After two years of graduate school and seven years of early stage venture investing, it seems like I am continually having to unlearn what I was taught now that I working with seed stage companies in Montana. One of the first requests from VC's when looking at companies is "let's see the finanicals" meaning, let's analyze the Balance Sheet, Income Statement and Cash Flow Statement. Like any good little grad student or analyst in a VC firm, I can crunch numbers with the best of them. In fact, I love to do that. I can spend hours calculating ratios and...continue reading...

Group thinking and corporate marketing that perpetuates the perceived need for IT infrastructure is a killer to small companies. Recently we took a dramatic step at TechRanch. Many years ago, some IT professional convinced us that we needed a server to host our own email and store documents. It was the center of our network and carried multiple levels of security. It hosted our shared calendar. We are a four person operation. Keeping this piece of equipment running was roughly a $500/month costs including server maintenance, software, updates and re-configurations. Insane. It became a product of multiple different people who...continue reading...

I'm going to rant a bit about the business professionals who are spouting some of the positive things about the current recession. (Yes, I believe it's a recession.) I'm reading articles written by Realtors stating that it is a 'buying opportunity'. I hear the same thing from my broker. Now the auto dealers are jumping on the band wagon. If you take that thinking into your business you start to say, now is a great time to hire, spend on infrastructure and expand into new markets. That's dangerous thinking. Going back to the February 2001 bubble burst and the nuclear...continue reading...