Companies funded by Whiner Jerkins 10/13/08
mattmaroon.com
Harvard
Never
MBAs.
trust anyone with degree from anywhere other than Stanford or MIT. they were so smart, they would have been VCs to begin with.
If
Needed
more money for yachts and personal trainers for their trophy wives. by borrowing, then betting that people who had poor credit ratings were really just misunderstood.
Gambled
Didn‟t
understand anything about the web, but bought Google until P/E ratio hit 872.
Turns
out poor people can‟t pay the mortgage on their $500k homes by selling their furniture and TVs on Craigslist for more than about 26 months. downgraded GOOG to hold when market cap exceeded total supply of money on earth.
Analysts
Someone makes idiotic web 2.0 startup.
Google buys startup for $50m and shelves it permanently.
Founders cash out GOOG and fund idiotic web 2.0 startup.
New fund takes $500m from endowments and retirement funds.
VCs take $10m annually for “expenses” for 10 years.
Returns $400m to endowments and retirement funds.
Invest in stupid web 2.0 companies, some of which get bought by Google.
Down Jones Industrial Average
Series A Valuations For Crap Like Seesmic
10 9 8 In millions of USD 7
6
5 4 3 2
1
0
Ha
ha, just kidding. Like you were charging them for anything. will buy less, so that $0.12 CPM you‟re making from AdSense will drop to $0.09
Advertisers
Don‟t worry about revenue, just hire. Google is just going to shut your product down when they buy you anyway. If asked about business model, just say “advertising”. Spend like crazy. We‟re giving you millions of dollars. Don‟t buy cheap champagne with it. Go Cristal or go home. Throw a party every time you get 10k more users. You can always raise more later. We‟ve got like $450m we need to spend. You know how hard that is? If you go on vacation, make a lip sync video to really bad music. Something from the „80s.
Turns out, it‟s not a good idea to hire 20 software engineers, 3 secretaries, 2 janitors, and a full time chef when all you do is make one Facebook app. Advertising might not work for you. In fact, it has never worked for anyone but Google. Google has already acquired one of your competitors. Don‟t have fun on vacation or you may be blamed for the Dow losing 800 points.
Don‟t
build your product in hopes of flipping to Google. It is no longer a potential acquirer. Now build products to flip to Microsoft. They still have lots of cash.
Fire
everyone. Cutting out an employee with $100k in salary is just as good as increasing revenues by $100k.
charging for your product. It probably won‟t work. We‟re not sure because nobody we know has ever attempted it.
Try
Most Web
2.0 companies will go broke. Try to be the last one of your friends to do so. You get extra ego points for that.
If
you can‟t get to cash flow positive, try shutting down, putting all money into CDs, and coming back in 5 years when things are looking better. Just be sure not to keep over $100k in any one bank so you‟re FDIC insured.
You and your semantic search engine are going to need it.