I never thought I would be channeling Spiro Agnew. After all, didn’t this Nixon V.P. resign disgracefully in the face of tax fraud charges? Yet, he is also known for a few choice turns of phrase. He didn’t mince words calling his administration’s enemies, “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history” and the anti-war movement, “effete corps […]
Ask any consumer start-up what their biggest obstacle to growth is and it’s likely you’ll get a consistent but surprising answer: I simply can’t find enough SEM/SEO talent. It’s not a shortage of programmers that are hindering start-up growth (much of the coding talent is being provided by offshore developers anyway), but rather the talent […]
I previously posted an article called “Why Start-up Lawyers Frustrate Me.” In only my 4th post on my new blog, I managed to piss off nearly every friend I have who works for a major law firm. There has been a ton of press and I think my IT guy is ready to shut off […]
Last week I read some startling statistics on layoffs in a number of industries. The numbers are for cutbacks or RIF’s since October 2007: 83,000 banking industry jobs 23,000 automotive industry jobs 22,000 airline industry jobs 11,000 hospitality industry jobs That’s over 125,000 jobs lost in just four industries in the past ¾ of a […]
I’ve decided to start a series of posts called “Why Xs Frustrate Me.” Today, X = Venture Lawyers. In future posts, X will equal academics, entrepreneurs, accountants, venture capitalists, drummers, the patent ecosystem and other targets of my affection. Given that I used to be a start-up lawyer and that even today more than half […]
Some say it’s “in the air.” In a recent New Yorker article by that name, Malcolm Gladwell reports that numerous inventions were actually simultaneously contemplated in parallel, but unknown to each other, undertakings. Other inventions were under-discovered until the right champion came along. In a far more startling observation, he reports of the efforts by […]
The VC business is a funny one and, in my sixth year at it, I am amazed at how much I am still learning with time. One of the fascinating things about the business is the way VCs process deals, known in the vernacular as “deal flow”. On the one hand, a VC wants to […]
My buddy Peter – a very smart cat – was a pure math major in college. Once, I asked him what the difference between pure and applied math was and he told me with an impish grin: “the applied math guys know how to add . . .” Of course, Peter went to Brown University, […]
On an annual basis, Probitas Partners conducts a Survey of institutional investors in order to gauge their opinion on key trends in the private equity market. We recently contacted approximately 4,000 institutional investors and received 359 individual responses from a mix of Pension Plans, Funds of Funds, Endowments & Foundations, Family Offices and Financial Institutions. […]
Michael Butler is chairman and CEO of investment bank Cascadia Capital. He is writing a book titled Financing the Future and the Next Wave of 21st Century Innovation, and is serializing it here at peHUB. What follows is an excerpt from the fourth chapter. A decade ago, every ambitious and analytical business-school student dreamed of […]