January 28, 2010
Ok, it is time to recommit to my blog
As I have posted before, Twitter killed my blog. Thankfully frienfeed has kept my off-blog activities updating here. But it is a new year. And I am going to re-commit to publishing more on my blog. More long form thoughts. More than 140 characters.
Lets start with a couple random ones.
1. Obama’s spin city speech was totally weak last night. Unfortunately the Republican response was weak as well. Obama is trying to move with the political winds, but still clinging to his liberal health care, big government is good base. He can’t have both. I am still clinging to my god and guns Mr. Obama.
2. Obama was stupid to attack the Supreme Court right in front of him.
3. I am going to have a VERY big announcement on Feb. 8. Bigger than the iPad. Believe me.
Posted by Martin at 9:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 24, 2009
Check out the 350 Project
Thinking alot lately about how to use on-line to drive local community and local purchases. Was in my favorite men’s store in Seattle, Oslo’s the other day and picked up the 3/50 project flyer. Very cool project. Didn’t know anyone had quantified the impact of shopping local. Forget Obama’s stimulus funneled through DC and the politicians. Shop local.
Posted by Martin at 3:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 16, 2009
Bezos on kindle/ebooks
They are separate businesses. Very interesting conclusion statement… Simplicity, he suggested, has been a reason that Kindle books now account for 35 percent of the sales of all titles that are available in both Kindle and paper formats. “We humans do more of what’s easy,” he explained. “If you lower friction, you always get more of what’s easy.” On the Kindle, he added, “you can think of a book and have it 60 seconds later. That is driving book sales.” I resemble that comment. I have bought and read 5X more books since I have the Kindle. Also I agree on the lower friction totally.
Posted by Martin at 11:32 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 28, 2009
My presentation to Oregon State University Tomorrow
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November 16, 2008
Where to have coffee?
Well I have my favorites. And I have alot of meetings in Coffee shops. It is a Seattle thing. I can tell allot about someone by the coffee shop they suggest to meet at. Greg over at Xconomy actually has started a list of the intersection between coffee shops and the Seattle start-up tech community. Interesting list. Check out who drinks where. My favorite is of course Cafe Fiore (and yes I can be seen on my Segway there).
Posted by Martin at 1:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 30, 2008
OSU investment club outperforms the market
About five years ago, I gave my college, Oregon State University, an endowment to start a real money trading account for the finance club. It is much more interesting to actually invest real money than play money, it changes the dynamics of learning very significantly. After three years of managing this small endowment, the club has a track record and has attracted $1M in investment from the OSU foundation. Very cool to see a small investment of mine pay off big and to create real learning opportunities. Article here.
Posted by Martin at 11:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 15, 2008
An oldie that I wish I had re-read myself
A post I made on Venture blog way back in June 23,2004 about success factors of a great start-up CEO. Still very true today.
Posted by Martin at 2:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 16, 2005
Gosh my timing is good on pensions
Yesterday I posted about the pension overhang as the next big bubble to burst. Today: Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | Senate Passes Bill to Shore Up Pensions The Senate passed (97-2 this is a no brainer) a bill to shore up company funding of pension plans, estimated to bu underfunded by $450 Billion. That is a BIG number. Guess who picks that up? Yes the tax payer through the PBGC. Think the National debt is bad? Think the war is expensive? Think it is costly to clean up Katrina? Think about picking up that tab. So in uncharacteristic form, the Senats is moving early (ish) on this and trying to force companies to catch up funding over the next 7 years (oh, those poor airlines have 20 years). Sounds good eh? Make the suckers pay. But what does it mean for earnings? What does it mean for restatements? GM got downgraded to junk and their stock took a big hit when they decided to account (only partially) for their underfunded liability. Think what will happen when companies fully fund the pensions. Earnings will tank. Look through your stock portfolio. Sell the ones with large underfunded liabilities. Buy companies without pension plans.
Posted by Martin at 7:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 15, 2005
The next bubble is not housing, it is pensions
What is the #1 potential bomb waiting to explode in the US economy? The popular press would have you believe it is the housing bubble. It is not, it is our underfunded pension liability. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation just released their 2005 financial statements: PBGC Releases Fiscal Year 2005 Financial Results Guess what? The recent bankruptcies of United and other old world industries have shifted tens of billions of dollars of pension liabilities from the private sector to the quasi public sector. How does the PBGC meet it's underfunded liabilities? You guessed it tax payers. Nice game huh? Shift liability from the shareholder to the taxpayer? I can give you a very long list of private debts I would like to make public debts. A large reason we are in this mess is that lax accounting rules have allowed corporations to pump up earnings by not funding their pensions. GM's debt was recently downgraded to junk status and the stock crashed when they were forced to make a $13B restatement of earnings to reflect their underfuned pension liability. If you looked at the three major car companies they basically don't make any money and only exist to pay their pensions for retired employees.
What does all this have to do with entrepreneurship and startups? Everything. If you can start a company today in an industry with a heavy pension burden, you may be able to get a competitive position out of the gate due to your lower fixed cost liabilities. I think it is time to start a car company.
Posted by Martin at 7:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 19, 2004
Another corporate intelligence service
Well NetContent has launched Scoop.com which sounds basically like Lead411, but won't give me a free account without asking for a credit card. Don't like that so I will not be doing a full review. Maybe someone there will give me a real account? This service is for $29.95 a month as well. Would be nice to do a shoot-out of these services to see which is best for a start-up. I would guess these services differentiate on reports/detail pricing and depth/breadth of sources.
Posted by Martin at 1:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 17, 2004
Review of Lead411.com
I have been singing the praises lately for all the cool tools out there today to make running a start-up so much easier. It is amazing what you can outsource and datamine from the right web sites. The nice guys at Lead411 sent me and offer I couldn't refuse, a free account just for reviewing their service. So here is my review:
Sign-up process and pitch:
Lead411 is basically a sales lead generation site. You can get news of financings, personell changes, big deals filtered by their industry categories and served up in a web page and/or e-mail. They collect lots of this data into company profiles as well that include company contact information, key employees, business description, etc. They will also sell you lots of marketing lists sliced and diced 100 ways.
What I liked:
- The price is right. For this information, many services will charge ALOT more money. For $24.95 per month or $199 per year, it is a bargain for any sales force.
- They have an interesting affiliate marketing program to sell the service through. Looks like an effecient channel.
- The company profiles, while very sparse on operational details, are quite deep in personal contacts. The handy "vCard" download by each person's name is very cool. I was impressed that at even small start-ups (like Akaba Inc) they had a meaningful number of contacts (in this case 3).
- The personalization of the filter to your interests is quite granular.
- The daily e-mails with "leads" have an excellent format and allow you to quickly prioritize what you want to see and click through for more detail (HTML mail).
- e-mails are listed for almost every company contact.
What I didn't like:
- In company descriptions, some categories are buckets. Like employees. It is probably set by a person.
- Not all the information is indexed. For example, Lead411 showed zero press releases for AkabaInc. On their site they had 8 press releases starting on July 17, 2001 thru Sept. 23, 2003. Maybe it was an archive problem, or just the data source Lead411 is sniffing. But in any case, since it is not complete, I immediately become suspect of my search results.
- Some click-throughs didn't work. For a compay Arxan which I know something about, clicking through from the Lead411 site to press releases didn't work. No error message, nothing. Just no forwarding to the site. Also, Arxan site had 5 press releases and only 2 made it to Lead411.
- Continued data inconsistencies between the company sites and Lead411. For Arxan, there were jobs listed on the site as available but Lead411 didn't list any.
- Lead411 uses a taxonomy to categorize companies and events for those companies, but I don't know where they got it from. It doesn't seem to be SIC codes (which would be understandable). It seems to be their own invention and some categories having overlap. When a company dreams up their own taxonomy I get worried.
- When listing company contacts, most phone numbers are just the switchboard not direct numbers.
Summary:
If you are looking for an easy way to find lots of contacts at a company and stay updated on their press releases, this service would do the trick. You get alot of marketing names for your buck. At this price, you can afford other sources as well. A great inside sales tool to do calling and e-mail prospecting.
Posted by Martin at 3:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 12, 2004
Poll results
Well your votes are in on What is MOST important to start-up success
Great Market 20 %
(15 votes)
Great CEO 12 %
(9 votes)
Great Managemen Team 33 %
(25 votes)
Great Product 18 %
(14 votes)
Great PR/Marketing 2 %
(2 votes)
It's a mystery 12 %
(9 votes)
Total votes 74
Looks like most people believe in management team. I tend to agree. Management team and CEO are the most reliable factors in a company sucess.
Posted by Martin at 6:27 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
August 3, 2004
The most random things come from having a blog...
I received the following e-mail late last night (name removed)
___________________________________________________
Martin,
I am working with a television show that is shooting in and around Chicago. It is a reality based show featuring a host of entrepreneurs. This week we are shooting an episode featuring our businessmen/women on a corporate retreat. We are looking to find a venture capitalist/motivational speaker to speak with our group of 9 people for about 45 minutes to an hour or so. The catch is that I just found out about this tonight and we are looking to have the speaker come out this Wednesday, August 4.
Please let me know 1. If you would be interested in speaking; 2. If you would be available this Wednesday afternoon to come out to a suburb of Chicago for the show (We can arrange all the travel for you); and 3. What would your rate be?
I appologize for the late notice, and I appreciate your taking the time to consider the opportunity. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Thanks again!
Best,
___________________________________________________
Wow, isn't the web wonderful! Just because I publish my thoughts about venture capital on a blog, someone can find me on Google and invite me to be on a reality tv show. I will let you know if I accept and how it goes.
Posted by Martin at 6:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 13, 2004
Want to buy cocaine dealer stuff?
Check out the Treasury Department list of seized stuff. You can be mac'n it like the big dogs in no time. Hey, there is a submarine!
Posted by Martin at 11:22 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack