www.ben.vc - Latest Comments

Re: Just Eat – how they delivered to become Europe’s Global Leader

Irshad Khan — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 07:38:20 -0000

Good article...

Re: Just Eat – how they delivered to become Europe’s Global Leader

Kn — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 07:18:06 -0000

Thanks Ben, and thanks for the support as the first VC investor in Just-Eat -;)

Re: Shapeways – Thoughts on a pioneering investment

Nick — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 08:55:36 -0000

I do hope those involved have read Cory Doctorow's "Makers". It's a nice thought experiment on where 3D printing might take business models.

Re: Shapeways – Thoughts on a pioneering investment

amamujee — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 14:36:13 -0000

This is awesome innovation to commercialise rapid prototyping devices which are traditionally used by engineers to help visualise and test out product components.

I remember building a CAD model at university and getting it built using 3d printing and thought it was fantastic.

If Shapeways can make it easy for the user to design items and replicate other items this has got loads of potential. The user education piece is probably the hardest part...

Re: Shapeways – Thoughts on a pioneering investment

PPM Template — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 00:58:16 -0000

"As with every investment a founding team with passion, determination, insight and openness to learn and experiment is what we look for and these guys have that in spades."

What is it about passion, determination, insight, and openness that keeps on popping up when hearing about successful Venture Capitalist, of any kind.

Congratulations, and Godspeed to Shapeways.

Re: UK Election – Betting vs. Polling: who will win?

indexben — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 18:31:00 -0000

Just checked again now and seems there is still a big delta. Think the actual volume of money on this specific market is still pretty small, pollsters probably have more invested in the result than betters at this point. They almost certainly will have in play during election night.

Re: UK Election – Betting vs. Polling: who will win?

chrisdee — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 09:14:18 -0000

Ben - I agree that this is interesting and having watched this situation for some time (with money at stake!) Betfair users do seem particularly convinced of a Tory win despite the well known (boundary commission) seat bias towards Labour. Also the recent Lib Dem surge would impact far more on the Tories than Labour and now most polls are predicting a Labour "most seats" win.

This intrigues me because I think Betfair usually gets things right (money where your mouth is etc) and the market flows that dynamically drive pricing on Betfair respond quickly to news - will be interesting if things hot up on Betfair as we approach polling day - wonder if they will have "in-play" betting on election night?

Re: The mobile black hole – can VC finally escape?

indexben — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 07:31:57 -0000

I think that's the my first blog comment from an iPod touch! thanks

Re: The mobile black hole – can VC finally escape?

James Sherwin-Smith — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:49:56 -0000

I would also agree that the next decade will see these inhibitors as
you mention above become increasing marginal.

On 1, the emergence of the apps/widgets model served over saas will
overcome this. Thanks to Apple's big push into this space (cf their inescapable
"there's an app for that" campaign), consumer awareness has increased
massively, and established players have had to work fast to keep up
(cf. RIMs announcement re the BlackBerry AppWorld at last years sxsw).
With another open platform in the form of Android hitting the
mainstream, this will put further pressure on Apple's closed AppStore
platform, and add some much needed competition.

On 2, the key remains to deliver your app as a browser based session
if you can, that way you negate some of the issues you raise here. But
even so we've seen significant consolidation in the device market with
Symbian and Windows ME and now Android. Outside those three, you will
have the BlackBerry OS and the Apple OS, but those 5 will take you
above 95pc market share I'd wager. The key point here is that its not
just first adopters who change their phone every 12 months, pretty
much everyone does. But these mass market users probably hold on to
their desktop or laptop for 36 months or so, which means change and
adoption cycles are much faster in mobile. So if I was a developer
today, I'd probably only bother coding for apple, blackberry and
android (I wonder if google were tempted to name it after a fruit
instead :-)

3 and 4 strike me as entirely related to one thing, bandwith. There's
little to no point having a fantastic device if you can't get the
media on an off it easily - my poor analogy would be there's no point
having a high spec laptop if the only input/output method is via
floppy disc. I'd be fascinated to see the upgrade stats from iPhone
2.5G to 3G users, but my guess is that most have done it as soon as it
was available and economic.

I think the key turning point will be the growing adoption of
connecting your mobile device to a WiFi base station when at work or
home (or even potentially on the go, with taxis, trains, planes and
hotels all offering WiFi now). In my opinion it will be this
proliferation of "wirefree" Internet that will really grease the
wheels. By wirefree, I mean not only going wireless, but more
importantly, that this is being offered for free, with only minor log in
requirements, which means it is actually usable to the masses.

As users become accustomed to the fact that they can connect their
devices at broadband speeds, leapfrogging 3, 3.5 and 4G connections
that are offered by the mobile network operators, then the full
potential of having a smart phone in your pocket will be realised.

With Skype (send and receive calls), email (send and receive text
messages and attachments) and Google voice (transcribing any voicemail
I receive to text) running over WiFi everywhere I go on my iPod touch, enabled
with Push technology (aka notifications) - remind me again why I would
even need a sim card, let alone a contract with a mobile network
operator?

Sent from my iPod touch over hotel wirefree in Mumbai.

Re: The mobile black hole – can VC finally escape?

indexben — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:33:05 -0000

Agree Patrice - Europe used to be ahead of US in the mobile area, but last few years have totally changed the picture. All the best and thanks for yr comment. Have a great 2010

Re: The mobile black hole – can VC finally escape?

Patrice Peyret — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 16:02:48 -0000

All true. But I would like to add that several impediments faced by many VCs w.r.t. mobile have been of their own making:
- lack of international savvy: unlike with the Internet, mobile is not the same model everywhere. I bet many US-based VCs would still be surprised today to hear that consumers in other parts of the world do not pay for receiving mobile calls or messages...
- lack of cultural understanding: how many VCs have I heard lecturing me about how SMS / texting would never make it in the US because "we are an email country"?
- lack of interest for consumer-facing ventures during the earlier industry years before Facebook/ Google. How many millions sunk in "mobilizing the enterprise" when it was obvious that most employees walk into the office every morning with their own cell phones, not cellphones imposed on them by their CTO....

The next billion mobile subscribers will not be in the developed / Western world, so VCs also need to be prepared to dust off their passports.

Re: The social media investment conundrum

indexben — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 08:35:23 -0000

Thanks Nic - was meant to be pretty schematic, agree its tough to time an investment right in this space, but definitely worth trying.

Re: The social media investment conundrum

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:35:24 -0000

Hi Ben - great to see you blogging. And nice URL!!

This post captures the pros and cons of social media investing well, although it seems to me that revenues sometimes lag traffic a little more than you suggest. My other thought is that short investment windows and rapid value creation create an environment where it is challenging for VCs to invest effectively.

Re: Playfish acquired by EA

Nicholas Lovell — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:14:27 -0000

It's a great deal, Ben, and I'm sure you've had fun working with Kristian and the team.

You may be interested in the analysis that I posted at Gamesbrief both on EA’s strategy (http://www.gamesbrief.com/2009... and on the acquisition (http://www.gamesbrief.com/2009...

Re: Top 5 pitfalls for VC bloggers

facebook-713753 — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:10:59 -0000

Chris Dixon (cdixon.org) does a great job blogging and tweeting about the VC industry ... while also running his company hunch.com.

Re: Top 5 pitfalls for VC bloggers

Ben Holmes — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:06:13 -0000

Thanks for your comments and good points, definitely will read and try to respond on comments where I can.

Re: Top 5 pitfalls for VC bloggers

P. Moehring — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:14:39 -0000

That is certainly true. It goes together with #3, timewasting, though. Other than that, a fair amount of educating the audience is really helpful - to many founders, VC is still a black hole of information.

Re: Top 5 pitfalls for VC bloggers

chrsoz — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:00:14 -0000

I'd add excessive pimping of one's portfolio companies - fair enough for it to be done to a certain extent (in the context of the themes and trends that you're looking at), but think it's a sure-fire engagement/interest killer if the blog comes across as being essentially an infomercial.

Not saying it looks as though that's this blog's agenda, but just to add it to the list!

As @farhanlalji says, Fred Wilson has set the standard for the content/conversation mix, which has made it the must-read that it is.

Good luck with ben.vc!

Re: Top 5 pitfalls for VC bloggers

Nicholas Lovell — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 04:47:07 -0000

Hello Ben,

Welcome to the blogging fold. I launched www.gamesbrief.com in January and as former equity analyst spent a long time crafting each post. It was not unusual for a post to take a whole day.

Only 10 months later and I can get a good post together in an hour, sometimes less, and some of the posts that are mainly about drawing people's attention to an issue, rather than analysing it, take only a few minutes. It's amazing how the blog has not only improved my ability to get to the point, it also helps me see issues that I would otherwise have missed, because I think "there's a good post in that".

So welcome to the frustrating, delightful world of blogging and good luck.

Re: The social media investment conundrum

Ben Holmes — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 04:07:48 -0000

Agree not all these businesses create enduring value and many acquirers regret the acquisitions they make in this sector (naming no names...). I was more thinking of it from the founders and investors perspective. All the best

Re: Top 5 pitfalls for VC bloggers

Farhan Lalji — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:52:25 -0000

I'd add not engaging in a conversation.

Some VC blogs post and then you see a couple of comments asking questions about the post with no response from the writer.

A few VC bloggers engage their community really well (@msuster @fredwilson) and their blog posts become the start of a conversation with the readers.

Good luck on the blog.

Re: The social media investment conundrum

spandana — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:41:55 -0000

i think social media monetizes no better than email, speaking of ad-based revenue models. unless of course, you factor in subscription products embedded into the social engagement flows.

Re: The social media investment conundrum

marcashton — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:48 -0000

I am not sure I agree with this comment: "Rapidity of value creation. The ability to create multi-hundred and billion $ value companies in the space of a 1-3 years is almost exclusive to social media" ....

... You have to decide whether you think "social media" sites like Twitter, Myspace and Facebook have created any "value" considering they are still trying to work out how to monetize their offerings.

The guys who have exited from these investments and cashed in have made a packet but other people have been left to carry the can in the hope that they will make money in the long run ... something which is still very much up in the air

Re: Sample Post X

indexben — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:50:49 -0000

testing # 2

Re: Sample Post X

indexben — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 11:04:46 -0000

Hello Testing