Thursday, April 7, 2011

Billions in venture markets

The initial public offering market for venture-backed companies in the first quarter was the strongest since 2007, according to a report by Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association.

Fourteen VC-backed IPOs occurred in the first quarter, with companies raising an average of $98.3 million. The total amount raised was $1.37 billion. Coupled with a strong acquisition market, the results showed that venture capitalists are finally getting some decent exits as the tech industry recovers from the recession.

During the quarter, 109 venture-backed companies were acquired. Of the 45 deals where the acquisition price was disclosed, the total purchase prices added up to $5.9 billion.

More about venture billions deals http://vsocial.livejournal.com/133851.html

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Google's new +1 service

The version of +1 service which is beginning today is not the toolbar version that we first got a glimpse of in December, that’s apparently a different version that was being tested. This version of +1 actually launching is a small button that will reside next to each and every Google Search result. If you like the result, you click the +1 button and it gets shared with your social circle — and the public (more on that in a bit).

The button also works on the ads that appear in Google Search. If you like those and think they can be useful to friends, you can also hit the button there to highlight them. That may sound like something no one would ever do, but the implementation is actually pretty smart. You see, since the pages that are linked to in Google ads also appear in Google’s regular index, if a page has ever been +1′d as a regular result, it will also show up as +1′d in the ad.

But let’s take a step back for a second. Google +1 is an extension of what Google has been doing for a while with Social Search, Google’s Matt Cutts tells us. In their most recent update to that feature, results were surfaced and highlighted when someone in your social circle shared something on a social network like Twitter or Buzz. “People really like this aspect of social search,” Cutts says.

At the same time, the current social mechanisms require some work to be useful — you have to explicitly share a link somewhere. You might not want to do that with every link you like. And that’s where the +1 button comes in, it’s a simple way to indicate you like a page and think it might be useful to others. Again, basically a “like” button.

Cutts wants to be very clear that this +1 data is public. While a big aspect of +1 is sharing results with your social graph (which is still sort of confusing given that Google isn’t an actual social network, so it’s Gmail chat contacts, Reader and Buzz friends, etc) , it is also about using that data in aggregate to highlight better results for everyone. For example, on a result that has been +1′d, you’ll see if any of your friends have +1′d it (in a similar way to the current Social Search look with people’s tiny profile icons under the result itself). But you’ll also see that X number of other people that aren’t in your social circle +1′d it as well.

http://www.businessinsider.com/political-infighting-overlapping-projects-slowing-googles-facebook-killer-2010-12

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Tips to raise funding

Where to Look for Startup Funding

Here are some places where you may be more likely to secure the money you need for a new venture.

Creative savings. Carefully analyze all your money needs and think creatively about how you can get things for nothing or at a lower cost. This review may not be as difficult as it sounds. For instance, consider bartering and ways to lower your overhead expenses. Look for ways to outsource tasks since this can convert a fixed expense into a variable one and you'll pay for it only when you make a sale. Accomplishing things without using cash is the same as getting money -- with the advantage of not paying interest or giving up equity.

Angel investors. These backers tend to invest smaller sums and take less equity than venture capitalists and usually make a more meaningful non-cash contribution to your survival and growth, such as advice and introductions to others who can help you.


Partner suppliers and customers.
No equity is involved in these deals, but your objectives are achieved without paying cash. For example, if you have a product that you sell through retailers or work with regular suppliers, make them an exclusive offer, such as a specific time period for free advertising or an agreement to purchase on extended payment terms.

Reinvested profits. Scale back on your plans for quick growth and focus your efforts on organic growth where your profits are reinvested in the business as a substitute for raising capital. It is a slower approach, but it can be more profitable and less of a strain on you and your company's well-being.


Tip number 1 – Create a feasible project

Feasibility study, as long as may be, may not always convince the reader your project is feasible and viable.

A feasible project must show, easily, clearly and simply that your project can generate great sources of incomes, keeping the project safe for the owner and for the investor.

Highlight your potential and abilities to become market leader in your niche.

Use professional experts services company for preparing the Feasibility study or prepare it yourself subordinated to an approved acceptable template.


Tip number 2- No Room for Mistakes

The fact there is no room for mistakes, will not leave you any options for modifying your concept or plan after applying to a financier.

Take into consideration that, it doesn’t matter if it’s a bank, fund or a private investor, the financiers analysts are analyzing tens of applications per day having the immediate instincts to find your mistakes and immediately disqualify the file.

Sometimes, when observing the file, simple mistakes will deny the file from financing, without even giving you any explanation for their negative answer.

Remember, you can’t correct the study, or the strategy chosen when you apply. This can be made only BEFORE you start any application process.

When your file is rejected by a financier, probably, it won’t have the chance to apply again, and if it does, it will probably not have the chance to succeed due to the bad impression that the financier already has about the file.

Summarizing this Tip, prepare your Project file and financial structure BEFORE you apply to the Financiers.


Tip number 3 – strong management

Having a strong project management is crucial for your success.

Actually, one of the lessons taught from the last global crisis was based on weak management structures and the fact that financiers were not putting enough attention to this area when analyzing their chosen projects.

Gathering a strong management team, with relevant years of experience, will make the financiers trust your company and the success of your project.

In case you are a startup company, or located in developing countries where strong management are not very accessible, we may find together creative solutions to create a strong local team backed with some external help.

other tips see on http://futurerating.blogspot.com/2011/03/startups-opportunities.html

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Web, Store, Mobile, Social Come Together

2010 was a turning point for mobile shopping with 44% of smartphone users downloading shopping apps and mobile commerce
http://futurerating.blogspot.com/2011/03/social-commerce-will-be-1.html

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Mobile service bubble or future of internet?

New venture bubble predicted by John Connor
http://futurerating.blogspot.com/2011/03/new-bubble-arise.html

will be in the mobile sector.

Foursquare just wrapped up the biggest product launch in its history.

Up next, likely starting soon: A third financing round that could potentially value the mobile/social company at $1 billion or more.

After launching Foursquare 3.0 two weeks ago, Foursquare held an all-staff brainstorm session today at its NYC headquarters. There was an amazing looking lunch catered by chef Sarah Simmons. And they even got some work done! "We filled up 15 sheets with Q2 ideas," CEO Dennis Crowley tweeted.

After those plans are firmed up, look for Crowley to kick into fundraising mode.

With positive reviews of Foursquare's new app, and a good growth story to tell -- 7.5 million users, up from 500,000 a year ago -- Crowley could potentially field funding or acquisition offers nearing or topping $1 billion.

Why raise money now? Because it can (and that's the first rule of fund-raising: Raise money when you can, not when you have to). And because it will eventually have to.

The company raised $15 million last spring from Andreessen Horowitz, with founders taking home another $5 million. That's a nice war-chest for a small company, but it won't last forever. Foursquare recently released a new self-serve tool for merchants to offer deals, but it's not currently generating any revenue from that. Also, it's probably time to step on the spending gas.

Eventually, if Foursquare is going to print money the way Groupon has, it's probably going to need a sales team. That, combined with the company's need for engineering resources, is going to require more money. And raising it could keep Crowley busy for a while.

He will have plenty of options.

Top VC firms, eager to invest in one of the big-and-growing social companies, could write big checks at big valuations. It wouldn't surprise us to see Foursquare raise anywhere from $50 million to $200 million at a valuation ranging from $500 million to $1 billion or more.

Union Square Ventures, which led Foursquare's $1.35 million Series A in 2009, could double down via its new "opportunity fund," which exists in part to allow the company to "continue to invest in our most established and successful companies."

Kleiner Perkins, which recently wrote big checks to Twitter and Groupon, could be a potential investor. So could any of the Valley's big firms, really.

And during the fundraising process, Crowley could easily run into some acquisition offers, too. Recall that last year, while he was raising money, Crowley also talked to Yahoo and Facebook about potential deals.

Google is one potential acquirer. We've heard rumors that Google cofounder Larry Page, returning soon to his old post as CEO, is considering buying a social network.

Google has still not been able to figure out "social," and Foursquare is a social product that works. Better yet, it's already mobile, so Google wouldn't have to figure out how to tailor it for phones. Plus, a big enough check -- maybe $1 billion or more -- could rid Crowley of the bad memories from working at Google the last time it bought his startup, Dodgeball, and eventually closed it down.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Investment without limits

LIMITLESS movie released simultaneously with the Libya action provides the idea
Who controls Libya - controls oil market

http://futurerating.blogspot.com/2011/03/limitless-investment.html

For those wishing to profit on market volatility - this recipe is from the movie:

gather all the information about the players of the sector of the market (especially information about what people think about this the other investors)
trade against the trend (in which all fold paper because of the rumors - buy on fact).

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Venture investment went online

New tool for venture investor SecondMarket have succeed how it was predicted by leading foresight expert Edward Mushinsky http://ierarhia.blogspot.com/2011/03/secondmarket-boost-startups-market.html

Saturday, March 5, 2011

New big investment ideas

1. new social marketing company gets funded every week
http://vator.tv/news/2011-02-24-syncapse-closing-25m-for-social-marketing

2. Mobile geo-services will be a new big idea
For example,
Ning, the "build your own social network" platform co-founded by Marc Andreessen, is launching an entirely new business tonight, an attempt to capture part of the fast-growing mobile chat and social networking industry.
The new product, "Mogwee," is basically a fun, real-time, mobile chat service, for both 1-on-1 and group conversations.

3. For Other new big idea see the John Connor blog
http://znacomstva.blogspot.com/2011/03/new-1-billion-ideas.html

Friday, March 4, 2011

How to realize self-organizing business model

In order to realize self-organizing model, from the outset to accept as immutable the two key tenets of the thesis:
all people in the system are equally talented, able to invent new business entity, and therefore - can act as initiators of startups, new businesses. Attitude toward man as a "detail", "cog" servant organization that something must it be eliminated. Any employee is perceived and evaluated solely in terms of high humanism;
company is highly decentralized. That is why the main thesis, the broadcast director, is: "Everyone has the right to create your own, new project within the organization."

If these postulates are accepted as absolute and fundamental, the next stage - the analysis of the resource base. We need to understand whether there is an opportunity to rely solely on the resources of the organization itself - or whether to involve someone from the outside. The answer to this question determines the number of levels in the hierarchy of the system fixes the ability to access its members to the total resource base, and also allows us to formulate principles to bring to a macro resources of the owner and top management. In the latter case, formed partnerships (they resursonesuschie) relations in the literal interpretation of "you give me - I told you" when a negative connotation gives way to a positive, harmonious interpretation.

Since each of the participants in the system has the right to run their own projects and attract external resources, mechanisms should be designed and defined borders, regulate the recruitment of temporary labor collectives, the creation of separate legal entities and other procedural matters. In addition, regardless of the chosen form factors to be considered the financial terms of the existence of each new project, as well as communications and "domestic" channels. So gradually built up "shell" that keeps the system from collapse, and providing for its security. Something similar would have happened if the orange would be formed not from the fetus, "from cover. One should clearly understand how we keep together a lot of talented people who are outside the shell there is nothing in common.

It is important to answer another difficult question: whether the initiator of the permanent head, forming around a gravitational core, or the time he was "let go" project, so that in future they will have to manage other people, with an entirely different rules.

After you have formed the core of the new system will determine the rules of the transition of people from one "slices" to another, or (if necessary) - the conditions of maintaining the status quo. It is widely believed, though good startups "nothing else to do more can not, they skate - venture projects, and not boring performance of staff duties under the current system. However, practice shows that innovators sometimes very tired from the continuous business of creativity. They want to "relax." And even more so - to "feel the result, rather than just constantly" sowing seeds ". Simulated our system takes into account this fact and provides an opportunity to change the status of a person with "warlord" to "staff officer", move it to the "good", where fighting for the survival of high-risk start-ups, "in the rear, into the bowels of a large-scale metaproekta (which will be accompanied by not only relevant changes in the conditions of life, the emergence of a sense of "systematic" existence, but also opportunities for further education). No accident in the construction of self-organization are usually found another important element - a system of universal education, which operates in a wide range, from individual coaching to active partnerships with international educational centers, and does not exclude changes in the profession (at the request of a person).

Self-developing system may seem very "democratic." But it is not: the basic rules apply to everyone without exception. Because otherwise be lost "planar" power system, which requires equal opportunities for people to move into the core start-up and back into the kernel (not so much to gain peace, but rather in the name of increasing the productivity of people by stable conditions of the center).

Begs the question: what forces are capable not only to keep the same talented people together and "move" them to one side? First of all - common ideology based on strong spiritual values. Only abstract and spiritual "problem of cosmic scale" might give people the energy to overcome all the difficulties and risks that accompany the development of such a system. So, you want to create a powerful ideology. Ideology, which, as the system itself will be built on the principle of viral, having a similar ability to "penetrate into the body of a person.

One of the most effective ways to spread this ideology can be tough ... ernichanie raised to the rank of the absolute basic paradigm of communication - communication mocking, REM, clownish. This kind of presentation of information have proven to be among the best rhetoricians. In the classroom the teacher or a rhetorician must play the role of a jester, and for quite a long time - the total performance. Only then heard remembered, settles in the mind. In this case, it does not matter attitude listeners to the speaker. Indeed, the challenge is to convey to people the information (and so that it is well "settled down", despite the apparent conflict with a rival personal ideology), but not in that he has achieved self-affirmation (which is based more on delusions of grandeur and has to do quite another, authoritarian systems). Here the fit to apply to Ecclesiastes, and, more broadly, to the practice of citing and interpreting biblical texts. In this sense, Ecclesiastes - indicative sample of abstracts that can change the world.

So, in a similar way could be structured and corporate ideology: from the collection of personal equipment leader it eventually grow into "life" of the company through the implementation of a whole system of special events.

But the ideology - is not the only important mechanism of self-organizing system. Require powerful mechanisms of control and security, formed by professionals - those who understand how to prevent damage that can cause system, people with alien or hostile to the values.

An important element of our simulated system is a harmonious unified IT platform that defines the common basic standards for all - from the "core" and "slices" to start-ups, just emerging on the periphery, close to the "skin". This binder and a vehicle control for the center.

Clear "architectural design", a single ideology and a common IT strategy form a "fiber" to help keep the "orange segments' together, not allowing them to move relative to each other.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

How to do Social commerce?

Social commerce will transform global economy.

New innovative models of shopping and commerce will emerge, particularly where location-based services are concerned. The shopping app RedLaser is a perfect example of the direction in which commerce is going, Jain told me. The app allows iPhone or Android owners to scan a barcode with their mobile device and see price comparisons online and at local brick-and-mortar stores, allowing them to locate the best price possible. These kinds of mergers of online and offline shopping will become more prominent in 2011, said Jain, who believes that Foursquare will be the principal driver of developments in location, commerce, and social.

Part of the new evolution of mobile commerce will be new developments in near field communications, which involves the use of proximity sensors to guide mobile users through stores and malls. These proximity sensors, said Jain, will be deployed more widely among small businesses in the coming year to allow users to locate specific items down to the very aisle and shelf. For anyone who tried to shovel their way through Best Buy this holiday season to find that one stupid gadget (that’s always hidden under a pile of other gadgets that other customers have pushed around), an app like that would be a God-send.

The best advises on social commerce was done by leading innovative marketing expert Edward Mushinsky http://futurerating.blogspot.com/2011/02/social-will-dominate-future-innovation.html

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Edward Mushinsky predicted die of traditional search

A leading marketing innovation expert Edward Mushinsky predicted
the company's "horizontal" search strategy is increasingly vulnerable to specialist search sites.

The bigger question, then, is how long traditional search — search that "sees" a vast swath of the Web's 180 million sites — can remain an attractive business model.

Google's humbling in the property sector indicates that the real threat is not from such Goliaths as Microsoft, but from a myriad of Davids—specialized search engines tailored to conduct "vertical" search tasks. Examples of these include restaurant reservations by OpenTable (OPEN), job hunting at Simply Hired, and online travel with sites like Orbitz (OWW) and Priceline (PCLN). These sites are not promoted explicitly as "search engines," but that's what they are; they also happen to execute transactions.

Now social search leads to the growth rate. It is companies like - search discounts site Groupon, specialized search sites for hotels, tourist destinations and real estate Realtor.com, Trulia, and Zillow in the U.S. and Rightmove.

People are now looking for recommendations of those who have already tried the required service or have lived in places where they congregate.

Social search market, as well as market of predictions - that are the search market of the future.
This was predicted in blog
http://ierarhia.blogspot.com/2011/02/john-connor-predict-us-strategy-to-make.html

Monday, February 14, 2011

Nokia will die

Nokia has picked Windows as its smartphone operating system.
This will depreciate Nokia capitalization and lead to their acquision.

John Connor said "Nokia will follow the Palm way."
http://futurerating.ucoz.ru/news/nokia_down/2011-02-14-2

HP, which bought Palm for $1.2 billion last year decided to kill off the Palm brand. They launched three new smartphones under the HP brand — Pre 2, Pre 3 and HP Veer — and to me they are marginally interesting.

http://gigaom.com/mobile/the-palm-is-dead-long-live-the-webos-so-what/


Other forecasts about mobile market http://www.businessinsider.com/mary-meeker-matt-murphy-2011-2#-1

Friday, February 4, 2011

Сбывшийся прогноз

Сегодня сбылся мой прогноз 4-х летней давности:
http://coolgoogle.blogspot.com/2007/09/blog-post_28.html

- сайты, которые последовали рекомендациям о вирусном продвижении через видео-сервисы и профессиональные соревнования - смогли увеличить аудиторию сайта в 25 раз за месяц, а прибыль удвоить
http://vsocial.livejournal.com/117997.html

Вот что я писал в 2007:
На чем социальные сети и мобильные операторы будут зарабатывать
1. Реклама. Мой прогноз на будущее рекламы:
Мобильные телефоны станут главным рекламным носителем - потому что будут самым эффективным средством рекламы.

Судите сами:
Приходящий СМС не проигнорируешь, это факт!
Потом, мобильные операторы могут определять положение абонента и передавать локализованную рекламу. А это почти гарантия отклика абонента на рекламный призыв, если еще и знаешь его мотивацию.
А для этого ничего не мешает фиксировать историю абонента по мобильным транзакциям.

Вот мои статьи с прогнозами:

Про монетизацию социальных сетей - http://rublicon.ru/columns/vsocial/385.html

Про видео в социальных сетях http://broadcasting.ru/articles2/Oborandteh/video_v_socialn_setyah

Про монетизацию http://www.sostav.ru/columns/opinion/2007/stat23/

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Цепная реакция революций: Тунис, сегодня Египет и Албания

В книге "Политический маркетинг" Э. Мушинского еще в 2008 году было предсказано, что достаточно революции в одной стране, как психический вирус недовольства выльется в подобные события в странах со сходными условиями. И вот прямо как по сценарию, одновременно вспыхивают революции в Египте и Албании, еще двух туристических странах с мусульманским подпольем.

На Западе не зря беспокоятся о судьбе Албании. Там сейчас условия для революции еще лучше, чем в Тунисе. Особенно много имеется причин для разочарований и крушения надежд. Ведь последнее десятилетие было самым успешным за всю историю Албании. Темпы роста экономики с конца 90-х гг. держались на уровне 5–7% в год, ВВП за это время удвоился,

Напоминает Россию: удвоение ВВП, твердая верткаль власти, что после кризиса перешло в вакханалию коррупции, недовольство народа и экстремистские вылазки мусульман.
http://znacomstva.blogspot.com/2011/01/blog-post_26.html