Good post by Chip Hazard of IDG Ventures (via PE Hub) on the opportunity in enterprise IT for young (and resilient) companies. Lots of greats points here including the need to include software as a service (SaaS) approaches and open source considerations.
A great visit to Hood River
Marel and I spent a few days last week down in Hood River, OR with the little one and our dog Riley. It sits on the Columbia River about 60 miles or so from Portland and 3ish hours from Seattle. I think it is one of the most scenic places in the world if you grasp just how the Columbia Gorge was formed not to mention the footsteps of Lewis and Clark.
Lots of relaxing, a few hikes and mostly unplugged. I’m a huge fan of Full Sail Brewing Co and the tasting room has one of the best views around – they even added table service since my last visit. We always enjoy starting the day at Acre Coffehouse as well as a stop at Cascade Cliffs up the river in Wishram for some great wine and some of the nicest folks around. Even got to witness a wildfire across the river and the impressive air and land assault to contain it.
Orchestria makes their bet on data loss prevention
Orchestria issued this press release yesterday about their "next generation" approach to the DLP market. I’ll save the biting criticism for always charming former Gartner analyst Rich Mogull, but do see this as an interesting development. Data loss prevention was about the only place Orchestria could go after making good inroads to the NASD 3010 surveillance market on Wall Street. That said, DLP is an infantile market estimated to be $100MM or so this year with dozens of vendors buzzing around for a piece of the pie. For those that don’t know, I am no longer in this market (details on my next gig coming) so am coming at this without competitive bias. There is lots of activity in e-discovery, archiving, and security and today’s announcement by Orchestria shows where they are placing their bet.
I’m still long Bear Stearns (BSC)
Maybe I am a glutton for punishment (or absent financial acumen) but have seen the volatile price as a buying opportunity although it is definitely in the speculative part of the portfolio. I’ll assume I am in good company with money bags Joseph Lewis taking a big stake and a nice pop today with the Fed cut (closing at 119.2 & up in after hours trading). Lehman reported today and came out better than expected. Bear reports on Thursday. Regardless of what folks say about the firm, Jimmy Cayne, and their hedge fund debacle, I still believe Bear is a well run shop. We’ll see here shortly if I am off base or not.
Kirkland triathlon
Congrats to Marel, Anne, Vanessa, and Elena for participating in the Kirkland triathlon this past Sunday. The little one and I made our way down to Houghton to see folks entering gray and rather choppy water on Lake Washington early Sunday morning. Everyone did a great job and it was a well done event. Maybe next year for me…
Shame
…or not. If you needed another reason to be disgusted with professional sports, enter Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots. A personal fine of $500k, a team fine of $250k, and the loss of first round pick and he hardly seems contrite. Kind of a "yeah, I did it, you caught me, here’s the dough, problem solved" attitude. I always thought things like the coach covering his mouth with the play card was a bit of overkill. Now I know better. Video taping play calls is pretty egregious.
The Patriots have had a heck of a run and it brings into question how they got it. I’m all for fierce competition, but there are ethical lines as well as legal ones. Win based on your brilliance, talent around you, and a bit of luck. Maybe it’s the sweatshirts…
Interesting move on the email landscape today
Venture capital shake-out?
That’s the position my Kirkland neighbor OVP Venture Partners is taking on the state of the industry in this newsletter. They sort through some data from the NVCA Yearbook and iterate it a bit further examining ‘active’ venture funds defined as those having made an investment in the past 12 months.
In 2000, there were 1156 different
venture firms that made at least one new deal. In 2006, there were only 597. This
is more like a 50% drop, not just 15%! We think that is the big, so far unwritten,
story. The US venture industry has been cut in half. That certainly qualifies
as a major shake-out.
Fund sizes are about double what they were in 2000 as most of the smaller funds created during the bubble years have disappeared or become inactive.
The venture capital industry is healthier
today than most people realize, given the magnitude of the shake-out already behind
us.
Venture capital as an asset class appears to be normalizing with the speculative money going to the ‘quality’ firms. That said, there is still no shortage of venture money chasing anything with a web 2.0 label on it. My favorite definition of web 2.0 is from Don Dodge = one web application, 2 founders, and 0 revenue…
This can’t be good
Looks like UK-based bank Northern Rock experienced a good ole fashion run on the bank today as people sought to withdraw their savings. Here is the full story from The Guardian.
This combined with the fact that Stanford is going to offer a class on Facebook applications (I desperately hope it is a joke) gives me serious pause.
Halibut cheeks
As posts on food seem popular (my post on cedar plank salmon gets a fair amount of traffic), I thought I would highlight another great part of living in the Northwest and the types of seafood available. If you’ve never heard of halibut cheeks, I’m sorry. I hadn’t before we moved here and they are quite possibly one of the most amazing pieces of fish you can eat. I am even on the halibut cheeks call list at Tim’s Seafood here in Kirkland so that I can get them when they come in.
My favorite way? Ginger and Soy. Shave a piece of ginger root and stir it into some soy sauce. Pour it over the cheeks and let it steam covered. The most difficult piece of this recipe is finding them – and not sure you’ll see them too far from the Northwest.
Venture Vice 