Tag Archive: intellectual property

Evaluating the Risks in Facebook’s IPO: Would You Invest?

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Facebook is forthcoming about the challenges of mobile: No revenue currently generated from mobile advertising; unclear how much mobile use could be monetized; failure to solve this puzzle combined with a dramatic shift toward mobile usage could be a serious problem; and they don’t control the iOS and Android platforms. Frankly, if there were one thing that persuaded me not to invest in FB at current valuations, this would be it.

Avoiding “Janitorial” Legal Work for Startups

Winklevoss Twins

Guide to laying the legal foundations of a successful startup company by startup lawyer Antone Johnson, Founding Principal of Bottom Line Law Group

Web 2.0 Summit 2010 – Thought Leaders Ponder the “Battelle” for the Network Economy

Web 2.0 Summit 2010 Live Stream

This week, industry leaders, pundits, journalists and assorted hangers-on are gathering in San Francisco for the annual Web 2.0 Summit, one of the online industry’s most influential events. John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly moderate conversations with a long list of Web luminaries, including Eric Schmidt, Carol Bartz, Marc Benioff, Reed Hastings, Peter Chernin, Tony Hsieh, Evan Williams, Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Pincus, Ron Conway, John Doerr, and Fred Wilson.

If You Build It, They Will Abuse It

MySpace Traffic Growth - Hitwise

As a completely made-up statistic, assume that 0.01% of users are sociopaths or predators who cause serious damage to the community and its other members. With 10,000 users, that’s one guy. With a million, it’s a hundred people. With 100 million registered users — the scale at MySpace when I left — it’s ten thousand. That kind of math illustrates why every major consumer Internet company has an abuse team that serves as the first line of defense against all kinds of ugliness.

The Crying of Bin 38: Valley Insiders, Anonymous Quorans, and a Vast Angel-Wing Conspiracy

Bin 38

My particular interest in Angelgate relates to the role of anonymity in social media, its facilitation of information flow in a way never seen before, and the fragility — under some circumstances — of that anonymity. Allowing users to log in via Facebook Connect, Twitter OAuth or Google Apps makes it easier than ever to unmask anonymous posters when a site owner is required to comply with a subpoena or search warrant.

Resources for Early Stage Entrepreneurs: Fifteen Items in the “Top 10″

Following is the new, improved, Top 15 List of free online resources addressing key recurring themes and questions that founders raise in our initial meetings: Assembling a founding team, choosing and forming a legal entity, deciding on how to compensate co-founders and employees, gauging market conditions for VC and angel funding, deciphering legal jargon and documents used in VC and angel financing rounds, identifying and retaining the best professional advisors, and so forth.