Blog Posts

  • Book rating rules

    Book rating rules

    I read quite a lot. And I provide reviews on most of them. Most are posted at my Goodreads profile page (and Goodreads then cross-posts them to Amazon). You can see my latest reads in the block on the side of this page. (I’m a bit ashamed my reviews aren’t more extensive; I’m not a good keeper-of-notesContinue…

  • Should the interest on convertible notes be paid in cash in some cases?

    When startups raise capital from outside investors, one financial structure commonly used is called a convertible (promissory) note. There are several motivations for startups & investors to use this arrangement. One thing is coming back to bite me, though, and makes me wonder if the terms of it ought to change in common use: conversion of the interest intoContinue…

  • Beyond Internet Gaga

    For a time in the mid-1990’s I was an analyst at Forrester Research, in its Network Strategy Service. Last week’s Distributed Denial of Service attack waged against Dyn recalls a report I wrote that I still consider groundbreaking. I asked George Colony, CEO/Founder of Forrester, if I could reproduce it here because I believe the technique I used — called scenarioContinue…

  • Viewpoint follows role: 2013 in review

    I left Acquia in the capable hands of its current management team last December after I had the fortunate experience to be tightly connected to TechStars during the Fall 2012 class. That involvement made me wonder whether there might be a business opportunity in building an accelerator for companies using Drupal as a technology platform, and I left Acquia to follow that idea. FortunatelyContinue…

  • Why zero-revenue companies can be worth billions

    Why zero-revenue companies can be worth billions

    In a recent blog post, Fred Destin of Atlas Ventures (again) added sanity into the discussions about why zero-revenue companies can receive valuations of many billions of dollars. I agree with everything he said. There’s one more point I’d add: Large scale audiences have a valuation-per-engaged-user. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all started out as zero-revenue companies. ButContinue…