Startups and Domain Names: Three Factors to Consider
A good domain name can catch attention, biasing people to prefer your company over competitors, and making it easy to reach the website if and when they decide to use it. A bad domain name can sink you. Like a storefront and location in the offline world, your domain name is the very first vehicle by which potential investors/customers/employees evaluate your company before they even engage.
Helping startups hit a home run, VC Style
Lots of venture capitalists claim to add value to the companies in which they invest. But how do they do it? And does it really produce better returns for their investors?
High Returns On A Small Fund Challenge Low Returns On A Big Fund
Let’s say you decide to invest in a VC fund. Congratulations: you’re now supporting the least unpopular part of the investing industry. That said, how do you avoid suffering the poor median returns the industry is known for? Assuming you have a large amount of capital to invest, the relatively easy decision is to invest in one of the brand-name, multi-billion dollar VCs. However, the conventional wisdom is that small VC funds have ...
March 3-6, Birmingham, AL: Alternative Investing Conference
This conference is an evolution of the Alternative Investment Roundup that the executives at SSBC designed, developed and ran each February in Arizona from 1997 through 2008. Each year the Arizona event attracted more than 130 Institutional Investors representing over $2 Trillion in investable assets.
Is The Government Telling The Truth When It Says Your Data Is Secure?
(David previously published this at Techcrunch.) Modern encryption systems are, in theory, exceptionally secure. The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), for example, is so sophisticated that all known attacks are considered computationally infeasible. It is no surprise then, that the NSA considers 256-bit AES safe for storing top-secret data. What is ...
A Closer Look At The Quality Of Angel Returns Data
Every major study conducted to date has placed angel investors’ IRR between 18 and 38 percent, as summarized by my Partner John Frankel and Professor Robert Wiltbank in prior Techcrunch articles. The bad news: the data on angel returns has historically been difficult to obtain, analyze, verify, and therefore rely upon.
Tuesday, Jan. 22: John Frankel presenting at HBS
The HBS Entrepreneurship Club is hosting John Frankel presenting on “How Your Startup Can Exploit the Current Technology Super Cycle” this Tuesday, January 22, 6 pm, at Harvard Business School, Aldrich Hall (Room TBD), Boston, MA. He’ll also join some students for a private dinner afterwards.
How VCs Deploy Operating Talent To Build Better Startups
Drew Hansen just posted a very interesting piece on Forbes on, “How VCs Deploy Operating Talent To Build Better Startups”. He draws on the research study my coauthors and I are about to publish on best practices in how venture capitalists increase the odds of company success through operational assistance. ...
Opportunities for Students to Work with ff (Graduate and Undergrad)
ffVC frequently works with students as a research sponsor or startup matchmaker. We are currently also seeking a team to develop two domain names we own or have an interest in, patents.com and alerts.com. If you’d like to work with us, please apply via ffvc.com/careers.
Social Fortress publicly launches at TechCrunch Disrupt
Adam Ghetti, founder of our portfolio company Social Fortress and an expert in security, publicly presented Social Fortress for the first time at this week's TechCrunch Disrupt Conference. I met Adam and Social Fortress at the first Flashpoint Demo Day in New York earlier this year; ff became the only ...
