A whole book was written about so-called Black Swan events—blindsides that no one saw coming. Its message: “Besides anticipating the obvious, be prepared for things you never dreamed could possibly happen.” Real-world examples: The Japan and Indonesia quakes and tsunamis. The fiscal meltdown that caught Euro countries with their balance sheets in tatters. The cloud. [...]
Venture capital funds are on an unsustainable path. In the past two years, venture capital funds invested US$24 billion more than they raised in new funding. In 2010 alone, they invested $26 billion against raises of $14 billion, nearly a 2X deficit. Contrast this with IPO statistics: in 2011, approximately 50 VC-backed firms went public [...]
It’s said that times have never been easier to get a startup off the ground. Between cloud infrastructure and efficient programming tools, ideas become reality in record time at low expense. We’ve seen a bevy of new startups take that path, perhaps fueled by a successful serial entrepreneur, a friends-family seed round, or an early [...]
Listening to Phil Wickham, CEO of the Kauffman Fellows Program, at last night’s Velocity Ventures/University of the Pacific MBA Showcase in Sacramento, I reflected on the drivers of both innovation and change viewed through his eyes. Phil noted that whether you were talking about the economy, an individual, or a business, the rate of innovation [...]
Some years ago I consulted with a leading executive coaching firm with C-level clientele. Working with one of their top managers and the company founder, we developed an audio program on the best ways to recover from unexpected setbacks in business and in life. Setbacks are all too common. In business, perhaps a deal falls [...]
Many marketers of my era remember well a small book titled, “Up the Organization,” written by Bob Townsend, the president and chairman of Avis Rent-a-Car who made Avis the biggest little number two in the world. Townsend died in 1998, but something he said in his book has stuck with me all of these years: he was okay [...]
This is another in my continuing series on the insights I’ve gained as I’ve talked with leaders and technical heads at numerous startup ventures. This installment: It’s hard to remember the concept you started with when you’re up to your Red Bull-fueled eyeballs in a tangle of code and you have lost sight of your customer [...]
Nothing is in shorter supply than time for an early-stage startup except money. Yet, often I see teams distracted from getting their product or service to the market as they enter an all-consuming focus on raising capital long before their venture has a value proposition investors can accept. Take last week, for instance. I spoke to a [...]
It’s easy to confuse the traction gained through free-user adoptions with real traction based on customers buying your product or service. It looks like Facebook is now learning how expensive their freemium model can be. More abut that in a minute. Large advertisers with large campaign purses to spend also face frustration in their social [...]
A funny thing happened recently on the way to the liquidity event…the much ballyhooed expectation of infinitely rising energy prices that many in Silicon Valley expected to drive a Clean Tech revolution failed to materialize, leaving conventional wisdom to scratch its collective head. Then, with a crash, the roof fell in. As Bloomberg reports, from [...]
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