Every year, most Americans experience a pay cut. Just an hour outside of Boston, where I sometimes fly fish, I drive through very poor, rural, and white towns. I drive by trailer parks, through small towns with almost no economic activity, and into areas with high heroin addiction rates. To better understand what is happening in
Category: Economics
Daily Fantasy Sports
I’m not a lawyer, and pieces of the law sometimes confuse me. Regarding daily fantasy sports, I think that pieces of the law are contradictory. Moreover, while all gambling involves wagering, I do not think that all wagering is gambling. Let me explain. The government spends a lot of money nixing acquisitions that yield monopolistic
Why Your B2B Cost Strategy Must ‘Fit’
Your B2B cost strategy must match your B2B revenue model, or your business model won’t click. Let me explain. I wrote in the past about B2B revenue models (here) and the differences between the perpetual licensing and subscription pricing models. The summary is this. If you charge $1 for your software, a licensing model lets you get that
No Free Lunch with Venture Debt
I sometimes hear entrepreneurs extol venture debt because it is “free money.” Low interest, non-dilutive capital. In my experience, there’s no free lunch in the capital markets. That’s certainly the case with venture debt. The interest is low for a reason. Venture debt is simply a loan. There are interest and warrants attached. There are
Why B2B Revenue Models Really Matter
Our firm does a lot of “B2B” and “B2B2C” investing. We are comfortable backing start-ups attacking the SaaS/software/tech spaces, whether they end up selling directly to other businesses or helping other businesses sell something unique to consumers. An example of the former is VoltDB, and an example of the latter is OwnerIQ. So, it is
Why Job Growth Is Slow
I was at a conference for VCs today, at which the closing speaker was Harvard Professor Kenneth Rogoff. He previously served as head economist at the IMF, among many other luminous positions. Rogoff also was a professional chess player. Pretty neat. He spoke about the worldwide economic stagnation and looked at potential root causes. Is