Tag Archives: Industry News

Archivas Goes to Hitachi/HDS

Posted on February 6, 2007 by Simeon Simeonov

The cat’s out of the bag. HDS acquires Archivas for up to $120M. Archivas was my first investment at Polaris. This is a great exit for the team and for the investors. Founder Andres Rodriguez envisioned a new kind of … Continue reading →

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Flipping the Ad Model: Consumer Choice == More Money

Posted on January 23, 2007 by Simeon Simeonov

Talk to a grizzled broadcast TV exec and he’ll lament consumer choice: the choice of many cable/sat channels, the choice of spending time online or in front of the TV, the choice of whether to watch ads or fast-forward through them, … Continue reading →

Posted in Advertising, Digital Media, Web 2.0 | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Integrated vs. Best-of-Breed Security

Posted on January 19, 2007 by Simeon Simeonov

There has always been a tension between integrated and best-of-breed approaches to software solutions. Much of the software industry has moved in the integrated direction, from OSs and platform runtimes to integration suites to ECM to application suites. The holdouts … Continue reading →

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Mobile Payments One Step Closer

Posted on November 23, 2006 by Simeon Simeonov

ZDNet reports on a collaboration that should bring mobile payments closer to reality.  Sony and former Philips chip unit NXP Semiconductors have announced they will create a joint venture to create a secure chip that enables short-range wireless interaction between handhelds, PCs … Continue reading →

Posted in Mobile | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Of Supercomputers and Contrarian Bets

Posted on November 8, 2006 by Simeon Simeonov

WSJ reports on the launch of SiCortex, a company I’m involved with. Talk about a contrarian bet–to back a “supercomputer” company in the age of Linux clusters and to spend non-trivial amounts of capital on developing sophisticated chips, interconnects and enclosures when everyone else gets … Continue reading →

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Mobile Advertising: Not If, But When And How

Posted on November 8, 2006 by Simeon Simeonov

People seem to fall in two camps with respect to mobile advertising: those who see it as an imminent opportunity of significant size and those who say it’s a few years off. No one is willing to say that mobile advertising … Continue reading →

Posted in Mobile, startups, VC, Venture Capital | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

The Mobile Stack Evolves

Posted on November 7, 2006 by Simeon Simeonov

MocoNews confirms what has been talked about for months now–that Voda is making a major shift in how it selects its devices. No more proprietary phone OSs developed by clueless ODMs who really don’t get SW. Voda’s future will be based … Continue reading →

Posted in Adobe, Microsoft, Mobile, startups | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Amazon’s Strategy: Too Risky?

Posted on November 3, 2006 by Simeon Simeonov

BusinessWeek has a good piece on the likely response of Wall Street to Amazon Web Services becoming a big part of Amazon’s business. It’s a legitimate question. More info in previous posts.

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Picking & Funding Winners

Posted on November 2, 2006 by Simeon Simeonov

One can argue that the rules for picking winning startups have evolved over the last ten years. In Bubble 1.0, you could have used a dart against a Broadview market map. Bubble 2.0 is all about consumer online/mobile plays, which … Continue reading →

Posted in Automattic, VC, Venture Capital, Web 2.0 | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

MAXimum Burn

Posted on November 1, 2006 by Simeon Simeonov

I haven’t posted in nearly two weeks because I’m still recovering from Adobe MAX 2006. Yes, it was in Vegas and, yes, the Macromedians (at least) know how to party till very early in the morning. Plus, two of my … Continue reading →

Posted in Adobe, Flex, Mobile, SaaS | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments