Salam provides the story of a wannabe Iraqi royal who descends from his London club to the tarmac in Baghdad. Contrast his local's POV with that of the big journo WaPo story. Salam also provides evidence that the U.S. armed forces are already enriching the local dialect, shall we say.
1:04:43 PM    

Old Friend of Apple days Mike Liebhold launches his Starhill blog, with dual themes of geo- and location related technologies, and the life and times of his particular place, in the redwood west of Skyline. Check it out, and welcome to the party, Mike.
11:34:55 AM    

Last evening I trundled over to the venerable Hyatt Rickey's for the Churchill Club's annual annual VC outlook event. This year as usual it was moderated by Sam Collela of Versant, who also took a speaking turn, with panelists Tom Dyal of Redpoint, Doug Leone of Sequoia, and Mark Heesen of NVCA (the venture biz's national association and lobbying arm). They'll go by initials in the following sampler of most interesting points, along with my occasional commentary in []:

MH: Feels an air of "tepid optimism." We are back to 1996-7 run rates on investment. VC fund raising is way down, but at least in part because few are doing so - "If you don't ask, you don't get." [Top level VC stats are freely available at the NVCA site, if you're interested but not sufficiently to subscribe to a reporting service.]

TD: What's different now: There is no big wave to ride. Investing is tactical, bottoms-up, sensitive to capital efficiency - no more "change the world". VCs are casting a wider net. He's focusing on data center infrastructure. The big changes there are toward: Linux and other open systems, clustering, commodity platforms, virtualization and application aware infrastructure, resulting integrity, data and systems management issues. But, keep an eye out for WLS (weird little stuff) - one-off good investments that are good businesses but don't follow a big theme.

DL: Two message for entrepreneurs: "Start a company now!", and "Don't listen to venture guys for ideas." Venture investing cycles are an old phenomenon - going back to disk drives, PCs, etc. - but their frequency and magnitude seems to be increasing. The thing to remember is that no one saw any of them coming - they are only diagnosed in retrospect.

We are still emerging from the down cycle. Good news: "The tourists have gone home" meaning amateur investors - and he thinks that are still some more firms that need to fold. Bad news: There's a large overhang of private companies that haven't exited - as many as 8,700! Many overinvested sectors: security, wireless, web services.

Winning entrepreneurs ask questions about second or third order problems: What will happen (for instance) when there are a dozen different security solutions deployed in an enterprise. Have differentiated IP, in a fast moving market, or else the strong balance sheets are the winners anyway. For VCs: Syndication is back in, even for the big guys.

SC: Lots of biotech growth ahead. 900 drugs in pipeline, 250 late stage, many of them potential blockbusters. FDA has a new commissioner with orientation to speeding up the approval pipeline. Press alarm about recent biotech closing in Bay Area is misplaced - just freed up experienced people for new ventures. Exits can be good: $.5 - 1.0b buyouts by pharma for a late stage drug play. However, bets and risk are also high: $900m to develop a drug, 12 years, 10% hit rate end to end. Ventures that can improve these numbers are also fundable.

The Q&A had some of the most interesting stuff:

How is venture capital doing outside the US? MH: It's a disaster. Limiteds are likely to be moving the venture allocations toward the US, which is seen as more stable.

How about AMT reform? MH: Forget it for now. It would be too expensive to the Treasury. It will take a full-scale taxpayer revolt, as it affects more, to move this forward.

What are the effects of FOIA requests for venture fund information from public limited partners, e.g., pension funds?
MH: IRR numbers aren't a big deal, more sophisticated journalists and readers realize that numbers in first five years of a fund aren't meaningful. Problem is that some want to go further and get information on portfolio company valuations, etc., and sell it. This is self-serving, and detrimental.
DL: A small company's advantages are speed and stealth, public disclosure of their status eliminates one of those. Result of forcing this will not be public information, instead pension funds and public university endowments will be kicked out as limiteds, since VCs can't have their relationships with entrepreneurs compromised.
[I completely agree. Even if their motives are completely pure, those pushing for disclosure at the detailed level are engaged in counterproductive activity. The result will be that public institutions are locked out of an asset class. The taxpayers, retirees and students will end up with the bill for a reduced total return. I'll be holding forth on this at more length in a future post.]
10:34:19 AM    

If you haven't already, check out Kevin Kelly's Recomendo, a bit of the spirit of the Whole Earth catalogs reborn in blog (and mailing list) form.
9:55:21 AM    

David Hornik explains the concept of Due Diligence, the namesake of this blog, better than I have to date. There's also good counsel for entrepreneurs preparing for the VC inquisition. Read the whole thing...
9:44:29 AM    

...and hilarious. It's been a bit busy the last couple of days, so I'm late to this, but check out the tech blogger parodies from Scoble's (ahem!) "friend." Keep a copy around for when you're stuck on airplanes or wall-to-wall scheduled and need your fix.
9:37:04 AM