09.29.06

What’s the point of having more?

Posted in Random thoughts at 4:32 am by Ray Wu

Here is a write-up on Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, on whether he will sell out after social networking site MySpace was valued at $15 billion by an analyst.

Here are a few quotes from the article

“If you’re living comfortably, what’s the point of having more?” Newmark said raising the money to subsequently give it away to good causes also did not interest him. “We both know some people who own more than a billion (dollars) and they’re not any the happier. They also need bodyguards,”

Nice statements! Why are we so busy at making money and building wealth? The fundamental question is whether more money will bring additional peace and happiness to life. I think we need to meet the baseline of our worth and living standard, but after that, are we just compete in vain? We bring nothing when we come into this world and we will take nothing when we leave. Accumulation of wealth is a strange notion yet so fundamental to human nature. In the end, won’t that be just another illusion? I have a lot of respect for Craig who states his value so well…

09.28.06

HP to Acquire VoodooPC

Posted in Technology Ventures at 11:34 pm by Ray Wu

Today, HP announced acquisition of Voodoo, a leader in the design and manufacture of high performance and personalized gaming computer systems. Game PC is the first project that comes out the incubator Phil and I developed at the beginning of this year. Even though the internal project is going well, using M&A helps to boost and accelerate HP’s entry into this market place. In addition, this is one of these new type of deals that combine internal incubation initiative with an external M&A to ramp up a complete innovative product line quickly. I think we are creating a new ways of commercialize innovations with this kind of approach. This deal is about innovation, not supply chain optimization. This is about brand enhancement, not commoditization. Hard to do these days in the PC world, but we are turning “magic” :)

Investor Forum

Posted in Technology Ventures, Events at 6:40 pm by Ray Wu

I was at the SVB, Deloitte and SDForum investor forum this morning. The event is a great place for early stage VCs/angel investors to meet promising young startups that seeks seed or series-A funding. I have been attending this event series for a while. Brian, Shai and Susan have done a great job of making this a cool place to hang out. Most of the startups seem to stay on security and Internet services enablement theme. Below is a complete list of companies from this event.

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Business Blogging

Posted in Technology Ventures at 3:50 am by Ray Wu

After blogging for a while, I realize that blogging is different for an insider of business operations and M&A activities. Even though this is a personal blog, I am sensitive to the areas that might consider to be strategic or have near-term activities. I typically choose to blog about the subject I found on a daily basis, and yet is not related to M&A deals, partnerships, incubation projects or anything that is business sensitive within my knowledge. I guess compare to typical bloggers out there, this does put a layer of boundary that could impact what I comment and not comment even though certain news could be very juicy to cover. BusinessWeek’s Stephen Baker recently commented on whether CEO should blog. I think a CEO not only faces more or less the same sensitivity issues as I mentioned above, he or she is has also less time and need to think about impact more. Blog is a great tool, but with all the noise on the Internet, how to structure a meaningful blog that has the right exposure and audience takes strategic thinking and design.

09.27.06

Visto raise $51M of new funding

Posted in Technology Ventures at 12:58 am by Ray Wu

According to VentureBeat, Visto just raised another $51M from mostly existing investors. What is going on with this space? Can the revenue really justify this kind of investment? With the new $51M, Vista would have received over $280M based on venture source ($350 according to VentureBeat) in venture funding. Its competitors such as Good Technologies and Seven are big capital sink as well. Good raised about $250M, and Seven got close to $100M. Both numbers are conservative.

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09.26.06

WebEx Connect

Posted in Technology Ventures at 7:45 am by Ray Wu

I was invited to the VIP reception for Webex’s big splash announcement on Monday night after the SaasCon. I have a lot of respect for WebEx, because of its execution capability and talents within the company. Min Zhu, co-founder of WebEx, is probably one of the smartest technologists I know. I have been expecting a lot since I know there is something cooking. What is being announced is called WebEx Connect, a web collaboration platform that ties business process, application, data and users together beyond a company’s boundary (I would call it boundaryfree collaboration). WebEx is leveraging its strength in communication, collaboration and web meeting, together with the Cordys’s data and process integration, and put that together in multi-tenant hosting environment, and deliver it as SaaS.
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