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Things I wish for in the new year

by Fred Wilson, January 2, 2009 | Comments (1)

	iTouch, secondary market and a cultural shift from cars to mobile devices No predictions for me. I'm done with that thanks to Brad Feld. And I am also done with resolutions. I resolved to get off of Microsoft products in 2007 and failed miserably. But I am looking forward to 2009 on this new year's eve and so I am going to list some things I am hopeful for in 2009. These ...
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Whither 2009 online ad budgets

by Fred Wilson, December 5, 2008 | Comments (0)

	Flat is the up 20% in online advertising From where I sit, it appears that the online advertising business has not yet fallen off a cliff. But what happens when ad buyers start spending 2009 ad budgets instead of working off the end of 2008 ad budgets that were set in a different economic environment? That's a question I've been pondering for months and have mentioned once or ...
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A lost decade, but not for everyone

by Fred Wilson, November 23, 2008 | Comments (0)

	Eventually, stocks like Google, Apple and many we don't know about will lead us back above the mean One of the best posts I read this week was from Fortune's Andy Serwer. In it, he noted: At the end of 1999 the Dow was around 11,400. Today the Dow is at 8,400, which means the index has fallen some 26%, a decline of almost 3% per year. With just one year left in this decade - even if ...
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Getting a piece of my action

by Fred Wilson, November 21, 2008 | Comments (0)

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You need to be a qualified investor to invest in the 'sorts of deals we invest in'

In the past week, I've had two different discussions with readers of this blog who wanted in on one of our deals. One reader wanted to invest in Twitter, the other in Boxee. I told them both it wasn't possible. There are all sorts of reasons why it's not possible, but let's start with the qualified investor rule. To invest ...

Joe the plumber's landing page

by Fred Wilson, November 17, 2008 | Comments (0)

How ReachLocal, Yodle and Clickable can help the plumbers of the world

Last month I attended the New Business Models For News Summit and found myself running the "revenue" breakout group. We talked quite a bit about generating revenue from local merchants. There are a bunch of companies working on this problem, including three in our portfolio, Clickable, outside.in and Targetspot. The conventional wisdom is that it is going to take a ...

What to look for next

by Fred Wilson, October 8, 2008 | Comments (0)

	We need more Warren Buffetts stepping up The Treasury, the Fed, and Warren Buffet have been the only buyers in this meltdown and have been largely focused on financial companies. Meanwhile the rest of the market has gone down 30% year to date and very few, if any, stocks have been spared. What do we look for next? Does the market just keep going down endlessly? What ...
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Is 'freemium' dead?

by Fred Wilson, October 7, 2008 | Comments (0)

	A look at free vs paid business models My friend Howard was visiting me a few weeks ago and he said to me "free is over, I am only investing in services that customers pay for". He said "freemium is dead". I reminded him that freemium is a paid model, but he wasn't buying it. There's a movement afoot by investors to back web services with a real ...
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Hacker news, Techmeme, and Google Blog Search

by Fred Wilson, October 3, 2008 | Comments (0)

Google Blog Search is 'all algorithm and no voice'

I just hate the word "killer" in a headline. It means the author is sensationalizing the potential outcome of a new product launch. FriendFeed was going to kill Twitter; Facebook was going to kill MySpace; Google Base was going to kill Craigslist. None of these things happened. Facebook's a juggernaut. FriendFeed might be. And Google Base is probably not. But ...

Initial thoughts on MySpace music

by Fred Wilson, September 25, 2008 | Comments (0)

User interface and social interactions have a long way to go

I've been evangelizing a free streamed all you can eat music service supported by advertising for as long as this blog has been around. And last night MySpace launched just that in partnership with the four major music labels and the large indie distributor Orchard. It's called MySpace Music. As I am writing this, I am listening to music of ...

Can you build an enterprise-only Web app?

by Fred Wilson, September 12, 2008 | Comments (0)

	Bloggers are hammering Yammer for not being innovative or unique I decided to try Yammer yesterday, but never got the confirmation email (I am sure it got stuck in one of my spam filters), so at this point, I haven't yet tried it. I am sure it's very good because it won the TC50 top prize and that's an impressive feat. Mark Evans says that many bloggers have been "hammering ...
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Open systems, open data, transparency

by Fred Wilson, September 5, 2008 | Comments (0)

	Collaborating with all players to build an open set of Web services Hank Williams points out that the front page of the Angelsoft website is really great. For those that don't know Angelsoft, it is a free Web service that many angel investors use to manage their deal flow. We've looked into using it to manage our deal flow and I wish we could use it, but we don't currently. Hank and ...
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Venture Fund Economics

by Fred Wilson, August 28, 2008 | Comments (1)

	Allocating follow-on capital It's time for another entry in my Venture Fund Economics series. This time I'd like to talk about the importance of allocating follow-on capital. One of the great things about early stage venture capital, as compared to many other investment disciplines, is that you get to build your position in the company over time, sometimes over a very long (5-7 ...
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The human piece of the venture equation

by Fred Wilson, August 20, 2008 | Comments (0)

Founding teams are young and inexperienced, mostly by design

We’ve been attending a lot of “demo days” in the past month and I am attending one more this week, TechStars in Boulder tomorrow. These startup accelerator programs, inspired by the success of Y Combinator, are launching something like 100 new web startups a year, possibly more. And the founding teams of all of these startups are young and inexperienced, ...

Venture fund economics

by Fred Wilson, August 4, 2008 | Comments (0)

	Gross and net returns The comments on my initial post on this topic went right at the VC's compensation - management fees and carry - and their impact on returns. So at Ken Berger's suggestion, I will change my planned post for today and address the issue head on. The returns venture firms get on their investments are called "gross returns". I didn't mention ...
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Corporate venture capital

by Fred Wilson, July 31, 2008 | Comments (2)

If Google were a VC, it would bring a lot to the table

The news this morning is that Google is seriously considering entering the venture capital business. They bring a lot to the table for sure. But as Jessica Vascellaro points out in here WSJ piece (which is what I linked to):Their [corporations who invest directly in venture deals] track records have been mixed. Corporate venture-capital arms have been hampered by challenges ...

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