Morpheus describes itself as “a gang of serial entrepreneurs and around 40 startup founders” who are “trying to make a small contribution towards India’s startup revolution.” The venture aims to fill the gap in early-stage financing with a decidedly hands-on approach. Is it a fund, an angel network, or an incubator? Are these labels even still…
Twitter and Facebook Investment Terms and Game Plans
There is a lot of chatter in the blogosphere about the recent $100 million investment in Twitter at a $1 billion valuation, but most of it based on speculation. Twitter and Facebook are private companies. You cannot get the facts simply by typing a stock symbol into Yahoo Finance. Our mission at ReadWriteWeb is to add to the facts, not just the…
Trading Scarcity: Is This the Killer App for the Real-Time Web?
Most platforms gain traction through a killer app. In the second generation of real time, that killer app was market data for financial traders. What will it be in the third generation?
Today, the real-time Web is associated with social networking status updates via services such as Twitter and Facebook. But whether this will be the killer app for…
T-Mobile’s Effective and Quietly Disruptive Wi-Fi Phone
There are those old-fashioned folks who still prefer to talk by phone, believing that “synchronous audio communication” is sometimes better than email or even – gasp – Twitter. The problem is cost, particularly for those not tethered to a land line or a laptop with Skype. Paying for 1,000 cell phone minutes per month is not exactly…
Where Is the Real-Time Web Message Bus?
Real-time computing is not new. This is the third generation of real-time:
• First generation: was done on a single processor, usually for process control in military systems.
• Second generation: within a Local Area Network, usually for a financial trading room.
• Third generation: applied across the whole Web/Internet, what…
VC Series A Web Tech Deals in August
Today is the anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse, which triggered the financial meltdown. That was when ReadWriteWeb started tracking Series A deals in Web technology. Thanks to our partner ChubbyBrain, we can now do this reliably and easily. Executive summary for August: down from July, with seed deals very weak. Analysis: decadent…
Do You Speak Global Innovation?
We at ReadWriteWeb believe that innovation is a global business (as we noted in an earlier post on the Global Innovation Graph). The “death of distance” – the notion that the Internet makes location irrelevant – may be an exaggeration. Face to face always matters, and that will happen where hubs of expertise and capital emerge. Silicon Valley…
Congratulations! What’s Next?
This is one post/chapter in a serialized book called Startup 101. For the introduction and table of contents, please click here.
You did it all: you built a valuable venture and sold it. The contract was signed… finally! The wire transfer came through. You are wealthy. Congratulations! So, what’s next?
Why even think about that ahead of time…
When and How Founders Should Hire a Professional CEO
This is one post/chapter in a serialized book called Startup 101. For the introduction and table of contents, please click here.
There are two schools of thought about founders as CEOs. One school says that founders rarely make good CEOs: the skill sets are simply different. The founders may make more money in the end, but they need to hire…
Bits of Destruction Hit the Book Publishing Business: Part 4
In this fourth part of our investigation into the ongoing changes in the book publishing business, we look at the author’s point of view. What are they getting today? What would they like to get? What can they reasonably expect to get as this drama unfolds? Authors are the creative juice of the whole eco-system. If they don’t create material that…
The Real-Time Web Is Not Hype: We Are All Traders Now
Hype cycles, like all cycles, are getting shorter. People want to be the first to say, “You heard it here first, folks: this or that hot thing you hear about all the time is a bunch of hot air.”
We love to debunk myths and prick bubbles as much as the next set of pundits, but we think the real-time Web is for real. Financial traders have lived…
Planning Your Exit
This is one post/chapter in a serialized book called Startup 101. For the introduction and table of contents, please click here.
If you have raised money from investors, you will need to sell the company at some point for them to get a financial return. It’s simple: if you don’t want to sell your company, then don’t raise external equity…
VC Series A Web Tech Deals in July
We have been tracking Series A deals in Web technology since the market mayhem in October 2008, and since May we have been working with ChubbyBrain, which tracks this kind of data full-time. Early-stage funding is important for the whole economy, so we decided to report every month, not waiting for quarterly data. The executive summary for July…
Who Has the Right VC Numbers and Who Cares?
We started tracking VC funding in October 2008, as the financial markets were melting. What caught our eye in those dark and gloomy days was True Ventures’ announcement of its Series A investment in Syncplicity. The more we looked, the more we found that the headlines were wrong. It was not all doom and gloom, not in our corner of the universe…
Maintain Focus, Health, and Passion During the Grind-It-Out Phase
This is one post/chapter in a serialized book called Startup 101. For the introduction and table of contents, please click here.
When you first start out, you will find it amazing that anyone will even listen attentively to your idea. Then, someone actually investing money at all in your venture seems extraordinary. When your first revenue comes…
How to Scale Without Losing Your Shirt
This is one post/chapter in a serialized book called Startup 101. For the introduction and table of contents, please click here.
There comes a time for every venture when the owners have to decide whether hockey-stick-like growth is feasible or not. In your initial plan, you indicated a sudden surge in revenue at a certain point in time, i.e…
Three Steps to Building an Online Brand
This is one post/chapter in a serialized book called Startup 101. For the introduction and table of contents, please click here.
The three steps to building an online brand are:
1. Look good,
2. Get noticed,
3. Build trust.
In the long run, only the last one matters. Enron’s logo was just fine, and it got noticed, but on that last count…
The ReadWriteWeb Q2 2009 VC Funding Report
We’re excited to announce the availability of ReadWriteWeb’s Q2 2009 VC Funding Report, our second premium report powered by data from ChubbyBrain. We have been tracking early-stage investment in Internet, mobile and SaaS since the financial crisis in September 2008 and we believe that this report is unlike anything else you’ve seen. Investors…
Who Is Pouring Enterprise Weedkiller and Why?
At the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, one question I asked all vendors was about their sales model. Were they relying on grassroots adoption, one click at a time, letting the software do the talking, not employing any sales people? Or did they follow the tried and true model of mixing inside sales (telephone, qualifying, small deals) and big-game…
InterWest Partners: Investing in Enterprise SaaS
We recently spoke with Bruce Cleveland at InterWest Partners. Bruce has been part of InterWest’s IT team since 2006, focusing on investments in the software and services sector, with an emphasis on software as a service (SaaS) and analytical applications. He is a board member of Cloud9 Analytics, Marketo, Right90, and Signal Demand. Prior to…