Social Media Week panel-News Dissemination in a Social Finance World

I enjoyed today’s panel at Social Media Week, with Paul Murphy of the Financial Times, presenting FT Tilt, followed by a panel on "News Dissemination in a Social Finance World". Howard Lindzon was a highly entertaining moderator. Twitter tag for discussion: #SMWFT FT Tilt is a new premium online financial news and analysis service focused...

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How the Networked Economy is Changing the Deal Origination ROI Paradigm

Peter Lehrman of AxialMarket posted this must-read Powerpoint on the evolution of private equity deal sourcing. I definitely agree with the points he makes here. Most interesting are his estimates of the cost for different methods of deal sourcing. We discuss in more depth a lot of these ideas in The Virtual Handshake. Deal Origination...

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How a Private Equity Fund Uses Social Media for Building its Investment Pipeline and Raising Capital

Most private equity funds (and the equipment finance industry) are well behind the VC industry with regard to their use of social media. Jeff Bussgang, General Partner, Flybridge Capital Partners, calculates that of the approximately 1,000 venture capitalists in the US actively seeking deals, 10-15% blog.  Sarah Tavel, Senior Associate, Bessemer Venture Partners, calls this...

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Oodle acquires Grouply

Congratulations to the team at Grouply on their sale to Oodle! I’ve been on the Advisory Board of Grouply since its very early days, and am an enthusiastic user. It very significantly increase my efficiency by allowing me to monitor more online communities than I could otherwise keep an eye on. I have to admit...

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Our new Harvard Business Review article: Time for Investors to Get Social

I’m excited to report that we’ve started to release the results from our first-ever study on best practices in private equity and venture capital deal origination. My coauthor Chris Farmer (formerly Vice President, Bessemer Venture Partners) and I published a summary in the current issue of Harvard Business Review. Evalueserve, a global research firm and...

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Los Angeles Speaking Engagements, October 6-7: CFA Society, Keiretsu Forum, and Harvard Business School (Update to Keiretsu Forum)

I’m visiting Southern California October 5-8, and I hope that some of you will be able to attend one of my presentations there. I’ll be discussing the results of my research project on "Private Equity and Venture Capital Funds’ Best Practices in Deal Origination". A preview of my slides is here. I’ll be speaking in...

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