Category Archives: Uncategorized

I probably have met with over 100 start up entrepreneurs this past year and with each of them I asked “how do you plan to solve distribution?”.  I was incredibly fortunate to have built Community Connect Inc. during a time … Continue reading →

LaunchTime (the business I am a partner of) is very bullish on the daily deal space.  For full disclosure we are investors and are incubating businesses in this space including Yipit, Coupang.com and DoodleDeals.com.  We were told about Groupon in … Continue reading →

The week after we sold Community Connect Inc., I didn’t receive any calls from Executive Search firms.  I remember waking up early one morning and feeling panicked not knowing what I was going to do next and more importantly that … Continue reading →

Just when you thought the Group Buying space couldn’t heat up anymore, Groupon goes and gets a $135 million investment from DST and Battery Ventures at a more than $1 billion valuation.  Groupon has proved how incredibly lucrative this business … Continue reading →

I have written a good amount about the success of companies like Zynga and how these apps should be called Viral Games and not Social Games.  It was the ability to utilize the different FB communication tools (Feed, notifications, wall … Continue reading →

Kara Swisher recently published an article titled Latest Trend for VCs Is Overfunding Group-Buying Start-Ups: LivingSocial Nabs $25 Million.  This LivingSocial investment comes a few months after Groupon raised $30 million which is amazing for a company that just launched … Continue reading →

So I recently read Lessin’ Lessons written by Bob Lessin. Bob is an investment banker and investor with an incredibly accomplished career including being the youngest partner (at 31) at Morgan Stanley and former Vice Chairman of Smith Barney and … Continue reading →

So, in my previous post I went over Life Time Value (LTV) of a user of a social game and how the Facebook ecosystem dramatically improves it.  However, this LTV is not exceptionally high given that only 1 to 2% … Continue reading →

I recently read a great blog post at Gamasutra that examined how social games like Farmville and Mafia Wars are not really social at all: “It’s also important to understand something about ‘social games’: Most of them are not social. … Continue reading →

The third part of this three part series of impulse discount ecommerce companies is focused on pay to bid auctions such as BigDeal and Swoopo.  These sites have really interesting business models.  Basically how it works is that they put … Continue reading →