Venture Capital
Why Facebook Clearly Belongs in the 10X Revenue Club
Attached are my thoughts on the Facebook S-1 along with some quick stabs at valuation. Brief disclosure, Benchmark Capital has a minority position in Facebook as a result of the acquisition of FriendFeed, a company that was incubated in our offices. I thought it would be useful to look at Facebook using the scorecard from our [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 49 so far )All Revenue is Not Created Equal: The Keys to the 10X Revenue Club
[Follow Me on Twitter] “ Don’t you know that you are a shooting star, And all the world will love you just as long, As long as you are.” – Paul Rodgers, Shooting Star With the IPO market now blown wide-open, and the media completely infatuated with frothy trades in the bubbly late stage private market, [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 87 so far )Silicon Valley’s IPO Anxiety
[Follow Me on Twitter] “Living in the limelight The universal dream For those who wish to seem. Those who wish to be Must put aside the alienation, Get on with the fascination…” — Limelight from Moving Pictures, Rush If you could travel back in time to the early 1990’s and ask Silicon Valley’s top entrepreneurs [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 51 so far )Android or iPhone? Wrong Question
[Follow Me on Twitter] In a recent New York Times article, Kathryn Huberty, a Morgan Stanley analyst was quoted suggesting that Apple’s iPhone is the key catalyst for an important new technology trend. “Applications make the smartphone trend a revolutionary trend – one we haven’t seen in consumer technology for many years.” This argument rings [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 154 so far )What Is Really Happening to the Venture Capital Industry?
[Follow Me on Twitter] Many are speculating that the year two thousand and nine represents a fundamental turning point for the venture capital industry. Some are arguing that the industry is in dire straits after years of poor performance. Others have argued that the math simply does not work for the industry’s current size. Another theory suggests that permanent challenges with the IPO [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 110 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 )Note To Timothy Geithner: Do Startups & Venture Capitalists Really Need More Regulation?
Mr. Geithner: In the late 1990′s, in response to the obvious financial shenanigans of large companies like Enron, Tyco, and WorldCom, Washington handed us the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. I have no idea how effective Sarbanes has been at reducing fraud (it obviously did not prevent our current economic malaise), but I do know one thing. Sarbox created [...]
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