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Intuit to Acquire Demandforce for $424MM
This morning, Intuit announced its agreement to acquire one of Benchmark’s portfolio companies, Demandforce, for $424mm. As with Instagram, Benchmark Capital is the largest institutional investor in Demandforce. Unlike Instagram, which is a consumer application and is extremely well known, Demandforce focuses on local professional businesses and has chosen to keep an intentionally low profile [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 13 so far )Understanding Why Netflix Changed Pricing
Many journalists have offered their opinion on Netflix’s recent changes, its stock price decline, and their even more recent branding changes (Qwikster). Yet in each article, it appears as if the journalist all agree that the price move (creating separate prices for streaming and DVDs) was a bad strategic move. As an example, Techcrunch notes: “Raising prices for those of [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 146 so far )Google’s Acquires ITA: Will Deeper Vertical Integration Lead to Higher Revenues?
“It’s funny how fallin feels like flyin, for a little while…” – Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart Soundtrack On July 1st, Google announced its intention to acquire ITA Software. ITA owns a primarily B2B airfare search and pricing system called QPX. Several of the leading online travel sites, like Orbitz, Kayak, and Bing Travel, use information [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 18 so far )When It Comes to Television Content, Affiliate Fees Make the World Go ‘Round
“The clock on the wall’s moving slower My heart it sinks to the ground And the storm that I thought would blow over Clouds the light of the love that I found” – Fool in the Rain, Led Zeppelin More often than not, we here in Silicon Valley are prone to idealism. We see a [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 84 so far )Want To Know More About the Future of Internet TV?: Let’s Look to Korea
[Follow Me on Twitter] We are clearly at a very important point in time when it comes to Internet video, especially video that is served to your television, but over the Internet (also known as “over-the-top” Internet video). Christmas of 2009 and Christmas of 2010 will mark the point in time that Internet menus began [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 10 so far )Bill Gurley on the “Free” Business Model
I have been intrigued by the back and forth between Chris Anderson, Malcolm Gladwell, and Mark Cuban on the topic of “Free” as a strategy and business model. For those that haven’t read the articles and posts, I highly reccomend them all. Here they are in a list: 1) Back in February of 2008, Chris [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 66 so far )Bill Gurley’s Online Video Market Snapshot
I recently spoke at AlwaysOn’s OnHollywood conference on the subject of today’s extremely dynamic online/Internet video world. Things are moving so amazingly fast that its extremely hard to predict specific outcomes. That said, I believe there are a number of critical issues to understand as we watch this market unfold over the next few years. [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 4 so far )Perfect Online Video Advertising Model: Choose Your Advertiser
Many companies and visionaries have pontificated about the future of video ads and different techniques for monetizing online videos. A big part of this is driven by the fact that while YouTube is a huge user success, its a less proven monetization success. On a recent trip to NYC, an idea came up which I can’t get [...]
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