Business 2.0

Image via CrunchBase Madrona Venture Venture Group joins the blogosphere, adding a much needed Venture Capital voice for everyone to follow. Let’s just hope they keep this one up, right now, many startups need to know what to expect when it comes to working with a VC, or just trying to survive 2009. Madrona is a venture capital company here in Seattle who has been in business since 1995. I have been to at least one of their speeches through MIT Venture Lab, and have had the fortune to...Read Full Story

Integrity Consultants was developed out of a passion for Market Research and the effects that Mystery Shopping, one of the most widely used Market Research tools, has on business. Having served this industry as a Mystery Shopper, myself, then as an Editor of client reports and Scheduler/Recruiter of mystery shopping assignments, I was able to obtain knowledge from a variety of different resources and develop a broad perspective of the industry, itself. During this process, I was able to...Read Full Story

This is one of the “don’t get it” weird notices from the lawyer representing Craigs List that was the in take down cease and desist row with Craigs List unofficial blog. The lawyer when explaining the C&D goes on to state that the site was running “deceptive text link ads” that they screen capped. The problem is that they screen capped a lot of Google ads, which is the bedrock process of the 2 dollars you make a month off your blog. Fwiw, we have no interest in shutting down blogs about...Read Full Story

Guest Post by Paul Song When John asked me to share one of my business experiences as a guest contributor to his blog a few months ago, I started to think which one would be the most interesting and relevant. Should I talk about starting an IT services company in my 20’s and what it was like to learn everything “on the job”? Or maybe the experience of taking a company public and playing with the “big boys” on Wall Street? Or maybe the humbling experience having our stock plummet by over 80...Read Full Story

We were all wondering what today would look like for Microsoft and for Yahoo now that the deal is a dead issue. While there have been some outrageous things said in the press, the true test is how the companies ride this week out as investors vote on the idea with their shares of stock. This snapshot of stock prices on pre-market action does not bode well for Yahoo, but surprisingly Microsoft is getting some traction this morning with their stock price. This is a good thing, as Microsoft...Read Full Story

Public Relations, the name alone is enough to give people nightmares, the incessant droning of public relations flyer’s in the e-mail system. Unsolicited, and in many cases unwanted flyer’s over the latest shiny new toy. Now a bunch of bloggers are whining about the whole thing, and while I am sympathetic to the issue, one nagging question keeps on cropping up. At some point the system that is in place today worked, worked well enough that it became a defacto way of doing business on the PR...Read Full Story

Lead Well and Prosper: 15 Successful Strategies for Becoming a Good ManagerThese days there seems to be a plethora of opinions on how to be a manager. I’ve reviewed a couple of good books on what to do when you become a boss, but those were more focused on techniques and methods. I’ve also seen a lot of so-called experts who have figured out the latest, greatest philosophy for business management. I don’t want to point fingers or single anyone out – but you know who I’m talking about. The...Read Full Story

The New York Times is reporting that there is a major slowdown in M&A as well as IPO activity happening in Silicon Valley the first quarter of 2008. The question we are asking is can this same thing happen in Seattle. The answer is most likely yes, but over the last 8 months people have been talking about how to survive a recession in Seattle, as well as other places. If the company here in the Seattle area was smart, they have been hoarding cash so that they have enough money to ride out the...Read Full Story

Odds are unlikely that anyone at Microsoft will listen to Gartner. But it is great when the news gets slashdotted and techmemed. The part about this is that people seem to be forgetting the normal business cycle, high growth at sometimes any cost, acquisitions, making tons of money. Then comes a stasis point where mistakes get made, like MS Bob, Windows ME, purchasing double click and letting tons of people go, warm body hiring, forgetting about quality in both skill and personality, ability...Read Full Story

Reading through Bloomberg this morning and realizing that we have a “perfect storm of doom” that is going to color how people invest, take advantage of new technology, and otherwise support the IT industry as a whole. Add to that companies cutting back on budget, firing people, a true lack of desire to hold back the tide, we are hitting the point where the weight of what we have created is going to alter the next generation of web technologies and people who start them up. A surge in...Read Full Story