Comments on: But Seriously

By: ratio analysis

ratio analysis — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 02:41:31 +0000

as many have suggested. In fact, they share interests with some of the companies they’ve funded who will be getting funding from elsewhere in the future

By: TicketStumbler

TicketStumbler — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 14:36:07 +0000

FYI we're back up and have soft launched concert tickets. Thanks for your patience everyone.

http://ticketstumbler.com/new-stuff/2008/10/18/...
http://ticketstumbler.com/

By: lighthouse

lighthouse — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:47:52 +0000

The distribution for the size of a company in a market is scale free. For every time you double the size of the company, you reduce the number of companies by a factor of X. X will be something like 7 but it varies.

So if our market is say ad-sense sites and X is 7 and we determine that there are 2401 sites worth $1 million, then there will be 343 sites worth $2 million, 49 worth $4 million, 7 worth $8 million, and 1 worth $16 million.

Clearly VC's are only interested in working the upper part of the curve and the higher you work on the curve the bigger the payout is for moving up one notch.

Basically as a investor, you need to look for people who can separate them selves from the masses quickly. There is a lot more luck to this than any one likes to admit so your best plan is to spread out your investments, push every one hard and hope you get lucky.

By: dave mcclure

dave mcclure — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 02:59:40 +0000

i might quibble about the #'s and the weighted average, but regardless for the FIRST-time entrepreneur, the weighted calculation doesn't make sense… the entrepreneur may take 1-4 years per at-bat, and they want to maximize on-base potential. in addition, GETTING on base the first time up DRAMATICALLY increases your chances next time (and all future times), since even after a minor win you are much more likely to get capital.

By: mattmaroon

mattmaroon — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:44:26 +0000

Well, a home run might pay 10x what a single does. Thus you'd way rather take a 20% shot at a home run than a 100% shot at a single, if you're a VC. If the single is $10m and you're a founder, that's not true.

By: dave mcclure

dave mcclure — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:41:14 +0000

nice analysis of VC-entrepreneur [mis-]alignment. particularly like the observation that 50K high-value customers may be worth more than 1M low value ones. most folks tend to pay too much attention to uniques, and much less to that minor point (not to mention retention / conversion rates).

on the other hand, an operative assumption here is that VC picks are mostly random and can't be improved… i'd say with a little bit more rigor & metrics, they possibly could.

if you can improve your on-base percentage (weighted by bases / runs), it may make more sense to hit singles all day long than to keep swinging for the fences. i know i'm in the minority on this point, but hey i always was a little different (read: weird

By: Mukund

Mukund — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 23:29:50 +0000

Matt
Again, the presentation was hilarious – but you knew that already. You like Seesmic that much huh?

By: mattmaroon

mattmaroon — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:43:41 +0000

Rocking dude. I would have used you guys to get better seats to the Black Keys last week (or at least look) but didn't feel like dicking around with StubHub and Razorgator myself.

By: danhau

danhau — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:40:22 +0000

Of course you choose to link to us the day we decide to soft launch concerts . Anyways, TicketStumbler is down for a bit as we complete this process.

Please read more here:

http://ticketstumbler.com/new-stuff/2008/10/15/…
http://ticketstumbler.com/new-stuff/2008/10/15/…

By: Gareth Allen

Gareth Allen — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:15:16 +0000

Also, its good to see you have time to post regularly again. Good insightful writing.