Gawker
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private equity
Peter Thiel's Depressing May
Even as Wall Street rallied last month, Peter Thiel's hedge fund lost close to $25 million, according to leaked documents obtained by Valleywag. Maybe this is why the PayPal founder has been grumpily calling people "frauds." More »
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By Ryan TateComment by Peoplefamiliarwith: Clarium Capital is a global macro fund. The S&P 500 isn't the appropriate benchmark to use with a... 3 Responses | Other threads
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leaks
Parking-Lot Typo Roils Apple Campus
Did contractors pave imperfection into Apple's parking-lot paradise? A controversial photo showing a misspelled traffic warning sent one employee out on the asphalt to disprove yesterday's report of a chip in Steve Jobs's flawless facade. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by saintjim: Someday soon there will be no observable reality left. Only Photoshop. 7 Responses | Other threads
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leaks
Tesla Motors Moneyman Revs His Mouth on Camera
A mysterious video of a Tesla investor talking about a rumored investment in the company has popped up on YouTube. Valleywag has identified the blabbermouth: Victor Morgenstern, chairman of a Chicago private-equity fund. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Joshman Gesamtstrecke: Somebody please chop the first 30 seconds off the video. Also, ye with sports cars, please hang up and drive,... 2 Responses | Other threads
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leaks
Salma Hayek's Hacked Emails Reveal Celebrity's Quotidian Existence
Hackers have broken into Salma Hayek's email, revealing the actress's iPhone-app obsession, designer-clothes habit, travel plans, and more. (Her billionaire husband, François-Henri Pinault, who's throwing a second wedding for her this weekend, pays the bill!) More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Richard Lawson: U wouldnt hack Obamas emales would u? 9 Responses | Other threads
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Web 2.Doh
This Is How Tim O'Reilly Monetizes Free
Ever wonder how much computer-book publisher Tim O'Reilly gets to flap his mouth at conferences about how everything should be free? His flack revealed it to the world last night via Twitter (of course). More » -
memos
Bad Boss's Get-Back-To-Work Email Sparks Online Revenge
When times are tough, bad bosses lash out. After John Soden III, a managing director at Thomas Weisel Partners in San Francisco, sent a hectoring email ordering employees into the office, his underlings struck back. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by phlox✔: Men using III bug me. Sorry John Soden, Davis Love & George(s) Foreman but the only reason you ever had... 10 Responses | Other threads
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leaks
Fast Company CEO: 'Show Some Respect'
What thoughts keep magazines bosses up late at night? Late last night John Koten, the CEO of Fast Company publisher Mansueto Ventures, was wondering why his staff hasn't asked him about how great he is. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by FracturedAcetabulum: Are they hiring? I'd love to work for this guy. He sounds like an inspiring leader, and someone from whom... 2 Responses | Other threads
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layoffs
Google Execs in Secret Layoff Meetings
More layoffs are coming to Google, employees there believe. A Googler tells us top executives abruptly cancelled meetings across the Googleplex Friday.
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By Owen ThomasComment by uncle_wiggly: Hey, where'd you get this photo. I didn't see any cameras in the room for that meeting. That's me with... 2 Responses | Other threads
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leaks
Mark Zuckerberg's Status Update: Paranoid as Hell
Is Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hunting leakers? His internal memo about CFO Gideon Yu's departure got forwarded to bloggers. Perhaps he was hoping that would happen, and not just so his spin would get out. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by clipper: Geez, did this guy piss in your cheerios or something? 3 Responses | Other threads
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leaks
Tesla CEO in Digital Witch Hunt
Enraged by leaks at his troubled Silicon Valley electric carmaker, CEO Elon Musk cooked up a sophisticated electronic scheme to catch the blabbers. It backfired hilariously on the brilliant entrepreneur, who's a bit blabby himself.
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By Owen ThomasComment by spitfire74: It seems that Jalopnik and Gawker have a witchhunt of their own aimed at Tesla. I have a Tesla... 8 Responses | Other threads
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leaks
MySpace Memo: Three Top Execs Leaving
Amit Kapur, the 27-year-old No. 2 executive at MySpace, is leaving, according to a memo from MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe. It looks like he's planning a startup: He's taking two executives with him. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by heroinandpeeps: Be honest with me...there is no "Tom," is there? 4 Responses | Other threads
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yahoo
Carol Bartz Gets New Yahoo Org Chart Half Right
Yahoo's new CEO Carol Bartz hates leaks, and we love Yahoo org charts, so the fact that we've received her announcement of the new Yahoo corporate structure is some kind of harmonic convergence. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Rock tha Hizzee: How different is the Customer Advocacy group from the Customer Insights group that Sue Decker championed? I mean, seriously. 4 Responses | Other threads
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perks
Cisco, the Best Lousy Place to Work
How did Fortune decide Cisco was near the top of its "Best Places to Work" list? An unhappy tipster at the networking-equipment maker leaked this report from a company meeting happening now: More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Pope John Peeps II: You know, water's a free drink. Quit being such a pussy. 11 Responses | Other threads
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blogging for dollars
Yahoo Might Buy Tumblr, New York's Cutest Startup
We hear Yahoo is in talks to buy Tumblr, a blogging startup run by 22-year-old David Karp for "low-to-mid eight figures" — which would translate to a small fortune for the New York entrepreneur. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by ZiggyStardust: As a Tumblr user, this makes me really, really sad. 5 Responses | Other threads
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schadenfreude
The Peter Thiel Bubble
Peter Thiel, so-called visionary, is working CNBC hard at Davos. Why would that be the case? His hedge fund is $5 billion smaller than it was six months ago. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by jhva3: He only lost 4.5%? That's pretty good performance in this market. 4 Responses | Other threads
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leaks
The $3,000 Invite for Startup Founders' Ski-Bum Party
The organizers of last November's Summit Series, a Mexican junket for 60 Internet entrepreneurs ages 35 or younger, are trying again. The last event was free. Now they want $3,000. Here's the invite (don't tell!): More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by NYCRockStar: Hmm... Think there'll be quiet about who's attending? I think not. GQ isn't "sponsoring" the lounge for kicks.... more » | Other threads
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yahoo
Carol Bartz's Leak Problem
No one said patching up Yahoo would be easy. New CEO Carol Bartz is trying to crack down on leaks at the troubled Web giant. How do we know this? Someone leaked a memo. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by ShriGalokie: Shame on the yahoo who leaked this -- loose lips sink ships! As for Carol's first week, the grammar police are... 1 Responses | Other threads
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carol bartz
New CEO Swears Like a Sailor at Yahoo Blabbers
Yahoo has long been the leakiest ship in Silicon Valley. So what is its new captain, tough-talking former Autodesk chief Carol Bartz, going to do about it? Cuss a lot! More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by NewtonClymene: She's definitely taking a masculine stance here. Everyone knows that, traditionally, men dropkick to fucking Mars while women dropkick to fucking... more » | Other threads
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Yahoo Layoffs
Jerry Yang's incompetent layoff memo
Yahoo has a strict set of rules to follow in layoffs: No small talk. Get to the point. Don't own the employee's feelings. Did Jerry Yang, the stumbling Internet company's cloddish founder-CEO, follow them in his latest all-hands memo?
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By Owen ThomasComment by YahooDame: Jerry never capitalizes his words, that's just his style even if it was a happy announcement. And he's an emotional... 4 Responses | Other threads
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leaks
Yahoo's secret layoff doublespeak revealed!
Yahoo isn't firing people en masse — it's "getting fit." That noisome euphemism for today's layoffs of 1,500 people must have hissed forth from the brain of some overpaid management consultant. Likewise for pages upon pages of instructions on how to sack employees — which Valleywag has obtained.
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By Owen ThomasComment by FeliceCrow: Having to laying off an employee is one of the most difficult professional situations I've ever been in - from... 5 Responses | Other threads
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Summit Series
Which founders frolicked in Cancun while you cleaned out your desk?
Last weekend, around 60 entrepreneurs under age 35 flew to Cancun for a retreat informally dubbed Summit Series. CNET reporter Caroline McCarthy was one of the press attendees who agreed not to name names. Nice try. The list of attendees identified below includes Dave Morin from Facebook, Joe Green who roomed with Mark Zuckerberg in college, and Sam Lessin who just got back from lip-dubbing Journey at Camp Cyprus. Tony Hsieh just laid off 8 percent of his Zappos staff. Ex-Googler Chris Sacca may or may not be rich, but I'm jealous of him anyway. More »
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By Paul BoutinComment by LongAgoYahoo: Screw profitable... How many even have any revenue? 3 Responses | Other threads
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leaks
You too can be a Crunchies Co-Host for $25,000
"Sure the economy is kicking the crap out of us," says the website for this years Crunchies awards for Web 2.0 startups, overseen by TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington. But don't let that stop you from spending $25,000 to be an official Co-Host for the event, a posh dress-up bash to be held at San Francisco's Herbst Theater in January. Or, for $15,000, you can sponsor one of the 15 award categories. I crashed the afterparty last year and, really, it was fun. But $25K? I'm dying to find out what this year's sponsors actually end up paying. Here's the official price list: More »
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By Paul BoutinComment by valleymonger: I bet bay area's french loic lemiur will pay the 25k. and then get them back from techcrunch in the... 1 Responses | Other threads
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meltdowns
Cisco kills Christmas
"There should be no Business Group, Technology Group or Business Unit-funded holiday parties." That's the extra bullet through the heart in an email being sent around Cisco. I've screencapped only part of it, because I promised not to provide any pointers to my leaker. Here's the ASCII text version: More »
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By Paul BoutinComment by GarthSatyr: Cisco has a lot of fat and redundancies .... the financial crisis and economic crash has led to entire segments... more » | Other threads
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death of print
Forbes memo confirms print, Web staff merging
Ending a longstanding internal split that dates back to the days of the first dotcom boom, Forbes Media is merging the staff which puts out the conservative-leaning business magazine and its online component, which run separately and with a ludicrous amount of mutual suspicion and jealousy. (Valleywag had gotten wind of these plans last month.) An internal memo sent by CEO Steve Forbes to staff says that print and online sales and marketing will be immediately integrated, reporting up to an "office of the chairman" which includes Forbes.com publisher Jim Spanfeller, whom rumors had previously pegged as the head of the combined operation. Integration of the Web and print editorial staff won't happen until early 2009. Translation: No one in the newsroom will know what's happening to their job until next year. Here's the memo: More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Drunken Economist: Ah Forbes. Think of it as Gawker Media in the Universe of Qward. I mean seriously. I'm expecting RealClear.Alicia.Silverstone next. Bizarro!... 1 Responses | Other threads
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Peng Zhou
The martyr of Tesla Motors
Having laid off 75-some employees and run his electric carmaker's cash balance down to $9 million, what is Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk busying himself with? Conducting a witch hunt to find who leaked Tesla's financials to Valleywag. The Truth About Cars has published an email it claims is from Musk, which includes a letter apology from R&D director Peng Zhou. The only thing that's curious: Our tipster said he'd been at Tesla for four years. Zhou has only been there for two years. In Musk's haste to find someone to blame, did he extract a forced confession from the wrong man? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by YervantTabasco: The original leak was written in clear, no-nonsense English. The use of 'our' to describe Tesla's customers indicates a... more » | Other threads
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perks
In-house gym Cisco's new profit center
Cisco, the San Jose-based networking-equipment giant, is closing its free campus gyms — and replacing them with a new, larger one for which employees will have to pay $20 a month. In explaining the change, Cisco's HR team has claimed it's subsidizing the price of the gym, as well as other health facilities at the same site by 90 percent. So, what, the gym would actually cost $200/mo. at market rates? Must be some gym. Check it out in this video a Cisco source smuggled off-campus, and read Cisco's memo, which touts the loss of free gyms as bringing a "positive return on investment for Cisco." If you're feeling brave, crash the gym's grand opening on Monday. More » -
layoffs
Will Yahoo please just fire everyone at once
One sure thing worse for morale than a layoff is a multiple-stage layoff. Jason Calacanis told you not to do that. Valleywag's publisher sacked everyone early, and at the same time in multiple timezones. So the old saying was true: "If you don't know what's going on by now, it means you still work here." I get to sweat it out for Owen for another quarter. A Yahoo employee — for now — tells us it's the other way around there. The scariest part of the job, says our tipster, is not knowing whether to work or go jobhunting. More »
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By Paul BoutinComment by HiQCode: The good managers left in 2007 and early 2008. 1 Responses | Other threads
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politics
Apple, Google oppose gay marriage ban, while Yahoo stays silent
Google crossdresser-in-chief Sergey Brin got his company, after contentious internal debate, to express opposition to Proposition 8, a California ballot initiative which would ban the same-sex marriages rendered legal earlier this year by the state's Supreme Court. Now Apple, too, has expressed its corporate views, donating $100,000 to the No on Prop 8 campaign. Who hasn't weighed in? Yahoo. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Ted Dziuba: Why the disclosure? You can't exactly short Prop 8's stock. 2 Responses | Other threads
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leaks
Two promoted at Forbes
Something is stirring at Forbes Media, the publisher of Forbes magazine and Forbes.com, two similarly named but otherwise uncooperative publications. Bill Baldwin, the paper tiger who runs print editorial, has issued a memo to his staff announcing two promotions. The Dickensianly named Stewart Pinkerton "will continue to spend a lot of his time overseeing the contributions of print writers to Forbes.com and vice versa." The other guy, Tom Post, will remain another faceless middle-management drone, but we're inclined to like the guy, since he went to the University of Chicago. More » -
great moments in journalism
How to have your layoff spin published verbatim
Got layoffs? Don't spend hours crafting the perfect "Hard Times, Hard Choices" blog post for your leader. Here's how to hack the media to deliver your message: More » -
jason calacanis
America's fun new way to lay off everybody
Jason Calacanis is a master storyteller. Like most writers, he needs an editor. Here's a summary remix of Calacanis's secret insider mail, sent a few hours after Mahalo's layoffs were expertly leaked to everyone but me, thanks pal. More »
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By Paul BoutinComment by workingstiff: For the love of all things good, how does Jason have the time to write these massively long emails and... 1 Responses | Other threads
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we read twitter so you don't have to
Valleywag on the airwaves at Yahoo all-hands
Why did Yahoo's Gary Gale Twitter about a Wi-Fi network labeled "Valleywag" at Yahoo's quarterly all-hands meeting? If I worked for the New York Times, I'd give you all some blah-blah-blah about how we don't discuss our reporting methods. But I run a gossip rag, so I'll just play coy. We did gather that Yahoo CFO Blake Jorgensen was asked about the company's pending layoffs of 10 percent of the workforce. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by SkittlesAndStarburst: I thought Yahoo's were getting the Microsoft package? Sue, Blake and jerry felt is was absolutely justified a few short... 1 Responses | Other threads
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leaks
Yahoo's management secrets revealed
I'll give Yahoo's culture this much: It is democratic and egalitarian, treating all employees equally. Equally like children. Yahoo's "start wearing purple" campaign was a clue — really, where do you see adults wearing purple, outside of a science-fiction convention? But I didn't realize how institutional the infantilization was until I got an eyeful of Yahoo's management-training materials. They are Web 2.0 meets The One-Minute Manager — all bubbly, rounded corners, big quotes, and emoticons. There's even a mirror, to remind Yahoo's leadership what preciously unique snowflakes they are. The richest part for me was the letter from CEO Jerry Yang, calling for "managerial courage." If only he could take his own advice. Here's Yahoo flash-card-sized advice for managers: More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by giddieup: i wonder how many millions did they waste to make up those slides. 2 Responses | Other threads
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meltdowns
Who's shameless enough to go to The Lobby this year?
Silicon Valley venture capitalist David Hornik's invite-only dealmaking conference, The Lobby, takes place again next week at a plush resort in Waikoloa Village on the Big Island of Hawaii. Camp Cyprus was nothing compared to this funeral pyre of cash. Who cares that twentysomethings spent their own money to vacation with friends, and filmed an over-the-top video of their frolics? Hornik's hoedown is the ultimate marker of what-me-worry excess in an age of recession. And Valleywag has the complete list of who's going. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Web2PointOhShit: And they're all going off to Hawaii... Anyone seen Snakes on a Plane? Anyone know where I can buy a... 1 Responses | Other threads
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leaks
Yahoo to cut 3,500 jobs — party on!
A tipster tells us that Yahoo plans to cut 3,500 jobs, chiefly in sales and finance, on December 10 — while keeping plans for a multimillion-dollar holiday party days before the cuts: More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Shadowlayer: Somebody will bring an AK47 to that party. 4 Responses | Other threads
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meltdowns
SAP's internal cost-cutting memo
The Wall Street Journal snagged a copy of an email sent around the world's fourth-largest enterprise software company. I'm impressed that a firm with 50,000 employees and two CEOs managed to restrict its leaks to the Journal. Here's the raw email reconstructed from the Journal's blog post, which spends too much time framing and excerpting the missive. Notice how the story gets the awful irony out of the way first — SAP is freezing its own IT spending — then spells out a three-pronged plan that never once says "layoff." More »
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By Paul BoutinComment by QasimMus: This means they are preparing for big layoffs. In Germany (where their are domiciled), there is a law that in... 1 Responses | Other threads
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meltdowns
Layoff PDFs are best
A longtime reader sent me this classic post-layoff notice in response to our plea for more crowdsourced content. Instead of just telling me a story in text, he gave me a Word document mailed to all employees, so I could screencap it for you. This would've been an awesome post ... in July, when the doc is dated. Yahoo did everyone a favor by including Valleywag in its training video All Hands, the Movie. The lesson? Tipping us isn't about whether or not you get caught. It's about watching how long those idiots in HR take to figure it out.
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By Paul BoutinComment by NorthBeach: you can add Ping0 to the list of stupid start up names, though. more » | Other threads
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Layoff Memos
Laid off before sunrise
We've got our first layoff-memo story — and it's actually about a layoff conducted without a memo. Read on, and don't forget to send in your own: More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by achinda99: I don't get the reference to Yahoo. 1 Responses | Other threads
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meltdowns
Sequoia's complete gloom-and-doom presentation
Silicon Valley is obsessed with a presentation by Sequoia Capital, the backer of Google, titled "R.I.P. Good Times". The venture capital firm's partners delivered it to its portfolio companies at a special meeting, predicting a long, painful recovery and advocating immediate cost cuts. We'd gotten notes from an attendee, but VentureBeat got its hands on the actual PowerPoint deck: More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by david: Ladies and gentlemen, in slide 6: the blue line is the bull and the bear is the black, and each... 1 Responses | Other threads
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meltdowns
"It's always darkest before it's pitch black"
Bad times have hit sunnily optimistic northern California. Does it matter if the mayhem on Wall Street had any real connection with the tech-powered Silicon Valley economy? Some of the region's most influential power brokers believe it will — and by pushing others around, they can make perception reality. A helpful insider has provided notes from a recent meeting of Sequoia Capital, a backer of Apple, Cisco, and Google which has risen to become the Valley's preeminent venture-capital firm. Michael Moritz had summoned CEOs of Sequoia's portfolio companies to tell them to prepare for a long, hard downturn. The bottom line: All startups must become cash-flow positive — in other words, earn more than they spend. Or in other, other words, act like the real businesses they always should have emulated. Here are what our tipster claims are notes from the meeting, apparently forwarded by one of the attendees: More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Antilles_Prime: doesnt look good at all, I hope we are at the beginning of a standard 7 year cycle and not... 5 Responses | Other threads
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