Devil's Advocate 2.0

I'm back... just posted the STORIES widget by Neil Gaiman

2010-05-19T16:34:00.000-07:00

Haven't had time to bog for quite a while - work, kids, work, work ...

Anyway I just caught a tweet by Neil Gaiman about a widget based on his "Stories" book, coming up next month... I had to try it out, so now you see it on the sidebar.

Check out this book:

Why do things break up as soon as the warrantee expires?

2008-12-24T06:48:00.000-08:00

I am sure it happened to everyone at least once - yout TV goes nuts, your computer blows a hard drive, your washing machine explodes and what not, and when you call customer service you find out that your warrantee has just expired.

Some poeple say it is a conspiracy - but I never believed it, there are no evidence...

Well someone has finally unveiled the demonic plot - take a look:

Sequoia Capital and the Death Spiral

2008-10-12T06:42:00.000-07:00

Been a while since the last post - too much work I guess.

Anyway this is my first post after the big crash of the American financial markets, and now the axe is coming closer and closer to the start-up world.

As a preparatory step, Sequoia Capital are rumored to have summoned their portfolio company execs and presented them with a horror-show of what's to come, and what they must do to survive. The main message has to do with the "death spiral" small companies might get into if they don't cut back, hard, and do it now - and do whatever they can to bring revenue in.

We got our hands on an exclusive version of this presentation by Sequoia (this is the real thing, no joke). Take a look (if you can't see the embedded presentations below properly, you can download them from http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=dd24q57c_0d23s9vgf and http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=dd24q57c_28fr7zpskd)

Part 1

Part 2

Getting tired of Facebook?

2008-03-16T03:33:00.000-07:00

Facebook is really cool and really changed the way people socialize. But too many people are beginning to take it the wrong way, and it is starting to be a real piss-off some times.

If you are getting tired of Facebook - you are not alone!
Just watch this:

Minesweeper: the movie

2008-02-27T06:17:00.000-08:00

Seen one Game Movie, seen them all?
Well, true that many Game-decendant movies are total crap.
But here is a movie related to one of the veteran, most popular games... you have to see this.

From the bright minds at College Humor.

Investment tips for Yahoo - Jerry Young, you better listen!

2008-02-26T04:44:00.001-08:00

If you still haven't heared about Shpiegler (a.k.a. "the Shark") - this is a good opportunity to get to know him and listen. This guy has cracked the code of making it big time in the world of Web 2.0 Start Ups, and now he is sharing his tips with the world.

This time he dispenses some silver-bullet tips to Yahoo to make them squeeze the bucks out of the Microsoft offer. Here goes:

Watch more DIY videos on 5min.com

PS. I hope you don't take it too seriously ...

A chilling view of Global Warming - and why you should spread the word

2008-01-30T05:12:00.000-08:00

Like most of us, I hear about Global Warming and natural catastrophes, is it really going to happen or not, and should individuals and governments start to do something about it.

Like most of us, I keep it somewhere in the back of my head, but I don't really care, I usually think "So I don't recycle and I don't write letters to the government to stop pollution - what's the worst that can happen?".

Well, having watched this short and simple video, I felt I have to do something - at the least, get more people to watch it.

Worth the 2 minutes watching it.

Web 2.0 Reporter/Blogger murdered in Iraq

2007-12-23T02:07:00.000-08:00

A very sad story, a brave Web reported victimized for voicing his Opinions in Iraq.
A report from Herald Tribune says that Ali Shafeya al-Moussawi was shot 31 times and found dead in his home in Sadr City early Saturday after Iraqi security forces raided the area and entered his home, Alive in Baghdad reported.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in a statement Tuesday that it was trying to determine if Ali Shafeya al-Moussawi was killed because of his work for the Web site Alive in Baghdad.

At least 124 journalists — not including al-Moussawi — and 49 media support staffers have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to CPJ, making it the deadliest conflict for reporters in the last 3 decades at least.

So sad that the virtual world comes to face the real world in such circumstances.

Homer goes YouTube: a picture a day

2007-12-18T04:26:00.001-08:00

What would it look like if Homer Simpson took a picture of himself every day of his life and posted on YouTube?
The result is both funny and sad - how life slowly turns Homer into his present gloomy self.

Posting on the Internet? Think your English is good? Check out WhiteSmoke

2007-12-17T03:02:00.000-08:00

Everybody's blogging. Aren't you?
I think one of the things people expect when they read blog posts is good language. Many people get turned off and abandon blogs where the English is clumsy, erroneous, or just plain boring. If you take the time to write posts, and you really want people to read and react, wouldn't you take the bit of extra time and effort to make sure your language will do the work?

Over the last 3 years I have been beta-testing, from time to time, a neat product called WhiteSmoke (www.whitesmoke.com), which really does the job. For people who are not native English speakers, WhiteSmoke helps you ramp up your written English very quickly and adapts to your field of writing. Even if you are a native English speaker, WhiteSmoke takes you to a whole new level of producing high quality, clear, effective English text.

There is a free trial, and if you are serious about your writing, give it a try.

I just got a cool video they made about WhiteSmoke... check it out:

September 11: 6 years later and I still get the chills

2007-12-17T02:37:00.000-08:00

I just watched a video taken by a family living 500 yards from the World Trade center, with 27 chilling minutes of footage they shot out of their living room window. They write at the beginning of the video that they were very hesitant to release it, and did so only 5 years later, because of the personal nature of it and their reluctance to have others abuse it.

The sheer horror builds up over the minutes, when at start one person describes to a friend what she is seeing over the phone, and it is clear that due to the shock she initially does not register the true magnitude of the terrible thing happening in front of her eyes. she gradually begins to understand, and her husband joins in the conversation, until the horror takes over them as the second building collapses and the huge, menacing cloud of smoke and dust approaches their window and engulf them.

I remember watching this live on TV from Israel at the time, but this original, plain, untouched video gives me the chills more than any footage of 9-11 I have seen to date.

Here it is:

MySpace as comparable to valuations of Web 2.0

2007-04-27T15:34:00.000-07:00

Let's take one of the well known success stories in terms of Web 2.0 exit: MySpace, which was acquired by News Corporation for $580M in July 2005. At that time, the Web 2.0 frenzy was not yet overheated, so analyzing this case can be used as a baseline for later valuations like the investment in Geni earlier this year.

At the time of the buyout MySpace had some 25,000,000 registered users ("Profiles"). This means News Corp paid about 25 bucks per registered user.

This is not cheap; yet it seems that buying MySpace was probably a wise decision by News Corp; the results speak for themselves as you can see in the graphs below.

(Note: the graphs were compiled from publicly available data, and are not formal material released by News Corp / MySpace)

So less than two years ago, the price tag for a site with the strongest brand in its space was set at $25 a user. How does this compare to the estimated $500 per user, as reflected from the $100M valuation of Geni by Charles River as I calculated in this post?

Food for thought.

Geni raised $10M at $100M valuation

2007-04-26T07:52:00.000-07:00

So the hot new genealogy ("family tree") site, Geni, succeeded in raising $10M from Charles River Ventures - at an amazing post-money valuation of $100M.
What does that mean? Let's think for a minute. Geni reports that they have some 200,000 registered users, who have creates nearly 2 Million entries in various Family Trees ("Nodes"). When trying to figure out the real value of the company, the only hard figure one can rely on is the number of registered users; the registered users are the ones who create and update the Nodes, but the number of nodes in and as of itself does not really represent the online presence on the site.
So 200K users are valued at $100M - that's $500 per registered user.

There are two ways to try and understand such a number.

1. The lifetime-revenue that Geni will generate from every registered user is $500. How will this revenue be generated? Premium registration - if they choose to implement that - will give at best a couple dozens bucks a year. Assuming a user stays registered and active for 3 years (VERY optimistic), this is still less than $50. The other $450 will have to come, one way or another, from advertising. That's $150 a year. Hello? Is anyone in the industry aware of a way to make $150 a year from a registered through advertising?

2. Since there is no real economic sense to this valuation, another option is using comparable: looking at other companies in the same space and in similar stages which have raised capital recently, figuring out what metrics were used by those investors to decide the value of the companies, and applying the same metrics to the company at hand. For example, if company X was invested at $50M post money with 100,000 registered users, and Geni has 200,000 users - simple arithmetic: Geni is worth $100M post money.

I am going to take some educated guesses at which companies were used as comparable valuations by CRV - in the next posts.

Anyway, the flaw in this simple logic is the herd effect: once a few "respectable" investors set the bar high enough, others will follow suite. And shortly after, the entrepreneurs start to believe these valuations, and the price tags they put on their companies begin to soar. And if some investors hesitate, thinking the valuations are overblown - there will always be someone else standing in line to invest.

Does anyone begin to get a feeling of Deja Vu? A drift of wind from 7 years ago? Is the bubble back?