Funding Universe: 7000 company histories

Trent Miskin sent me this link to Funding Universe's 7000 company histories.

While it doesn't have everyone of interest (I couldn't find Ebay, or Overstock), it did have PayPal and Amazon in the 7k.

Here's a snippet from the PayPal history:

"In just eight months time, between January and August 2000, PayPal surged from 12,000 accounts to 2.7 million. The company's transaction process helped tremendously to fuel the growth. Money could be transferred to anyone who had an email address, even those who did not have to have a PayPal account. However, recipients did have to open a PayPal account in order to claim their money. The system's convenience and cost won over eBay shoppers. They no longer needed a credit card to buy online, and the service cost them nothing. It was cheaper even than a postal money order and stamp. Sellers were required to pay 1.9 percent of the sales price."

What's wrong with Yahoo context ads?

I'm  am running Yahoo Publisher Network for my text ads on my blogs and not Google's adsense.

My brother-in-law was in town for Christmas and he and I argued over which ad system was better. My arguement was that Yahoo paid more than Google. He felt that Google had a higher click through rate because Google's relevancy engine is based on click throughs as well as cost. (Supposedly Yahoos new Panama engine does the same thing.)

But my blog at Medical Spa MD is a real hit and miss. When Yahoo is working well it places ads with great relevancy. But around 20% of the time the text links are some form of generic financing ads. Since I've not run adsense on that blog it makes me wonder if Google wouldn't do better for me?

One thing is for sure, with Yahoo getting their ass handed to them by Google, they can't really afford to loose the clients they already have.

Capitalist Pig isn't happy either.

The excitement was short lived as within three days, the yahoo editorial staff had removed 231 of the keywords.  That’s over 75% of the keywords that I’m currently running with google that have high CTR, and great conversions.  So now, if I want to get back in, I have to spend more time resubmitting the keywords that were declined.  The question is, what would be a better use of my time?  Trying to get all my ads back into yahoo so I’m in front of the roughly 25% of users that use Yahoo or increasing my exposure in Google?  It’s definitely more efficient for me to spend more time with Google since I’m sure my ads and keywords are going to show there.

...More than one advertiser has come public with their experiences with click fraud on Yahoo’s network.  One of the bigger claims was from Pepperjam which had a client that ran through $10k worth of clicks in one day with Yahoo.  I first read about the story when reading Shoemoney’s blog, who has a strong relationship with Pepperjam.  Yahoo responded with a $10k “goodwill” credit to the advertiser without admitting that there was fraud.

Fight Club Members

I've put up a list of Entrepreneures who've been to Fight Club. Unfortunately, it's slightly less than half of those who've come to a dinner. I just never seem to remember to pick up cards.

If you've been to an event and would like some free Google Juice, just fire me off an email and I'll stick you in.

Fight Club is an no stress, networking dinner. If you come, you come. If you don't, you don't. No need to sign up for anything and there's no cost except your own meal. If you've never been but would like to check it out, here's the requirements.

1. You have to be invited by a member.
2. No students, vendors, sales guys or lawyers. (Unless you're invited by a member.)
3. No 'What-can-I-get-out-of-you' types: There's a strict no-asshole policy.

My own feeling is that events where you talk to someone for 3 minutes and then move on are of limited use. Fight Club is designed so that you're spending some time (one meal) talking to 4-5 people who are of some relevance to you and have been deemed 'good people' by someone you already know. Of course we are all talking business.

It seems to be working out well enough. Here's the partial, short, and incomplete list:

• Alex Lawrence - Franchise King
  
• Allan Young - University Venture Fund
• Blake Snow - Provo Labs
  
• Bob Barnes - Zonder.com
  
• Chris Knudsen - Podango 
• Chris Sandberg - Entrepreneure
  
• Colin Kelly - Connect Magazine
• Daniel Holisnger - Wiki Review
  
• Derek Perkins - Seatability
• Devin Thorpe - Thorpe Capital
  
• Geoff Osmond, Connect Magazine
• Jacob Hanson - HireVue
• Jared Van Orden - Entrepreneure
• Jason Barber - Seatability
• Jeff Barson - Nimbleit.com - Surface Medical
  
• Jeff Jordan - Funding Universe
• Jeremy Neilson - Utah Fund of Funds
• John Wright - Powercode
• Jordy Gundy - Overstock.com 
• Josh Steimle - MWI
• Judd Bagely - Overstock.com
  
• Justin Bergener - VIPBloggers.com
• Michael Ebert - Entrepreneure
• Nate Thurgood - BelleHavens
• Phil Burns - Tag Jungle
• Richard Tripp - Yepic.com
• Robin Peng - Design Engine
  
• Ryan Coombs, Audio Archives - Ryans Fight
• Ryan Hutchings - Marketing
  
• Ryan Money, HireVue - Money Talks
• Shawn Nelson - Lovesac Rebel CEO
• Ted Broman - Integracore

Fight Club Members

The incomprehensive, incomplete, partial and unfinished list of Fight Club Members in Utah.

A list of those who've attended Fight Club dinner and I happened to get their card. There are actually more than 70 so the list is about half. If you've attended and aren't on the list, add your info a comment and I'll kick it up. (Then I'll delete the comment so you won't be embarrassed.)

The Members: 

• Alex Lawrence - Franchise King
  
• Allan Young - University Venture Fund
• Blake Snow - Provo Labs
  
• Bob Barnes - Zonder.com
  
• Chris Knudsen - Podango 
• Chris Sandberg - Entrepreneure
  
• Colin Kelly - Connect Magazine
• Daniel Holisnger - Wiki Review
  
• Derek Perkins - Seatability
• Devin Thorpe - Thorpe Capital
  
• Geoff Osmond, Connect Magazine
• Jacob Hanson - HireVue
• Jared Van Orden - Entrepreneure
• Jason Barber - Seatability
• Jeff Barson - Nimbleit.com - Sendside Networks
  
• Jeff Jordan - Funding Universe
• Jeremy Neilson - Utah Fund of Funds
• John Wright - Powercode
• Jordy Gundy - Overstock.com 
• Josh Steimle - MWI
• Judd Bagely - Overstock.com
  
• Justin Bergener - VIPBloggers.com
• Michael Ebert - Entrepreneure
• Nate Thurgood - BelleHavens
• Phil Burns - Tag Jungle
• Richard Tripp - Yepic.com
• Robin Peng - Design Engine
  
• Ryan Coombs, Audio Archives - Ryans Fight
• Ryan Hutchings - Marketing
  
• Ryan Money, HireVue - Money Talks
• Shawn Nelson - Lovesac Rebel CEO
• Ted Broman - Integracore
  

Googles new hiring algorithms & the Wisdom of Crowds

The inevitable decision making problems of a lack of diversity.

 
From the NY Times: Google's Answer to Filling Jobs: New Algorithm

Google has always wanted to hire people with straight-A report cards and double 800s on their SATs. Now, like an Ivy League school, it is starting to look for more well-rounded candidates, like those who have published books or started their own clubs.

Google is rightly known for hiring smart people. But there's a strong argument that the lack of diversity in decision making will lead to less 'smart' decisions than a more diverse group.

From The Wisdom of Crowds: 

If four basic conditions are met, a crowd's "collective intelligence" will produce better outcomes than a small group of experts, Surowiecki says, even if members of the crowd don't know all the facts or choose, individually, to act irrationally. "Wise crowds" need

1. diversity of opinion
2. independence of members from one another
3. decentralization; and
   
4. a good method for aggregating opinions.

The diversity brings in different information; independence keeps people from being swayed by a single opinion leader; people's errors balance each other out; and including all opinions guarantees that the results are "smarter" than if a single expert had been in charge.

It seems that adding a few dunces to your group can actually impove the quality of decisions that come out of it. That means that there's still hope for most of us.

Google might understand this in the future too. We'll have to wait and see if there's a sea change and they take the chance to hire outside of Stanford and a few token Harvard grads.

Just can't help it... I'm Iron Man

Super hero or super villain?

Take the quiz to find your super alter ego.  Here are my results... obvious to all that know me.

As a superhero, I'm Iron Man

Iron Man 95% Green Lantern 90% Superman 85% Spider-Man 75% Catwoman 75% Supergirl 70% Hulk 70% Wonder Woman 65% Robin 60% The Flash 60% Batman 55%

Inventor. Businessman. Genius.

And as a villian?

Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom 84% Lex Luthor 76% Apocalypse 71% Venom 71% Dark Phoenix 67% Kingpin 66% Poison Ivy 66% The Joker 62% Green Goblin 62% Mystique 62% Juggernaut 62% Catwoman 60% Magneto 55% Mr. Freeze 54% Riddler 53% Two-Face 46%

Blessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity.

Drunk Drivers

When I was seventeen I had a crush on a Cheerleader named Tami. She was killed by a drunk driver.

Some of the most powerful advertising is public service. 

I came upon this page about Jacqueline Saburido and the drunk driver who hit her.

It makes you realize just where your troubles fit in the big picture. 

The $100 Micro VC Maddy Fund & Kiva's Third World Entrepreneures

Third world entrepreneures will be receiving some VC funding this Christmas... in the amount of $100 from the Micro VC Maddy Fund.

 
Kiva.org is a microloan sight that lends money to third world entrepreneures in help their businesses and grow markets and economies.  So...

I've decided to facilitate this process and hopefully my daughter and I will learn from and teach each other something along the way.

My daughter will be receiving a gift certificate for $100 that she can invest in entrepreneurs who need access to capital. My expectation is that these tiny loans will be repaid and that I'll provide Maddy with $100 next year to ad to her Micro VC Maddy Fund. Then we'll sit down and have a talk about expectations and responsibilities. I think of this as a kind of 'Pass It On' project

I'm adding the $100 Micro VC Maddy Fund as a new category but I'm sure Maddy will be posting about on her blog at Pony Tail Club.

During the week between Christmas and New Years  Madison will be responsible for using the Kiva site to find 4 receipients to loan $25 each to. (Kiva uses a technique that allows / encourages this.) She will have to report to me why she chose this individual over all the others.

One of the most important in my mind is that she understands the finality of this act. Loaning money to one person means that you're not loaning money to someone else. Maddys decisions will carry repercussions for individuals that she needs to consider and not take lightly.

My goals in doing this are:

• I believe in Kiva mission and want to support them.
• I believe in my daughter and her sense of justice.
• I want my daughter to realize exacltly how privledged she is and respect those who are less fortunate.
• I want my daughter to feel the joy of successfully helping someone.
• I want my daughter to learn something of decision making and repercussions.

I'd encourage anyone who thinks this is a good idea to comment, do it themselves, or blog / link to Kiva.org.

Update on Fri, February 16, 2007 at 5:31 PM by Jeff Barson

You can see Maddy's current Kiva portfolio here.

Microsoft patents your RSS feed.

Since Microsoft is hated four times as much as Google, perhaps they drew the short straw.

... two recently published patent applications reveal, Microsoft (MSFT) is claiming it invented RSS.

That's a long shot, however: "Prior art," the patent-law term for earlier examples of the technology in use, should be easy to show, since RSS has been around for years. The most likely outcome will be that Microsoft's patent is rejected - and no one else will be able to patent RSS, either, keeping the technology free for everyone to use.

Lawyers and the 'sue to protect' theory. 

The Art of the Sign Up Page

Tim Bednar over at Turtle Interactive has written a great post on “The Art of the Sign Up Page“ where he discusses his insights and decisions. 

I selected these sites because I thought they were well done and were subscription based, productivity applications. Other applications I reviewed included: 30boxes, Blogger, del.icio.us, Flock, Give Meaning, Kiko, My Pick List, Titlez, CRM from Zoho, Zopa, Second Site, LinkedIn, Box.net, Vyew, and Cork'd.

What elements make up a sign up page?

The best place to start is to list all of the elements that compose a sign up page:

• Logo
• Elevator pitch
• Description copy
• List of key features
• List of key benefits
• Call to action
• Testimonials
• Tours
• Examples of who is using the application
• Screen shots
• Life-style images
• Link to more information (price, login, about, blog, terms, privacy)

All men are created unequal.

From NYTimes: Billionaires & The rest of us

 
The truth is that one life is not valued the same as another. The human condition is that we place more import on those we define as in our 'tribe' as more important that others.

The fundamental condition of valuing every life as having the same intrinsic value? We're far from reaching the utopia of Star Trek.

As Gates told a meeting of the World Health Assembly in Geneva last year, he and his wife, Melinda, “couldn’t escape the brutal conclusion that — in our world today — some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not.” They said to themselves, “This can’t be true.” But they knew it was.

...A famous story is told about Thomas Hobbes, the 17th-century English philosopher, who argued that we all act in our own interests. On seeing him give alms to a beggar, a cleric asked Hobbes if he would have done this if Christ had not commanded us to do so. Yes, Hobbes replied, he was in pain to see the miserable condition of the old man, and his gift, by providing the man with some relief from that misery, also eased Hobbes’s pain. That reply reconciles Hobbes’s charity with his egoistic theory of human motivation, but at the cost of emptying egoism of much of its bite. If egoists suffer when they see a stranger in distress, they are capable of being as charitable as any altruist.

...Even when private donations are included, however, countries like Norway, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands give three or four times as much foreign aid, in proportion to the size of their economies, as the U.S. gives — with a much larger percentage going to the poorest nations.

Top Five Venture Capital Firm Web Pages

Greg Gallants Top Five Venture Capital Firm Web Pages.

 
I don't have much to add although I'll plug Venture Voice as amont the top 5 venture podcasts worth listening to as you drive around with your iPod buds jammed into your ear canals.

 Gregs List:

5. Sequoia Capital's Share Your Idea Page
The firm that bankrolled Google and YouTube understands how to build a website. This page makes the list for simply using headers like "pain killers" and "inferno".

4. First Round Capital's Our Focus Page
It usually takes a mental jargon filter to decipher a VC firm's "about us" page and figure out what type of deals it likes to do. This page provides a bulleted and clear narrative of how First Round likes to invest (as if their name doesn't provide enough of a clue).

3. Omidyar Network's Employees Page
If VC firms are all about people, why not list all of them? In alphabetical order, you can find bios for everyone from the chairman to the administrative assistant. You can even view how their bios have changed over time.

2. Union Square Ventures's Home Page
While many VC's have blogs, Union Square Ventures is the first -- and to my knowledge only -- VC firm to make their home page a blog. Is that a good idea? Just check their publicly available stats.

1. Bessemer Venture Partners's Anti-Portfolio
Don't think this firm takes itself too seriously just because they were founded in 1911. In what must be the boldest VC web page ever posted, they list all the now-great companies that they passed on funding, which include PayPal, Apple, eBay, Intel and Google. A clear message to entrepreneurs: Don't give up hope just because a VC said your company stinks.

Venture Deal: Your guide to Venture Capital, but no RSS feed.

Venture Deal

These guys are showing up as ads in some of my rss feeds so I gave them a click drive by.

I love the three big buttons, the bottom one of which is for service firms so they can find funded companies and immediately proceed to shorten your runway. As Borat says, "very nice".

Here's what they say they do: VentureDeal is an online database that gives subscribers the latest information about technology-related venture capital transactions and dealmakers in the United States and Israel.

You can trust VentureDeal. All deal information content is sourced from publicly disclosed documents within hours of publication. Our consistent attention to detail and ongoing, multiple-review quality control process provide you with the assurance of quality information.

While they have a blog, Venture Deal has no general RSS feed. You're going to have to use one of the four buttons they post. What's up with that? and...

Does anyone in this field but me get tired of the 10 ways to get money from an investor series that includes gems like... it takes time, and get a personal referral... I'll bet I can list the next 7.

1. Get a stellar advisory board.
2. Passionate, startup experienced, & trustworthy management
3. Bootstrap your way to success.
4. Big Big Market
5. Scalable to infinity & beyond
6. Tell them your happy to be replaced.
7. Tell they you have answers to India & China.
   

Maybe I'm just cranky.  But a site with no rss feed can do that to a guy.

But I'll leave a trackback anyway. 

Cool Science Facts: A feed worth having.

I have about 250 rss feeds that I subscribe to. Some I skim or glance at, but some I actually take the time to read every post that comes out because the content's always that good. I'll have to go through and pick out a best of to post later.

One of the 'always reads' is Cool Science Facts from Drew Olbrich. It's the kind of info that's perfect for blogging. Short, extremely well written, accurate, and funny.

Cool Science Facts: Binary Neutron Stars 

The astronomers who discovered this binary neutron star system gave it the name PSR J0737-3039. I wonder what these guys name their pets.

Every day, the two neutron stars in PSR J0737-3039 get a quarter of an inch closer together, because of energy loss due to gravitational waves. 85 million years from now, they'll merge together. One minute before this happens, the neutron stars will be only a few hundred miles apart, and orbit around each other 30 times per second. In the final few moments, they'll get much closer together, and extremely angry, and the orbital frequency will increase to 1000 times per second.

This is totally insane. Two city-sized objects, each with the mass of the sun, whirling around each other 1000 times per second. If you don't think this is impressive, you might as well go back to bed now.

When the neutron stars in PSR J0737-3039 merge, they will probably form a black hole, which is an exotic astronomical object whose gravity is so strong that even humor cannot escape it.

Investment Banking Fees

 Maybe I'm just on some kind of Wall Street kick today. Fabrice Gringa's candid interview on Venture Voice gave me a singular respect for a French guy. Since he's only one French guy I can keep my universal feelings for certain aspects of the French intact. But Fabrice seems to be OK. That said, he has posted on the recient sales of tech companys on Ebay where Ebay is acting as a defacto investment bank. Below is his list of the fees you can expect from Wall Street. It certainly makes Ebay look attractive.

From Fabrice Gringa's blog: Investment Banking Fees

Aggregate value of transaction – Aggregate fee as a % of the transaction

$20 billion – 0.150%
$15 billion – 0.180%
$12.5 billion – 0.200%
$10 billion – 0.230%
$9 billion – 0.240%
$8 billion – 0.250%
$7.5 billion – 0.265%
$7 billion – 0.275%
$6 billion – 0.300%
$5 billion – 0.320%
$4 billion – 0.360%
$3 billion – 0.400%
$2 billion – 0.450%
$1 billion – 0.600%
$900 million – 0.625%
$800 million – 0.650%
$700 million – 0.700%
$600 million – 0.700%
$500 million – 0.800%
$400 million – 0.900%
$300 million – 1.000%
$200 million – 1.200%
$100 million – 1.500%
$50 million – 2.000%

As I mentioned before, those are retail prices so you might be able to shave a bit from those. Also, at lower price points and/or in deals that are less likely to happen you likely to have a retainer (say $50k) and a minimum transaction fee (say $750k).

Side note: IPO fees are very different. For IPOs where the market cap is below $400 million the bankers take 7% of the proceeds split between the book runner and the co-managers.