The Series A Crunch: One More Reason to Bootstrap and Skip Venture Capital
I’ve talked a lot about bootstrapping on this blog–I am a total convert, and I’m enjoying every minute of bootstrapping my own company. There are many reasons for my enthusiasm. Investors these days are going to make you take most of the bootstrap journey before giving you a dime being one of the biggest. You’ve [...]
How to Position a VC Startup for Acquisition: You Can’t
How do you position and maneuver your VC-funded startup for acquisition? The short answer is, “You can’t.” The VC’s didn’t sign up for an acquisition. They are seeking a billion dollar revenue opportunity because that’s what it takes to move the needle on their portfolio. If they are willing to talk about an acquisition at all, [...]
Canada’s Next Five Years
1997-2012: Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. 2012-2020: Optimism, Opportunity, Execution. I’ve been bullish for a while now, it’s no secret. It was 5 years ago that I was writing off VC in Canada and explaining how startups needed to step up to create an environment to bring them back. And like a bowl of Sea Monkeys, the [...]
When Capital Isn’t Scarce
For a long time VC’s and other investors bemoaned SaaS. I head more than one say that nobody would ever be able to raise as much money as Salesforce did to IPO–$70M–so you just had to figure out how to do it much more cheaply than Salesforce had. This morning I read that Marketo has [...]
The End of the Beginning
Today Get Satisfaction announced that we have successfully closed a new round of financing, led by Bruce Cleveland at InterWest Partners. It’s a validating moment for all the hard work that the team has undertaken, particularly in the last year and a half. Despite the fundraising process being a major MBO for me over the [...]
Evernote Celebrates Birthday by Joining the Billion Dollar Club (Really?)
Evernote has recently celebrated their third birthday. I also recently had my 21st birthday – it feels good to be able to legally grab a drink finally. (Hey, if Evernote can lie about their age, so can I…). Joke apart, I have no idea why a company would pretend to be half as young as [...]
The Art of Riding the Bubble
People are increasingly asking whether there is a Bubble underway in the tech business. The answer is that by the time you know there is a Bubble it’s probably too late to do anything about it. But if all you’re doing is asking whether there is a Bubble, the Bubble is probably not here, yet. [...]
Color
Wow that’s hot. Social networking, mobile, photo sharing. $41M raised before launch. Testing conventions, with damn good timing. But will this color fade to grey? Mobile social software application Color launched today. With more pre-launch funding by Sequoia et. al. than Flickr was bought for it is something to watch. Smart and accomplished team, which [...]
SAP Ventures Backs Lavante: Despite Hiccups, the Supplier Management Gets a Vote of Support (Part 1)
Spend Matters has spent quite a bit of time covering vendor happenings in the supplier information management (SIM) and related markets of late. Some providers in the sector, such as Aravo and Rollstream, appear to be winning a se…
The 2010 Trident Capital Investment Strategy Session
couple of weeks ago, our partnership met to discuss our investment strategy for the next 12 months. We hold this session every year. But this year’s meeting was particularly important because we discussed the overall investment strategy for our new fund (Fund 7). We also reviewed the market conditions in the sectors where we invest, [...]
