Category: Venture Capital

Bros Funding Bros : What’s Wrong with Venture Capital

A VC on VCs :

From the foundations and NGOs that are eradicating poverty and taking care of the world’s worst off, to companies like Facebook, Google and Apple that are inventing the future while looking after our best off, they have all explicitly decided to become less consensus driven and less homogeneous. They have found this increases creativity and drives business results. In turn, they are doing the ambitious, groundbreaking work that we used to do. And even though they have more work to do, when you compare the complexion of these leaders to the leaders within our industry, we look like total laggards.

→ The Information

How $1bln Evernote Went From Silicon Valley Darling to Deep Trouble

Depending on where you stand, Evernote is either a sinking ship or a maturing company going through a normal transition cycle. But most people we spoke to seem to agree that the company has failed to take advantage of its red-hot growth and make enough money from much of its huge user base — and is starting to show early signs of being an ailing unicorn.

It’s a sobering reality check about the business challenges that can derail even the hottest tech sensations.

I am fed up of Evernote. Iterations after iterations, their apps are clunky as ever.
But to be fair, all other services of this kind (OneNote, Quip…) are worse.
So I am stuck with Evernote, anyway.

→ Business Insider

A Different Approach To VC

Fred Wilson :

I wrote this to my partner the other day. I’m not going to provide the context. It doesn’t matter. It could have been about almost anything in the startup sector right now.
“the biggest thing that is wrong with the startup sector right now is entrepreneurs and their teams are too focused on valuation and not enough focused on business fundamentals”

→ A VC

Lunch with the FT: Neil Shen

It is getting late. After prodding doubtfully at a bright yellow jellylike substance that turns out to be mango salad dressing, the smartphones on the table begin to vibrate and beep once more. “Venture capital is a regret business,” concludes one of China’s most successful investors. And with that he finally turns his attention back to the gyrations of the market.

→ Financial Times

The NYTimes Could Be Worth $19bn Instead Of $2bn

IMG_1358

Frédéric Filloux :

Through this lens, if Wall Street could assign to The New York Times the ratio Silicon Valley grants BuzzFeed (8.5 instead of a paltry 1.4), the Times would be worth about $19bn instead of the current $2.2bn.

Again, there is no doubt that Wall Street would respond enthusiastically to a major shrinkage of NYTCo’s print operations; but regardless of the drag caused by the newspaper itself, the valuation gap is absurdly wide when considering that 75% of BuzzFeed traffic is actually controlled by Facebook, certainly not the most reliably unselfish partner.

While BuzzFeed relies on ridiculous headlines and traffic from Facebook, investors are more inclined to value BuzzFeed way higher than the Times because of the potential it can generate in the future.

On the other hand, the Times is a safe-house, which proved to be realistic 5-7 years ago by transitioning into a successful digital brand. So all in all, the growth of Times is less tangible than a relatively new website. That’s precisely why there’s such a gap between the two. Though to be perfectly realistic, considering that one is kinda overvalued and the other one undervalued (in Silicon Valley standard) these two ratios should adjust and get closer together.

→ Monday Note