Silicon Roundabout Yesterday kicked off the swing through the United Kingdom for Governor Patrick of Massachusetts and the Innovation Economy Partnership Mission 2011. After a remarkable...

Ten Predictions for 2030 I spent this weekend with my two sons in Ft Myers, Florida as part of our annual pilgrimmage to the Red Sox spring training camp. While not chasing after foul balls (thanks, Youk!)...

Insights On SaaS From The $32 million HubSpot Mega-VC Round Tuesday’s big news is that my company HubSpot announced a major new round of venture financing. Details can be found in the non-clever, but descriptively titled “Sequoia...

Building Products That Win: Wisdom from WebInno29 It was a great Web Innovator’s Group meeting on Monday night – one of the best I’ve been to in a while. The ideas were flowing, the floor was humming, and people are definitely...

The Theory of Innovation, and the future of software When we talk about accelerating software development, we’re really talking about accelerating innovation. We can learn from other forms of innovation, like evolution...

CriticalMass is Critical... Earlier this week the New England Venture Capital Association (NEVCA) announced the launch of CriticalMass, a novel shared workspace at the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC)...

Facebook Credits: Great for Social Games Software Developers but Not a Currency This week, Ayeah Games introduced Facebook Credits to FanSwarm. This addition was an important step forward in many ways, spanning both company and in-game initiatives. Most...

Winners of #bostonhack The winners of the first Boston Hack Day Challenge are KnowEssentials and Boston Green, which demonstrate the wide variety of hacks created in a mere 48 hours. The first...

Is first to market really a good strategy? Looking at the recent crazy high $15B (yes billion) valuation of two year old Groupon got me thinking about why? What did Groupon do correctly? Are they winning because...

First Look: mtiks Unless you’re a recording artist or a member of the MPAA, it’s likely that piracy isn’t top of mind. And if you’re a developer creating iPhone, Android, and Windows phone apps...

My Ideal Social Network: The Interest Graph It has now been a year and a half since I graduated college. Surprising how much life can change in such a little amount of time. My priorities, ambitions, interests...

Some Insights on Group Buying Sites I have some pent-up thoughts on the dynamics at work in the “group buying” space. Having cofounded a company called KangoGift (not a group-buying service, rather a service...

Boston needs more developers... here is how we are trying to help If you follow the tech or startup scene, you’ve probably heard about the shortage of developers both in Silicon Valley and in the Boston/New York areas. We at Fairhaven Capital...

Swap.com Energizes Team by Sharing Space With Other Startups When I joined Swap.com, we had a team of seven and were renting an office in downtown Boston. To implement our expansion strategy, we needed to look for new office...

What do we build now? A page from Blueleaf's Lean Startup Playbook (with examples) Progressive Fidelity Testing at Blueleaf. As a follow up to my last post Letter to a Young entrepreneur I got a number of questions about what to do after building the first...

Two months from prototype to... our product is live! This week we handed out keys to our initial set of paying customers for our business intelligence webapp. Two months ago our customers were using our prototype “product”...

“Mark Zuckerberg Stole My Idea!” No he didn’t. He took a concept, improved it, and executed better than the Winklevoss twins could have. Facebook is the most blatant, glaring example of alleged...

First Look: Textaurant Textaurant is focused on solving a simple issue that everyone can identify with: waiting for a table at a restaurant stinks. Even when the restaurant hands you a plastic...

To Code or Not To Code There’s a lot of debate about whether it’s worthwhile for MBAs interested in web startups to invest the time to learn how to code. Some argue that once you have a great...

Calling All University Spinouts - Present at URES 2011! University Research and Entrepreneurship Symposium (URES) is the "go to" annual event in Boston for the country's world-class research universities to showcase...

Ten Companies to Watch in 2011 Admit it... you still have the mental energy for just one more list of predictions about 2011, right? Well, we have saved the best for last. Announcing our inaugural...

2010 - Top 15 Acquisitions 2010 will be remembered as the year of the Tech rebound in Boston, as we saw a number of exits (acquisitions) and several startups that received funding. The larger...

Top 10 Blog Posts for 2010 It is that time time of year for "best of" and "top" lists for 2010, so we thought it would be fun...

Mobile messes up the lean startup seed funding economics Dan Bricklin has a lengthy but worthwhile piece on the challenges facing the startup developer these days that puts some meat...

IPO Anxiety - East Coast Version Bill Gurley’s excellent piece on Silicon Valley IPO Anxiety inspired me to take a companion look at the East Coast, particularly Massachusetts and evaluate the...

Why I am Excited to Run TechStars Boston this Spring! Over and over again, since I became an investor, I’ve heard from many wise people that you should not invest in anyone that needs your help. This puzzles me. In my...

Founder Dialogues featuring Diane Hessan of Communispace (Video) On October 27th, Eric Paley held his latest Founder Dialogues event! This time, in his usual sit-down...

Virtual Goods: A Market Assessment With the close of 2010’s calendar fast approaching, economists and statisticians have begun their usual parade of product...

Boom or Bubble? The Boom Case Investors, both VCs and angels, seem to be doing some crazy things of late. What started as a frenzy in the seed spectrum of the market earlier this year...

China Re-visited… What a fascinating week to be traveling in Asia. President Obama is here for the G20 Summit – as is Tiger Woods – and frankly I am surprised at how tough the...