phone calls, internet access, breakfast, gym access, etc. I was thinking about this a couple of weeks ago. I was in San Francisco and staying at a reasonably nice national chain hotel and paying over $200/night for the privilege. On top of that I had to pay  forInternet access ($9.95 for crappy 200kps throughput), local calls ($0.75 a pop) and access to their gym ($10/day).  Not so  when I stay at cheaper hotels(particularly down on the peninsula, but I’ve…

Conveying Information Effectively

Here’s an interesting experiment to try. Get a friend. Think of a song (one that you would reasonably expect your friend to know as well). Tap along with your finger while you play the song to yourself in your head. Now ask your friend what song you were taping out. It turns out that the taper’s estimate of  how easy it will be for someone to guess what song they are tapping is vastly greater than the success their friend will have in actually coming up with the correct song. The taper believes they are conveying much more information than they really are.  (Apologies for not being able to find the actual study reference I was looking for – I couldn’t find it on Google…

What it takes to go public

I’ve sat through a few presentations by investment bankers recently on what it takes to go public (most recently at VC in the Rockies – see my post about the conference here).  I  thought I’d throw out some of my notes so you could see what I’m being told it takes to get public in the current market.  The VCIR panel I sat through included some thoughts on the state of the m&a market, so I’ll include those notes as well. Company ‘Requirements’: – Revenue: ‘Bigger the better’; minimum of $60m/year annualized (so $15m/quarter at the time of the IPO; however 60% of 04’ IPO’s were < $100m in revenue (up from only 30% in the depths of the market);…

Who vs. Where

I recently wrote a blog – The Power of Location – about Quova (one of the companies I work with) and the idea of “place” on the Internet.  In response, Dimitar Vesselinov (who has a great blog) dropped a couple of comments to the post. My sense is that not everyone pays attention to the comments section of blogs, so I thought I’d post the links he suggests here. I also want to be sure I’m clear on the differences between digital identity (the subject of Dimitar’s comments) and geolocation (the subject of my post) as well as how the two ideas overlap. First the comments. Below are some sites that Dimitar sent over for those interested in learning more…

The 10 Minute Difference

When I graduated from college I worked on Wall Street for a couple of years as an analyst for Morgan Stanley. While a valuable experience, especially for someone such as myself who had never even considered taking a business or finance course (I was an econ and psychology major), the job pretty much sucked. While I enjoyed the finance aspect of it and, particularly in my second year, had great access to the CEOs and CFOs of the companies I worked with, a lot of my job involved staying up until all hours of the night (morning, technically) preparing analysis and putting together ‘pitch books’ for use in presentations the following day. Not particularly glamorous work. Nor was it generally…

The Power of Branding

Ross and Dave sent this link over to me today. Parody –  a strong sign of flattery.  Clearly Apple has marketing down – we could all take a lesson. . . https://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/images/iProduct.gif