Disqus - Latest Comments for itsdono

Re: The AVC Reader Census: A Day Later

itsdono — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:37:26 -0000

Start translating your posts into other languages and you will get other people reading them...

Re: Unemployment and Structural Change

itsdono — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:37:34 -0000

You might find the following article interesting regarding historical consumer behavior when exiting recessions and what is happening so far in this recession.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-dea...

Re: Thematic vs Thesis Driven Investing

itsdono — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:05:03 -0000

I imagine in your thesis driven approach that it would be valuable to revisit that thesis on a periodic basis with a critical eye to see if the environment has changed in a way that would impact your thesis, especially with the speeding up of change in the Internet.

Re: "Audio Preview" Is A Bad User Experience

itsdono — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:01:04 -0000

Nope - takes too much time. if I'm potentially interested in purchasing an album, I'll sample a few songs and a 30 sec preview works just fine for that.

Re: More (Too Much?) Free from Google: Turn-By-Turn

itsdono — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:50:42 -0000

In the physical world, what Google does is analogous to "dumping": using profits in one area in order to subsidize getting market share in another.

I don't think that national or even international (WTO) regulatory bodies have really caught on to what is happening.

Re: Start-up studies: A pop quiz

itsdono — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:22:40 -0000

I would short the dollar in the forex markets.

Re: "Audio Preview" Is A Bad User Experience

itsdono — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:37:09 -0000

I like the 30 second preview and use it frequently.

Re: 85,000 reasons why Apple’s iPhone isn’t going to be disrupted

itsdono — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:52:40 -0000

The iPhone Platform has been adopted only by the early adopters, the middle of the bell curve is not locked in yet. If Android can get enough critical mass of applications soon enough, they will be able to compete for the middle of the bell curve, and Apple will have merely performed the pioneering work...

Re: Only 17 venture capital firms raise money in Q3 — fewest in 15 years

itsdono — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:32:30 -0000

This is the inevitable overshoot to the downside. Worldwide equity and bond markets have been rising since March 9 and I expect that the endowments and pension funds will begin to step back into alternative investments in greater force as their portfolios rise in value.

Re: Paying To Pitch

itsdono — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 17:01:19 -0000

Totally agree with this. One potential good side effect of this is that it will cause Angel groups to increase their member dues, thus weeding out the wannabe investors and/or service providers from the real investors.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg: The evolution of a remarkable CEO

itsdono — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:26:10 -0000

I sure hope Facebook does something better with its business pages. To me, it is the orphan now, especially after the site wide redesign.

Re: Is the tech boom over for entrepreneurs?

itsdono — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:41:25 -0000

Siebel's comment reminds me of the US patent officer's comment in the late 1800s that he didn't think there was a need to have a patent office anymore, since everything that could have been invented of any substance already was...

Re: The Best Deal In Startup Land

itsdono — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:47:45 -0000

Better to have a lower percentage of a very valuable company, then a high percentage of a dead company...

Re: Accept Software takes $15.4M for product planning tools

itsdono — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:37:31 -0000

Other companies in the same space as Accept Software are:

Alignent Software - www.alignent.com

RuleStream Corporation - www.rulestream.com

Cheers,

Don Jones
VentureDeal

Re: What’s really happening to venture capital industry?

itsdono — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:07:26 -0000

The venture capital industry will indeed shrink - permanently - in total dollars as well as number of VC firms that are active. However, as Ethernet pioneer Bob Metcalfe has said, smart entrepreneurs will sift through the technologies that have been funded during the bubble years and will assemble the next great company and technology.

Also, venture capital firms have typically been staffed by two types of partners: technologists that came from industry and bankers that came from the MBA route. Look for the bankers to largely exit the business, since the value add will not be in large quantities of capital deployed, but rather the astute combination of technologies and management expertise.

Re: Venture capitalists hammer entrepreneurs: Valuations lowest in five years

itsdono — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:45:54 -0000

Down rounds are also bad for entrepreneur and senior management morale. What does it profit a VC if they get a higher percentage of the company, but less productive and engaged senior management?

Re: Video: Wired editor Chris Anderson on The Colbert Report

itsdono — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:55:06 -0000

Chris Anderson's book "Free" is an excellent read and should be required reading for Internet/digital media/e-commerce/software/mobile entrepreneurs.

Re: Jigsaw launches Data Fusion to clean up sales contact lists

itsdono — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:30:22 -0000

Jigsaw's venture capital financings were:

April, 2006 - Series C - $12 Million
December, 2004 - Series B - $5.2 Million
December, 2003 - Series A - $750,000

Re: The bizarre case of Oak Investment Partners

itsdono — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:22:20 -0000

Many VC firms enjoyed the flood of liquidity over the past 10 years and it's true that some are better at raising funds than investing them, but over time economic realities will force changes in relationships between GPs and LPs. Excesses will be squeezed out of the system and it will return to equilibrium in time.

Re: Today’s economy: A different odyssey than in 2001

itsdono — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:31:12 -0000

I think the biggest longer-term problem for the venture capital world is the broken IPO market. Most VCs cannot justify their existence from a risk/return standpoint without a functioning IPO market.

Re: The VC model is broken

itsdono — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:03:45 -0000

The venture capital business is fundamentally a financial services business. My belief is that like most other financial service sector industries now, it will be forced to consolidate and shrink, due to under-performance. There is still too much money chasing too few deals that will ever exit for decent returns.

Re: The "Content" API

itsdono — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:12:23 -0000

Fred,

Your comment in the post - "But if instead of being limited to wikipedia, they could use dozens of highly trusted, accurate content sources (emphasis mine), they could probably do much more." is interesting so far as the issue of trust and accuracy.

The level of "trust" in major news source organizations has dropped dramatically over recent years, especially as these organizations have tilted to one end of the political spectrum or another.

Developing a system that highlights bias, such as the recent work to identify left-leaning/right-leaning article citations, is an interesting and challenging field. How to monetize that type of system is perhaps even more difficult.

Re: Turns out, Sequoia raised more money than any other VC firm

itsdono — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:08:20 -0000

The trend of fewer and larger VC firms continues, leaving the very early stage "funding gap" to grow more. Early-stage startups that can advance their business plan further down the road before attempting to raise funding will be advantaged over those that are not as developed.

Re: What To Look For Next

itsdono — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:23:09 -0000

According to the Economist, Japanese corporations have $600 billion at their disposal, after years of good earnings and savings. The yen has also done well as a currency, making it the strongest against the dollar.

Re: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/10/free-vs-paid.html

itsdono — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:30:00 -0000

Freemium works for our venture capital database www.VentureDeal.com. It has a limited free version for two weeks and costs $25 per month for a full access subscription.

The business and model are proving to be recession resistant...