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Congratulations Joshua, on Delicious going full-time :)
Jason is speculating the proud papas were Union Street Partners Brad Burnham & Fred Wilson (aka A VC).
I'm wondering whether it might have been Rob Hayes & Doug Solomon at the Omidyar Network, since they invited me and Sachin to dinner down at O'Reilly Etech and Joshua was there too. Then again, maybe Rob & Doug were just enjoying the geek factor...
in any case, here's to more tasty things ahead!
Google, hungry for metrics, sez "Uni wa totemo oishii yo!" and announces it's buying Urchin.
While the obvious story is that Google wants to provide better ROI metrics for AdWords users, the interesting part is that Urchin may also provide some limited webhosting capabilities.
This of course will fuel the same kind of "futures" speculation as when Google became a domain registrar a few months back.
curiouser & curiouser, said Alice...
Hmm.
Looks like our friends at Indeed.com removed the <# of jobs> (total) metric they had on their site, and replaced it with <# of new jobs in the past 24 hours>. Curious, said Alice...
Here's the before and after:
----> 
Wonder if that move had anything to do with the fact that we started beating them by ~100K jobs or so sometime last week? (Last count: ~2.6M on SimplyHired vs ~2.5M on Indeed as of midnight last night, before they yanked the overall stat).
Perhaps it was also related to the NY Times piece today, and their own release which dropped this morning. Guess it might not have been good for their PR if we were seen having more jobs, especially when they've been out for over 3 months and we launched less than 2 weeks ago.
Indeed.
NY Times E-Commerce Report just published an article about the emerging job search engine market that mentions our new startup, along with a few of our competitors:
Over the last year, more people have turned to sites like Shopping.com and Kayak.com to avoid the hassle of clicking around to find travel or shopping bargains. Now a handful of new companies are lining up to provide similar services for job seekers.
While the big search engines refine their more generalized search approach, companies like Indeed, SimplyHired and WorkZoo have in recent weeks introduced services that scan both well-known and obscure employment boards on the job seeker's behalf.
...(more)...
SimplyHired seeks talented SysAdmin with no clue as to market rate salary
Full Disclosure: since we're a startup, we pay crap. But we do have a lot of fun, and we bring in lunch on Fridays. And we always have lots of snacks around.
(tough sell, huh? well anyway, i told our current SA i'd help him find someone)
Who knows, someday we might be worth a lot of money. Until then we can promise only lots of grueling work, colleagues who don't shower very often, and people who like to make really tasteless jokes & bad puns.
Oh yeah, and it's an exciting & challenging startup work environment.
If you're interested, apply here. Keep those cards & letters comin' folks ;)
Paul Graham wrote an essay on Why VCs Suck. I don't disagree with his analysis, but it's perhaps a bit over the top. I would suggest simply that VCs force a high return-on-capital bar that requires a very aggressive growth strategy. While this can sometimes backfire on both VC and certainly entrepreneur, it isn't necessarily a bad approach. It does necessitate a big idea with a liquidity event, and if that's not a match for your business idea then you probably shouldn't be going to VCs for funding (or for that matter, to angels who will look to VCs as downstream investors).
Brad Feld and Fred Wilson probably qualify as VCs that Suck Less, but i think they should be challenged to back it up with some explanation and/or data, other than the fact they're VCs who write cool blogs (thanks Ross). Another VC that sucks less: David Hornik is a pretty sharp guy. And perhaps Ram Shriram and Ron Conway are notable angels that suck less (though Ron had his share of hard knocks in the downturn, the Google investment appeared to save the valuation of one of his famously diverse & aggressive boom-years angel funds). I don't know Ram or Ron very well, but i've heard good things from other folks i trust.
Here's an idea: how about some disclosure by VC funds as to the median equity stake they take in a venture? I'm sure with the various term sheet provisions that might be tough to measure, but perhaps a step in the right direction to see VCs offering more competitive disclosure.
Note that VCs readily report IRR #'s (that's "Internal Rate of Return", or a measure of ROI on invested capital) to their LPs (that's "Limited Partners", or the big pension funds and institutional investors that invest in VC funds). However, you don't see many (any?) VCs advertising to their dealflow (that's us, the entrepreneurs) that they have better rates available than the VC down the street. While i'm sure they don't want to compete just on this metric, it is a relevant way to compare & contrast sources of funding.
I heard Ram speak at a Stanford entrepreneur conference and mention something about not ever wanting to invest in companies where the VCs had a higher stake than X in any round (i believe X was 40%, not quite sure). His point was that high VC equity stakes may setup a company for failure via founder dis-interest and disillusionment, if during tough times the entrepreneurs don't feel like they have enough ownership in the company to make it worth their [typically herculean] efforts. I thought to myself now THERE is a smart investor -- describing to future entrepreneur ears why he thought taking LESS equity made for a better startup company. That is innovative & unique thinking... and not bad marketing either.
In short, i would suggest that VCs that Suck Less are all about disclosure and transparency.
Could be disclosure means telling people their area of investor expertise, median equity stake taken, term sheet provisions, their family of portfolio companies, etc etc. But regardless of what they disclose, i think what makes for better VCs is generally about subject matter expertise, knowledgeable guidance, help with strategic partnerning, and most importantly open communication.
One other thing -- it's important to see VCs that are learning about the industry, just like us entrepreneurs. When i go to Search Engine Strategies or O'Reilly Etech, I always notice that there are a few earnest VCs who make it to those events. They should get credit for making the extra effort, rather than just sitting on Sand Hill Road and seeing what comes through the door. Sometimes new trends don't always start in a 50-mile radius around Palo Alto (ok so 35% of it does, but not 100%). Lately I've seen Chris Moore, Venky Ganesan, Jeff Clavier, & Gaurav Kotak at geek events i've been to -- kudos to them. Warren Packard and Peter Nieh are definitely cool VCs, and not just because i play ultimate frisbee with them regularly ;) Steve Jurvetson doesn't come out for disc much anymore, but he does post awesome photos on Flickr (and Steve knows a thing or two about nanotech).
Finally, much love to Doug Solomon & Rob Hayes from the Omidyar Network, who are doing great venture capital AND venture philanthropy work (& thanks for dinner at Etech too :)
For me, these are people i'd look for & things i'd think about when considering whether to take money from a VC... er, i mean, a VC that Sucks Less ;)
Topix.net agreed to sell a 75% stake in its business to 3 large newspaper publishers.
Gannett, Tribune, and Knight-Ridder -- the same collective who jointly own job site CareerBuilder.com, as well as other online assets such as ShopLocal.com, Cars.com, and Apartments.com -- each will acquire a 25% ownership interest.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed, and there appears to be some discrepancy in the guesstimated valuation of the remaining 25% equity held by the 9 Topix.net employees. Respective takes by Susan Mernit, Bambi Francisco, John Battelle, and WebProNews.
Regardless, i'd have to say those folks did well. Nice job Chris & team :)
after launching the SimplyHired site and geeking out at the O'Reilly E-tech conference, both Dave & Sachin were pretty exhausted.
however, some apparently were a bit more tired than others...
(thx to Ross Mayfield for the Mile High guest moblog ;)
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