The Equity Kicker

Are the days of multiple usernames and passwords numbered?

The dream of being able to sign in to just about any site with the same username and password took a step closer yesterday when Facebook joined the OpenID Foundation.

For me this is a very good thing. Facebook Connect has been out in the market for a month or two now and their [...]

The future for Twitter

As I read about the first commercial Twitter spamming tool this morning I am reminded of a mashup* event I attended last week where the future of Twitter was discussed extensively.

My big takeaway from that conversation are that people use Twitter for two very different reasons: To stay in touch in a small [...]

Track your friends on mobile with Google Maps

The blogosphere is awash with talk of Google Latitude, their new service that allows friends to see each other’s location on Google maps on their mobiles. The screenshot below says it all.

I think this service will be a big deal. After all the hoo-ha about privacy and nervousness about how people will [...]

Planning multiple rounds of finance during the downturn – give yourself time

When we are asked to invest in the Series A or Series B of a company it is often the case that the plan is to raise a Series B or Series C further down the track. Part of the investment case then becomes an analysis of the chances of raising that next round, [...]

Forrester projects ecommerce will do well this year

I get asked all the time about the impact of the credit crunch on the venture capital industry, and one of the things I quite often say in reply is that good VC is all about investing in fast growth markets, and that sure they will be affected by the downturn, but there should [...]

On web business models, profitablity and scale

Fred Wilson wrote a great post over the weekend which was largely dedicated to making the point that in the final analysis profitability is what makes a business attractive, and that being small or medium sized and highly profitable is often a better idea than being large and loss making. I couldn’t agree more, [...]