Nothing ventured, nothing gained

Congratulations Reid and the LinkedIn Team

2011-05-19T09:33:00.002-04:00

Feeling Around in the Dark

2011-04-20T11:47:00.003-04:00

A recently hired executive at one of my portfolio companies sent me this picture today to explain how he feels on the new job. I told him that, indeed, it can be a pretty crappy experience while one is still feeling his way around in the dark, but eventually he'll get a handle on things...

TechStars New York likes my blog

2011-04-15T13:47:00.004-04:00

As I approached the TechStars Demo Day event in New York yesterday, the first thing I noticed was my blog title in lights. (Thanks, TechCrunch, for the photo.) The second thing I noticed is that no two "N's" were alike. The sloppy Webster Hall sign stood in sharp contrast to the incredibly well-polished pitches from the 11 startups inside. If the products and business models of those startups are

Suckers Must Be Trading Facebook Stock

2011-03-23T16:23:00.005-04:00

If you have ever owned a fax machine, then surely you received an occasional spam fax from a stock promoter. The typical one or two page stock-pumping fax proclaims the "sure thing" of potential profits from buying some rinky dink stock you've never heard of at the bargain basement price of $1 or $2 per share. "It's definitely going to $5, maybe even $10," so buy now "before it's too late." I

Enjoy Dumpster Diving?

2010-09-15T23:33:00.003-04:00

I was greeted at home this evening by a violation notice from NYC's Environmental Control Board -- aka the "garbage police." My building was fined $25 because one of my neighbors disposed of paper and cardboard in the trash instead of recycling those materials.Here is the exact hand-written text on the violation notice dated 8:17pm on Aug 31:"I did observe 3 white bags placed out for collection.

Bessemer's 10 Laws of eCommerce

2010-09-09T15:54:00.005-04:00

A few years ago, my Bessemer colleagues Byron Deeter, Philippe Botteri (blog) and David Cowan (blog) led and synthesized a lot of our firm-wide views on what it takes to build a great software as a service (SaaS) business. They have since published several versions of a white paper entitled Bessemer's 10 Laws of Cloud Computing and Saas. Based on the number of press hits, the thankful compliments

A belated thank you

2010-08-26T21:55:00.005-04:00

When I started leading venture capital investments for Bessemer in 2003, I was scared out of my mind. I suspect a lot of young investors feel similarly. It's incredibly frightening to commit millions of dollars of other people's money to a young (typically loss-generating) startup. There's a good chance you'll never see that money again. It's nerve-racking. I learned to think of the concept

There's an App For That (on your TV)

2010-08-12T11:17:00.003-04:00

Ever since the initial iPhone release in 2007, I assumed Apple would eventually extend its consumer device operating system to televisions. Benchmark's Bill Gurley predicted it here and even included a nice living room mockup.To date, Apple has only delivered a mediocre tv attachment called Apple TV. Samsung, on the other hand, has delivered the real thing -- a television set on which you can

World's Greatest Cloud Service Provider

2010-04-20T13:54:00.003-04:00

Along with several of my colleagues, I am particularly attracted to our cloud computing roadmap, and I spend a fair amount of time exploring related ideas and companies. It came as a bit of a surprise to find that the world's greatest cloud service provider was a virtual unknown just a week ago:(Credit to my friends at Parallels for sharing this image with me.)

Spam is everywhere, not just in email

2010-04-07T22:31:00.013-04:00

About five years ago, I focused on building highly valuable businesses on the back of user-generated content. I led my first related investment in 2005. It was in a San Francisco-based startup called Yelp. Over the following 18 months, I led three other Bessemer investments based on the same fundamental roadmap: Wikia, OLX and LinkedIn.One nice thing about the roadmap approach to investing is

Leaders Can Fall Fast on the Internet

2009-07-15T22:02:00.003-04:00

Just a few years ago, the industry-leading incumbent in the Internet local search category was IAC's CitySearch.com. It had an apparently unassailable position in local search with no meaningful competition.Well, times have changed. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome gave a speech earlier this afternoon during which he mentioned a number of leading Internet companies such as Google, Twitter,

New year, new blogs to read

2009-01-04T22:09:00.002-05:00

Over the last few months, I added three new blogs to my reading list, and they're all related to venture capital and entrepreneurship. Some are not new, but they're new to me, and I think they're all worthy of a regular reading. Let's hope the respective authors each do a better job posting fresh content than I have been doing.Jeremy Stoppelman, a founder and the CEO of Yelp, is offering up a

The NY Times Says Yelp has Arrived

2008-11-04T21:26:00.002-05:00

It's not often that the venerable New York Times publishes a glowing piece on one of my portfolio companies. This is a welcome bit of good cheer amidst the backdrop of a generally gloomy economy. When I invested in the young company founded by Jeremy S. and Russ S. back in 2005, Yelp had attracted about 100,000 San Franciscans to its site. Today, with more than 15,000,000 monthly visitors, it

Humor without the lies, please

2008-11-02T14:31:00.005-05:00

I admit that I'm a frequent reader of Valleywag, a low-brow blog full of silicon valley gossip. It's often pretty funny, and I know many of the people referenced in the stories, which only adds to the entertainment value.Last week, however, the blog ran an entry containing a fabricated story. The entry was meant to embarrass Jimmy Wales, an entrepreneur we backed two years ago. If there is

Portfolio Company Politics

2008-10-01T21:49:00.002-04:00

I got nervous today when I heard one of my consumer internet portfolio companies had posted a political advertisement on YouTube. It seemed obvious to me that any consumer company is likely to alienate half of its customer base by making a political statement. No matter how well-executed the ad, it is guaranteed to hurt business as much as it helps.It appears that I may have jumped too quickly to

Money fears

2008-09-29T17:40:00.003-04:00

Doesn't this new version of the dollar bill do a perfect job capturing the essence of the Treasury Department's current state of mind?

Oh my Goldman

2008-09-18T19:43:00.002-04:00

I got a first-hand sense of how badly Goldman Sachs felt the pressure of the crumbling financial markets this morning. At the start of a private company's board meeting I was attending, a director received a call on his cell phone. One member of the board had not yet arrived, so the director answered the call in case it was the missing attendee. He dispatched with the caller after about a

He has no credibility, but I think he's 100% correct

2007-10-22T15:40:00.001-04:00

For several months now, I have been privately telling anyone willing to listen that search advertising, though incredibly effective, is over rated. At first glance, it would appear that advertising to someone in context of his search activity is an utter utopia for marketers. What better time to advertise a DVD player, for example, than when a consumer types "DVD player" into Google's search box.

What are you reading?

2007-05-10T16:41:00.000-04:00

I always like to know what smart, tech types include in their daily reading. Yesterday, I learned that a very successful entrepreneur (and good friend of mine) named Chris Dixon put up a web site with links to a few dozen of his favorite blogs and websites, and this afternoon I finally got around to studying the list. I have been particularly curious to know what Chris reads because he always

My Click Fraud Theory

2007-03-29T17:53:00.000-04:00

With the astounding growth of auction-based pay-per-click (PPC) advertising led by Google and Yahoo over the past several years, there is a great deal of discussion about click fraud. I think most people are completely missing the point. Those who are complaining about the issue really have nothing to complain about. Bizarrely, those who are getting screwed haven’t even uttered a peep.Click fraud

My Simple Multiple Choice Test For Consumer Internet Startups

2007-03-25T21:32:00.001-04:00

Anyone thinking about starting or joining a consumer Internet startup should be able to answer the following question, and if the answer is "d) none of the above," then I'd suggest looking for a new job.So, here's the question: does your company attract users with any of these things?an inherently viral ideasearch engine optimized content that grows naturally with usagethe ability to spend money

Small Businesses are Starting to 'Get' Local 2.0

2007-02-27T21:59:00.000-05:00

As an investor in Yelp, I was delighted to discover this blog post by Peggy Wynne Borgman, the owner of Saratoga Spa. In it, she admits to ranting about the dark side of user generated content for months before recently changing her tune and "falling in love" with Yelp.Initially, I wondered: why the sudden change of heart? Had a savvy business person at Yelp managed to bribe Peggy into becoming a

Sleeping at Night for $5 a month

2006-12-13T19:36:00.000-05:00

Several months ago, I confessed to being a Scan Artist. I bought a fantastic, speedy desktop scanner from Fujitsu and converted almost every paper record in my home office into a PDF file. I don't keep hard copies of anything anymore.There are many virtues to a paper-free life. For those of us living in small Manhattan apartments, the space saved by eliminating paper files was enough, by itself

Changing gears

2006-11-04T14:31:00.000-05:00

Changing gears -- smoothly and at the right time -- is something that the best venture capitalists do extremely well. By changing gears, I mean shifting from one investment theme to another.After building expertise in big box retail investing, for example, it's no easy feat to abandon that knowledge to pursue something totally different like communications investing. Yet that is precisely what

Shorts and Longs (Cont'd)

2006-09-26T22:23:00.000-04:00

Several months ago, I wrote my initial "shorts and longs" blog entry covering a few things I'd bet against (shorts) and a few things I like (longs). Here's a new entry in the longs column: the US economy relative to the rest of the world. There has been a lot of talk about the US losing its leadership position to China and/or India over the next few decades. I think it's going to take a lot