April 2009
51 posts
“Less capital in the asset class, smaller fund sizes, smaller partnerships,...”
– The Venture Capital Math Problem
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Google Public Data
Google has released on awesome visualization tool for public data on US states and counties. For example, here’s the historic data on unemployment rates for the US, New York State and California.
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“We have too many stores to sell “stuff,” all sorts of stuff. Too...”
– John Mauldin - Back to the Future Recession
“These amounts were paid to you at the expense of other customers while BLMIS was...”
– Madoff Investors Ordered to Return False Profits - NYTimes.com
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A Drop In The Ocean
The Economist is my favorite magazine. It never stops surprising me with the quality of its content.
However today they wrote something I dont’ agree with on their weekly Politics newsletter.
Mr Obama held his first cabinet meeting and called for his departments to find $100m in savings to “set the tone”. The cuts represent 0.003% of the $3.5 trillion federal budget.
That’s...
“I learned that a business deal made over dinner and a handshake can turn into...”
– Fred Wilson on his investment in Geocities
“The Marketplaces business unit, which consists of eBay, Shopping.com, StubHub,...”
– eBay Inc. Reports First Quarter 2009 Results - Yahoo! Finance
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YouTube Bandwidth Costs And Internet Peering
Two sources shed a different light on possible bandwith costs of YouTube: YouTube’s Fine - Analysts Don’t Understand Internet Peering and The Value of Content Distribution Networks (pdf) Google presentation.
Peering agreements between Google and Internet Service Providers may significantly reduce YouTube streaming costs compared to the $360 million estimated by Credit Suisse.
“The Norwegian study looked at almost 2,000 online music users, all over the age...”
– Study finds pirates 10 times more likely to buy music | Music | guardian.co.uk
“It’s always smart to prepare for disaster. In investing, that means holding...”
– The Atlantic Online | May 2009 | Why I Fired My Broker | Jeffrey Goldberg
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US Government Printing Dollars vs MEW Collapsing
As John Mauldin said in his newsletter, the Fed has announced they intend to print $300 billion.
If that sounds like a lot, remember that Americans used to extract over $100 billion per quarter in Mortage Equity Withdrawals (MEW) in 2007. That amount corresponded to over 8% of Disposable Personal Income (DPI).
For Q4 2008, Net Equity Extraction was estimated at minus $77 billion, or...
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“If one advances confidently in the direction of one’s dreams, and...”
– Henry David Thoreau, via MDV
“You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when...”
– Paulo Coelho
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How To Change The World
Yesterday I saw a link (probably reading Seth Godin’s blog) to Chris Guillebeau’s 279 Days to Overnight Success (pdf) and A Brief Guide to World Domination (pdf). I found them inspiring and now I actually feel urged to do something about it. I think they are a worthwhile read.
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“To sum up, globally we are tracking or doing even worse than the Great...”
– The world economy is tracking or doing worse than during the Great Depression | vox - Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists
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Spreadsheet of European VCs
Via Hacker News, Via The Business Leaders Network, I found an excellent spreadsheet of European VC funds hosted at Zoho.
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Twitter vs SMS
Today I was surprised to see that in April 2009 Twitter almost reached the same search volume as SMS on Google Insights.
It could be a good sign of Twitter gaining ground as a communication platform, as opposed to just another social web 2.0 site.
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Skype Numbers Round-Up
Following rumors about an IPO of Skype, here is a round-up on Skype financials:
Revenues 2008: $551 million (+44% on 2007 figures)
EBITDA 2008: $116 million (21% margin)
Revenues 2010E: $740 million
EBITDA 2010E: $156 million (21% margin)
Ebay bought Skype in september 2005 for $2.6 billion. It then paid earn-outs of $600 million (out of a $1.5 billion earn-out pool) to shareholders....
“There’s a market for sound and fury. Plenty of people will gladly trade some of...”
– Getting Attention Is a Stupid Business Plan
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A Bottom-Up Approach To Electronic Medical Records
Via BusinessInsider, via Jay Parkinson’s blog, I found one more piece of evidence on the dismal state of digitalization of health records, in a review of a patient trying out Google Health and its import function. The interchangeable use of billing codes for conditions and medications generates totally unusable data.
My impression is that the situation is so bad that it will just be...
“Recessions nonetheless create more opportunity for challengers, not less”
– Hanging Tough: Financial Page: The New Yorker
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“More importantly, this means that the United States eventual date with...”
– Bankruptcy - Social Security Stunner; Bankruptcy of Nation Moved Up Several Years - Apr. 1, 2009 | Blogs at Chris Martenson - Bankruptcy, Government, Social Security, US
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“William Henry Gates, Jr. and Mary Maxwell [Bill Gates’s parents] were...”
– How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates
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“This is a city built from nothing in just a few wild decades on credit and...”
– The dark side of Dubai - Johann Hari, Commentators - The Independent
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Volume Premiums in Advertising
From a good Facebook advertising platform analysis on Forbes, it seems like there is a premium on reach, rather than on precise targeting.
Generally, the promise of online advertising is targeting pitches at the precise group for your particular product. But all that precision doesn’t make Facebook much more profitable. In fact, typi The approximately 2,300 U.S.-based Facebook users with...
“Last year was the worst on record for the U.S. newspaper industry. Total...”
– The Wounded U.S. Newspaper Industry Lost $7.5 Billion in Advertising Revenues Last Year
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“Excessive inflation is a typical outcome in oligarchic situations when a weak...”
– Inflation Prospects In An Emerging Market, Like The U.S. « The Baseline Scenario
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The G20 Meeting
If you don’t trust journalists and reporters, please find below the resolutions of last week’s G20 meeting (or download the final communique pdf). The 20 members of G20 are 19 countries … plus the European Union (which as a whole generates a higher nominal GDP than the US). I was surprised to see that Indonesia and South Africa are members.
Spain, The Netherlands, Poland and...
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A Fractal Method For Risk Management
Today I found a Financial Times article authored by Benoit Mandelbrot (yes, the Mandelbrot set guy) and Nassim Taleb (yes, the Black Swan guy) dating back to March 23, 2006.
They introduce a “fractal” approach to describe our world of wild randomness, as opposed to a traditional Gaussian model, to take into account rare but extremely impactful events. For example, fat-tail stable...
“Because collapse will not be televised, you will not know that it has happened....”
– Collapse and its Discontents DMITRY ORLOV / Carolyn Baker.Org 1feb2007
“In the world of investments, there are many ways more subtle than the Martingale...”
– Semyon: The real cause of the financial crisis
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Disruptive Innovation At Work
Just saw that Silicon Graphics was sold for a mere $25 million today. 10 years ago it was making $4 billion in revenues in high-end workstations and servers.