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DST and Y Combinator: A (VC) Industry in Transition

This week’s debate over AngelList(background: link, link), and how VC deals are sourced and evaluated, is just further emphasis that the Venture Capital Industry is in transition. The fundamental forces driving this transition have been playing out for a while now: Lean Startups[11.“Cheap revolution,” open source stacks, RoR, etc.], Super Angels, a legit secondary market for private company shares, huge late-stage valuations, and readily available monetization systems[22.Pervasive internet adoption, Google AdSense, Apple App Store.] leading to very high “capital efficiency” and short cycles from founding to break-even.

An event illustrative of this transition is the announcement that financial firm Digital Sky Technologies (DST) will, automatically and on extremely generous terms, invest $150,000 in every seed-stage company that Y Combinator backs. Y Combinator itself, ambiguously understood by the VC community ((Is it an angel investor?…

    THE GAP

    A few more details have trickled out about the Hurd transgressions that have shaken loose some odd revisions in analysis that, well maybe these were “fire-able offenses.”

    Some of the details that have muddied the waters:

    WSJ: Hurd Deal Inflamed…

    Marc Andreessen as Interim CEO of HP

    Perhaps I am getting too out front on this issue, but the pieces are really starting to fall together for the decision to put in Marc Andreessen as the Interim CEO of HP ((A note to future readers: as…

    QC: RIM versus UAE

    I’ll admit to being surprised by the amount of coverage this is getting but even so I’ll make a quick comment on the RIM versus UAE kerfuffle because there is a bit of misunderstanding out there, even from the security experts:

    HFT Bot-versus-Bot

    Zero Hedge has a great post on High Frequency Trading (HFT):

    “It’s Not A Market, It’s An HFT ‘Crop Circle’ Crime Scene”

    In this article Tyler Durden presents pretty compelling visual evidence of “quote stuffing” by HFT trading bots. …

    And the Finns?

    Thanks for all of the positive response to my exhausting survey of the strategic landscape of the wirless industry:

    Welcome to Freaking Helsinki, RIM

    I seem to have become a bit of a clearing house for abused SF’ers that walk through the…

    Welcome to Freaking Helsinki, RIM

    As a stalwart member of the last pocket of Blackberry “dead-enders,” I was stunned last month when I actually found myself considering buying a Google Android device.

    It was a shocking moment that laid bare how crushed RIM (the maker…

    Dispatches from DeepAnalysis(DA)

    Got a good dispatch from DeepAnalysis(DA) today sparked, perhaps, by some of the recent conversations around the stay lean / quality growth topic.

    From DeepAnalysis(DA):

    The Greater Grower Theory – Entrepreneurs ignore profits and spend for growth in the hopes that…

    The Last of the Mohicans

    I saw an interesting TV advert while on the stairmill in the gym this beautiful Friday morn.  It was a promo for Tom Cruise’s “Knight and Day” touting the positive reviews for the film opening this weekend.  Usually you…

    A Pernicious Lack of Perspective

    Over the last few years, I’ve managed to peek through my fingers, with some trepidation, to look at the postings of the enfant terribles of our tech-startup-blogosphere, those of Jason Fried, DHH and the 37Signals[11.37Signals.com ] cohort.

    And…