How much is Twitter worth? Many numbers have been thrown out there, but NeXt Up Research, a firm found by financial analyst Michael Moe, believes the micro-blogging service’s value is somewhere between $441 million and $589 million. NeXt Up’s analysis is based on comparisons with other companies and its own financial projections, which include an estimate that Twitter will generate revenue of $114 million to $134 million in 2013. That’s, of course, a wild guess, considering that Twitter, which is backed by $59 million in venture capital, hasn’t figured out a working business model. But in its report, NeXt Up does try to back up its projections rather thoroughly.
The essence of the entrepreneurial spirit is to create a lot with very little, writes Stuart Ellman of RRE Ventures. He details how two entrepreneurs his firm has backed ”learned the pros and cons of what constitutes overspending” with previous companies. Today, these two entrepreneurs run a tight ship at their respective start-ups, understanding that “every dollar spent is a dollar that will have to be raised later.”….
There are six words to live by on the Internet, writes Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures: open, global, mobile, social, playful, and intelligent. Only the last characteristic, Wilson says, hasn’t come to fruition yet as companies haven’t figured out a good way to make the Web smarter. After reading this scary story from The New York Times about how machines may outsmart mankind, do we really want the Internet to be that smart?….
Nobody wants to be caught riding a Segway because you look smug just standing there, writes Paul Graham, founder of YCombinator. “You don’t seem to be working hard enough.” He proposes Segway create a new version that makes it look like the rider is working harder, like riding a skateboard. The real problem with Segway, Graham writes, is that the company raised too much money too quickly. “If they’d had to grow the company gradually, by iterating through several versions they sold to real users, they’d have learned pretty quickly that people looked stupid riding them.”
You can download the free report here at SharesPost, which connects accredited buyers and sellers of shares in private companies, including Twitter….
Courtesy of an article dated July 29, 2009 appearing in VentureWire's The Daily Startup
Comments