Very interesting. Another lever for Gore to try and influence the climate change issue. The alliance provides Mr. Gore an additional pulpit for his advocacy of environmental causes, but also gives the Nobel laureate an opportunity to nurture green businesses. Venture capitalists said the move could help companies financed by Kleiner establish ties with big […]
Amit Varma
He is a Mint columnist and I have not read all his columns as I have been rather busy but I remember reading one in August which I found amusing and instructive. Here is the link I hope to read more of Mr. Varma’s writing. In the US I was a regular reader of Walter […]
Inner Circle
Attracting talent is enormously important. I saw some earlier threads on this so I thought I would share how we are trying to do this at Eko. We created a pool of stock that advisory board members and early employees can invest in. This stock is issued at approximately 3X the founders round. The 3X […]
Review of Payment Systems by RBI
Reserve Bank of India has published Annual Review (FY 2007) of Payment and Settlement Systems. It’s encouraging to read that RBI is taking some concrete steps to increase the penetration of electronic payments. I specially found Chapter 2 and 4 of this report interesting. Some interesting observations: Electronic Bill Payment ( for utilities ) has […]
The Art of Learning
Not very much off-topic for entrepreneurship blog but just wanted to throw some light on work of – “Con Kolivas“.He should be well known for guys following Linux development, for others …. This guy is a doctor in Australia with no professional training in computers, still he got interested in Linux Kernel. I used to […]
Bangalore in AFM
I was in Bangalore on wednesday for BangaloreIT.in event, and it took 4 hours to go and come back due to traffic and demonstrations. At the evening, it took more than an hour and a half in the security queue at the airport! See pictures below. It is amazing how the city has continuously failed […]
Cisco’s I-Prize For Innovators, Technologists and Entrepreneurs
Just in case some of you missed out on this. Yesterday Cisco’s Wim Elfrink announced the launch of the I-Prize contest, where you can collaborate with anyone in the world, build a virtual team and pitch your idea to Cisco. The winning team will then get an opportunity to work with Cisco and get a […]
IT Magazine – Innovation in Startups
I wrote an article for IT Magazine outlining specific areas of innovation that we are seeing in startups on a systemic basis, and what seems to be most important aspects. Please find it here. Broadly, we see less of “invention” but more need to make incremental innovations on execution. The key areas for such innovation […]
80s all over again?
Merrill Lynch has a fascinating analysis on the various striking similarities between this financial cycle (mostly in the US) and the one in the late 1980s. Have a look at the article – just the charts should be enough to provide a lot of food for thought. The late 1980s was a cycle characterized by […]
Peer to Peer Lending – India feasibility?
At Canaan US, we have invested in a peer to peer lending company – Lending Club. The company launched itself on Facebook and in last three months, it has facilitated $1 million in loans. The value proposition is for people taking unsecured personal loans of smaller amounts (~ $5000) and also for lenders getting higher […]
Great read: SaaSy security suits small businesses
Absolutely credible and intuitive assessment of the consolidated and de-productized information security market by David Cowan of Bessemer Venture Partners. David has hit the bullseye here, beautifully explaining the current and underlying bottlenecks ailing the business of information security. Personally, I feel this is a brilliant take on the future of the IT security industry. […]
Sweat equity in new ventures
I recently read one article about compensation in early stage ventures. One of my friends is planning to invest in a startup where he is one the four partners of which two of them will be running the show while the other two will be just investors. The proposed equity structure is 25 percent each […]