Entrepreneurship

06.12.07

Israel Rising Entrepreneurship, VC | Comments
Tom Friedman's op-ed piece in the Sunday New York Times (subscription required) is worth a gander. It sings an old tune - that of promising young innovators, and their financial backers, as economic growth drivers - against the unusual backdrop of Israel's seat in the global tech engine. Here's the "money" quote: If you want to know why Israelâ€™s stock market and car sales are at record highs â€” while Israelâ€™s government is paralyzed by scandals and war with Hamas and doesnâ€™t even have a finance minister â€” itâ€™s because of this ecosystem of young innovators and venture capitalists. Last year, VCs poured ...
05.14.07

Content As E-Commerce Catalyst E-Commerce, Entrepreneurship | Comments
At the beginning of the year I noted that media (i.e. content) would play a role in 2007 e-commerce growth. Here was prediction #2 in my e-commerce prognostications: Content shifts traffic patterns. Especially within niches, the more sophisticated e-tailers will look to media to drive visit frequency. Just as groceries changed Wal-Martâ€™s customer base from one that visited on average once a month to one that visited on average once a week, e-tailers will use topical media to bring customers back (see Blueflyâ€™s â€œflypaperâ€œ). I should have also touched on content as differentiator in crowded, commodity retail markets. Today, Amazon announced its purchase ...
04.30.07

Tracking the Ill Entrepreneurship, Healthcare | Comments
Thank goodness we're starting to see consumer-facing healthcare analytics. Daily Strength's user-generated treatment efficacy rankings and Vimo's procedure comparison shopping tool offer excellent examples of recent entrants' efforts. A week ago, I ran across Who is Sick, a company tackling what I'd call communicable disease geotargeting. With trivial pursuit-esque pies dotting a city map, the company visually represents the harboring of illness. Fascinating. Consider the following current map of Louisville: They've certainly not hit a statistically significant reporting threshold but the concept clearly has merit and I bet version 2 takes it further. I'm imagining the more serious - cancer clusters around who knows what - and less - chicken pox pies in ...
04.15.07

Venture Impact: Southeast Figures Prominently Entrepreneurship, VC | Comments
I finally got around to looking at Global Insight's recently released study, "Venture Impact: The Ecomonic Importance of Venture Capital Backed Companies to the U.S. Economy." This one's great emotional candy for anyone in the business. After all, venture-backed company employees represent 9% of all private sector employees, and employment at venture-backed companies grew at triple the rate of overall domestic growth in the period from 2003 to 2005. Hoo-rah! I'm not surprised by the above, but what took me aback was data on venture-backed company jobs by state, which prominently figures Georgia and Tennessee amongst other eye-openers. Peek at the following table ...
03.27.07

MyShape - New "Custom Fit" Entrant E-Commerce, Entrepreneurship, VC | Comments
Despite what has been a marked uptick in consumer facing startups over the past couple years, it's not altogether often that e-tailers make it into VentureWire. If memory serves, 1-800Diapers.com was the last that graced its e-letter. So I was interested to read the scoop yesterday that a shopping site called MyShape received $2 million from angel investors. Here's the skinny on the company per Erica Owen's reporting: MyShape, which launched six months ago and is based in Altadena, Calif., matches shoppers measurements, body shape and preferences with the varying sizes of participating brands to help overcome the fashion industry's lack ...
03.19.07

Outside "Internetville" Entrepreneurship, VC | Comments
Wheat field - (Mornico Losana, 26 Jun 2006), orginally uploaded by Simone Merli I've often heard seasoned venture capitalists refer to a kind of informal screening process for new deals. It goes like this: If I hear about a new, interesting company once, I'll mentally "log" it If I hear about a company twice (from separate sources), I'll check them out If I hear about a company three times (again, disparate sources), it's time to bring them in for a pitch This methodology serves as cure for "deal overload" and harnesses one's network as interest barometer. I'd contend that rising transparency in the ...
03.15.07

Trendwatching: One-Stop Healthcare Services Entrepreneurship, Healthcare | Comments
The Funky Team, originally uploaded by jacq77 Yesterday, The Boston Globe ran an article on reknowned business strategist Michael Porter's latest healthcare riffs. Porter, who is perhaps best known as a Harvard Business School professor and co-founder of Monitor Group, and lesser known as #1 on the Thinkers 50 list (beating out Bill Gates for the "world's most influential business thinker" spot), has recently tackled our domestic healthcare crisis with his book Redefining Health Care. It's been on my bookshelf for a couple months now awaiting a read, so I eagerly dove into the Globe article in which Porter highlights cooperative physician services ...
03.05.07

Personality Typing in Venture Capital Entrepreneurship, VC | Comments
Psychoanalist [sic], originally uploaded by DarthLen I'll never forget Mitch Mumma of Intersouth telling an assembled group of newly initiated venture capitalists that a degree in psychology would probably be a stronger indicator of success in the industry than a degree in economics. One's ability to intuit the capabilities of a team, to build trust, and manage bumps in the road are key skills for a VC, and only likely to become more so as investment opportunities become more competitive. Consider the kind of relationship building the Outside.in investment required. It's worth noting, then, that venture investors do occasionally bring ...
03.03.07

Heading to SXSW: Attendant Thoughts Entrepreneurship, Media, VC | Comments
Texas Flag on Fire Truck Grill, originally uploaded by jehinote I'll be trekking to Austin next Friday for my first SXSW conference. Do let me know if you're attending and interested in meeting up. I've been glancing through the agenda and caught the following: "Don't need no VC when you've got a PC." How's that for a grabbing panel lead-in? Actually, it's a rehash of a worn tune in the industry and it's a misnomer for the topic of a panel that'll be worthwhile for attending creatives: "Web 2.0 / 3.0 ArtsEntrepreneurship.com: Make Your Passion Your Profession." Venture dollars rarely go ...
03.02.07

The Goldilocks Experience Entrepreneurship, Media | Comments
Goldilocks and the 3 Pups, originally uploaded by *Tiny Dancer* I heard a clever dictum from an entrepreneur this past week. He said, "I like to call it the Goldilocks experience - not too hard, not too easy." Got me thinking about what should be a "Goldilocks experience." After all, in the media business it seems nothing can be too easy. UI experts sweat every detail to drive friction out of the user's experience. A world of infinite content channels and short attention spans demands too easy. Challenge, however, has its place. Consider gaming, where "difficulty" has become an experimental playground: ...

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Welcome to Punctuative! Here you'll find occasionally insightful comments on entrepreneurship, venture capital, technology, and the future, as well as a nifty tool meant to help open doors in the financing world. Go ahead and explore.