Above the Crowd

[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, it is common to see articles that reference both “ valuation ” and “ revenue ” and suggest that there is a correlation between the two. Calculating or qualifying potential valuation using the simplistic and crude tool of a revenue multiple (also known as the price/revenue or price/sales ratio) was quite […]

“Little Joe never once gave it away Everybody had to pay and pay”                   — Lou Reed, Walk on the Wild Side The consensus seems to be that social networks have a monetization problem.  On this topic, both the leading technology industry blogs  and the world’s top news organizations  agree.  The problem is not that these sites have no revenue.   I “guesstimate” that MySpace and Facebook have annual revenue run-rates of approximately $650mm and $450mm respectively – highly reputable numbers.  The perceived problem relates directly to revenue per user or page view, as these are two of the most heavily trafficked sites on the […]