categories
HOT TOPICS
- The Accelerator Conundrum
- The Startup Velocity Question
- Platform as a Service
- Man and Superman
- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
enterprise
Sabrix: Marrying Domain Expertise with Algorithms
The trend question that Sabrix poses for VCs and other enterprise software entrepreneurs: are there other such deep domain knowledge based opportunities which may allow you to carve a niche for yourself, and has a sufficient TAM to be interesting to investors?
And for VCs, this is a shift away from very deep, defensible technology based investments to something that is perhaps not the most challenging technical problem to address. Domain expertise, however, is extremely defensible, especially when married with technology.
The Salesforce.com of Security
Software as a Service (SaaS) continues to be a trend, as big domains get shifted over to the ASP model. Qualys is one such proponent of SaaS, following the footsteps of its larger and more successful brethren – Salesforce.com and Webex.
Bought by WHOM?
Epiphany has been acquired. Finally. By a rather large, little-known Chicago company called SSA (Nasdaq: SSAG). Now, who is SSA? Here are some financial data: Market Cap: $916 Million 2004 2003 2002 2001 Annual Sales ($ mil.) 636 296 160 136 Annual Net Income ($ mil.) 18 52 1 (41) And here is some History:
Resurrection of the Living Deads
There have been a few deals this year that make a lot of sense for the shareholders, but make very little sense for the acquiring private equity firm, despite the discounts: Broadvision’s acquisition by Vector Capital is one such. The second one is Golden Gate Capital’s acquisition of Blue Martini, presumably to merge with Ecometry, one of their other portfolio companies.
Microsoft offers Home Work Help
Taking note of this daily homework battle, Microsoft has decided to help — or at least to see whether it can make some money by addressing the problem. The software colossus has just introduced Microsoft Student 2006, designed to make it easier for middle-school and high-school students to attack homework efficiently by gathering homework resources in one place on the computer.
Oracle: Next stop, Manhattan
Venture Wire reports: Software giant Oracle Corp. said it agreed to acquire retail software maker ProfitLogic Inc. for an undisclosed sum – its second acquisition in the retail software sector this year – as it bolsters its challenge to publicly traded SAP AG. Oracle and SAP, bitter rivals in the $9 billion business -management software
India, Inc.: Wake up!
What the Chinese are doing is doing leveraged buy-outs on big, fat, powerful American brands reeling under margin pressures, and applying what they do really well: low-cost manufacturing to shave the fat off, while at the same time gaining access to brand power and distribution channels. This leads me to wonder how long India, Inc. will remain asleep at the wheels?
