Voices - Blogs

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So much for those “four bad bears”, it would see. As of this past week the recovery from the lows of the current financial crisis has surpassed the recoveries of its three nominal predecessors; [via Dshort]

On a purchasing-power parity basis, emerging markets are set to account for more than half of global growth, for the first time ever.

Good, lengthy interview with ISI's Ed Hyman:

Some links from my weekly Weekend Reading column over at TheStreet. M&A to see serious uptick in 2010 (IDD) Asset Bubbles and Market Crises (JoI) The perils of the world economy's Great Stabilisation (The Economist) Credit Derivatives Are Not 'Insurance' (SSRN) The Great Depression Analogy (NBER) Lessons from the Great American Real Estate Boom and Bust of the 1920s (NBER)

Bijan wrote a good post yesterday called We Gotta Do A Deal Together in which he outlined the common practice of VC's showing each other investment opportunities. That's how I got to know Bijan. He showed us Tumblr. And we...

Published a new post: Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-12-13 http://cli.gs/BzN2R # Published a new post: Internet T’s & C’s – do we have a problem? http://cli.gs/ysqeP # Published a new post: The best companies are analytical http://cli.gs/6hULQ # Published a new post: Your help with a new strapline for DFJ Esprit http://cli.gs/mBeX6 # Thanks everyone for all the input [...]

If you’re new to Twitter, you might be wondering about the basics types of people on the services. I explained the six types over at the American Express Open Forum.

Over at the American Express Open Forum, I provided a list of my favorite applications. Check out the list if you want to see what makes me tick.

One of the things Start Ups usually excel at is support. It is one of those weirdly inverse things I've seen over the years. A one or two person company goes nuts with respect to support, answering emails around the clock, sending out compiled fresh...

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© Lars Plougmann So, you think you've got the venture capital world figured out. You've got your own startup company and you're thinking of dipping your toes into the VC waters... Well you might be in for a rude awakening. Entrepreneur.com just published a short list of myths about venture capital funding that you need to consider before you make the plunge. For example, you may think that you can take VC funding and still retain control of your own company.Entrepreneurs who are ...

mobile gaming - an introduction at TJ's Weblog "Bigger than Hollywood"- that is how people describe the video-game industry according to a recent Economist article. Online gaming is the newest opportunity to bring interactive games to consumers. Consumers like games as they seemingly ...

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Nice graphic from my friends at WeatherTrends of the looming storm in the U.S. northeast. The storm before Christmas, as it were, with some heavy accumulations.

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A new Senate bill that just passed committee would drive the creation of more science parks around the U.S. Specifically, the bill would allow the Secretary of Commerce to guarantee up to 80% (!) of loans over $10m for the construction of science parks. Whoa, good thing that. After all, we don't have nearly enough vacant office space in the U.S. Rates are only running at a near-record 16.5% (according to Reis), with many cities at 25% vacancy and higher. And commercial real estate loans extant are merely teetering and threatening to bring down the regional banking system, so adding a few million more square feet will just give the system a helpful shove into complete insolvency. I get that Olymia Snowe and Mark Pryor want to be helpful and create legislation to drive innovation. And I get that building science parks is fun and cool and way easier than actually doing science. So I understand the temptation entirely. But are you people completely mad? What are you thinking by adding...

Repost of my post at Nivi and Naval's great VentureHacks. Every entrepreneur should get VentureHacks for Christmas. There is a behaviour I witness in some first-time CEO's that I meet, not necessarily the younger and more mavericky generation, that I do not think is necessary nor helpful. It's an insidious but frequent tendency to let the board decide rather than advise or approve. It goes like this: Because VC's have blocking rights on some important decisions (approving the budget, your comp, raising money), they are often able to wield way more power than their 20% ownership would suggest they should...

Speaking of KPIs, our favourite eCommerce guru Michael Ross just published a really useful article on the best KPIs for eCommerce companies. What I like about Michael's approach is that it brings together best practice from the worlds of online...

Lightspeed has invested across several cleantech areas, including solar (Stion), biofuels (LS9, Solazyme), clean coal (Coaltek), LED lighting (Exclara), and energy storage (Leyden Energy, f/k/a Mobius Power). Peter Nieh and I (Andrew Chung) teamed up again this year to make a few predictions about cleantech in 2010 (see our prior year predictions for 2009 and 2008): 1. [...]

As Dave Winer has been pointing out in recent weeks, there is something quite interesting happening in the blogging/microblogging world. First WordPress allowed posting and reading wordpress blogs via the Twitter API. Then yesterday our portfolio company Tumblr did the...

Regular readers will know I see the iPhone/app store as a passing phase in mobile, a step on the way to a web paradigm equivalent to what we have on the PC.  One of the big questions is how long this current phase lasts and with the momentum of the iPhone and the rush by [...]

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Overhead while I was hanging out with a bunch of start-up folks: Her: "How was your holiday party last night?" Other her: "It was pretty good. We invited the VCs but they didn't show up so we really did have a great party, we could...

One of the displays that the smart meter PG&E installed in my home last month is a voltage display, which shows the total system voltage entering my structure from the power pole. This number fluctuates by 5-7 volts each day, which got me mildly curious but it was the supposed accuracy of the meter that [...]

This week the NY Times explores how failing to pass health reform will have an impact on innovation -- and archetypal Silicon Valley startups. In the cradle of American innovation, workers are making career choices based on co-payments, pre-existing conditions...

Is having the soundest banks in the world something to brag about? I'm not convinced. Bear with me on this, as I'm semi-serious. Think of it this way: You certainly don't want the least sound banks in the world. Those are disastrously unhelpful in doing anything useful in a modern economy. The list of such bad bank [ed., the other kind of bad banks] countries is currently led by Algeria, Libya, Lesotho, Kyrgyz Republic and East Timor. You end up with bank failures and lousy credit, loans, consumer accounts, etc. It's the worst of both worse worlds. You don't even want average banks. We're terrible at assessing bank risks, so being of average soundness is only another way of saying that the fuse is lit, but we just don't know how long it is. Banks in the middle of the pack aren't really in the middle of the pack; they're actually languishing at the back if you take a long enough view. So, do we want the soundest banks, in some Consumer Reports of soundness sense? The appeal is obvious,...

You know the expression “It’s tough to soar with eagles when you are surrounded by turkeys.“ Well, its even tougher when you are even lower – as in swimming with crabs at the bottom of the pond. In the last...

Yesterday my pal Tom Raftery posted about PG&E’s smart meter rollout in California and problems customers were experiencing, and he featured some comments that I made during a phone conversation we had. “It seems that PG&E’s smart grid rollout is woefully under-resourced at the back-end. What PG&E should have is a system where customers [...]