I’m giving a talk next month on “How Private Equity Funds Raise Capital and Source Deals with Social Media” at Terrapinn’s Private Equity Latin America & Real Estate Latin America conference in Miami. I discuss this topic in more depth in an earlier article I wrote. Here’s my draft presentation: I argue that social media...
[Continue Reading]Should a Company Spend VC Funding on a Domain Name?
This is part 1 of a 2-part series on domain names and startups; part 2 will be “Build Your Startup on a Vacant Domain Name”. It is no coincidence that companies with the best domain names often tend to rise to the top of their space. Foursquare won vs. Gowalla, Loopt, and others. Wesabe lost...
[Continue Reading]Is The Government Telling The Truth When It Says Your Data Is Secure?
(I previously published this at Techcrunch.) Modern encryption systems are, in theory, exceptionally secure. The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), for example, is so sophisticated that all known attacks are considered computationally infeasible. It is no surprise then, that the NSA considers 256-bit AES safe for storing top-secret data. What is a little more surprising, however,...
[Continue Reading]How Private Equity Funds Are and Should Be Using Social Media
Can professional investors use social media? Or, is social media strictly for teenagers and staying in touch with your friends? Historically, institutional investors kept their investing strategy and their activities very discreet. Today, however, some are aggressively employing social media tools to discuss their strategies, deals in the pipeline, and even their political views...
[Continue Reading]How VCs Deploy Operating Talent To Build Better Companies
Drew Hansen just posted a very interesting piece on Forbes on, “How VCs Deploy Operating Talent To Build Better Startups”. He draws on the research study my coauthors and I are about to publish on best practices in how venture capitalists increase the odds of company success through operational assistance. We are using just about...
[Continue Reading]Free Video: How to Hack Your MBA
Evisors just posted the video from my recent webinar on “How to Hack Your MBA”. Since 1992, I’ve been working on a book tentatively titled “Hack your Education: How to Squeeze Maximum Value from College or Graduate School”. I’ve posted on my site the expanded slides from the webinar and a draft of the book....
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