Vertical Ad Networks: Evolution

Another big funding round in the vertical ad network world: FM raises between $40 and $50M from Oak Investment Partners. Valuation: $200 Million; 2007 Revenue: $25 Million; 2008 Revenue Forecast: $60 Million. Not bad!

Shutterfly’s Strategy: A Conversation with CEO Jeff Housenbold (Part 4)

SM: Your vision was to move beyond the traditional print model, and rather be the center of a lifestyle. JH: I also saw us as building a personal publishing platform. Yes, we have consumers doing all the beautiful cards, books and calendars, but we also have lots of small businesses, charities, schools, non-profits, jewelry manufacturers,

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Deal Radar 2008: Federated Media Needs to Focus

I was recently at a dinner party where a venture capitalist asked me about Federated Media, and whether his firm should invest in the company. Federated, if you haven’t yet figured this out, is on the funding trail at the moment, trying to raise money.

Deal Radar 2008: Glam Media’s Fashion Forays

Glam Media is a women-focused distributed media network that represents and packages content from over 400 sources including fashion blogs, websites and magazines. Along with Glam.com, its flagship, it brings together content relevant to women while giving advertisers an efficient access to fragmented inventory. It is one of the companies we covered earlier in Women

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Deal Radar 2008: Adify’s Market Taking Time to Develop

Adify is a vertical advertising platform co-founded by Russ Fradin with former Flycast co-founders, Larry Braitman and Richard Thompson. I interviewed Adify’s CEO, Russ Fradin in 2007.

Building an Ambitious SaaS Company: Taleo CEO Michael Gregoire (Part 9)

SM: What is your business model? What is the pricing model? MG: The pricing model in the enterprise space, for companies with more than 3,000 employees, is that we charge by the number of employees in the company. It is not a transactional pricing system. We use multi-year contracts; most of them are three years

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Deal Radar 2008: Travel Ad Network Executing Flawlessly

Travel Ad Network (TAN) is the leading vertical ad network focused exclusively on travel. It reaches users across 50 websites including Lonely Planet, Kayak, RandMcNally, Skybus Airlines, Groople, TravelHero, BootsNAll, AreaGuides, HotelsByCity, EuropeForVisitors, AirGorilla, and many others. Top advertisers with TAN include American Express, Vacations to Go, Best Western, Netherlands Tourism, Tourism Australia, etc.

Financing & Exit

If you are a very early stage entrepreneur looking for financing, chances are you need a lot more than help with financing. Most likely, you need help with Positioning, as well as overall strategy. For the moment, I do not have the bandwidth to take these projects on on a pure equity basis. I do

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