The following was compiled by Richard Yan, a first-year student at the Kellogg School of Management. Richard previously worked at mid-market private equity fund GarMark Partners, where he analyzed and invested in debt and equity transactions and managed portfolio companies in a wide range of industries. Panel: Digital Marketing & Internet Services: Futures and Exits […]
The following Wharton PE Conference notes are from Carmen Feliciano, a first-year MBA student at the Wharton School. Prior to Wharton, she worked as a Brand Manager in Technology & Consumer Goods. Panel: VC in Emerging Markets Panelists: David Lam (WI Harper Group), Patrick Eggen (Qualcomm Ventures), Vijjay Khanna (GIV Venture Partners), Jeff Richards (GGV […]
The following was compiled by Rohan Deuskar, a first-year MBA student at the Wharton School. Prior to Wharton, Rohan was a serial entrepreneur and most recently ran the Innovation Department at mobile marketing firm Vibes Media. I asked the Wharton conference organizers for their key takeaways from keynotes by John Megrue Jr., CEO of Apax Partners […]
The following Wharton PE Conference coverage is from Daniela Stefovska, a first-year MBA student at the Wharton School. She sat in a panel about the future of private equity. Prior to Wharton, Daniela worked in the Global Treasury group of Merrill Lynch, where she helped create the Liquidity Risk Management platform. Alternative Investments: Strategies for […]
The following Wharton PE Conference coverage is from Daniela Stefovska, a first-year MBA student at the Wharton School. She sat in on two keynotes, from John Megrue of Apax Partners and Dalip Pathak of Warburg Pincus. Prior to Wharton, Daniela worked in the Global Treasury group of Merrill Lynch, where she helped create the Liquidity Risk […]
I've been worrying lately that we are suffering from a lost generation of entrepreneurs. That was my first reaction when I read what Sequoia's Doug Leone said a few weeks ago about innovation and age at a recent talk with MIT Sloan students visiting Silicon Valley, where Leone claimed that only people under the age of 30 are truly innovative. Over 30 folks can manage innovation, Leone observed, but you need to be under 30 to create it. Examples cited included Jack Dorsey, Twitter's founder who was 30 at the time that he started the service. Now you can argue whether this is right or whether it's a hyperbolic statement for effect, but let's put that aside for now. Here's my worry: when I was under 30, I had the opportunity to be a part of a rocket ship start-up (Open Market), that promoted me into an executive team position of a public company in my 20s. The lessons and skills from that experience inspired me to delude myself into thinking I could be the founding president of another start-up, Upromise, when I was 30. At the time,
Joseph Schumpeter, the legendary economist and political scientist, called it “creative destruction” when a severe downturn ravaged a wide range of industries, sectors and nations – ruining growth, devastating jobs and squeezing credit in the process. Well, we’ve certainly seen plenty of “destruction” over the past 18 to 24 months; now it’s time for the “creative” part, and it should start sometime early in 2010, when the economy’s healing process begins to make itself felt. That’s right. I believe the economy is beginning to mend and knit back together. As we all know, the “destruction” has been excruciatingly painful and dislocating, but it has cleared out the uneconomic and unproductive investments and set the stage for steady new growth and sustained capital markets-driven enrichment.
Reports of venture capital’s demise are greatly exaggerated. Not a day goes by without a commentator reading the VC industry its last rites. And many of the gloomiest prognostications come from those inside the industry. A recent survey found that 53% of VC respondents felt the industry was broken. It’s too easy and lazy (and self-serving for some) to claim the VC model as broken. Nineties nostalgia recalls VC as an investment strategy played on Lake Wobegon, where the sun always shined, all portfolio companies were above average, prices always moved higher and everyone came away a winner.
Historically 70% of job growth in the U.S. has come from the small business sector – including the world of start-ups in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. While small businesses are known for their agility – out of necessity – they are also much more susceptible to the vagaries and uncertainties emanating from Washington, DC these […]
Today’s announcement of our investment in oneforty is a useful prompt to talk about why I’m a big believer (and now investor) in the real-time Web. The real-time Web (i.e., the overwhelming stream of instant, free flowing information available digitally) is clearly hitting the mainstream. One can declare this confidently when even CNN calls it […]