Blogstream of Brandon Zeuner

“Sometimes, the best part of buying something… is the buying part.” 

True Ventures points out in their recent post, Venture is Back, Baby, that liquidity is confidence and liquidity is ratcheting up in tech with recent acquisitions and possible IPOs lingering for 2010. Crunchbase is showing a flurry of activity, as well, with their acquisition tracker tracking 2500 deals with a total acquisition price of $372B. The usual suspects (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and Cisco) are picking up companies on the cheap and not so cheap (Google, Adobe and EA paid premiums for recent acquisitions of AdMob, Omniture and Playfish). Other companies like MySpace and Apple are cleaning up on the music front and taking advantage of fire sale prices with companies like LaLa, iLike and iMeem. On the front end of startups we're seeing a lot of competitive early-stage (seed and A) deals, and later stage (B, C and even D) deals are way up with good valuations. Yet, the bigger tech guerillas are still laying off (down a bunch compared to November of last year). As Om pointed out, it's an odd time in the tech industry right now, however, the opportunity behind the uncertainty is what has me most excited.

Posterous is growing up. Custom theming and a better user experience is their latest offering. It's the simplicity of Posterous that makes it so elegant. 

     

Click here to download:

Gigya_is_the_Plumbing_for_the_.zip (81 KB)

I learned of Gigya back at Demo in early 2008 when we launched Flypaper and saw a demo of an incredible back-end to Sprouts widget creation tool. Sprout was able to show us where their user's widgets were traveling, living and how they were performing. It was Gigya's Analytics powering this visual buffet of data. At Republic Project we used the Wildfire feature to power the sharing behind our artist widgets and now we are experimenting with their Socialize product to power sites and other widget projects. 

Gigya's Wildfire

In a nutshell Wildfire boosts widget distribution by enabling users of the widgets to easily install those widgets in places they want them, including more than 70 social networks, blog platforms and bookmarking sites – all without leaving the site or app. It helps to: 

A great quote from Sergey Brin about conducting business in an economic downturn in Google's 2008 Founders Letter:

"Nonetheless, I am optimistic about the future, because I believe scarcity breeds clarity: it focuses minds, forcing people to think creatively and rise to the challenge."

Official Google Blog: The 2008 Founders' Letter

Why, all of a sudden, is everyone an “expert?” Every month, I run across hundreds of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles that claim "expert" in the bio. Whether or not to follow or friend a person back is largely based on whether or not they make the expert claim. To me, the expert claim immediately tells me you are not an expert. Experts don't make claims. They don't have to. They’re recognized by others as an expert. Real experts may acknowledge it. They might say, "oh, I guess I am an expert," and without actually claiming it themselves, move on and let others tout their expertise. 

Twitter is chock-full of so-called social media experts, SEO experts, Internet marketing experts, network marketing experts, wine experts, mortgage experts, real-estate experts. You name it, if there is an expert out there, likely they found Twitter as a home to spout off about their awesomeness. 

On the flip side, I met with a buddy a couple of weeks ago who asked what I thought about calling himself an “M&A apprentice." He went on to explain how he’s always learning. That he’ll never be an expert. However, if you knew this guy's background, you'd agree that he's no novice. He is an expert. He’s led over 23 successful M&A's for major corporations and startups. He’s taken 2 companies public and has created more wealth for his investors and shareholders than you can imagine. He is recognized as an expert by his entire industry, yet his bio and words claim "apprentice." So, next time you think you have to  dial up the “expert” card to gain credibility, remember that most experts don’t make the claim.

Starting on September 5th I went on a social media diet. My Macbook Pro logic board bit the dust and up until yesterday I was pretty much machineless. Okay, I still checked in on emails and a few social sites, but i did very little by way of production. My diet was purely consumptive. So, I am back on board with a sorta working machine. Still working out the kinks. Time to start producing again. Oh yeah, was the break worth it (even though it was kinda forced)? Definitely!

"In a start-up company, you basically throw out all assumptions every three weeks."
-William Lyon Phelps

"Running a start-up is like being punched in the face repeatedly, but working for a large company is like being waterboarded." -Paul Graham (Ycombinator) 

This quote doesn't need much more explanation. It's one of my favorites.