Month: September 2011

The venture capital industry’s online talent show has a new entrant, with Boulder, Colo.-based Foundry Group channeling the vocal and aggressive facial hair styling of ‘90s R&B group Color Me Badd in a music video that spoof’s Saturday Night Live’s Digital Short segment.

The partners of Foundry Group: From left, Brad Feld, Ryan McIntyre, Seth Levine and Jason Mendelson

It almost begs for an SNL spoof of our own: REALLY!?! with Venture Capital Dispatch. But, we’ll leave the comedy to the venture capitalists.

The video was clearly meant to publicize a new book from partners Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson titled “Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist.” But the spoof–which Feld jokes in a press release is “an important piece of American film making”–also takes some humorous jabs at the venture capital industry.

For example, the song rhymes “I’m a VC” with “I meet over Sushi.” There’s also talk of khakis and climbing “under the term sheets.”  And then there’s the line, “’Cause I’m a VC, I’m a VC/Can’t take a leak without people who pitch me.” It’s worth noting that particular scene features a journalist pitching a venture firm to Feld as he stands at a urinal.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKArupEBE6Y]

via blogs.wsj.com

Has the difficult economy of the last few years forced you to re-think your plans for selling your business?  Probably. 

Should you wait for a full-blown economic recovery before seriously considering selling your business?  Not necessarily. 

Is there a mechanism that can help bridge the gap between the purchase price you were hoping to receive for your business and the lower purchase price you are likely to receive?  Absolutely!

An earnout can help you bridge the gap between a buyer's concerns about your business and asking price, on the one hand, and your own certainty about the future performance of your business, on the other.

So, how does it work?  An earnout is a contractual obligation that provides a seller with a higher purchase price – over a designated time period after the closing – provided the seller achieves certain agreed upon targets.  In other words, an earnout can enable you to achieve a higher price on the sale of your business because the final purchase price is based, to an extent agreed by the parties, on the future performance of your business.  Properly designed, an earnout will cause a buyer to pay a higher purchase price at a level the buyer is comfortable paying and at performance levels the seller believes are reasonably attainable.

via vcexperts.com

Fenwick & West LLP, a national law firm that
provides comprehensive legal services to technology and life sciences
clients of national and international prominence, recently put out
their Q2 2011 Bay Area Venture Deal Terms report.
VC Experts' coverage of that report can be found at Q2 2011 Bay Area Venture Deal Terms.
In light of this, we have provided an early look at some of the
analysis that we have compiled thus far covering areas outside of Silicon
Valley for Q2 2011. Specific company terms & valuations are available to subscribers of VC Experts Valuation & Deal Term database. In this report, you will see some
consistencies in terms with both areas, and also some differences.

via vcexperts.com

Angel investors can provide you not only with the money to take your small business to the next level, but also real-world experience, advice and a cache of industry connections. But are you giving investors the information they need to continue the conversation and open their wallets?

Since your first impression is crucial when approaching investors, here's a look at some of the must-haves for pitching your business:

via www.entrepreneur.com

California Governor Jerry Brown, who has the rare distinction of having twice followed former actors into office, recently explained his job this way:

“A lot of this is theater. How do you communicate to 38 million people? … [I]t’s gesture, symbol, the narrative, the drama. Who’s the protagonist? Who’s the antagonist?"

What can the world of acting teach us about leadership? If you accept the fact that engaging and motivating people is a critical skill for leaders, then the performing arts is an excellent place to look for guidance.

After all, film is a $32 billion business worldwide. Television keeps the average American glued to the couch for 35 hours a week. And live theater draws legions of passionate fans. They must be doing something right.

Here are five rules from the stage and screen that will help you lead more effectively by communicating more persuasively.

via www.businessinsider.com

New research led by Elaine Wong at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has found that CEOs with wider faces tend to lead their companies to better financial performance than CEOs whose faces are skinnier. Can this be true? And if so, why?

The researchers say that broader faces, in men, are a result of more testosterone, and note that male hockey players with broader faces have been shown to spend more time in the penalty box for fighting, which is again supposedly linked to testosterone. So, they wondered, would CEOs with higher levels of testosterone-as shown by their facial features-be more aggressive, and would their companies benefit?

via www.bnet.com

One of the best ways for a small business to get on the map is to have the CEO and/or other key members of the executive team establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry. A perfect example of this is the fact that you are reading this story on Small Business Trends. The small business experts who contribute to this site are hoping that their insights will pique your interest and encourage you to find out more about them and their businesses.

Thought leaders have myriad online avenues in which to broadcast their expertise and, hopefully, use those broadcasts to generate business. With the advent of social media, small business owners and experts now use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube (among other social media platforms) to get the word out.

Recently, Google introduced Google+, the search engine giant’s entry into the world of social media. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that Google+ has a cornucopia of features and has been catching on like wildfire.

via smallbiztrends.com

Gamification — the application of online game design techniques in non-game settings — has been quickly gaining the attention of leaders in business, education, policy and even terrorist communities. But gamification also has plenty of critics, and the debate over its future could become an epic battle in the same vein of many online game favorites. This special report includes coverage of a recent Wharton conference titled, "For the Win: Serious Gamification," in addition to interviews with conference participants who discuss the use of gamification in business, government and other arenas.

via knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

Here is what Carol Bartz thinks of the Yahoo (YHOO) board that fired her: "These people f—ed me over," she says, in her first interview since her dismissal from the CEO role late Tuesday.

Last evening, barely 24 hours after Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock called Bartz on her cell phone to tell her the news, she called from her Silicon Valley home ("There are reporters at the gate… a lot of them.") to tell Fortune, exclusively, how the ax came down.

On Tuesday, Bartz was in New York, to speak at Citigroup's (C) technology conference the next day, when she was supposed to call Bostock at 6 p.m. "I called him at 6:06," she recalls. When he got on the line, she says, he started reading a lawyer's prepared statement to dismiss her.

"I said, 'Roy, I think that's a script,'" adding, "'Why don't you have the balls to tell me yourself?'"

When Bostock finished reading, Bartz didn't argue—"I got it. I got it," she told the Yahoo chairman. "I thought you were classier," she added.

via postcards.blogs.fortune.cnn.com

British defense company BAE Systems has developed an “invisibility cloak” that can effectively hide vehicles from view in the infra-red spectrum.

The patented system — called Adaptiv — uses a matrix of hexagonal “pixels” that can change their temperature very rapidly. On-board cameras sweep the area to pick up the background scenery and display that infra-red signature on the vehicle.

This allows even moving tanks to be effectively invisible in the infra-red spectrum, or mimic other objects. “The tank skin essentially becomes a big infra red TV,” BAE Head of External Communications Mike Sweeney told Wired.co.uk. “You can display anything you want on it — including a cow — while the rest of the vehicle blends into the background.”

via www.wired.com