Just a quick update for those of you following our investment in Frugal Mechanic: Eric and Tim don’t make much noise but they’re quietly dominating the world of auto parts price comparison. That may not sound like a big market, but DIY auto parts is actually a $19B market in the U.S. alone, and none continue…
Since last fall’s economic downturn, dozens of pundits of various stripes have announced the death of venture capital as an asset class. And it’s true (as Paul Kedrosky and the Kauffman Foundation have convincingly argued) that the class is grossly overcapitalized and will have to shrink radically to produce the kinds of returns investors rightfully continue…
Last week Founders Co-op added a new company to our portfolio: Frugal Mechanic. This deal won’t surprise anyone who’s familiar with our investment thesis: It’s a niche offering (vertical search + price comparison in the $40B DIY auto parts market), With a smart distribution insight (white label parts search for auto enthusiast sites, of which continue…
Last week I wrote about a small investment Founders Co-op had made in Array Health Solutions, a Seattle company that helps small employers control the spiraling cost of health benefits. This morning I unfolded my New York Times to find a front-page article on the very problem Array was created to solve. The story, titled continue…
At 15%+ of U.S. GDP, it’s impossible to ignore health care as a vector for investment. By all accounts the system is badly broken, which should create myriad opportunities for nimble startups to find and exploit inefficiencies. But the sheer size and complexity of the system, not to mention the thicket of state and federal continue…
An old friend once shared a telling (and slightly off-color) story about working for a Hollywood studio. He didn’t have much money and his car was a shabby older model. One day his boss (a successful producer) took him aside and urged him to upgrade for the sake of his professional image: “In this town,” continue…
I’ve been looking for a good holiday read and today Om Malik offered a book suggestion that’s right up my alley: “Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way to be Smart“. In the post, he also cites a handful of what he calls “data-centric” companies – including Summize, Glassdoor and Panjiva – as examples continue…
The current economic crisis is causing pain in nearly every sector of the global economy, with more to come. The public markets will likely continue to slide as the long-term implications for jobs and consumption are fully priced-in and additional buckets of poorly-priced risk (like unsecured consumer credit CDOs) start to topple over like the continue…
One of the first things we look for in an investment opportunity is a unique insight about how to secure low-cost distribution for the idea. Absent that insight, even the most compelling software execution can languish in obscurity; if it’s present, the resulting momentum can turn a good idea into a category killer by giving continue…
Om Malik has a great post up today titled “Why Windows Mobile is in Trouble.” In it, he cites a recent Gartner study on smartphone market share that helps put the iPhone phenomenon in perspective, and also shines a light on prospects for Blackberry’s much anticipated Storm model. As the table below indicates, worldwide iPhone continue…