Posted in Business, Credit Crunch, Finance, Recession, Small Business, Startup, Syntagma on September 22nd, 2008
Is a Harvard MBA such a good asset in business these days?
It probably still is, but some doubts are being aired about its involvement in the ongoing credit crunch.
Read more about The Great Harvard Sausage Scandal 2008 over at our parent site, Syntagma.
Who, then, are the people that created this vastly complex set of financial instruments based on the always-temporary phenomenon of rapidly-rising asset prices? And who were their managers who let them do it?
It appears that a large number of them are alumni of the Harvard Business School, even those working in Britain and Europe. President Bush is one of them. British PM Gordon Brown has surrounded himself with such types for more than a decade.
Read the rest of the article.
Posted in Bootstrapping, Funding, Small Business, Startup, Venture Capital on September 10th, 2008
Back in January, Larry Chiang wrote an informative piece over at GigaOm on which venture capitalists to avoid.
No names are mentioned, just their characteristics. He offers a list of nine VC archetypes you’ll definitely want to avoid, just as soon as you hit the $900,000-mark.
Here are the first three to get you in the mood:
1) Mr. Armchair. He’s a Friday afternoon Chairman. He knows exactly what he’d do as board member of facebook, Google, MySpace.,YouTube. Too bad his portfolio company’s don’t get the same enthusiastic coverage.
2) Mr. One-Hit-Wonder. Yes he sold Postage.com for $200 million (and kept $15 million) so if you wanna hear war stories from the ’90s, take this GSB alum’s money.
3) Mr. Spray-n-Pray. He cites being founding CEO as his Operations experience. (Translation: He was a interim CEO for his last venture firm before company/portfolio implosion and subsequent fund implosion. His fund is a catch-all and he tries to participate in every Sequoia backed deal.
Read the rest of the article here.
