Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Gerbsman Partners, Investments, tagged boic, Gerbsman Partners, global economic downturn, lending crisis, Robert Tillman, stagnation in economy, venture financing on July 15, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the largest providers of funding for U.S. home mortgages, closed at their lowest levels since 1992 on concern the companies need to raise more capital amid larger-than-expected losses. Corporate “federal agency” debt obligations and mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by the companies also plummeted relative to government debt as investors thinned positions, analysts said
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Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, funding, Gerbsman Partners, hichtech funding, Robert Tillman, startups, Venture Capital on July 7, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Here is an interesting observation from by Josh Kopelman, Managing Director of First Round Capital. His blog, Redeye VC is a good source for frontline observations on funding.
“A pre-launch, stealth-mode company just closes a seed round of funding. Three weeks go by, and the news of the company’s funding starts appearing in VentureBeat, PEHub, and Venturewire. The story is then picked up by mainstream tech bloggers and press. The CEO starts getting phone calls from journalists. I then receive frantic, angry phone calls and emails from the CEO that go something like this: “Dude! Did you announce the funding? We wanted to stay under the radar…”
Click here for some interesting viewpoints.
Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Gerbsman Partners, Intellectual capital, tagged boic, Gerbsman Partners, Harvard Business School, Hasbro Inc, John Osher, Procter & Gamble, Robert Tillman 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
Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Gerbsman Partners, Investments, tagged asset-backet securities, Board Of Intellectual Capital, credit crisis, Economy, Gerbsman Partners, global economic downturn, Oblong dice, Robert Tillman, Wall street journal 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
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged boic, Oil crisi, oil crisis, Robert Tillman, stagnation in economy on June 14, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Last Friday’s market rout in employment, oil, the dollar and stocks was not the end of the world, but it is a warning. The message is that the current Washington policy mix of easy money and Keynesian fiscal “stimulus” is taking us down the road to stagflation.
read more here.
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