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That Wild, Wild Web: NOT a Tale of Web 3.0

That Wild, Wild Web: NOT a Tale of Web 3.0

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Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

Tech is and has been referred to as the wild, wild west since the early days of Web 1. Like those pioneers who ventures out into terra incognita when the west was being settled, those web pioneers didn’t know what they’d find, and even in their travels, they were making it up as they went along.

Head’s up: the same goes for investors. There’s no startup handbook, although there are books that bear that title. There’s no investor handbook, either. Which is why founders may hear one thing from one investor, get totally different feedback/advice from another. And yet different feedback/advice from a third, and so it may go, all the way down the line.

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Tech: The Half-Year in Review

Tech: The Half-Year in Review

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Image by Stux at Pixabay

Just a reminder that June is the year’s midway point and always a good idea to take stock of where we are so far.

The big tech stocks have all taken a long-overdue hit, as has the rest of the stock market and the word is that it has become harder to raise funding. It’s true that investors aren’t writing checks at the rate that they did, but then again, we’re coming off a 13-year tech high, and many people who cashed out or who were acquired suddenly became investors. But were they qualified? All things considered, that’s part of the broken VC model. Do they add value, or just money? There is a difference, and the distinction is important, especially in times like these.

Even the so-called high-flying seasoned investors are feeling the pain. It’s one thing to be a genius in the good times.  We’ll see who the true outliers are moving forward. Read More...

What Does a Guy Have to Do to Acquire a Media Company Around Here?

What Does a Guy Have to Do to Acquire a Media Company Around Here?

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Tech has been long overdue for a correction, and it certainly hit this week, with a vengeance and on all fronts, and especially in the stock market, where Jeff Bezos lost $13B in just a few hours. He’s still one of the wealthiest people on the planet but, hey, a billion here, a billion there, before you know it, it adds up to real money

Elon Musk had been battling for Twitter for weeks. The board scoffed at his initial offer. Twitter workers freaked out over Elon Musk in internal Slack messages (“Physically cringy watching Elon talk about free speech,” wrote one site reliability engineer, and for fook’s sake, doesn’t the South African-born billionaire realize that he’s in America now!!!). Now that Musk has more or less been handed the keys, the tech press is up in arms, too, that yet another billionaire owns a media company. Or so it was reported by MSN (backed by billionaire Bill Gates), in a Bloomberg opinion piece (owned by billionaire Michael Bloomberg) published in the Washington Post (owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos).

With all of those forces against him, makes you wonder what a guy has to do to acquire a media company in this day and age? Read More...

The Billionaire Boys of Summer

The Billionaire Boys of Summer

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Image by asderknaster from Pixabay

In early July – Independence Day Weekend – 1500 tech leaders and shakers and movers and government representatives met in Sun Valley at the Allen & Co Summit

/Billionaire’s Boys Camp ostensibly to “discuss and somewhat unofficially close on deals that go on to have a greater impact on the rest of the regular world.” Most arrived by private jet as, although lowering the carbon footprint is important to the climate change agenda that applies to the world at large, they’re just not the ‘rest of the world.’

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The Secret Formula for a $1T Valuation

The Secret Formula for a $1T Valuation

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AKA, Who Wants to be a Trillionaire? Ok, maybe not a trillionaire, but running a company with a shot at getting to the trillion dollar status, has been there, or is damn close or potentially able to get there? Notice that Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook – four of the FAANG stocks – all have something in common: they all have 100M+ plus users, and are “trusted” platforms – “trusted” being an odd choice of words here, in our case, but work with us.

While Netflix is also part of the FAANG stocks and ergo potentially a trillion dollar player, the company is now experiencing something less than that Silicon Valley-venerated hockey stick growth, as Netflix reports slowing subscriber growth for the first time, which is also part of our point here. Read More...

As the FAANG Founders Turn – On Each Other

As the FAANG Founders Turn – On Each Other

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

You have to give Mark Zuckerberg credit. Love him or hate him, he does act very deliberately, even if you might believe that it is with malice aforethought.

Netflix founder and CEO Reid Hastings resigned from the Facebook board this past week. Peggy Alford, currently senior vice president of Core Markets for PayPal, will be nominated to join the board of directors and become its first black member, but there’s a clear case of missing the forest through the trees here.

Facebook is reportedly spending $1 billion on producing original content. When Hastings joined the board in 2011, he said that he had been trying to figure out how to integrate Facebook and make Netflix more social, so getting on the board was a good deal, according to Business Insider. Read More...