Category: Features

  • Startups: Telling Your Story with Numbers

    … nailing Unit Economics This post was first published on the Crunchbase blog. Every startup begins as an idea. And as a founder, your idea needs a powerful story that wins the support of two key audiences: The customer. The story to a potential customer is all about what product or service you offer them, why…

  • Social, Mobile and Global – the new human race

    This is my talk from the MENA – ICT event in Jordan. The event was great. Almost 1000 attendees from all over the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) talking about Information and Communications Technology (ICT). [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sYJll54slY&w=560&h=315]

  • The Valley of Death

    This poem seem particularly pertinent to the current state of Silicon Valley. Incubators on ones side of the valley. Nothing in the Valley. Growth Capital on the other side. Most startups are dead as soon as they exit their 3 month stint. The exceptions are rare yet notable. WHAT HAPPENED TO VENTURE CAPITAL? The Charge…

  • The impact of mobile growth on web advertising. Is Android bad for Google?

    Google and Facebook can’t turn off the mobile deluge I just posted on TechCrunch. The article focuses on the Facebook S1 filing and in particular on the risks section that covers the growth of the mobile internet and its potential impact on the web business model. Facebook itself has been very clear that its advertising revenues…

  • Cloud based services – the future of the Internet

    Fred Wilson has a response today to Eric Schmidt’s declaration in Edinburgh that Google+ is an “identity service”. He asks and answers his own question. “whom Google built this service for? You or them. And the answer to why you need to use your real name in the service is because they need you to.”…

  • De-portalization and Internet Revenues I

    I am re-posting this from the edgeio blog. Mainly because I think it has current relevance and will in future have historical value. I’m not certain the edgeio blog will continue to exist, so this is the new home for the post. Since it was originally written we have seen the rise of Adbrite, Glam,…

  • OpenID and Data Portability

    Nicolas Popp – a leading advocate of Open Identity and data solutions – posted on his VeriSign blog today following the rather heated discussions that have ensued since Google announced its Friend Connect product recently. Nico’s employer – VeriSign – along with Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, AOL and others, is a member of the board of…

  • Google and the newspapers

    Over the long labor day weekend Google announced a serious change in the way Google News will relate to the various wire services and the newspaper industry. The change could have a dramatic impact on the traffic Google News sends to newspaper web sites. There have been several commentaries on the developments and Techmeme has…

  • The Pareto Principle is nonsense.

    In response to the current discussion on Techmeme and TailRank hipmojo writes that the Pareto principle is in play on the internet and that no matter how much we want it to be otherwise 80% of online advertising will go to 20% of the web sites. When the dust settles, the top 20% of websites…

  • De-portalization and Internet revenues

    Last week Fred Wilson did a post on a phenomena he called de-portalization. I think he is right on the money. I just posted a piece on the edgeio blog that picks up on that theme and discusses the consequences of the trend. The top 10 consequences are: 1. The revenue growth that has characterized…