I might be calling this a little early, but in times such as these, its better to be early than dead. Now that the Sensex is 30% (Nasdaq 25%) off recent peaks, and US economy heading downwards, here are some lessons from the last time we went through this: Cash is king – raise money […]
BarCamp Mumbai – 29th Mar
BarCamp Mumbai 2 was a big hit with over 200 attendees and a day full of discussions on many interesting topics and ideas. BarCamp Mumbai 3 is now on the cards for 29th March at School of Management at IIT Mumbai. In the true spirit of BarCamp it’s an open platform which anyone can make […]
What’s a great team?
Well, this came out of a comment on our fund announcement post. Someone asked, what do we mean by a great team. While it is almost impossible to provide a precise definition of the same, I would like to offer some things that we look for. Every team might not have all of them, but […]
Canaan closes $650M fund
Happy to report that we have announced closure of our eighth fund at $650M. The fund will continue to focus on early stage technology businesses in US, India and Israel. India could account for upto 25% of the fund commitments. For our India operations, this is a significant increase in commitment. We started investing in […]
Back to vortals
Remember vortals from the dotcom hey days? For those who dont recognize the term, it stood for vertical portals – go after a particular target group, and provide range of services to them – our first business before we gravitated to jobsahead was a “vortal” called zipahead for Indian youth! Well, the vortal is back. […]
Harish Gandhi joins Canaan Partners
Happy to announce that Harish Gandhi has joined Canaan Partners’ India team. Prior to joining Canaan Partners, Harish headed the Value Added Services (VAS) Business and the New Product Development team at Bharti Airtel. In his product development role, Harish was responsible for working with a number of VAS product, service and content companies as […]
VentureWoods India Venture Polls 2008
Results of VentureWoods 2008 India Venture Polls are out! Interesting findings: Activity is predicted to shift to areas that have been a “wait and watch” last year – mobile data services, ecommerce, online education, local language etc. It will be interesting to see if these remain at that stage or finally mature. A lot of […]
State of Innovation in India
Read Write Web has an interesting article on the state of innovation in India. I agree with most of what the author says in terms of transition over last ten years. Within the context of technology businesses, which is what the article focuses on, I am not sure of whether concept arbitrage theme (which is […]
2008 India Venture Polls
Happy to kickoff some venture polls for 2008. Given how often VCs get it wrong, I thought I’d stay away from making predictions, and rather get the community view! survey software – Take Our Poll web surveys – Take Our Poll If you would like to run another venture poll, please go ahead!
Admin – VentureWoods upgrade
All of you might have seen venturewoods in transition over past month or so. Thanks for bearing with us through a relatively slow upgrade effort. The key things we have been able to accomplish are: Transitioning to the latest wordpress system to provide us flexibility going forward Have author names on individual post pages, and […]
Top 5 Usability Challenges
Jared Spool has an interesting article on top user experience challenges. They are: Scalability Visual Design Comprehension Interactivity Change Management The other gap I see very often is Site Speed. In my experience, speed makes a tremendous difference to how much a site gets used. What is your sense on readiness of India’s skill pool […]
Facebook Demographics
Interesting presentation on facebook demographics and marketing case studies. Key points: 56% Female Only 46% in Professional jobs or Students – notice the shift here from earlier student-only position Demographics are shifting fast over time – interesting implications for marketeers Marketing is more a function of communication than advertising – engage with your audience – […]