Tag Archives: Polaris Venture Partners

FastIgnite is born

Posted on April 6, 2009 by

Spring time. Time for changes. I’ve moved on from Polaris and I have a new company called FastIgnite. Read about it here, subscribe to my feed and follow me on Twitter to stay informed and, while you are at it, … Continue reading →

Posted in FastIgnite | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Starting Up Plinky

Posted on June 9, 2008 by

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 →

Posted in startups, VC, Venture Capital, Web 2.0 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Should VCs Bet on the Idea or the Team?

Posted on June 9, 2008 by

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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Consumer-Selected Sponsorship

Posted on February 15, 2008 by

Sponsorships are growing as an advertising concept and the most interesting sub-segment is the one where consumers select the sponsors they want to be associated with. One of our companies, AWS Convergence Technologies (the folks behind WeatherBug) was a pioneer … Continue reading →

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

Strategies For Startup Success

Posted on February 8, 2008 by

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 →

Posted in startups, VC, Venture Capital, Web 2.0 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Polaris Digital Media Summit

Posted on February 3, 2008 by

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 →

Posted in Digital Media, Google, Microsoft, startups, VC, Venture Capital | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Amazon Web Services Startup Challenge

Posted on December 4, 2007 by

I’m heading to Seattle tomorrow for the AWS Startup Challenge finals. Many entered the competition with the hope of winning fame & glory, $50K in cash, $50K in AWS credit and an investment offer from Amazon (the details of which … Continue reading →

Posted in amazon web services, SaaS, startups, Web 2.0 | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Coolest Tech Gadget for Millionaires

Posted on October 16, 2007 by

If I sold stock earlier during Bubble 1.0 and if my house had a basement I’d get an SC5832. SC stands for SiCortext, a Polaris portfolio company I’m involved with. 5832 is the number of processors in this dense Linux … Continue reading →

Posted in startups | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Top 10 Security Companies

Posted on October 15, 2007 by

A friend once told me that when the media puts you on a pedestal it is because they want to swing at you with a baseball bat. So it is slightly bittersweet to see Veracode on NetworkWorld‘s list of top 10 IT security … Continue reading →

Posted in startups | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Nokia & Navteq: Vertical Integration or Diversification?

Posted on October 2, 2007 by

Mapping is the killer mobile app. Whether you have location-based services (LBS) or not, the chances are that you are using mobile mapping software on your smartphone and starting to take it for granted that it will just be there … Continue reading →

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