Profile
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Nabergoj, LeMeur and Engelstrom at Monaco Media
119 days ago | Comment
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STEVE JOBS AT HOME IN 1982
132 days ago | Comment (2)
“This was a very typical time. I was single. All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo, you know, and that’s what I had.” —Steve Jobs
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Steve Jobs on focus
135 days ago | Comment (1)
"People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the 100 other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the many things we haven't done as the things we have done."
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Louis Gray: Proposed Salmon Protocol Aims To Unify Conversations on the Web
145 days ago | Comment
Proposed Salmon Protocol Aims To Unify Conversations on the Web - http://blog.louisgray.com/2009... -
The Series A Term Sheet: 5 Terms Founders Should Focus On
142 days ago | Comment (1)
Founder Vesting.
Ivan Gaviria today walks us through 5 terms founders should focus on when navigating their first term sheet:
1) Option Pool
2) Dividends
3) Liquidation Preference
4) Board Composition
5) Founder VestingOften the Series A term sheet will be used to negotiate founder vesting as part of the overall terms and conditions of the financing. With few notable exceptions, the primary value in a typical start up company is in the people and, not surprisingly, investors want to make sure those key people stick around.
As with everything in this business the basic concept is simple – stock owned by the founders is made subject to a repurchase right, exercisable by the Company if the founder quits or is terminated. The repurchase right “lapses” on a negotiated vesting schedule so that fewer and fewer shares are “at risk” over time.
Again, though, the devil is in the details. What percentage of the founders’ shares will be subject to the repurchase right? Over how many years? Will the vesting accelerate if there is a sale of the company? What about acceleration if the founder is terminated without cause? What sorts of things should constitute cause?
It’s a topic on which several hundred words could be written just walking through the lingo - “good reason,” “double trigger versus single trigger,” “constructive termination,” etc. So let me make just two high level points.
First, this is an area where founders often get their first taste of being a bit conflicted. From an individual perspective, a founder might wish to be as aggressive as the market will bear on vesting schedule, acceleration terms and other founder protections.
As a co-founder or CEO, however, one also has to consider the founder/co-founder dynamic as much as the founders/investors dynamic. I’ve often seen co-founders set up aggressively pro-founder vesting terms only to have a team member break up the band and walk away with a lot more equity than the remaining team would have liked. As a related second point, this is an area where it pays to try and strategize a few moves ahead to build consistency into equity terms on the team. Having a patchwork of different deals can create odd incentives or hurt morale if, as a result of different acceleration terms for example, a deal will produce widely different economics for employees at similar levels. In any event, a founder going into a Series A term sheet negotiation should understand his or her existing stock terms and exactly how the term sheet proposes to alter or amend those terms.
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Obama Wins 2009 Nobel Peace Prize
153 days ago | Comment (1)
President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, a stunning decision that comes just eight months into his presidency.
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How the Real-Time Web Is Leaving Google Behind
155 days ago | Comment (1)
Edo Segal, a pioneer in real-time search, thinks the field is going to explode as updates become more automatic, with our devices autoreporting where we are, how we're feeling, and what we're doing and seeing. Old-school search will never vanish, but real-time news will create a society where we have an omnipresent sense of the moment. "Google organized our memory," Segal says. "Real-time search organizes our consciousness."
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virgin america rocks
155 days ago | Comment
even serving absinthe..
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EVENT: "Don't Fly Blindly: Startup Acceleration and Metrics"
156 days ago | Comment (1)
9.10.2009 at 18.00, British Banker's Club, 1090 El Camino Real, Menlo Park
Startup acceleration, analytics and metrics with:
Hiten Shah is the founder of ACS, Crazy Egg & KISSmetrics
Sean Power is the co-founder of Watching Websites & co-author of O'Reilly's Complete Web Monitoring.Participate in this active discussion as they share their ideas and experiences on startup acceleration, analytics and metrics.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 9th at the BBC in Menlo Park! Registration begins at 6pm.
Event Schedule:
6pm-630pm - registration
630pm-730pm - networking
730pm - topic discussion
FIRST 3 comments win a free ticket!
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Prototype: Why Consumers Like New Products With a Familiar Ring
156 days ago | Comment
Humans instinctively sort and classify things. It’s how we make sense of a complex world.
So when companies develop innovative products and services that don’t obviously fit into established categories, managers need to help people understand what comparison to make. Without that step, potential customers might just walk away wondering, “What is it?”
As a starting point, it helps to understand some basic traits of behavior. When people encounter something they don’t recognize, they make sense of it by associating it with something familiar.
“What category you place something in has a huge influence on how you view its basic properties,” says Arthur Markman, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas in Austin. “The category signals not only a set of features to expect, but at a more basic level, when and how you should use the novel item.”
And depending upon what cues they are given, people will place the same item in different categories. -
Global Competitiveness Report 2009-2010 by the World Economic Forum
163 days ago | Comment
This year’s Global Competitiveness Report is published against the backdrop of the deepest global economic slowdown in generations. What began as a financial crisis in a handful of industrialized economies continues to spill over into the real economy, engendering massive contractions in consumer demand, rising unemployment, and mounting protectionist pressures worldwide. Developing countries have not been spared from its fallout; many are now facing slumping demand for their export products along with falling commodity prices, significant reductions in foreign investment and remittances, and a more general liquidity shortage. The strong interdependence among the worlds’ economies makes this a truly global economic crisis in every sense.
This year’s Report features a total of 133 economies, thus providing the most comprehensive assessment of its kind.The Report contains a detailed profile for each of the economies featured in the study as well as an extensive section of data tables with global rankings covering over 100 indicators.
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How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet
163 days ago | Comment
1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;
2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;
3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.
