April 2012
3 posts
Budget Constraints Improve Product Quality
Doing quarterly reviews of our companies tonight, one key lesson has emerged. Budget cuts and headcount reductions forced one of our companies to focus exclusively on the quality of the product as a means of attracting users rather than spending on unproven marketing channels. This has led to increases in activity and new user registrations to record levels - with zero marketing spend. How ironic....
The King of Spectacular Returns
One of the highlights of this year’s NVCA meeting was seeing Mike Markkula interview Arthur Rock.
Rock’s “most fun deal” was Scientific Data Systems, his first big exit. He didn’t get into details about this spectacular investment so I did a bit of research.
SDS was founded in 1961, the same year that Arthur Rock moved to California to start Davis & Rock. In...
They Need 34 More Instagrams
It was interesting to read Ben Horwitz’s blog post about Instagram.
http://bhorowitz.com/2012/04/22/instagram/
312x is certainly a spectacular return in 2 years. Now, compare that against $2.7B raised so far.
http://bhorowitz.com/2012/01/31/why-has-andreessen-horowitz-raised-2-7b-in-3-years/
Simple math says, after netting $78M on $250K, the funds of Andreesen Horowitz will need 34...
