Malcolm Gladwell lit a few fires last week with his (broadly perceived as negative) review of Free: The Future of a Radical Price, Chris Anderson?s new book.  Gladwell is more negative on Anderson?s examples (such as YouTube as successful free offering) and the myopia of what Gladwell calls ?technological utopians,?  though, than

Well, it's been a week since VCDB went live and the response has been overwhelming… and instructional.  First and foremost, I've been surprised by the impact that Twitter has had on traffic.  As a group instant messaging app (oversimplification, I know), it's a powerful one.  A few "tweets" from well-"followed" twitterers...

This one's been a long time coming, so I'm glad to finally be throwing back the curtain. In short, I've built a tool meant to help open doors in the venture capital financing community.  If you're in a hurry, give it a go now; otherwise, read on for the details and

In the midst of conversation with an investor/entrepreneur out of Dallas, I mentally stumbled over his musing, "Good tooth to tail ratio."  This one was new to me, though the startup world is full of bizarre analogies.  I'm used to baseball metaphors (e.g., single, double, triple, home-run returns), horse racing

Market makes for a healthy obsession.  Marc Andreesen calls it "the most important factor in a startup's success or failure." And there are plenty of market intricacies to ponder but size is a big one (forgive the pun <grin>).  So I'm prone to comparing, and putting into context. Benchmarks are key here.  Domestic...

Controversy walks hand-in-hand with innovation. It seems, after all, that conversation focused on what's to be raises hairs. Never mind that we can?t agree on the forecasting. It?s that even when we agree, the outlook may be distasteful. Consider for a moment John Tierney?s recent piece correlating business lunch deal success with serotonin...

There?s something appealing about viewing entrepreneurship through the lens of evolutionary biology.  Any fruitful niche finds occupants, symbiosis can offer a leg up, and ?survival of the fittest? ultimately reigns.  I?m reminded of this November 2006 video from Brad Feld encouraging entrepreneurs to ?munch on the bones? of competition (...

I've been thinking about two competing online ad trends: 1) Advertisers/publishers are getting better and better at targeting ads. 2) Consumers are getting better and better at ignoring ads. Targeting improvements have come on multiple fronts.  Advertisers have an increasing understanding of who is consuming content, in what context, and what ...

A friend introduced me to a noteworthy line of thinking recently.  It went something like this: "There are two types of entrepreneurs in this world: alpha entrepreneurs and beta entrepreneurs.  Alpha entrepreneurs are the guys that are naturally risk tolerant, even irrational dreamers; they're charismatic and marshal folks around them...

This whole Spitzer hullabaloo has me thinking about legacy.  The New York Times put up an interactive timeline, "Milestones in an Ambitious Career," that curtly sums the New York Governor's key career moments into a few pictures and captions.  Here's the headlining snippet: "Eliot Spitzer's journey from Harvard Law School to...