I came across this blog post on business 2.0 (beta?) titled “Why Valley VCs are like the mob“. The catchy title hooked me in and i went on to read it. Basically, the blog’s premise is that startups in the valley don’t need to raise money but they raise it anyway, in order to win the “Mob” support.
It’s a good article, it kinda captures what is happening here in the valley. However, it’s a bit glammed up
First of all, the power of google’s adsense is overstated. I don’t think there are any startups that base all their revenue on google ads and turn solid, sustainable profit enough to expand the business. Google adsense is more about getting some cash flow and getting some basic idea about CTRs on your web pages etc. Also, most of these start ups are really focused on building users and adsense allows them to make some money without losing any focus from the product. I don’t think there haven been any non-seo sites being greatly profitable based on ad-sense alone.
It’s true that you can create these startups out of much lower cost than before, and monthly burn rates other salary are very low. Consequently, small startups which don’t overhire don’t need a lot of money (> 500-600K$) to get to market. However, these amounts are way to small for VC companies to invest in. Successful consumer internet startups (sites with >1M users) that have been bootstrapped, don’t really need a lot of money to keep operations going and expand from there. But, they do need money and these companies are not really generating a lot of extra cash flow.
Entrepreneurs do have a need to take cash to expand their business. They need smaller amounts than before and they don’t like to give out stock. But if you are an investor, you are going to negotiate for lower valuation and higher investment. I guess the entrepreneurs taking “too much” money now, won’t regret it if the market has a downturn and they can sustain their company for 2 years more with the “Extra” money.
Don’t click on this link. Don’t follow it. Please don’t.
Why? because it’s impossible to remember and it’s written by nobody.
p.s. all the characters on that page are fictional and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Some of the characters may have certain traits and/or mannerisms that may seem to suggest actual persons but no claim is made that these traits exist at all or in this combination in any person, living or dead
atleast, that’s what i think.
Every few years, this seems to be something that all the movie fans across india go through. One more movie - beloved to the nation of a billion people or atleast has succeeded in engaging their attention - gets proposed for the best foreign film award in academy awards. Of course, more often than not, it does not even win a final nomination.
Since 1929 (when academy awards started) only 3 indian movies were nominated to Best Foreign Film. They are Mother India (1957), Salaam Bombay (1988) and Lagaan (2002). I wasn’t around when Mother India was made. Salaam Bombay was not a mainstream movie in india. It’s a really good movie, but i doubt if majority of movie-goers in india watched it. Lagaan is one movie that captured nation’s attention and won their hearts over.
Except those 3, none of the 1000s of other movies that were made in india even qualified for a nomination. To me personally, that is quite shocking. Ok, some of the popular movies are plagiarised. A lot of them are no more than formulaic movies filling in the neccessary ‘masala’ and keeping the movie entertaining updated to newer times. However, there are quite few gems, which engage the viewers and a lot of the movie viewers connect with them on several levels.
Even with my limited knowledge of indian cinema, I can think of quite a few hindi & telugu movies that should be strong contenders for best foreign film. SwatiMutyam (telugu), Parinda (hindi), Paheli (hindi), Sankarabharanam (telugu), Nayagan (Tamil), Rudaali (Hindi), Hey Ram (Hindi), Devdas (hindi). If you know any more movies or can think of some, post them in comments.
In 2006, there are atleast 2 films which have engaged in indians. Rang De Basanti connected with the nation’s idealistic youth, while Lage Raho MunnaBhai beautifully combined comedy with core message from the father of the nation. Lage Raho Munnabhai has revived social activism based on true gandhian idealogy. “Gandhigiri” is in vogue. Perhaps more young people learned about some core gandhian principles from this movie than through their text books which provide statistics and deify Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
Rang De Basanti connected with nation’s youth, glorified violent action as a solution to decayed, corrupt political & governmental structure. In this it is a polar opposite to Lage Raho Munnabhai. It glorifies freedom fighters who chose to kill instead of love their enemy.
Surprisingly, both these movies were probably the biggest grossers in 2006. As to what a cinema can hope to do -at the boxoffice & socially- they have done all those and beyond.
Sadly, both of them did not make the cut. A nation perplexed - and somewhat offended - started wondering if oscars are even relavant to them. I was in hyderabad, listening to the radio stations when the final nominees were announced. This seemed to be a sensitive issue to be discussed everywhere. Of course, most of the people on the calls said that it’s not important to be nominated for academy award and we shouldn’t care. Newspaper experts wrote about this and said the same. “who needs the oscars?”, “we don’t care”
Yet, We Do.
I suppose the academy will never ‘get’ the indian culture, indian cinema and india. They look at foreign films through the lens of american issues. Which makes me wonder about the 5 nominated films for best foreign film. Do the people in their home nation like those movies?
It’s been more than 5 months since the last blog entry. There isn’t a real reason for not blogging. For a while i wanted to blog about all the brouhaha related to yahoo! competitive position. But, i really didn’t like the negative tone about what was being said and didn’t feel like contributing to the irrational pessimism about yahoo. I was heads down into getting my startup going. I really needed to focus my energy and efforts internally.
One of my new years resolution is to blog more often. Mainly because, reading blogs keeps my perspectives fresh. Writing my blog helps me think about issues, form opinions, and express myself. It’s something i definitely enjoy doing and i want to do more often.
Anyway, this is my attempt to get back into blogging..