Catching Up On Readings: Media Mania

If you have missed these posts from my recent writings, today may be a good time to catch up on some reading:

First, in the blogosphere, online media, old and new media, advertising – big changes have taken place. Here is a set of posts from the Deal Radar series that might help you make sense of these developments where I discuss companies that have driven some of the biggest changes: Techcrunch, GigaOm, Federated Media, Glam Media, Adify, Travel Ad Network, and Seeking Alpha. >>>

Deal Radar 2008: GigaOM

Blogs have changed the face of the web dramatically over the last few years. GigaOm is a network of blogs published by GigaOmniMedia, Inc. You could read my interview with founder Om Malik here to get a flavor of how he pioneered blogging in the early years of the millennium. >>>

Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 14)

SM: Were they willing to fill out the spreadsheet you sent over? LD: Most people are like, “this is insane … what are you, a root canal?” >>>

Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 13)

SM: What does it cost to buy a SuccessFactors solution? LD: It ranges. We have multi-million dollar deals. We just told Wall Street (because we want to ensure they know we have a good future so we did something we normally would not do) that in the first 5 weeks of 2008 we did a million dollar deal in retail because we know that sector has been hit very hard. And we did a million dollar deal in financial services. At the same time I saw a deal done yesterday for $5,000 for a 10 people company. It really depends on how many products you buy and how many seats you take. >>>

Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 12)

SM: Very early on in this conversation, you mentioned you are really into metrics. Talk about metrics you track, metrics you manage your company by. LD: We can start out with late-stage pipeline coverage. That is how I know our business is healthy. Late –stage pipeline coverage of each area and each sector is probably how we have been successful in all these areas. >>>

Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 10)

SM: How did you go from 2001 with $1M in financing to the scale you are today? Didn’t you have to finance the company further? LD: I basically did not have a life for six years.

SM: Didn’t you need more financial resources? LD: When you are cash flow positive, you don’t need any more money. That’s the funny thing. For the first three years, we did not spend any more money. I got a new investor in from Texas Pacific Group in 2003, and I still remember him in every board meeting saying “I can’t believe it, you still have not spent any of my money.” >>>

Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 9)

SM: How do you view your competitive landscape right now? The HR, human capital landscape is moving online and becoming very big as we are penetrating more of the mid-market and small businesses. How do you view the rest of the players in your ecosystem and how do you position? LD: Let’s just look at the facts, I’ll talk to you like an engineer because that is how I have learned to speak now. We are in 13,000 opportunities at the moment, and the competitor we have met the most, we have only encountered 17 times. Our biggest competitor is not another software vendor, it is companies not doing anything. >>>

Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 6)

SM: How did you find this particular company that you ended up acquiring? LD: From a friend who sat next to me in business school. He was at a venture firm, so he knew of all the good companies that simply did not have leaders.

SM: Which venture firm was he at? LD: It was Foundation Capital. He told me about the first one, and the founding father of Foundation Capital told me about the other technology firm which was a big, scalable on-demand platform, which is really the most interesting thing I bought. The other thing I bought was really worthless; it had a little bit of sales, maybe $100K or $200K. But non-event. >>>