CreditReport.com is certainly ramping up traffic - year on year traffic is up almost 400% to 4m visitors a month, according to their Compete.com site profile.

The only mystery is today's announcement of the acquisition of the CreditScore.com domain, a site that Compete credits with less than ten thousand uniques a month (actually closer to 5k).

The company's press release said only that it "plans to distribute millions of free credit scores to consumers and educate them on how best to manage the factors affecting their score" - something they would have been quite capable of doing prior to this acquisition.

Anyone got a better take on what this acqisition is about, please feel free to share...

People send me stuff to read all the time and something just struck me about the latest batch of e-documents that people have been sending - they actually fit on my screen.

Yes, that's right - it seems that even non-game developer folks are finally starting to grasp that information rendered in landscape mode can transmit more info via a standard laptop screen (1280px x 800px) than information rendered to be printed on a piece of paper (8.5" x 11").

Another trend we're seeing is increased rendering of html font/object size information in pixels, rather than the much older points or ems (which seem to typify the output of snobby design shops). Using pixels for web design really is a no-brainer argument - pixels are the only form of measurement that make sense when 100% of your viewing audience are staring at a computer screen.

Hello pixels, goodbye portrait. Points, you will not be mourned, other than maybe by a few aging typographers.

When it comes to visas, two countries get me hot and bothered: the US, because of its failure to innovate and show the rest of the world the path to the future, and India, because it remains well and truly stuck in the past.

How many deals have not gone India's way because business people couldn't travel there last-minute, or without considerable difficulty? I personally know of several such deals - and once enjoyed the experience of being refused entry at Mumbai airport because the Indian embassy in a third country had made a mistake. Somewhere in Mumbai, a roomfull of people was waiting for someone to come and talk about purchasing their goods.

I love India - hate their visa system. One day, someone in government there will do the math and finally figure out how much the country could be gaining from copying virtually any other country in the world and enabling executives, investors, employers, to travel there with ease.

Enough of India. Let's discuss the US. Right now, I am faced with the choice of either standing in line for a new H1B visa or equivalent, or doing the work I need to do to support my startups in a third country, via the Internet and a joint-venture structure.

There are several countries that my wife and I have friends in, and these choices are all excellent. Should we choose to go that route, and "phone in" my work to the US, who loses? No us. The people that will lose are the local community right here where I currently live - in Florida.

• The local restaurants (already thinly-populated).
• The supermarket and local food stores.
• The dry-clearner.
• My banker, my lawyers and my accountant.
• The local mechanic.
• The local hospital.
• My commercial real estate landlord.
• My real estate agent, insurance agent,

I could go on, but I sense you've got the drift. Each of these guys will lose a chunk of change when I leave - why? Because Visa regulations don't affect people like me - they affect the people I distribute my paycheck to. I can park myself anywhere, and "phone in" what I do from any number of places that would be only too happy to have me, and spend my money there, in a third country.

So why make me? Shouldn't the aim be to generate as much money as possible for US businesses?

Visa regulations affect the people that salaries get distributed to after they are earned - the local merchants and business owners that stand to benefit from business and investment brought into America by foreigners. When too tough, they make the country as poor as if few regulations existed.

There's a great line in the new Verizon 3G TV ad (the one that rips off the Big Red commercial from the seventies) that promises if you choose Verizon, you'll be able to "download stupid stuff much better". I don't know how long it took to get that approved internally, but it brings a smile to my face everytime I hear it. Because fundamentally, that's what happens on the Internet: a lot of stupid stuff. Which brings me to Hunch.

Hunch, on the surface, appears to be about stupid/fun stuff. Randomly-selected topic samples include "Pink Floyd Albums", "Is he/she a true friend?" and "What should I do in Pembrokeshire?". But that's not right at all. Behind all of these seemingly trivial questions lurks a really smart idea - the more I know about you, the better I can find you something you'll buy.

Don't think it'll work? Go to Hunch.com and click on the "Credit Card" topic. Or the "Camera" topic. Or the "Beauty and Personal Care" topic. You won't be able to resist. Stupid? Far from it - "engaging and potentially paradigm shifting" is how I'd characterize it.

I tried Hunch myself for the first time the other day and I enjoyed the user experience - the UI is clean, the questions (supplied in most part by users - users are called "people" by team Hunch) are well-structured and flip by fast, and it was engaging enough for me to stay with it though 20 or so such queries.

The basic idea - that Hunch will make money by providing a superior set of purchasing choices, based on your answers - is sound. I recommend you check it out.

Two terms that confused me when I first began talking with venture capital providers were "pre-money valuation" and "post-money valuation". Hearing someone ask "so what's your pre-money?" for the first time left me with no choice but to ask for an explanation, which painted me immediately as a rookie - never a good feeling.

To make things easy for first-time entrepreneurs (or veterans that don't happen to have a calculator handy), I've created the DealHorizon.com Post-Money Valuation Calculator. Just enter the amount of capital you're looking to raise, and the percentage of ownership you're looking to give up, and it will give you both your pre-money, and your post-money. Simple!

*Your pre-money valuation and post-money valuation represent (a) the agreed value of your business moments prior to your investors making their investment (i.e. the "pre-money"), and (b) the value of your business after they've put their money in (the "post-money"). Note: This calculator does not take into account liquidation preferences or other complex, value-changing conditions.

Swaptree.com, if you haven't visited, is a place where you can "trade books, video games, CDs and DVDs" - for other books, CDs, etc that someone else has. In-demand objects can be swapped for thousands of different offerings. You can trade without regard to object type - it's a marketplace, after all.

I first became acquainted with Swaptree when I found myself on stage with their founder during a pitch session in Philadelphia, back in 2006. At that time, Swaptree was barely two years old and just getting into their groove. At 150k users a month (Quancast) and rising, and with $4.8 million in newly-minted capital, it would appear that the company is poised for some upside (this is indicated by their YOY Quancast graph also).

I like Swaptree. I like the business model, the site design (in particular, the use of the map on the front page to show the swaps), and I like the fact they have resisted changing the design every five minutes like most social sites. Given Swaptree's demographics, I'm sure that is appreciated.

It always bothers me when you have to go to the end of an article to understand the methodology behind the statistics used to sell the headline. The headline in question this time was

Facebook becomes bigger hit than Google

and it is complete nonsense.

FT.com, the source of the quoted headline above, indeed clarifies things several paras into the commentary, when it finally explains, helpfully, that "the Hitwise figures only cover visits to the Google.com site, meaning that services such as Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps and searches carried out in a box in a browser toolbar are excluded." It goes on to then further clarify:

"Taking all Google properties into account, the internet company accounted for 11.03 per cent of US website visits last week among the top 100 domains, compared with 10.98 per cent for Yahoo properties and 7.07 per cent for Facebook, according to Hitwise."

In other words, the headline shuold have read "Google and Yahoo Remain Bigger Hit Than Facebook" - the precise opposite of what actually ran.

One of the first business books that really won me over was Profit Patterns by Adrian J. Slywotzky. One of the things I appreciated as someone who was just getting started, was that it clearly illustrated the different business types, and attempted to quantify why it's good (then) to be Microsoft or Intel, versus a non-name chip producer or software company.

To illustrate these differences, Slywotzky used a simple 1-10 table to reference the "strategic weight" of a business type, and how that might translate into value. At the top of the table, he used as his reference point companies that "own the standard" (his examples were Microsoft (personal computing) and Intel (microchip)).

Around the middle were companies that owned strong brands (Coca-Cola, McDonalds). At the bottom were "branded commodities" (worth 2 on the index) and "non-branded commodities" (worth a measley 1 out of 10).

The reason this table has stayed in my mind more than a decade is a chance encounter on an airplane while reading the book. Somewhere in Asia (probably somewhere in China, given my travel plans back then), a travel-worn executive plopped down in the seat next to me and asked me what I was reading. I explained the premise of Profit Patterns and showed him the "strategic weight" table.

He nodded, then looked at me. "So where do you think I fit in there?"

He'd already told me he worked for Mobil. I pointed to the bottom of the table. "Branded commodity. You probably rate a two."

I think he knew I was teasing. "I don't think so."

Interesting, I thought. "So where do you think you fit on here?"

"Anywhere we want to," came the answer, with a laugh. This time, he was doing the teasing.

Fifteen years on from that remark, it turns out he's right. But for complicated reasons - despite being listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, oil is really not a commodity at all - as with diamonds, the price and availability of oil is carefully controlled.

Which brings me, finally, to the point of this post.

When it comes to getting financed, it is really important that you know who you are. Much of the angst I see on TheFunded.com and elsewhere comes not from mixing apples and oranges, but oranges and Apples. People selling commodities mistakenly believe they're selling Products. People selling products claim they're not creating products but creating a service platform (see next para). People selling services think they have their "anchor tenant strategy" figured out, and they're steps away from moving from being a service provider to being a "service platform".

Here's my take: If you're a commodity producer, you're worth whatever you're worth right now. Sit on the dock a couple of hours too long, and you'll might well be worth less (if it's fish you're selling, please remove the space between the last two words).

Products are worth current market share, times growth, discounted for the risk of said growth targets not being achieved and cost of capital.

Product platforms are the exception in product-land, in my book. iTunes isn't worth the one app it started with, it's worth 30% times the average purchase price times how ever many apps are on there now, multiplied by growth, discounted for cost of capital. The weak point? Most of the time, iTunes deals in one-time purchases. For this reason - non-linear payment cycles - some product platforms, like vererable Microsoft, are struggling - at least relative to the service platform pure-plays (see below.)

For me, the real value plays lie with services - or, more specifically, scaleable service platforms. Google, Yahoo, SalesForce.com, health providers, insurers, the phone company, (modern) airport management companies, new media distribution firms. These guys take exclusive (or close to it) customer access and marry it with a scaleable (with respect to how many services can be built) set of renewable services.

What are these scaleable service platforms worth? The short story is, at least 3x everyone else (check out these price/sales ratios: Google: 7.8, SalesForce 7.3 vs. IBM 1.34, GE 1.16). A product/service platform mix like MSFT? 3.8 - right down the middle.

A number of years back, I was approached by a company in that needed some help finding a strategic partner. The company, based in Asia, was doing pretty well. They had some partnerships with some top brands, a solid customer list, and revenues were growing nicely. What they needed was a US-based strategic partner with money to invest and the ability to push their products into that market.

Within a few months, I found them such a partner, based in the US, and worked with the company's bankers to create a good deal for the Asian firm. The term sheet we negotiated achieved the company's goals, and once we had it signed, we flew back home, ready to start preparing the due diligence package. And that's when the fun started.

The first thing we discovered, upon opening up the accounts for analysis, was a hole in the balance sheet. The "sweat equity", the unpaid work done by the company's founders since the company's inception, had not been reflected in the "Accrued Salary and Expenses" line in the Liabilities section of the Balance Sheet, or anywhere else.

Most of the company's senior management team had been working on half salary (and sometimes less) for years, since the company's formation. And, though the team had already been allocated some common stock based on their cash contributions upon founding the company, this oversight meant the team was in danger of losing significant additional value in the upcoming negotiation.

The second thing we discovered was that the company's financials had been quite literally "prepared by hand" - the person creating the spreadsheets - a much older gentleman - had literally entered every sales and vendor invoice and cost item manually and hand-calculated every output in Excel over the past two years.

Pre-trip, we had assumed he had used Excel's "Paste Special" function to remove the formulas (more proof of why assumption can be the mother of all screw-ups). He hadn't. When we showed him the "Sum All" function, he was amazed.

The third thing we discovered was that the sales projections for the next three years had been prepared the same way - using pencil and paper. There was no easy way to adjust for the probability of a bad quarter (or a great quarter), and no way to adjust any of the expenses short of re-calculating the entire spreadsheet. Adding a new opportunity involved a complete re-calculation of every worksheet. There was no tie-in with the Cost of Goods Sold worksheet, other than another hand-calculation.

With three days before the team arrived from the US, there was only one way to tackle these issues - fire the accountant, create an accurate Profit and Loss statement, including a set of historical accounts and projections, using the existing accounts and sales data, and create a revised Balance Sheet that accurately reflected the salary accrual strategy that management had been following.

We knew we'd have some explaining to do re the revised balance sheet, but we were comfortable the investor would understand our reasoning there. The revised Profit and Loss statements, Cash Flow, and Projections were our larger concerns, and needed to be addressed before their arrival, so due diligence could be completed to their satisfaction, and the funding closed.

For the accounting requirements, rather than stay with Excel, we chose to go with QuickBooks - an excellent and proven accounting system for companies fo small to medium size. For future projections, we used one of my financial models (a precursor to the models available for download on this site).

The evening before our guests arrived, thanks to these two sets of tools, four very tired entrepreneurs, and two tired consultants, we had every sales invoice loaded, every expense in place, and everything else dollar-perfect and ready for their analysis.

The good news? Despite the pencil and paper approach, the accounts turned out to be perfect with respect to the historical inputs, and the projections sheet was such a hit, the investors asked if they could share it with their financial group back at HQ. The even better news? Three weeks later, the deal - a US$10 million first-round funding - closed, at the full value agreed in the term sheet.

Lessons learned:

1. Be prepared. Had we not undertaken to revise the accounts of this company to be in line with international (GAAP) standards, there is a risk the investor may have looked at the accounts and made an adverse judgement about the quality of the company, based on the quality of the information being presented - which might have endangered the funding

2. Don't assume - know. Never assume that a spreadsheet was created by someone who knows what they're doing - they may have been created by hand-copying in numbers from a circa-1972 Casio calculator (!) - check every cell, every formula, and step back and look at the big picture - don't assume anything - ask to see the assumptions beneath every projection

3. Account for all possible options. Don't create projections that can't be dynamically adjusted to account for all possible events - positive or negative - a non-dynamic set of projections that fails to articulate a multitude of possible strategic options can sometimes signify a management team bent on executing a single strategy, come Hell or high water - Hell and high water can be avoided by articulating different sales and operating strategies in a dynamic financial plan - and when it comes to financing, though many VCs will use their own tools to conduct analysis during due diligence, having a dynamic approach to execution may shorten the time needed for due diligence

4. Include your founder value at full weight. Entrepreneurs, if you can only be bothered to learn a handful of accounting principles, learn this one: learn how to accrue your salary to the Balance Sheet, so you can be repaid what is owed later or have something of value you can convert into equity at the right time. Acknowledge the fact that you're working for half-salary (or less) using your accounts - - if you don't do this, you risk losing the value of your contribition*

*The importance of accruing salary pre-funding is especially true if there is any risk of losing control of your company, or its accounts (i.e., if you're re-assigned to Special Projects, fired, or otherwise leave the business before this value can be realized). Should that happen, the best defense you have against ending up with nothing to show for your efforts is an audited set of accounts - a set that includes your founder contribution at full value.

There's a handful of blogs and sites that I go to when I'm looking for inspiration from the world of Internet Marketing and social media. One of them is Sphinn, an Internet Marketing News and Discussion Forum.

I find that Sphinn is a pretty solid place to look for advice on SEO topics, advertising (including keyword strategies), e-commerce engines, managing affiliates - pretty much the nuts and bolts of web marketing. Here's the current "Top 5" topics listed in their "Hot Topics" section:

Handy Tools and Tips for E-Commerce Websites

Ruud Questions: Arnie Kuenn on Link Building

22 Linkbait Headlines Almost Every Blogger Can Use

5 Strategies to Maintain and Improve Your #1 Rankings in Google – After You’ve Reached the Top

W3C Validation for SEO? Give me a Break.

A couple of days ago, I thought I would attempt to add an article to Sphinn - a press release for a recent launch that I was part of. I posted it up, waited for it to be approved - then was astounded to see it rejected for being "too salesy". A bit taken-aback, I asked for an explanation, and received one - from Michell Robbins.

Hello John,

Here's the rub - I didn't get mad, didn't try and push things. I was actually impressed that moderators were taking the time to go through things that were clearly borderline, and make what could be a potentially unpopular call (up until now, I'd thought only slashdot did that).

There are very few well-managed social media sites - or, for that matter, channels - out there. It's nice to see Sphinn sticking to their focus and maintaining their policy.

Final note - additional kudos to Sphinn for having posting categories that actually make sense. As anyone who has tried to post something to Digg will attest, most social sites offer a poor range of categories to posters. Sphinn gets their posting categories right.

You can find Sphinn's parent company's DealHorizon.com profile here.

A couple of days ago, I posted a blog entitled 5 Easy Steps to a Great Business Plan and some of you were kind enough to email me with some kind words about it. It seems there are many others out there who agree that writing a focused, crisp Executive Summary before you write the rest of your plan is smart thinking.

In the example I provided in my last post, I offered up a premise based on a fictional business as an illustration of the importance of writing a tight Executive Summary. Today, I decided to go a step further and automate the process of writing an executive summary, using that example as a starting point.

You can find the tool I created - I'm calling it the Executive Summary Generator - in the Free Tools section of the DealHorizon.com store or by clicking on this link. Yes, it's a free tool. It uses the same five questions I articulated in my 5 Easy Steps to a Great Business Plan blog the other day to assist in creating a tight, focused Exec Sum.

The output can be easily copied into Word, or whatever other format you're using. Please take a peek at the tool and let me know what you think - and if you like it, please click the "Share" button on the AddThis widget at the top of the Executive Summary Generator page and spread the word.

There has been a lot of press recently about Google's attempts to become more responsive to real-time information searches, which translates more literally to "hey, index my tweets, dude - because I'm more interested in the here and now than I am in some web site from 1998".

What has gotten less coverage though are the improvements going on at Yahoo. Compared to Bing and Gooogle, I find Yahoo to be the "most improved" of the bunch - by far. They do a better job of finding more relevant results, and appear to my eyes at least to do a far better job of indexing real-time data from Twitter and elsewhere.

Previous to 2010, I've been using Yahoo mainly for its superb Finance section, Google (and sometimes Bing) for general search and news, and Wolfram Alpha for data. But, increasingly, I'm liking Yahoo Search for general search results over Bing and Google - which is not something I expected I'd be saying in 2010.

Writing a great business plan (and I've authored and co-authored dozens of plans) is not that hard. You simply need to understand that investors are busy people, and tell them the five critical things they need to know about your business, as soon as possible in the plan.

Contrary to a lot of advice about writing the Executive Summary last, I believe you should first write the Executive Summary first - but in a highly structured way. So put aside the templates, fire up a blank Word document, and start creating your business plan by first creating the "one-page plan" that encapsulates the five essential things your investors need to know about your business:

1. What problem does your business solve?

2. How many potential customers have this problem?

3. How many of these people can you effectively reach?

4. How much capital do you need to get started, and how much money can you generate after costs?

5. Is it possible to protect your solution against competitive pressures (i.e. by using patents, by out-advertising the competition, by offering a lower-cost solution, by teaming up with market-leading partners, etc)

The first thing that you'll notice about this approach is that it works for ventures of any size, or any type - from giants like Google down to single-proprietorship businesses. For example, if my business is selling wireless sensors that detect the PH level of swimming pools and alert pool owners via email, my "pre plan" might look like this:

1. What problem does your business solve?

Many swimming pool owners don't know how to regulate the PH level of the water, or don't have the equipment to do an effective job. An unmaintained pool and poorly-regulated use of chemicals can pose significant health risks. Using a pool maintenance service provider can cost hundreds of dollars a month.

AAA PoolBot alerts customers via email when the PH level of their pools requires adjustment. Costing just $129.95, with optional service plans starting at just $4.95 per month, the AAA PoolBot allows pool owners to maintain their pools at a fraction of the cost of hiring a pool service company.

2. How many potential customers have this problem?

According to USA Swimming and the National Swimming Pool Foundation there are 10 million swimming pools in the United States, with 360,000 Public Pools that stay open all year.

3. How many of these people can you effectively reach?

Our web site, www.aaaPoolBot.com, receives around 10,000 unique visitors a month, almost all of whom have pools. However, our new marketing partner, www.poolbotsrus.com, is the market leader in this space and reaches over a million unique users a month, 80% of whom are returning visitors.

We believe we can create awareness among 22% of US pool owners, or 2,200,000 potential customers, representing a possible market size of $285 million. Based on conversion data collected from aaapoolbot.com over 12 months, 2.5% of visitors can be expected to convert to sales, resulting in $3.51 million in first year sales, net of affiliate commissions, up from $350,000 last year.

4. How much capital do you need to get started, and how much money can you generate after costs?

The company is currently unable to fund manufacture of the anticipated number of units from cash flow, and requires additional capital to ensure an adequate flow of units into the market.

Taking in investment capital will also allow us to increase our margins and lower costs. Each AAAPoolBot currently costs $38.95 to produce and distribute. We believe we can reduce costs by 50%, and increase our net margin by 12% to 18% overall, by producing in volume.

5. Is it possible to protect your solution against competitive pressures (i.e. by using patents, by out-advertising the competition, by offering a lower-cost solution, by teaming up with market-leading partners, etc)

We believe our five year exclusive partnership with the world's largest swiming pool device distributor provides good protection of our market position. In addition, we are the holders of US Patent #089278 which we believe will provide strong protection over the next fifteen years. Our board of advisors includes two ex-Olympic champions, both of whom have agreed to feature in our marketing campaign over the coming 12 months.

Summary

Now, I don't know about you, but after reading the Executive Summary above, I'm pretty sold on AAA PoolBots (which is a shame, because it's a toally fictional business!) They appear to solve a problem that a large number of US households have to deal with, and are able to back up their numbers with evidence from 12 months of selling to a fraction of the total market.

Their new partnership should allow them to reach a much bigger share, and the capital they are seeking will allow them to increase their margins beyond the cost of capital. Their exclusive distribution deal and US patent provide strong protection for investors, and it looks like they have exactly the right folks on board to work as pitchmen for the product. It looks like a winner.

The rest of the plan should now be plain sailing - more detailed information on your beta trials, information about your previous success as a business operator, some discussion on any potential delivery risks, plus a detailed financial plan - and you'll be in good shape to start pitching your business.

AudiioLife just pulled down a little over a million bucks in funding today. And from my standpoint, they seem to have exactly the right model for the music market - and that's coming from a guy that was once (albeit briefly) in a rock band*. Their model is: provide everything that the artist needs to make money from online sales, from the standpoint of a full risk-share partnership. Or as one of their customers put it:

"Audiolife not only lets you create an online store to sell CDs and digital downloads, but it will actually manufacture the CDs for you, on-demand, as customers buy them. The up-front cost? Nothing. Zero dollars and zero cents. This is a big deal."

It actually goes much further than that - providing a full-on e-commerce platform and analytics dashboard to boot. It really doesn't get much better than for an indie artist that wants to maintain control.

This a business that fits its audience like a glove - and that seems to be what AudioLife have done - they have tailored their service to the musician that wants to invest in their own distribution channel and own the ROI. As they say on their site, "goodbye post office" - this is a soup to nuts service for musicians wishing to distribute their own music.

It probably helps that they're based in Van Nuys - I was based in L.A. too when I was shopping my band, and when we sold Heart of Asia, we did that through L.A. as well - very successfully. I'd recommend you check out the buzz on AudioLife - I enjoyed touring their site.

*When I was a struggling songwriter in L.A. twenty years ago, we all hung out at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel (which back then was a bit of a dump - it isn't today) and played our songs to each other. Most people in the group did well and went on to fame and fortune but I was always surprised that one guy - a very talented person named Gregg Alexander - never made it. Then the other day, my wife showed me his New Radicals CDs.

Guess Gregg is doing just fine. ;-)

As readers of this blog know, I recently co-founded a company that I'm enormously excited about - Heardable.com. This company, which was founded just last October, has come leaps and bounds (check out our testimonials). I've never been involved with a project that has done such a good job on implementation this early in the game.

You can find the release here on PRWeb. Please retweet/share with others - we'd love your help in getting the word out about Heardable. And we'd love you to visit and type in your domain as well, so we can help you answer that essential question all online marketers should be asking:

What's your Heardable Score?

Scientists, we are finding out, are human. Give them a need for research grant funding, a bad day at work, or a piece of data that doesn't fit, and they will, it increasingly appears, do what's needed to put bread on the table.

The recent "ClimateGate" debarcle caused by a hacked mail server at the University of East Anglia, and the incredibly unscientific "results" concerning glacial melting that were published recently in the UN IPCC report, represent the tip of an iceberg - an iceberg that appears in no danger whatsoever of melting.

Scientists, as we're learning, are not so much humans as pack animals. For centuries, scientists have shown a remarkably strong propensity to maintain the status-quo, regardless of evidence they should move in a new direction. It would appear they're doing it again with climate change.

Why so much misinformation? Scientists are well aware what happens to renegades - and I'm not just talking about Galileo or Copernicus. I'm talking about Alfred Wegener (plate tectonics/continental drift), Ignaz Semmelweis (the need for santization), Dmitri Ivanovski (viruses), Vera Rubin (dark matter), and Nathan Myhrvold (climate control).

Renegades get laughed at, shouted at, forced to sit outside the room, or ignored - often for decades - lest they interrupt the feasting/funding/acceptance speeches. Often, they triumph only because the strength of their personalities was equal to the strength of their ideas (Vesto Slipher, who discovered the universe was expanding when everyone else thought it was contracting, was not a forthright individual - which is why it took someone more aggresive like Edwin Hubble to bring this theory into the light.)

In addition to a strong personality, having money helps. Nathan Myhrvold is proposing to remove climate change as a problem for the low low price of $250 million via a system called Stratoshield - and as the ex-CTO of Microsoft, he can afford to wait out the sceptics, The problem? He is being frozen out of the argument - because if he's right, an entire industry - climate change - may have to go into hiatis.

Better to kill it, freeze it out, or have one of the gods of the existing movement (Al Gore?) proclaim it to be useless ("I think it sucks" was Gore's response upon being told of Myhrvold's bold - and rather elegant - plan.) Why does it suck? Because it endagers the herd.

Which gets me to my point. What is the average person to think about all this? Is the world getting hotter or isn't it? Isn't science supposed to provide clear answers, and if so, surely that is one we can nail? (Some renegades believe the cimate may actually be cooling - click here for a useful bunch of stories from "the other side").

USA Today published some stats yesterday that show a whopping 50% drop in support for the idea that climate change is upon us. In the critical area of young people - people who can actually be expected to get out of their houses and carry flags and stomp their feet when things are not right, 44% see global warming as either "not too important" or "not at all important."

If scientists continue screwing the data up so badly that no clear picture is possible, and people like Al Gore keep rejecting terrific ideas like Stratoshield, then the climate change business may be in for a rough few years. I personally worry about putting up Stratoshield - what if the warming data turns out to be mostly made-up, and the cooling trend guys are right?

Innovation is all about greating greater efficiencies. Venture capital is all about profiting from the resulting value migration. The folks at DataXu are on track to do both.

As a long-time user of various ad networks, the inefficiencies have always struck me as an outrageous and unsustainable way of keeping margin firmly on the side of the sellers.

DataXu and its competitors, such as MediaMath (and, it should be said, Google) are at last starting to even the score by introducing real-time bidding across all major systems - a development that should hopefully allow those of us that make our livings online to start seeing some higher gross margins.

Fifteen years ago, when I was selling TV ads for a living, not only did you have to book well in advance for the "proven" spots, but the pricing system was so rigid it made airline price schedules seem relatively simplistic. Back then, it was impossible to do anything in real-time - if more people were watching the show on the channel beside you, there was no moving your spots around the dial - it just wasn't possible.

This is the key benefit - the promise of DataXu that they will play the role of the honest broker, by analyzing traffic and conversions in real-time - so you can move your money in behind the best-performing properties. The testimonials and case studies on their site seem to illustrate that is exactly what is happening.

My only concern is that once these systems grow in size, they will start applying their own versions of volume buy-ins and minimum inventory levels, effectively pushing the small business operator or startup back to the starting position. But then if that does happen, therein lies an opportunity for someone else to innovate.

For DataXu's DealHorizon profile, click here.

The Visionary

Essential to any new company's success, but may appear mad/dormant/useless to staff members other than the Wise Man, and especially to the Willing Slaves. Once in a while (or maybe only once), comes up with a "crazy big idea" that becomes the basis for the company's value proposition and millions in future exit value (provided the idea is executed by someone other than the Visionary). During productization, the Visionary's input risks being completely forgotten, with possible result of ouster, osterization, and future drinking problem. When teamed with a Wizard and a Wise Man, can become enormously successful. When kicked in the pants enough, can become a Wise Man (rare - drinking problem more likely - but possible).

The Wizard

Visions tend to remain inside the heads of Visionaries (or on the pages of a business plan) in the absense of a Wizard. It is the Wizard's job to not only create a tangible expression of the Visionary's dream, but to preferrably do so using a level of magic that borders on proprietary. Beware the Visionary-Wizard combination: sometimes the Visionary can wake up with an entirely new vision in mind - if that person is also the Wizard, formulas/products that were on the verge of completion may suddenly evaporate.

The Willing Slave

The Willing Slave is what may be called in some mature companies a workaholic. He/she wishes nothing more than to maximize their output during waking hours. A genius-grade, well-managed Willing Slave can create exponentially more value than whole armies of non-willing slaves (contractors), and will willingly work to bring the magic of the Wizard into the light. But the risk of burn-out is great, and if there are more than one Willing Slave in the room, the Wise Man must step in and provide guidance.

The Wise Man

Behind almost every successful start-up lies a Wise Man. Sometimes VCs put them in place as COOs or executing CEOs because they understand that the Visionary may be too busy dreaming up new ideas to execute, the Wizard has too little interest in the ROI, the Closer will sell anything, and the Willing Slave needs to be worked at the correct pace. The Wise Man has been there, done that. He's seen it all before. He knows a year has only 250 workdays and knows exactly what can be accomplished in that time. He knows that delivering too quickly causes quality problems, and deliverying too slowly will kill the company. He knows the time-value of money and is usually a pretty good judge of legal risk issues and spreadsheet jockey. Don't hire the Wise Man at your peril.

The Closer

Companies die (and/or never get funding) without the Closer. Closers are able to take a product based on the dream of the Visionary, the magic of the Wizard, the guidance of the Wise Man, and the work of the Willing Slave, and sell it with such force that not only does the product get sold, an army of advocates is created - the buyer of the product becomes a Closer of equal capability. This is what VCs call "achieving scale". Good closers can do it by phone (and are seldom seen without one to their ear), better closers know that networking and face to face can greatly expand scale - the best closers understand how to close to millions simultaneously via email or AdWords or a viral video, to anyone, anytime, anywhere.

Okay, so I saw the news come over the wire about Posterous and was vaguely aware of what they do - and my reaction was, who needs another Twitter? But the news that RedPoint, Trinity and Ron Conway had combined to provide them $4.4mm was enough to go take a fresh look.

Boy, what a nice experience. First of all,any site that puts a line through the need to signup is already ahead. Increasingly, we'll be seeing a lot less of this due to the growing move to leverage existing directories, such as Facebook, Yahoo, Google, etc, but the approach of Posterous - using an emailed post to push a signup and build the user profile - allows them to play in this area as well.

One of the other things I enjoyed about the Posterous experience was the fact that the branding *actually hangs together*. I'm one of four founders of Heardable.com, and we spend a lot of time looking at online branding and a lot of it aint pretty. How nice it is to see someone get it right - Posterous sends email that actually looks like it came from thir site. Amazing.

Right now, against all odds (the odds being, I already have about fifty accounts out on the web), I'm pretty sure I'll be using Posterous going forward. I think the interface is cleaner than Evernote, and much much more in tune with what users are looking for.

For more info on Posterous, you can check out their DealHorizon.com profile here.

I met Jonathan Schwartz of Bulldog Strategy for a coffee at "World Headquarters" (aka Angry Moon Cigars) in Palm Beach today, and sitting across from us were two rich, retired guys from Jersey.

After listening to us update each other for a few minutes, one of them had a coughing attack, leading me to suggest he should lay off the cigars. That got a laugh, broke the ice and got us talking.

What intruiged me about the conversation was again being reminded that there are still millions, perhaps tens of millions of people out there in developed countries that haven't yet adopted some of the basic client software that the rest of us have adopted for daily use - like Skype.

These guys had never heard of Skype. They shook their heads when we told them that international calls were free.

I told them about the retirement home where my Dad lives in Australia (he has Parkinsons and needs 24 hour care) - and how they have a laptop now which they will bring to his room, so he can connect to us in Florida via Skype (the home has its own account) and see the grandkids, have a chat, etc.

Grandfathers themselves, they thought that was brilliant. Which is exactly what my Dad thinks of it.

We moved on from Skype to the topic of robotics (as featured in a recent Popular Mechanics article - PopMech being the Wired magazine of its day). I took a few minutes out to show them the video of Boston Dynamics' "Big Dog" equipment-carrying robot, and their new PetMan biped.

If you haven't seen these videos, check them out here on YouTube. They are mindblowing - watch the PetMan biped robot get kicked from the side, then correct itself in mid-stride. This video is guaranteed to make you feel like the future is now, and it was an even bigger hit with the guys from Jersey than Skype.