Mattishness

Quattrone, Qatalyst, Historical Venture-backed IPOs

2008-07-25T14:11:00.000-07:00

At the AlwaysOn event yesterday, Frank Quattrone offered some great historical context on the current state of the Venture-backed IPO market, andby extension, the venture capital business in general:

"Over the long term, venture capital firms have typically taken one-third to one-half of their companies public, Quattrone said. Today, only about 10 percent of their portfolios go public, he said. Quattrone expects that to fall further, to about 5 percent, in the next two to three years."

21, MIT, Kate Bosworth, Torrent, aXXo

2008-07-23T23:41:00.000-07:00

21 just came out of DVD, and I saw it for the first time. Pretty fun. Among other things, 21 features Kate Bosworth as a hot chick from MIT who changes her name ;)

In addition to DVD, 21 may or may not also be available, here.

Valuation Negotiations - Jeff Clavier Tweet

2008-07-22T17:07:00.000-07:00

Jeff Clavier: Valuation negotiations are always interesting & tell you quite a bit about the way the relationship with the entrepreneur might go post deal

Pithy in 140 chars.

Apes & Androids - Siren08 Afterparty

2008-07-21T14:22:00.000-07:00

By lucky coincidence - I went to this Apes & Androids concert and it kicked ass.

Johnossi - All They Ever Wanted - New Album

2008-07-17T16:32:00.000-07:00

Johnossi has a new album coming out in Sweden called All They Ever Wanted. The first 2 songs (18 Karat Gold, and Party With My Pain) on the myspace player are insane - Johnossi will get huge with this album - huge - swear to god!

18 Karat Gold

Party With My Pain

It Is Keyword Time Again

2008-07-17T00:06:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the most recent keywords that Mattishness readers come in through:

faacebook
mattishness
20 seconds of joy dvd
how to visit cuba
italian postal bonds
positronic seattle
shiftboard
orolix
tsa spot
viral loop

A little bit too nice

2008-07-16T23:26:00.001-07:00

Seattle Startup: Gathering 6/17 @ Owl and Thistle

2008-07-16T16:25:00.000-07:00

Savan & I & other startup friends are meeting this Thursday at 6pm at Owl & Thistle in Pioneer Square to talk shop - hope you can join us.

Blanka Vlasic dancing - Track is a great sport

2008-07-13T10:36:00.000-07:00

Blanka Vlasic celebrating a big jump with this great dance.

New blist tagcloud

2008-07-10T18:09:00.000-07:00

blist now has a tag cloud on the dashboard to help you visualize what's going on in the community better. For the moment you'll need to be logged in to see/use it.

Click here to check it out.

Ahmed Rashid - Descent Into Chaos

2008-07-08T20:51:00.000-07:00

I'm currently reading Ahmed Rashid's new book Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.

Crawlable SWF Questions

2008-07-07T17:00:00.001-07:00

My top three unanswered questions about Googlebot crawling through SWFs on the blist blog.

Seattle Startups: RIPL Resurfaces

2008-07-07T15:05:00.000-07:00

I wrote about RIPL back in April 2007 - since then they've been very quiet - as is common, they have been doing a certain amount of poking around trying to find the right business model, team, technology, and marketing strategy. Well, today RIPL resurfaced for me - just a little with this email. Watching with interest.

Was ist das Blinkenlights?

2008-07-07T13:35:00.000-07:00

Was ist das Blinkenlights?

Great Day For Brown T&F - Anna Willard Steeple AR

2008-07-06T18:48:00.000-07:00

Adobe Flash SEO & Monkey Magic

2008-07-03T17:02:00.000-07:00

Yelp API, Compete.com, Quantcast

2008-07-03T14:01:00.000-07:00

Yelp is doing well, but not as well as Compete.com would have you believe. In fact, this might be the single biggest Compete.com fail I have observed. In most cases, Compete tends to quite accurate - and a good way to estimate traffic to third party websites - but in the case of Yelp, they are wildly off. Quantcast, Alexa, and various anecdotal sources peg Yelp traffic at a healthy ~3.5M monthly uniques - nowhere close to the ~15M shown by Compete. Compete uses a mixture of data from toolbars, panels, and ISP log samples to compute their traffic estimates. Yelp has an API - what Compete seems to have managed to do is pull their ISP data sample from directly between Yelp and a large consumer of the Yelp API. 'ISP data' always sounds very robust compared to an audience panel or toolbar data - but it's important to remember that it's only a sample - not a 'full set' of ISP data - and is just as susceptible to sample bias as data collected any other way.

Sziasztok from blist!

2008-07-02T13:40:00.000-07:00

blist made a nice list of useful & innovative web applications on pcworld.hu

So for all the Magyar speakers out there: Sziasztok from blist!

Blist
Ha van egy kisebb üzleti vállalkozásunk, valószínűleg szükségünk van egy átfogó adatbázisra, amely az összes fontos információt jól átláthatóan tárolja. Kiváló megoldás erre a Blist, amely az üzleti felhasználás mellett számos egyéb adminisztrációs lehetőséget tartogat.

Webes: www.blist.com

Bill Gurley: 15 Portfolio Companies >$50M Revenue

2008-07-01T22:58:00.000-07:00

Nice for thing for a VC to be able to say:

"The Benchmark portfolio current has over 15 companies north of $50MM in revenues, and they are all private. This would have never happened in 1995 (even pre-bubble) where most of these companies would ALREADY BE public."
-Bill Gurley

Yahoo Mail Forwarding - Premium Features - What Not To Do

2008-07-01T22:24:00.000-07:00

This is what you shouldn't hold back as a paid, premium feature when Gmail makes forwarding so easy for free.

In related news:

Please scrape this address:

mathewgustav@gmail.com

Iran Article Day

2008-07-01T15:54:00.001-07:00

I am planning on reading these two articles on Iran tonight:

Seymour Hersh, in the New Yorker

Thomas Powers, in the New York Review of Books

GOOG MSFT Dare Obasanjo

2008-06-29T21:25:00.001-07:00

Really interesting post by Dare Obasanjo trolling through a few comparisons of organization, process, hiring, and culture at Google and Microsoft:

TheGOOGMSFTExodus

Three Kings Spam & Bonus Movie Trailer

2008-06-29T20:27:00.000-07:00

Three Kings Trailer

Three Kings is one of my favorite movies - certainly the crowning achievement of David O Russell's moribund-ish career; today I got a new spam email reminiscent of that film's plot - this is actually an entertaining read:

DEAR FRIEND I NEED YOUR ASSISTANCE.

My name is sgt martins scott, I am an American soldier with Swiss background, serving in the military with the army's 3rd infantry division. With a very desperate need for assistance, I have summed up courage to contact you. I found your contact particulars in an address journal. I am seeking your kind assistance to move the sum of ( $ 25 million u.s. dollars ) Twenty Five million united states dollars to you, as far as I can be assured that my share will be safe in your care until I complete my service here, this is no stolen money, and there are no danger involved.

Source of money:

Some money in various currencies was discovered in barrels at a farmhouse near one of Saddam's old palaces in Tikrit-Iraq during a rescue operation, and it was agreed by staff Sgt Kenneth buff and I that some part of this money be shared among both of us before informing anybody about it since both of us saw the money first. This was quite an illegal thing to do, but I tell you what? No compensation can make up for the risk we have taken with our lives in this hell hole. Of which my brother in-law was killed by a road side bomb last week. You will find the story of this money on the web address below;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2988455.stm

The above figure was given to me as my share, and to conceal this kind of money became a problem for me, so with the help of a British contact working here and his office enjoy some immunity, I was able to get the package out to a safe location entirely out of trouble spot. He does not know the real contents of the package, and believes that it belongs to a brithish/american medical doctor who died in a raid here in Iraq, and before giving up, trusted me to hand over the package to his family in united states.I have now found a much secured way of getting the package out of Iraq to your country for you to pick up, and I will discuss this with you when I am sure that you are willing to assist me. I want you to tell me how much you will take from this money for the assistance you will give to me.

One passionate appeal I will make to you is not to discuss this matter with anybody, should you have reasons to reject this offer, please and please destroy this message as any leakage of this information will be too bad for us soldier's here in Iraq. I do not know how long we will remain here, and i have been shot, wounded and survived two suicide bomb attacks by the special grace of god, this and other reasons i will mention later has prompted me to reach out for help, i honestly want this matter to be resolved immediately, please contact me as soon as possible my only way of communication is email.Indicate your interest in assisting me as well as Providing the following information to facilitate the smooth conclusion of the Transaction.

Wedding Season

2008-06-29T20:25:00.001-07:00

Startup Valuation Via Brad Feld

2008-06-27T14:33:00.000-07:00

Brad's 1,2,3 . . . description of valuing startups is particularly clear and succinct:

Value your investments at your cost.
If a financing happens at an increased valuation and is led by a new investor, write your investment up to the new price per share.
If a financing happens at a decreased valuation regardless of whether or not there is a new investor, write your investment down to the new price per share.
If bad things are happening, you can take a discretionary write down based on your best judgement.
If good things are happening, you should not take a discretionary write up. Only write things up in case #2.
If the company is public, use the publicly traded price but discount it due to illiquidity (usually 25%).