By Miki Saxon

Hooray!  Finally!  It's about time.

For more than a decade my angel in vestor and many of our colleagues have been bemoaning what happened to the venture world. Call it the takeover of the walking investment banker.

It started when the name partners wanted to kick back a bit. That made sense, but unfortunately they went to Wall Street for their new people and hired a lot of the hot young turks who were great at manipulating money, but had never really produced anything.

I remember a client telling me how the Board member from his VC investor had a tantrum yelling for the company’s ROI numbers—when the company was six months, working on a revolutionary hardware/software system and the product was still in development. Sheesh.

“The biggest names in the industry are concerned about low returns and are blaming several factors: funds that have grown too large, the M.B.A.’s that have invaded the industry and older partners who have lost touch with what is new in technology.”

For those who don’t understand, typically a partner sits on the board of each startup that the firm funds and this limits the number of companies in which they can invest. In 1990 VCs invested $2.7 billion, at the height of the dot bomb it was $104 billion; it’s dropped back to around $30 billion now.

Because the money must be put to work, too much money is often forced on firms that didn’t need it.

“That often means forcing $3 million into a company that needs $300,000,” according to Ben Horowitz.

Now a number of VC firms, some old players and some new ones have decided to change the game.

The latest, and one of the hottest, is Andreessen Horowitz...

To read more, please CLICK HERE or Visit:

http://mappingcompanysuccess.com/2009/07/

back-to-the-future-for-venture-capital/

By Miki Saxon

May 1, 2009

I’ve never been a lover of the MBA, its almost holy status, depending on the school, and especially its dominance on Wall Street.

In a recent post Justine Larbalestier said, “I was fascinated by Background Briefing’s recent documentary about the emergence of business schools and their effect on corporate culture and its relationship to the current crisis: MBA: Mostly Bloody Awful.”

To read more click www.leadershipturn.com/the-rise-of-the-mba-and-the-fall-of-business/

By Kim Merson

Giving back to the local community has always been very important to each and every member of the TeraTech team.  Now, more than ever before, TeraTech has realized that it is equally important in supporting this community as an entire enitiy as well.  This being said, at one of our weekly staff meetings, one of  our developers, Jo Ann Goertner, shared with us a volunteer program that she became aware of after doing some research for herself.  Now, TeraTech has joined as a Corporate volunteer for Manna Foods (http://www.mannafood.org/), in partnership with Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS).  This is how it all began.

There are numerous children who are on free and reduced meals (FARM) within the county.  MCPS discovered that a lot of the children in the FARM program were coming to school hungry on Mondays, resulting in poor behavior and lower grades, all because a child was hungry.  Manna Foods partnered with MCPS and implemented the "SmartSacks" program.  This is where TeraTech steps in.
 
We sponsor Georgian Forest Elementary School in Silver Spring, MD.  This means we pickup the food from Manna Foods (bi-weekly), store it in our office (all non-perishable items), stuff all 11-15 items per week into a plastic grocery bag (all recycled and brought in by our staff, friends, and family) then deliver them to the school on Friday mornings for the school staff to get to the maximum allotted 48 children in time for take-home Friday afternoons.
 
This is most definitely a win-win-win situation.  It costs TeraTech just a small amount of time.  It usually takes approximately 30 minutes of bag-stuffing time after each one of our weekly meetings; we are gathered at this time anyway.
 
Is this something that you or an organization you are  involved with would like to participate in?  Please contact Kim (at) teratech (dot) com to obtain more information.  Meanwhile, please save your plastic grocery bags for us.  Also, if you are ever in the area of our office on a Wednesday afternoon about 1:45, stop by to join us in the bag-stuffing action!

Hey All,

I read this article and it makes some very valid points concerning today's economy and the state of the business realm.  Please check it out!

Lie, Cheat, Steal—Business As Usual

by Miki Saxon on April 6th, 2009

Sometimes it seems as if the economic crisis is acting like an earthquake that’s turning over rock after rock and all kinds of icky things are crawling out much to our dismay. A few months ago I wrote about the mindset that seems to be so prevalent these days.

Click to www.leadershipturn.com/lie-cheat-steal-business-as-usual/

This happens to me all the time.  I try to do SO many things at once none of them get done at all.  Sure there are some people who talk on the phone, send an email, write a report and eat lunch all at the same time, but that doesn't make them more efficient.  On the contrary, if you're the person on the other line of the phone with that multitasking maven, you'll probably notice that you don't have their full attention.  The email being sent by the diligent do-gooder may be filled with typos, or they'd have to go back over it again to make sure it wasn't, which pretty much cancels out the time saved multitasking in the first place. 

It is almost counterintuitive, but the best way to get things done is to do them thoroughly one at a time, without any interuptions.  If you try to do two things at once, at best you'll end doing both quickly, but probably not very well.  Miki Saxon's blog, which always has great information and insight, gave me some clues about how this works.  Read her blog by clicking here.