Author Archives: Simeon Simeonov

About Simeon Simeonov

Entrepreneur. Investor. Trusted advisor.

Speaking at Cloud3 Forum

I will be leading an unPanel (like unConference but smaller) at Xconomy’s Cloud3 Forum. Great lineup of speakers and the audience will be full of pundits (trust me, see the invite list) so the conversation is guaranteed to be both … Continue reading

Posted in cloud computing | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Personality test for entrepreneurs

I’ve had several interesting conversation following the article on negotiating a better series A deal. Entrepreneurs write and ask for advice on a specific situation. Unfortunately, it’s really hard to give specific advice in these cases without a fair amount … Continue reading

Posted in startups, VC, Venture Capital | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Which type of investor makes the best board member?

A few days ago, WSJ’s startup & VC blog referred to an NVCA study where entrepreneurs complained about the lack of operational experience in some VC board members. I’ve been an entrepreneur as well as a VC. The biggest travesty … Continue reading

Posted in startups, VC, Venture Capital | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

Wikipedia lessons

A comment on my recent post about social commerce pointed to the Wikipedia article on social commerce, which was started in September of 2007, according to the history. Which is funny because I started the first Wikipedia page on social … Continue reading

Posted in Social Commerce, social media | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Mobile advertising got more (less?) competitive

Google just nabbed AdMob for a handy $750M. Congrats to AdMob founder Omar Hamoui who got into the space early and executed very aggressively. More details on the acqusition here. The background story here is of the explosion in mobile … Continue reading

Posted in Advertising, Google, Mobile | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Will 2010 be the year of social commerce?

I got credit for a great post on social commerce I didn’t write. As for whether 2010 will be the year for social commerce, I’m not sure. I think 2009 really accelerated the social advertising trend. Some of my posts … Continue reading

Posted in Social Commerce | Tagged | 6 Comments

Hats off to Arrington

Well, it seems that the Mike Arrington’s pointed critique of social marketing practices is getting even the very large players to move quickly. Today, we’re adding a fifth principle that clarifies a specific use case that we feel is particularly … Continue reading

Posted in Advertising, Facebook, MySpace, Social Advertising, Social Commerce | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Space matters (Facebook certainly thinks so)

I visited Facebook’s new space a few months ago. VPE Mike Schroepfer gave me the tour. I did like it a lot, although I found a few of the areas quite dark. Maybe it was the jet lag. See the … Continue reading

Posted in startups | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

The pressure of money

In some markets, the presence of even a few players willing to do shady business can have a profound effect on the ecosystem. Advertising, particularly the hard ROI kind, is one of these markets. Here’s what ad networks struggle with—to … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

A new spin on pitching and fundraising

Every conference having anything to do with entrepreneurship and venture capital has the obligatory “pitching & fundraising” panel. I’ve been on enough of them to have a sense of how disappointing they can be for the audience. Experienced folks hear … Continue reading

Posted in startups, VC, Venture Capital | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments