Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Eminently social

Just finished reading an article in this month's Fast Company titled "The Myth About Creation Myths" (sorry, the link to the article is for paying members only). It discusses the misconceptions that callow entrepreneurs have about the iconic entrepreneurs of the 20th and early 21st century. Though we've all heard of the stories of two young brazen adults fresh out of college starting a company in a garage to see it grow to a corporate juggernaut this is an anomaly and certainly not the norm. Of interest for anyone that is thinking of starting up an idea is that a study of venture capital backed companies found that over 90% of these companies were based off of the founders previous experience. Though we all enjoy a good story of a company's genesis being born out of garage, that's all it is, a story to pique our interest. Companies are born inside other companies. Apple was started by two founders that had previous experiences working for Atari and HP. YouTube was started by expatriates of PayPal. The list goes on. Learn from the success of others that have walked down this path and get a job first!

Thursday, February 22, 2007

VCLK

Just read the VCLK quarterly release. Fairly impressive numbers. Could be a good play for the latter portion of 2007. Currently, it has a high multiple which I'm not willing to pay for going into the slow season. However, two solid quarters of good results and possible guidance and I might jump back in. I suspect this will cool off a couple of points at which re-entry will be attractive.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Ruby On Rails Web Hosting

So I've been looking around for a decent and affordable Ruby on Rails (RoR) web hosting provider and the best one I have found to date is Host Monster. If anyone knows of any others I would appreciate your feedback!