Category Archives: investment

The anti-portfolio

Posted on July 23, 2009 by paulmcl

You have to be pretty brave to be a venture capitalist and keep an “anti-portfolio” page on your website. This lists the deals that you were offered but turned down. Bessemer Ventures is the only VC I know that does … Continue reading →

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Term sheets

Posted on June 9, 2009 by paulmcl

What is a term sheet? If you raise money from a venture capitalist (or an experienced angel) then the most important conditions for the investment will be summarized in a term-sheet. It sounds like this should be a simple document … Continue reading →

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Patents, CDMA, trolls and standards

Posted on June 4, 2009 by paulmcl

CDMA is also another interesting oddity from a patent point of view. Most patents are tiny pieces of incremental innovation that form the many little pieces you need to build complex technological products. You can’t build a semiconductor without violating … Continue reading →

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Why are VCs so greedy?

Posted on May 27, 2009 by paulmcl

Why are venture capitalists so greedy? Why do they want a 20-30X return on their money? Why doesn’t investing $5M and selling the company for $15M a couple of years later make them happy? After all, when I’ve bought a … Continue reading →

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Wall Street values

Posted on May 5, 2009 by paulmcl

Wall Street does a terrible job of valuing investment. I’ve talked earlier about how financial accounting standards do a poor job of capturing the value of many modern companies in their balance sheet. But Wall Street is driven by people … Continue reading →

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Crushing fixed costs

Posted on March 26, 2009 by paulmcl

There is a trend that the current downturn is only going to accelerate: to turn fixed costs into variable costs. Often this is what is behind outsourcing of some capability. Sometimes it is driven purely by either cost (let’s do … Continue reading →

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It’s like football only with bondage

Posted on March 20, 2009 by paulmcl

Woodrow Wilson once said “If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if an hour, I am ready now.” Being succinct is really important when trying to close some sort of deal, whether it is … Continue reading →

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Twitpitches

Posted on March 6, 2009 by paulmcl

Can you pitch your company in a tweet? This is known as a twitpitch. In fact it is a great discipline if not always practical: can you compelling summarize your value proposition in 140 characters or less? Never mind sitting … Continue reading →

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Blazing a trail

Posted on February 24, 2009 by paulmcl

The mystery of whether Blaze DFM had closed down or not is over. It has been acquired by Tela Innovations mainly, it would seem, for the PowerTrim technology that had been licensed by TSMC. A major strategic relationship between Tela … Continue reading →

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Will you green-light my chip?

Posted on February 20, 2009 by paulmcl

I already took a cursory look at the fact that the semiconductor industry is going to restructure, partially driven by the current economic downturn but mainly by the fact that almost all semiconductor companies are going to become completely fabless. … Continue reading →

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