Venture Explorer

Joost a Google company?

No, this is not scuttlebutt about Google acquiring Joost (or vice versa, for that matter :-)).   Driving home this evening, I heard Tom Leykis on the radio raving about his SlingBox and other services that are reinventing TV.  A listener called up to plug Joost, the TV-on-your-PC service from the founders of Skype, currently in invite-only beta.  Imagine my surprise when the caller repeatedly credited Google as the parent of the Joost service!

Just this morning, I read Fred Wilson's post in which he talks about people believing that Google and Yahoo are owned by the same company - are we at the point that Google is automatically credited with every innovation on the Internet?

No YouTube without widgets

Deepak Thomas and I co-authored a case study for Startup Review on the Rise and Rise of the YouTube Empire.  First of all, thanks a million to Deepak for doing so much of the heavy lifting on this study - once he wraps up his MBA at the University of Chicago, Deepak will be a great asset to a VC, PE or Hedge Fund!

The study got picked up by a lot of websites - here are some of them: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=SKPB%2CSKPB%3A2006-45%2CSKPB%3Aen&q=vineet+buch+youtube+startup+review

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Entrepreneurship: From an Entrepreneur's Perspective!

Plenty of VCs (myself included :-) ) blog about how to build companies ... few entrepreneurs have the time to do so.  Here's Dick Costolo, serial entrepreneur and founder of Feedburner, which hosts my blog's feed, blogging about entrepreneurship ...