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Homerun hitters take on small ballers at Venture Shift

by Ezra Roizen, July 16, 2012 | Comments

'Moneyball' view of investing vs swinging for the fences

Vator and Bullpen Capital’s Venture Shift event is this Thursday in San Francisco (get tickets here!). I’m moderating the panel No. 4: What’s the new venture hit/what’s the exit environment look like? $100M exit or $1 Billion IPO? With so many start-ups being funded with under $1M, are the new investors looking for M&A exits? What's the best strategy: the ...

The new model for schools and education

by Ezra Roizen, May 19, 2012 | Comments

A five-point plan that we should invest in

\ There’s a scene in the new Star Trek where kid Spock is in an individual learning pod with poetry, calculus and whales floating by. This scene is immediately followed by him swapping blows with a crew of sociopathic Vulcan classmates. I think these two scenes sum up my concerns about an overly automated education. Sure, these Vulcan kids would nail ...

How do you replicate Silicon Valley entrepreneurship?

by Ezra Roizen, February 6, 2012 | Comments

	Silicon [insert your area here] "This country can't be knocked out with one punch," said Clint Eastwood, during the Super Bowl halftime, in an ad for Chrysler. "We get right back up again, and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines. Ya, it's halftime in America, and our second half is about to begin." I do think there ...
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Venture Shift NYC and the Angel Investing Hall of Fame

by Ezra Roizen, November 6, 2011 | Comments

The swing-for-the-fences strategy is intriguing, but other models also yield compelling returns

At Vator and Bullpen Capital's Venture Shift event next week, I’m moderating a panel called “Super angels, micro-VCs, incubators, etc.: Which early stage strategy is best?” Groupon’s IPO last week, which valued the company at one point during trading at nearly $20 billion, was just another reminder of the power of “swing for the fences” investing. As I was ...

Super angels - it's just the beginning

by Ezra Roizen, July 6, 2011 | Comments

Three contributing factors to the emergence of the current angel and micro-VC ecosystem

I’m moderating a panel at the upcoming Venture Shift event, titled "How angels and super angels/micro-cap VC funds are changing the stakes and making a new ecosystem." This is a terrific topic. By way of background, you can see my comprehensive thoughts on launching new media ventures in a presentation I gave at the Haas >Play conference, called The Three ...

Why Groupon passed up $6 billion

by Ezra Roizen, December 7, 2010 | Comments

As with American Idol, we're entering the round where the public votes on the multiples

Bambi and I were at the Mayfield Fund holiday party last night and naturally a frequent topic of conversation was the not-Google/Groupon deal. Most folks appeared to be amazed that Groupon would turn down a reportedly $6 billion proposal. And believe me, $6 billion sounds like a lot of money. I would really like to have $6 billion. But is ...

Announcing VatorAcademy

by Ezra Roizen, November 3, 2009 | Comments (1)

A new platform for entrepreneurial executive education

Vator on Tuesday launched a new executive education platform, specifically for entrepreneurs. It's called VatorAcademy. Entrepreneurs have to be the ultimate generalists, with proficiency in a number of professional disciplines. Yet many great businesses are launched by innovators with deep understanding of a specific problem, but often less experience in a number of other key areas. Vator is creating a ...

AlwaysOn 2009 OnHollywood winners are...

by Ezra Roizen, April 8, 2009 | Comments

The evolution of digital entertainment: Return of the king

The digitization of entertainment was exactly what we thought it was going to be, though we didn’t know it at the time. Silicon Valley (writ large) deals with digitizing stuff. Hollywood creates content. When the Internet brought the two crashing together we knew both were going to have a role to play. At first it looked like technology would control ...

March Madness on the iPhone - We've arrived

by Ezra Roizen, March 13, 2009 | Comments

NCAA junkies may just ante up to get a glimpse of the game wherever and whenever they want

March Madness is not only a battle of wills and abilities between hyper-talented coaches and athletes, it’s a time of the year marked by an individual journey for access. Thursdays and Fridays of March Madness are tests of will and creativity for any loyal hoops fan. It started with radio earbuds strategically placed in the ear away from your co-workers. ...

Street fighters' down round survival guide

by Ezra Roizen, February 21, 2009 | Comments (1)

If you're an entrepreneur and your back is against the wall, read this

There's a lot of whacky stuff going on in the private/VC financing world right now. So, I thought I'd put out a quick note on three things I think entrepreneurs should be considering if they're in the unfortunate position of needing to negotiate a critical round of financing right now, and their hands aren't very strong relative to their investors.As ...

AlwaysOn 2009 OnMedia 100 winners

by Ezra Roizen, January 22, 2009 | Comments

The Rubicon Project tops the list, ranking No. 1 among peers

We are pleased to announce our third OnMedia 100 list of the top private companies in online marketing. The 2009 list presented a new challenge for the editorial team, namely spotting the companies that embrace the current market pressures and crystallize into diamond, amongst the many more that will be turned to dust.The winners from this year's list will likely ...

On Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers

by Ezra Roizen, November 30, 2008 | Comments (2)

	Quick thoughts on being successul Does the year you're born make any difference in your success? It's a question that will come up for anyone reading Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers. Even though there's something about Gladwell's books that make me feel like I'm supposed to read them in an airport, I was able to fight that feeling long enough to get through it this past Thanksgiving ...
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Village Voice vying to take back classifieds

by Ezra Roizen, October 29, 2008 | Comments

Weekly turns daily, and fights for online local ads

The Village Voice has been around for 41 years, and for the latter part of the last century dominated the local advertising and classified market in New York. It was a weekly newspaper that survived on advertising. But these days, the Village Voice, which is comprised of 15 newspapers and five national blogs has watched Craigslist and Yelp, as well ...

Get people to buy into your dream

by Ezra Roizen, July 16, 2008 | Comments (1)

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Customers, vendors can help finance your company

Entrepreneurs should think of OPM - other people's money, said Intense Debate CEO Tom Keller, who shared his lessons and advice to entrepreneurs in this interview. "It's important to get other people to buy into the dream," he said. Importantly, Tom isn't just referring to investors. He's referring to customers and vendors. Paying customers are a form of non-diluted financing. ...

CEO Pete Vlastelica on the Yardbarker playbook

by Ezra Roizen, June 30, 2008 | Comments

After originally launching a “Digg for sports,” Pete Vlastelica realized that in order to attract big league advertisers he was going to either need to bring them “closer to a purchase decision” or create a highly-engaging content experience. So after drawing up a new set of plays for the company, Pete and his team were able to land a $6 million round of financing from DFJ, Labrador and a roster of big name athletes. Now Pete is rolling out a ...

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Ezra Roizen
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STRATEGYfx, LLC (Owner)

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