Do You Know Your CEO?

Apr 28 2008

Posted by Jay Dia in Forming the Business, Growing the Team, Startup Guide, Tales from the Front |

In consulting with investors, I am often witness to the postmortem examinations of failed startups. Many times, the focus invariably turns to the CEO to see his or her role in the demise.
In one case, the CEO’s role was quite clear. The CEO lied to customers about product development times in an [...]

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Betting on Blogs

Apr 22 2008

Posted by Jay Dia in Angel & VC View, Entrepreneur's View, Tales from the Front |

In this week’s issue, Mass High Tech (MHT) reported that there were $196M in revenues from advertising in blogs, podcasts, and RSS feeds in 2007, compared to $78M in 2006.
While this figure is modest compared to the overall ad spend, they signal a growing comfort level on the part of advertisers to put some money [...]

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Pulling the Plug

Apr 04 2008

Posted by Jay Dia in Angel & VC View, Saying Goodbye, Startup Guide, Tales from the Front |

It is ironic that my first blog under the category Startup Guide should be about winding down a company, but many times looking at a bad ending is a good way to learn about assessing risks in the business you are starting.
This past Monday, we pulled the plug on a startup and filed the papers [...]