Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 6)

SM: How did you find this particular company that you ended up acquiring? LD: From a friend who sat next to me in business school. He was at a venture firm, so he knew of all the good companies that simply did not have leaders. SM: Which venture firm was he at? LD: It was

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Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 5)

SM: When working with smart people, it always pays to explain why. LD: Exactly, and they will ask 15 questions to get there if they need to. To this day I adore them. They cannot do anything until they know why. I love that. That was the biggest learning for me was how to manage

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KaThunk!

By Frank Levinson, Guest Author When I left day-to-day contributing at Finisar in early 2006, I wondered if it was not possible to teach others some of what we learned in those early years. So began my journey working with small companies somewhere between being an angel investor and a venture capitalist.

Finisar’s First 10 Years

By Frank Levinson, Guest Author [Frank Levinson shares his experience bootstrapping Finisar, which became a public company later. Last year, we spoke with Jerry Rawls about Finisar’s Turnaround story, also a worthwhile read.]

India’s Labor Arbitrage Strategy

It has been an interesting few days of being on the receiving end of tremendous hate mail due to my widely syndicated and (looks like) read and discussed Death of Indian Outsourcing article.

Building a New Venture Firm: Brian Jacobs of Emergence Capital (Part 5)

SM: What happened after you closed the fund? Did the thesis check out? What was happening in the marketplace, and how did you get your positioning and your thesis out there to solicit deals? BJ: SalesForce.com went public as we were closing our first fund, and that proved to be a home run for Emergence.

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Entrepreneurial Executives?

I wrote this post on February 11, and have received a large stream of deals that are looking for financing. As I am working through these, it is becoming obvious to me that in most cases, the ventures need a couple of more key people in specific functions.

Deal Radar 2008: Travel Ad Network Executing Flawlessly

Travel Ad Network (TAN) is the leading vertical ad network focused exclusively on travel. It reaches users across 50 websites including Lonely Planet, Kayak, RandMcNally, Skybus Airlines, Groople, TravelHero, BootsNAll, AreaGuides, HotelsByCity, EuropeForVisitors, AirGorilla, and many others. Top advertisers with TAN include American Express, Vacations to Go, Best Western, Netherlands Tourism, Tourism Australia, etc.