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Archive for June, 2008

100 Million avatars!

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Community, Gerbsman Partners, Investments, Market research, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on June 27, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Online communities have for quite some time been on everyone´s lips. Second Life and it´s creator Linden Labs have shown that a virtual economy can generate cash. Another one that recently reached a major milestone is Habbo Hotel. as they moved beyond 100 million avatars created, it does represent a solid business case.

Stardoll, Age of conan, WoW and other MMORPG communities keep pushing their products out and generate tons of cash. My wonder is if the online devices like iPhone will start make the heavy graphics environment look good enough on the device. As the networks keep expanding its capacities, and devices gets richer – it is only a matter of time before someone makes it happens.

Read more at Mashable here

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17 Mistakes Start-ups Make

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Gerbsman Partners, Intellectual capital, tagged , , , , , , on June 25, 2008| Leave a Comment »

John Osher has developed hundreds of consumer products, including an electric toothbrush that became America’s best-selling toothbrush in just 15 months. He also started several successful companies, including Cap Toys. He built sales to $125 million per year and then sold the company to Hasbro Inc. in 1997. But his most lasting contribution to the business world just may be a list of screw-ups he jotted on the back of a piece of paper.

“After I sold my business to Hasbro, I decided I’d make a list of everything I’d done wrong and [had] seen other entrepreneurs do wrong,” explains the 57-year-old Jupiter, Florida, serial entrepreneur. “I wanted to make a company that didn’t make any of these mistakes. I wanted to see if I could come up with the perfect company.”

He came up with an informal list of “16 Mistakes Start-Ups Make”-since expanded to 17-that has been used in a Harvard Business School case study, has been cited in many publications, and has become a part of what he teaches budding entrepreneurs in his frequent university lectures. He also used the list in 1999 when he started Dr. John’s SpinBrush to sell a $5 electric toothbrush that quickly became America’s best-selling toothbrush. In 2001, Procter & Gamble purchased the company from him for $475 million.

More here

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Nokia buy Symbian

Posted in Gerbsman Partners, Market research, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 24, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Nokia said today that it will buy up the part of Symbian it doesn’t already own and create the Symbian Foundation, which will unite all of its flavors into a single, common software platform that will go open source in two years. The move is a clear response to the realities of today’s mobile market — but will it work?

Click here for a excellent analysis from GigaOm

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Inherently Risky Business

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Gerbsman Partners, Investments, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 16, 2008| Leave a Comment »

As the first anniversary of the credit crisis approaches, it’s clear that a major part of the problem was a spectacular failure of information, with complex asset-backed securities turning out to be far riskier than anyone thought. But as sophisticated as we consider ourselves, this is just a contemporary example of what might be called the Problem of the Oblong Dice.

Read more of the Wall Street Journal article here

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Federal Reserve and ECB are in no mood to save us from the consequences of our debt

Posted in Uncategorized on June 15, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Fetch your tin helmets once again. The European Central Bank is opting for a monetary purge. So too is the US Federal Reserve, now ruled from Dallas.

Über-hawks and Cromwellians have gained the upper hand at the great fortress banks. Whether or not they admit it, both are embarked on policies that must lead to retrenchment across the Atlantic world.

Read more here

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