Another reason why most European VC’s are so...

I was reading a very interesting article in Redherring about a so-called venture capital firm, the London-based Tempo Capital Partners. I say so-called because of its business model. Instead of investing to capital-needy, high-growth potential start-ups, Tempo buys the leftovers from other venture firms. Tempo is not the only company in this space, rather it is indicative of the entire European VC market. What is so interesting...

Get your message out cheaply...

Few very smart start-ups are beginning to use YouTube during pre-launch. What they are doing is releasing a video or two that demonstrates the product or service. There is even a potential added bonus. If you can create video that is fun to watch, you can generate that viral tide-wave as people pass your video around and around. This is a guerilla marketing technique that will certainly become more mainstream.

An update to my old technique...

So you have an idea for a new high priced newsletter or magazine. You can line up your writers and editors, rent some facilities and then try to line up the financing before you go totally broke. Then you spend months creating the first issue. All this time you have no idea if anyone will really buy it. Well that is certainly one way to enter the publishing business. However, a smarter way may be this. You develop the...

Typical Engineers...

If you are not creating value, you are destroying it. A Facebook deal may happen any day now for $1 billion plus. YouTube got taken out last week by Google of $1.65 billion. MySpace was taken out last year by Murdoch for an estimated $560 million, but its recently estimated value is upwards of $15 billion. What about the site that was one of the pioneers of Web 2.0, Friendster? As early as 2002 Friendster founder Abrams...