Music Services
I did not know playlist.com was doing this well. Image via AVC.
That said, anyone play JamLegend lately? I thought it rocked.
Madoff's Ponzi Fraud
The SEC should really have caught this.
Markopolos Madoff Complaint Publish at Scribd or explore others: United States Politics financial fraud
Addicted to Cash
One of the worst things that can happen to your startup is getting addicted to cash. Most of the time, this is because something is ramped too early. Marketing, R&D, salesforce. At ecommerce companies I find this especially painful to watch: marketing is just burning through cash while management desperately hopes margins improve with volumes or conversion finally picks up or something. It feels like a plane where the pilot is shouting LIFTOFF, LIFTOFF and there’s this big wall at the end of the runway and your speed is increasing and… urgh.
Lesson: stay slim until it makes sense. Experiment with small marketing budgets. Don’t suck on the firehose until you can swallow the consequences. Stay away from large $ rounds until you’ve figured out your business.
Amazee
It’s kinda cool somehow but the real litmus test will be whether it gets any usage. The entry into the service is difficult. If my mom came to that page she’d be all bounce rate.
...and we're back!
A mere week off and I return to a lot of interesting news. Not just that my new blogging platform of choice has raised another $4.5M from Fred Wilson, but Accel Europe have defied gravity with a cool $500M+ fundraising and OATV/USV/TAG have seed-funded AMEE, an interesting Comscore meets cleantech play in London.
And Sterling slides towards Euro parity. Times are interesting.
Zermatt 08. All runs open. Posting might be lighter for a week or so.
Legendary. Reminds me of childhood drives with my dad.
Relenta - Email Management & Contact Manager Software
Shared email, contacts and task manager. It’s like Zimba met Salesforce and they had an all-terrain baby that’s prettier and less fussy. Give it a whirl.
In response to Fred’s rather gloomy post:
What a great time to have cash - it’s what everyone wants these days. And what a great time the next three years will be to build companies. Less competition. More talent. More time. Better prices. Fundamentals stronger than ever. And the big boys just blinked.
Illegitimi non carborundum, etc.