Valleywag
irrational exuberance
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layoffs
Fast Company publisher to lay off 20
Times are tough all over. That's the excuse bosses are now using for cleaning house, making hard decisions they were too timid to execute in bubblier times. We've just heard that Mansueto Ventures, the publisher of Fast Company and Inc. magazines, is laying off 20 people. Inside the company, it's being spun as an "economic move" — but if it's a financially motivated maneuver, why is Fast Company magazine being left untouched in the layoffs? More »
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 »
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 »
Entellium
How deep did Entellium's fraud go?
$50 million of venture capital down the drain. A fraudulent set of books, going back to 2004. How did this happen? Entellium, a Seattle-based software company, saw CEO Paul Johnston and CFO Parrish Jones resign, days before the two were charged with wire fraud. What no one has explained: How on earth were the two executives able to get away with overstating the company's revenues to investors by a factor of four? More »
meltdowns
Sequoia calls off the boom
The good times are over, the partners of Sequoia Capital are telling the entrepreneurs they fund. Quite literally: They sent a summons to a summit meeting with a picture of a gravestone with the writing "R.I.P. Good Times," rival venture capitalist Om Malik reports. There, partners including Michael Moritz and Doug Leone told CEOs of companies in their portfolio that they should steel themselves for a prolonged downturn, make their businesses self-sustainable, and cut all unnecessary costs. More »
9:00 PM on Wed Oct 8 2008
By Owen Thomas
5,977 views,
15 comments
Latest by HoHummer: And this is a great time to get a (slightly used) Ferrari. more »
startups
Silicon Valley has its own portfolio of toxic investments that no one likes to talk about. The office parks along 101 are littered with the living dead, startups running on fumes of hope and trickles of venture capital. What their future looks like: The $5 million asset sale of Radiance Technologies, a digital-video file-delivery company, to Comcast. An asset sale means that the buyer gets the technology, patents, and servers, while investors are left with the liabilities. Radiance's VCs, who sank $26 million into the company starting in 2000, are unlikely to see much from the purchase. Play that scenario out hundreds of times, and you get a glimpse at what's coming for investors and entrepreneurs. No wonder even sunnily optimistic VCs are losing hope.
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The fire sales to come
Silicon Valley has its own portfolio of toxic investments that no one likes to talk about. The office parks along 101 are littered with the living dead, startups running on fumes of hope and trickles of venture capital. What their future looks like: The $5 million asset sale of Radiance Technologies, a digital-video file-delivery company, to Comcast. An asset sale means that the buyer gets the technology, patents, and servers, while investors are left with the liabilities. Radiance's VCs, who sank $26 million into the company starting in 2000, are unlikely to see much from the purchase. Play that scenario out hundreds of times, and you get a glimpse at what's coming for investors and entrepreneurs. No wonder even sunnily optimistic VCs are losing hope.
More »
great moments in pr
eBay PR chief bullshits own staff on layoffs
Alan Marks, eBay's top flack, has a new buzzword for layoffs: "simplification." It's a simplification so simple that Marks had to send a 1,078-word memo explaining it. The bottom line: He cut 15 out of 105 people, or 14 percent of his staff worldwide, but he's hiring another 8 people into new positions. This makes me wonder: Is Marks so immersed in PR-speak that he's lost the ability to compose a blunt and honest communication? Or does Marks, an eBay novice who only joined the company in April from Nike, simply distrust his staff, and thus feel obliged to sanitize all of his internal emails in case they get leaked — as this one has? Read on: More »
yahoo
Sue Decker's third coup d'etat
A tipster tells us Yahoo's upcoming layoffs could come in just a week. Among the people with their jobs on the line: CEO Jerry Yang. Sue Decker, Yahoo's scheming president, is hoping to oust him sooner rather than later, especially if pressure from Wall Street after Yahoo's surely dismal third-quarter earnings, set to be announced on the 21st, give her the excuse. Decker, formerly Yahoo's CFO, has been peddling her seat on the board of Berkshire Hathaway to convince fund managers that she has Warren Buffett's backing. If she pulls it off, it will be the third time Decker has knifed a colleague on her way to the top. More »
rumormonger
