I am attending Henry Blodget ‘s “Startup 09″ conference in lower Manhattan today. Business Insider has done a great job of orchestrating the debut of a first-rate, high level technology industry business conference.
Thanks to Henry Blodget (CEO of Business Insider, Julie Hansen (COO) and the rest of the team at Alley Insider for inviting me to this debut tech event.
{mosimage}Tony Perkins opened the 2008 Summit at Stanford 6pm 7/22/08 with remarks about the economy, politics, and entrepreneurial environment. KPMG presented their analysis of the AlwaysOn top 250 Companies, including information on tech M&A over the past few years.
Jack Dorsey from Twitter showed up to accept the award as selection as the #1 startup out of the AO 250. He shared some more details about the Berkeley Journalism student who was freed from a jail in Egypt by the Twitter community. There was a lot of twittering going on throughout the conference, as attendees posted to Twitter; and exchanged notes while watching the conference live webcast feed.
Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital is conducting a panel on “Big Media’s Comeback” featuring Albert Cheng EVP Digital Networks at ABC-Disney, John Edwards CEO of Move Networks, Thomas Lesinksi President of Paramount Digital Entertainment, Michael Montgomery President of Montgomery & Co, and Todd Teresi SVP Yahoo!. Tom Lesinksi is explaining how Hollywood’s 50-year old business model, being very lucrative, are difficult to disrupt.
Around 700 attended the Churchill Club’s annual debate for 2008, centered around where Tech Trends are going.
Here is an excellent summation, summing up the ground covered in the discussion, written by Eric Savitz of Barron’s and here are the panelist’s slides
Speakers:
I attended this interesting panel discussion session Thursday Jan 10. It was organized by the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs, held at the Wilson Sonsini Goodrich campus in Palo Alto, and attended by about 130 local entrepreneurs and business people. The panel discussion was moderated by Mark Albertson, Executive Producer of Tech Closeup TV, and the four venture capitalists were selected because they are ‘A-round’ (sometimes also called ‘seed’, or first-round) investors, who need to be ahead of the cutting edge of investing trends. ‘A-round investment’ is currently the place to be due to systemic changes underway in the venture capital business.
This Churchill Club panel met at Dinah’s Poolside Cafe/Hotel April 23 2008 for a breakfast panel discussion of the state of venture investing almost half way into 2008.
The backdrop, of course, being an essentially closed IPO market, a buyer’s M&A market, soaring oil prices, a second quarter of weakening consumer spending, and of course US bond and stock markets undergoing continued major turmoil due to the ongoing mortgage derivates triggered financial crisis. But this panel of leading venture and angel investing professionals for the most part characterized the private equity investment business as percolating along just fine, thank you very much.
{mosimage}This Churchill Club panel met at Dinah’s Poolside Cafe/Hotel April 23 2008 for a breakfast panel discussion of the state of venture investing almost half way into 2008. The backdrop, of course, being an essentially closed IPO market, a buyer’s M&A market, soaring oil prices, a second quarter of weakening consumer spending, and of course US bond and stock markets undergoing continued major turmoil due to the ongoing mortgage derivates triggered financial crisis.
To download the .pdf (easy read) version, click here
Steve takes a look at a first class, large-scale Silicon Valley startup incubator
{mosimage}I attended this interesting panel discussion session Thursday Jan 10. It was organized by the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs, held at the Wilson Sonsini Goodrich campus in Palo Alto, and attended by about 130 local entrepreneurs and business people. The panel discussion was moderated by Mark Albertson, Executive Producer of Tech Closeup TV, and the four venture capitalists were selected because they are ‘A-round’ (sometimes also called ‘seed’, or first-round) investors, who need to be ahead of the cutting edge of investing trends. ‘A-round investment’ is currently the place to be due to systemic changes underway in the venture capital business.