Chat with Sumir Chadha of Sequoia Capital

Got an interesting video from YouTube. Interview with Sumir Chadha - Sr. Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India @ TiECon 2007.

Gizmoz Rocks

Get your own at Gizmoz.com

Boxing & a lot more can happen over coffee

8.00 PM IST. Barista Coffee PVR Saket, New Delhi

"You are not been to the boxing arena, then why those black circles? ... Not having enough sleep, tired, or just stress? ... You need to be cared, are ya single? "

Too many questions? Yup - Defnitly from a female!

They say "a lot more can happen over coffee" - True! Since you wanted to sip those awesome beans in warm water with awesome tar filled inside white paper and most of the time you have to share table with others! Blessed!

"Yup, I am - Infact 'Romatically Challenged' ! I replied.

Trust me folks - It feels great watching some chick laughing for a genune cause, trust me! "But why"? The smile etc,etc ...

Blame it on the schools I attened, all boys - I never had an opportunity to groom myself as a 'nice guy'! Hard luck! - Answer.

"Ohhh ... but ... hey you have a cute face, gals love that and I see - you dress well, I saw you comming in Avis and the driver is opening the door for ya - you must be earning well, you told me you are into strategy and advisory (sorry guys - I did flaunt my firm and job a bit) ... still?"

Well sweet heart - Its not just about a cute face - its about something, something you really don't wanna do.

"You know what" now she's really acting like a mentor " you just need to listen to all Air Supply songs". ( Oh Really ...)

"I think to find love - you need to act like a Buyout fund" I said.

"What the fuck?" Predictable reaction.

"You know - You need to be a buyout fund, you need to acquire controlling stocks of the chick, even in the case of old Gap CEO ( read Chick with experience in romance) need to put extra 12% shares -that makes the whole situation into 4% debt! And I'm a not a trend investor..."

[ I know thats going wired - I had a simple answer for that, but I was just checking her *connected thinking* ability ( you knw I badly need a Research Analyst - Hiring interview) ]

"Or you need to be Africa - babe I'm starving for love, I don't have anybody - my family disowned me, my girlfriend ditched me and appreciating my best friends shoes just cause he's got an appartment and he's living alone ... I don't have anyone!"

"Okie - So you are not a buyout fund neither Africa ! " Guess he's interested in me , she's constantly ignoring her Cig - now thats a good point!

• I'm not a Lover of Salsa
• I hate Westlife and band of boys/gays
• According to me "Wham" is not the greatest song ever
• I hate SRK, Krish and Yash Raj films
• Sorry I don't watch the OC
• I don't eat Italian or French or dream about honymoon in Paris
• Honey - I just can't blame Himesh Reshmiya and Mika ( i know why you hate both - not because they lack talent, its the 'in thing' thesedays)
• Spas - Bu ha ha
• Golf? I play since school - not a wannabe Rolex fan - I know what it takes to be a tiger - no nike cap and wheatish dads money looks can ever make ya a tiger
• I just don't need a hair gel to look retarded

So pal, thats my point - pretty interesting ppl around. So hardluck!

"Your Cig's actually burned out" - "Oh... gawd ... I just .. I just ... Can I have yor lighter again" ( "Anything for ya sweetheat")

So whats now then - you been analysing people? All thiese ages? How Old are ya?

Time for a belated birthday wish mate, June 10 and im 25 now!

"Ohh ... Belated hapy birthday buddy ... So you were talking about the learning curve ..." She's really interested or she's so fucking jobless

"Well ..." ( lighing Cig, one deep pick and a pause) " what I've learned over the last 25 yrs is Chicks look for Three 6 factor in men"

"Six Foot, Six Packs and Six Inches - Unfortuatly I can't provide the first two"

She grabbed the attention of the PVR Saket community in a second - Thanks to her Bingo-Laugh!

"Dude - You are freaking mad - I just ... Lemme treat ya with a coffee! " So kind of her " Here?" I asked. well nice girl, "Well, you haven't cleared the take-me-home time yet. So Barista"

Double Shot Esspresso! ( not that I'm a fan of esspresso, thats teh cheapest available in Barista, I just don't wanna tax strangers, like Mexico)

You alone or waiting for somebody?
Well - I'm waiting for ma Brother ... Okie

Are ya in Orkut? ( Fuck thats the freaking thing I hear when strangers meet, It used to be whats yr phone# or emil id mate - Wharton, are ya listening ?)

Story goes on and on - Till her media chick arrived late - all going to the Media night at TC " Dude, you wanna join us? "
(WTF? even/odd issues) "Thanks pal, I'm kinda busy and need to finish some work to save my job .. carry on. have a great time"!

"Are ya sure? Give me your number ... We'll meet again ..." ( she's so sure i guess: Creed Fan?)

Whatever - back to same old Cig!



9.30 PM IST

17 Twitter messages ... Busy Deleting crap!

Bubble - Long ? Short?

Marc Andreessen, the inventor of the first commercially viable Web browser and the co-creator of Netscape, finally has a blog. And he started this week with a splash: in his third post, he offered a harsh (for him) rebuttal of the spreading notion that there is a new Internet bubble forming, that Silicon Valley is overexuberant about “Web 2.0,” and that soon it will all come crashing down (blog.pmarca.com).

“If you’re going to call a bubble on the basis of lots of bad start-ups getting funded and failing,” he writes, “then you have to conclude that the industry is in a perpetual bubble, and has been for 40 years.”

For the most part, he argues, the companies that are getting the most money and attention are those that deserve it. “People laughed when Fox bought MySpace for $580 million,” he wrote, but now, given its revenue growth, “MySpace would probably be valued at between $3 billion and $5 billion.”

BTW More Bubble Stuff? Thanks to NY Times & Dan Mitchell here's some.

• markevanstech.com
• tfc.gov
• Portfolio.com
• charkinblog.macmillan.com

Well comming back to Marc, do check the 'The truth about venture capitalists' series

25th Year & 25th Hour : Happy Birthday!

Hey! Its my Birthday today

And after a long 25 hrs of work, I'm going to the hills to celibrate!

Catch ya !

TV - the Blip way

Blip.tv, the video sharing site focused on independently produced shows, today announces the closing of its series B financing and its first venture capital investors. The round was led by Ambient Sound Investments (ASI), the venture capital fund established by the four founding engineers of Skype.

Other participants in the round include the venture fund Lauder Partners; Jeffrey Sechrest, Managing Director and co-head of the media and entertainment division of Lazard; Andrew Rasiej, founder of the Personal Democracy Forum; Jonathan Kopp, a partner in the PR, marketing and advertising firm SS+K; and Ken Sawyer, founder of Saints Capital.

Blip.tv, founded in May 2005, is also marking its second anniversary.With ASI's support, blip.tv, which shares revenue with content creators on a 50/50 basis, will expand its ability to give content creators the opportunity to generate revenue by offering new advertising options, advanced technologies, and an extended distribution network to make blip.tvshows available in as many places and on as many devices as possible. The company already distributes user video to destinations with combined reach measured in the hundreds of millions.

Heard of Dina Kaplan? Nope? Lindsey Campbell? Nope? Better press "X" now!

Whats your pitch?

Vator.TV, the video site started by Bambi Francisco, the former MarketWatch columnist, officially launched!

It is designed for people to share ideas about their companies, to investors and others. From the main page, you can select “My Vator” to create a pitch and manage your profile. Outsiders can use a search bar to find pitches. There is also a text news section and a place where pitching competitions are listed.

Interesting features: They've managed to get the who's who of the VC industry. Vinod Khosla, Tim Drapper etc etc....!

Khosla's pitch on "Areas of interest" is a message to future biggies - think different, give that social networking concept a break!

I like the "Competitions" session: Business Plan competitions!

The competition section is a place to find and search for business or product ideas submitted to the latest contests held by Universities, venture capitalists, angel investor groups, conferences, and companies. Competitions typically last for 3 months and are designed to attract a particular type of business or product idea. For those seeking a solution to a specific problem, holding a competition on Vator.tv is an efficient way to source ideas.

Watch Pitch Tim Draper your billion dollar idea here and the responses' fentastic!

So - People, Whats your pitch?

The Twitter of Sex

MeetMoi, a clever “location based” mobile dating service, has just raised $1.5 million in a first round of financing.


You go to MeetMoi’s site, fill in some basic info, upload a profile, and register your phone number. Then, whenever you’re looking for a date, you send a text message containing your zip-code and cross-street to MeetMoi’s system. This lists you as “available,” and sends text messages with your profile to other “available” people within your vicinity.


If your profile makes any of these people tingle, they can reply to the text and the message will come to you. You then can see their profiles and have the option to respond. At no point does MeetMoi disclose your phone number. The service is free to register and costs 99 cents for 10 anonymous text messages.

The funding comes from Acadia Woods Partners. It is available on Cingular, Nextel, Boost, Sprint, T-Mobile, ALLTEL and CellularOne.


The WallStreet Jurnal mentioned MeetMoi’s story really well (read here - subscription needed)


So - Science of Twittering - Third Law of Web 2.0? People dumping computer? Think so!

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs highlights at D5 - All things Digital

Old Media meets New Media

Old media visits new media to tell them what they're doing to keep up. Wallstrip's Lindsay chats with Beth Comstock, President of Integrated Media at NBC Universal.

Compensation at VC-Backed Companies

Fresh off the rousing success of their Term Sheet series, the guys at AskTheVC have begun tackling the issue of compensation at VC-backed companies.

This is must-read stuff for any entrepreneur in the process of raising venture capital, or who already has raised venture capital.

After all, who else are you going to ask if you’re getting screwed over? Your own VCs?

A few highlights from what’s been posted so far:

Compensation Before Raising Money: “Don’t be greedy on cash compensation. There is nothing that turns off a VC more than seeing a pre-revenue, pre-funded company where the employees are making market salaries…”

Deferred Cash Compensation: “Be careful about expectation setting here – while some VCs will respect this arrangement, if this deferred compensation number starts to grow, as a condition of the financing the VCs will often require some or all of the deferred comp to be converted into equity…”


Equity Compensation Terms: “The standard vesting terms for a venture-backed company are typically a four-year vest with a one year cliff. For example, let’s assume you are granted an option for 10,000 shares of stock as part of your compensation package. A standard vesting plan would have you vest 25% of your options (2,500 shares) after one year (“the cliff”) and the other 7,500 monthly over the next 36 months (or 208 shares / month)…”

What Percentage Will You Own at Exit: “The range is so broad as to be meaningless…”

follow Ask a VC for more.

Science of Bubblishness, Mohalo and Blogs that Talk!

Mahalo.com, the latest company from entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, launched, with a stripped-down search engine designed to handle only the most popular requests in widely appealing categories.

Focused on areas such as travel, music, television, movies, cars, food, health, news and sports — and filtered with the help of a team of 40 employees in Santa Monica, Calif. — the limited results are meant to avoid the spam and other junk results that clog up the other search engines. They aim to fulfill the Web’s most repeated requests.

By cherry-picking only the most popular 10,000 search terms, it can organize results in the form of a more organized, thoughtful list about your search term’s attributes.

The challenge here, though, is that dozens of other search engines have launched to tackle specialized search already, including shopping search engines, job search engines, travel engines and engines like Hakia that organize results in similar ways to Mahalo.

Moreover, there are other sites that provide real people to help assist in searches, such as ChaCha.com. Finally, Mahalo forces people to change their searching behavior, requiring them to calculate when to use Mahalo versus say Google or other engines — all things that make this a long-shot for quick, big success.

Geek gossip is (well - not from Truemors) Calacanis had ambitious plans for his video wikipedia, but had no idea he'd be this aggressive in funding Mahalo. From the various numbers floating around, our guess is that Calacanis is seeking up to $20m, at a valuation of up to $100m. The round would make Mahalo one of the most lavishly backed pre-launch sites since, um, Boo.com during the last bubble. (That didn't end well.)

Bubble? Telecom bubbles and blogs that talk… this week Sweetheart Lindsay sits down with Alan Levy, founder of BlogTalkRadio.