The Equity Kicker

Following Yahoo’s $1.1bn acquisition of Tumblr Pandodaily published an article asking why Tumblr and Foursquare, New York’s top consumer web startups, haven’t had the same success as Twitter and Facebook. First the numbers, as measured by 2012 revenues Foursquare and Tumblr are a long way behind:

Pando points out that one would expect [...]

Inn0vation Matt3rs have analysed jobs listings by European VC backed companies by looking at the data on Ventureloop.com. There were nearly 1,500 jobs posted in the last seven weeks, which would mean c11,000 over the course of the year if that rate was maintained. These are jobs listings which I guess are a [...]

A couple of weeks ago veteran Benchmark VC Bill Gurley posted a typically excellent and thorough analysis of pricing for market places and platforms. Bill calls the money that platforms take from transactions the ‘rake’ and you can see from the table above that there is a wide range out there. Rakes comprise [...]

I think I’m right in saying that this is the first guest post we’ve ever had on The Equity Kicker and it’s from my partner Simon Cook who has a few things to say about the budget. If you think the government should be supporting startups and want to know more about how they [...]

Google announced yesterday that it is shuttering eight more products, which makes it 70 they’ve closed down since they started their cull in 2011. I’m sure this is the right decision for them, and I applaud their focus and desire to do a small number of things well but Google Reader was part of [...]

Brad Feld wrote a post earlier this week titled How is your Q1 going? This is the key paragraph:

If your sales and revenue are not on or ahead of plan, it’s time to take a hard look at what is going on. Q1 is the easiest quarter to make since you just created [...]

Brian Frumberg, My friend and venture partner at our sister fund DFJ Gotham is organising a pitch event for UK startups to meet New York investors. Knowing Brian, it will be a good one. Details below.

VentureOutNY is Seeking UK Tech Startups to Pitch NYC Venture Investors Date: April 8, 2013 Where: New York, [...]

Subscription ecommerce has become quite a hot business model over the past couple of years, perhaps reaching peak hotness 6-12 months ago. Notable examples of companies in this market include our portfolio company Lovefilm (acquired by Amazon for a rumoured £200m), our portfolio company Graze that sells healthy snacks, shoe subscription businesses ShoeDazzle and StylistPick, [...]

Facebook announced strong Q4 results yesterday:

1bn monthly active users across all platforms, a 25% YoY increase 680m monthly active users on mobile, a 57% YoY incease Mobile DAUs exceeded web DAUs for the first time in Q4 2012 Revenues of $1.6bn, up 40% since Q4 2011 and slightly ahead of analysts’ expectations [...]

Every now and again I like to post a video which shows how fast new technologies are coming down the pipe. The pace of technology innovation is accelerating all the time but most people don’t fully grasp the implications. By showcasing technologies like self driving cars and robotics I hope to make those implications [...]