From Istanbul To Sand Hill Road

The Internet Venture Fair

  I recommend anybody interested in investing in the Internet to attend the Internet Venture Fair & Investment Forum. It will take place in San Jose during June 20-21 2006, and will showcase the up and coming Web 2.0 companies, and a number of panels by Internet savvy investors. In addition, the Chairman & CEO of AOL, Jonathan Miller, will be the keynote speaker.

There will be small and large companies, all selected by an advisory board of Venture Capitalists who specialize in investing in the Internet and consumer services.  The list of participating companies can be found here.

Never Underestimate The Power of Nature

Somewhere in this blog, I wrote about a centipede catching a bat, and the eerie fascination of seeing a primitive animal hunt one farther up in evolution.  Well here is another one.  This one takes place in an aquarium.

So here is how the story goes.  A number of four-foot long sharks are put in a big aquarium.  But the aquarium keepers are worried because there is a red octopus in the same tank.  Will the octopus be safe with these sharks roaming around?  After all, one is merely a mollusk and the other is at the top of the food chain.  Or is it?

Then they notice some sharks disappearing overnight.  This goes on for a while, until somebody decides to stay up all night to solve the mystery.  And they do.  It turns out that the first assumption was very wrong indeed.

See for yourself at:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7004909622962894202&pr=goog-sl

How to Get Your Point Across

Back on this blog due to popular demand...

I got the joke below from a colleague yesterday.  It's more than a joke.  I think there is a profound lesson hidden in it.  No matter if you are an entrepreneur, engineer, sales guy, or venture capitalist, if you want to get your point across, you have to frame it in a context that your audience can relate to.  You have to put yourself in your audience's shoes.  Now enjoy the joke keeping that in mind...

Boudreaux, the smoothest talking Cajun in the Louisiana National Guard, got called up to active duty one day. Boudreaux's first assignment was to the military induction center, and because he was such a good talker they assigned him the duty of advising new recruits about government benefits, especially the GI insurance to which they were entitled.

Before long, the Captain in charge of the induction center began noticing that Boudreaux was getting a 99% sign-up rate for the more expensive supplemental form of GI insurance.

This was odd, because it would cost these low-income recruits $30.00 per month more for the higher coverage, compared to what the government was already providing at no charge.

The Captain decided that he would not ask Boudreaux directly about his selling techniques, but would instead sit in the back of the room at the next briefing and observe Boudreaux's sales pitch.

Boudreaux stood up before latest group of inductees and said, "If you has da normal GI insurans an' you goes to Iraq an' gets youself killed, da governmen' pays you beneficiary $20,000.00.

If you takes out da supplemental insurans, which cost you only t'irty dollar a mons, den da governmen' gots to give you beneficiary $200,000.00!"

"NOW," Boudreaux concluded, "which bunch you tink dey gonna send ta Iraq first?"

Web 2.0 Awards

This link  has a good list of interesting Web 2.0 companies.  Most of them are well-known.  I was surprised that Yelp and Riya were missing in their respective segments.  At least Riya is unique enough to deserve a spot. 

web2.0

VC