Corporate Values Are Make Or Break

Your corporate values can NOT evolve over time @jack 30-30-30-10: A More Thoughtful And Egalitarian Formula For Equity Distribution In Tech Startups For The Age Of Abundance https://t.co/i9ufBFYq9H @Twitter @facebook @Google @amazon @Apple @AlibabaGroup https://t.co/88zqpv0kFt

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) November 4, 2019

.@jack breaks down the elements of company culture and identifies the most important thing to get right: alignment around a common purpose. Read more of Jack’s advice for founders on building culture in the early days. #SevenQuestions

— Sequoia (@sequoia) October 9, 2019

A princess turns into every giant sequoia in Khartoum.

— Magic Realism Bot (@MagicRealismBot) November 4, 2019

25K Becomes $110 Million In 5 Years

Secretive, Sprawling Network of ‘Scouts’ Spreads Money Through Silicon Valley
Sequoia Capital has funneled millions of dollars to scores of well-connected entrepreneurs and academics, who invest and look for ideas

Startup investor Jason

Calacanis took a $25,000 gamble five years ago on a company almost no one had heard of called UberCab. That investment in what is now Uber Technologies Inc. has ballooned to roughly $110 million.

..... Most of Sequoia’s scouts are entrepreneurs whose startups were funded by the firm. That means they know a lot about what Sequoia is looking for and will recommend the firm to other entrepreneurs. ....... Forging tight relationships that generate new deals for venture-capital firms is more important than ever as the cost of creating startups falls. The resulting acceleration in company launches has made it harder for venture-capital firms to identify the best opportunities as startups emerge. And competition is growing as new investors who are flush with capital invade the technology world. ...... Sequoia made early bets on many of today’s tech titans, including Apple Inc., Google Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. ...... It was the only venture firm that backed messaging company WhatsApp, sold to Facebook Inc. last year for $22 billion. Sequoia invested about $60 million for a stake valued at $3.5 billion in the deal. Sequoia now owns stakes in 33 private, venture-capital-backed companies valued at more than $1 billion apiece, more than any other venture-capital firm. ...... If a scout’s investment is successful, the vast majority of gains are shared by the scout and Sequoia’s limited partners, Mr. Botha says. Other scouts and Sequoia partners themselves get a small piece of the gains. ..... Sequoia says it instructs scouts to tell startups in which they invest where the money is coming from. But the firm tries to hide the investments from rivals by making them through limited liability companies with odd names. The names include Dragonsteed LLC, Vermillistock LLC and Rocketbooster LLC. ...... In addition to a small number of professors who are scouts, a separate team of unpaid students at Stanford, Harvard University, Columbia University and other elite colleges is on the lookout for promising ideas and entrepreneurs. ...... “VCs want their brand names on campuses,” says Daniel Liem, who says he was a Sequoia scout while studying computer science at Stanford. “They want to find the next Zuckerberg or Spiegel,” Mr. Liem adds, referring to the founders of Facebook and Snapchat Inc. ...... Sequoia’s scouts usually invest about $30,000 at a time and are given initial access to about $100,000 a year. Mr. Botha says the amount can grow if scouts identify even more hot ideas. ..... For scouts, the appeal is membership in an elite club and free money to make seed investments, which they might not be able to afford. .... Scouts are a “very early warning system, like having a bunch of little satellites installed across the Valley, picking up blips on the radar,” he says.

Mike Arrington: Movie Star

I have known Mike Arrington to be a heat seeking missile that constantly goes after controversies. Half the time when he hits the target he realizes he is the one who created the controversy in the first place.

His now having crossed the line to become a full fledged investor - CrunchFund - to me has felt like the most natural thing. Many VCs blog. When a blogger invests what seems to be the problem?

This guy wanted to be an entrepreneur. I'd say he did become one. TechCrunch I view as a startup. I never thought of it as a magazine. It is an online community he has created.

He is super well connected. He is insightful. It is to be seen if he can also do well to spot those hot new startups that make you a lot of money. I have a feeling he might be able to pull it off.

Arrington, Calm The F____ Down
Sonar: How Whales Roll: Mike Arrington My Sonar Friend
Mike Arrington Liked My Comment
Mike Arrington And I: Close

The Color Social Graph Might Work Better For Books, Movies, Music

Especially music. I don't think picture taking is overdone at all. Once Fred Wilson dismissed Facebook as "a photo sharing site." It was said at a major conference, and the comment sent a lot of pigeons flying, but he did point out a basic truth, which is that photo sharing is the primary activity on Facebook.

Google Images, Facebook Photos, Twitpic, Instagram, FoodSpotting

Is It A Bubble?

Image via WikipediaThis bubble talk/debate could last for the rest of the year. It might even spill into 2012. Because the craze is just beginning. My take has been that some real wealth is being created, but there sure is some accompanying froth. That is not something to complain about. On the cutting edge there are hits and misses. To expect for all hits is highly unrealistic. It just never has happened.

But the debate is robust and very real. Everybody who is a somebody has an opinion.

A Mini Bubble Burst In Three Years
Bubble, Boom Or Froth?
Bubble Talk Goes On: It's An Overshoot

Startups And The Art Of Selling

Image via CrunchBaseI for one think Facebook should have been forced to go public at a billion dollar valuation, or 10 billion max. But the company continues to be privately held. I could argue it has had several private IPOs.

There are several forms of exits. IPO is the rare exit. It is for the best of the breed. By definition most startups are not there, will never get there. Getting bought by a bigger company is a respectable, lucrative exit.

And there's the non exit exit. You don't go IPO. You don't get bought. But you become profitable. You start minting money. What's there to complain? I'd hope the vast majority of startups out there would go for this "exit."

A Victory For Larry

Image by yuichi.sakuraba via Flickr

Bloomberg: SAP Must Pay Oracle $1.3 Billion Over Unit's Downloads: the largest jury award of 2010 ..... s the largest ever for copyright infringement and the 23rd-largest of all time for any jury award

Larry asked for two billion. SAP offered 20 million. So Larry upped the ante. He asked for four billion. Looks like he has been awarded close to what he asked for. Asking for two billion and getting 1.3 billion is close.

Social Capital And The Venture Capital Game

This article in TechCrunch reinforces with sound data what you could have guessed on your own or rather, what is wisdom in the tech circles, that social capital matters. What you know is important, sure. We would like to believe there is a meritocracy. But who you know is als

Image via CrunchBase

o important, very important. It is not true that social capital is less important in a meritocracy. Not everyone has to have 10,000 friends, or even a thousand. How many people you know and stay in touch with depends on your personality type, career domain, success, how busy you keep, and a few other things. Can you smile? Can you say hello?

Maybe you know a lot, but would it not be swell if you could team up with people who also know a lot? Teaming up with people with similar goals and interests can take you a long way. Teaming up with people who compliment your knowledge and skill set is the only way to go. And then there's social

Image via CrunchBase

capital for social reasons. Who do you want to hang out with? Partying is also important.

And then there is the social capital social media cocktail. You can manage your bank account online. You can also grow, nurture and manage your social capital online. We live in such a day and age.

The Top 100 Networked Venture Capitalists TechCrunch Do venture investors

Image via CrunchBase

with the biggest and best networks end up producing the best returns? ....... “better-networked VC firms experience significantly better fund performance,” as measured by how many of the companies in their portfolios exited via an IPO or acquisition. ...... all the other venture firms who co-invested with it in funding rounds ...... The more co-investors a venture firm has, the better its network. The better its network, the better its overall returns. ....... better access to deal flow, talent, advisers, potential customers, and potential exits. ..... “to get a high score, you need to co-invest often with others that also co-invest often.”

Image via CrunchBase

1. Draper Fisher Jurvetson
2. Sequoia Capital
3. Accel Partners
4. Intel Capital
5. First Round Capital
6. Dag Ventures
7. New Enterprise Associates
8. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
9. Benchmark Capital
10. Ron Conway

Whom You Know Matters: Venture Capital Networks and Investment Performance


Whom You Know Matters: Venture Capital Networks and Investment Performance -

Fred Wilson
Facebook And Mashable: Social Media And Social Media Blog
Is Google Wave Social Enough To Challenge Facebook, Twitter?
Is Reading Socializing?
Define Social Media

From The Netizen BlogRoll

One afternoon in NYC Just as the brand started in the UK as the David to many Goliaths in aviation, mobile telephony, and financial services, the Virgin companies in the US are Davids offering a fresh value-for-money alternative to the bigger, bloated, legacy institutions... On Fallon.
A Pause From The Regular Programming For A Commercial
Securing An Independent: Identify Candidates
Sarychev Peak Volcano in Stereo
Bring the world to your event
First Round Capital Office Hours Comes to...Our Office

The King of Twitter He’s still dead. All that follows is discussion and wouldn’t we re

Image via CrunchBase

ally rather discuss it with our friends than Al Sharpton? ...... If the Iraq War was the birth of CNN could Iran and Jackson mark the start of their decline in influence? ........ Neda. Piece by piece, the story came together before our eyes, in public. The journalists added considerable value. But this wasn’t product journalism: polishing a story once a day from inside the black box. This was process journalism and that ensured it was also collaborative journalism – social journalism ..... n Twitter, the trends were all but filled with Jackson – except for the Iran election, which was still there, in the middle. That renews my fai

Image via CrunchBase

th in us.
Is Blogging Evolving Into Life Streams? Scoble spends more time promoting Friendfeed than his own blog ...... many of the top 100 blogs all look like mainstream media, with a team of writers, photographers, and editors. ..... the iPhone has resulted in 400% increase in uploads to YouTube ..... he’s slowed down on blogging and increased his activity in Twitter and Friendfeed ..... he’s losing his thought leadership, his voice is lost in the noise

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Are You A Fonero?

I have been following the universal, wireless broadband vision furiously at this blog over the months. First Wimax, then xMax, but someone has come up with an idea that goes over the curve for its simplicity and practicability. And I read about that in the news earlier today, and only an hour earlier I ended up doing a technorati search on my Nepal blog, and it appeared that some Rebecca Mackinnon has been linking to my blog posts quite a lot, and from a respectable, experimental Harvard blog too. So I googled her, found her email address and emailed her to say thanks: all that helps the movement back there, I said. Then I proceeded to read a little of her, and bam, there she was, she sits on the board of this hot company.

My friend Martin Varsavsky has just made an exciting announcement: his new Wifi startup, FON, has received investment and backing from Google , Skype, Sequoia Capital, and Index Ventures. ........ (Disclosure: I am a member of FON's U.S. board of advisors) ......... Three months after Martin launched FON on his blog, the $21.7 million dollars worth of funding shows tremendous support for FON's vision: a global community of people who share WiFi connections, known as "Foneros" in a tribute to the company's Spanish origins.

Wow. This is quite circuitous, don't you think?

RConversation
RConversation: Microsoft takes down Chinese blogger
Techjournalism News :
Rebecca MacKinnon
North Korea zone
Rebecca MacKinnon - Berkman Center for Internet & Society
North Korea zone
IT Conversations: Newbies - Bloggercon III
Blogging, Journalism and Credibility
CJR Daily: Rebecca MacKinnon, Pretend Tourist No More

FON In The News

Speakeasy: No deal with FON, despite what FON says Seattle Post Intelligencer
Google, Skype Make Wi-Fi FON Red Herring
FON Raises $22 Million for Open Wi-Fi Access Sharing Converge Network Digest
FON Raises $21.7M Light Reading
Fon takes Freenet cue for WiFi hot spot plan Globe and Mail, Canada

02/07/06 1:45 AM Update. I just saw someone on the FON Board who I have met personally when the guy was running for New York City Public Advocate. We had a brief conversation at the MeetUp.com headquarters hosted by Scott, the CEO. (Social Networking: Where The Internet Comes Down From The Clouds, MeetUp, LinkUp)

Andew Rasiej is the Founder and current Chairman of MOUSE. He has also served on the New York City Board of Education’s task force on technology and has spearheaded several innovative projects that support efforts to bridge the "Digital Divide" in public education. He truly believes in the need for WiFi as a way to empower citizens to do more then connect to the internet and read email.

Rebecca MacKinnon was one of CNN’s youngest Bureau Chiefs (China, fluent in Chinese), named as a Global Leaders of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum. She left CNN and became a fellow at Harvard’s Berkmen Center and founded Global Voices with Ethan Zuckerman.



2:33 AM Update: Browsing around I bumped into this: WiFi Phone. In the works. It's all coming together: the chips are falling in place. The Skype people have funded FON, and Netgear is to carry Skype. The dots are connecting. (Internet Phones, Video Blogging, Nano)