Alexei@Nitobi

Dr Kedrosky, whom you all know as the prolific author of Infectious Greed, is speaking to us about VC. Always an entertaining speaker, here are the main points. I think somehow.. he’s like actually blogging while on stage talking to us.

The law of the VC bubble.. it takes a lot of dead bodies to fill a swamp.

The first bubble in 2002 was not actually a bubble at all.. (maybe)… it was actually just a reaction (a rapid one) to what was going on. There is as much money out there right now as there was during the first “bubble” but its just more concentrated in the top VC firms.

It’s really the richest VC’s that continue to make money because they have access to the best deals!

Paul tells a good story about one VC recently who floated a vague offer to raise money and in 24 hours he had billions in committments for ‘anything’.. (at least I think thats what he said)

If you don’t need venture capital, DON’T TAKE IT.. do something else.. be revenue funded. Anything else. retain 100% of your stock for heaven’s sake! But if you don’t take it and you really need it, then when the worst rolls around and you really need it then you’ll have to take the terms they give you (bad).

What’s the problem with Web2.0 firms? LOW barriers to entry! Rediculously low. Easily duplicable products. You just need a little cash – which big firms have.

YouTube.. interesting.. no currently visible business model, but they kindof look like what a television network of the future might be.. hmmm…

Growing companies economically is not as easy as the giants make it seem.. Amazon.com – capital expenditure growing faster than revenue.. same thing with Google! How can they sustain this?

The 3 most interesting companies in the Web2.0 space in the last 3 months were ALL in the B2B space. DabbleDB in Vancouver and (editor’s addition: eBusiness Applications in Vancouver also.. B2B software components)

Another community based one that is actually profitable.. generating $10-15k per day is plentyoffish.

So many Web2 firms are trying to sell features, not companies..

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 16th, 2006 at 11:15 am and is filed under web2.0, events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.