DealHorizon - the faster, easier way to create and share business plans

The start-up was backed by heavyweight venture firms Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

As Silicon Valley becomes more frothy, the club becomes less exclusive.

A round-up of venture-capital news and analysis from VentureWire and around the Web.

I've been writing about boards of directors some lately - both changing my behavior as well as thinking out loud as I explore reinventing how boards work for the book "Startup Boards" that I'm working on with Mahendra Ramsinghani. All fit in the context of continuous communications as I believe three things about early stage [...]

Michael Galpert wrote a post on hiring for startups, which he summarized cleanly in one sentence: "Everyone is hiring and nobody wants a job." In the internet startup world, that says it all.The problem is exacerbated in the startup world because of the availability of remarkably inexpensive angel capital and the extreme capital efficiency of the early phase of building a product. Ramen, a case of Red Bull, lots of open source tools, and AWS can take you a long way (millions of users) these days.But both the startup world and the rest of the labor market are going through a more radical shift. The disaggregation of labor. As the external costs of doing business reduce because of the efficiency created by web services, companies (firms, if you're academic about it) add less value to their employees. Firms emerged historically because they aggregated up labor efficiently to reduce external costs of doing business for all participants inside the firm. When those external costs reduce, disaggregation is natural because you're better off working for yourself and owning your own destiny than participating in a firm that no longer adds value in its overhead.It might sound like a bad thing for company building if no one wants to work at companies anymore. But that doesn't have to be the case. You can build a company specifically designed to take advantage of this shift. For example, at Spark this thesis is a core part of our excitement about some of our investments like Work Market, Skillshare, and Storenvy. And we look forward to making more investments in this space.(hat tip to Andy Weissman as we've been sharing a conversation on the subject).

It plans to do for gamers what Netflix has done for movie lovers.

The Facebook IPO is the most important IPO to hit the stock market in …..forever. Not because of its size in dollars. Not because of the gap up it may experience in its first day of trading. Nope. Its the most important IPO ever because: 1. It could lead to individual retail investors coming back [...]

I stopped by a library (the Boston Public Library at Copley) on my way to work this morning. Some observations:A library smells like a library. I had forgotten that smell. Papery, but not like money smell or photocopier paper smell… it's different.90% of the people I saw there were sitting in front of a computer… either their own or one of the BPL's computers.Book checkout process was self-checkout, like at Home Depot or CVS.The computer I used to access the card catalog (what an anachronistic way to describe a computer app!!) was running either IE 3 or 4.Once I gave up on the card catalog terminal, I resorted to my iPhone browser and found that the BPL is running a nice implementation of BiblioCommons. A very cool company worth checking out.Dewey decimal lives strong.The building is breathtaking both inside and out. Rivals great museums. I bet Boston could sell the building and property, take all the proceeds and put it in a trust that would dividend enough cash to pay for free wifi for the city of Boston in perpetuity. I'm not advocating they do this… but that's how nice the building is.It's just as free as ever.I remember in the late 90s, my local library was on the forefront of internet adoption. Everything was searchable from home, online periodical indicies were accessible… it was all really interesting and novel. Little has changed since then. I wonder why? How did library IT move from bleeding edge to trailing edge in a decade?I don't own a Kindle, but I might buy one just for access to the Kindle Owners' Lending Library. This looks like a very interesting product: get new books, for free, over the air. Just need a Kindle and a Prime subscription. It's a big vision, and it has important implications for all our local libraries.

A round-up of venture-capital news and analysis from VentureWire and around the Web.

Lately questions about Intellectual Property or IP have been cropping up left and right.  Eliot Durbin (my partner at BOLDstart Ventures) and I had a long discussion this morning in preparation for his panel today about IP and patents.  Last week, we met with a company and when we asked about their core IP, they [...]

Dow Jones VentureSource breaks down the numbers.

I have been in Orlando for the Sapphire event and while I missed day 1 I did take in the full experience yesterday. With no particular narrative here is a summary of thoughts I collected. Sapphire is huge, the main pavilion is easily 3-4x the size of Dreamforce and the energy is studious and focused. [...]

Seattle-based ClearSign Combustion Corp. said its initial public offering of its shares raised gross proceeds of $13.8 million.

A round-up of venture-capital news and analysis from VentureWire and around the Web.

Accel Partners is among the backers of a company focused on the developing world.

This morning I had a gritty, sweating, damp, dirty run down Bowery through Chinatown and back. It was a short run - only 30 minutes and my coach's note for me was simple and clear: "One of those "throw away" runs that mean a lot to long term fitness improvement." So I did it. I've [...]

Jeff Atwood wrote a controversial post today that's getting some heat (positive and negative) on HackerNews. His thesis is quite succinctly captured in his title: Please Don't Learn to Code. Despite the fact that I disagree with his thesis, it's an interesting and well-written post. I think highly of Jeff, and I understand where he's coming from. The world does not need lots of mediocre programmers, I agree… but, please learn to code anyway :). Here's whyI know how to code, and I'd self-identify as a mediocre programmer (at best). I write code fairly infrequently and almost entirely for recreation. Learning to code fundamentally changed my world view. Computers were created to automate much of what humans understand, but accomplish relatively slowly. They were created by humans as a mental exoskeleton that augments and extends our abilities. When you learn to program, you learn just as much about computers as you do about your own mind. I remember the euphoric experience of implementing A* and realizing that pathfinding is something we all do everyday, but now I have a mental framework that can efficiently optimize the process. That experience changed the way my brain engaged the pathfinding problem from then on. Programming changes the way you learn, and I think everyone could benefit positively from that experience.I, like Jeff, don't want to be subjected to the output of a world of mediocre programmers. But when I talk to another programmer (no matter the quality), I love the way they navigate arguments, take in new data and make it fit with their prior knowledge, and simplify complex ideas. Learning to program is like literacy, it's a new way to learn and engage with the world, and it's one well-worth doing.UPDATE: Ben Stein beat me to this with a great take.

Big-data company Qualtrics raises $70 million in venture financing.

A round-up of venture-capital news and analysis from VentureWire and around the Web.

The online couponing company pushes into France with its latest deal.