http://www.digitalgoggles.com Random thoughts around technology, the internet and startups Sun, 11 Sep 2011 20:45:33 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 10 years ago today an historic event took place that changed most of our lives. As I watch the television coverage, I can't help but think about where I was that day. I was a wide-eyed, recent college graduate and had started my first real job in technology at one ... http://www.digitalgoggles.com/2011/09/11/10-years-ago-today/ Quora has been exploding. There's a ton of valuable content and high quality contributors on the site, but it's definitely getting harder to find the best threads. On that note, here are some of my favorite threads across venture capital and startups. This is by no means an exhaustive list ... http://www.digitalgoggles.com/2011/01/29/best-of-quora-venture-capital-and-startups/ High frequency trading and proprietary trading have received quite a bit of media coverage as of late between the recent unexplained market plunge and of course the mortgage meltdown. Not to mention, there is a cloud of looming regulation over the industry. The senate passed a bill on Thursday that ... http://www.digitalgoggles.com/2010/05/24/fintech-roundup-trading-startups/ I'm starting a new weekly series called FinTech Roundup that will be dedicated to discussing technology startups in and around Financial Services. The series will highlight recent investments, M&A and trends across Payments, Capital Markets (Trading, Securities, etc), Banking and other related sectors such as Real Estate and Insurance. Okay, ... http://www.digitalgoggles.com/2010/05/11/fintech-roundup-1/ This past weekend Fred Wilson wrote a timely post on VC and systemic risk. Aside from the topic, one comment particularly struck an accord with me. He said: I believe entrepreneurs will use technology to reinvent the way financial services are provided to consumers this decade. I agree and here's why. First, ... http://www.digitalgoggles.com/2010/04/12/reinventing-financial-services/ Google launched its new social experiment called Buzz yesterday. It has been labeled a Twitter and Foursquare killer by some, and lame and boring by others. Most of the launch was media hype, but it got me thinking about how startups must feel when they see new product announcements by ... http://www.digitalgoggles.com/2010/02/10/how-startups-can-compete-against-google/ TechCrunch posted an article this past weekend on the startup Blippy and how Amazon is insisting that the company stop collecting user purchase data and erase all data that was previously collected. The article got me thinking about our personal data streams, the implicit web and ownership. Many investors and ... http://www.digitalgoggles.com/2010/02/08/do-you-own-your-data-stream/ Most VCs have a standard protocol for evaluating investment opportunities, but entrepreneurs vary greatly in their evaluation of VCs. Experienced entrepreneurs have been through the fund raising process before and know what "potholes" to avoid. There a few questions that entrepreneurs should ask of their potential VCs and some do, ... http://www.digitalgoggles.com/2010/01/20/top-questions-that-dont-get-asked-when-raising-capital/ Boy has the financial services landscape changed over the past year. Collapse and utter failure are the first words that come to mind. AIG, Lehman, Merrill Lynch the list goes on and on. At the same time, a few survivors like Goldman are thriving in this environment and getting ready ... http://www.digitalgoggles.com/2009/10/29/is-fintech-dead/ Cleantech has been one of the few bright spots in terms of venture capital investment in 2008. According to The Cleantech Group, a market research and financial services firm, Q3 brought a record-level of $2.6B invested across 158 companies located in North America, Europe, China and India. That's a 37% ... http://www.digitalgoggles.com/2008/12/21/cleantech-software-opportunity/