Web 3.0 & eBay (Part 4)

Acquisition Strategy eBay acquired online ticket marketplace, StubHub for $307 million in May 2007. It also acquired social bookmarking discovery service, StumbleUpon, for $75 million. These are mostly acquisitions by eBay to strengthen its verticals and community features. Going forward we could see eBay making many more acquisitions to strengthen its key verticals, but also

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Web 3.0 & Yahoo! (Part 4)

Acquisition Strategy Yahoo! has made several acquisitions this year, primarily in display advertising. The key acquisitions were MyBlogLog, Right Media, BuzzTracker, Rivals.com, Zimbra and BlueLithium. Of these, RightMedia and Blue Lithium are good moves to consolidate its Ad Networks position, but Zimbra, in my opinion, is not a good acquisition. I feel Yahoo! can improve

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Incubator Funds in India: Synthesis

My first experience of technology entrepreneurship in India was in 1994 while I was still a grad student at MIT. The most vivid memory I have of that experience is that it took me 6 months to get a phone line. It was before wireless. It was, most certainly, before venture capital in India. Things

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Incubator Funds in India: Management Team

This is going to be the last segment for this series on Incubators in India, and it tackles the key to making such incubators work. We have said, that we need concept engineering, engineering management, product marketing, sales, biz dev, legal and financial talent in the incubator management team. I am going to, therefore, propose

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Incubator Funds in India: Fund Structure?

Typically, venture funds pay out 2-3% of the capital in annual management fees, and offer 20-30% in carry (profit sharing). So, let’s look at the table below of various fund sizes, and what those numbers amount to:

Incubator Funds in India: Adult Supervision?

Okay, so we are talking about designing an incubator that will give entrepreneurs access to concept engineering, engineering management, product marketing, sales, biz dev, legal and financial talent and resources that is well beyond what a small startup could ever dream of attracting. This definitely is starting to sound too good to be true! Wait,

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Incubator Funds in India: Real Estate & Infrastructure

Pretty much wherever you look to set up your entrepreneurial venture in, at this point, in India, you are looking at expensive real estate. I have heard from entrepreneurs who are struggling to rent 1,500 sq. ft of space to start their ventures up. Therefore, imagine how valuable it would be if you could sublet

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Incubator Funds in India: Legal & Financial Structuring?

Judging by the kinds of questions that show up in various entrepreneurship related blogs and forums, financial structuring, otherwise known as the Cap Table, is something entrepreneurs often need help with. Here’s a quote from Alex Osadzinski on the overall philosophy of a good term sheet: “And, I can’t stress enough that a fair deal

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