Yesterday, I met with someone launching an exchange for privately held companies . The idea is to have a marketplace that is somewhere between the inefficient one-off negotiation of secondary sales on one end and going public on the other. Pretty quickly our discussion turned to the disclosure of information about these private companies. One of the reasons given for being a private is so as to not have to disclose a lot of information to others (including potential competitors). So how do yo...

Yesterday, I met with someone launching an exchange for privately held companies . The idea is to have a marketplace that is somewhere between the inefficient one-off negotiation of secondary sales on one end and going public on the other. Pretty quickly our discussion turned to the disclosure of information about these private companies. One of the reasons given for being a private is so as to not have to disclose a lot of information to others (including potential competitors). So how do yo...

One of the great things about being focused on investing in web services is that the technical challenges faced by almost all of the companies in the Union Square Ventures portfolio tend to be the same. The solutions on the other hand vary widely. Some companies rack their own servers, others are at traditional hosting companies and some are entirely in the cloud. Some use Java, others PHP, many mix languages. You get the idea. And: there is no obvious correlation between the tools companies ...

One of the great things about being focused on investing in web services is that the technical challenges faced by almost all of the companies in the Union Square Ventures portfolio tend to be the same. The solutions on the other hand vary widely. Some companies rack their own servers, others are at traditional hosting companies and some are entirely in the cloud. Some use Java, others PHP, many mix languages. You get the idea. And: there is no obvious correlation between the tools companies ...

Yesterday, I had a fascinating lunch with some very bright folks from the Gates Foundation. In addition to public health, the Gates Foundation appears to be ramping up its activities in education. A key topic at the lunch was the impact of the web on education. The discussion really helped clarify my own thinking about what the critical missing element is (at least so far): scale. Scale on the web is unlike anything that we have seen before. Facebook recently announced that they crossed 300 m...

Yesterday, I had a fascinating lunch with some very bright folks from the Gates Foundation. In addition to public health, the Gates Foundation appears to be ramping up its activities in education. A key topic at the lunch was the impact of the web on education. The discussion really helped clarify my own thinking about what the critical missing element is (at least so far): scale. Scale on the web is unlike anything that we have seen before. Facebook recently announced that they crossed 300 m...

We have met with a number of companies in the online ad market recently. Every time I ask the entrepreneurs to chart how what they offer fits in with the networks, exchanges, data providers, ad servers, optimizers, agencies, etc. Inevitably, every one draws themselves in the center with the other players revolving around them. Also inevitably, the picture gets complicated rather quickly. Then this morning, I had a conversation with a friend who is on the publisher side. She was telling me abo...

We have met with a number of companies in the online ad market recently. Every time I ask the entrepreneurs to chart how what they offer fits in with the networks, exchanges, data providers, ad servers, optimizers, agencies, etc. Inevitably, every one draws themselves in the center with the other players revolving around them. Also inevitably, the picture gets complicated rather quickly. Then this morning, I had a conversation with a friend who is on the publisher side. She was telling me abo...

Just posted over at the Union Square Ventures blog on a topic that combines my interest in technology with my interest in economics: Structural Change and Marketplaces.

Just posted over at the Union Square Ventures blog on a topic that combines my interest in technology with my interest in economics: Structural Change and Marketplaces.