Blog entries written by Anthony Dale Kuhn
| Dow Jones VentureSource: "2008 was the slowest year from VC-backed liquidity events since 2003" | |||
| Written by Anthony Dale Kuhn | |||
| VentureBeat.com : From a press release by Dow Jones VentureSource: "2008 was the slowest year from VC-backed liquidity events since 2003, according to new data from Dow Jones VentureSource. The year saw only $24.1 billion in IPO and M&A exit value, which was down 58% from the $57.6 billion produced in 2007. This included a fourth quarter without a single IPO." There might be some pockets of VC investment that are somewhat resistant to this downward trend, but it's obvious that the forecast for exits and IPOs in the coming months, and maybe even years, is grim. Find out more facts and figures by reading 2008: Worst VC-Backed Liquidity Year Since 2003 . FutureLab.net : Sure, people like to munch on monkey bars, aka bananas, for a healthy, potassium-rich snack that won't strain their budget or waistline, but what about the on-the-go consumer who might want to buy a ripe, yummy Chiquita banana at their local quick food joint? Chris Lawer reports on a very successful program to meet this exact, and previously unfulfilled, demand in How to Innovate the Banana . After a deep look at where there might be customer "banana jobs" that were not being met, Chiquita arrive at the conclusion that people wanted in their yellow food items any time and every where. "With the opportunity for the 'snacking whilst on-the-go' job precisely identified and validated, and with the help of Gen3 Partners Inc., a Boston firm, Chiquita found a way to keep individual bananas fresher longer so they could be sold in more locations, not just at supermarkets." A new space-age packaging material was found and hand-selected, perfectly ripe bananas could now be delivered to impulse-buying health food eaters anywhere. In The Line of Wire : Guy Kawasaki is the featured entrepreneur in a recent blog post highlighting the "then-and-now" of startups. The video of Kawasaki speaking to a group of Stanford engineers is classic Guy and worth the 10 minutes it takes to watch. Guy gives a multi-point recipe for success and wraps up the proceedings nicely by urging would-be entrepreneurs to do something grand and not just something that is 10 percent better than what already exists. Check out Entrepreneurship - then and now! for a much-needed booster to sagging start-up confidence levels. As an example of how we arrived at the bankruptcy of the American dream, the Wall Street Journal 's Would You Pay $103,000 for This Arizona Fixer-Upper? can't be beat. Although it seems impossible to believe, the owner of a shack purchased for a few thousand dollars was eventually given multiple equity loans, which were then bought and sold in the derivative investment market after being tranched to within an inch of its life, and because it was such a highly-rated, and therefor safe, investment, the derivative eventually became part of the bubble. The article reports: "Thus was Ms. Halterman's diminutive blue house tossed into the immense sea of mortgage-backed securities that would eventually imperil the U.S. financial system. Some $4.1 trillion in American mortgages were put into securities such as these between 2005 and 2006, including $1.6 trillion in subprime or other high-risk home loans, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, a trade publication." Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction and in this case, much sadder. In a related piece at Clusterstock , Michael Lewis and David Einhorn take on the mortgage derivative problem and suggest a number of ways to help fix it via their NY Times contributions. The articles featured are a truly mind-boggling and unsettling, but honest, reckoning of the choices made and the depths eventually plumbed with a hearty recommendation that the SEC-Wall Street connection be forever severed if there is any hope of avoiding such a calamity in future times. " Close the revolving door between the S.E.C. and Wall Street. At every turn we keep coming back to an enormous barrier to reform: Wall Street’s political influence. Its influence over the S.E.C. is further compromised by its ability to enrich the people who work for it. Realistically, there is only so much that can be done to fix the problem, but one measure is obvious: forbid regulators, for some meaningful amount of time after they have left the S.E.C., from accepting high-paying jobs with Wall Street firms." There is a fair call for allowing things to flow the other way, with the idea to fill a few key Cabinet posts under President Obama with successful traders who have tested their meddle over time to assist in crafting a fiscally-responsible policy to start the country on the road to recovery. | |||
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| 2008: The Year In Open Source | |||
| Written by Anthony Dale Kuhn | |||
| ArsTechnica.com : Ryan Paul takes us on a there-and-back retrospective journey featuring open source successes in A look back at the open source victories of 2008 . It's easy enough to review what's happened, but the oft-maligned practice of accurately predicting what's to come is much, much harder. Paul foretells of the political ramifications of open source operating systems: "Although the coming year will bring many exciting new developments, there will be some challenges as well. The ongoing debate about how to bring freedom to the cloud will intensify and become more urgent as more users turn to web-based applications. The role of the open source software community in civic and political issues will become more pronounced, too. The principles of software freedom can make a difference in many critical areas, including national security and election integrity." Can the people's software usher in a new age of equality and good vibes for all or will it create a mish-mash of non-interoperable programs that complicate already tenuous functionality? TechFlash : From the Pacific Northwest viewpoint, things are looking mighty sparse in venture capital for the coming year. Seattle's John Cook provides more details of this dark premonition: "[A]ll of this news presents a nightmare scenario for venture capitalists which rely on IPOs and M&As for returns. Without returns, VCs will have a much tougher time raising money when they attempt to hit the well in the next fund-raising cycle." And because many investors in such ventures have less capacity for risk there will be less money searching for the large, long-term results yielded by VCs in years past. 1/2 percent savings rates and in some cases, negative returns on bonds, are de riguer these days for those who have felt the deep sting of crashing markets and less appetite for losing more. Check out A bleak time for venture capital which includes a snapshot of the past year's VC environment that only reinforces the negative in an already depressing situation. The Frisky : Things are tough all over, no doubt. One German entrepreneur is struggling to launch his branded condom line which might land on the far side of good taste. In a shortish piece , Catherine dishes the dirt: "A German entrepreneur is applying for a federal trademark to use the Freedom Tower to market a line of condoms. His proposed slogan is 'Freedom Tower: Make Love Not War.' Clearly this guy lacks originality; he stole his product name from the main building in the new World Center Complex that has yet to be completed, and he borrowed the tagline from the ‘60s anti-war movement. Relatives of Sept. 11 victims are understandably upset, and the Port Authority, who owns the Freedom Tower, is scrambling to block his use of the name." There are other buildings that might stand in for the Twin Towers' replacement should the Port Authority successfully block the efforts to combine condoms and bad taste. BusinessWeek.com - NEXT Column : Would you believe that non-toxic water can be turned into very effective cleaning products? One global hotel giant does and uses an innovative method to turn water into a veritable goldmine of sanitary solutions. Michael Arndt reports on the technology at work behind this miraculous alchemy: "First you dump salt into tub of regular tap water. Then you zap it with low-voltage electricity. This splits up the sodium and chlorine that make up salt. The chlorine side because hypochlorous acid, which is a more powerful sanitizer than bleach. The sodium side becomes sodium hydroxide, a detergent-quality alkaline. You use a membrane to separate the two. And that's it, except that Electrolyzer has patented a process that allows both products to remain potent for up to three months." The Hyatt chain of hotels has been using the products in its flagship Chicago location for over a year and found the water-based liquids both save them money and work better than the noxious chemicals they replace. Read Water Works: Hyatt's New Disinfectant/Cleaner Comes from the Tap for the rest of the story. A recent Voice of America editorial makes the case for intellectual property protection that should at least get a few people thinking about what it means to enforce IP laws and help developing countries to their best to put strong foundations under their growing innovation efforts. Strong IPR protection and enforcement ensure inventors, creators and other risk-takers can be rewarded for their ingenuity and investment in innovation. To thrive, knowledge-based industries rely on the protection of innovation, creativity, cultural diversity and technological development. Protecting and enforcing intellectual property rights helps to drive long term economic development by stimulating job growth in primary and supporting industries, and increases in work force skill development. Not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars in profits lost by the companies that own counterfeited products and the additional loss of tax income by the host countries of the IP holders. To find out a bit more, just click through to the aptly-named Protecting Intellectual Property . | |||
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| News For The New Year | |||
| Written by Anthony Dale Kuhn | |||
| A quick list of 5 noteworthy articles you should read: Tales of Woe From Small Business Execs by Peter Galuszka at The Corner Office . Marissa Mayer's 2009 Resolution: Leave Google at Valley Wag by Owen Thomas. IPOs Usually Take Longer To Realize Than M&A by Mark Peter Davis at get venture . Ten Tiny Things Every Small Business Owner Should Do in 2009 by Guy Kawasaki at Open Forum . Innovation Agenda (Part Three): What’s Wrong with Law School? by Susan Beck at The Am Law Daily . Happy New Year and may the coming year bring you health, wealth and happiness! | |||
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