Formula - low cost, sell first, take innovation risk and run marathon

There is no ideal profile. Entrepreneurs can be gregarious or taciturn, analytical or intuitive, cautious or daring - Amar Bhide
Never met him personally but I have been following Sridhar Vembu’s companies for quite some time. First time in 2003, during my first startup project (AssuredWeb). Back then I was amazed by the business model of [...]

Valuation is a state of mind

I must say this must be the most positive statement I have heard in recent time:
“Companies always need to separate valuation from strategic and performance issues, and this is obviously a valuation we need to grow into and we hope we will, But we know it is an aggressive valuation.” - Jim Breyer.
[Hat tip [...]

Google is in the business of boldness and quirkiness

Google is definitely on an outstanding trajectory. It’s stock hit $600 last week prompting NYT columnist Steve Lohr to lay out all the growing risks ahead of Google. His main question - “Can anything stop the ascent of Google’s stock?”.
As if too much of a success has to be a cause of concern. Is it [...]

Shhh Meme-cops are watching you

You can’t just monkey around anymore!
Dave Winer says people who are using “social graph” term are sounding like monkey.
In the wonderful echo-chamber called Silicon Valley there are some fine folks who need to wield baton and show everybody what meme-cops are capable of.

To begin with, Brad you cannot  conceptualize anything in the public space [...]

First big Facebook application acquisition

Inside Facebook has the scoop on TripAdvisor acquiring Where I’ve Been for a whopping $3 million.
Having followed all the hoopla around F8 right from the begining I can say this is a beginning of a new type of startup building. Call it Startup-dgets (along the lines of widgets and pronounced like startup-jets). Speed of [...]

Albert Camus please visit Silicon Valley

I know he is long dead but Silicon Valley can use Albert Camus genius right now. There is lot going on here which will make for an interesting existential drama.
Filthy rich as compared to 99% of the world, but still managing to carry everyday concerns which can put Communist era Soviet citizens to shame. [...]

Blackout info first hit Twitter

I was about to go into meeting with a customer only to find that he wont be able to make it due to power outage.
I checked on Technorati about the blackout but there wasn’t anything there.
I checked on Twitter, there were lot of near-real time messages about the outage. Infact in a very creative [...]

Parakey goes to Facebook

Justin Smith has a breaking news about Facebook acquiring Parakey:
Just received word from Facebook that the company has made its first acquisition: Parakey, a startup founded by Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt, co-founders of Mozilla Firefox.  Ross and Hewitt will join Facebook immediately to work on the Facebook Platform.
I have been following [...]

From publish-or-perish to blog-or-perish

[This post is in response to this post. I could have just emailed Steve but hey blog rebuttal is the new in-thing]
Silicon Valley is full of visionaries, pundits and geeks. Lot of these folks provide good enough reason for lot of people to live here and be a part of the guess-the-next-big-thing game. I do [...]

So much breathlessness for Yahoo announcement

So Terry Semel stepped down and rightly so. Business of media is now a business of technology so it makes strong sense to have technology guru at the top.
Jerry Yang has stepped in to fill in Semel’s place. To me this is a great news as Yahoo will now have geek at the top and [...]