Showing posts with label Paul Graham. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paul Graham. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 06, 2011

48 Hours


It was two days before Demo Day at Y Combinator and Daniel Gross had moved from product to product like I had changed majors at college. The guy had nothing for Demo Day. The textbook thing to do for Paul Graham was to say, you know what, you had your 12 weeks, tough, you are out. But Paul Graham took the road not taken, and that made all the difference.

Greplin: The First Y Combinator Company To Get Me Excited

Greplin happened during the final 48 hours.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Idea to Initial Execution

photo of Paul GrahamImage via Wikipedia"If you're investing in a startup at a $10 million valuation, you're not saying it's actually worth $10 million … You're saying it has a 1% chance of being worth a billion."
- Paul Graham


March 25: Stern: Entrepreneurs Exchange Summit
TechCrunch: If Execution Is What Matters, Where Does That Leave Ideas?: the process of getting a great product out there is a vital part of what constitutes innovation in the first place.
The saying that it is not the idea, it is the execution is cliche in the industry. I am going to argue to the contrary. Ideas matter. Big, unsexy companies execute all the time. When a Marco leave a Tumblr to launch an Instapaper, that is not to say he got dissatisfied with Tumblr's execution, and decided he could do a better job at it, and so he left. It was not about the execution. Tumblr's execution is the most sophisticated it has ever been. He left for the idea.

Saturday, March 05, 2011

Greplin: The First Y Combinator Company To Get Me Excited

Image representing Daniel Gross as depicted in...Image via CrunchBaseDon't get me wrong. I am and have been huge on Paul Graham and Y Combinator. Recently I read the name of a friend - 19 years old - in a magazine article. She apparently had graduated from Y Combinator and had just raised a million dollars in funding. I emailed her. Hey, is that you? Yes, it is me, she said. You should also raise money, right now is a great time to do so.

Paul Graham, Brad Feld, Me, BBC

But I have said at this blog a few times that I don't see any iconic company emerging out of Y Combinator. Y Combinator has had a propensity to produce middling companies. A $200 million exist is not impressive.

Greplin

And let me make it very clear I have not been reading up on Y Combinator companies. There must be gems being spewed out every few months. But I only read about companies that show up in the news.

Wednesday, February 02, 2011

Yuri Milner's Smart Y Combinator Move

Paul GrahamImage by davidcrow via Flickr
Wall Street Journal: Y Combinator’s Paul Graham On The $150K Per Start-Up Offer: “It’s probably one of the most surprising things that has happened so far,” Graham said. ..... Milner teamed up with SV Angel–the seed fund run by prominent angel investor Ron Conway–to offer $150,000 each in convertible debt in each company. .... Of the more than 250 companies that Y Combinator has produced since 2005, more than 20 have been acquired, but mostly for small amounts. The biggest success, by acquisition price, is Heroku Inc., which Salesforce Inc. bought in December for $212 million. ..... convertible debt–which converts to equity once the company raises venture capital at a set price–with no valuation cap and no discount, an extremely rare set of terms for entrepreneurs. ..... Y Combinator companies received $11,000 plus $3,000 per founder in exchange for 2% to 10% of equity ..... the average Y Combinator company raises $700,000 after the program. .... “The biggest change and huge change for better is now none of them are desperate,” Graham said. Fund-raising “takes a lot of time away from the company. Now they’re already there. They have that foundation.”
I don't think a Google or Facebook can come out of Y Combinator. The big iconic companies tend to have this streak of independence. But I think Y Combinator is great for middling companies. I'd be very surprised if any Y Combinator company goes IPO some day. But many have been and will be bought for a decent chunk of change. Many will stay mid size and profitable.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Top VC Bloggers: The Numbers Don't Look Right


TechCrunch has an interesting post: The Top 20 VC Power Bloggers Of 2010.

It's good to see Fred Wilson, Brad Feld, Chris Dixon, Charlie O'Donnell, and Albert Wenger on the list. These are people I have met in person or, in Brad Feld's case, interacted online. Of all the people on the list, I personally know Fred Wilson best, either in terms of how often I visit their blog and leave comments at their blog, or in terms of how many times I have met in person.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

TechStars' Geographical Advantage Over Y Combinator

Image representing TechStars as depicted in Cr...Image via CrunchBase
TechCrunch: TechStars Launches Ten New Startups In Seattle: six of the first twenty companies to go through the program have been acquired by larger companies, and about 70% of its companies have been funded and/or are now profitable.
Y Combinator is in the Valley. Y Combinator has done something remarkable. I think Y Combinator is the reason we have a new species in town: the super angel. But Y Combinator is in the Valley. Being in the Valley, in the Valley alone is a disadvantage. People don't buy servers anymore. They have Amazon web services. Times have changed. Some of the best programmers I know are self taught people. All the material you need to teach yourself programming is available online for free. And so the idea that you have to be in the Valley to be part of the action, well, that is passe.

Monday, November 01, 2010

Dave McClure: Super Angel: Foulmouth

Master Of 500 Hats: July 2010: MoneyBall for Startups: Invest BEFORE Product/Market Fit, Double-Down AFTER.
Super Angels are a recent enough phenomenon that even Paul Graham only very recently wrote about it. There used to be angels and venture capitalists. Super angels have wedged themselves between the two, supposedly wanting to threaten both. Super angels are not your rich uncles, they are not family and friends, they have millions of dollars that they themselves raised, but they are not VCs. They pay way more attention to you than VCs can, they are agile, they have way more money than the traditional angels, and in many cases they are out to make quick money. They are not looking for the next Google, they are looking for the next company Google will buy.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Big Churns In The VC Industry

Vinod KhoslaImage via Wikipedia
Paul Graham: The New Funding Landscape: After barely changing at all for decades, the startup funding business is now in what could, at least by comparison, be called turmoil..... the previously sharp line between angels and VCs has become hopelessly blurred. .... Super-angels compete with both angels and VCs. .... most of the changes will be for the better.
To those who have been regular readers of the blogs of the major venture capitalists, this churn is not news. The fact that there has been some major churn has been talked about for months. But what people make of the churn, now that's a different story. The best minds have been overall positive with the developments. Looks like entrepreneurs now get to shop around more. There is much more early money available. And that money is not blind money. Early stage investors tend to be more hands on.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Me @ BBC



LONDON, ENGLAND - MARCH 02:  A BBC logo adorns...Image by Getty Images via Daylife
This BBC article is the biggest media mention of me to date. The last time I had anything even remotely close was when a German newspaper wrote an article calling me Robin Hood On The Internet, ("Robin Hood Im Internet") and that was in 2006 for my fierce work into Nepal's democracy movement. That article also resulted in me getting interviewed by German radio right here in Manhattan. They said that newspaper article created a demand among many local radio stations. And that of course they will translate, and the voice over will be in German. I showed up at their state of the art studio, did my interview, and left. No snacks, nothing. Around that same time I was also lined up to appear over the phone for a BBC program. This was going to be live. But I overslept. And felt so bad about having overslept. It was like winning a marathon and missing out the awards ceremony. But I blogged saying I got invited on to the program. (BBC Calls) That was like giving myself a consolation prize.

It is also a good feeling to get followed by Ann Curry on Twitter. (Direct Messages From Ann Curry, Steve Case, Robert Scoble) I am strong on social media, on new media, but I have always been big on old media. You have to grow up listening to BBC radio as your only reliable news source in a non democratic country to truly appreciate what that brand name means. And I was a guy who could even listen to the BBC in English. That impressed a lot of people back in the days.

You can speak English? Okay, so speak. I want to hear what it sounds like.

United States To Woo Entrepreneurs With New Visa Law BBC News
Paramendra Bhagat, a budding entrepreneur, wanders around the cream of New York's tech scene, shaking hands and making contacts.

This is the NY Tech Meet-Up, a well-known monthly gathering of more than 700 people, including venture capitalists (VCs) looking to fund the next Facebook.

Sitting in a large auditorium in Chelsea, there is a crowd of hip, skinny people and the earliest of early adopters. One man ignores all the presentations to watch live baseball on his iPad - four days after it launched.

"I'm here because this is where all the opportunities are, in New York," Mr Bhagat says.
After the presentations finish and the mingling begins, he goes around talking to the investors, telling anyone prepared to listen about his start-up, which aims to bring poor people in the Indian sub-continent online.

But Mr Bhagat is from Nepal, and despite having been in New York since 2005, US visa regulations mean there is no easy way for him to stay in the US as an entrepreneur.

Even though, he says, "there are immigrants who want to come, and VCs who need them".
The news article mentions Paul Graham, it mentions Brad Feld. That is august company.

A Soft Spot For Mike Arrington
Paul Graham: Y Combinator
An Immigrant Story For Brad Feld

Kabir Chibber| NewsCred
Kabir Chibber- Goal Blog - NYTimes.com
Kabir Chibber (kchibber) on Twitter
Kabir Chibber on Vimeo
Kabir Chibber [Monocle]
Kabir Chibber - LinkedIn
Kabir Chibber - journalisted.com
Kabir Chibber” Search Results « Prospect Magazine


Reblog this post [with Zemanta]