venture capital

What you can do with $30 million of venture funding

Have you heard of Color? It’s the start-up that raised a staggering $41 million without a product. Unfortunately,  that capital didn’t translate into a hit and Color soon folded.

Clinkle could be the next Color. Clinkle raised an amazing $30 million, also on the back of concepts and not actual product. Unfortunately, that capital didn’t translate into a hit and…Clinkle is now pivoting.

TechCrunch has a story on the pivot, now called Treats, and it basically sounds like a debit card with rewards you give to your friends. I use the word “basically” because I’m still confused by the mechanic, despite TechCrunch laying it out in point-by-point form.

That’s got to be worrying for Treats.

People are busy and have enough problems; most won’t learn something new that’s complicated when there are already so many good alternatives.

Read Full Article

If all your money was in Bitcoin, you’d have only 44% left

The hype for Bitcoin was almost oppressive earlier this year. I took a look and concluded it was too early to be a mainstream opportunity: it’s not consumer friendly, not widely accepted and worse, too extreme in its volatility for most to stomach.

Yet, hundreds of millions poured into Bitcoin – from rose colored speculators to blue chip venture capitalists.

Bloomberg’s recent study is a fresh reminder that hype does not always translate into immediate payoffs. Bitcoin was actually the worst performing currency of 2014, having lost 56% of its value from last year.

Read Full Article

Google has more value than Microsoft, but Microsoft is more valuable than Google

There’s a story on TechCrunch today on how Microsoft’s market value exceeded Google’s market value. I don’t know if this is news, but I suppose it’s interesting to check in from time to time on how the public markets perceive the two tech giants.

What caught my eye were two comments from those claiming to be from two prestigious venture capital firms: Accel Partners and Silver Lake Partners.

Here’s an angry one from Han Lee, Accel Partners:

Dear writer, do you really not know the difference between market cap and enterprise value? Pathetic.

From Jeff Schnabel, Operating Executive at Silver Lake Partners:

Total enterprise value is a more accurate measure of a company’s value (market cap is only a piece of the puzzle – the value of the company’s publicly traded equity).

If you look at TEV, Google is still worth more than Microsoft ($306.4B vs. $290.4B)

What is Enterprise Value and how’s it different to Market Value you may ask? Finance people love to confuse lay people to make themselves look smarter, so let’s peel away the jargon.

Read Full Article

Venture capitalists can do dumb things too

How dumberer can people get? Even accomplished investors can do really questionable things. Take Pavel Curda, a venture capitalist, mentor at an incubator and the founder of the API Mashup Contest. His dumb thing is meeting women at tech gatherings and emailing them the following message soon after:

One Woman Finally Calls Out a Tech Investor for Creepy Advances

Yep.

The crazy thing is that this must work sometimes, else why would he keep doing it right? Well, Pavel flew too far near the sun when he tried it on Gesche Haas.

Read Full Article

People at Echelon are too good looking

I’ve been to every Echelon since it began, and the conference has changed a lot over that time. Everything is bigger, slicker, more polished. A reported 1700 attended the conference! There are more interesting people from a wider variety of backgrounds. Ideas are well researched and articulated. Start-ups pitch well and are better funded; you can say almost professional.

The tech scene’s maturation is unbelievable; like watching a child grow up into a young adult.

While so much of this is good, I have noticed two trends that while are not yet concerns, can easily be if we as a community are not careful.

Read Full Article