Do not follow the crowd

Editor's Note: Jules Maltz is a general partner at institutional venture partners (IVP), late stage venture capital firm based in Menlo Park. You can follow him on Twitter @ julesmaltz.

Whenever I was going to make new investments, I always think of 2 × 2 matrix, I learned from Andy Rachleff, benchmark capital, former partner.

The idea is that if you do a new venture investment (or base the company), you may be "right" or "wrong" and you can be "consensus" (after the crowds) or "non-consensual." everyone knows that if you're wrong, you're not making any money. But the interesting part of the chart to the right and above consensus too great for your return. A lot of money, as any horse racing handicapper can tell you is when you're right and don't follow the crowd.

Fortunately (for leading players and savvy venture capitalists), the crowd expressed are often based on the "hype" and not reality. In conditions of effective market, each company will fall somewhere along the line of dotted black in the chart below (with equal basis advertising).

However, in reality, the venture market is inefficient. There are many companies (which I will not call) whose advertising is significantly higher than the base and there are a number of companies (which many of us do not know), which are the opposite. Perhaps I am wrong, as I am right in investment decisions, but my two favorite kinds of companies are the characteristics of the oval (a) or (B):

Hidden gems (Oval): these are the companies that have strong fundamentals that exceed their advertising. They are often on the market, or geographic location, are not widely enterprise of the branch and/or have their business in a market environment is still not understood. Examples of these types of investments in our portfolio of Buddy Media (2010) and Fleetmatics (2010) and outside of our portfolio include RPX (2009), Palantir is (2008) and now (2006) If you're right, the company will grow in advertising and as a basis. If you are wrong, the company will go away quietly without anyone noticing. You know that you're invested hidden gem, the if people tell you:

What they are doing again? looks like playThat niche in "interesting" investmentHave fun, flying in the x meeting of the Council! (sarcastically)

Although hidden gems is a non-consensus because their basis exceeds their advertising, you can make a non-consensus "hyped" investment company if you think it will outperform the expectations of the crowd. These rare (and expensive) companies are called:

Breakthroughs (Oval): they have early hype, but has not yet entered the mainstream. Consensus is that they can be "Roman candle", which will soon come crashing down to reality (blue dashed line). You may not be consensus if you think it is much more than even the early advertising offers. During the hidden Gem, investing uses low buy sell high strategy breakout investing is to buy high, sell higher. These investments in our portfolio examples of Twitter (2009) and Zynga (2008), and outside of our portfolio include square (2011), Foursquare (2010) and, most famously, Facebook (2006). If you get the investment law, the foundations are rising faster than anyone imagined you incredibly valuable business. If you get it wrong, the unanimous opinion is correct and massively overpaid. You know that you have invested in multiple companies, if people say the following:

Wow. I can't believe you paid valuationIt just seems fadWon't XYZ crush them? Remember what happened to Friendster

Ultimately, regardless of the location of your company on the graph, you always want to move in the right as soon as possible. So if you are a company of breakout, lucky to get some advertising and take advantage of it, make money by hiring great people and focus on fundamentals. And if you are a hidden gem, don't feel bad that no one knows you just remind them that you are a non-consensus!

Jules Maltz joined institutional venture partners (IVP) in August 2008, and already more than 10 years of venture capital and startup experience. It focuses on later stage venture capital investment in rapidly growing ...

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Google unveils chrome native client, the next generation of Web applications to follow?

MG Siegler wrote to TechCrunch since 2009. It covers web, mobile, social, big companies, small companies, in fact all. And Apple. A lot. Prior to TechCrunch he covered various technology beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, mg attended the University of Michigan. He had previously lived in Los Angeles, where he worked in Hollywood and in San Diego where ... ? Read More

For well over a year now Google hyping up something called a native client. This open source technology, which allows Web browser for running compiled native code. In other words this potential missing link between native applications and Web applications. And now finally getting baked into chrome.

As Google notes on their Chrome blog today, the latest beta version of chrome (version 14) has its own built-in client. Their implementation allows for c and C++ code to run inside a Web browser while maintaining security, which offers Web technologies like JavaScript.

Google Writes:

Native apps client use pepper, a set of interfaces that provide c and C++ bindings to HTML5. As a result, developers can now use their native code libraries and experience to deliver portable, high performance Web applications.

This work was a long time coming. He was in May 2010 that Google first started talking about their own client to Google i/o Conference. This past February, Google notes that own the customer becomes closer to reality when they announced a new SDK for developers to play around with this year, the i/o operations, the company once again the hope that it will be ready this year in the future of chrome.

While the native client, an open source project, it was heavily driven by Google. Not only do they have done much native client work by themselves, but they have already done most of the work for Peppers plugin API (PPAPI), which is the development of the Netscape plugin API (NPAPI), which the latest versions of Web browsers (except IE, of course, has its own technology). PPAPI offers better performance than an NPAPI PLUGIN, which is the key to improving your client work.

All this can add up to the next generation of Web applications, if the developers take advantage of the native client. Intensive code will now be executed on the local machine (native code) during in real time in the browser. This should lead to more Web-based gaming, media, etc.

Google also notes that the Web audio API is part of the 14 Chrome beta, this will also help with the development of immersive gaming done through your browser.

Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and money in the world of information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers many ...

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Google chrome is based on open source Web browser chrome, which is based on Webkit. By chance he was announced prematurely on September 1, 2008 and is scheduled to ...

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Obama checks in: you can now follow our President at immodestly

Alexia Tsotsis currently works at TechCrunch as a writer. She is also a blogger who attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California. She majored in writing and art, moved to New York shortly after the end of the work in the entertainment industry and media. After four years of his life in New York and to attend courses in New York. ? Read More

First Facebook, now Twitter then immodestly; Obama sure gets around (social platform). As announced today at the White House blog, Obama will scan location-based service as he hits his stops on the tour bus in the West economically. Of course.

Users who want to follow Barack can check out White House immodestly page here, where they can now subscribe to White House tips, as well as the return of the White House when they visit, as well as the President of the event. And Barack already left his first "tip" link to blog about the tour first stop at lower Hanna Bend Park in Cannon Falls, Minnesota. Eh, someone should tell him that it's not exactly how they are used.

One wonders how the coverage of social media is doing recently brought to the Obama campaign's Technical Director (and former technical director neftegazoprovodnye) Harper Reed who hep these things, and how useful location-based service will get Word to supporters. In any case, it seems like you need to follow the President through his page to actually find it, search for "Barack Obama" on mobile applications I guy in Salt Lake City and Barack Obama in London.

Although probably the most famous, Barack is not the only politician to Foursquare. Mayor Bloomberg famously tested marriage Equalitocalypse earlier this summer and Mitt Romney and Cory Booker also exchange their refunds to fans. * Insert joke about Obama, he is the Mayor automatically visits here. *

Also: it seems like Foursquare has created a White House page to automatically follow people back, otherwise, Obama will place a lot of friend requests. Personally I can't wait until he joined the Instagram.

Foursquare is a location based social network that includes gameplay elements. Users share their location with friends check in via the Smartphone app "or text message.

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