| Silicon Alley Insider
"I believe it should be possible to start a small business and to have a small number of profitable customers, and to earn a living. From there, it should be possible to work hard, and to grow your business into something substantial. Until recently, this was the American way, and it applied to technology as much as to any other business. But no more."
In a contracting U.S. economy, venture capitalists are in the somewhat awkward position of sitting on billions of investment dollars with fewer opportunities to strike it rich. The question is whether VCs will hold tighter to their purse strings.
Coffee may cut the risk of dementia by blocking the damage cholesterol can inflict on the body, research suggests.
YES!!!
by Erick Schonfeld | TechCrunch
"Adeo Ressi, the founder of TheFunded, the invite-only community for venture-funded CEOs to compare notes about building startups and bitch about VCs" offers terrific advice to anyone looking for Venture Capital.
The Art of Designing Markets
By Alvin E. Roth [via] scribd
Roth says "thanks to a new branch of economics, business can create markets where there were none or fix them or fix them when they go wrong."
| Silicon Alley Insider
"What happens when IPOs stop and M&As slow down? Maybe, just maybe, investors start worrying about shoveling more cash into startups. A new study (PDF) says that angel became more cautious last year be, while a different survey says confidence among venture investors fell to its lowest level in the past four years during Q4 2007."
Written by Carleen Hawn for FoundRead
Serial founder Tony Wright recently launched RescueTime and shares with F/R what he learned from the yCombinator experience.
Educators Corner: John Doerr, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (video after jump)
John Doerr, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, talks about what distinguishes successful companies from all others. The two main factors are passionate founders and devotion to technical excellence.
by Benjamin Yoskovitz, Standout Jobs
"Hiring at startups is hard. You’re swamped, running in a ton of different directions and don’t necessarily have a big budget set aside for recruiting. But hiring top talent at startups is essential. You can’t afford to hire anything but A-players. Sadly, too few startups dedicate the time needed to recruit properly."
by
Redeye VC: A view of the startup ecosystem from a coastally challenged VC.
"I don't know.
Why is it so hard for people (including both entrepreneurs and VCs) to say these three words?"
The Princeton Review & Entrepreneurs 5th Annual ranking of top undergraduate and graduate programs for entrepreneurship.
[via] Young Entrepreneur www.youngentrepreneur.com
"What are the common mistakes that new entrepreneurs make and how can you avoid making them yourself? Here is our top 10 list of mistakes people make when starting a business:"
Catastrophic collapses and classic crashes in the high-tech business world.
By Inside CRM Editors November 19, 2007
"Some things were just never meant to be, but that doesn't mean that investors won't pile millions of dollars upon a bad idea — or even a good idea gone bad."
By David in Startup Information
"Let’s begin by dissecting the title “Venture Capitalist”… Here’s a description from our good friend, Wikipedia:
Venture capital is a type of private equity capital typically provided by professional, outside investors to new, growth businesses. Venture capital investments are generally made as cash in exchange for shares in the invested company. A venture capitalist (VC) is a person who makes such investments."
ScienceDaily (Apr. 1, 2008) — "Smart business leaders understand that confidence affects decision-making and ultimately a company's earnings. But giving employees positive feedback in the hopes of promoting better decisions sometimes can backfire, suggests new research from the psychology department and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the London Business School."
by John | JohnNdege.com
"Yesterday I shut down my startup. We were unable to achieve what we wanted. I probably wouldn’t have got this far and learnt so much if it wasn’t for hacker news, so here’s me giving some startup advice back to the community."
“In my view, entrepreneurial judgment is the ability to tell the difference between a situation that’s not working but persistence and iteration will ultimately prove it out, versus a situation that’s not working and additional effort is a destructive waste of time and radical change is necessary….[this] is one of the main reasons starting a company is so hard.”
by Michael Arrington | TechCrunch
"TheFunded, a site where entrepreneurs can leave anonymous feedback about their experiences with venture capitalists, has created quite a stir on Sand Hill Road."
"Three years ago, Peter Thiel, who runs a small venture-capital concern called Founders Fund, plowed $500,000 into a little-known social-networking Web site called Facebook Inc. Later on, his company invested a bit more."
By Dominic White - Telegraph.co.uk
"Web 2.0 is producing a new wave of entrepreneurs with London acting as the epicentre for most of the developments. Dominic White looks at who might be the leaders of the new generation"
Posted on March 29th, 2008 on HiveLogic
"I’ve been thinking a lot about offices and work environments recently. A lot of people are getting interested in the coworking phenomenon."
The SimpleBits office. Photo by Dan Cederholm.
By DONNA BOGATIN • STARTUP CHATTER
"Blogging VCs public rating of entrepreneurs’ (supposedly) confidential pitch sessions are often entertaining, but generally unfulfilling."
