Go to Source: Vesting in general (and founder vesting in particular) is an oft-misunderstood tool that has a tendency to really screw up young companies.? There are some deep misconceptions at work here that often cause founders all sorts of grief.? Most of it comes from the simple fact that stock grants are, at their

Go to Source: Like many in tech, I believe all software patents should be abolished. That said, I think Facebook made the right move by filing a lawsuit against Yahoo's patent attack. As I see it, Facebook had 4 choices: - Settle. Given their pending IPO, this would have been the easiest route. But, by

See original post at cdixon.org – chris dixon's blog: Companies that employ the "freemium" business model give away a product or service for free and then charge for additional features. The freemium model has gotten more popular as the cost to deliver free services has dropped but the cost of employing sales and marketing people...

See original post at BRYCE DOT VC: Tuesday a video surfaced that inspired the online world. The reactions I saw from many across my social networks were of awe and a longing to achieve their own dreams of human flight. The link was tweeted, liked and fav?d all across the web, racking up millions of

See original post at BRYCE DOT VC: What possibilities are you losing sleep over? via thebenjamins-thebenjamins

See original post at BRYCE DOT VC: If you can get past the interviewer, this conversation with David Chang of Momofuku fame is an entrepreneurial treasure trove of stories and perspectives on fear, failure, risk and the mythical genius chef. Which is why it?s required weekend viewing on BRYCE DOT VC. (via Explore)

See original post at cdixon.org – chris dixon's blog: Angry Birds was Rovio's 52nd game. They spent eight years and almost went bankrupt before finally creating their massive hit. Pinterest is one of the fastest growing websites in history, but struggled for a long time. Pinterest's CEO recently said that they had??catastrophically small numb...

See original post at Andrew Chen (@andrew_chen): Once you've been working in Silicon Valley for a bit, you're often offered advice such as: Are you launching at X conference? ?… where X is whatever hot conference is coming up, like SXSW or Launch Do you have an X app? … where X is whatever new

See original post at BRYCE DOT VC: ?Too much of today?s technorati confuses building a popular social app with curing cancer.? – Amen

Defrag 2011 wrapped on Thursday. As in other years, I was happy to be engaged by interesting thinkers, both on stage and in the audience.? Interesting conversations are easily found at Defrag. Reflecting on the speakers though, here are a few of my personal highlights from the two day affair: I loved James Altucher's irreverent

I was sitting next to a first time Defrag attendee for most of yesterday.? About midway through I asked him how he was liking the conference. He works with a Fortune 100 company and admitted that he was struggling to figure out what he was going to "bring back to work with him after the

See original post at BRYCE DOT VC: About this time last year as I walked down the Embarcadero, en route to my office, I thought there was a 50/50 chance I?d have an FBI agent waiting for me in the lobby. A few nights prior, only weeks after moving to the bay area and days

See original post at A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks: In a two-party political system like we have in America, the fight is always over the middle. The hard-lefts vote Democratic, the hard-rights Republican, even if they don?t know the candidate, even if they don?t like the candidate, because it can?t be as

See original post at BRYCE DOT VC: I had a conversation with a VC about a year ago that I think about often these days. We were discussing investment strategies and approaches to the current market and he,?unconsciously?at the time, made the distinction between seed ?deals? and REAL investments. Me being me, I didn?t want

See original post at cdixon.org – chris dixon's blog: What belongs in common to the most people is accorded the least care: they take thought for their own things above all, and less about things common, or only so much as falls to each individually. ? Aristotle?* A major policy goal of capitalist countries in

See original post at Dan Shapiro: Tweet Raising money is hard, and there?s no way to screw it up faster than going around asking, ?Hey, could you introduce me to some investors??? It?s sort of like when, on the second day of school, a goofy freshman asked me if I could introduce him to any

See original post at BRYCE DOT VC: Every time I push the ?Create Post? button on Tumblr I cringe. Doubt sets in. Did I say the right things? What did I leave out? Do I sound like an idiot? About a year ago is when I made a more?conscious?effort to get consistent posting stuff here.

See original post at Dan Shapiro: Tweet I?m digging in to Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson?s outstanding new book, ?Venture Deals?. It?s full of both thoughtful analysis and commonsense wisdom about how to make a financing successful. In one section, they discuss the ?business plan?: ?We haven?t read a business plan in over 20 years.

See original post at BRYCE DOT VC: There?s a?small?myth in startupland that goes something like this: VCs invest other people?s money, Angels invest?their?own money. It often surfaces under the?auspices?that VCs have an emotional or financial distance from?their?portfolio companies as they are simply managers of other people?s money. The problem wi...

See original post at BRYCE DOT VC: Over the course of my career as a VC I?ve been involved with a bunch of fundraising. Raising money for our fund. Raising money for our portfolio companies. Advising friends on?their?fundraising. Lots. Of. Fundraising. Some of that fundraising has been very?successful. Some less successful. And some has been

See original post at BRYCE DOT VC: While the media debates the recent billion plus dollar valuations being thrown at Y Combinator alums AirBnB and Dropbox, they?re missing an opportunity to discuss what I see as the most interesting innovation happening among Y Combinator startups. This?profile of Weebly in The San Francisco Chronicle touches ever...

See original post at Inspired Startup: Let?s soak the rich – apparently that?s what most Americans think should happen to reduce the deficit including Warren Buffett.? A recent CNN poll says that 63% of Americans wants to raise taxes on the rich. ? Everyone knows that our federal deficit is unsustainable.? It?s clear to me

See original post at Dan Shapiro: Tweet Shortly after the sale closed, John Cook interviewed me about the experience. ?He did a great job of transcribing all of my verbal gems, like ?Maybe that is an economic way of looking at it, or something that I am unfamiliar with.?? I?m not even sure what that

See original post at cdixon.org – chris dixon's blog: If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged,

See original post at Andrew Chen (@andrew_chen): The ?Ultimate Driving Machine? is a classic slogan that makes BMW compete based on position, not features. It?s hard to keep things simple, especially when adding so many new features In my recent post on the virtues of marketing simple products, a couple readers wrote in to write

See original post at BRYCE DOT VC: The rise of the iPad became that much more interesting this week as sales numbers from Apple?s quarterly earnings poured in.There?s been plenty of clear and concise?analysis?done over the last few days, so I will stay way from that. But, I do want to highlight one theme we?ve

See original post at Dan Shapiro: Tweet There are two very special types of startups that you should know about: the Twitter Startup and the Hoverboard Startup.? If you?re one of these and don?t know it, you?re going to screw up your pitch. Imagine walking in to hear a startup pitch its goods.? The CEO

See original post at BRYCE DOT VC: I had a different post I?d plan to write this morning, then I read this on the blog of Boise, ID based Highway 12 Ventures blog: The venture?business?demands successive funds be raised to keep a firm ?in the game? as it relates to quality deal flow and reputation.

See original post at A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks: I built this software for myself, and then it turned out a million people wanted it exactly how I originally envisioned it. After hiring a few people, being the CEO became a lot easier, and I was able to focus on high-level strategic

See original post at cdixon.org – chris dixon's blog: An extremely useful concept that has grown popular among startup founders is what eminent entrepreneur and investor Marc Andreessen calls ?product/market fit?, which he defines as ?being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market?. Andreessen argues persuasively?that prod...

See original post at A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks: In Part 1 I explained how it?s senseless for small companies to compute ?one correct value? for the company, but rather that buyers and sellers must be considered separately. I covered the buyer side there; now let?s tackle the seller. Are you willing

See original post at Startup Whisperer: If you are in a startup, you are naturally in the position of being a "change maker."? You are naturally pursuing a new opportunity without a template for success.? There is no proverbial teacher's textbook that can help guide your product and your business plan.? It doesn't matter because...

See original post at BRYCE DOT VC: You know what doesn?t come to mind when I think of street art culture? Suitcases. Yet someone at Tumi thought this would help them ride a wave of cool sweeping the globe. Instead, I predict this wave will only sweep them onto the shelves of TJMaxx in record

See original post at BRYCE DOT VC: A few weeks back Dan Primack wrote a piece dissecting?the return performance of their private equity portfolio. When it comes to measuring venture capital returns the top tier of?performance?is where all funds try to place themselves. They do this by casting themselves against vintage years, assets classes or...

See original post at cdixon.org – chris dixon's blog: When I started grad school in 2001, every student was given an online ?classcard?. Classcards were kind of a hybrid of modern-day LinkedIn and Facebook profiles. They were mostly static: no feed or status updates or any other advanced features that we are all accustomed to

See original post at A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks: This guest-post is from Joannes Vermorel, founder of Lokad which produces sales forecasts for off-line companies. He has a personal blog about cloud computing. Despite experts routinely claiming Email 1.0 will soon be replaced by their own Email 2.0; Email 1.0 is here

See original post at BRYCE DOT VC: What the above video lacks in audio and production quality it makes up for in its prescience for the future. Sure you could go drop $150 on the Ray Ban website for a pair of?Wayfarers OR you could spend the same amount for?this pair of HD enabled, socially?networked,

See original post at BRYCE DOT VC: Last night, while my older kids were outside playing and my wife was getting a little time for herself, I found myself on the floor with our 9 month old daughter. She?s at an awkward age. Not quite ready to crawl, but strong enough to put in a