Investment Thesis: Ramneek Gupta (Part 2)

SM: What are your key investments and the rationale behind making those investments. This will help entrepreneurs understand how you process deals. Do you fund capital-intensive deals? RG: Only if they can demonstrate a good ROI. SM:Do you fund built-to-flip deals? RG: Build to flip is usually not a type we focus on. SM: Do

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Investment Thesis: Ramneek Gupta (Part 1)

I had invited Mark Sherman at Battery Ventures to contribute his perspective to the series. Mark has responded via Ramneek Gupta, who wants to focus this interview on investment as it pertains to India, specifically. Battery has a major focus on India right now. SM: Please describe your background, to help entrepreneurs understand your point-of-view.

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Yahoo, eBAY, Microsoft, AOL

Once again, the media is calling for big acquisitions. This time, Merrill Lynch Analyst Justin Post says that Microsoft should acquire Yahoo. On the other hand, there is also speculation about Yahoo buying AOL from Time Warner. John Battelle doesn’t like this option. I said, a year back, that Yahoo and eBAY should merge. Since

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Future of EDA: Addendum

Recently, Gartner fired their EDA research team, part and parcel, with veteran analysts Gary Smith and Daya Nadamuni. Here’s John Cooley’s report on the departure with comments from many industry stalwarts. This takes out the last remaining independent analyst that covered EDA as an industry. There is a problem in EDA. Small $4 Billion market

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Hello Terry, This is George!

People have started wondering what the hell Terry Semel is up to. Amongst these people, there is a category that has more than idle wondering to do. George Roberts would fall in this category. Oh yes, I’m talking about the low-key, soft-spoken co-founder of KKR, the buyout giant. There’s someone else who says, “Damn! Wish

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Stumbleupon

Some stuff I found on Stumbleupon: (a) Playing with a ball (b) Strange Places (c) Mental health As Om said at the party on Saturday night: “The Web’s most addictive time wasting tool !” And, it is a compliment, since, as you can see, I have wasted some time on it too. Try it, and

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Yahoo’s Woes

Here’s an article from Hollywood Reporter on Yahoo’s woes. I still think Yahoo has some great assets, but it is doing a very poor job of leveraging them. Here are some levers I would focus on, to deliver Yahoo out of the muck: (a) MyYahoo : Tying personalization with the in-house systems of advertisers could

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Investment Thesis: Warren Packard

Here’s an interview with Warren Packard, a General Partner at Draper-Fisher-Jurvetson. DFJ has funded Hotmail, Skype, Overture, Baidu, Interwoven, 411, and many others companies. Typically, they do a LOT of deals, and are less hands-on than many other firms who take on smaller portfolio, with a more active commitment to helping the entrepreneurs. They have

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