What's wrong with Yahoo context ads?

ysmma_1.gifI'm  am running Yahoo Publisher Network for my text ads on my blogs and not Google's adsense.

My brother-in-law was in town for Christmas and he and I argued over which ad system was better. My arguement was that Yahoo paid more than Google. He felt that Google had a higher click through rate because Google's relevancy engine is based on click throughs as well as cost. (Supposedly Yahoos new Panama engine does the same thing.)

But my blog at Medical Spa MD is a real hit and miss. When Yahoo is working well it places ads with great relevancy. But around 20% of the time the text links are some form of generic financing ads. Since I've not run adsense on that blog it makes me wonder if Google wouldn't do better for me?

One thing is for sure, with Yahoo getting their ass handed to them by Google, they can't really afford to loose the clients they already have.

Capitalist Pig isn't happy either.

The excitement was short lived as within three days, the yahoo editorial staff had removed 231 of the keywords.  That’s over 75% of the keywords that I’m currently running with google that have high CTR, and great conversions.  So now, if I want to get back in, I have to spend more time resubmitting the keywords that were declined.  The question is, what would be a better use of my time?  Trying to get all my ads back into yahoo so I’m in front of the roughly 25% of users that use Yahoo or increasing my exposure in Google?  It’s definitely more efficient for me to spend more time with Google since I’m sure my ads and keywords are going to show there.

...More than one advertiser has come public with their experiences with click fraud on Yahoo’s network.  One of the bigger claims was from Pepperjam which had a client that ran through $10k worth of clicks in one day with Yahoo.  I first read about the story when reading Shoemoney’s blog, who has a strong relationship with Pepperjam.  Yahoo responded with a $10k “goodwill” credit to the advertiser without admitting that there was fraud.

Fight Club Members

sm.fightclub.jpgI've put up a list of Entrepreneures who've been to Fight Club. Unfortunately, it's slightly less than half of those who've come to a dinner. I just never seem to remember to pick up cards.

If you've been to an event and would like some free Google Juice, just fire me off an email and I'll stick you in.

Fight Club is an no stress, networking dinner. If you come, you come. If you don't, you don't. No need to sign up for anything and there's no cost except your own meal. If you've never been but would like to check it out, here's the requirements.

  1. You have to be invited by a member.
  2. No students, vendors, sales guys or lawyers. (Unless you're invited by a member.)
  3. No 'What-can-I-get-out-of-you' types: There's a strict no-asshole policy.

My own feeling is that events where you talk to someone for 3 minutes and then move on are of limited use. Fight Club is designed so that you're spending some time (one meal) talking to 4-5 people who are of some relevance to you and have been deemed 'good people' by someone you already know. Of course we are all talking business.

It seems to be working out well enough. Here's the partial, short, and incomplete list:

Fight Club Members

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Googles new hiring algorithms & the Wisdom of Crowds

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The inevitable decision making problems of a lack of diversity.

 
wisdomofcrowds.jpgFrom the NY Times: Google's Answer to Filling Jobs: New Algorithm

Google has always wanted to hire people with straight-A report cards and double 800s on their SATs. Now, like an Ivy League school, it is starting to look for more well-rounded candidates, like those who have published books or started their own clubs.

Google is rightly known for hiring smart people. But there's a strong argument that the lack of diversity in decision making will lead to less 'smart' decisions than a more diverse group.

From The Wisdom of Crowds: 

If four basic conditions are met, a crowd's "collective intelligence" will produce better outcomes than a small group of experts, Surowiecki says, even if members of the crowd don't know all the facts or choose, individually, to act irrationally. "Wise crowds" need

  1. diversity of opinion
  2. independence of members from one another
  3. decentralization; and
  4. a good method for aggregating opinions.

The diversity brings in different information; independence keeps people from being swayed by a single opinion leader; people's errors balance each other out; and including all opinions guarantees that the results are "smarter" than if a single expert had been in charge.

It seems that adding a few dunces to your group can actually impove the quality of decisions that come out of it. That means that there's still hope for most of us.

Google might understand this in the future too. We'll have to wait and see if there's a sea change and they take the chance to hire outside of Stanford and a few token Harvard grads.

Just can't help it... I'm Iron Man

Super hero or super villain?

Take the quiz to find your super alter ego.  Here are my results... obvious to all that know me.

As a superhero, I'm Iron Man

Iron Man
95%
Green Lantern
90%
Superman
85%
Spider-Man
75%
Catwoman
75%
Supergirl
70%
Hulk
70%
Wonder Woman
65%
Robin
60%
The Flash
60%
Batman
55%
Inventor. Businessman. Genius.

 

And as a villian?


Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom
84%
Lex Luthor
76%
Apocalypse
71%
Venom
71%
Dark Phoenix
67%
Kingpin
66%
Poison Ivy
66%
The Joker
62%
Green Goblin
62%
Mystique
62%
Juggernaut
62%
Catwoman
60%
Magneto
55%
Mr. Freeze
54%
Riddler
53%
Two-Face
46%
Blessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity.

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The $100 Micro VC Maddy Fund & Kiva's Third World Entrepreneures

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maddyfund.gifThird world entrepreneures will be receiving some VC funding this Christmas... in the amount of $100 from the Micro VC Maddy Fund.

 
Kiva.org is a microloan sight that lends money to third world entrepreneures in help their businesses and grow markets and economies.  So...

I've decided to facilitate this process and hopefully my daughter and I will learn from and teach each other something along the way.

logoLeafy2.gif

My daughter will be receiving a gift certificate for $100 that she can invest in entrepreneurs who need access to capital. My expectation is that these tiny loans will be repaid and that I'll provide Maddy with $100 next year to ad to her Micro VC Maddy Fund. Then we'll sit down and have a talk about expectations and responsibilities. I think of this as a kind of 'Pass It On' project

I'm adding the $100 Micro VC Maddy Fund as a new category but I'm sure Maddy will be posting about on her blog at Pony Tail Club.

During the week between Christmas and New Years  Madison will be responsible for using the Kiva site to find 4 receipients to loan $25 each to. (Kiva uses a technique that allows / encourages this.) She will have to report to me why she chose this individual over all the others.

One of the most important in my mind is that she understands the finality of this act. Loaning money to one person means that you're not loaning money to someone else. Maddys decisions will carry repercussions for individuals that she needs to consider and not take lightly.

My goals in doing this are:

  • I believe in Kiva mission and want to support them.
  • I believe in my daughter and her sense of justice.
  • I want my daughter to realize exacltly how privledged she is and respect those who are less fortunate.
  • I want my daughter to feel the joy of successfully helping someone.
  • I want my daughter to learn something of decision making and repercussions.
I'd encourage anyone who thinks this is a good idea to comment, do it themselves, or blog / link to Kiva.org.

Microsoft patents your RSS feed.

rssfeedicon.jpg

Since Microsoft is hated four times as much as Google, perhaps they drew the short straw.

... two recently published patent applications reveal, Microsoft (MSFT) is claiming it invented RSS.

That's a long shot, however: "Prior art," the patent-law term for earlier examples of the technology in use, should be easy to show, since RSS has been around for years. The most likely outcome will be that Microsoft's patent is rejected - and no one else will be able to patent RSS, either, keeping the technology free for everyone to use.

Lawyers and the 'sue to protect' theory. 

The Art of the Sign Up Page

backpack1_thumb1.pngTim Bednar over at Turtle Interactive has written a great post on “The Art of the Sign Up Page“ where he discusses his insights and decisions. 

I selected these sites because I thought they were well done and were subscription based, productivity applications. Other applications I reviewed included: 30boxes, Blogger, del.icio.us, Flock, Give Meaning, Kiko, My Pick List, Titlez, CRM from Zoho, Zopa, Second Site, LinkedIn, Box.net, Vyew, and Cork'd.

What elements make up a sign up page?

The best place to start is to list all of the elements that compose a sign up page:

  • Logo
  • Elevator pitch
  • Description copy
  • List of key features
  • List of key benefits
  • Call to action
  • Testimonials
  • Tours
  • Examples of who is using the application
  • Screen shots
  • Life-style images
  • Link to more information (price, login, about, blog, terms, privacy)

All men are created unequal.

0393318885.jpgFrom NYTimes: Billionaires & The rest of us

 
The truth is that one life is not valued the same as another. The human condition is that we place more import on those we define as in our 'tribe' as more important that others.

The fundamental condition of valuing every life as having the same intrinsic value? We're far from reaching the utopia of Star Trek.

As Gates told a meeting of the World Health Assembly in Geneva last year, he and his wife, Melinda, “couldn’t escape the brutal conclusion that — in our world today — some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not.” They said to themselves, “This can’t be true.” But they knew it was.

...A famous story is told about Thomas Hobbes, the 17th-century English philosopher, who argued that we all act in our own interests. On seeing him give alms to a beggar, a cleric asked Hobbes if he would have done this if Christ had not commanded us to do so. Yes, Hobbes replied, he was in pain to see the miserable condition of the old man, and his gift, by providing the man with some relief from that misery, also eased Hobbes’s pain. That reply reconciles Hobbes’s charity with his egoistic theory of human motivation, but at the cost of emptying egoism of much of its bite. If egoists suffer when they see a stranger in distress, they are capable of being as charitable as any altruist.

...Even when private donations are included, however, countries like Norway, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands give three or four times as much foreign aid, in proportion to the size of their economies, as the U.S. gives — with a much larger percentage going to the poorest nations.

Top Five Venture Capital Firm Web Pages

top%205-741409.gifGreg Gallants Top Five Venture Capital Firm Web Pages.

 
I don't have much to add although I'll plug Venture Voice as amont the top 5 venture podcasts worth listening to as you drive around with your iPod buds jammed into your ear canals.

 Gregs List:

5. Sequoia Capital's Share Your Idea Page
The firm that bankrolled Google and YouTube understands how to build a website. This page makes the list for simply using headers like "pain killers" and "inferno".

4. First Round Capital's Our Focus Page
It usually takes a mental jargon filter to decipher a VC firm's "about us" page and figure out what type of deals it likes to do. This page provides a bulleted and clear narrative of how First Round likes to invest (as if their name doesn't provide enough of a clue).

3. Omidyar Network's Employees Page
If VC firms are all about people, why not list all of them? In alphabetical order, you can find bios for everyone from the chairman to the administrative assistant. You can even view how their bios have changed over time.

2. Union Square Ventures's Home Page
While many VC's have blogs, Union Square Ventures is the first -- and to my knowledge only -- VC firm to make their home page a blog. Is that a good idea? Just check their publicly available stats.

1. Bessemer Venture Partners's Anti-Portfolio
Don't think this firm takes itself too seriously just because they were founded in 1911. In what must be the boldest VC web page ever posted, they list all the now-great companies that they passed on funding, which include PayPal, Apple, eBay, Intel and Google. A clear message to entrepreneurs: Don't give up hope just because a VC said your company stinks.

Venture Deal: Your guide to Venture Capital, but no RSS feed.

vd_logo.gifVenture Deal

These guys are showing up as ads in some of my rss feeds so I gave them a click drive by.

I love the three big buttons, the bottom one of which is for service firms so they can find funded companies and immediately proceed to shorten your runway. As Borat says, "very nice".

Here's what they say they do: VentureDeal is an online database that gives subscribers the latest information about technology-related venture capital transactions and dealmakers in the United States and Israel.

You can trust VentureDeal. All deal information content is sourced from publicly disclosed documents within hours of publication. Our consistent attention to detail and ongoing, multiple-review quality control process provide you with the assurance of quality information.

While they have a blog, Venture Deal has no general RSS feed. You're going to have to use one of the four buttons they post. What's up with that? and...

Does anyone in this field but me get tired of the 10 ways to get money from an investor series that includes gems like... it takes time, and get a personal referral... I'll bet I can list the next 7.

  1. Get a stellar advisory board.
  2. Passionate, startup experienced, & trustworthy management
  3. Bootstrap your way to success.
  4. Big Big Market
  5. Scalable to infinity & beyond
  6. Tell them your happy to be replaced.
  7. Tell they you have answers to India & China.

Maybe I'm just cranky.  But a site with no rss feed can do that to a guy.

But I'll leave a trackback anyway. 

Cool Science Facts: A feed worth having.

pi.gifI have about 250 rss feeds that I subscribe to. Some I skim or glance at, but some I actually take the time to read every post that comes out because the content's always that good. I'll have to go through and pick out a best of to post later.

One of the 'always reads' is Cool Science Facts from Drew Olbrich. It's the kind of info that's perfect for blogging. Short, extremely well written, accurate, and funny.

Cool Science Facts: Binary Neutron Stars 

The astronomers who discovered this binary neutron star system gave it the name PSR J0737-3039. I wonder what these guys name their pets.

Every day, the two neutron stars in PSR J0737-3039 get a quarter of an inch closer together, because of energy loss due to gravitational waves. 85 million years from now, they'll merge together. One minute before this happens, the neutron stars will be only a few hundred miles apart, and orbit around each other 30 times per second. In the final few moments, they'll get much closer together, and extremely angry, and the orbital frequency will increase to 1000 times per second.

This is totally insane. Two city-sized objects, each with the mass of the sun, whirling around each other 1000 times per second. If you don't think this is impressive, you might as well go back to bed now.

When the neutron stars in PSR J0737-3039 merge, they will probably form a black hole, which is an exotic astronomical object whose gravity is so strong that even humor cannot escape it.

Investment Banking Fees

 Maybe I'm just on some kind of Wall Street kick today. Fabrice Gringa's candid interview on Venture Voice gave me a singular respect for a French guy. Since he's only one French guy I can keep my universal feelings for certain aspects of the French intact. But Fabrice seems to be OK. That said, he has posted on the recient sales of tech companys on Ebay where Ebay is acting as a defacto investment bank. Below is his list of the fees you can expect from Wall Street. It certainly makes Ebay look attractive.

From Fabrice Gringa's blog: Investment Banking Fees

eb_gra_ljw0041.gifAggregate value of transaction – Aggregate fee as a % of the transaction

    $20 billion – 0.150%
    $15 billion – 0.180%
    $12.5 billion – 0.200%
    $10 billion – 0.230%
    $9 billion – 0.240%
    $8 billion – 0.250%
    $7.5 billion – 0.265%
    $7 billion – 0.275%
    $6 billion – 0.300%
    $5 billion – 0.320%
    $4 billion – 0.360%
    $3 billion – 0.400%
    $2 billion – 0.450%
    $1 billion – 0.600%
    $900 million – 0.625%
    $800 million – 0.650%
    $700 million – 0.700%
    $600 million – 0.700%
    $500 million – 0.800%
    $400 million – 0.900%
    $300 million – 1.000%
    $200 million – 1.200%
    $100 million – 1.500%
    $50 million – 2.000%

As I mentioned before, those are retail prices so you might be able to shave a bit from those. Also, at lower price points and/or in deals that are less likely to happen you likely to have a retainer (say $50k) and a minimum transaction fee (say $750k).

Side note: IPO fees are very different. For IPOs where the market cap is below $400 million the bankers take 7% of the proceeds split between the book runner and the co-managers.

Maybe I need a day job.

keith_rich.jpgIn a year when Wall Street investment bankers are expected to collect $24 billion in paychecks, according to New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi, it makes you wonder if working for the man might not be the way to go. Of course then you'd have to wrestle with your inner self over actually being the man, not to mention those incredibly constricting dress shoes.

Nah. It's the endless supply of Hot Pockets and Zena tapes for me.

Taxing Entrepreneures & Risk Takers

postagedue.jpgI hear a lot about encourageing risk taking and the benefits entrepreneurs provide to an economy. I'm still waiting for all this good will to funnel down to the level I'm at. It's kind of like that saying about Trickle Down Economics: 'The middle class didn't get trickled down... they got trickled on.'

Should We Worry about the Rising Inequality in Income and Wealth?, Judge Richard Posner considers how a high marginal taxes effects entrepreneurs and risk takers:

high marginal tax rates discourage risk-taking. Consider two individuals: one is a salaried worker with an annual income of $100,000 and good job security, and the other is an entrepreneur with a 10 percent chance of earning $1 million in a given year and a 90 percent chance of earning nothing that year. Their average annual incomes are the same, but a highly progressive tax will make the entrepreneur's expected after-tax income much lower than the salaried worker's. Many of the people at the top of the income distribution are risk takers who turned out to be lucky; the unlucky risk takers fell into a lower part of the distribution. It is rich people as a class who are growing relatively richer, not necessarily individual rich persons.

via Venture Voice 

Google Hated 1/4 as much as Microsoft and loved more than Apple.

It seems that with all the Google sniping going on, someones actually looked at it.

Clearly, there is four times the number of people hating Microsoft compared to Google. In the meantime, Apple which is another all time favorite technology company with a religious following comes somewhere in the middle with 42,700 results returned for the query “I hate Apple.”

Startup Equity Splits & Stability

chart_moderate-pie.gifNoam Wasserman, professor in the Entrepreneurial Management unit at Harvard Business School, has the best actual diagnosis of startup founding problems around. (At least that I can find.) Best of all, he makes sense and shows his empirical data.

 

Equity-Split Results, Part 1: When Do Teams Split Equally?

The table below summarizes how these factors tended to increase versus decrease the chances that the equity would be split equally.

split_drivers.0.jpg


Interestingly, the prior relationships among the founders (friends vs. co-workers vs. strangers) did not have any significant effects on the equality of the split in either direction, either because they are non-factors, or because they include conflicting effects that largely cancel each other out.

Equity-Split Results, Part 2: Implications for Team Stability

The table below shows the major factors that had statistically significant effects (at the p<.05 level or better) on team stability (defined as whether all founders were still working or not) at each 6-month milestone, with a "+" showing a significant positive effect on team stability and a "-" showing a significant negative effect on team stability.

equity_stability.jpg

998 founders from 326 multi-founder technology ventures.


In non-table form, the results are as follows:

  1. When the team invested the same amount of financial capital at founding, the team tended to be more stable throughout the 2 years.
  2. When the team had a heterogeneous (i.e., widely differing) amount of prior work experience, the team tended to be less stable for the first 12 months, after which the effect became insignificant.
  3. When the team split the equity equally, it tended to be more stable throughout the 2 years.
However, this last result (#3 above) is counter-balanced by two factors:
  • Teams that split the equity equally and raised a round of outside financing during a period tended to be much less stable in that period, any time during the first 2 years. (In its magnitude, this effect completely washed out the positive effect from #3 above.)
  • Teams that had been friends before founding and split the equity equally tended to be less stable for the first 6 months, after which the effect was insignificant.

Venture Beat: FF Class Stock for Founders

Founders Fund Logo

FF Class Stock for Founders 

A form venture capital funding in Silicon Valley is getting increased interest from founders of start-ups.

It is called the “FF class” of stock, for founders who want to cash out a small percentage of their stake in a company so they don’t have to wait until the company is sold or goes public.

This practice is not entirely new. Many founders through the decades, including at Intuit years ago and Jonathan Abrams at Friendster more recently, have sold shares in their company to their venture backers and gotten cash to enjoy life a little more. But with the favorable start-up climate now, VCs are doing more to accommodate founders, entrepreneurs are getting more sophisticated, hearing more about these sorts of terms, and increasingly asking for them.

Raising money in good times