What’s in your Anti-Portfolio?

One inevitable aspect of being in the venture capital business is living with the ones that got away.  Every vc out there has passed on at least one deal that has gone on to become a big winner.  If they tell you differently, then they are either new to the profession, or in serious denial. 
We all deal [...]

Angels Fight Back

As an update to my last post about the Financial Reform Bill, the Angel Capital Association is now reporting that Senator Dodd will be introducing amendments addressing at least two of the three issues relating to early stage investors.
According to peHUB, after word of the original provisions leaked out, “vc bloggers took to their keyboard with furious [...]

Angels Under Fire

I don’t want to beat a dead horse on the Dodd Financial Reform Bill, but more and more disturbing details continue to emerge as people actually get through the 1,300 page piece of proposed legislation.  John Maudlin, writing in his Frontline Newsletter, points out three provisions that could spell the end of angel investing as [...]

Crowdsourcing is a Symptom

A lot has been written lately about the age of crowdsourcing, and for good reason.  It is a shift that is changing the way many companies do business.   Recently, John Winsor, the CEO of Victors & Spoils, had a great blog post where he contended that, in the world of marketing, crowdsourcing is being driven by [...]

Discouraging Entrepreneurial Risk

It is being reported that another bill has been introduced in Congress  that would require any venture capital fund with at least $30 million under management to register with the SEC.  There are a couple of reasons why I think this is a horrible idea. 
The first reason is purely practical.  Typically, venture funds, particularly smaller funds, [...]

News From The Portfolio

A couple newsworthy tidbits from the portfolio this week:

Lijit joined some pretty elite company by exceeding the half billion page view threshold (you can read about it here).  There was also a nice interview with Lijit COO Walter Knapp in AdExchanger.com (here).

Victors & Spoils is looking for talent.  They have a full time account director position open [...]

Manage the Business, Not the Board

Seth Levine, a managing director at Boulder-based Foundry Group, had a good post this morning on companies who use sales plans to “under promise and over-deliver.”  Seth concludes that this type of planning creates internal confusion and completely clouds the reality of what is going on within the company.
I couldn’t agree more with Seth, and [...]

Rebuilding a Brand

I don’t know if it’s all the talk about Toyota or Tiger, but I’ve been giving some thought to how difficult it is for a company to rebuild its brand after losing the public’s confidence.  One of the mistakes that a lot of companies seem to make in these situations is to focus exclusively on [...]

Welcome home Tyler!

I don’t usually post about personal matters, but I would be remiss if I didn’t take the oportunity to say welcome home to my nephew Tyler (born 2/27/10) who has finally made it home from the hospital to join his parents and his twin brother Charlie.  
I can’t wait to meet you guys.

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