November 2005
Cliche of The Week
When an investment doesn't work out, the first attempt to salvage the deal is typically to look for a buyer. When that doesn't pan out, the next move is often to look for a company to merge with. Usually its... [Read More]
November 30, 2005 05:38 AM, By Fred Wilson
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Tags: mergers turnarounds
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We are very happy about the success of our new website. It has become a vibrant hub for thoughtful exchange and we hope we can facilitate even more dialogue that our audience finds interesting. This would not be possible if... [Read More]
November 28, 2005 01:46 PM, By Charles O'Donnell
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Tags: blog design
Cliche of The Week
This is not a cliche but a great line that I heard several weeks ago that I have been using since (so it may become a cliche): If you must forecast, do it often. Forecasting is always a difficult proposition... [Read More]
November 23, 2005 05:32 PM, By Fred Wilson
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Tags: budgeting cliche forecasting
Evolution vs. Intelligent Design
For years, we have been fascinated by the fact that many of the very best startup companies come out of "side projects". They are accidents really. eBay, Google, and Yahoo! are all examples of this mode of starting companies. Delicious... [Read More]
November 22, 2005 02:03 PM, By Fred Wilson
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Tags: design evolution startups
Sessions Top Ten Insights - Eight - Putting A String On Data
Our sessions event happened almost a month ago and it is starting to fade into my memory. But there is at least one phrase that came out of Sessions that we are still using with regularlity at Union Square Ventures.... [Read More]
November 19, 2005 05:59 AM, By Fred Wilson
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Tags: data open rss
Cliche of The Week
Venture Capital is a lot about pattern recognition; in finding good opportunities, in managing them, and in exiting them. So when I say, "I've seen this movie before", something I've apparently said quite a few times on my personal weblog... [Read More]
November 16, 2005 06:36 AM, By Fred Wilson
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Tags: cliche patterns vc
Sessions Top Ten Insights - Seven - Less Control Can Create More Value
There was a lot of discussion about the relationship between web service providers and consumers. This relationship is obviously especially important in services where the consumers are also the producers of the service. One thread of this discussion was about... [Read More]
November 15, 2005 09:34 AM, By Brad Burnham
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Tags: abuse control service sessionstopten usvsessions web
Our Customer Is The Entrepreneur
Many of the people we know in the venture capital business think their customers are the LPs (the investors in venture capital funds). We've always thought that was wrong. The entrepreneur is the customer and the LP is the shareholder.... [Read More]
November 12, 2005 04:16 PM, By Fred Wilson
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Tags: entrepreneur vc
Sessions Top Ten Insights - Six Reputations Are Not Portable
There was a lot of talk at Sessions about trust. The word appears 33 times in the transcript. Jeff Jarvis mentioned it 11 times himself. Here, Jeff makes the point that value is shifting from content to trust. “And so... [Read More]
November 9, 2005 05:20 PM, By Brad Burnham
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Tags: reputation sessionstopten trust
VC Cliche of the Week
This one's not really a cliche, but the "king of the cliche", Bliss McCrum, used to say it all the time and I love it and am going to use it anyway. Bliss, who had a large family, used to... [Read More]
November 9, 2005 06:44 AM, By Fred Wilson
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Tags: cliche leadership vc
Sessions Top Ten Insights - Five
One of the insights from our Sessions event was from Yochai Benkler who said the following about peer production: we do have very good research on how adding money undermines social motivations depending on contents I am not sure... [Read More]
November 5, 2005 12:24 PM, By Fred Wilson
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Tags: amazon api peerproduction webservices
Will Live Kill?
I posted on my personal weblog about Windows Live and the threats that it may or may not pose to startups working in the web services market the other day. It fostered some good discussion in the comments section of... [Read More]
November 4, 2005 08:50 AM, By Fred Wilson
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Tags: live microsoft webservices
Sessions Top Ten Insights - Four
Here are some more of the insights that we gained from our Sessions discussion... Michael Parekh makes the point that all peers are not created equal… “Another thing, the term peer to peer, one of the things that's implicit, unfortunately,... [Read More]
November 3, 2005 10:48 AM, By Brad Burnham
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Tags: usvsessions
VC Cliche of the Week
Every week I do a VC Cliche of the Week on my personal blog. This week's cliche is The Devil You Know Is Better Than The Devil You Don't Know. Here's a link to the post.... [Read More]
November 2, 2005 06:48 AM, By Fred Wilson
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Tags: cliche vc
Sessions Top Ten Insights - Three
Umair Haque said something (or actually quoted someone) at our Sessions event that has been rattling around my brain for the past week. Umair said: Herbert Simon said it in 1971, which is that "What does an abundance of information... [Read More]
November 2, 2005 05:38 AM, By Fred Wilson
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Tags: attention blogs feeds