Forbes Column 08: A Technological Fix For Education

Here’s my new Forbes Column, A Technological Fix For Education, profiling HotChalk. You may have read the interview I did with Ed Fields, HotChalk’s CEO. Another recommended reading piece while on this topic is Lucid.

Deal Radar 2008: Xactly

Xactly develops software-as-a-service for managing sales performance. It provides real-time, web-based, on-demand sales compensation solutions that help companies to sell more. The programs are affordable and enable smaller size companies to design, implement and manage sales compensation programs. The company was launched in 2005 by Christopher Cabrera and Satish Palvai and is headquartered in San

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Forbes Column 08: Hydro-Alchemy

My new Forbes column, Hydro-Alchemy, discusses the world’s upcoming water crisis and an entrepreneurial venture, Energy Recovery Inc., that is tackling the problem with a Sea Water Reverse Osmosis technology for water desalination. You may have read my interview with Hans Peter Michelet last year. ERI has recently filed to go public.

Travel Ad Network Raises Series A

Travel Ad Network (TAN), the largest vertical ad network in travel, just closed a $15 million Series A round of financing led by Rho Ventures, Village Ventures and individual investors. And what a Series A it is! $50-$75 Million valuation, estimated in my deal radar post and commensurate with the trends in the industry set

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OpenSource Thought Leader and CollabNet Founder Brian Behlendorf (Part 1)

When I think OpenSource, I think about a certain well-known figure from my grad student days at MIT, who never showered, slept in his office, and believed that software should be free. Today, I bring you a different sort of OpenSource pioneer: one with a business sense! Brian Behlendorf, as you will get to know

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Shutterfly’s Strategy: A Conversation with CEO Jeff Housenbold (Part 11)

SM: Pretty much your customer base of 2.4M customers stick around. Do you see much churn? JH: I have been here three years, so 12 quarters; 75-77% of our revenue in each of those quarters is from repeat customers. That is a really good testament to the loyalty of our customers. I get asked a

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Shutterfly’s Strategy: A Conversation with CEO Jeff Housenbold (Part 9)

SM: What do you think of SmugMug? It is very popular. JH: It is popular for us because we are in the valley. When you look at the grand scheme of things, they are still a relatively small company with about $10M in revenue. I think what they have done well is they said in

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Shutterfly’s Strategy: A Conversation with CEO Jeff Housenbold (Part 8)

SM: Why didn’t Flickr elect to work with you? JH: At the time we were competing with Yahoo Photos, and Flickr chose a small company who is producing product as their outsource manufacturer. That small company has signed up a number of sites who in the early days thought they were competing with Shutterfly. They

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