The Equity Kicker

Board meetings in an era of rapid execution

Customer development guru Steve Blank recently wrote a couple of good posts (part 1 here and part 2 here) on what is good and bad about board meetings in the twenty first century and how we might change them. As he says, board meetings haven’t changed much…

As customer and agile development reinvent the [...]

Hot markets still grow even when the overall economy stalls

It is always easier to grow a company when the overall economy is on an upward tick, there is no doubt about that, but I always say that as a venture investor if you pick your targets markets well they should grow through the good times and the bad. That’s important because most investments [...]

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-06-05

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-05-29 http://goo.gl/fb/VxpRA # The ingredients for a successful startup http://goo.gl/fb/hLFPz # @putt1ck 2010 was a tough year, so investment levels dropped, 2011 looks better though. And amount of capital in the market is an issue in reply to putt1ck # Cool that Urban Outfitters is getting slammed for stealing [...]

How the very best companies perform

In a day when the world is awash with talk of bubbles after Groupon and Pandora filed for their IPOs I thought it would be interesting to take step back and look at the performance of a handful of the best tech companies created since the dawn of the internet. The growth of [...]

Google and Intel top the M&A leagues

One of the best ways to get a premium multiple for your company is to build a deep relationship with your potential acquirer. It is only possible to build a limited number of such relationships and hence (all things being equal) it makes sense to focus on partners with a good track record [...]

50 Questions: How does a VC consider competition?

Twenty-fourth in a series of weekly posts by myself and Nicholas Lovell of Gamesbrief which answer the fifty questions you should ask before raising venture capital. We expect the series to run for a year after which we will collate the posts into a book. You can find the rationale behind the series here, [...]