Do We Need More Funds in India?

Someone posed this very appropriate question in response to my Incubator Fund series. The answer is No. However, what we need is two things:

Pioneering Video Conferencing: Polycom CEO Bob Hagerty (Part 2)

SM: What happened after Ampex? BH: I wanted to take more of a risk so I went to a small startup called Conner Peripherals. There was an article in Fortune about us being the fastest to the fortune 500. You have to look at them in quarters because a year was just too fast. I

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Eric Benhamou: The Saga Of Palm (Part 14)

SM: This has been a very interesting discussion. Anything else you would like to add before we conclude, especially about your personal situation at present? EB: On a personal level, things have worked out pretty well in the sense that I believe in ten year cycles – at least for me. I think, you can

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Eric Benhamou: The Saga Of Palm (Part 13)

SM: What is Elevation’s investment thesis regarding positioning? Is it still a prosumer play? EB: The Elevation thesis is pretty simple. It basically says that smartphone market is at its very infancy, and the arrival of the iPhone is expanding the opportunity, making it more real to more people. It is very clear that it

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Eric Benhamou: The Saga Of Palm (Part 12)

Palm’s Elevation Partners deal is a smart move to give the cmpany its best shot at a turnaround. Jonathan Rubinstein joins as Executive Chairman, as part of the deal, and the transition is due to happen soon. SM: What about the CEO though? EB: What was critical was to be able to add this talent

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AMD Needs a Multi-Core Killer App

After it released its first dual core Opteron for servers on April 21, 2005 followed by the Athlon 64 X2 for desktops a month later, Intel released its first dual core, the Pentium Extreme Edition. Around the same time, AMD splashed full-page ads in newspapers calling upon the bigger rival to join a duel to

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Eric Benhamou: The Saga Of Palm (Part 8)

SM: What is Ed Colligan’s area of expertise? EB: He contributed a lot in the marketing front of the company. That was his main contribution. Ed was a first time CEO. The board felt he could preserve the innovation skills that had characterized the success of the early Palm days as well as Handspring, while

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Eric Benhamou: The Saga Of Palm (Part 4)

Palm’s product schedule went off-track, as they steered consumers off Palm V, an obviously terrific product, without a compelling new product introduction. SM: Do you think it created market confusion for customers? EB: Yes. It was a sign that the pace of innovation had slowed down. All of the people we had put in place

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