Category Archives: VC

The Easy Road To Incremental Innovation

Posted on September 3, 2008 by Simeon Simeonov

I was chatting with Hank Williams today about startups and the evolving venture capital landscape and he pointed me to Judy Estrin‘s upcoming book “Closing The Innovation Gap.” I guess I just added another title to my ever-growing, impossible-to-catch-up-with reading … Continue reading →

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Eureka Moments

Posted on August 5, 2008 by Simeon Simeonov

My partner Alan Spoon pointed me to this New Yorker article on the neurophysiology of Eureka moments. Only the abstract is available online so you’d have to find the full article the old-fashioned way. Serendipity and depth of insight are … Continue reading →

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Starting Up Plinky

Posted on June 9, 2008 by Simeon Simeonov

Om Malik broke the news today about Plinky. Plinky is the brainchild of founder/CEO Jason Shellen, a former Googler who worked on Blogger and shipped Google Reader. Jason and I partnered up last fall and just raised our seed round from my … Continue reading →

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Should VCs Bet on the Idea or the Team?

Posted on June 9, 2008 by Simeon Simeonov

My partner Bryce Youngren pointed me to some research by Chicago GSB Professor Steven Kaplan who tackles the perennial question of whether one should bet on the jockey or the horse. The presentation, although meandering, does have some good data in … Continue reading →

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Fluid Architecture or How ColdFusion 8 Won The Jolt Award For Web Development

Posted on March 7, 2008 by Simeon Simeonov

A couple of days ago I listened with empathy as a passionate entrepreneur told the story about bootstrapping his business over many years. Like many other entrepreneurs in his situation, he had to repeatedly make micro-optimization decisions that got him … Continue reading →

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MIT 100K Startup Competition Kicks Off

Posted on February 9, 2008 by Simeon Simeonov

The mother of all university startup competitions, the MIT 100K business plan competition, kicked off last night at the funky Stata Center at MIT. The competition takes three months–the finals are on May 14. I had a chance to talk … Continue reading →

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Strategies For Startup Success

Posted on February 8, 2008 by Simeon Simeonov

I gave at talk this morning at Yankee Group. It was part of the SmartSpeaker series that CEO Emily Green has been organizing for a few months now. Many months ago, over breakfast, Emily asked me to give a talk … Continue reading →

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Polaris Digital Media Summit

Posted on February 3, 2008 by Simeon Simeonov

I spent the last few days in Deer Valley, UT at the annual Polaris Venture Partners Digital Media Summit or PVPDMS08 as we casually refer to it (right). It’s a great event where the CEOs of our digital media companies mix … Continue reading →

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Going For It

Posted on January 29, 2008 by Simeon Simeonov

In a startup environment favoring fast, relatively cheap exits instead of building sizeable companies, it is always interesting to look at the choices startup founders and CEOs make when they have the option to sell the company or build it … Continue reading →

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Facebook SocialAds Market Size

Posted on November 24, 2007 by Simeon Simeonov

An entrepreneur and I were talking about startup opportunities in the social advertising space. We ended up wondering about market size, which is an impossible question to answer on Net scale so instead we talked about Facebook’s SocialAds network. We … Continue reading →

Posted in Advertising, Facebook, Social Advertising, VC, Venture Capital, Web 2.0 | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments