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It’s A “Dry” Cold… (Part 1)

Posted on Friday, Mar 16th

by Calvin McElroy, Guest Author [Cal writes a funny and informative piece on the Canadian Venture Capital industry. The good news: Entrepreneurship in Canada is alive and well.]

Turn Around Series: Jerry Rawls, Finisar (Part 7)

Posted on Wednesday, Mar 14th

Dramatic changes in the market had forced major fiber optic giants like Lucent into tough decisions. The market also proved to be volitile and unpredictable. Nortel, in desperation, offered Finisar its optics business. SM: Nortel had interest in survival. JR: Yes. We spent two weeks in Ottawa trying to figure out how we could assume

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Is Bootstrapping Becoming Sexy Again?

Posted on Friday, Mar 9th

Gone are the days when entrepreneurs boasted at cocktail parties about how many million dollars they have raised for their startups. That was so very nineties! Yes, times have changed. Entrepreneurs seem to have become savvier. In the last 2 months, I have worked / spoken with several sets of entrepreneurs who are perfectly happy

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Concept Arbitrage: Navteq

Posted on Thursday, Mar 8th

As I wrote the Navteq piece, it struck me that the entire address data and mapping services category is a great one for India, and ripe for a Concept Arbitrage. A personal anecdote. Every time I visit India, and I go to visit relatives in North Calcutta, I wonder how on earth would I navigate

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Indian Incubator Fund: Specs (Part 2)

Posted on Monday, Mar 5th

We dicussed the “Problem” in the last part. In this one, let’s discuss the “Entrepreneur”. Again, I’ll tell you a story from my own experience. My advisor at MIT, Prof. Anant Agarwal, was (is) also an entrepreneur. So, when I walked into his office one day in 1994, and declared that I wanted to finish

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Indian Incubator Fund: Specs (Part 1)

Posted on Sunday, Mar 4th

I promised entrepreneur Sujai Karampuri that I would write a piece on what an Indian Incubator Fund should look like, in response to the discussion in my previous piece, India Needs More Incubator Funds. To begin, I will tell you a story. When I first arrived at the Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT, my

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Why No Product Companies in India?

Posted on Saturday, Mar 3rd

By Sujai Karampuri, Guest Author I have already written an article called, ‘Need Product Companies In India’s Growth.’ Before I start writing on what we need to do, I would like to talk about some of the most important reasons that curtail us from spawning product companies. Some of them are obvious-history, post-independent economic policies,

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Concept Arbitrage: Web 3.0 & Enterprise 3.0

Posted on Wednesday, Feb 28th

Last summer, I wrote a Concept Arbitrage series focusing on the Indian market. The market has moved, and Consumer Internet and Mobile Value Added Services, which were turning hot then, are much too hot now. Valuations are very high. Much too high. At this rate, I dread to think how long it would take to

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