The Effect of Facebook’s IPO

By guest author Daniel Burrus Facebook’s IPO may well be the biggest and most hyped IPO ever … and for good reason. Many people would like to have bought Google or Apple when they first went public, but they didn’t. Now they’re kicking themselves for it. Unfortunately, you can’t go back and undo the past.

Read Full Article »

Deal Radar 2008: AKQA

AKQA is an interactive ad agency driven by ideas to inspire its clients to move forward in the digital era. Some of the services AKQA provides are designing interactive experiences for its clients. It also provides content creation and distribution as well as E-commerce and technology solutions for them. The company was founded in 1995

Read Full Article »

Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 11)

SM: You don’t face as much competition in small business either. LD: No, you don’t. There is no competition. That was Eric Dunn’s decision point on the Board. “That alone,” he said, “is an argument for me. We struggled so much in Intuit when we went up market to make the product scale.”

Building an Ambitious SaaS Company: Taleo CEO Michael Gregoire (Part 7)

SM: I wonder how Louis was able to fund the company in 1999. I talked to a lot of SaaS company CEOs and all of them were turned down by the VCs. Yesterday, I was having lunch with Philippe Courtot, who you may know, is the CEO of Qualys. They do security as SaaS, and

Read Full Article »

Deal Radar 2008: Facebook Woes Coming?

Facebook is the most popular social networking site providing an interactive space that helps members communicate with “friends”. The site features like ‘Wall’ and ‘Poke’ have created a vernacular amongst the youth population. It was started in February 2004, by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg. “Are we Facebook friends?” has now become a social phenomenon! Angel

Read Full Article »

Deal Radar 2008: Zappos Wants to be Amazon When it Grows Up

You have heard me talk about the verticalization of the web. Here’s a good example of a brand built on that premise. Zappos.com is the #1 online footwear retailer. Apart from retailing around 1,100 well known brands of shoes, boots, sandals, and athletic footwear, it also retails accessories including socks, wallets, belts, designer handbags, and

Read Full Article »

Deal Radar 2008: eHarmony Replacing Yenta

eHarmony is an online dating/matchmaking site that uses its patented Compatibility Matching System™ to match singles. In November 2004, eHarmony raised $110 million in a Series B round of financing from Sequoia Capital, Technology Crossover Ventures and Tuputele Ventures. It had earlier raised $3 million in Series A from Sarofim Fayez and Co.

Deal Radar 2008: Kayak Consolidates Travel

As we have discussed, Online Travel is a large category, and active in entrepreneurship. Web 1.0 produced giant companies (Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Priceline), and in Web 2.0 we have a couple of vertical search engines that are pulling ahead. Kayak, the world’s largest travel search engine, receives more than 6 million unique visitors per month.

Read Full Article »