Deal Radar 2009: Jivox

Directories such as the Yellow Pages are still important marketing tools for small and medium sized businesses. But with the services of companies such as Jivox, which specializes in online video advertising, small business owners can use DIY online marketing and communications tools to develop the same kind of sophisticated advertising as larger players. Founded by Diaz Nesamoney in 2007, Jivox is headquartered in San Mateo, California with offices in Bangalore, New Delhi and Mumbai, India. Nesamoney, who had has had two prior successful ventures in Celequest and Informatica, was looking for his next challenge but wanted to do something outside of his enterprise software background. >>>

Oracle Acquires Sun. OpenSource, First. SaaS, Next.

The media chattered and twittered about the mega players HP, Cisco and IBM following the news of IBM’s desire to acquire Sun. No one talked about Oracle as one of the mega players in data centers. Larry Ellison’s ego apparently didn’t like that very much! >>>

Prospering Amidst the Real Estate Meltdown: Trulia CEO Pete Flint (Part 5)

SM: How many consumers are you touching right now?

PF: Over 5 million unique users monthly. Trulia is one of the largest real estate sites in the US and is growing very rapidly. We want to grow more. >>>

Catching Up On Readings: Green Jobs

Here is a summary of the posts from this past week, in case you missed them. >>>

How To Fix the Broken US Economy (Part 2)

By Guest Author Bill McGinnis, CFA

[Bill’s series continues with a discussion of how short selling contributed to the fall of the once-mighty Citigroup.]

The following text was submitted to the New York Times as an Op-Ed piece on November 23, 2008. It was not published. At the time, Citigroup stock was in a freefall. The stock ultimately stabilized, only to go into freefall again in March 2009. >>>

Selling in a Non-objective Environment (Part 1): Introduction

By Guest Author James T. Healy

[Earlier in the month, Clara Shih discussed how social networks such as Facebook have changed the relationship between buyers and sellers. Today, James T. Healy begins a series of articles that examines the buyer’s environment and suggests strategies sellers may need to adopt in tough situations.]

Whether we like it or not, most of us are selling something. We are all sales people. We sometimes think of a sales person as someone selling a product. But college professors are in sales! Professors must sell their students on their ideas and philosophy or some benefactor on providing a research grant. A CEO sells the board on his operating plan. An entrepreneur sells venture capitalists to raise money. A father or mother may be selling their kids on not doing drugs. The fact is we are all in sales. >>>

Prospering Amidst the Real Estate Meltdown: Trulia CEO Pete Flint (Part 4)

SM: You were also providing information regarding the price surrounding properties had sold for. Where was that data coming from?

PF: Initially it was coming from listing agents who said they sold a property. They were promoting the fact that they had sold the property, so we simply tagged the property as sold and gave the credit to the real estate agent. >>>

How To Fix the Broken US Economy (Part 1)

By Guest Author Bill McGinnis, CFA

[Many of you have participated in the debate I have encouraged in my series on Capitalism 2.0. It’s important to keep the discussion going and work together to offer solutions. To that end, over the next two weeks guest author Bill McGinnis will discuss two practices he believes must be changed: short selling and mark-to-market accounting. Bill begins with a more general background on what has gone wrong and what the US government must do differently.]

The following piece was sent as an email to numerous politicians and select media on September 24, 2008.  Recipients included both the Obama and McCain campaigns. >>>