The headline assumes Apple suffers from hubris, is greedy and arrogant. That’s clearly a subjective opinion. It is based on:
- Ten years after the Think Different campaign ushered in a new golden era for Apple, it has experienced a memorable, legendary and impressive reversal of fortunes, giving it a sense of excess pride and confidence.
- The stock market run up is forcing Apple to take greater financial and operational risk, hence greed.
- Last but not least, my experience with them suggests that the Cupertino-based firm is now arrogant.
This does not, in any shape, form or fashion say anything about the company’s prospects or future. Google too is arrogant, deservedly so, for example. It’s the most valuable Web company, and poised to overtake MSFT in market cap by 2010.
Last week I wrote something (recap here) suggesting that Apple will try to keep the hits coming after the iPod at the detriment of their core products. Naturally, the hardcore Apple fans took this the wrong way, accused me of having an agenda and a bunch of other nonsense. Anyway, having turned that page, today Apple released a statement stating that because they have shifted assets and resources from Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard to the iPhone, meaning that the OS’s release will now be delayed until October. Cleary, this is not a mortal blow at all, especially if the iPhone (and by extension, other new products like Apple TV) become hits. The iPod has now sold 100 million units, so a success even a fraction of that would justify the strategic shift.
Of course, some would argue that the stock - which we ranked in the Top 10 Web/HiTech Stocks of Past, Present and Future after having risen tenfold in less than a decade - already reflects bullish sentiment over the iPhone, because many simply assume that Apple will churn out hit after hit… will it? We hope for Apple shareholders that it does, otherwise investors who come in at these levels might find themselves holding the bag.
The stock is down 2-3% after hours… but long term, what do you think?
Is Apple on an upward trend, or at $79B in market cap, is it where Dell was a few years ago?
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WatchMojo NewsletterEarlier this year, we wrote here that billion dollar acquisitions are over and that large companies will pursue IPO routes over sales. Facebook is one example that comes to mind, having turned down offers from Viacom for $800M, Yahoo! ($1B and $1.6B). When you realize that Google’s two billion dollar babies - dMarc and YouTube - have had challenges, you see that there is a line that is being drawn in the sand.
New companies that have “clean” capital structures with relatively no skeletons in the closet can continue on an independent route, because their financial backers are patient and they are not war-torn.
But companies that survived the dot com explosion of 2000-02 are increasingly making the decision to cash out:
Yesterday, Comcast bought Fandango for a reported $200M.
Today, Paid Content is reporting on rumors that are circulating that Yahoo! is about to plunk down $100M for Rivals.com.
Both Fandango and Rivals.com face considerable competition, but both have strong businesses in their own right. Ultimately, the founders, managers and investors want out, fearing that if they don’t cash out now, they might miss yet another golden opportunity.
New businesses, even those that are much smaller than Facebook, tend to have a more patient outlook, thinking that this time things will fare differently. Regardless of the outcome, things are getting very interesting.
I would not be asking will Photobucket survive without MySpace, I’d ask if they would survive with MySpace? The site will never hit those lofty numbers Lehman Bros. hurled at Michael Arrington, it ain’t worth $400M. And while we’re at it, they were dumb to try to get one past MySpace.
Arrington is a smart man, seems like a nice enough bloke, but he is wrong to think that Photobucket can and will do fine without MySpace. What they offer, frankly, is a commodity. They’ll never hit those numbers, and I hate to say it but Valleywag is right when it says that he’s being biased (though they don’t word it so kindly).
More importantly, the point to this post is, browing the comments on the post, this made me laugh:
Do I have an affinity towards [Photobucket]? Yes. They talk to me when I call, whereas Myspace/Fox now ignore my requests for comment because they think I am anti-myspace/fox (this is ridiculous - see www.techcrunch.com/tag/myspace - I cover lots of their new stuff in a positive way). I also hired a fox exec as our CEO, and she loves that company. But Photobucket is also a small guy that a very large gorilla is jumping on, and I tend to side with the small guy.
Hmm… call me old fashion, but maybe that’s why they don’t return your calls. I can’t get into the details, but having worked at News Corp./FIM and one of their magical subsidiaries, I can tell you that they probably didn’t really appreciate you poaching one of their employees, but that’s just me. And, if that’s not enough, this is Rupert Murdoch we’re talking about, if he wants to send any messsages through media, he’ll use his own outlets, which mean more content, building of his audience and more advertising revenue.
Well, that headline is misleading, obviously, but I did get your attention.
Not a day goes by when venture capital financing does not seem to get turned upside its head. Last year, it was Charles River that doubled up as a bank and began to offer entrepreneurs debt financing. Then a month ago, one of HipMojo.com’s sponsors RaiseCapital.com attempted to become a matchmaker for those seeking and offering financing.
A week after that, a new site called TheFunded came along to try to give some gloves-off feedback on VCs from all over the world.
And this week, we see a new venture, titled Venture Hacks, that tries to take away some of the mystery and myths of VCs.
Today’s post is interesting, mainly because it’s akin to my advice to stock investors about not looking too much at the stock price, but rather, examining a company’s market capitalization. Being on my third startup, the main advice is simple, but there are always plenty of details that all entrepreneurs can use, and you know that they say, the devil’s in the details.
And speaking of the devil, literally and figuratively, VCs get a bad rep, so one has to wonder: who’s behind this site, and what’s the deal?
The site is the brainchild of Nivi and Naval Ravikant. Nivi is an EIR at Atlas Venture. Naval is a serial entrepreneur. Oddly enough, while he does not represent the views of Atlas, his firm is supportive of the venture. I spoke to him last week about it: “I’m an EIR at Atlas, not an Associate, Partner, etc. I can’t speak for Atlas and I’m not their representative but I’m working with them because they are fans of greater trust and transparency between entrepreneurs and VCs.”
Indeed, anytime there’s more transparency in business - be it financing or marketing - it’s a good thing.
Fred Wilson arguably started the trend, Rick Segal deserves a lot of credit too, some of this posts are simply priceless… and of course, services like AskTheVC are helpful as well.
Some stats on mobile, from eMarketer, from ZDNet:
The mobile advertising space, which is supposed to be a $13.9 billion market by 2011 according to eMarketer, than be an agent in the massive TV advertising market.
“We believe mobile internet advertising should develop faster than PC internet ads, however, precisely because we already have a precedent and the expansion should be much more global in nature. In addition, should Google achieve similar dominance in mobile that it has achieved in PC-based online advertising (we estimate 45% of every online ad dollar will go through Google’s system in 2008), the contribution to revenues could be meaningful. Getting even 10% of the mobile advertising market in 2011 would make mobile a larger contributor (on a net revenue basis) than Google’s entire affiliate business today.”
I’d be making a considerable understatement by saying that we’re very bullish on wireless entertainment and mobile advertising. We even published a large chunk of our business plan pertaining to the segment’s size here.
Anyway, the ZDNet post argues that Google should think small when it comes to acquisitions, arguing that YouTube and dMarc are billion dolalr busts. It would be highly ironic if YouTube became this generation’s Broadcast.com, of course, but since Google has already folded Google Video into YouTube, then I doubt that will happen, at least exactly as it did with Broadcast.com.
Looking at some of Google’s mobile acquisitions, it’s clear that Google wants to exert its Web dominance onto wireless. That’s no guarantee, but if Google is poised to overtake MSFT in market cap and become the world’s first trillion dollar company, it only makes sense to be aggressive in wireless, since we’ve already acknowledged that the Web’s next Google will hail from wireless, the fastest content delivery platform ever, so shouldn’t Google aspire to be the next Google? After all, had MSFT realized how huge the Web would be, and then realized how big search would be, the next MSFT would have been MSFT, and not Google, which has replaced MSFT as the leading monopoly online.
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