Miscellaneous

On to private hosting

Robert W. Anderson — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 23:45:00 GMT

After careful consideration, I have decided to begin blogging on my own privately hosted site: et.cairene.net. If you have subscribed to my feedburner feed (i.e., http://feeds.feedburner.com/MindFromRWandering), then your subscription will follow.

For me, it came down to this: I want more control than a community-hosted service can supply (free or otherwise). The quite reasonable changes here at GeeksWithBlogs resulted in pushing me to this conclusion, but I would have gotten there anyway.

Thanks to Jeff Julian for GeeksWithBlogs and for his suggestions too.

I will continue “lurking here”. I often read through the GeeksWithBlogs homepage and have started checking out the Podcast Studio.

GeeksWithBlogs changes . . . update your feed!

Robert W. Anderson — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 10:33:00 GMT

I stopped posting over the last few days due to the service changes at GeeksWithBlogs. They have decided to include advertisements on all of their hosted blogs and feeds. I can understand their need: the community is growing rapidly and it's costing more money to support.

I would have preferred it if we (as a part of this community) had been given a chance to comment on this change and even been given the option of ponying up some money. My guess is that many members here would pay in advance for the service or even just donate money to keep it running free of ads. (Jeff Julian implies that there may be options for an ad-free premium service in the future once they get their new blogging system in place.)

Instead, we received an e-mail on Sunday morning. By Monday morning, my blog had an advertisement on it. BTW: I don't object to advertisements, I just object to having no control over the advertisements.

This is kind of ironic for me as I have been trying to figure out how to get more control over my blog's CSS template only to find that I now have less.

In Jakob Nielsen's article Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes, he says that you don't want to let someone else control your blog. He even sites this very issue as a reason (see issue #10).

Yup.

Now what? Well, I am evaluating other options. And maybe I will move again. If you are a subscriber, please make sure you have subscribed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/MindFromRWandering -- this will ensure that if I do make a move, you will come along.

Update: One thing I forgot to say in this post: I do appreciate the community that GeeksWithBlogs is building here. I don't actually expect service for free (and of course, that is what I have gotten and continue to get from GeeksWithBlogs). And I do fully appreciate Jeff's need to make this change.

Acquisition Criteria

Robert W. Anderson — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 11:58:00 GMT

Robert Scoble posted some things he would consider when evaluating an acquiring company. I read his post with interest as in the past I was actively involved in the sale of a company I cofounded.

He asks if anyone else has any good advice for entrepreneurs considering a sale.

Here’s mine – I’m sure this isn’t complete, but it is a start:

The deal makes financial sense to all of the existing owners (not just to the entrepreneur). Sometimes deals are put together that are attractive to the entrepreneur while attempting to cut out the other investors. Avoid this if at all possible. If the ethics don’t bother you, think of it as self-preservation: you may need those investors again even if just as a reference. After all, this probably won’t be your last start up and it means a lot to say that you made money for your investors.
What are they buying: branding, company, people, product, technology, market share or entrée, credibility? Make sure that you agree with them about what they are buying. Which products are important? Which technologies are important?
The deal makes financial sense to the buyer. People tend to ignore this (and maybe you should if Robert Scoble is buying you). I think this is important in understanding why they are buying you.
What is the plan for the company once it is acquired? What numbers are you supposed to hit? What kind of money can you spend?
What will happen if things go sour?
Ask for examples of unsuccessful acquisitions – what happened to those people / products / technologies? How were those people treated?
Make sure that there are committed-to budgets post-acquisition. Also, keep reinforcing that the numbers need to be trued up based on the acquisition closed date. One VC told us recently that she is seeing people state their numbers by “months after funding” instead of fixed dates. I call this out because our acquisition took 2 months longer than it was supposed to (and the numbers needed to be trued up several times). These numbers are often tied to management / group bonuses, so you don’t want their to be confusion about this.
What kind of approval processes will be in place?
How will they judge this a successful acquisition?
Is the acquisition popular in the acquiring company? Will you be competing with others in the company?
Finally, will you want to work there? Will you want to work with your new boss? In the group in which you are placed?

My motivation for some of these questions comes from my own experience. For example, we were bought to give credibility in a new market as well as to infuse our entrepreneurial spirit across the greater company to affect more ASP-related business. We had a brand, products, and credibility that supported the acquisition. But when it came down to it, we were bought by a “numbers” company. What mattered more than anything else was that we hit our revenue targets. Strangely enough, receipts, costs, and cash, didn’t really matter. Just revenues.

That said, our acquisition was a success by the most important measure: that company (Energy Interactive) and the core personnel (outside of the founding executives) continues to this day as a somewhat independent group, selling the same / similar products into the same industry.

Now, I don’t mean to imply by any of my suggestions that I believe that these criteria particularly apply to Microsoft; however, I do think it is a good thing for the entrepreneur to investigate these (and many other) issues when evaluating an acquisition.

My interview with DOC | HOLLADAY

Robert W. Anderson — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 02:17:00 GMT

I talked with David Holladay at PDC05 (i.e., DOC | HOLLADAY). Today he published the interview here.

I talk a bit about what Digipede does and what makes our product different from other Grid offerings out there. I also talk a little bit about the background of my team and what got us interested in this market space. At least I think that is what talked about -- I haven't watched the interview myself!

To GeeksWithBlogs

Robert W. Anderson — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 14:25:00 GMT

I have decided to move my blog from Blogger over to GeeksWithBlogs. My biggest reason for doing this is that GeeksWithBlogs is a community of technical people focused on the Microsoft platform.

Blogger is, well, blogger: A community of everyone on the planet who blog. With the change, I'm also changing the name to "Expert Texture".

Since I use FeedBurner to manage my feed, I am able to keep my existing RSS feed, which is here. Also, I have duplicated this post between the two blogs.

What / who / where / why?

Robert W. Anderson — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 13:18:00 GMT

I am new to geekwithblogs. I recently started blogging here. I think I answered all of these questions there (i.e., specifically here). I'm trying to decide if I should move my (relatively few) post from there to here.

What say you?